I Wouldn't Know Where To Start
“Sorry?”
“We’re in the Otherworld. Or, well, one of them. The one that I’ve been attempting to find an entrance to, thankfully. Certain Otherworlds are rather more permanent when you enter.”
“What?” Cedric exclaimed. “Oh my God, oh my God… we need to leave now!”
“Just a few more seconds.” Harry responded. “Using my age disparity, I’ve charted the dilative effect Annwn has on time. If we leave now, we’ll still be victims of the Sluagh. We leave when I say.”
-{╣ ҉ ╠}-
In the grand scheme of things, they had lost about a day within that cave in Annwn. Shortly after they returned to the castle, on Christmas day, more precisely, Harry was once more distracted from his various goals. On his bed was a package, which held a silky, white cloak, from which emanated the humming he knew to originate from the Otherworlds.
Consulting the book he had acquired so long ago revealed it to be a Treasure of Britain, one which he had no use for. But someone else may have a use for it.
“Cedric, Have you heard of the Treasures of Britain?” Harry asked as he opened the door to Cedric’s dorm.
“Harry?” Cedric groaned from his bed, still asleep. “What time is it?”
“Nine a.m. You have yet to answer the question.”
“Ugh, it’s too early for this.” Cedric muttered before turning to Harry. “Of course I have, everyone who’s raised in Pellaras has.”
“How would you like to own one?”
Silence filled the air, with Cedric looking at Harry, mouth agape in shock.
“I’d love to, depending on the Treasure! But they’ve been lost for centuries.”
In response, Harry showed him the ring on his hand before twisting it and clenching his hand into a fist, vanishing, and then reappearing.
“The Stone and Ring of St. Eluned the Fortunate.” Harry idly commented as he laid out the cloak on Cedric’s bed. “I found it in my travels. And I have recently acquired Gwen, the Mantle of Arthur in Cornwall.”
“Hell yes!”
-{╣ ҉ ╠}-
Having found what he was looking for and no longer being distracted by the Mantle, Harry turned his attention back to Professor Binns’ barter, having developed an inkling of an idea.
“Good Professor.”
“Ah, so the bard returns.” Binns greeted him, floating closer as he did. “Have you found any relevant content?”
“Moreso that I have the beginnings of a method thought of, though it would necessitate a rather specific attribute. Were you a man of Christ in your living days?”
“As it happens, I was a follower of Christ, though I was, perhaps, less pious than I had wished to be.”
“Were you a celebrater of All Hallowtide?”
“Of the entirety, no.”
“What of All Souls Day, in specific?”
“Ah, of that I was a celebrator.”
“Then I believe I may be able to assist your passing on when next the celebration occurs, though I shall have to adapt a rite or two to facilitate it.”
“Such good tidings you bring, good bard.” Binns replied. “For when I impart the knowledge of my safe’s location, the pass code is seven-four-nine-two.”
Nodding to the professor, Harry made his way out of the castle, heading for his next task.
-{╣ ҉ ╠}-
Exiting out of the small cave entrance he had found on returns to the Lake’s cave, Harry, sopping wet, hauled two grouse from his bag, setting them free after waking them from their slumber. Within moments, he heard the baying of hounds and the pounding of paws against the ground.
“Ah, so the Good Bard once more finds himself in my audience. An encounter sought this turn, no less. What tidings have you?”
“Good Huntsman, I bring both tidings good and tidings ill. Would you wish the dour, or would you wish the sweet?”
“The sweet, all the more dour for the next to be.”
“Your tutelage of the tynged was most fortuitous a turn, as it allowed my procurement of aid for an endeavor of mine. Th Sluagh failed in its attempts to claim my soul as fodder for its forces. Where necessary I have seen to the magicians being reminded of the treaties by which they are bound.”
“It heartens to hear you have kept to the tynghedau placed upon you, and used the arts taught to you in appropriate manners. The dour?”
“The magicians are a foul lot. This you have known, for with the length of your life such a fact could not escape your notice, especially when the dead find themselves in your court. However, I find a specific fault with their society. Their enslavement of Good Neighbors.”
“The elves.” The Huntsman nodded. “A tragic business, but one that has persisted unresolved, despite the wishes of our King, and the wishes of far too few a number of magicians, bound as both peoples are by treaties.”
“The Good Neighbors and the magicians may find themselves not able to intercede on the elves behalf, but one who is a step between? Not quite magician, not quite one of the Folk?”
“Were such a being to live, they would be bound by both parts and, in their contradictions with each other, bound by neither of them.” The Huntsman replied, the light glinting over his eyes as sharp as the knives on his belt.
“And thus, be able to intercede, and unbind them, and unwind the tynghedau. Might I venture a question further than this which I ask?”
“Indeed.”
“When under you I learned, I studied the art of laying tynghedau upon another. An aspect that was not touched upon, though I yet wonder at, is what allows one not sovereign or inhuman to lay such a restriction on others. Does it reside in the nature of the magician’s magic?”
“Such a supposition would prove true.” The Huntsman waxed, circling Harry. “The nature of the bard magician is one bent the slightest step above that of the standard. Such a difference, though cosmologically insignificant, nevertheless places them as of greater import than their lower kin. A sovereign of a kind, though not of significance when one looks in the viewing pool of the greater world.”
“So if one wished to find the source of the bindings and tynghedau, one would gaze back on bards of the past?”
“Perhaps, though one might too find other works, preludes to works they deemed greater.”
“So one must gaze before, yet not discard what glimpses of their presence they find, for a glimpse might yet contain manifold mysteries and truths.”
“And yet one must discern through the truths which are Truth, from those that are truth, and to discern the hidden within the assumed, the works of one attributed to the other.”
Gazing at the sky, Harry went silent for a while, all the while circled by his once-mentor, eventually turning his gaze once more to the Huntsman.
“You have provided much for me to ponder this day, Good Huntsman. A fruitful audience this has been, and a fruitful Hunt for your Hounds.”
“Indeed, Good Bard. You may yet find fortune in your endeavors.”
And with the pounding of a horse’s hooves, the Huntsman vanished.
-{╣ ҉ ╠}-
Following his audience with the Huntsman, the rest of the year passed rather quickly, filled with schoolwork and research into funerary rites as they were, though he managed to keep track of the days enough to host a small meal for the vernal equinox. The time came, however, for the school year to end. As he and Cedric were relaxing in a train compartment, Cedric looked up from his book to look at Harry.
“I never got around to asking, but why’d you need access to Annwn?”
“To meet with the Good Huntsman of the Night.”
“Who?”
“The leader of one of the True Wild Hunts, he who rides the night sky, collecting the dead, assisted by Mallt y Nos and the Cŵn Annwn.”
“That…” Cedric began, trailing off before suddenly alerting. “Are you talking about Arawn? I thought he was a myth!”
“So too are dragons, no?” Harry asked, quirking an eyebrow up. “There are precious few things that are true myths, and even those tend to have a kernel of truth within their falsehoods.”
“I guess so…” Cedric replied. “Just… kind of odd to find out your friend’s spoken with someone worshipped as a god.”
“A minor correction. Someone who has studied under someone worshipped as a deity.”
“What?” Cedric faintly asked.
“Where do you think I learned the art of tynghedau?”
“I thought it was just… a bard thing.”
With that sentence hanging in the air, they returned to what they been doing prior, waiting for the train to reach its destination.