Hellforged (22 page)

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Authors: Nancy Holzner

Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Demonology

BOOK: Hellforged
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The constant feedings exhausted Ceridwen as the infant literally drained her life. She named the baby Avagddu—the name means “utter darkness”—because each time she fed him, he suckled so hard and so long the world began to go black. Unwilling to let the child deplete her life force, she gathered herbs to make a potion that would allow the baby to change its shape. That way, the hungry infant could become a calf, goat, sheep, or dog and suckle from other animals, letting Ceridwen regain her strength. She hired a shepherd boy, Gwion, to stir the potion as it boiled in a cauldron over an open fire. Gwion’s instructions were to keep the fire going and stir without ceasing until only three drops of potion remained. Those three drops would hold the concentrated magic to turn Avagddu into a shapeshifter.
As the shepherd boy stirred, the exhausted Ceridwen stuffed rags in her ears and went to sleep. She slept for weeks without waking. As Avagddu cried, more and more Morfran emerged. The cauldron absorbed some of it, and some possessed Gwion, already a greedy child, who began to hunger for the potion. At the crucial moment, Gwion scooped up the last three drops and, hot as they were, swallowed them. The overheated cauldron shattered, and Avagddu’s enraged howls reached a new pitch.
The Book of Utter Darkness
depicted Gwion differently from other sources. Here, he was grasping and sneaky—a prime target for Morfran possession. In other histories, the boy started off as either ambitious or foolish, but he gained great wisdom from Ceridwen’s potion.
Back to the book. The shattering of the cauldron awoke Ceridwen, who saw what had happened. Furious at Gwion for consuming the magical drops, she chased the boy. As he ran, he changed into a rabbit to gain speed. Ceridwen shifted into a greyhound. When she gained on him, he leapt into a river and transformed into a fish; Ceridwen became an otter to hunt him there. The chase continued like that: Gwion shifting as he tried to escape and Ceridwen right behind him, her shifts always erasing his advantage. At last, when Gwion could run no more, he hid in a barn, where he dived into a storage bin and became a grain of wheat, hiding in a huge pile of other grains. Ceridwen changed into a black hen and pecked inside the bin. She, too, had a great capacity for hunger, and she gobbled up every grain—including Gwion.
The book implied this was a suitable end to Gwion: A greedy, treacherous boy succumbed to his hunger and landed in another’s stomach. But, as anyone who’d read the
Mabinogion
knew, it wasn’t his end. I turned the page. The story was appearing fast in my mind, as fast as if I were reading it. The next section related a scene new to me.
Ceridwen returned home to find Avagddu quiet, playing with a fragment of the shattered cauldron, cooing and smiling. Ceridwen knew the cauldron had absorbed much of the Morfran and become saturated with poison as the potion boiled. She tried to snatch the shard away from her son, but the hot iron burned her hand. Avagddu laughed at her pain, then went back to babbling at the fragment. Ceridwen watched him. He looked like he was having a conversation with the shard. Although the iron had burned her, the child seemed unharmed. And for the first time in months, the baby wasn’t howling. She let Avagddu keep his plaything.
Nine months later, Ceridwen gave birth to Gwion anew. The baby was perfect, and she named him Taliesin—“radiant brow”—to honor his beauty. Ceridwen favored the new baby, igniting a fierce hatred in Avagddu. The older boy spent his time huddled with his precious cauldron fragments. Ceridwen still couldn’t touch them without burning herself.
Avagddu drew dark magic from the fragments and transformed himself into a poisonous mist. The mist spread over Taliesin in his cradle, and the baby cried out for their mother’s help. Ceridwen came running and fanned Avagddu away. The older boy approached Taliesin as a snake, a beautiful butterfly, and a rain shower—all poisonous. Each time, Ceridwen rescued her younger son. But she realized Avagddu would never quit trying to kill his brother, so she sent Taliesin away to be raised by a human family. Frustrated that his hated brother was beyond his reach, Avagddu swore eternal enmity against Taliesin and the humans who fostered him.
And so three races were born with these events. Taliesin’s descendants were the Cerddorion. Avagddu fathered a race of demi-demons, the Meibion Avagddu, or Sons of Utter Darkness. And each searing, poisonous, iron-hard fragment of the shattered cauldron became a Hellion. The largest of them, Difethwr, remained Avagddu’s companion and chief retainer throughout his life.
 
I LOOKED OVER AT MAB, WHO STARED INTO THE FLAMES dancing in the fireplace. I’d been so deeply absorbed in the book, I didn’t notice her build a fire. Her eyes met mine.
“Are you all right, child?”
“Yes.” And I was, despite a slight ache behind my eyes from staring at the pages as the book whispered its story in my mind. The story had been familiar, yet different, with its emphasis on Avagddu and demons. In the
Mabinogion
and the Cerddorion histories I’d read, the whole point of the story was Taliesin’s birth. To the norms, Taliesin was a hero and the greatest Welsh bard. To the Cerddorion, he was the first member of a glorious race of shapeshifters. But in
The Book of Utter Darkness
, Taliesin was the enemy.
“This is the first I’ve heard of the Meibion Avagddu,” I said. “What are demi-demons?”
“They’re half demon, just as you are half human. Their shapeshifting powers are different. They have a human form, which enables them to move about in daylight. But they cannot turn into other creatures, as we can. Rather, they have shadow demons. That means they can assume their demonic form from twilight until dawn. But even in full daylight, the demonic half shadows them, following them in the demon plane.”
She held out her hand for the book. I was happy to pass it to her. As she took it, a cool, soothing sensation spread over my demon mark, like aloe vera on sunburn.
“The Meibion Avagddu are a depleted race,” Mab continued, holding the book in her lap and smoothing a hand across its pale cover. “Their females are barren. The males sometimes mate with human women, but two-thirds of the children from such couplings are stillborn. Of those born alive, half die in infancy.”
“Is that why I’ve never run into any?” Then I realized. I
had
run into one—who’d said we shared a common ancestor although he wasn’t Cerddorion. “Pryce is a demi-demon.”
She looked pleased I’d managed to put two and two together. “A powerful one. He fancies himself the leader of the Meibion Avagddu.”
Great. Sworn enemy of the Cerddorion and humans alike. And I’d hitched a ride with him. “He told me he was my cousin.”
“Do not trust him. Whatever Pryce says, he means harm—always. Remember that.”
I needed to read up on this other branch of the family, so I asked Mab for a book about the Meibion Avagddu. To my surprise, she told me my lessons were done for the day. “Your only text will be
The Book of Utter Darkness
. Your study of it can proceed only as the book is forced to reveal itself to you.”
It would be a lot easier if I could just get the Cliffs Notes. “How do I force it?”
“Not through effort. ‘Force’ was the wrong word, perhaps, because the things we associate with physical force—violence, weapons—have no power over the book. Rather, they feed it. You, yourself, must become such that the book can no longer resist you.”
“That sounds awfully Zen for a demon fighter.”
The corners of Mab’s mouth twitched in a tiny half-smile. “Binding the Destroyer to yourself was the first step. And that part is done; you need not deepen that connection. Now, you must focus on purity.”
Purity. That shouldn’t be too hard. Kane was absorbed in his case and Daniel, except for that one heart-thumping kiss, kept his distance. Anyway, both of them were on the wrong side of the Atlantic.
Mab noticed my blush. “I don’t mean physical purity, Victory. You must be purely
yourself
. That’s the simplest thing in the world, yet not as simple as it sounds. You bear a Hellion’s mark, and you’ve put your own mark upon the Hellion in turn.”
My heart sank. “It’s a lost cause, then. I’m contaminated.”
“No. The Hellion’s essence marks you, it’s true. But in the marking were the seeds of your purity. Only
because
you’ve been marked can you gain real purity.”
Whoa, definitely Zen. As in making your head hurt if you tried to make sense of it.
She reached over and patted my hand, then stood. “Now, spend the afternoon as you wish. Sleep if you like; you may find the book drains you. Take a walk. Or go visit Mr. Cadogan at the pub—but keep your distance from Pryce. Would you like Jenkins to drive you to the village?”
“No, I don’t feel up to socializing. But a walk sounds good.”
“That’s fine. I’ll see you at dinner, then.”
I lifted my jacket from the peg by the kitchen door and stepped out into a damp, gray day. Turning up my collar, I thought about what I had to do: Keep from dreaming, read a book written in a language I didn’t understand, and become pure through contamination. Piece of cake.
18
THE SUN STRUGGLED TO PUSH THROUGH THE CLOUDS AS I crossed Maenllyd’s sloping back lawn, heading toward the woods behind the house, where a public footpath would take me across neighboring fields and through more woods. The wind rattled tree branches and carried a scent of damp earth. The air was warm enough that yesterday’s powdering of snow had vanished.
As I walked, I tried to figure out what Mab meant about being pure. I climbed a stile over a stone wall to follow the path through a field, scattering a flock of sheep as I went. As the sheep broke and ran, I thought about how they were effortlessly pure, each one true to its nature as a sheep. The color of this animal’s fleece or whether that one had a long nose—none of that mattered. Each was simply what it was.
Well, hooray for the sheep.
Easy for them. No matter how much I tried, I
couldn’t
be pure. That polluting Hellion essence was inside me, an ugly, permanent blot on my soul. Like a stain that would never come out no matter how much you scrubbed. I was marked by the Destroyer’s essence, and now I’d learned that essence was the Morfran. Those rages I’d suffered for ten years—yeah, “spirit of destructive hunger” described them perfectly.
I was polluted by the very thing I hoped to defeat.
You must be purely yourself.
The burden of Mab’s words weighed on me like some kind of metaphysical backpack loaded with metaphysical bricks.
Forget it. I gave up thinking about purity and focused on recent events. Three zombies were dead, killed by the Morfran. Difethwr seized on our bond to invade any dreamscape where I was, using me as a lens to focus the Morfran, to send it after the last zombie I’d spoken to before I went off to dream-land. For now, thanks to Mab’s tea, the zombies were safe. But Mab said the tea was only a stopgap. We had to find something more permanent.
Preferably something that didn’t involve being pure, because I sucked at that.
“Hello, cousin.”
I whipped around and slammed him in the chest with an elbow strike before I realized it was Pryce. He grunted and staggered back, a hand on his chest. Two seconds ago, I’d been alone on the path.
“Where in hell did you come from?”
“In a manner of speaking, you could say that, yes,” he gasped.
His answer made no sense, but I wasn’t going to ask for an explanation. I wasn’t going to apologize, either. He shouldn’t have snuck up on me. Anyway, Mab said to avoid Pryce, and that was my plan. I moved past him and kept walking. A moment later, he fell into step beside me.
He wore gray trousers and a black cashmere sweater—no coat—and he carried a carved staff, using it as a walking stick. His shiny black shoes weren’t exactly hiking boots, but his feet seemed to glide over the trail.
“Go away,” I said. He didn’t reply, keeping pace at my side. Short of running down the trail like a crazy woman, I couldn’t do much to avoid him. I just wouldn’t talk to him.
But Pryce wasn’t interested in talking. He didn’t say a word. We came to a place where the footpath crossed a country lane. I turned right, onto the road. Half a mile along was another path that would take me back to Maenllyd. Pryce turned with me.
I stopped and faced him. “What do you want?”
His face was all innocent puzzlement. “Same as you, I’d imagine. I’m out for a walk.”
“Well, I’m out for a
solitary
walk. So you can take a hike. But not with me.” I started down the lane, away from him. Immediately he was beside me again.
“You do speak English, right?” I said.
“There’s no need for enmity between us, cousin. I’d prefer we were friends.”
“I’m not your cousin.” I walked faster, but he kept up with me.
After several tense, silent minutes, we reached a gate in a low stone wall—the entry to the footpath back to Maenllyd. I turned to tell him again to get lost, but he spoke first.
“You’ve begun reading
The Book of Utter Darkness
.”
“How do you know that?” I thought of my demon mark’s reaction when I touched the book. “Did your pet Hellion tell you?”

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