Becoming P.T. Lyfantod - 25
A serial fantasy novel
What follows is Part 25 of Becoming P.T. Lyfantod
If you missed Part 1, start there:
I watched him warily, not sure how to feel. We’d done it! We’d found the first standing stone of Cyril Lightfoot…but the hideous creature before me wasn’t at all what I’d been expecting. I couldn’t help but wonder if coming here hadn’t been a terrible mistake. My voice shook as I addressed the candle-wearing ghost.
“Excuse me, but are you…Cyril Lightfoot?”
His head jerked up, and he fixed me with pinprick eyes. “Cyril Lightfoot? Me? That worthless old knob? Not bloody likely!”
“Then who are you?” asked Stuart.
The creature spun, and I was left staring at his pudgy backside. His candle left a sinuous streak on my retinas. “I? I am Godwyn!” He rose as high as the low ceiling would allow. “Godwyn the Great! Godwyn the Fearsome! Godwyn the Fomorian!”
“Fomorian?” I gasped. “But…they’re evil!” I met my friends eyes, willing them to understand. This was a trick. A trap. A deadly blunder. “Cyril Lightfoot and the Fomor were enemies!” I reached into my bag and brandished the Book. “It’s all in here!”
“What is that?” hissed Godwyn, flitting closer. “A book? Why’ve you got a book?”
“It’s all here,” I repeated, paging frantically. “‘Lightfoot fought the wicked Fomorians for many years at great personal cost. He and his followers often arrived to rally forces on the verge of rout or annihilation. Employing a host of magical abilities, Lightfoot managed time and again to drive the Fomorian horde back into the sea from whence they came. At the time of his last battle, where many mistakenly believed he died, Lightfoot had sustained so many gruesome insults to his person that many said the bard must have been held together by a combination of magick and grace.’”
Godwyn’s face grew darker and darker as I read. “Let me see that!” he swiped at the Book with his pudgy green fingers. I cowered away, clutching it to my chest.
“If you’re his enemy,” asked Merry, “why are you at his monument?”
Godwyn spun to face her and growled, “Enemy is too pleasant a word.”
“Then why?” pressed Iain.
The little Fomorian whipped his head this way and that, trying to glare at all of us at once. “D’ye think I wear a flaming candle on me head for looks? He captured me, the stink-breathed old…and forced me to do his dirty work! Helping the likes of you become more like him, that you might join him going about killing my own kin!”
“You don’t seem all that helpful,” said Tom.
“I said the lines!” he snarled. “Hail Adventurer! You heard! You ungrateful little sh—”
“You never got to the end,” said Merry. “You said, ‘Prove worthy to follow in the Bardic tradition, and join in the eternal fight against the fell,’ and then you stopped.”
Godwyn seethed. He scrunched his eyes. Curled and uncurled his fingers. “Dense, dimwitted, and dull. Accursed obligation! The fell Fomorians!”
“It’s a little perverse, isn’t it?” said Stuart. “Having a Fomorian initiate people into the fight against…Fomorians?”
“Yes,” said Godwyn, “it is perverse. You tell the old man that when you meet him, but warn me before you do because I want to watch his face.”
“Are they really out there?” asked Tom. “More like you?”
“You bet your last farthing! And if I ever get this damned hunk of wax off my head…”
“Are they really as bad as his book says?” asked Merry. “Are they all wicked?”
“Wicked, dear girl, is in the eye of the beholder. The Fomor want what everyone wants.”
We exchanged glances. “What’s that?” Iain asked.
Godwyn shrugged. “To pillage and destroy and cover land and sea with our spawn and the red blood of our enemies from one horizon to the other.”
No one spoke. We only nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable answer.
“How many of you are there?” I asked.
Godwyn leaned forward and regarded me with narrowed eyes. “Hundreds,” he hissed with relish, “at the very least.”
I blinked. It was far fewer than I’d anticipated. “Hundreds? That isn’t so many.”
Godwyn’s expression darkened, and he drifted closer, till our noses were nearly touching. “Some of us are rather large.”
I swallowed. “Oh.”
Merry spoke up behind him, drawing him away. “How does a candle make you a prisoner?”
“Damned if I know!” Godwyn snapped. “It’s magic of the foulest sort. Being bound to Lightfoot is insufferable. Like having a boil on your arse for all eternity.”
“For someone who’s supposed to serve him,” Stuart said, “you sure do bad-mouth him a lot.”
“I prefer to abide by the spirit of the bond rather than the letter. My duty is to guide young neophytes and speak truth for their benefit. So you’ll know I’m telling the truth when I tell you that Cyril Lightfoot is a great steaming pile of horse dung.”
“But you have to guide us,” I said. “To answer our questions?”
“That’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it?”
“So how does it work? Are we going to become heroes?”
“If by heroes you mean great warriors whose names are passed down through the ages, who have statues made of them, and wee human babes named in their honor…that depends. I say, none of you are called Cyril, are you?”
We shook our heads.
“Oh thank the gods. There was an acolyte named Cyril once, and it went straight to his head. The old man was intolerable. Until…” Godwyn’s eyes glazed and a slow smile spread over his face.
“Until what?”
His eyes flicked toward me. “Until he was eaten,” he cooed.
“Eaten?” said Tom. “By what?”
“By a very large fish.”
“A f…”
Merry was not discouraged. “Will we learn spells?” There was an intensity in her voice that was almost frightening.
Godwyn glowered. “It’s possible.”
“How?”
He jerked his head towards the doors. “In there you’ll receive a trial, the first of three. Complete it and you’ll be rewarded with knowledge.”
“What kind of knowledge?” asked Tom.
“Bardic knowledge of course!”
“You mean magic,” said Merry.
“Yes, magic! Don’t get too excited. It’s not going to make you bloody Cú Chulainn.”
“Is it dangerous?” asked Stuart. “The trial?”
“Would that it were,” Godwyn replied wistfully. “No. Lightfoot likes to weed out the stupid before the weak.”
“So what happens if we fail?” I asked.
Godwyn smiled. “Then you’ll know you’re unremarkable, rather than merely suspecting.”
“That’s it?” said Tom. “No punishment? No curse, or…or giant fish?”
“Oh, I wish there were a curse.” Godwyn twined his fingers together. “I’d be far more proactive in recruitment.”
“How many tries do we get?” asked Merry.
“As many as you like, dear girl.” Godwyn swooped over to slip a finger beneath her chin. “After all, stupid once need not mean stupid forever. Hmm?”
Merry shoved his hand away. I was surprised to find it solid. “And if we pass all three?”
The question wiped all amusement from Godwyn’s face. His nose wrinkled and his mouth turned down. “You’ll be invited to join the Order of the Brazen Horn and become true disciples of Cyril Lightfoot.”
“Bards, you mean.”
Godwyn gave an exasperated shrug. “But even if you do manage to survive that long, I wouldn’t go making any long-term investments.”
Merry deliberated for all of an instant before turning toward the rest of us. “What do you think?”
I of course had already made up my mind. I’d decided days ago that if I found Lightfoot’s stone, I’d follow the path wherever it led. But I was surprised by the hunger in Merry’s eyes. I could see the decision playing out on the others’ faces, but there wasn’t a shred of doubt on hers. Whatever conviction she’d had about the world being simple, straightforward and mundane had been swept away, replaced by the desire to know…everything.
I know how you feel. I have a few unfinished stories from years ago that I have no idea where the stories were going. So, I'm mad at myself for leaving them hanging.
Best chapter yet :)