Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Read online

  “I’m not afraid of Trig,” came the muttered reply.

  Of course not, she thought. He didn’t have enough sense to be afraid.

  “Would you like some honey?” she asked, pulling a honey-stick out of a packet tucked into her belt.

  He shook his head without bothering to look at her offering. ’Twas fresh clover honey packed inside a rough horsetail stem. She stuck it in her mouth and dug into one of her pouches for a pinch of lavender. ’Twas the last she had, and it had bits of stem and leaves mixed in with the petals. ’Twas still a potent simple, and good for whatever strange malaise ailed him, she was sure.

  Holding the lavender in her palm, she took the honey-stick out of her mouth and squeezed a glob onto the sweet-smelling debris. She worked the whole of it into a small ball and gave him a measuring glance. ’Twould do him good to eat it. The trick was getting it in him.

  He might bite her head off, or worse.

  But she was Yr Is-ddwfn Liosalfar, was she not?

  Aye, she thought, she was a warrior from the kingdom across the timeless sea.

  Still, ’twas with a cautious hesitancy that she reached up and took hold of his hand, pulling it away from his face. Her trouble brought her under the close regard of two very bloodshot eyes.

  “ ’Twill do you good. I swear it,” she said in a coaxing manner, even as she wondered what she was about. Spent or not, he was still a storm, and ’twas usually no undertaking of hers to coax storms into the palm of her hand.

  Daring all, she pressed the sticky stuff against his lips and instantly knew she’d made a mistake. He did not bite, but opened his mouth to take the lavender and her fingers inside. Startled, she made to pull back, but could not. He caught her hand in his, holding her still as his lashes swept down across his cheeks.

  Sticks! She scarce could breathe. His tongue was unexpectedly soft... and warm... and wet, and the slow slide of it across her skin, sucking the honey off her fingers, sent a wash of heat flooding down her body. Double sticks! She had not known that one stroke of the Druid boy’s charmed tongue would weave such a dangerous spell.

  “La,” a voice exclaimed. “What’s this?”

  Llynya whirled around, jerking her hand free of his. A guilty blush stole up her cheeks. Her heart was pounding.

  Two of the harvesters had come upon them, Massalet, a young Ebiurrane woman, and Edmee, Madron’s daughter. Gods, Llynya thought. Edmee would not miss much. Her friend had one side of her silvery green tunic hitched up through her belt and was carrying a birch basket full of raspberries. Massalet, brown eyes all atwinkle, held a wooden bowl full of cream.

  Both maids were smiling broadly—much to Llynya’s mortification—and Edmee set her basket down so she could make words with her hands. Llynya’s blush deepened. She and Edmee had devised the language years ago, basing it on the silent signals of the Liosalfar, and she understood Rhuddlan and Madron’s mute daughter all too well.

  “Moira would have you eat these,” Massalet said, interpreting for Mychael and trying hard not to giggle, “in case ye canna make a full repast of Llynya’s fingers.”

  “Be gone with you.” Mychael’s voice was hoarse and gravelly, revealing a fatigue that went far beyond what Llynya had seen in his face, but she dared not look at him again. She wanted to run, felt the need of it twitching in her heels, yet felt equally compelled to stay. Damn Druid. He had ensorcelled her. Hadn’t she told herself to beware of his kiss?

  But who would have thought he would kiss her fingers?

  “Oh, aye, we’ll leave ye be,” Massalet said, grinning, undaunted by his gruff demeanor. “Just be sure ye eat something besides the sprite.” With a laugh, she set the bowl down on the bench and took off. Edmee, however, was not so easily dismissed.

  Finger sucking? she said, giving Llynya a lift of her eyebrow and the barest hint of a smile as she sat down next to her and settled the raspberry basket next to Mychael. She was fair-skinned with auburn hair like her mother, and had eyes as green as rowan leaves. The ab Arawn boy and I have been studying the Druid wisdoms together since May, and he’s not tried to suck my fingers.

  Just as well, Llynya thought, sending her friend a vexed look that she hoped disguised her inner turmoil. Though Edmee’s hearing was fine, Llynya answered her in their silent language, hoping Mychael would simply ignore them. I was administering a simple, nothing more.

  Edmee’s grin broadened as she gestured to the berries and cream, offering them to Llynya. Nor, as far as I know, she continued, has he been sucking on anyone else’s fingers, though a few would be willing.

  Llynya ate some berries and drank some cream and didn’t taste either. Neither did she deign to answer the quip, guessing Massalet was one of the maids holding herself forward for the archer’s attention.

  Has he kissed you yet? Edmee asked.

  “No,” she blurted out, then cast a glance at Mychael. The intentness of his gaze on her was far worse than Edmee’s gentle teasing, and she quickly looked away. She was ready to run away as well, no hesitation.

  He will, you know, Edmee continued. Once a man has sucked your fingers halfway down his throat, he’s going to want a kiss.

  “Oh, sticks and bother,” she said, though she already knew the truth of it. Hadn’t she sensed as much in Crai Force? Look at him, Edmee. Does he look to be in any condition to kiss anyone?

  Edmee considered the question for a moment, slanting a glance at Mychael. He looks in need of a kiss, she finally signed. But I would that it was not you who gave it to him. He’s—

  Mychael’s hand shot out and covered her fingers. “You go too far, silent one.”

  Llynya near expired on the spot, her mortification complete.

  If Edmee was surprised by Mychael’s reading of their hands, she gave no sign other than her considering gaze.

  “Tell your mother I would speak with her today,” he added, releasing the maid.

  Edmee rose to her feet, and Llynya scrambled to hers, not wanting to be left alone with him. Gods, what had she and Edmee been about? Speaking of kissing in front of him as if he were blind.. Trig had taught him the Liosalfar signals. He’d even used them with her. To discern the rest of their language was not so much for the quick-minded.

  Trig. She near swore. ’Twas well past time for her to get to the portcullis.

  Edmee signed a repetition of Moira’s instructions for Mychael to eat, then with a teasing smile was gone, walking back toward the harvest fields. Awkward in her haste to do the same, Llynya handed Mychael the cream and muttered something about hoping the lavender helped, all without once looking at him. Then she took off, only too glad to escape.

  Mychael watched her leave and wondered if traces of the previous night’s madness yet flickered through his veins. What else could have compelled him to such a rash act? He’d tasted her, slid his tongue around her fingers and sucked the honey from their tips, and if not for Edmee’s untimely arrival, he would have had his kiss. He’d heard the catch in Llynya’s breath, felt her pulse racing. There had been no resistance in her, nor any lascivious fire, only a soft giving he could have drowned in.

  He’d near died in the night. Whatever was happening to him, he no longer had the strength to control it. Worse, ’twas Madron who had saved him, filling him with some nameless potion and chanting songs that had taken him away from his pain—taken him from his dark and fiery vision to a place outside the flames. Aye, he’d risen above it and looked back and seen himself still lying in his tower room, swathed in shadows and sweat. Whither he’d gone he could not say, but a cool, waveless sea had been close on one side of him and a dense mist-laden forest on the other. Though a pale sun had shone above it all, to the west there had been night, a dark lake of sky with the rind of the moon and blue-white stars floating in it, stars unlike any he’d ever seen over Wales. In all that stillness, naught had moved until the lure of the west bade him take a step. To the dark he’d gone, following the shore, cloaking himself in moonbeams and feeling time shift with
the sand beneath his feet. Into the dark he’d gone, a traveler clothed in white, treading a path marked by starlight.

  After a long hour the wind had come up, rising over the water, swirling about him and turning his gaze from the moon. From across the sea he’d watched the witch blow her breath into his mouth—not a kiss—and thus cool his blood even more. With the last of the heat gone, he’d returned, awakening as if from a dream.

  Except none of it had been a dream. When he’d finally stirred at dawn, he’d found a half-empty phial holding a dark concoction nestled in the bedclothes. He had it with him, secreted in a pocket Moira had sewn in the lining of his tunic. He would ask Madron what it was she’d poured down his throat, and what his price would be for having drunk it. For the witch’s brew would have a price; there was no doubt about that, just as there was no doubt about its effectiveness.

  Aye, the damned stuff had worked. The Druid woman would have him yet.

  He turned his gaze to the field of grass. So would Llynya have a price, one he’d already begun to pay. The taste of honey and lavender lingered on his tongue, and the taste of her skin. He’d been mad indeed to set his mouth to any part of her. Still he knew he would taste her again.

  ~ ~ ~

  From up on the wall-walk, Madron watched Mychael slowly get to his feet, obviously still aching from his ordeal by fire. Dragonfire. She’d stayed with him until dawn, until she was assured he would suffer no added ill effects from her potion. Thus she’d spent the night sitting by his side reading the Fata Ranc Le.

  The boy had not let anyone near the Red Book of Doom since Ceridwen had given it to him. Where he kept it hidden had been beyond Madron’s ability to find, until she’d watched him return it that morning to Balor’s boar pit, not a place she would willingly go. Last night, blessed fate of its own, he’d had the book in his room, open and ready for her to peruse at her leisure.

  Disappointingly, no more of Mychael’s fate had been revealed beyond his place in the priestess line and the circumstances of his birth. Proof enough that like Madron, he was a carrier of the book, not a part of it. Such was the book’s magic, set into it by she-whose-name-could-not-be spoken, the greatest of all the Prydion Magi, that when an heir laid his or her hand upon the Fata Ranc Le, their fate would begin to reveal itself on the pages within, and the book would pass into that person’s hands. Sometimes bits and pieces came to light within other stories, if the fates were entwined. Sometimes the stories were short, barely a page. The book was highly illustrated and ofttimes illuminated, making it a thing of beauty. Many of the languages in the Fata had died or been lost, and not even her father had been able to read all of the stories.

  ’Twas a rare pleasure to hold the book again after so long a passage of time. Seventeen years earlier, Madron had taken the Red Book from the Hart Tower in Wydehaw Castle and put it in the scriptorium at Usk Abbey. Nemeton had feared he could no longer protect either her or the Fata Ranc Le, and had exiled them both to a Christian house. His other great book, the Prydion Cal Le, had not been seen since his death.

  ’Twas at Usk, at her father’s behest, that she had written Ceridwen’s story into the Fata’s pages to ensure that the future would pass as he had foreseen. No one else would have dared such a breach of the hallowed pages.

  And yet the book had acquired a new fate since Madron had written Ceridwen’s. How it had gotten there was a mystery. No Prydion Mage had ever gone to Usk to write the story. And if by chance the book had come into contact with one of its fated heirs, why hadn’t it passed on?

  That Mychael’s story had not appeared was a sore burden. She would know if the boy lived or died, if he would have sons or daughters to carry on the Merioneth priestess line, if the dragons would come when he called, or if his dragon-tainted Druid blood would be his doom.

  The book had told her naught. Without such guidance, she would be hard-pressed to help him beyond what she’d done in the night.

  Beautiful wild boy, she thought, watching him make his way across the bailey. He had one arm wrapped around his middle, his hand soothing the left side of his torso where the dragonfire was wont to run rampant. Did that long ago priestess conjure you only for you to die before you meet the fate for which you were born?

  Chapter 11

  Trig barely gave her a glance when Llynya finally made it to the portcullis. A group was already gathered, Liosalfar mainly, with a few untried youths hanging about the fringes and sitting in a haywain. War was the order of the day, and Trig was firmly in charge, dispatching scouts and assigning watches to a cadre of the more experienced warriors—those who had fought in the Wars. Each of the border scouts was given a horn of tightly curled silver to sound in warning or if in need.

  Shay spotted her immediately, giving her a short wave and walking over. Bits of chaff littered his hair and stuck to his tunic, making her wonder if he’d chosen to sleep in the haywain the previous night. ’Twas not a bad berth. She’d done it herself a time or two when the nickering of Rhuddlan’s mares was the lullaby she needed.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, a note of concern in his voice.

  “I stopped by the chapel,” she said, offering him a sage leaf out of one of her pouches, hoping to distract him from the blush she still felt on her cheeks.

  He stuck the leaf in his mouth. “You’ve a cream mustache and berry stains on your lips.”

  She shrugged nonchalantly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, relieved by his inattention to more personal details. “So would you, given the chance.”

  “Well, you almost missed your chance. Trig’s called for an expedition to Tryfan.” Shay’s eyes lit with excitement. “Twenty of us are to go and see what we can find. Wei is leading, and he’s already picked me.”

  An expedition to Tryfan, she thought. Gods, but there was the chance of a lifetime.

  “To mine for elf shot?” she asked, her blush forgotten

  “Aye, and mayhaps a chance to explore.”

  “The mountain halls are said to be bigger than Lanbarrdein, with stone thrones twice as high as a man.”

  “They’ll not be as rich, I’ll bet.”

  “Not in dreamstone or rubies”—for Lanbarrdein was encrusted with both—“but mayhaps in something even more wondrous, supposing they could be found.” And there was the catch, she thought. Legend said the mountain fastnesses of the Douvan kings had been sealed for all time, ne’er to be opened again. Even so, here was adventure on a high scale indeed, to mine for elf shot.

  “Come with us, Llynya. You know Wei would be glad to have you.”

  He was right. ’Twould take no more than a lift of her hand and Wei would have her with them on the journey north. In easier seasons, they’d traveled many a league together. He knew her strengths and probably her weaknesses too—except for the lavender simple.

  She searched the crowd, looking for the elf-man, and found him by the iron gate, instructing two boys in the making and fletching of arrow shafts. Naught else would be needed to complete the weapons, except for the elf shot points he and his party would bring back from Tryfan, if any could be found.

  “ ’Tis far safer in the north you’ll be, sprite.”

  Something in Shay’s voice brought her head around. ’Twas more than the patronizing air he’d taken with her lately, the one she found so damned rankling. His face was drawn, his eyes dark with worry.

  “Wei and I were the ones who carried you away from the weir after the battle of Balor,” he went on, quietly insistent, “and after this last go ’round in the dark, I think you should steer clear of the caverns. There’s something down there, and I fear it means you no good.”

  “I’m not afraid of the Sha-shakrieg.” ’Twas only a small lie, for at the worst she was no more afraid of them than any other Quicken-tree.

  “ ’Tis not the Sha-shakrieg I’m talking about.”

  “Then what?”

  “I cannot say exactly, but...” His voice trailed off, and though he shrugged, he did not
smile. Nor did he retract his words.

  “I’ve not known you to be prescient, Shay.”

  “ ’Tis not prescience to sense something that’s truly there, and in Crai Force, while I searched for Trig and Math, I sensed something else in the dark besides Quicken-tree and spider people. Did you not feel it too?”

  Aye, she had sensed another presence in the furtive scrabbling she’d heard, and mayhaps in a raspy rhythm of disturbed breath.

  A cold shiver wound its way down her spine. Had she heard breathing, she wondered, while she’d huddled by the falls? Or was her memory playing tricks on her? Had something grasped at her tunic as she and Mychael had run? Or was she building a troll out of Shay’s fears?

  There was danger in the dark. She could not deny it, but she did not need an elf child’s nightmare of uffern trolls to find where hers lay. Descent into the weir of the golden worms would be her undoing—or her salvation.

  “When does Wei leave for Tryfan?” she asked.

  “After the midday meal,” he said with noticeable relief. “We’re taking Rhuddlan’s mares and will meet at the stable.”

  “I’ll see you then.” She clapped him on the shoulder in good-bye before making toward the portcullis and Wei.

  She’d made no promise really, and given enough time Shay would figure that out. He would certainly know it when they left and she was nowhere to be found. Her duty lay elsewhere.

  “Wei,” she greeted the Quicken-tree man. His hair was near as pale as Trig’s, a mix of blond and gray showing his age and falling past his shoulders. His sleeveless tunic revealed iron-bound muscles and a lifetime’s worth of tattoos: his initiation into a leaf clan, daur for Wei, the oak clan; his name in ogham down the inside of his right forearm and in the runes of the ancient common tongue down the inside of his left. All warriors had been marked thus in the Wars of Enchantment. High on his shoulder was a rowan leaf, identifying him as Quicken-tree, and below it the sign for Deri, where he was to be buried.