Free High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) by David Kearns Page A

lady in the story.”

    “Macsen made three castles for her. And she made roads between the castles. They are supposedly the roads made by the old Romans.”

    “Is that all? She made roads? Hardly the work of a beautiful woman.”

    “What you must do is not the work of a beautiful woman. Yet you must do it.”

    I looked at him. For the first time he had mentioned something about what was to happen to me.

    “How do you know this? Who told you what I am going to do?”

    “You are the Expected One. It is known what you will do.”

    I walked away from him, turning his words over in my mind.

    “It is known, except by me,” I said, still looking away. “I have no idea what I am supposed to do. I don’t even know why people call me the ‘Expected One’. Are you going to tell me?”

    When I turned, he had walked away. My words echoed emptily in the air. I had to run to catch up with him.

    “Tell me,” I yelled.

    He stopped. I stopped.

    “‘Canwyll yn tywyll a gerdd gennym.’” he said.

    Those words. They rang a bell in my head. The words on the wall of the tunnel.

    “Those are the words in the tunnel,” I said. “You know them.”

    “‘A candle in the darkness marches with us.’” he said.

    “Wait,” I said, walking up to him. “That is what the words mean. Do you know what the rest of the words say?”

    “‘In forest, field, hill and dale,
      A candle in the darkness marches with us,
      The one who is ready leading every attack.’”

    “Who wrote those words? What do they mean? Tell me.”

    “The old ones made them. After the Romans left. Before my people came. Before my people were slaughtered at Catraeth. They say this. You are the Expected One. You are the candle. You march with us. You are the one who is ready.”

    “Did you say at Catraeth? You cannot mean that. ‘Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth oedd fraeth eu llu.’”

    “They went to Catraeth many in number. None returned. My mother. My father. My brothers. None came back. I am the last of the Votadini. I am the last Gododdin. As I was a babe in arms they did not take me.”

    “But that all happened hundreds of years ago. How is it possible ...?” As I spoke I remembered Eluned’s stories of her life. Nefyn was the same. People for whom time was different to mine. Eluned had been born hundreds of my years previously, yet to me she was still a young woman. Nefyn was the same. No wonder he was lonely. For hundreds of my years he had lived in this bleak place alone.

    If that was true, it dawned on me, then what about the times Gwenllian had visited him? In his time scale they seemed far apart. In my time scale they could be hundreds of years apart. That could only mean that her next visit could also be in another hundred years. Maybe more. Not a few days, or weeks as I had been expecting.

    I sat down on the nearest fragment of wall. When I looked up at Nefyn tears were running down his cheeks. Now I knew why he always seemed so sad. I covered my face with my hands and wept. I heard him shuffle his feet then move off. I let him go.

Chapter 20

    Another two weeks passed, as far as I could tell. I wondered what the passing of time meant to people like Eluned and Nefyn. Did it appear to move more slowly? Each day we went about what became our routines. Nefyn disappeared some time after the sun came up and rarely returned before it went down. Each day he brought a sack full of wood for the fire, so that before long there was a high pile beside the fireplace. He also managed to bring some small animal or bird most days, as well as a variety of roots.

    Eluned still spent all her time in the Room. She transformed it as much as she was able. The books were placed in one corner, after she had blown the dust from them and polished the ones with leather bindings. She washed our sleeping blankets and our shifts, a very laborious process with the primitive facilities available to her. The first night I slept in a newly washed blanket I