Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Page 21

  The fey, mournful howl of the new song grew in strength, echoing off the giant pillars of ice and drowning out the sound of the sea crashing into the rocks below. She stared into the black reaches of the cave, frozen in fear with a prayer on her lips, until a hand grasped her arm.

  With a start, she looked up and found Varga near. She could see naught of his wrapped and shrouded face except for his black eyes peering at her. His hand on her arm was like enough to hers, including being chafed red with the cold, but she saw what lay beyond the loose cuff of his sleeve, and she flinched. He immediately loosed her arm.

  “ ’Tis naught but your hound loose in the dark,” he told her in his muffled voice, nodding toward the cave where the unearthly cry still rose from its depths.

  “I have no hound,” she said, her breath making vaporous puffs in the air. Then she knew and gasped a name. “Conladrian.”

  Varga shrugged and motioned up the trail. Nia followed, but cast a look behind. Conladrian, last seen in the mists pouring out of the Weir Gate. ’Twas Rayne he must be mourning, his littermate, younger sister laid low on the shores of Mor Sarff by Caradoc. How was it he lived in this faraway place girt with ice and darkness?

  The Dangoes. She repeated the name silently, and a shiver set her to trembling. She would not forget.

  That had been two days past, and now ’twas heat she felt building ahead of them and pressing against the chill of the caves. Bedwyr had been killed in Crai Force, but the others had survived. She’d seen them in the damson shaft and heard their plans. Their leaving had been hard to bear, but she was Liosalfar and knew Trig had spoken with wisdom. They had been outnumbered twenty to one, and Trig would have sensed the greater force. Rhuddlan would mount a rescue, but by her best reckoning, she put him just beyond the Magia Wall. She was on her own and had gleaned little information to help either herself or the Quicken-tree.

  The Sha-shakrieg had argued in the damson shaft after the Liosalfar had left. Blades had been drawn and the company near split a dozen ways. One faction had cleaved to the dead boy they’d carried out of Crai Force. Others had made to follow the Liosalfar, but Varga had held them back, and miraculously held them all together. Rhuddlan’s name had come up many times. In the end, Varga had prevailed, and they’d begun their trek toward Deseillign, carrying the body and their leather packs filled with thullein.

  The sound of rushing water came to her on the next turn in the track, a great fall of it, and around the next turn came the light—bright and unbearable after the darkness of the caves, cast in shades of yellow and orange. The colors, she soon realized, were not of the light itself, but from the surrounding rock. Varga slipped a protective layer of gauze over her eyes before leading her on. She noticed all the Sha-shakrieg doing the same, pulling their gauze bandages up to dull the light. The landscape changed quickly from mostly horizontal to toweringly vertical, from the grays and browns of the deep earth to a thousand shades of orange and umber, to yellow, gold, and ochre, and to red in all its hues. Sheer-sided slick-rock canyon walls rose ever higher on either side of the gorge they followed, with a pale ribbon of blue-lighted sky showing in the opening above. In places, water ran down with the light, rivulets of color wetting the stone and illuminating the richness of the striated colors. Ahead of them, she could hear the thundering of the falls growing closer.

  Pools of crystal-clear water marked one side of the path. Small and intermittent at first, they soon grew larger and closer together, until they began running into one another in a trickling cascade. Green plants sprouted up at the edges of the pools, and moss showed around the banks. Yet for all the beginnings of vegetation and the stream, ’twas the smell of the desert she sensed most keenly, dry and fine and slightly bitter. The sand, when it came, was at first no more than a few wind-driven grains littering the floor. By the time they began switchbacking into another descent, it had become a thick layer drifting into the canyon’s nooks and crannies.

  The falls gradually came into view, a line of silver rimming the edge of a canyon wall and growing wider as they rounded the curve, until finally the sheeted veil of water was before them. A heavy mist billowed into the gorge, dimming the light. The desert scent was drowned by the smell of water. Looking about her, Nia could see the trail had come out on a great rift that stretched for miles in either direction. The falls dropped from a promontory hundreds of feet above the trail and plummeted back into the earth through a mighty chasm hundreds of feet below them. In width, the chasm was half the length of Carn Merioneth’s eastern wall, with rivers joining it at different heights. Canals stretched out in four directions from the lake formed by its rushing waters, and far in the distance, across a barren landscape of endless sand, she saw towers floating on the horizon.

  “Deseillign?” she asked, pointing to the east. She would know her doom.

  Varga shook his head. “No. Wadi Bishr-dira. The towers you see are pillars of rock shaped by the wind. Their heavy capstones keep them from being completely worn away. Deseillign is twice as far as can be seen from here.”

  Wadi Bishr-dira. The name echoed softly inside her. Varga used the common tongue when speaking with her, the language of all lands, but his voice had warmed when he used his own language to speak the name of a place he knew. She looked back out over the empty plain. Like the canyon walls around her, the desert was shaded in many colors. Clouds scudding across the sky threw shadows on the rise and fall of dunes and the rare scattered outcropping of rock. There was naught of what she knew, no trees, no mountains, no forests. It was the land of her enemies, yet the land itself was part of Earth, and she sensed the same power moving through it as moved through Riverwood or Wroneu. What stories did the night winds tell across the desert? she wondered. Of what did the sands whisper beneath the burning sun?

  A group of black-cloaked guards waited nearby, while the rest of the Sha-shakrieg troop continued on down the trail, silent except for the creak of their leather ore packs. Varga called one of the men over and spoke to him in a low voice, then pulled a parchment from a pouch on his belt and handed it to the soldier. When the soldier started back down the trail at a run, Varga turned to her and pulled the gauze away from her face. Then he lowered his own, though only from his eyes.

  “You should eat,” he said, handing her a tough strip of the mashed and dried leaves that had been their rations on the journey.

  She accepted the food, her hand out, and noticed an odd shimmering blue cast on her skin. Curious, she looked up, past the clouds, and her breath caught in her throat.

  “The vault of heaven,” Varga said. “The light of the Star still burns above Deseillign.”

  Nia knew what it was, but she’d never expected to see it. Far above the clouds, looking truly like the sky, was the roof of rock that encased the underground realm of the Sha-shakrieg, a cavern so vast as to deny that description, a country stretching from the Rift to the wasteland, a full thirty days’ march wide.

  The light flooding the subterranean desert came from the masses of crystal lodged in the rock, remnants of a star that had fallen to earth. Spread across the dome in a clear, mineral venation, the crystal burned with the fires of heaven, unquenched for a span of time beyond even the memories of trees. Only the rock itself had lived as long.

  She moved her hand through the chroma, watching the starshine play upon her skin. That it could sustain a Light-elf, she had no doubt, if just barely. For all its bright beauty, ’twas not as potent as the daystar. Locked in the earth for millions of years, its life force was waning. She wondered if the Sha-shakrieg knew their time was running out—as would hers, if she could not escape.

  She turned to Varga. “How many days’ march to the city?”

  He considered her carefully through the slit he’d made in his bandages. His eyes were not so dark as she’d thought, but closer to brown, very thickly lashed and deeply lined at the corners. “For them”—he gestured at the troop winding its way down to the desert floor—“two days by caravan. With the L
ady’s leave, you and I will go back.”

  “Back?” she repeated, startled.

  “To Merioneth, to Rhuddlan’s court that I may speak my piece.”

  Hope rose in a rush. He was taking her back. Alone. Whether ’twas brave or foolish, she cared not, though from what little she knew of him she thought that foolishness was not his wont. Yet with only him to guard her, she had a high chance of escape—even if her chances of survival were not nearly so good. She’d been underground for nine days without the sun’s light to lift the weight of the darkness, and had only five more before the toll would tell. Beyond that was the unknown. No Liosalfar had stayed below more than a fortnight since the Wars of Enchantment.

  She looked out to the crystal-streaked sky above the sand valley of the Rift. The starlight would help, but mayhaps not enough. Five days to get to the Dragon’s Mouth. Alone, she could do it, if she was not injured in the escape.

  Near as quickly as she allowed her hope to rise, ’twas dashed. Varga carried only her pack, but signaled for another of the black-cloaked guards to bring him one of his. Unlike the ore packs, the guard’s pack jingled and clanged. Inauspiciously, she thought. Her foreboding proved justified when Varga reached into the pack and pulled out a wild tangle of chains. Rusted and barbed with a line of hooks, they had the wicked look of fetters.

  “What are those?” she asked in a voice edged with anger begat of fear.

  “Running shackles. Your odds of escape will not improve for being left alone with me.” The clinking of iron underlay his curt explanation.

  “I’ll not run with those on my legs.”

  “You’ll run,” he said, calmly assured, untangling the looped metal links one from the other. “And over the middle stretch, you’ll wish you could fly.”

  Bastard. She cared not what he said. If he bound her with chains and irons, the journey back through the caves would take longer than she could survive.

  Something must have shown in her face, for his next words offered encouragement. “I know how the deep dark weighs on the Quicken-tree, and that you’ve been at least nine days down. With it eight days back to the light, you’ll be dead, or desperately failing three days before we get to the Dragon’s Mouth. So we’ll not go back the way we came. There are shortcuts through the great caves, none swifter than the ones we’ll take, and few more hazardous, but we’ll cut the three days we need off our time.”

  “We’ll cut even more if you do not shackle mc.”

  “We could,” he agreed, “but you’re Liosalfar, and I remember enough of the Wars to take extra care.”

  “What care?” she chided in her anger. “You risk certain death to go to Merioneth.”

  Unbelievably, he appeared to smile beneath the gauze. “Not so certain as all that. Rhuddlan will not underestimate the importance of what has brought me out of the desert.”

  Nia’s ears pricked up. Here was the answer that had eluded her all these last long days. The Wars were centuries past, the realms of enchantment at peace. Those who had battled for supremacy, the Dockalfar, had fought to their death, each and every one, ensorcelled by their mad leader with a bloodspell gone awry. No contact had been made between the Quicken-tree and the Sha-shakrieg for five hundred years—until Varga had captured her in the dark.

  “Why did you come?” she asked.

  Varga gave the Liosalfar warrior a measuring look and was reassured by what he saw. He’d stopped drugging her that morning, replacing the lightly poisoned rope he’d used on her wrists to keep her manageable on the trek. He’d dared not continue with it. He needed her strong for the run they would make to Merioneth, and within a half day’s time, she was rebounding in health and vigor. The dullness had gone from her eyes, leaving them a pure, clear green, the color he’d oft seen Quicken-tree eyes in battle when they shone as bright as their dreamstone blades. Her hair was a dark chestnut brown, proving her young, barely out of swaddling clothes by tylwyth teg standards, yet she was tall and leanly muscular and old enough to have been carrying daggers and a sword.

  The answer to her question held risks, but also rewards. If he could bring her to his side, the shackles could be left off and her chances of making it home would increase tenfold. For all that the Liosalfar had seen the smoke and the broken damson shaft, after the debacle in Crai Force not even Varga of the Sha-shakrieg wished to walk into Merioneth without a hostage. ’Twould do him far better not to have his captive dead in his arms when that day came, if there was to be a hope of an alliance.

  In a matter of days, the thullein they’d brought home would be forged into blades and given an Edge of Sorrow by the desert smiths, with one blade made more deadly than all the others combined. No skraeling could withstand even the weakest of the desert smith’s swords. With the Lady’s leave, he would offer the swords to Rhuddlan in return for a fighting force. Together they could put the skraelings in a vise.

  And still it would all be for naught.

  A foul curse lodged in his throat. With the Lady’s leave—The curse escaped him in a low hiss. Her long-held hate would be the death of them all. Rhuddlan had nigh destroyed her once, but the King of the Light-elves was her only hope now.

  The great crystal seal on the abyss in Kryscaven Crater had been broken by enchantment, and ’twas from there that the mortal danger arose. Dharkkum. None could withstand it, not skraelings nor trolls, nor the fell mage who had wrought such malevolence.

  To win the battle against the all-consuming darkness of Dharkkum they would need Rhuddlan’s dread beasts, and they dare not draw the dragons down upon themselves without a lord to rule them. The King of the Light-elves was a fair dragon keeper, or had been before Merioneth had been lost and the nest emptied, but to wield the Magia Blade took the fire and fury of youth, and Rhuddlan had near as many years as Varga himself.

  The aetheling he’d seen in Crai Force had fire in her, starfire. ’Twas in her blood, but the bloodlust fury for the fight was not. He’d watched her fight, and aye, none were faster or cleaner with a blade. Warring with dragons, though, took madness, and he’d seen naught of that about her. There must be another aetheling, a Dragonlord, and that one, he knew, would be Rhuddlan’s bane.

  “Do you know the story of the Starlight-born?” he asked in answer to the Liosalfar’s question.

  “Bits and pieces, aye,” she said. “They ruled the Douvan Kingdoms, but that was a long time ago, too long ago to be remembered.”

  Yes, she was young, he thought.

  “ ’Twas even before the Thousand Years War,” she said, adding the reference as if he might need one. He smiled beneath his mask of gauze. He’d had a child once who had been as young as she, but no more. All his children had been lost in the Wars of Enchantment.

  “The Thousand Years War gave the elves two kingdoms of their own, that of the Liosalfar and the Dockalfar,” he said. “ ’Tis said the Wars of Enchantment had their beginning in the ending of the Thousand Years War.”

  “Aye, I’ve heard the same.”

  “Such is often the case with wars,” he went on. “One leads into another. For the Starlight-born ’twas the same, but the span of time between wars was far greater, encompassing whole ages. The time between the Thousand Years War and today would be naught compared to those ages. Time enough for all the world to forget the war that came before and to be unprepared for the war that comes again.”

  “War is coming?” He heard the quickening in her voice and took it as a good sign. She would fight, as would Quicken-tree and Ebiurrane and Yr Is-ddwfn, and all of the tylwyth teg, fight for their lives.

  “War, but unlike any you have known, unlike what any of us have known—Sha-shakrieg, Liosalfar, and those of Men who trade in memories even more ancient than the Douvan Kingdoms.”

  “You don’t know much of men, if you think they see beyond their bellies and the short span of their lives,” she said, arching one of her eyebrows to make her point.

  A warrior, he thought, but no scholar. Yet for what he needed, ’t
was the warrior who would do.

  “They are there,” he promised her, “in every corner of the world. Holy men and women who guard the secrets of the past so that they will not be forgotten, whose sacred duty is to their gods, but whose sacred trust is the knowledge left by those who came before, age after age since the world began. Rhuddlan knows them in your land, even as the Lady of Deseillign knows them in hers.”

  “You speak of an alliance?” She sounded incredulous, and both of her eyebrows rose, as if she thought him crazed beyond saving.

  “Aye.”

  She dismissed him with a rude noise.

  Hiding a smile, he shrugged out of her pack. “It is in my best interest as well as yours to return to Merioneth as quickly as possible. If you think on it, you’ll know I speak the truth. You’ll not be guiding me into the heart of the Quicken-tree stronghold, as I already well know the way. And there’ll be no surprise to your kind. Rhuddlan is not one to forget his old enemies, and on the war gate I left him a sign that I would return. He’ll remember enough of knotwork to read what is there, and remember me well enough to know that if I’d meant you harm, I would have left you en chrysalii for him to find with the message.”

  Her gaze, so bravely contemptuous before, filled with fear. Yes, she understood what he’d said, even if she’d never seen the ancient torture. Mayhaps the Quicken-tree told their campfire stories as well as the Sha-shakrieg. No child of Deseillign did not know of Rhuddlan, Scourge of the Wasteland.

  “So I offer you a truce,” he said. “Your word against these.” He lifted the chains, and light glinted off the razor-sharp barbs.

  “Aye, and you’ve got it,” she said after only a moment’s hesitation. How truthful she was being remained to be seen, but even if her agreement was half a lie, ’twould be enough to see them through. The route he planned would leave her little time or inclination for escape.