TRR: The Prophet and The Cupbearer

from "The Red Book of Rhiannon"

Maeve hovered before the cave mouth. How had it come to this? But who else would go if not her?

She entered the cave, located in the Deeps. The icy water became still, lacking the swirls and currents of outside. A sheet of mica revealed Maeve’s reflection: her broad whiskered face, thin lips, and silver grey scales sparkling with its own bioluminescence.

With a tail swish, she swam past and deeper into the cave. The answer had to be here, it had to be.

The spiralling tunnel led her down down until the water grew warmer.

Maeve had seen it in a dream: the lost greal suspended above the roil of golden lava and bathed in white noxious gases.

One by one the members of the Chosen Court had died leaving only she, the Prophet, to remember them and their failings. No, not only that, but to make amends and repair the damage she and they caused. How could her dreams lead her wrong?

Ah, but she had prophesied true: it was her beloved monarch, Urien, who ignored the insistence of having a draig môr in attendance at Arthur’s coronation.

She would never forget that fateful day. She had stood on the stony beach in her human form at Ynys Môn to witness the handing over of the greal, the silver cup that bequeathed magic and the ability to unite a people.

Ankle deep in water, she watched Arthur’s ship sail for the mainland, its misty hills within sight of Ynys Môn. Maeve exchanged a glance with Uriel. :I will follow,: she thought.

:He swore to bring it back.: Urien sounded tired.

:I do not trust him, or his man Myrddin. Or the Morrígan to be kind. We’ve surrendered our greatest treasure, against my advice. He should have—:

Urien cut off her thought with a wave. :Whether it is on this beach, or that one, it matters not. What matters is the witnessing by his people. It’s as true for them as it is us. It is done, Maeve.: He and the rest of the Chosen Court slipped into the waters, returning home.

She waded out, slipping beneath the waves, heading for Arthur’s ship. Beneath the surface, Maeve easily spotted the hull by the foaming confusion it left in its wake. She swam alongside the ship, just below the surface. She didn’t care if any aboard spotted her. Let them know she meant to hold them to account.

They set anchor just off the coast, rowing ashore in smaller boats. Maeve waited until the last boat beached before coming ashore. Surfacing, she watched Arthur and his men set a rough camp on the beach, above the high tide mark. Campfires flared.

Once the first seven stars appeared in the sky Maeve swam to shore. She skirted the camp’s edge, remembering how the humans had stared at her naked form, even the handful of women who traveled with Arthur. They wore swords and carried shields, their femininity revealed by curve of hip and swell of breast beneath their leather tunics.

Maeve crouched behind a boulder, long since fallen from the cliffs above. After a time, a throat cleared, just to her right. “Maeve, wasn’t it?”

She started. Next to her stood Myrddin. He had perhaps a handful of years on Arthur but even though grizzlier beards accompanied the human king, Maeve had learned during their negotiations over the greal that the king listened to Myrddin first.

“Myrddin.” She remembered to use her voice. She jerked her heard toward the campfire where the dark-haired human king ate some sort of pheasant and roared with laughter. “His prophet.”

He crouched next to her. “Like you, you mean?” Myrddin made a face. “Hardly. I know the old ways as one of the last in the druidic line. That’s how I knew about your kind and our connection.”

Maeve swallowed her derision. Listening to bonfire tales didn’t require magical foresight. She didn’t answer, surveying his darkened form for a weapon. No swords had been permitted at the meeting place, but all had worn empty scabbards.

“I won’t hurt you,” he murmured. “I don’t have any clothes to spare—we travelled light on this venture— but you may take my cloak.”

“Clothing is not necessary.” Maeve resumed watching the camp, glancing at Myrddin out of the corner of her eye.

“You will find it essential when the sun rises. Your skin is so white you glow even with this thin slip of a moon.” The moon’s sliver stood high in the sky.

Maeve shook her head, too late hearing the shells in her braids rattle.

Heads turned. Swords slid partway from their sheaths.

Myrddin rose from behind the boulder. “Can’t a man even take a shit in peace?” He made sure to kick some pebbles as he moved.

Laughter answered him.

He squatted next to Maeve. “I’ll leave the cloak for you when we leave in the morning. We men are only human.” He rose, made a show of hitching his breeches, returning to the camp. From behind the boulder, Maeve heard jests greet him and his good-natured responses.

As the camp settled into slumber, Maeve abandoned the boulder and crept among them. Arthur had taken the greal, but she doubt it remained in his care.

Five people slept around Arthur’s fire, one of them nestled in Arthur’s arms. A woman curled up in a ball opposite. Myrddin lay to Arthur’s left, another man to his right. Myrddin’s arms folded over a bag. By its shape, Maeve knew he carried the greal. ‘Cup bearer,’ Maeve thought.

Myrddin’s dark eyes glittered. ‘Prophet’, he thought at her.

Maeve straightened. How could he think to her? He wasn’t even— Disconcerted, Maeve fled for the sea, her feet sliding over the rounded beach stones, yet no one followed in pursuit.

A second day of sailing found them in Môr Hafren. Maeve trailed them, no longer wanting to be seen. That a human could hear her thoughts frightened her.

They reached Abona midday the third day. Bobbing in the estuary, Maeve watched them move through the village until they entered a Roman villa atop a hill.

She waited until night fell. Ashore, she shivered as she wrapped herself in Myrddin’s now-sodden cloak. She slipped through the village like a phantom, heading for the villa.

Myrddin found her peeking through a window. “Still following us?”

Maeve faced him, “You don’t sound surprised.”

“Neither do you.” The night shadowed much of his face, his lantern casting odd shadows across it. “You may as well join us. We travel inland tomorrow.”

She stepped back. “No. It wasn’t part of the agreement.”

“And yet you are here. Come in.”

Perhaps that’s why she thought of him now. The heated building warming her chilled skin mirrored the gradual heating of the icy water around her.

Somehow, they entered the villa without anyone noticing. He led her to a store room. The shelves contained large pottery vessels. Filled grain sacks piled in one corner.

“Stay here,” Myrddin said. “Let me find you some clothing.” It didn’t take long for him to return with an armful of wool and linen, but it felt like a long time.

Maeve thanked him, letting her cloak fall with a wet slap on the packed dirt floor.

Myrddin averted his eyes, stammering his polite response.

Ignoring him, Maeve sorted the clothing. She used one piece to towel herself dry. She reached for a linen shift and paused. “Are you going to watch?”

“It’s… it’s not that.” His cheeks burned. “Why don’t you trust us to return your sacred object?”

“Because this is not what my vision showed me. The least I can do is try to ensure it comes back to us.” The shift dangled from her hands. “At the campfire, you spoke to me using your thoughts. That’s the dreigiau môr way. How—”

“I am of the druidic line,” he said as if that explained everything.

“Magic?”

He nodded. His gaze no longer shy, he stared at her in something akin to hunger.

“You’re not used to naked women.” Maeve stated it as fact.

He shrugged. “If you are trying to provoke me … I will not break the laws of hospitality.”

Maeve edged closer, noticing they were close in height. “Even when your guests asks it of you?”

Myrddin stared.

“I will not force you.” Maeve tilted her head. “I thought you were interested.”

He sucked in a breath. “This suits both of us. A mutual hostage-taking, as it were.” He stroked her silver white hair, closing the space between them.

Maeve bridled at the word ‘hostage’ but she couldn’t deny its truth. The flesh had ways to bind people together, to hold true to promises… but it wasn’t infallible.

The water’s temperature grew near boiling. Maeve returned to herself in the dark, scalding cave. Caer Morgana had suffered since. She’d observed the dreigiau môr decline. There was only one way to save her beloved people.

She expected a challenge, or a puzzle, some wrong turn. That had been her life. The wrong turns, the wrong compromises.

She lingered beyond her normal lifespan. She knew the Goddess kept her alive for a reason. This final quest…

The heat seared her scales, They crackled, curling and melting. She couldn’t fail now.

The tunnel opened out into a giant chamber. The ceiling hid in the gloom. Ahead, across a lake of lava, she saw a shining light, spearing upward into the dark ceiling.

Death waited.

Maeve didn’t know how she still lived in the steaming tunnel. Salt clung to her lashes, her whiskers. She inhaled evaporated seawater and strange fumes. She’d been here before.

Maeve rode behind Myrddin, clutching his waist in a tight grip, terrified she’d bounce off the animal. They rode amidst Arthur’s men.

Her head started spinning. Her heart constricted. She choked, a horrible gurgle. Her limbs drooped and she slid backward…

She woke some hours later. She lay next to the road, propped up against a tree. The bark dug into her back.

Myrddin knelt by her side. “Where you fell wasn’t safe, so I brought you back here.”

Grateful she had no memory of that, Maeve thanked him.

“We should continue if you’re able. Ride in front of me.” He helped her onto his pony and mounted behind her.

“You still carry the greal, cup bearer?”

Myrddin’s arm tightened about her waist. “Cei has it. Arthur thought it safer with the group.”

Maeve’s stomach roiled in sudden premonition. “They will wait for you to anoint him?”

“Of course.” He kissed her neck. “Do not fret. I will return it to you.”

Maeve came to in a small hut watched over by a gaggle of children and two goats. “Myrddin?” she croaked.

“Ma!” the children bellowed.

A plump woman entered from outside, the sunlight blinding Maeve. “The young master had to leave. He said to wait for him and … he said the strangest thing.”

“Which was?” Maeve accepted a spoonful of gruel from the eldest girl-child.

“He said you needed to bathe in the sea.” The woman shook her head. “What nonsense! You’ll just need to wash again to get rid of the salt.”

Maeve waited for Myrddin. And waited. When her strength returned, she submerged into Môr Hafren, becoming draig môr, feeling herself restored.

She returned to Abona, waiting through the months of her belly swelling until the boy child came, untimely and stillborn.

Maeve wrapped the blue-skinned babe in her shift and sank beneath the waters of Môr Hafren. The villagers would say she drowned but Myrddin, should he ever return, would know a different ending.

She swam with her dead babe, keening and wailing within her heart. Nobody would learn of her foolishness. As if flesh could actually bind.

After a time, she found the cave and decided to lay her baby to rest at its farthest end. She’d traveled further than she ever expected. Back then, just a few decades ago, a stone bridge crossed over the lava.

She had no way to reach her baby boy now. Unless …

Maeve muttered magics, a spell to swell and grow until her bulk nearly filled the tunnel. Her magicked flesh would protect her, boiling her away until she reached the shining light. She’d reach and reclaim the greal for the dreigiau môr.

She dove into the fiery lava, burning, screaming, until the earth rejected her. “You are not of us!”

She soared forward through noxious gases. Maeve choked, her eyes watering until they crusted shut. Blinded, she sailed in a glorious arc. “You are not of us!” the air shrilled.

Maeve sank into the lava until the lava spat her out again, a third smaller than when she started. She arched, twisted, burning, choking until she flopped into the molten rock a third time.

Again the lava reduced her and ejected her. She expected fire to close over her head but landed on solid ground.

Maeve forced her eyes open. Her vision blurred. She made out the tiny cairn that held her heart. The light shone from it up into the unseen ceiling.

No greal. Had her dreams tricked her again?

She rested. She slept … and dreamed. Her child, her perfect human boy, sat before her. He held out his hands and she knew he didn’t ask to be picked up. She took the boy in her arms and sobbed and sobbed until she ran dry of tears.

She heaved, waking with a sigh.

Maeve stared aghast into the flaming lava, not really seeing it. What he asked of her… Take his bones and grind them into a pearl? All to find that damned greal?

In a fugue, she crawled to her son’s cairn, dragging the stones away with a heavy claw. Her son’s bones before her, she cried over them. Her tears fell on the little pile of bones. Bones so brittle from the the infernal heat that her tears melted them, only the boy’s pelvis held them together.

Crooning a spell she would never remember afterwards, she rolled the bone paste in her clawed hands. When she was done, a pearl gleamed in her palm.

Looking back across the fiery lake, Maeve tucked the pearl into her cheek and enspelled her body to grow in order to survive the return journey.

As before, she dove in and was flung out of the lava three times, but this time her bulk did not diminish.

In her final leap she slid into the tunnel, the walls scraping her raw sides. Somehow the magical change had become permanent.

Maeve knew she could never return to Caer Morgana in this state. Her body, formed at such a deep fathom, would fly apart in the lower hydrostatic pressure above.

She waited with the pearl until the first Grealseeker sought her out.

And this is the true story of how the Grealseeker ring came to be.

If you’re new to The Môrdreigiau Chronicles, welcome! You might find the Glossary helpful for some of these words. Caer Morgana is where most of the dreigiau môr live. Eidothea and Llyr get to meet Maeve in the next instalment posted on March 23, 2024.

For

Brian Reindel 👾⚔️

‘s Lunar Awards Prompt Quest #1.