Bound into the Blood

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

George woke to the wet rasp of a tongue on his cheek and the rumble of a purr. Imp, he thought, after a moment of confusion. “Enough,” he mumbled and raised his hand to brush away the half-grown cat. He pushed himself up to sit cross-legged and leaned his back against the leg of the table.

Angharad bent over him, concern clear on her face. “Sit down,” George said. “I’m fine.”

“No doubt. That must be why you’re down there instead of up here,” she said, but she turned his chair upright and sat down again carefully in hers. “What happened?”

He probed but there was no inner response. “Apparently Cernunnos wasn’t pleased with this particular line of inquiry.”

She rolled her eyes at the sarcasm. “Why not?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? He’s never told me anything about my father and clearly doesn’t want me to look into it.”

Her brow furrowed. “Harsh treatment.”

But he can do whatever he wants to me, George thought, including just snuffing me out. Cernunnos had healed him of mortal injuries a few months ago, but it took persuasion and George had little confidence that Cernunnos was sentimental about keeping him around. He didn’t want to alarm Angharad with that idea, but a quick glance up at her face convinced him her thoughts were running the same way.

Imp tapped his knee and he turned his attention to the black tom-kit. “Trying to tell me something, my lady?” he asked. The cat carried a passenger, an avatar of the goddess Senua, protector of hidden things. Since he’d brought the kitten back from Gaul, it had attached itself to Angharad and followed her around diligently, to the consternation of her two other cats and all their dogs. Watching this small beastie rule the household animals had provided much amusement, but he was still waiting to find out why Senua had taken an interest in them.

Imp leapt up to Angharad’s lap and began kneading it, purring, to make itself comfortable.

Angharad smiled down at her husband as her hand stroked the kitten. “Not much room here anymore.”

Two more months, he thought, and then a daughter, Mag says, if a rock-wight that only knows one gender can tell the difference properly. Family to come.

But what of the family past, he thought. My father is dead to me, is it? I suspect maybe not. I wonder what Senua could tell me. My father’s history is certainly hidden enough to be in her purview.

The speculation made him uneasy. I belong to Cernunnos now, and I’ve seen his jealousy before when Senua or Taranis took an interest. Appealing to Senua for help would be like setting up a rival. It feels… disloyal. This is between Cernunnos and me.

He looked around him and his mouth quirked. And here I am sitting on the ground, having just thought of looking into my father’s life a few minutes ago. What will his reaction be if I continue?

He leaned down to push off from the floor and rose to his feet. “Don’t worry,” he told his wife, as he dusted himself off. “I’ll have to give this some thought before going any further.”

Later that afternoon, George opened his back door and whistled up his dogs to keep him company.

Angharad’s terriers were accustomed to being excluded from these tours of the pack in the kennels, but George had fallen into the habit of letting his own dogs, the ones he’d brought with him from his old life in the human world, mix with the pack for hound walking. It gave them more exercise and helped accustom them to occasional overnight stays in the kennels when he was away.

They walked together through the small walled garden behind the huntsman’s house, the dogs lingering to investigate interesting smells and then catching up. The garden was now in the midst of its summer blooming, brilliant in the hot sunshine. The riot of spring was over, but the long-lasting perennials provided notes of red bee-balm and deep-blue spiderwort, highlighted by tall yellow black-eyed Susans and the broad white blossoms of rose mallow. A clump of lupines, rising in a variety of soft pastels from their leafy bases, filled one sunny corner.

He knew most of these flowers and Alun had identified the rest for him as each had come up, but it was hard to accustom himself to the absence of so many garden mainstays. Where were the roses, for example? It seemed to him the beds had been designed on one occasion from flowers available in the new world, and then left unchanged for centuries but for maintenance and renewal.

He remembered the tales of human pioneers in America bringing along precious seedlings and slips so that their new gardens and orchards in the wilderness would contain their favorites from their homes, even from across the sea. The fae had brought orchard trees, apple and pear, but not peach. Vines from Gaul, but no rhubarb from further east. And yet, they imported spices like cinnamon as part of their normal trade. Unpredictable choices, he thought.

He’d asked Ceridwen about roses during one of her history lessons, and she’d told him that some of Gwyn ap Nudd’s settlers had included them after all, but there were none to be seen in Greenway Court—they were the favorite flower of Gwyn’s much-disliked father Lludd, King of Britain, and no one had the temerity to display them in Gwyn’s own court.

Whenever he thought about the absence of roses, George marveled. It was so emblematic of the differences between the fae world and the human one, that a distaste could endure for fifteen hundred years unchanged because it was within the lifetime of a single fae, like Gwyn. His great-grandfather.

He opened the back gate in the wall and led his dogs across the lane to the gate opposite. The entrance to the huntsman’s alley was his personal shortcut into the kennels. The shaded walkway provided some welcome relief from the sun.

Where were the innovators, he wondered, gardeners experimenting with new species? He knew there were wizards who specialized in plants, in drugs and toxins, but where were the ordinary folk, the ones who just wanted to see if they could grow a better color or a different form?

It was like the animals, he thought, the new world species that the settlers found. They did some breeding of domesticates, the native horses for example, but mostly they left them alone, to thrive or not, hunted or not. Some of the native plants became popular, but from an indirect source. The fae grew their own potatoes and corn, but the original seed stock was imported from their hidden trade with the human world, which was where the plants had been domesticated, not here. Tobacco and sugar were much admired, but they were bought in bulk from the human world, being crops too labor-intensive to be easily cultivated by the sparse population of fae. If there were no human world to draw upon, how much more impoverished the choices would be here, he thought. But, then, would they miss what they didn’t know?

When he and his dogs reached the end of the alley and the door into the kennels, he paused, his hand on the latch. The smell of fresh whitewash had faded away as the newness of the rebuilt structure began to wear off.

He opened the door and stepped into the back corridor, and then across into the huntsman’s office. When he walked in, he sneezed. Plenty of new scents lingering here, he thought. Dust from the books, paint, and especially the sharpness of the polish on his new walnut desk, glowing in the bright sunlight that was reflected in from his window into the main courtyard. The smell of the ancient journals and scrolls overlaid everything else. It was good to see them back on their replacement shelves, the hunt logs and breeding books going back to the days before Gwyn brought the hounds of Annwn to the new world and moved the whole domain with them.

The wild hunt, George thought. The hounds of hell. That’s how they’re known to human legend. My pack, my charge. No different in most ways from any pack of foxhounds, like those he’d grown up with, hunting in Virginia. But once each year, on Nos Galan Gaeaf, All Hallows’ Eve, they changed. Then Cernunnos, the master of beasts, turned them to the cause of justice, and it was Gwyn’s responsibility to carry out the sentence, with George as huntsman for the pack. He’d done it once before, and in a few months, he’d be doing it again.

He walked over to the new cupboard, sturdier than the last, that housed the oliphant, the ceremonial horn carved from the end of a tusk and enspelled to preserve it from decay. It was reputedly as old as the pack itself, used only during the great hunt once each year. He peeked in and ran his fingers along it gently, the ancient ivory smooth to his touch, then locked it away again.

He turned on his heel and surveyed the room. Everything occupied the same places as before the fire, as though the kennels had not been completely destroyed. His only complaint was the new sofa. It looked fine, the cushions a dull dark green, but he was sure it couldn’t be as comfortable as the old one where he’d taken many a brief nap. Too bad it was solid-padded instead of sprung, but the cushions were certainly thick. The new one was longer than the one he’d inherited, he’d noticed. A subtle nod to his height?

He sat down for a moment to update his hunt log with a few notes about the hound walking this morning and Eurig’s comments about the puppies. Hugo took the opportunity to hop up onto the new sofa to try out its suitability as a dog bed and stretched out the full length of it on his side, his long legs dangling over the edge.

“What do you think?” George asked him. “Comfy?” Hugo’s tail thumping at the sound of his voice answered him.

The smaller yellow Sargeant claimed the space remaining at the far end of the cushions and curled up tidily.

“Alright,” George said. “You two clearly approve, anyway.”

Before he put his journal aside, he thought about Eurig’s complaints again. He’d wanted to get this season’s whelps out from underfoot as the kennels were rebuilt, and puppy walking was a traditional method of tying the interests of the landowners and the hunters together. The puppy show at the end of the season would provide a public way to thank them, and the puppies would return improved for the experience.

He’d considered letting his grandparents in Rowanton take a couple but he was reluctant to bring the hounds to the human world where questions would be raised and anyway it was more important to strengthen the local ties here. Thinking of his grandparents reminded him of his parents. His grandfather knew little about his own son-in-law, but George was going to have to ask him for anything he might remember.

Why was Cernunnos so upset? He probed again, but encountered only silence within. Still not talking to me, he thought.

He shook off his worry and headed out the door, slapping his leg to summon his dogs to follow.

When George emerged into the kennel courtyard, the hounds hopped off their benches in their pens on the far side and lifted their heads to cry a greeting. He was glad they hadn’t changed the layout or materials much in the reconstruction but then the stone had burned as well as the wood in the magically-augmented fire so there was little reason to eliminate all the wooden elements.

Ives, the kennel-master, had taken the opportunity to redo the plumbing and the foundations and to plow and replant the attached hound runs, so a general sense of renewal everywhere was overlaid on the resurrected complex.

Tanguy stuck his head out of the building, across the courtyard from the huntsman’s office. “Master Ives asks if you’ll step in for a moment, huntsman.”

George nodded and followed him in, leaving his two dogs out in the courtyard to sniff noses with the hounds through the fences of their pens.

It was relatively quiet in the workroom just off the corridor on this side. In the heat of the summer they tried to prepare the food for the hounds early in the day, and they needed cold spells to keep the knacker’s meat from spoiling. Game wouldn’t be hunted again until the beginning of fall, so the full bustle and steam of preparing food for the hounds was much reduced.

Still, there was always tack to be repaired, and both of the kennel-men sat at the worktable with leather in their hands, busy with awls and waxed thread. George noticed that the scent of the leather was stronger than usual, or perhaps it was that the competing odors hadn’t yet settled in to the rebuilt rooms. Give it a year, he thought, and it’ll smell just the same as before—a mix of steamed grain, boiled meat, leather, and hard work, with the sparkling tang of polish and liniments overlaying it all.

He nodded at Tanguy and Huon. Both of the short lutins in their usual red vests and breeches nodded back. “How do you like your new digs?” he asked. At their puzzled expressions, he emended, “I mean, the new sleeping chambers.”

One improvement Ives had requested was a couple of rooms where the kennel-men could sleep over, if there were an emergency of any kind. They had houses and families of their own, but it was useful to have a place onsite, and George had commented on how there was usually a room or two like that over a large stable, for the same reason.

“They’re handy, huntsman,” Tanguy said, “though Armelle would rather see me home at night.” He blushed as he said it. He’d been married just a few months, like George.

Bachelor Huon laughed at his workmate as George passed, walking through to the kennel-master’s office in the next room.

Ives rose from his short desk to greet him, and walked around and closed the door behind him. George’s eyebrow raised—it was uncommon for that door to be shut.

“What’s up, kennel-master?” he asked. The older lutin made his way back to his desk chair and waved him to a larger seat in front, one of a pair that he kept around that were better suited to the size of a fae, or a human like George.

Ives didn’t respond directly. “We’re all done,” he said. “The books going up in the huntsman’s office, that was the very last of it.”

George let him set his own pace for the conversation. “So, everything’s back to normal, is it? You happy with the results?”

Ives nodded. “We’re ready for the puppies to return anytime.”

“A good thing,” George said. “The walkers are getting… restive. I just had an earful from Eurig this morning. Not sure if I can make him keep them a few more weeks.”

“Iona threatens the same,” Ives chuckled. “Benitoe must be stopping his aunt from kicking up too much of a fuss.”

“Or he’s keeping some of it to himself to spare us,” George suggested.

“Could be.” Ives paused for a moment, and George waited impatiently for the real topic to be introduced.

“Dyfnallt working out well for you?” Ives asked.

This can’t be the real subject, either, George thought. “I could use another whipper-in with Benitoe away, but with both Rhian and Dyfnallt willing to swap roles as huntsman and Brynach helping out, it’s good enough for the hound walking.”

Ives hesitated again. Taking a guess, George ventured, “When’s Benitoe coming back from Edgewood? Does his aunt still need his help with the inn?”

A surreptitious glance at Ives confirmed his suspicion. This was what Ives wanted to discuss. George leaned back and waited.

Ives cleared his throat. “You know Benitoe is part of the Kuzul.”

George nodded. That was the governing council for the lutins in Gwyn’s domain. The workings of the handful of elders were obscure outside the lutin community but occasionally they stepped into the light for matters that involved the fae or other races.

When Gwyn ap Annwn sent his foster-son Rhys north to Edgewood to revive it after the exile of Gwyn’s sister Creiddylad, almost all the industry had to be rebuilt and the people salvaged from centuries of abuse. Benitoe had been sponsored to the Kuzul by Ives as a sort of junior member, delegated to look after the interest of the lutins who had been lost there.

“The Kuzul have a new mission for him, huntsman, and it involves you.”

“You want me to let him have as much time off as he needs, is it?”

“No, that’s not it at all.” Ives frowned and glanced down. “I told them this was korrigans’ work,” he muttered, “but they overruled me.” He raised his head and looked George squarely in the face. “They want him to visit the human world, with you. To look for trading opportunities.”

That surprised him, Ives thought, watching the huntsman’s face.

“Let me explain,” he said. “It’s the old story, those who want things to stay the same, and the factions that want change.”

Where should I start, he thought. “Have you heard about Deuroc, yet?” he asked.

George shook his head.

“He’s one of the resurrected ones from Edgewood, come in with all his family surviving. They put him in charge there, and he’s been working with Benitoe. He’s part of the Kuzul now.”

He hesitated. The engrained habit of saying little about the doings of the Kuzul to outsiders was hard to overcome.

“Most of the Kuzul were alarmed by the disaster at Edgewood, so many of our folk dead or missing. But there’s no denying that the survivors, well, they’re different. They lost family and friends, but it’s made them tougher. They have no interest in returning to the old ways, and Deuroc is their voice.”

“Forged in the fire,” George murmured, and Ives nodded.

“Deuroc tells them they’re getting stagnant. Tells them the destruction in Edgewood can work in their favor. ‘Look at that inn run by Maëlys,’ he says. ‘Could that have happened anywhere else?’ And the older councilors just frown and try to ignore him.”

“But I think he’s right, huntsman,” Ives continued. “They’re all working together over there, the lutins and the fae, and Rhys and Edern are encouraging it by keeping the rents low and helping them rebuild with loans and material.”

Ives remembered Edern’s vow that Rhys had sworn to uphold, to look out for the lutins in Edgewood in Isolda’s memory. Not dead a year yet, his daughter, and it still caught him by surprise when he thought of it. He took a breath.

“Horse breeders like Luhedoc and some of the others who meet with outsiders, they’ve grouped together in one area, where the farms were mostly abandoned and there’s a small, empty village they’ve renamed Karnag. A mix of several clans, you understand, not just one, and there are a few fae, too. And korrigans. Things are moving very fast there.”

George gave a half-smile as if he recognized this sort of story.

“Well, Deuroc wants them to expand,” Ives said, “and he’s convinced enough of them to give it a try that the Kuzul have been forced to take action. The oldsters are worried most about the young folk who want to go there from other places, against the wishes of their clans, and what that will do to disrupt us. Me, I think having a place for them to go is a good thing, a way to experiment, to learn.”

“So how did they decide?” George asked.

“Deuroc thinks this ferment of activity in Edgewood could be the foundation for a larger role for lutins in the world. He sees change coming for the fae and the korrigans, with the new ways being made by the rock-wights and the new power of Gwyn as King of Annwn. ‘If we don’t make a place now,’ he says, ‘we’ll dwindle into backward folk of no importance. They’ll leave us behind.’”

George nodded.

“Some in the Kuzul said, ‘Where would you have us seek for this wonder? What new thing can we make part of our lives?’”

Ives smiled. “Deuroc and Benitoe have been working together, you understand. So he tells them, ‘New things come from the human world. Look there.’”

George covered his face with one hand and shook his head.

“So they’ve given Benitoe the task. Find something suitable for the lutins that lets us grow with everyone else while still remaining true to our nature.”

“Ah,” George said. “For a moment there you had me worried. I thought you were going to ask for something difficult.”

Ives chuckled at his dry tone.