with those who had joined him in Annwn.
And any heretical enemies of the Church.
When Cormac crawled into bed, sleep came on swift wings.
“My king, there is nothing I can do,” John Lewis Hugo said, his voice low.
“Nothing you can do?!” Philip raged. “Nothing you can do?!”
John did not answer, his mask of ruined flesh impassive. Philip fought the urge to pin his oldest friend against the stairwell wall and beat him senseless. Caer Llion brooded like its king. Sunrise had not yet come, the corridors vacant of staff. It suited Philip. The spiraling staircase unfolded downward from his suites, the passage chilly and empty of servants. Whenever he ventured into the warrens beneath the castle he preferred no one to know. Gauging the progress of the witch, no matter how distasteful, had become of singular importance. The time to lead the crusade into the world of his birth was nigh upon him—the end of the war in Annwn his father had ordained and the beginning of his true calling.
Now his longtime friend and most powerful ally informed him that McAllister and Ardall were out of reach—out of reach!
“Answer me!” Philip commanded.
“My king, you know as well as I the cauldron has limits,” the advisor said. “Once the knight and his charge fled into the lower reaches of the Snowdon and into the Nharth, they became and continue to be outside the range of my magical ability.”
Philip mastered his frustration, if barely. The stairwell they descended opened into the expanse of the Great Hall where two Templar Knights snapped to attention from their post at the main entrance, the enormous banner of the Plantagenet House hanging above them, its roaring golden lion staring down with authority from a crimson field. Not capturing the knight and the boy rankled him. He wanted to add their power to his own. Philip had instead been forced to undo the magic chains binding the bodach for centuries and unleash the predatory Unseelie creature upon the boy. The smoke-like beast had sniffed Ardall’s coat and bounded from the castle like a sable bolt shot from a crossbow. The bodach was now within the Snowdon hunting. Or feasting on the dead.
It irked Philip that he didn’t know which. John hadn’t been able to view what transpired in the Snowdon and the Carn Cavall, leaving Philip in the dark.
Passing carved stone statues of stoic knights and ancient tapestries depicting victorious battles from his Annwn arrival, Philip and John traveled deeper into the castle and took a broad staircase down, its steps worn from ages of passing feet. Caer Llion had been built upon a large abutment of rock overlooking the sea, long before Philip was even born, and he had taken it as his main capital after invading Annwn. Over the centuries, he had fortified his new holding and conquered most of the island. By bribing the Cailleach to keep it eternally summer, the economy of the land grew as his people multiplied. With the growth of the great northern cities of Caer Dathal, Mur Castell, and Velen Rhyd in Gwynedd, Philip strengthened his rule and most of Annwn was quelled. His land, his rule.
With Philip watching the hall, John opened a secret passageway set behind a large wall-hung tapestry, its thickly woven fabric obscuring the entrance into the dungeons. Philip flinched as cool air mixed with the tang of human waste and unwashed bodies swept over him. He pushed down the bile rising in his throat; he hated going into the dungeons almost as much as he hated the fey and their ilk.
“What have you seen in the cauldron then?” Philip questioned.
The wall grinding to a close behind them, John mumbled a combination of words until a blue flame materialized in the air to light their way down the staircase. “Before the sun set last evening while you met with the lords, I traveled over the breadth of Annwn. The fey are moving. Thousands of Merrow have come ashore near Mynyw at Porth Cleis, armed and ready for spending long days on land. Up the coast, many of the buggane have left the ruins of Caer Harlech, heading toward the Snowdon. Both groups have entered the Nharth mists. There may be other fey joining them, but I cannot view the entirety of Annwn every moment.”
“Mobilizing.”
“Mobilizing,” John agreed. “And there are others.”
Philip frowned. “Others?”
“Lord Gerallt and his daughter have vanished. My spies know not where they have gone, but they are no longer in Mochdrev Reach. I believe