Legend of the Pendragon: The Last Pendragon Saga, #8

By Sarah Woodbury

Cade and his companions have reached the final reckoning. He must either rise to the promise of his birth and become the legend that prophecy foretold—or face the ultimate destruction of his people and his country.

Legend of the Pendragon is the eighth and last installment in The Last Pendragon Saga.

The Complete Series Reading Order: The Last Pendragon, The Pendragon's Blade, Song of the Pendragon, The Pendragon's Quest, The Pendragon's Champions, Rise of the Pendragon, The Pendragon's Challenge, Legend of the Pendragon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Morgan-Stanwood Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540148711

Sarah Woodbury

With over a million books sold to date, Sarah Woodbury is the author of more than forty novels, all set in medieval Wales. Although an anthropologist by training, and then a full-time homeschooling mom for twenty years, she began writing fiction when the stories in her head overflowed and demanded that she let them out. While her ancestry is Welsh, she only visited Wales for the first time at university. She has been in love with the country, language, and people ever since. She even convinced her husband to give all four of their children Welsh names. Sarah is a member of the Historical Novelists Fiction Cooperative (HFAC), the Historical Novel Society (HNS), and Novelists, Inc. (NINC). She makes her home in Oregon. Please follow her online at www.sarahwoodbury.com or https://www.facebook.com/sarahwoodburybooks

Book preview

Prologue

Arianrhod

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Father—

You have meddled quite enough in the human world for now, don’t you think?

Arianrhod bent her head. She should have known better than to appeal to her father’s paternal instincts, as he had none. At times like these, it was best not to think of Beli as her father at all. He was the sun god, whose presence gave light and whose absence meant darkness and death. Gwydion, the coward, wasn’t even here to back her up. He was exploring other options, whatever that meant.

Meanwhile Beli paced back and forth before the great hearth in his receiving room. First Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon and then Taliesin. What did you mean by giving your son to him? That was not my intent!

Arianrhod kept her eyes on the ground. I apologize, Father. I must have misunderstood. She could feel his gaze boring into her, but she refused to look at him. Beli, who was also the lord of the Otherworld, was not to be trifled with, especially when he was on fire with rage. And yet, she could not remain silent. Efnysien—

Efnysien! He has done as much or more for this family than any other! Did he not sacrifice himself in the black cauldron and save us all? Next you’ll be accusing Nysien of treason.

Efnysien was a blackguard, known throughout all worlds for deceit, betrayal, and mercilessness. His brother, Nysien, on the other hand, was a close companion of Gwydion and was light to Efnysien’s dark. It was hard to believe the two brothers had come from the same mother. And it was Nysien, of all the sidhe, who feared his brother the least.

I would never do that, Father, and I don’t understand why—

Beli pointed at her. I will not hear another word!

Arianrhod subsided as Beli wanted, but her insides were churning. She glanced to the doorway where her mother, Dôn, waited, hands folded patiently in front of her. Dôn nodded, and Arianrhod took the motion as a dismissal. Her mother always had the right soothing words to calm the fire that burned in Beli. Arianrhod would be foolish not to leave her to it.

She looked up once more into her father’s eyes and then looked away again—but not before she saw something flicker in Beli’s eyes, the emerald green turning momentarily to smoky gray. She disguised her surprise with a twitch of her skirt and a flourished spin on her heel, but her heart was shaken. The madness had overtaken her father again. She had noticed it happening more and more often lately, even if nobody but Gwydion acknowledged it. Something was wrong in the very heart of the Otherworld.

Chapter One

Caer Wydr

(Dôn’s Castle in the Otherworld)

Taliesin

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Mabon leaned in to Taliesin and whispered conspiratorially: I don’t seek the Treasures for myself.

Taliesin hesitated a few steps from the top of the stairs and then continued climbing. He struggled daily against pride, but he couldn’t deny that he prided himself on his equanimity and his refusal to rise to whatever insults or provocation Mabon chose to throw at him. There were times when Taliesin willfully masked uncertainty with poems and songs designed to distract and confuse his listeners—as well as bring them insight if they cared to look further. But still, he shouldn’t have been surprised that Mabon could see right through him. He was sidhe after all.

This latest comment was pure Mabon. He kept his secrets, and then, for no apparent reason, chose to reveal them. The key was, as with Taliesin’s own poems, to see the thinking behind the action and to understand that, like Taliesin, his purpose was to confuse and deflect. It occurred to Taliesin only now that like was drawn to like, and it was a sad commentary on his own character that he was able to understand Mabon—because he understood himself.

But if Mabon was choosing this moment to justify his personal quest for the Thirteen Treasures of Britain, it was because there was something else that he didn’t want Taliesin to know.

Explain, Taliesin said.

I admit that I used them, Mabon chortled to himself, a response that in a child might be amusing, but in a god was disconcerting in the extreme, but that was temporary until such a time as I could pass them on to my master.

You mean Efnysien. Yes, I know.

Mabon’s expression turned haughty. If you know so much, why do I bother speaking?

Taliesin grasped Mabon’s upper arm and stepped with him across the threshold into the room at the top of the stairs in the castle of the goddess Dôn. They found themselves in a vast garden, and when Taliesin looked up, he saw the ceiling was open to blue sky. No snow fell here, and the temperature was balmy enough that he was too warm in his cloak, where before he’d wanted to clutch it around himself.

Horrified—not at the warmth but at the change in location—he spun around. Where the doorway to the stairwell had been, there was now an archway, adorned with trailing vines and red flowers. Dôn’s castle was gone. Goronwy and Catrin were no longer coming up the stairs behind Taliesin and Mabon because there were no stairs to come up.

Taliesin hurried to the trellis and would have cursed if he hadn’t known the danger of taking any god’s name in vain at such a juncture. Instead he called upon his patron, Gwydion, with faith and hope, waving a hand to reopen the door and allow his friends to come to him.

Nothing happened.

Taliesin frowned. He hadn’t initially intended for Catrin and Goronwy to come to the Otherworld with him at all, but now that he’d brought them, he couldn’t just abandon them, even if it meant leaving Mabon here and not pursuing the Treasures any longer. He recalled the spell he’d used to open the door in the crypt, hoping to part the veil between the Otherworld and the human one, in the hopes of reentering the crypt at the abbey and returning to Dôn’s castle that way. He would have to face the snow alone—along with whatever obstacles she’d placed as guards around the castle—but the possibility of danger couldn’t keep him from his responsibilities.

Frustratingly, there was no response to this request either, and he was forced to acknowledge that there was no further point in trying. He’d invoked Gwydion’s name and been granted entrance when he’d created the doorway underneath Valle Crucis Abbey. Gwydion had to know that Taliesin was here. Why was he withholding his favor now?

Taliesin checked the location of the sun, worried all of a sudden that they’d already been in the Otherworld for too long and that time was passing in a way his senses weren’t registering. Days could have gone by without him knowing. Years maybe. With Gwydion’s abandonment, he was as adrift from his moorings as he’d ever been.

Bracing himself to face what Mabon had in store for him, now that he’d isolated him from his friends, Taliesin swung around. The child-god had remained a few feet away, standing with his hands on his hips and that supercilious smile he wore whenever he was feeling particularly satisfied. Taliesin wished Goronwy were here to wipe it off. But then Mabon’s eyes moved from Taliesin’s face to a point over his left shoulder, and his face paled. Something had to be very bad to discomfit Mabon, and Taliesin spun back around to see what it was.

A man stood ten paces away, where the door to the stairwell had been, and where a moment ago there’d been no one. Taliesin hadn’t had the wherewithal to open a way between the garden and someplace else, but this man had to have done exactly that. Taliesin’s eyes narrowed as he took in the man’s appearance. He was shorter than Taliesin, dark-haired, brown-eyed, not particularly muscular and even a little soft around the middle. He wasn’t handsome; he didn’t shimmer with godlike power. He was just a man.

And that was the problem.

A god who didn’t need to look beautiful, who had no interest in projecting power or authority, was far more to be feared than Mabon with all his childish needs could ever be.

Don’t come any closer. Taliesin’s voice held the tone of Command.

You never should have thought that you could go your own way, that you could come here without attracting attention, Mabon said from behind Taliesin. His voice held pride and that same irksome satisfaction that drove decent men mad. His demeanor was that of someone who’d pulled the wool over another’s eyes, but Taliesin couldn’t figure out what the trick had been. He felt inside himself that he’d behaved logically, and it had been his idea to come to the Otherworld.

Hadn’t it? Taliesin thought back to all of his interactions with Mabon since Arianrhod had appeared in the road from Dinas Bran.

Do you think I mean to harm you? The man, whom Taliesin had concluded by now, in part from Mabon’s reaction, was Efnysien himself, put out a hand in apparent welcome. I assure you that is far from the case. It’s the last thing I want. I seek only to talk, to hear your wise counsel.

Taliesin hesitated. It had been foolish of him to show what he was thinking by invoking his magic, and now he felt even more foolish for slowly lowering his staff at Efnysien’s calm words.

Why would you want to speak to me? Taliesin felt as if he was forcing the words through frozen lips. Mabon was a trickster, but Efnysien was the consummate deceiver.

To enlist your help. Efnysien tipped his head to one side so that he could see Mabon behind Taliesin. Taliesin took a step to the right so the two gods could greet each other properly. He would just as soon not be the focus of Efnysien’s attention anyway. Thank you for bringing him.

Mabon bowed deeply. You are most welcome, but it was my honor.

You will be well rewarded for your faithfulness.

Mabon straightened. I would ask—

Efnysien wagged a finger at him, cutting Mabon off before he could complete his sentence. Now, now. You know that I cannot give you back your power. It would immediately call attention to our doings, wouldn’t it?

What doings are those? Taliesin said.

Efnysien’s expression turned very grave. A corruption has spread throughout these domains. I know you have felt it, even seen it at the times it has penetrated the barrier between this world and the human one.

Taliesin struggled to keep his breathing and his response even. Efnysien wasn’t lying, but it was he who was the corruption’s source. You are speaking of the darkness.

Efnysien bobbed his head. For long years I have watched it, observing its spread. Of late, it has gained strength. Something—or someone—is feeding it.

You are.

Efnysien threw back his head and laughed. I? You blame me for the darkness?

Taliesin managed not to recoil. That Efnysien could laugh at the darkness made Taliesin’s limbs ache with cold—and fear, truth be told—though in this moment he didn’t know if he was more afraid of Efnysien or the darkness. Taliesin had seen it and felt it—coiling, oily, evil. When it had come to him underneath Dinas Bran, he had collapsed under its power. He’d been overcome with a sense of despair that had made him unable to move, think, or feel anything but its suffocating blackness. Only the quick thinking—and quick feet—of Cade had saved him. He didn’t ever want to go near it again. In fact, he would have preferred never to think or speak of it.

But Efnysien laughed again. I can assure you that I neither began it nor drive it. While I would control it if I could, it is beyond my power. He sobered and stepped closer, closing half the distance between them. I should be flattered that you think me capable of creating such an entity.

Then what hope have we to stop it? Taliesin forced himself not to take a step back.

Efnysien might look like a mortal, but he was sidhe, and Taliesin could sense the magic in him. While Taliesin wasn’t ever one to ask for help, and he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d relied on anyone else, especially when it came to his powers, he wished Catrin and Goronwy were here. One or the other might be able to see through the illusion Efnysien was projecting or tell him the truth about who he was from his aura. If Taliesin hadn’t been trying to keep his expression serene, he would have narrowed his eyes as it occurred to him that perhaps this was the reason Efnysien had separated him from his friends.

It is my hope that you will consent to help me gather the Treasures. Only then might we contain the darkness.

Me? Taliesin struggled to contain his surprise that Efnysien had actually admitted to wanting the Treasures, and for a purpose with which Taliesin could not argue.

Why not you? Are you not the most accomplished gweledydd in Britain? Do not the words of your compositions have power in and of themselves?

Taliesin canted his head in silent admission. He shouldn’t have been flattered, but even as he struggled against accepting the accolade, the ancestors inside him preened. It wasn’t as if Efnysien was wrong. And yet ... What good will my magic be if yours cannot touch it?

Raw power isn’t enough, at least mine isn’t enough. Never before has any sidhe welcomed a living human to the Otherworld, but the time has come for sidhe and human to unite if all of us are to be saved.

Taliesin rubbed his