Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Read online

  “Aye, the Druids must be warned,” he agreed, albeit reluctantly and not without a trace of warning. “But I would as soon send another. I have need of you here.”

  Madron was well versed in Druidic lore and capable of manipulating natural things—a witch, he’d heard men call her in an absurd underestimation of her skills—but she was no warrior like Fand to be sent alone on a mission, not with war brewing.

  “None know the path as well as I,” she countered, barely concealing her irritation with his veiled command. That she tried at all, Rhuddlan considered a hopeful sign. In truth, she was not his to bid. Anglesey was as much her home as Merioneth, or the cottage she’d left in Wroneu Wood, and he’d long since lost any rights he’d once had as her protector. She had stayed with the Quicken-tree in Merioneth more for their daughter Edmee’s sake than because of him, accepting that ’twas better for the girl to be among her own than to lead the solitary life of her mother.

  For himself, he was glad to have Madron near, whether she was his to bid or nay. The summer had provided many opportunities for indulging in her company, a contrary pastime that both appeased and intensified his longing for what they’d once shared. Few were as quick as Madron, and she’d learned much in their years apart. Much that had surprised even him.

  “Nor do any make paths as well as you. Not even your father could set such a blaze to the earth,” he said, effectively telling her that he knew of her efforts to keep an opening in his bramble with her spells. “Nemeton but marked a path. You conjured a beacon with your bags of stuff.”

  She had the grace to blush, for Madron was ever graceful, even at her worst. That he could discomfit her at all, he took as another hopeful sign. For too many years she’d been as stone with him.

  “Did you leave it be?” she dared to ask, her blush notwithstanding.

  “Aye. For you. For now. Anyone who uses your path will find himself delayed, but not harmed.”

  “Fair enough,” she conceded, relinquishing the arrow. “You know, in truth, that we are not at cross-purposes.”

  “Nay, we are not,” he agreed, then turned and called a Quicken-tree youth forward. “Tages, take this to Anglesey and find the old men who live in the caves. Tell them the tale of what the Quicken-tree found in the damson shafts, and then it’s to Inishwrath with you. I would have tidings of the troll fields on the island. No change is too small to report.”

  Tages swore his oath upon the elf shot arrow and went the way of Fand and Prydd. Rhuddlan continued around the gathering, sending various men and women of both the Quicken-tree and the Ebiurrane to warn clans in the far north and the west, south, and east, and with each of them he sent word for Ailfinn to come nigh. He needed the mage as well as an army.

  Shortly before midnight, the last messenger left the confines of Carn Merioneth, a fleet form sliding silently through the postern in the wall and heading for Kings Wood across the border in England. Being closest, the Kings Wood tylwyth teg would be the first reinforcements to arrive in Merioneth.

  Madron took her leave, heading toward the lower bailey. To check the boy, Rhuddlan was sure. Others in the group spread out to find what rest they could before the march. For him there would be no rest. He would leave before dawn with a handpicked troop to recover Nia, and to reconnoiter the deep dark and see what inroads the enemy had made.

  “What else would you have me know, Trig?” he asked, turning to the elf-man who waited by his side.

  Aedyth had fashioned a patch of green leaves for Trig’s left eye. The other stared at him with an emotion Rhuddlan couldn’t name.

  “Ye said the boy would test me,” Trig said, “and by the gods, he did. ’Twas not me who left Bedwyr by the dark sea.”

  “Was blood let?” Rhuddlan asked with misgiving. ’Twas no time for him to lose the old warrior as his captain, and Trig would not have left Bedwyr without a fight.

  “Nay.” Trig shook his head. “He flanked me with his blade drawn before I could so much as find me knife.”

  Rhuddlan shifted his gaze to the hearthfire and back to Trig again, releasing a sigh. ’Twas also no time for Trig to be losing his edge. “ ’Tis not like you to be caught with your guard down.”

  “Nay.”

  “But without any blood being drawn...”

  “Nay, Rhuddlan. ’Tis over. Your new captain lies in the lower bailey. If he lives the night, no doubt he’ll serve you well.”

  “He had no wounds other than what Llynya inflicted. Moira will heal those quick enough.”

  “ ’Tis not his wounds that threaten him,” Trig said. “He’s what Naas told ye—quickened in his mother’s womb by priestess blood, and dragon spawned. A nestling no more, he’s cooking in his own fire this night.”

  Rhuddlan glanced toward the lower bailey in time to see Madron slip through the open arch in the wall. His instinct was to follow her, but his common sense bade him stay and hear Trig out. She knew the boy better than most. Indeed, when he’d told her what Naas had seen, she’d shown no surprise and said naught but that there was a little of the dragon in all of them.

  ’Twas Rhuddlan’s fear, the dragon in the boy, for ’twas more than a little. Many nights this summer past he had watched Mychael pace the ramparts, oblivious to storms that had sent the Quicken-tree into their huts. He’d seen the moments of frenzy in the boy’s eyes, and he’d seen the scars that marked the boy’s body from his repeated attempts on the wormholes—and his fears had grown.

  Rhuddlan had been a dragon keeper until he’d sealed the Weir Gate to protect the pryf, thereby sending the dragons far out to sea. They’d not come near him or Merioneth since, but they called to the boy, and ’twas to the boy they would come if they ever came again. When that happened, Rhuddlan knew his time would be at an end, the old king passing to make way for the new.

  Mayhaps he was ready. Mayhaps. But the boy was not. The boy was wild and growing wilder. Now Trig had seen the roiling up of power in Mychael, the dragonfire, but whether it would work for the Quicken-tree or against them, not even Naas could tell.

  “Nay, Trig, your work as captain is not yet done,” he assured the older man, keeping his fears to himself. If the darkness was rising, the tylwyth teg needed Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas more than they needed Rhuddlan of the Light-elves. The question was if they could survive Mychael ab Arawn. “In the morn, we’ll set the boy to a task to put him back in his place.”

  “And what place would that be?” Trig asked with a skeptical lift of his eyebrow.

  “For now, ’tis behind you in battle and bent to my will.”

  “The boy don’t bend too well.”

  “No,” Rhuddlan agreed. “He doesn’t.”

  Clapping his captain on the back, he sent Trig on his way, then crossed over to the portcullis to choose his weapons for the morrow.

  He knew the Earth. He and the tylwyth teg spent their lives in the flow of her most subtle rhythms, shifting effortlessly from one season into the next with the trees, one eon into the next with the living rock, revolving with her around the Sun and basking with her in the celestial light of the Moon, forgetting nothing. Nemeton had prized them for what he’d called their bit of knowledge, which Rhuddlan had in the beginning thought to be an absurd conceit. Earth is all, he’d said. To know her in all her wonders is to know the heart of the Mother. And so Rhuddlan had believed, until Nemeton had directed his gaze toward the heavens and told him that before Earth there had been Chaos, and it had come from afar.

  Rhuddlan knew the story of the Starlight-born. ’Twas written on the first page of each of the Seven Books of Lore, lest any forget. The surprise had been that Nemeton also knew the ancient tale and had brought it to bear on an age long removed from the terror.

  The Douvan kings of the Twelfth Dynasty had lived in a second age of chaos long before the Thousand Years War. In their time of direst need a child had come to them out of the deep dark to wield the Magia Blade—Stept Agah, the last Dragonlord. That story, too, was old, even in the reckoning of
elfin time, a telling of battles and plagues and a shadow across the land, of armies of wolves and uffern trolls, of sweeping sickness scouring the ranks of men and elves, and of the black, reeking vapor—portent of Dharkkum—that had hung like a pall between heaven and earth, until Stept Agah had called the dragons and overrun the plaguing armies. The beasts had devoured the darkness, and the Prydion Magi had once again forced the remaining smoke and effluence into the chasms that lay deep below the surface, sealing them with damson crystal wrought with words of power.

  But beasts of war are ever hungry... and once roused to battle, the dragons were wont to ravage the land unless ruled by the Magia Blade. In all his long life, Rhuddlan had never seen them fight. They came to the nest on Mor Sarff to breed and spawn and die. They were born in the nest, a secret place beneath the pryf’s labyrinth accessible only through an underwater tunnel, and they died in the same.

  Now the crystal seals were breaking. He needed Ailfinn to tell him why, and if the worst proved true, he would need the dragons to fight—the dragons and Mychael ab Arawn.

  ~ ~ ~

  Descent... descent... descensus—He was falling, falling like an angel from the grace of God. Kyrie, eleison. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy...

  Mychael lay spread-eagled across the rugs Moira had laid for him in his solar. His tunic and shirt were off, his braies loose. One of his chausses was missing, leaving his left leg bare, and still the heat burned him.

  The Quicken-tree woman had long since stitched him and left him alone for his night’s sleep, but there would be no escape into sleep for him this night. The first incandescent flash had finally broken through his will and flamed to life even as Moira was smoothing the last of her rasca down the scar running the length of his left arm, torso, and leg. If she’d felt it, she didn’t say. He’d noticed no difference in the healing touch of her fingers when the heat began. Thankfully, she’d left before the changes in him had become too visible. He’d never told her of his fearful malaise. She knew about the scars. ’Twas enough.

  Madron knew. She’d seen the scars, and she’d offered him potions. Potions to cool the flames. Potions to ease his pain. Potions to soothe his soul. Potions, no doubt, to make him hers.

  Ceri had not trusted her, but he trusted in Ceridwen. In his hands he held his sister’s gifts, a green stone she’d called “Brochan’s Great Charm,” and the Fata Ranc Le.

  He should not have let his sister go so quickly to the north. She was the touchstone to his past, blood of his blood, but she suffered no dragonfire. Mayhaps she could heal him. For certes the Quicken-tree’s old healer, Aedyth, would have naught to do with him. Moira’s rasca helped, but only to a point far short of relief.

  There was one other spoken of by the Quicken-tree, a mage summoned by Rhuddlan who had not yet answered the call, whose touch it was said could raise the dead, whose simples were as the elixir of life itself, whose enchantments put Madron’s to shame. Ailfinn Mapp was her name. A Prydion Mage, they said, someone who knew the secrets of the ancients.

  Naught could be more ancient than dragonfire, and if the mage kept the secret of his bane, he would know it. But she did not come, no matter how many messengers Rhuddlan sent at the turning of every moon.

  Nay, he thought again, he should not have let Ceridwen leave him so quickly on his own. Yet with disaster looming, ’twas best she was well out of it and away. Away to the cool north. Thule. Land of the frozen wastes. Farther north than any man had ever gone. Did Dain Lavrans also burn with inner fire to long so for the farthest reaches of coldest winter?

  Ceri had spoken of a palace to be carved from ice, and of a boy-child to be born there. Mychael wondered what manner of man would come from out of the arctic landscape, home of the fierce north wind. And would he ever meet his twin’s son? Or would he die an ignominious death bathed in sweat and burning in madness before the child was even brought into the world?

  Another wave of heat washed through him, and he gritted his teeth, clenching the red book to his chest to keep from being swept away by the force of it. Only God knew how much of himself he would lose if he let go. He feared it would be more than he could bear.

  A rock-crystal lamp lit the interior of the tower room, the colors of its flames dancing over bare stone walls and a roughly made table. Above him, a half-thatched roof of woven willow wands became an arborescent cathedral bathed in flickering light and shifting shadows. Stars and the moon shone through the loose weave.

  “... mercy,” he whispered for the thousandth time, struggling against the endless tide of fire. But God in His wisdom denied him.

  His mouth was parched. A flask of water lay not an arm’s length from him, and another of catkins, but he dared not let go of his talismans to reach for either. His very existence was balanced on a knife edge, suspended over a fiery abyss.

  An abyss. A fathomless canyon carved into his heart by the dragons, grown deeper each time he’d lowered himself into a wormhole. When had he first heard their cry?

  In Strata Florida on a winter night when he’d walked the cool cloisters alone and been beset by a vision.

  When had the wildness first come upon him?

  So very long ago—but not like this.

  Never like this.

  How could the dragons not be upon him when he felt their flames scorching a path down his body? ’Twas the vision all over again, with Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas raging across a night sky, weaving trails of fire with their breath, and the shadows of his enemy marching from behind, wave upon wave of fear-begotten foes taking form out of the darkness. Sha-shakrieg and skraelings.

  Only he could hold them all at bay. Only he—and the sword he’d been given did not fit his hand.

  The muscles in his arms twitched and shivered with the force of his grip on the red book and the charm. They never yet had kept him from the inferno that burned inside him, but he held on. He needed will and yet more will to keep him from his feral doom, strength of will to hold on until the wild madness passed. For as surely as it would come in the dark heart of the flames, the wildness would pass.

  All things passed in time. In time.

  “Time.” He muttered the word as a curse, forswearing his pleas for mercy. The wormholes had beckoned, and he’d succumbed. Still they’d kept their great secrets from him. He knew nothing of time, except that burning with an inner fire could give a man a glimpse of eternity, an eternity of damnation—for what was the fiery abyss that reached for him if not hell itself?

  His breaths grew shallow and quick, like the panting of an animal. His gut cramped, doubling him over with a weak cry of protest. The next sound to breach his lips was a keening moan... and so the wildness began. Christe, Christe, Christe, eleison...

  Chapter 9

  Llynya made her way through the willow huts in the lower bailey, eating a warm honeycake she’d gotten from Moira at the hearthfire. Moonlight shimmered on the curtain wall, beckoning with the promise of solitude and an unencumbered view of all the stars in the night sky. Mayhaps she should climb to the battlements. The meeting under the yew would be finished soon, giving leave to more private discussions she wanted no part of, especially if they included Rhuddlan or Shay.

  Rhuddlan would have naught but scolding on his mind and punishments too onerous to bear. While Trig had made an accounting of Mychael’s mishap, the Quicken-tree leader had turned his brief but thoroughly chastening gaze on her. She had thought herself full-grown, until Rhuddlan’s glance had proved her otherwise. Despite all she’d been through, she was still the sprite, and still in hot water up to her neck. In hindsight, she’d been damned lucky no Sha-shakrieg had gotten his teeth into her.

  As for Shay, her longtime companion in adventure and mayhem had become appallingly solicitous and disgustingly overconcerned for her welfare since the battle with the spider people. If ’twas up to Shay, she would not be allowed beyond the wards. Her great worry was that he would convince Rhuddlan of the same, yet she dared not argue for her continued freedom. B
etter to lie low this night, assume the best, and stay discreetly to the rear of the column on the morrow. She would camp with the Ebiurrane in Lanbarrdein and with luck, Rhuddlan wouldn’t even know she’d made the descent. And thanks to Trig, she now knew how to open the seals on the tunnels leading to the wormhole.

  “Bagworms,” she muttered. She’d been as well into the thick of the battle with the Sha-shakrieg as any and been the least harmed. Even Rhuddlan had noted that, though he’d not given her much of the credit for her unscathed state.

  Coming abreast of the stairs, she angled her steps toward the wall, then changed her mind upon seeing the bent form of Naas on the battlements. The old woman toiled night and day to bring down the curtain, planting her seedlings in every rocky chink. She wasn’t given much to talk, but this night, Llynya was inclined toward none.

  With the ramparts taken, only one place could ensure her privacy, the apple grove in the farthest reaches of the lower bailey. ’Twas the oldest part of the castle grounds and had been the least changed by the Boar. The southwall tower where Mychael had taken up residence was close by the orchard, but she could avoid him easily enough.

  Keeping to the darkness and the shadows cast by flickering lanterns, she passed huts of different shapes and sizes. Some were thatched and daubed for wintering over. Not everyone had been going to the winter grounds this year, and now mayhaps none would go. Hushed voices speaking of nighttime things slipped through the woven willow wands as the wild folk bedded down. In some of the huts, lullabies were sung to charm children into dreams.

  Let others sleep this night, Llynya thought, continuing on. She would look to the stars and gaze at the moon, celestial orb rich in elfin lore and magic for a woman’s taking. She needed magic, more magic than she held, earth magic she could take into the deep dark.

  Mychael ab Arawn had proven an unlikely ally. Crazed man. His mood had grown dangerous on the march up to Carn Merioneth, leading him into mutiny on the shores of Mor Sarff. By anyone’s figuring, wounded or not, Trig was the captain, and he’d been against the decision to leave Bedwyr at the Serpent Sea, but he’d been no match for Mychael. Neither was she. On the sands leading to the gates of time, the archer had shown himself to be exactly what she’d seen in Riverwood. Sín. A rising storm of fury.