Chapter 31: THE HEARTBEAT UNDER THE HILL

The seed lay in Cynfael’s belly like a coal that would not cool. It pulsed with a rhythm that was almost a heartbeat, but slower, older, as if the earth herself kept time to some vast and patient music. He had descended into darkness, expecting death, expecting the black spear of the antlered figure to find him at last. Instead he had found a door, and a keeper, and a seed warm as a heart pressed into his palm.

Now the door was closed behind him, and he stood in a place that was not quite the chasm he had entered. The walls breathed. The air tasted of roots and rain and the slow turn of seasons. He walked, because walking was the only thing left to do, and the passageway sloped gently downward, deeper into the hill, deeper into the dark.

The seed pulsed.

He pressed a hand to his stomach, feeling the warmth through his tunic. His father’s blade hung at his hip, but it felt lighter now, less a weapon than a memory. The bronze ring on his finger had gone cold. The sight, the gift that had let him speak to the dead and feel the spirits sleeping in the earth, had quieted to a whisper at the edge of his mind.

“I am still here,” he said aloud, and his voice echoed strangely, as if the walls were listening.

The passage opened into a cavern so vast that the darkness above him seemed to have no ceiling at all. Roots hung down like the ropes of a great ship, thick as a man’s arm, and from them dripped water that gleamed faintly, as if the stone itself wept light. In the center of the cavern stood a tree—or what had once been a tree. Its trunk was gnarled and ancient, its branches bare and twisted, reaching upward like the fingers of a drowning man.

But beneath the bark, something moved. A slow pulse of light traveled up the trunk, from root to crown, and when it reached the highest branch, it dimmed and faded, only to begin again from the base.

Cynfael approached the tree. His boots crunched on something underfoot, and he looked down to find the floor covered in bones. Small bones, the bones of birds and voles, but also the long bones of men, and the curved ribs of horses, and the delicate, hollow bones of children. They lay in drifts, centuries deep, and the light of the tree pulsed over them, making them gleam like ivory.

“You have come.”

The voice was not spoken. It rose from the earth, from the roots, from the very stone, and it vibrated in Cynfael’s chest like the low note of a war horn. He turned, but there was no one there. The tree pulsed again, and he understood.

“You are the old thing,” he said. “The one that rose at Badon.”

The tree’s light flickered, as if in amusement. *I am older than that name. Older than the hill. Older than the people who gave the hill a name. I was here when the ice retreated, and I will be here when the green land turns to dust. I am the root and the seed, the beginning and the end.*

“Why did you call me?”

*You opened the door. You swallowed the seed. The seed is mine, and now you are mine. But I did not call you, Cynfael ap Bryn. You called yourself.*

He shook his head, but the tree’s light pulsed again, insistent.

*You came seeking a purpose. You came seeking a song to sing, a death to die, a meaning to cling to. You found the spear, and the spear found you, and you thought that was the answer. But the spear was only a door. And I am what lies beyond.*

Cynfael’s hand went to his father’s blade, but he did not draw it. The tree’s roots shifted beneath his feet, and the bones stirred, and he felt the seed pulse in his belly like a second heart.

“What do you want of me?”

*I want what you have already given. The seed. The sacrifice. The choice. You chose to fall, Cynfael ap Bryn. You chose to be the door that closed. But the door does not close forever. It only waits.*

The tree’s light grew brighter, and he saw that the bark was not bark at all. It was skin—old, wrinkled skin, stretched over a body that had been buried so deep and so long that it had become part of the earth. The branches were arms, the roots were legs, and the face that looked down at him from the crown was vast and ancient and sorrowful.

*I have slept for a thousand years,* the old thing said. *I have dreamed of the green land and the rivers and the sea. I have dreamed of the people who walked upon me and the beasts that grazed upon me and the birds that nested in my branches. And then the dream changed. The people forgot me. They built their walls and their roads and their temples, and they forgot the old names, the old songs, the old ways. They cut down my children and burned my bones and poured their blood into the earth as if it were nothing.*

The light dimmed, and the cavern grew cold.

*Now the Saxons come, and the Britons fight, and the earth drinks the blood of both. And I wake, because I am called. Because you called me. Because you swallowed the seed and opened the door.*

Cynfael’s throat was dry. “I did not mean to wake you. I only wanted to stop the war.”

*The war is not stopped. The war is only beginning. Aelle will not turn aside. The grey druids have bound themselves to the shadow, and the shadow is patient. You have given me your flesh, Cynfael ap Bryn, but you have not given me your will. Not yet.*

The tree’s branches creaked, and one of them reached down, brushing his cheek with the touch of bark that was also skin.

*But you will. When the battle turns, when the spear is lifted again, when the land calls, you will give me your will. And then the door will open, and I will walk out, and the green land will remember its old king.*

The seed pulsed, and Cynfael felt something stir in his chest—not his heart, but something deeper, something that had been sleeping in the bone and the blood and the dark of him.

“I will not,” he said. “I chose to be the door. I chose to close it. I will not open it again.”

The tree’s light flickered, and for a moment he thought he saw amusement in its ancient face.

*You chose to be the door,* the old thing said. *But you did not choose what would walk through it. And the door is not locked, Cynfael ap Bryn. It is only waiting.*

The roots beneath his feet shifted, and the bones began to whisper. And far above him, in the world of light and air and battle, he heard the faint cry of a war horn—Arthur’s horn, the horn of Badon—and he knew that the battle had not yet ended, and that the seed within him was growing, and that the door was still open, and that he was not the one who would close it.

The tree’s face leaned down, and its breath was the smell of turned earth and old rain.

*The hunt is not over, Cynfael ap Bryn. It is only waiting for you to run.*