Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (5 page)

“
How many people saw that,
do you think?” Dad said in a low voice.

“
Too many,” David
said.

And then David looked past him to see
Gwenllian hovering in the doorway to the tower.

“
Is she … is she …?”
Gwenllian said.

“
Honey, no.” Dad was with
her in two strides. “Mom’s going to be just fine.”

David followed, since there wasn’t anything
further to be done from up here, and tugged Math’s elbow to make
him come too.

“
How do you know that?”
Gwenllian regarded Dad with big eyes.

David had never spent much time with his
little sister, and not for the first time, he felt bad about it.
His half-sister Gwenllian was fourteen years younger than David,
and he didn’t know her well at all. But he didn’t have to know her
well to know that she loved Mom too. Mom was the only mother
Gwenllian had ever known.

“
Because she always is,”
David said. “She’s done this twice before. I’ve done it. Anna did
it to come here with me not long after you were born. It’s
terrifying when it happens, but they’ll be back in a few days.
You’ll see.” For maybe the first time in David’s life, he took
Gwenllian’s hand, and they followed Dad downstairs.

The queen’s hall was now
full of people: kitchen staff packing up the uneaten food; a
serving girl scrubbing at the blood on the floor, since Alan had
been taken away and was no longer bleeding against the wall;
counselors and advisors waiting for orders. One of David’s most
trusted counselors, Nicholas de Carew, stood next to Cadwallon, the
young captain of Dad’s
teulu
. Carew had come with David to
Rhuddlan for the opportunity to confer at length with both him and
Dad. The day hadn’t turned out quite like anyone had
expected.

Goronwy hustled through the exterior door,
followed by Bronwen, who was drying her hands on the edge of her
cloak. David caught her arm. “How’s Alan?”

She shook her head and shrugged at the same
time. “He’s alive. That’s about all that can be said.” Bronwen
picked up Catrin, who wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck.
“The wound is a nasty one to his gut, but it’s pretty far to the
left, and his bottom rib deflected the blade.”

Lili had gathered all the children at one
end of the table, out of the way of the activity in the room.
Catrin, Bran, and Elisa sat on her lap, while Arthur’s nanny
clutched Arthur and Padrig to her. As David came over to them, Lili
looked up, a terrible questioning expression her face.

“
They’re fine,” David said.
“Gone, but fine.”

“
What do we do?” Lili
said.

“
What we always do,” Dad
said. “We wait.”

Feeling bereft, David sat down in the chair
Mom had been sitting in. The party they’d planned for so long had
barely started before Marty had arrived. When David had traveled to
the modern world two years ago with Cassie and Callum, he’d seen
the storm and guessed what was about to happen. His family—Mom,
Anna, and himself—time traveled when their lives were in danger,
and with the single exception of when Mom had returned to the
modern world with Anna at David’s birth, it always happened when
they were in motion.

So far, by David’s count, they’d survived
three car accidents, a plane crash, a shipwreck, and three long
falls from high places, with this latest incident making the
fourth.

“
Wherever they’ve gone, if
they’re going to get back, they’re going to have to survive another
brush with death.” Math pulled out the chair next to
David’s.

“
I know.” David picked up
Mom’s uneaten roll and dropped it without tasting it. “I’ll say the
same to you as I said to Gwenllian. They’re going to be fine. Maybe
Anna will even remember to bring back lip balm for
Bronwen.”

Math didn’t crack a smile, and David had to
admit it was probably too soon for joking. Cadell came over and sat
in his father’s lap, his sword still in his hand. He didn’t look at
Math or David.

It was time to speak to everyone. David took
in a breath and raised his voice to cut through the babble in the
room. “Okay.” The noise instantly ceased. Goronwy had his hand on
Dad’s shoulder; they’d been speaking quietly but now they both
looked up. “Here’s what happened and what we’re going to do. Kids—”
David gazed around the room at each of them and managed to gain
their attention, however briefly, “Grandma and Aunt Anna have gone
on a little trip. I know what happened in here was scary, but they
are both completely fine.”

“
That man cut Mom,” Cadell
said. It might be a long time before he could see something other
than that image whenever he closed his eyes.

“
It was a surface wound,
like a scrape,” David said. “A couple of years ago, Grandma and
Grandpa went away with Uncle Goronwy. Some of the littlest of you
weren’t born yet. They left because Grandpa was sick and the people
there made him better.” David rubbed Cadell’s cheek with one
finger. “Grandma is going to make sure that your mom stays
safe.”

Cadell put his arms around his father’s neck
and held on.

“
Marty, however, is not
fine.” Dad scrubbed at his face with both hands, and then dropped
them to take Elisa into his lap.

“
I can’t say I’m sorry
about that,” Math said into Cadell’s hair.

Ieuan appeared in the doorway leading to the
west corridor. David had been waiting for him to return before
deciding what to do next. Bronwen went to her husband, and he put
his arms around her. Catrin had gone back to her meal, which at the
moment consisted of a well-buttered roll that dripped with
honey.

After Bronwen released Ieuan, she glanced at
Dad, who’d sunk into his chair and didn’t look like he had the
strength to leave it. Then she said to David, “You’d better go talk
to everyone else, David.”

He sighed. They had to come up with a story
to explain the disappearance, and as usual, it would be that Mom
and Anna had traveled to Avalon. “Dad?”

Dad grimaced with what David hoped was
regret rather than pain. “I’m with you, son.” He rose to his feet,
Elisa still in his arms. David was glad to see that some of the
color had returned to his face, though his skin was still grayer
than David liked. Long and lean, with only a speckle of frost in
his dark hair (though more in his beard), he didn’t look that
different from how he’d looked nine years ago when Anna and David
had saved his life by driving their aunt’s minivan into his
attackers at Cilmeri. His twin two-year-old children may have worn
him out at times, but they also kept him young, and most of the
time David didn’t notice the twenty-year age difference between him
and Mom.

Today, however, was not one of those days.
“Thanks, Dad.”

Bronwen lifted a hand, almost as though she
were in school. “I have an idea.”

“
I am open to any
suggestion,” David said.

“
Then I need you to give me
a second.” She looked at Goronwy. “Will you come with
me?”

“
Of course.”

With a last squeeze of Dad’s shoulder,
Goronwy followed Bronwen as she darted out of the room. Carew moved
to Dad’s side in Goronwy’s place. Dad looked up at him but didn’t
nod or speak before looking away again. Everyone waited. David had
no idea what Bronwen was up to or what to expect, but he trusted
her, which was why he’d agreed to whatever she wanted without first
asking what it was.

Five minutes later, she returned with a
triumphant expression. “Goronwy has everyone gathering in the great
hall. Come on.”

Bunched into a group, kids
and adults together, the family descended the stairs from the
queen’s hall directly into the inner ward. Lili held Arthur’s hand
and walked beside David. As they reached level ground, a bard’s
clear tenor soared from the open door to the great hall.
“
Afalon peren a pren fion
…
”

David groaned. “Bronwen, what have you
done?”

“
If you’re going to stand
up there and talk about Meg and Anna traveling to Avalon, at the
very least everyone can be in the right mood to hear it,” she said.
“Right now, we have a dead man at the base of the
tower—”

“—
I ordered his body moved
to the chapel, actually,” Ieuan said.

Bronwen shot her husband an impatient look.
“You know what I mean. It’s the only explanation that makes sense
when so many people saw Anna and Meg vanish in midair.”

David blew out his cheeks, knowing he was
cornered and knowing she was right.

“
You haven’t fought this
battle for years, Dafydd,” Lili said. “Why fight it
now?”

“
I haven’t fought it
because you told me to do so would be a waste of effort,” David
said. “I prefer the story about the Land of Madoc,
though.”

“
People from the Land of
Madoc are solidly in this world. They don’t have the ability to
vanish,” Dad said.

That was unfortunately true. “I don’t like
it. I’m not Arthur,” David said.

“
I’m Arthur!” David’s
two-year-old son gazed up at him with bright eyes.

David put a hand on his son’s head and bent
to kiss his nose, amazed that he’d spoken so clearly, but pleased
too. “Yes, indeed you are.”

Bronwen grinned and said with some of her
old graduate school snark, “He speaks truth to power.”

David scoffed, though not because she wasn’t
right. He and Lili had named Arthur with an utter cynicism about
what they were doing and what it would mean to the people David
ruled. Still, he didn’t have to like it.

The group entered the hall as the bard was
finishing his song. All conversation ceased as the entire royal
family of England and Wales crowded through the doorway. Goronwy
bowed from the dais. All of the inhabitants of the hall followed
suit. Aaron stood to the right with his son, Samuel, and David
caught his eye. He nodded gravely. Samuel was staring at his feet
and didn’t look up. They, along with a handful of other advisors,
knew the truth about who David was, and that meant they also knew
what had happened to Mom and Anna. Aaron, in particular, had seen
it before. Goronwy had lived it.

There was no help for it, David opened his
mouth and boldly lied to everyone else. About what had just
happened, about Avalon, about who he was.

Avalon
. Lili took its existence for granted—both what she knew of
the reality and the myth. Although David used the myth to his own
advantage, what he actually wanted was to make Avalon
real
, not just for himself
and his family but for everyone. The poets had foretold it
centuries ago, though David’s vision wasn’t anything like what the
legends described. Avalon wasn’t a fantasy world infused with
magic. It was the place he’d been born.

And what made that
place—America—special was what it brought to the table, namely an
ideal of freedom and justice for everyone. The Avalon David wanted
to build here was a mirror of that. More to the point, the reason
David hadn’t dared to speak about it out loud to anyone before,
even to his family, was because he wanted to start the American
Revolution five hundred years early.
Against himself.

It was a big dream. A huge, impossible,
ridiculous dream. But he’d been thinking about it for nine years,
ever since he’d quoted Patrick Henry to his father before the
defeat of King Edward at the Conwy River. At that time, David had
thought it might be possible to achieve a united Wales, even if it
took his lifetime and many generations of his descendants to
accomplish it. Instead, it had taken three years. Now, as King of
England, David had the power to make the much bigger dream a
reality, and if any dream was worth chasing, it was this one.

He found it ironic, too,
that many generations of kings of England had fought for this dream
as well, though they’d pursued it at the point of a sword, which to
David’s mind would defeat the entire purpose.
The United States of Britain.
Even
King Edward, God rest his soul, might have approved.

Chapter Four

November 2019

Meg

M
eg
rolled down a slight incline, crunching through a bed of frozen
leaves. After two revolutions, she came to a stop at the bottom.
She breathed hard, the black abyss fading from her mind’s eye, and
sat up. Snowflakes fell steadily from the sky. The ground wasn’t
covered in white, however, so it seemed they’d started very
recently.

Before she had a chance to panic, Meg spied
Anna at the top of the bank she’d just come down. Anna pushed to a
sitting position and looked down at her mother. “Are you okay?”

“
I’m good.” Meg got her
feet under her and stood, shaking out her cloak and dress as she
did so. “What about you?”

Anna rubbed at her forehead. “My head
hurts.” Then she swung her legs around and slid down the slope to
arrive on a level with her mother.

“
You’ve had quite a day,”
Meg said. “How’s your neck?”

Anna put a hand to her throat and then
removed it to look at her fingers. They came away bloody. She
tilted up her chin so Meg could see her neck. “What do you
think?”

Meg gently touched Anna’s skin. “It isn’t
bleeding much.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her
dress and dabbed at the wound. “I think it’ll be okay, though it
would be better if we had a couple Band-Aids.”

“
Yeah, well.” Anna took the
handkerchief and continued dabbing. “Maybe in a bit we’ll actually
be able to get some.” She looked around. “Where do you think we
are?”