Becoming P.T. Lyfantod - 26
A serial fantasy novel
What follows is Part 26 of Becoming P.T. Lyfantod
If you missed Part 1, start there:
One by one, the others nodded.
Merry faced Godwyn, met his eyes and held them. I’d never been reminded more of Dona, the fierce, fearless halfling warrior, first into battle no matter the odds. Even Godwyn seemed to perceive it, for his eyebrows rose and he drifted backwards.
“We’ll do it,” Merry said. “Show us the trial.”
“Aye, milady, at once!” Godwyn bowed and scraped in the air, but in spite of his sarcasm, he floated toward the doors. He lay a hand upon each and pushed, and this time they groaned, clouds of dust and bits of rock crumbling from the ceiling.
The dust cleared, revealing a second, smaller room, a vacant octagon suffused with a golden glow that had no obvious source. The walls were painted with a great battle scene, aging but clearly recognizable. Atop high cliffs above a raging sea, men with gleaming arms and armor struggled against monstrosities. No two were alike, but they were all horrible. Great, small, dark and light, some looked vaguely human while others were hideous aberrations. Nearly all of them were in some stage of being gruesomely slain. Seaspray filled the air, and rays of golden sunlight shone down from gaps in lowering thunderclouds.
“I hate this room,” muttered Godwyn as we followed him in, gawking.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Stuart pointed. We followed the line of his finger to a resplendent figure, perched on the highest cliff. A titanic wave crashed behind him, and his armor gleamed a radiant pale blue in a shaft of heavenly light. There was a sword at his side and a horn at his lips.
“That’s him,” Godwyn scowled, “but don’t be fooled by this propaganda. Cyril Lightfoot is— ”
Light flashed at our feet, and we looked down. Carved into the floor was another, larger version of the same knot graven on the stone outside.
“—is here,” Godwyn finished sullenly.
The knot glowed blue-green, dimmed, then brightened again. Thrum. The air hummed with energy. A sonorous note, like a string plucked and left to rumble. Another followed, higher than the first, and another after that. Invisible strings played a song that started slow but rapidly increased. Blue-green flame raced along the lines of the knot in time, faster and faster still. I pictured dextrous fingers dancing over the face of a fiddle or a lute. My heartbeat sped. My fingers itched to tap along. I glanced down and realized they were tapping, and I didn’t remember giving them permission. Unnerved, I made a fist as the music crescendoed. The glow brightened, blinding white, and I shielded my eyes against it.
The music subsided.
When I opened my eyes, a man stood in the center of the knot. Pale blond hair hung past his shoulders, flattened by a shining metal cap topped with a sprig of hawthorn that quivered when he moved. He had a bristly beard and moustaches that dangled over the end of his mouth. His pink cheeks were wrinkled, the corners of his brown eyes crinkled in a welcoming smile. I put his age around fifty.
He was swathed in a golden-yellow garment I had no name for, not quite a robe and not quite a kilt, belted at the waist and draped over one shoulder. A blue jacket hung open in a V down his front and flared at the waist. Beneath that, a loose white shirt, and then a fitted red one. The hilt of a longsword rose over his shoulder, and a curving brass horn hung at his hip. He didn’t look entirely real. There was something about the light or the color of him that wasn’t quite right. A silveriness that made me question his solidity.
“Hail, young adventurers!” he bellowed in a rich, melodic baritone, settling his gaze on each of us in turn. “I am Cyril Lightfoot, hero of a hundred battles, crusader for the light, bane of the vile Fomhóraigh!”
Godwyn sighed audibly up near the ceiling.
“For centuries, I and my Order have held back the tide of evil that would wash over the world and cover it in darkness. Now you, like those before you, have chosen to answer the call, to serve the divine lords and ladies of the land, to hold the line, sing the warrior songs of Mistral and Sennight, and call death and fury down upon the foes of all that is good and proper. The way ahead is fraught with peril and not for the faint of heart, but I see by the steel in your eyes that you are no wilting buttercups. Though the road will be long and the challenges many, before me stand naught but heroes to be, for whom there can be no fate but glory everlasting! Step forward now and grace me with your names!”
My eyes swiveled left and right. My friends looked every bit as dumbfounded as I felt. Heroes to be? Glory everlasting? It was everything I’d wished for and infinitely more than I’d expected. The words rang in my head like Lightfoot’s invisible strings, and I tried to fathom what they might mean. Everything was happening so fast.
I’d never been the best at anything. Not school, not sport, not music, nor anything else. As far as I knew, there was nothing remarkable about me. I was passingly good at a number of things but never enough to be worth noticing. There’d been a time when I tried standing out for my mother’s sake, but that was long past.
I wasn’t even bad enough to warrant any special attention. People concerned themselves with those at the top and at the bottom, and I was solidly, unobtrusively, in the middle. I’d never thought it bothered me much, being average. For the most part I was content getting by. As long as no one was yelling, I was doing all right. But in that moment I realized the reason I’d resigned myself to mediocrity was that I’d never been offered anything else.
The end of school and adulthood loomed hazy in the future, and I hadn’t a clue what I wanted to do with my life. No inkling of who or what I wanted to be. And since no one ever asked, I’d been free to tell myself that at some point, I’d…figure it out.
And here was Lightfoot. A man—ghost?—five-hundred years dead if the Book could be believed, offering me the chance to be special, and I realized I wanted it more than anything. My heart ached with it. I didn’t know what he was offering exactly, but I knew I didn’t want to be a dentist, or an electrician, or an engineer. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to fight the darkness, whatever that meant. I wanted magic and glory everlasting. I stepped forward and opened my mouth—
“Meredith Cadwaladr.”
