Nine clans, over fifteen thousand souls, spread across the shallow valley. Huddled against the cold, families stood in tight groups, children sheltered by their parents’ bulk. Every adult, man or woman, stood armed. Spears, bows, swords, axes, shields, iron helms, chain mail glinted dully in the morning’s wane light. The sun shown as little more than a lighter smear of gray in the low, scudding clouds overhead.
Along the valley’s western slope a hillock of barren rock, tallus deposited long ago as the great sheets of ice retreated, rose to form a natural overlook to the valley below. Upon its summit, a small group of men and women stood facing a single figure, his thick cloak blowing loose in the bitter wind. For all the winter’s gelid breath, beads of sweat trickled down Dael’s face. Flushed and feverish, his whole being hummed with power. Power he’d spent the past three days stoking with arcane magics and meditations. Armed with an old Roman gladius and Scythian recurved bow fitted into a leather sheath at his back, it was the scroll of ancient parchment held tightly in his left hand that radiated a deadly and dark puissance far beyond his other arms.
Facing Dael stood the clan chieftains: Merfyn of Gwynedd, Idwal of Ceredigion, Cadell of Powys, Iorwerth of Glywysing, Hywel of Gwent, Llywarch of Brycheiníog, Tewdwr of Erging, Cormac of Dyfed, and Conall of Mide across the western water. On his right Morrigan held their newborn daughter while his left was flanked by his foster siblings, Arawn and Fia, and the only Roman of the assembly, Alpin. Behind Dael, the somber, gray presence of Myrddin stood like a shadow.
The past days and nights had been hectic. By the appointed day all nine clans had arrived upon the shore of Ynys Môn. Dael met each one and then went into seclusion to meditate upon the mantras with which he would release his spell’s power. Nine mantras, nine cascading levels of power until he rode such a wave of eldritch force that Time itself could be mastered. The task of shepherding each clan through the preparations and explanations of what exactly would happen, and where and why they were going – into exile some said after hearing – had been left to Morrigan and Myrddin.
For a moment Dael stood silent, regarding the clan chieftains, all related to their kingdoms’ rulers through bonds of blood – sons, brothers, uncles. Satisfied with what he saw in their eyes, in the set of their faces, he inclined his head and prepared to speak, difficult as that was with what coursed through his being – a raging conflagration of power demanding release.
He brought his gaze up, but before his first utterance he paused, then swung his eyes to the east in a piercing look that set fire to his eyes. Later, all who saw his face claimed they had truly flashed, their gray burning like molten silver.
