The dawn was cold and grey and lifeless, dull with the scent of the sea at low tide. Bran fastened his cloak at his throat as the boy Ben pressed a heel of dry bread into his hands. "We will part company here," Luned was saying, and her face was grim and serious beneath her sleep-mussed hair. "Make for the furthermost gate of the City, and a friend will meet you there. I will catch up with you when I can."
"What are you going to do?" Bran asked, his voice muffled by the mouthful of bread he was trying to talk through. Luned's teeth flashed in a bright, wicked smile, and she slipped a silver ring off her finger and held it toward him.
"Distract them from following you, of course. Now, take this. Turn the stone to the inside and close your hand around it. Move quickly toward the gate, and keep to the shadows as much as you can." He held out his hand, palm open, and she dropped the ring into it. He slid it onto his third finger; it was tarnished and delicate, slender strands of darkened silver braided into a circle and wrapped around a single smooth, round blue-grey stone. Bran turned the stone inward, he heard a startled gasp from Ben, saw a nod of approval from Luned.
Gwion moved to open the door for them, and clasped each of their hands warmly. "I wish we could have had more time," he told them, "for I have missed you. Pob hwyl, my friends."
They ducked hurriedly out the small wooden door in the grey stone wall with ivy crawling steadily up the side, and there they parted. When Bran had last travelled this route he had been riding next to Will, there had been a parade to see them off, and a girl with dark hair had thrown flowers toward them; he had not been skulking in the shadows, hunted. But hunted he was, or so Luned and Gwion told him, and so he kept close within the shadows of walls and alleyways with Luned's silver ring turned inward on his hand and his mother's cloak, dull side outward, cowled over his face. Luned darted around a corner and he lost sight of her entirely, though he fancied he could still hear the ring of her footsteps on the cobblestones. The harsh call of seagulls echoed in the damp salt air, the fog was thick and wet his cheeks. The City was only now beginning to wake, the dawn barely peeking above the horizon, filtering weak and dim through the blanket of clouds. Fishermen cast their boats off from the harbour, calling to each other in low gruff voices; further from the shore the bakers were opening their shops for those who had time for tea and breakfast before going about their day's affairs. It woke something in Bran, something that had long lain dormant. It was that part of him that remembered waking up in the earliest hours of morning to feed dogs, to put on the teakettle and set out scones for breakfast while his father worked, the boy who remembered waking to the smell of wet grass and rain and the perfection of an old quilt and the weight of his dog lying across the foot of his bed. It was homesickness, in a way, the feeling of being displaced, of almost belonging, of something left behind the way one abandons childhood games, because once the time for them has passed, there can be no returning to them. He felt suddenly, profoundly, terribly out of place. Everything was different, and yet he was not; he remained perfectly suspended between his two pasts because he could never reconcile them.
The sharp sound of footsteps on stone grew louder, and, suddenly fearful, Bran pressed himself back against the nearest wall. Three tall men, cloaked and long-strided, appeared from out of the fog, and Bran felt the niggling beginnings of something, some deep discomfort stirred in his gut that he recognised vaguely as that sense those of the Light had for those of the Dark. He hoped they could not feel him in the same way, and tucked his chin to let his hood fall further over his pale face.
The men spoke to each other in curt, hushed tones, and they walked with purpose. "The girl headed toward the water," one said, and Bran's hand went to the hilt of his sword even as he tried to shrink further beneath his cloak. "Back to the ship."
"They split up," the tallest snapped. "She's there to lead us away from the boy, that much is plain. He'll be making for the Gates, if I know anything."
"Or," the first said mildly, "that's what we're supposed to think, and they're both to meet back at the ship." They crossed in front of Bran, bent forward, beady dark eyes searching out the doors and alcoves of the road, and yet their gazes passed over him as if he weren't there. Of course, he said, with an inward sigh of relief. They can't see me. I just thought they would be able to, somehow, as worried as Gwion and Luned were over it. The stone of the ring dug into the fleshy part of his hand where it joined his finger, and when the men had passed far enough ahead, he walked on.
He felt a good deal less worried after that, and he moved briskly but not fearfully through the maze of roads that led toward the outer walls. The sun forced its way through the clouds, and with it the City came to life around him, women in shawls and tall stiff bonnets appeared in the doorways with baskets on their arms, children chased each other through the streets, young men barely older than Bran struck up poses they seemed to think were dashing against storefront walls. No one saw or acknowledged Bran, and gradually he forgot about being careful, and let himself revel in the bustle and flurry of the City's morning.
He came in time to a junction where three roads converged in a wide circle. In the centre stood a fountain, crafted from smooth black stone and surrounded at the base with short, carefully-pruned bushes. Streaks of silver ran through the stone like rivers in miniature, spreading from the base and stretching toward the edges. Bran was not sure, even then, why he paused to lean over the fountain and gaze into the water, let alone reach to touch it. His open palm lay flat atop the surface of the water, and his own pale face stared back at him from the ripples, and he heard, off to his left, a sharp, hasty, quiet, "There. That's him, there."
He jerked his head up, turning, he saw the same three men who had crossed his path before. This time, though, they were staring directly at him, or at least at the ground at his feet, though they stood with hunched shoulders and made no move toward him. For the briefest moment, Bran thought he would draw his sword; his chin raised, his gold eyes cold and arrogant. He reached for his sword beneath his cloak, his fingers curling around the hilt, the smooth stone of Luned's ring tapping against the cool metal.
"That's right, boy bach," the tallest of the men said gruffly. "Stay right where you are. We know how to find you, now the sun's out. Invisible might you be, but you've still a shadow, and I can see your head in the water there."
Bran let go his swordhilt, closed his hand again around the stone, and the man who had just spoken grunted in frustration. His fingers clenched tight, he glanced down at the water again. His reflection in the pool was gone.
Perhaps, if Bran had been the same as the first time he had come through this city, if he had been that young Pendragon just coming into power, astride a tall horse with Will at his side, he would have fought. Now he looked at them, three burly men with the faint scent of the Dark still about them, and remembered Luned's words—move quickly toward the gate, and keep to the shadows as much as you can—and he ran.
For a little way, they followed him. They could hear the soft leather thud of his footsteps on the road, and they had already guessed he was heading for the Gate. He ducked through gardens and alleyways, narrowly avoided toppling into the children playing in the streets, pelted through a pattern of streets he remembered only vaguely, the way one might remember an especially vivid dream. But it was not a dream, this Land that had passed away was alive and so, too, were the servants of the Dark. Bran missed Will, and kept running.
The great gates of the City loomed before him, and Bran cast a last glance over her shoulder. His pursuers were nowhere in sight, but he caught a glimpse of his own shadow dark on the ground and did not dare stop. His side burned, his breath coming hard in his chest from running, and his cloak was heavy and much too hot. He staggered the last few paces and leaned heavily against the tall stone wall.
Hidden by the shadow cast by the gates onto the ground, he rested for a moment, gasping. Running through mountains, fields, was not new to Bran, but prolonged running with this urgency was exhausting. It was only after he had caught his breath that he really looked around.
A horse and rider stood waiting. The horse was tall and pale, small yellow flowers braided into its mane. A woman sat astride him, in gold brocade, her long light hair falling past her shoulders. Her face was proud and cold, and her eyes pierced the shadows where Bran was hiding.
"Come into the light, son of Gwenhwyvar," she commanded. Bran pushed away from the wall to greet her. It occurred to him, as he let the hood fall back from his face, that if this was not the friend Luned had mentioned, but the rider did not set his senses tingling the same way as the others had with the echo of the Dark. She was old, so old, and that he could feel as surely as the weak warmth of the sunlight on his skin.
She offered him her hand, without dismounting. "Climb up," she said.
Bran seized her hand and swung up behind her on the horse. "Where are we going?"
"The Country," she answered, and without saying anything more she leant forward and nudged the horse. It launched forward, and Bran held on to the lady's belt and watched the countryside go by around them. Not even Teg could run this fast, he was not sure any horse he had ever ridden before could. Still, the gait was smooth and rocking, and considerably easier on his legs than running had been.
To each side the landscape blurred past. Bran could hear the bubbling laugh of a river, and sometimes would catch glimpses of it through the trees. The sun was brighter now they had left the City and the seacoast behind, or perhaps it had simply burnt through the fog at last.
They were travelling too fast for conversation, and in any case the rider did not seem inclined toward it. She spoke to Bran only to warn him—"Hold on now," or "See that creek? We will jump it." Her chief interest seemed to lie in the three birds that wheeled above them. There was a raven, a kestrel with scarlet wings, and some small hawk Bran could not see well enough to identify. They would vanish sometimes, but always return, and the horse paid no attention to them even when they dove near his head.
The sun hung high before they stopped to rest, on the bank of the river where it turned across their path. The lady straightened and the horse slowed and stopped, and Bran slid gratefully to the ground. The rider dismounted, and stood at the horse's head for a moment, watching him. The kestrel came to land on her wrist.
"Prince of the Britons," she said at length, "most of the morning we have travelled now together, and you have not even asked for my name."
Bran stretched out on the grass, too bone-weary for ceremony. "I do not have to ask," he said quietly. "A great lady, with a horse and three birds. I know who you are, Rhiannon-queen."
A faint smile curved her lips. "That is good." She reached into the saddlebags and fetched out a bundle that she spread out on the grass; there was bread and cheese and apples and dried meat, and a flask of crisp white wine. They shared the meal for a while in silence, with Bran tossing pebbles off the bank into the water and Rhiannon feeding crumbs to her trio of birds.
"Where are we going?" he asked again, idly, eyes closed against the sunshine, sprawled out on his belly. He was warm and content, and the wine and the hood over his face made him drowsy. Here in the tranquillity of the riverbank it was easy to feel as though the morning's urgent flight had been part of another quest entirely.
"Does it matter?" Rhiannon asked, as the kestrel plucked a bit of bread from her fingers.
"Luned told me she would catch up with us," Bran answered, musing. "That implies some actual destination, to me, or how would she know where to find us?"
The queen's laugh was a bright and crisp as the river-water. "Luned would be able to find you wherever you went, if she cared to," she said mildly. "But yes, we are bound somewhere. I will take you to the tower, to the Empty Palace, and there I will leave you."
Bran peered at her, pushing the hood from his face. "But the palace was in the City, before."
"Yes." She shrugged, carelessly. "This land is growing. Things can change, caught out of Time though they may be."
Bran looked down at his hands: small still, pale, callused from harp and sword but with Luned's ring large on his finger, so plainly not yet a man's hands, and said quietly, "Not everything."
"No," Rhiannon agreed, watching him. "Not everything." She sat on the grass with her legs folded under her, her cloak laid out next to her, her arms bare. On her shoulder was a tattoo, dark lines intertwined in the stylised image of a trio of birds, standing out stark against her fair skin. When she spoke again, her voice was soft, thoughtful. "It must be a great relief to your mother," she said quietly, "to have you back with her again before you were grown."
"Maybe." Bran shifted uncomfortably on the grass. Rhiannon smiled at him.
"I admire your mother," she said gently. "We have something in common, she and I. It is a very hard thing to give up a child." She tossed her head then, as if shaking off a bad memory, and rose to her feet. "Come, then. We must hurry, if we are to reach the tower before twilight."
She did not explain why that was necessary, and Bran did not ask. He just pushed himself up, adjusted his hood over his face, and swung up behind her again when she offered her hand. His legs were sore, aching, but he held onto Rhiannon's belt and rode on in silence.
The day stretched into afternoon, the shadows of the trees lengthening alongside them. The path they followed became a cobbled road, the white horse's hooves ringing against it, and in front of them rose a wall, with a castle behind.
The first—and last—time Bran had seen the Empty Palace, it had been in the middle of the City, there had been throngs of people walking by and they had all turned to see him and Will in their coach. It had been alive and bustling then, the sun glinting off the nine-paned windows and crooked shadows cast from the balustrades. Now the courtyard was empty, overgrown, with ivy stretching over all the high places and weeds poking up between the cracked cobbles. And all around it, bare fields—the City had moved on, and left the palace behind.
Rhiannon slowed her horse, halted at last before a narrow stone staircase that led to the door inside, and twisted in the saddle to face him. "And here, Bran ap Arthur, is where I leave you. Go inside and take what awaits you. Luned will meet you when she arrives."
Bran slid to the ground, tired knees nearly buckling when he landed. Slowly he climbed the stairs up to the door, and Rhiannon sat proud atop her horse, watching him. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped through, and he saw her begin to gallop away as he pulled it to.
He had stepped into a corridor of mirrors, all metal and glass. Even the first time, with Will, he had hated them, the light, discomfort, the uneasiness of being reflected so many times over. But it was worse now, and not only because he was along—the walls around him had all been shattered. Instead of hundreds of repetitions of himself, Bran was surrounded by broken fragments of his own reflection—here a patch of white hair, a swirl of dull cloth, the glint of yellow eyes narrowed against the light.
Take what awaits you? It made no sense, he didn't know what Rhiannon had meant. He stepped up to the wall, defiant. It had been words, before, not wandering, that had discovered the exit, perhaps it would do the same for whatever he was supposed to do now?
"I am the womb of every holt," he recited, his voice shrill and hollow in the echoing hall. A thousand pale lips moved with the words around him, but the glass did not clear. Feeling frustrated and lonely and entirely uneasy, Bran started walking.
He was not sure how long it actually was that he wandered. He walked with his hood up, to block as many of the fractured reflections from view as he could. He walked and thought of Will Stanton, of laughing and being nervous together and tossing a penny to decide which way to go.
He thought of Pridwen, and his father, and leaving Will behind. He thought perhaps he had not made the right choice after all.
He thought he had never been given a right choice, really.
And after a time he noticed that one of the dark places in the wall had not moved, the way the rest of the images had. Pausing, he squinted, peered closer—there really was a broken place in the middle of it, where the cracked metallic surface had fallen away and left only blank stone.
Bran raised his hand, pressed his fingers against the hollow. The wall was rough, and full of magic that made his skin burn. There was something about the wall, about the mirror, and he stared hard at it as though that alone would give away its secret.
It came to him.
He knelt, fishing in the cloak's inner pockets, and pulled out the mirror-shard he had found in the dark corridors of his father's castle. In a moment of desperate, irrational hope he pressed it against the broken place in the wall and thought, show me Will.
For the first moment it remained only his own young, pale face that stared back at him, over and over. The light of the mirrors began to fade, the images vanishing with dizzying speed and he felt as though he were falling.
It was not until the world stopped spinning that Bran saw him.
It was some trick of glass or light or magic, surely, because this was Will Stanton as Bran had last seen him; young, round-faced, with an impish grin and old, old eyes. Something twisted inside him then, and started to ache, and he pressed his fingers against the glass and wished with everything he had to wish with that he could have his friend back again. He was tired of feeling stagnated, of watching the world grow and change and knowing he would never change with it, but even this he thought he could bear if he did not feel quite so alone in it. It felt like a betrayal, for a moment, because surely his parents were the same; his mother had said as much before he had departed.
But boys are not meant to remain always with their mothers.
Show me, he thought desperately. The cracks had sealed themselves where the broken place had been, and he knew he would not be taking the little mirror away with him again. Show me one more time, for real, please.
And slowly, the reflection of the child-Will in the mirror changed, grew taller, older, the childish roundness melting from his features, the smile fading. He was still barely grown, but already there were the beginnings of worry lines at the corners of his eyes, a crinkle of laughter at his mouth.
He looked up at Bran, and his eyes widened in surprise. He laughed, briefly, lightly. "I'm dreaming."
"You might be," Bran conceded, and slumped against the wall in the greatest relief he remembered having felt.
"Or I might not," Will said after a moment where they just stared at each other. "Merriman talked to me through a mirror, once. In the Lost Land. You couldn't see him."
"I remember." Bran's hands fell away from the glass. Now that they could talk to each other, he did not know what to say.
Neither, it seemed, did Will. There was a pause. "Well," he said at last, "how are you, then?"
Bran opened his mouth to answer, to say something about quests and journeys and adventures, of the things he's seen and done and learnt, but what actually came out was a forlorn, "I miss you."
Will did not quite meet his eyes through the glass. "I miss you, too. You—you look the same. That's odd, isn't it?"
"You have no idea," Bran said dryly. "I've got a lot to tell you. Well, I would—I'm not sure how long I can stay here." He voice went troubled and hurried. "I'm in the Empty Palace now, Will, the place with all the mirrors where we were before. Only the words didn't work this time, and I don't know how to get out. I'm supposed to take something with me and go."
Will listened to him, head cocked, face thoughtful. "Take something with you?"
"I was told," Bran explained, "to go in, take what waited for me, and meet someone outside. Only I don't know what it is. The only thing I've found here is you."
"Bran," Will said suddenly, "put your hands on the mirror again."
"What?" But he did, raised his hands and pressed his palms against the reflection. It had been smooth and cold before, but this time it was warm and yielding and rippled beneath his touch. He gasped as his fingers sunk into it, and on the other side, Will lifted his own.
Their skin touched. Will's fingers were narrow, smudged over with pencil-lead, smooth. Bran's were small and slender and pale. Their hands tangled together, and Bran could feel the slow rhythm of Will's pulse in his thumb.
"Step back now," Will directed, and Bran did. He pulled away from the wall, and Will held onto him, and his long tan hands followed Bran through the mirror. He had a strange look on his face, but wrapped his fingers around Bran's wrists and pulled, and a moment later they were both standing on the smooth shiny wall, staring round at all the myriad reflections of themselves.
Will looked up at the ceiling, flinched away from the other Brans and Wills staring back at him. "I am the blaze on every hill," he said clearly, his voice deeper than Bran thought it should have been, ringing against all the mirrors.
There was no explosion, no flash of light. The maze went dark around them, the floor vanished from their feet, and they fell.