Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Read online

  Llynya, he signed, and when she still did not respond, his own heart began beating too fast. Mayhaps he was too late. Mayhaps she’d already been alone too long and had begun her decline. She was not as strong as the others, not yet as hardened to the march and the weight of the darkness.

  He swore to himself, at a loss. Shay would have seen the flash of dreamstone light and would come, but they could not stay where they were.

  As if to prove him right, the crunch and scrape of some new thing in the dark sounded behind them, off to the east. Mychael whirled, keeping Llynya at his side.

  The smell that came after the sound was enough to decide him. He swiped his hand up the side of her arm—come—and took off, determined nor to be caught in the trap of the curved wall with God knew what readying itself for attack. He knelt for her blade and sheathed it with his own, never once letting go of her. She had no choice but to come with him, but whether she did it willingly or unwillingly, he couldn’t tell. The strength of his grip overrode any effort she might make.

  He wasn’t going to lose her.

  ~ ~ ~

  Swivin’ dirt and light-sucking rock. ’Twas always the same. Dirt and rock. Dirt and rock. And a bit of worm flesh now and then. Christ save him, how long had he been scrabbling through the dark searching, ever searching? He’d once been strong and bold and feared. Now he was—what?

  A swivin’ dirt scraper. A leg dragger.

  A leg dragger whose fortunes would soon be on the rise.

  A groan strangled in his throat as he grabbed the next handful of dirt and rock and pulled himself up and forward in the tunnel. Some of the passages he traveled grew so narrow he had to crawl out of them. Such was this one, but this one was worth the trouble. He smelled lavender at the end of it. He’d been smelling it for days, here and there, and he was finally getting close, very close, to the source.

  ’Twas a woman. The underlying scent was unmistakable, and she was just ahead in the dark, in a cavern he’d left a few days past because of the strangers who had come, the newcomers. Swivin’ odd they were, shrouded figures with bandaged faces come to dig in the caves for pieces of rock.

  Fools, all fools. The treasure of the dark wasn’t in the rocks. ’Twas in the holes, if a man had the strength to endure them.

  He’d endured, so help him God. Caradoc, the Boar of Balor, had endured. And because he’d endured, the other ones, the dark soldiers, had found him and made their twisted promises to him. Skraelings they called themselves, and if he’d had them by his side during the battle for Balor, the land above would still be his. The smell of them alone would have been enough to send his enemies running. “Quicken-tree,” the skraelings called the bastards who had slaughtered his garrison and left him to die in the bowels of the earth.

  The sounds of the fighting had drawn the skraelpack south to where they’d found him half-dead on the shores of the black sea. A dirty bit of business they’d done there with the washed-up remains of his men, before they’d taken him back to their tunnels in the north. Foul, stinking places. He’d never known such stench, but they’d patched him together of a sorts. He felt a smidge stretched, a bit askew, not quite right, but he was alive and growing stronger and was no man’s prisoner. When he’d had all he could take of the north and demanded they bring him south again—south to the wormhole!—by God they’d done it posthaste.

  A grimace twisted his mouth as he took hold of his left knee and dragged his leg up closer to his body, readying himself for the next pull forward.

  The newcomers were another lot altogether, wasting their strength hacking away at dirt and rock, working by the light of their yellow lamps for hours to gain even a small amount of stone.

  He’d tried stealing a piece of their hard-won ore, thinking it precious, but he’d not gotten far before a thin, stinging rope had been thrown around his wrist, pulling him up short and forcing him to relinquish his prize. They’d be paying for that soon enough. The rope had disappeared nearly as quickly as it had come, but he’d been burned and had a scar to show for it. Bastards. They looked more to be fighting men than miners, so ’twas a fight he would give them. Skraelings would run ten leagues in a single night for the promise of blood, and he had sent word with the last pack of dark soldiers that had come south that blood was to be had.

  Not many who came up against a skraelpack survived in one piece, literally. The night they found him, the stinking creatures had been chewing on his arm when he’d come to, and he’d sent three of them flying before they could get a good piece out of him. He had the scars from that bit of mischief too, teeth marks the size of tally sticks. The newcomers’ swords were long and sharp, but not as sharp as skraeling teeth.

  The green-smelling Quicken-tree had sharp swords as well, but their days were numbered—mark his words—had been numbered since the day Balor had fallen to the swivin’ green horde. And then they had added torture to his torment by sealing the tunnels leading to the hole. He’d howled his misery then. Now he and the skraelings would kill them all—all but one. One he would keep alive, for the Quicken-tree knew much that he needed to know, much that he would know, if he could just catch one and ask it a few questions with his knife.

  He hadn’t as yet. Damn fast they were and tricky in the tunnels, impossible to track with any consistency, and the skraelings had been strangely reluctant to go after them. Wait, he’d been told. Wait and watch, and he would have all their skins as his reward. So he’d waited, and he’d watched, and he’d sent tidings of the newcomers. But his waiting was over. The Quicken-tree had made a mistake. They’d brought one who smelled of lavender, the scent so rich and sweet, ’twas impossible to lose her trail. He’d have her quick enough even without the skraelings.

  A pox on all women. ’Twas Ceridwen ab Arawn, his own feckless betrothed who had cost him the life he’d known. Well enough that another of that fair rotten sex should return him to glory of a different sort. He would squeeze the secrets of the deep out of her, drop by perfumed drop, and bargain with her carcass if needs be for more. They knew. The blue-bladed bastards knew about the friggin’ great hole, and they would know how he could get back in without being burned alive.

  Wicked curse! He gritted his teeth and dug his hand into the floor of the tunnel. Then he pulled himself forward and up, shoving with his good leg.

  ’Twas always there in the back of his mind, those shifting shades of heliotrope and green flowing through the abyss, a swivin’ siren’s call. But every time he’d gone near, the heat of it singed and scorched, eager to consume him if given a chance.

  Retreat was no less painful. When he’d first fallen into the hole, he’d despaired of ever getting out. Now he despaired of ever getting back in.

  Redemption would be his. The cleansing waters, the blood of the Lamb, ’twas all there in the worm’s mighty hole, and more, endlessly more, on and on into the promise of the Lord—the salvation of immortality. He’d had a taste, and he would have another.

  There was a way back in, there had to be, and the Quicken-tree knew it. ’Twas why they’d killed everyone else, to keep them from knowing what power lay within the abyss.

  He knew. He’d been there and been marked. ’Twas the bright copper stripe in his hair that had truly set the skraelings off him. Even the largest of them had grown wary upon seeing it. Wary, and then excited. Aye, ’twas the stripe that had saved him from their jutting, misshapen jaws.

  He stretched his arm out again and touched cold, wet rock, not dirt. His pulse quickened. ’Twas the opening of the tunnel into the cavern. The smell of lavender was strong, so strong he knew that if he reached out with his hand, she would be there. His.

  And so she was, for an instant. His fingers, stretched to their fullest, touched soft cloth, but ’twas the merest flick of it, a brush against him as she ran by.

  No! He lunged for a better grasp, scrabbling out of the tunnel to prevent her escape, and was caught, his wrist bound by the quick burn and twist of a stinging rope before his shoulders
had cleared the opening. The bastards! They had no right! He tried again, even knowing she was gone, and once more felt the lash of the intruders.

  Swallowing his howl of rage, he jerked his hand free and sank back into his cold and lifeless hole. They would die. They would all die. Next time, he swore, there would be none to save her.

  Chapter 6

  Mychael ran with Llynya through the dark, skirting dripshanks and pools, making his way toward Shay. Something had been back there, something bigger than a tua, and it had been after them, suddenly scraping and scrambling, the stench of it bursting upon them in a rush. If he’d hesitated a moment longer, it would have caught Llynya. He was sure of it. They’d lost the beast, if beast it be, in their wild dash through the stream, but they were now both dripping wet, which he feared would do the girl no good. He needed to get her to a place where they could use their dreamstone blades. The heat coming off a single crystal hilt more than doubled when two were bound together. ’Twould be enough to warm her, and mayhaps seeing the light would ease her fear.

  The trail split ahead of them, with the path he’d taken earlier heading across the cavern floor and another winding higher in a course of stairs up the wall. He chose the stairs, keeping her close behind him. If trouble came, he would as soon have the high ground and a wall at his back—and the elf-maid at his side, fierce chit. He hurt like hell and was still bleeding. Half-frozen and scared witless, she’d cut him with a speed and a finesse he would be hard-pressed to better, ready in an instant to fight and, if needs be, to kill.

  She knew what was in the dark, knew enough to be terrified. Sand eater, she’d called him, leaf-rotter, and cried Bedwyr’s name. Only by the light of her blade and his touch had she recognized that he was of her company, a telling lack.

  Sticks, indeed, he swore to himself. She couldn’t smell friend from foe, let alone the hundreds of other things she needed to discern to keep herself safe in the deep dark. Like the old ones whose senses were no longer keen, she should not be allowed beyond Lanbarrdein. She belonged in the forests, not in the caves where the ability to blind scout meant the difference between life and death.

  Leaf-rotter. ’Twas a coarse oath for a Quicken-tree to use, and he was sure it had naught to do with dragons, nor, he prayed, did the awful stench of the thing that had scrabbled after them. If dragons scraped and stank and lurked in fetid places, he was doomed.

  They were nearing the place where he’d left Shay, when a high-pitched hum streaked across the black emptiness in front of them. He stopped and pulled her closer to his side. She did not balk, but followed his lead, keeping her one hand in his and holding on tight. Thus she clung and shivered and no longer thought to fight him. Thank God.

  Her skin was soft, her fingers fine-boned yet strong as they clasped his. And the smell of her, lavender-breathed and something more, something essentially female at its core. No one at Strata Florida had thought to warn him about the scent of women, though they had warned of plenty else: the fire in women that made men burn, the lasciviousness of the female nature, and of mysteries too profane to be told.

  Pointed ears and slender curves. Woad tattoos. Leaves and twigs in tangled hair. How many nights had he prayed that the monks had not lied?

  He stared into the darkness ahead, waiting, the iron dagger grasped in his fist. If there was danger to others in the wild blood pulsing through his heart, he feared she would be the first to feel it. ’Twas more than simple lust she roused in him, he would swear it, though she roused him easily enough. He’d won and lost that monkish battle with himself enough times over the years to recognize its sweet edge, but the yearning he had for the girl went beyond lust—or so he’d thought. With her plastered up against him as close as anyone had ever been, her panicked breath warming his shoulder and melting his resolve, he wondered if in his inexperience he had simply underestimated the power of crude desire.

  Shay had stolen a kiss from her in the guise of comfort. Dared he succumb to temptation and try the same? Dared he turn and draw her close and set his lips to her cheek? Soft skin there, to be sure, and not so far from her mouth. Would such a touch be enough to ignite the lasciviousness of her nature as the monks had warned?

  Somehow he thought not. More than likely, she would gut him and be done with it. Aye, she was not one to be trifled with. She’d proven that the first night at the well, going for her knife against the blade-master himself. He should have taken greater heed.

  The hum came again, farther away, and he wondered if they would not both be better served if he set his hand to getting them out of the cavern alive, rather than trying to immolate them with lasciviousness.

  Monks, he thought. What could they know of women’s natures?

  “C-come,” she suddenly said, slipping around him on the stairs and pulling him along by the hand. She was still shivering like a leaf in the wind. Not much fire there to burn a man, he granted.

  In three steps, she led him off the stairs into a tunnel that twisted into the earth. ’Twas a novelty for him to be led anywhere by a woman, though Madron did her best to try. He followed the maid more out of a dubious impulse to stay near her rather than the common sense that told him she’d already gotten herself lost once and needed his help. The tunnel grew progressively narrower and lower, curling in on itself, until they came to the end of it with him crouching for lack of headroom.

  “ ’T-tis safe to light the b-blades here,” she told him, and he believed her. They were out of Crai Force. Holding both crystal hilts in his hands, he squeezed and ignited a lambent glow. The heat was slow to build, but ’twas there, coming to life between his palms.

  A shuddering sigh escaped her, and she reached out with her hands, opening them to the light, warming herself as if he held a fire.

  “ ’Twas n-near frozen I was,” she stammered.

  With good reason as far as he could tell, looking her over. Her hair was sopping wet, her clothes sodden. Water dripped off the hem of her silvery green tunic, pooling on the floor. The warm puffs of her breath made small vaporous clouds in the cold air.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked. She didn’t look to have a mark on her—unlike himself—but that didn’t mean she’d escaped her ordeal unscathed. Nor could she be any too happy that ’twas he who had found her. He doubted if she would have fought Shay so fiercely.

  “Nay.” She shook her head, and water fell from her leaves and twigs like a fine rain. “I am of a piece.”

  ’Twas what he’d thought in Riverwood when he’d seen her in the wych elm, though he’d thought her of a far different kind of piece. Even knowing she was Liosalfar-trained had not prepared him for her skill with a blade. Her first strike had been like lightning coming out of the darkness. The ones that followed had been equally fast. Over the months in Carn Merioneth, he’d done his share of swordplay with the Liosalfar, and he’d not seen any as quick as the girl. With a blade in her hand, her speed defied belief, making him wonder if some other force was at work. Mayhaps her dreamstone dagger was druaight, an enchanted thing come up from the deeps of time. Madron had explained such to him, how the relics of an earlier age oft resurfaced as things of wonder.

  He looked at the knives in his hand. His blade, Ara, shone more subtly blue than Llynya’s, which leaned toward green. Not so subtle was the difference in the hearts of the crystals. The center of Ara’s hilt gleamed white. Llynya’s hilt held a shattered violet flame, the color lightening as it crackled up through the crystal, while remaining deep and unfathomable at the core. But whether ’twas enchanted or nor, he couldn’t tell. It felt no more unusual than his own glowing blade—a seeming magic to him, though Trig had assured him the phenomenon was as natural as rain. The way of it had simply passed beyond men’s ken.

  Once the maid’s fingers were warmed, she leaned back against the tunnel wall and began searching through the pouches hanging from her belt and a green baldric bandoliered across her chest. She rummaged for a while before pulling out a soppy pinch of lavender and offering
it up.

  “It will ease you, if you like.”

  When he shook his head, she stuck the petals in her mouth. She was a mystery, aright, he mused, a mystery of terror and tears quickly overcome, of fast blades and flowers.

  “We’re safe here for the moment, long enough to get warm,” she said, her head bent once more over her pouches. She must have had a dozen of them, but had lost her pack.

  “Safe from what?” he asked.

  “The Sha-shakrieg.”

  “Sha-shakrieg?”

  Her gaze flicked up to meet his, and like Shay’s, her eyes shone aqua in the dreamstone light. She held a piece of seedcake in her hand, and it, too, was the worse for having been dunked in the river. “Spider people.” She put the seedcake in her mouth.

  Spider people. Sweet Jesu. Mychael squeezed the blades tighter and cast a wary glance toward the tunnel opening. God’s ballocks. She’d trapped them. ’Twas what he got for following his damned impulses. “What are spider people?”

  “A wasteland tribe from Deseillign,” she said around the mouthful. “They were allies of the Dockalfar in the Wars of—” She stopped suddenly, and he turned to find her staring at the side of his face where she’d cut him, where the blood still trickled down his cheek. Her own face paled at the sight.

  He started to wipe the blood away with his shoulder, but she stopped him.

  “Wait,” she said. “Wait. I have rasca.” She reached for her pouches again, and he noticed her fingers were trembling.

  “Are you sure you’re not hurt?” he asked, hoping she hadn’t just realized ’twas him tucked away with her in this far corner of the cavern. Mayhaps the light was only now strong enough for her to see. ’Twould be enough to startle anyone who felt a need for warding signs in his presence, to find him looming over her with a pair of daggers at the ready.