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Achren watched Eilonwy by the light of the Golden Pelydryn. It shone on the girl’s red-gold hair as she sat at Achren’s feet, slowly turning the pages of the spellbook. She seemed very content, studying the magic that was her birthright, and quite unlike the willful girl she had been in Spiral Castle.
Achren remembered how she’d tried so hard to tame that girl. One small child, in a castle Achren ruled, inhabited only by Achren’s servants, in the middle of an isolated forest. She’d thought it would be easy to mold Eilonwy in her own image. Or, perhaps not quite in Achren’s image, for Achren herself would have chafed at all constraints and plotted the day when she could seize power for herself. Achren didn’t want a rival, she wanted a… not a tool, a mindless tool could never make magic… a perpetual apprentice. A helper. One with no ambition of her own.
Achren had initially thought she’d found exactly that. The child Eilonwy had been many things, but ambitious was not one of them. When Achren had given her lessons in magic, she’d been driven to distraction by the girl’s ceaseless chatter, her inattentiveness, and constant random questions.
But she’d also been relieved, in a way. The girl clearly had no interest in magic for its own sake, nor in the power it could give her. She was no child-Achren, who had paid the closest of attention to her own lessons, only asked the occasional and carefully thought-out question that would reveal much to her while revealing nothing of her, and recited spells silently to herself as she lay in bed at night, pretending to be asleep.
No, Eilonwy was no Achren. And yet her childish prattle had often contained surprising wisdom. Her strange way of thinking, of making odd connections between seemingly unrelated things, had sometimes provided Achren with startling insights. The lessons in magic began as a tedious necessity to prepare Eilonwy to become a vessel of power for Achren’s use. But they became a refreshing, if often also frustrating, means for Achren to practice new ways of thinking. Her spells had improved since Eilonwy’s arrival at Spiral Castle—and that could only be explained by her exposure to the girl herself, for Achren could not tap into even the smallest portion of the power held within the Golden Pelydryn.
Achren should have been more careful with the girl. She knew perfectly well that Eilonwy's ramblings masked a sharp mind and a strong will. She should have known better than to let her run wild around Spiral Castle, assuming she was up to nothing more than childish games. It had been a great mistake not to restrict the girl’s movements. Or, better yet, to set a spying spell upon her, so Achren could have seen all that Eilonwy saw. Then not only would she have stopped the girl from setting the prisoners free and escaping herself, bringing down Spiral Castle in the bargain, but the power of Dyrnwyn would have been Achren’s.
But Eilonwy’s days of freedom were over now. She now belonged to Achren, body and soul. Really, Achren didn’t know why she hadn’t enchanted Eilonwy years ago, in Spiral Castle. It would have spared her a great deal of trouble. Had she done so, Spiral Castle would still stand. Perhaps even now she would be ruling Annuvin with her consort Gwydion by her side.
Well, no matter. She had lost Gwydion and Spiral Castle, but she had Eilonwy back. And this time, she meant to keep her.
Some day, Achren thought, she would lift the enchantment from Eilonwy and see if the girl was ready to embrace her role at Achren’s side of her own free will. It was tiring to hold such a strong enchantment, over her heart and will and soul, all day and all night. Even aided by Eilonwy’s own power and the book of spells, Achren doubted that she could keep the girl under the enchantment and go forth to battle Arawn himself in Annuvin.
But lifting the enchantment had risks. Great risks. It is far easier to maintain an enchantment than to make it, or remake it. Once Eilonwy had her free will restored to her, if she chose to fight against Achren, she would be armed with not only every spell she’d learned from the book she was even now studying, but with the tremendous power of the Golden Pelydryn.
True, the girl had no idea what the Golden Pelydryn actually was. She thought it was a “bauble,” a child’s toy with no use other than to give off a pleasant light. But no one knew better than Achren that objects of great magical power could have a kind of will of their own. How else had the great sword Dyrnwyn found its way into Eilonwy’s hands, and thence into Gwydion’s? All objects are made to a purpose, and a sword is forged for battle, made to cleave flesh and draw blood. Dyrnwyn sought out its purpose, and the hands of a warrior fit to wield it.
So, too, the Golden Pelydryn was made for the hands of an enchantress, to reveal the unseen and the unknown, to dispell mystery and lift veils. If it was content to be tossed about like a toy, it was only because it recognized Eilonwy’s soft palms as those of its proper master, now too young to know her own purpose. But Achren was certain that the Golden Pelydryn was only waiting. Once she lifted the enchantment laid on Eilonwy, either the girl would willingly take her place as Achren’s eternal apprentice, or Achren would have a battle on her hands—a battle that she might not win.
Taking Eilonwy, keeping Eilonwy: it was like holding a gwythaint on a leash. Achren’s lips curved in a bitter smile as she thought of Arawn’s gwythaints. He thought he had tamed and mastered them, but he had not. He had only enslaved and subdued him. If his control ever slipped, they would turn on him and rend him limb from limb. And when—if—Achren released her control over the girl, the same might happen to her. Oh, certainly the Eilonwy Achren had first placed under the enchantment would not be ruthless enough to kill the woman who had raised her and taught her everything she knew. But who knew what this Eilonwy, the Eilonwy Achren had bent to her will, the Eilonwy who had learned all the magic that was her birthright, would do?
It was ironic that the Eilonwy Achren needed, the one willing to wield the darkest of magics, was the one that Achren must fear.
Some day, Achren would have to choose between safely amassing power at Caer Colur, and risking it all for the chance of far greater power and glory.
Some day, Achren thought, watching the light of the Golden Pelydryn strike fiery glints from Eilonwy’s hair.
But not today.