Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Page 23

  A shrubby margin of brambled hazel, hawthorn, and bracken rose up on the hills to mark the beginnings of the lake forest. She could not speak for the hawthorns, but the hazel trees were old beyond their time, their long life a gift from Rhuddlan for some ancient deed. The lake forest birklands were her favorite. Made up of lofty golden beech trees and the occasional giant sycamore, they were lovely places to while away an afternoon or an evening, especially when a full moon dappled the leaves with silver. ’Twas like a fairyland then, with the light dancing all around.

  When she could no longer detect movement through the trees on the island, she made a quickety-split dash across the bridge. Mychael was no doubt heading for the pool at the base of the cliffs. If he was going for a swim, he really should have a lookout, so ’twas just as well she’d followed him out of the castle.

  In truth, she’d been following him all day, keeping him in sight while keeping out of his. Her fascination with him had doubled over on itself half a dozen times since being with him in the tower. She was thoroughly dismayed with her reaction to a single bout of kissing—and thoroughly smitten with him, she feared.

  He’d spent a terribly long time with Madron in her hut that afternoon, before Tabor had arrived with the ponies. When Mychael had finally left the Druid woman’s quarters, Llynya had seen him slipping a phial into his breast pocket. A simple, no doubt, and she dearly wanted to taste it and discover what Madron had given him. Some witchery potion for certes, mayhaps something to more securely bind him to Druid ways—or to Madron herself.

  Llynya didn’t like the thought of that a’tall. She’d gone back to the tower while he’d been unloading the ponies and made him a simple of her own, the dose she’d promised him in lieu of Aedyth’s. She’d left it on his tower-room door, but he’d not gone back to his room before making his escape through the postern gate.

  He’d gone to see Moira that afternoon too, and come away with a bundle of Quicken-tree cloth he’d taken with him when he’d left Carn Merioneth.

  Fool boy. He should not be wandering beyond the curtain wall by himself after dark. Nigh onto most all of the wolves had strangely disappeared out of Riverwood four days past, but there was aught besides wolves to fear. And if he was going for a swim, he’d be even more vulnerable, in the water without weapons, naked as a newborn ba—

  She pulled herself up short, a blush full-blown on her cheeks. What was she thinking? She couldn’t spy on him if he was naked.

  On the other hand, if he was naked, she should spy on him, if she was to keep him safe.

  “Bagworms,” she muttered, caught betwixt and between and annoyed at herself because of it. She’d seen plenty of naked men of all shapes and sizes and ages, from the newest babes to the oldest warriors. With Moira and Aedyth, she’d done her share of tending to aches and pains, and she’d swum in Bala Bredd with a dozen or more naked Quicken-tree and not thought a thing about it, because nakedness was not thought of by any of the tylwyth teg.

  But Mychael ab Arawn was not tylwyth teg, and she’d ne’er kissed a Quicken-tree man the way she’d kissed him. It changed everything, that kiss, and to secretly look upon him naked with lust in her heart would be as close to Christian sin as she hoped ever to get.

  And truly, it was lust she felt for him. She’d held him in her hand and felt the spell of sex magic rise up in both of them, the power and the heat and the longing, until his had spilled into her palm. It had all gone too fast, but she’d thought of little else all day—and of how such kissing could have come to a far different end, one in which she had not run away.

  Aye, she wanted the Druid boy for her own, and mayhaps that was the biggest change in her. She no longer could have sat in a tree all night and blithely watched over lovers in the glade below, not without thinking about Mychael and his kiss.

  Her only hope, then, was to catch him before he got in the pool, smooth over the part about following him, and convince him to return to Carn Merioneth posthaste. Thus she took off into the woods and arrived at the pool just in time to see him dive—bare naked—into the water. The curses of “sticks” and “more sticks” fell from her lips. Thoroughly frustrated, she paced the shore, waiting for a chance to catch his attention, determined to make a clean breast of it. She’d followed him, aye, but for his own good. She’d seen him naked, aye, but purely by accident and not for long, and with the mist and the night, she’d not seen much. Truly, not much at all.

  Her foot landed on something soft, and she stopped to see what was cushioning her step. ’Twas his clothes.

  Of course, she thought with an exasperated sigh. They lay in a haphazard pile near a small ring of stones, a fire ring. She knelt down and brushed her bootprint off his tunic and, in the brushing, felt Madron’s phial. She paused, but for no more than half a moment, not long enough to give her reticence a chance to bloom into restraint before she had Madron’s gift in her hand.

  Settling comfortably onto the leaves and pine needles carpeting the ground, she crossed her legs, rested her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and gave the phial a good looking over. ’Twas sheathed in a leather casing—cow’s leather, poor thing—with the top sealed by a round of beeswax, a typical configuration of Madron’s. The leather was an abomination, as always, but Madron was Druid, not tylwyth teg. Llynya sniffed around the seal. The beeswax came from a hive in the northernmost reaches of Riverwood, where the bees harvested sweet clover and heather, and she wondered that Madron traipsed so far afield.

  Carefully, she rolled the beeswax up to reveal the potion. ’Twasn’t much to look at, darkly green with bits of whatnot floating on top, but the smell was enough to set her back. Herbaceous and pungent, it reminded her of nothing so much as one of Dain Lavrans’s concoctions, aqua ardens, water that burned. The mage had ever been distilling something in his lower chamber, and often enough it had been aqua ardens. The herbs in the potion were mainly of the cooling variety.

  Cautiously, she touched a little of the stuff to her tongue. Naught happened at first. Then it warmed, giving her a tingly sensation. The warmth spread as far as such a small taste could go and cooled. The basic infusion was refreshing, mostly benign, except for a couple of ingredients: a hint of mushroom spore she knew to come from an ancient faerie ring in Wroneu Wood, and a salt she could not precisely define. The herbs were potent enough to be helpful, but not harmful. On the whole, the potion had about it the taste of Moira’s gwin draig, dragon wine, yet with an edge Llynya was not sure the Quicken-tree woman would countenance—except mayhaps for a Druid boy. Moira and Madron oft had their heads together over one simple or another, and this one could very well be a compilation of the two women’s. There was naught of a binding spell about it, and for all its potency, she did not think it could hurt him. Someone should be with him, though, if he ever decided to use it. Men were not oft prepared to go where mushroom spore might take them. ’Twould be best if he wasn’t alone if that time came.

  Her curiosity satisfied, she resealed the phial and returned it to the pocket of his tunic. The white wool from his much-altered monk’s habit was patched and worn, roughly woven and scratchy beneath her fingers. Moira’s patches of quilted Quicken-tree cloth were luxuriously soft and thick in comparison, and Llynya found herself wishing all his clothes were so fine. She folded everything in a pile: tunic, shirt, a buckled baldric, chausses, braies, and reached to set the cloak on top. ’Twas a good piece of Quicken-tree cloth, dark green shot through with silver. But ’twas more than just his cloak, she realized when she lifted it. Moira’s bundle was wrapped inside. She took a peek, wondering what the other woman had made him.

  A flash of purple caught her eye at first look. She was ever inclined to investigate things like flashes of purple and, it seemed, anything having to do with Mychael ab Arawn. So she lifted a piece of the cloth and discovered, to her surprise, that Moira was more prone to binding spells than Madron. The Quicken-tree woman had finished the edge of the cloth with intricately knotted braidwork known to weave a bi
nding fate. The stitches along a seam were fine and delicate, worked one over the other, then back again to recross, the whole of it making a never-ending knot in one of Moira’s strongest patterns. Then there was the purple.

  Llynya lifted another length of the cloth and discovered a tunic sleeve, a marvelous sleeve more like her own than what any of the Quicken-tree wore. To get a better look, she shook the tunic out, and a cascade of wild iris rippled down into her lap—purple petals delicately veined in saffron yellow, calyxes and stems intact, sword-shaped leaves woven into the cloth like verdured blades.

  The plants graced naught but the outside of his left sleeve, from shoulder to wrist with each corolla pressed into a perfect fleur-de-lis. More of the sword-shaped leaves had been woven as narrow panels into the front of the tunic and as a stripe down one of the chausses, their supple greenness contrasting with the cloth. ’Twas wondrous and strange that Moira should make him such clothes.

  Llynya smoothed her fingers over the tunic. ’Twould keep him warm, much warmer than sheep’s wool, and the shimmery green cloth would hide him in the forest as well as it did any of the tylwyth teg.

  The sound of a splash at the far side of the pool drew her head up. He was swimming through the shadows where the cliffs angled out over the water, but even the added layer of darkness couldn’t hide the pale gold of his hair. He levered himself up onto a rocky ledge for another dive, and moonlight ran down the length of his body in a silvery stream.

  He was beautiful, she thought, bathed in mist, the steam curling around his feet and legs and twining about his torso like a silken veil. She brought a handful of his clothing to her nose and watched as he dove, entering the water even more quietly than he’d left it. The scent of violets came to her from his tunic, telling her his clothes were worked in iris even down to the roots. The cloak smelled solely of him, of man and musk, and she brought it closer to her face.

  When he surfaced about midway across the pond, she raised her dreamstone dagger and tightened her hand around it to make the hilt flash, identifying herself as Quicken-tree. The colors of the crystal would tell him ’twas Llynya of the Light-elves. She planned on staying until he left, so she would as soon let him know he wasn’t alone. To her surprise, after a moment he flashed her back. ’Twas then she realized he was not nearly as vulnerable, nor as naked, as she’d thought. A quick check proved his belt and dagger sheath nowhere to be found.

  “Rotters,” she swore under her breath. She’d been on a fool’s errand. He’d been running with the Liosalfar for nearly half a year. He did not need her protection. No doubt he could handle wolves and skraelings, the Sha-shakrieg, and a whole band of marauding thieves and cut-purses with one arm tied behind his back. Yet now that she’d so blatantly announced herself, she couldn’t very well leave, not without looking even more the fool. So she sat herself down by the fire ring to brave it out and silently condemned herself as a half-wit ninny.

  He slipped beneath the water and did not surface again until he reached the rocky ledge that made up the shore. The pool was depthless, or at least the bottom had ne’er been touched by a Quicken-tree. A pillar of rock did rise to within ten feet of the surface in the center of the pool, and ’twas from there that the geyser sometimes blew out its steaming, mineral rich brew. Mostly the hot water bubbled out of the pillar without reaching the surface, making the pond warm and pleasant for swimming even when snow was piled all around—none of which occupied her thoughts nearly as much as the sight of him rising out of the water.

  “Malashm,” he said, wiping his face and then slicking his hands back over his hair.

  “ ’Lashm,” she said on a half swallow. The water glittered on his skin and ran in rivulets down his lean, angular body, defining the muscles in his arms and chest. Small waves lapped at his abdomen and broke on the silver and leather belt buckled around his bare waist. The hilt of his dreamstone dagger glowed blue and white beneath the surface of the pond, lighting the jut of the hipbone from which it hung and probably more, if she’d dared to look, which she did not.

  He didn’t seem the least surprised to see her, or the least self-conscious about his undressed state, which disconcerted her almost as much as the way he looked, like a pagan water god ascending from his kingdom in the mere.

  “Is everything aright at the keep?” he asked.

  “Aye,” she managed to get out, then wished she’d prevaricated a bit. Of course he would think she’d been sent by Trig to find him, and for certes she’d given herself away by admitting there was no emergency that had sent her out in the middle of the night and that demanded his speedy return.

  He was quiet for a moment, his gaze holding hers across the water. His right hand had settled around his dagger hilt. His left was splayed across his midsection in an absent caress that did damnably odd things to her insides every time her gaze slipped the least bit. No doubt he was mulling over her reply and realizing she’d come of her own accord and not on orders—a fact proven by his next question.

  “Are you staying for a while?” he asked, cocking his head as if he was not quite sure what to make of her being there.

  “A while,” she said as nonchalantly as possible, as if she had merely happened by with no particular plans.

  “Would you watch this, then?” He unbuckled his belt and laid it on the rocks, dagger and all. “I’ll swim better without it.”

  At her nod, he dove back into the water with a graceful arc and swam again to the far side of the pool.

  Left at a loose end, she could think of nothing more sensible to do than build a fire and gather a goodly pile of sticks and fagots. The air was growing cooler and had a certain crispness that ofttimes heralded snow. ’Twould probably not reach Carn Merioneth or the lower reaches of Riverwood, but Bala Bredd was a mountain lake, and the mountains could well be dusted by morning. She lifted her nose into the night and closed her eyes. Aye, there would be snow, and soon.

  He finished his second lap of the geyser pool and started another, swimming with powerful, even strokes—back and forth, back and forth—until the fire was crackling and she’d long since stretched out on her back on a makeshift pallet of their cloaks, to watch the stars rather than him. Now and then she wondered if he would swim the night away, but mostly she let the rhythm of his strokes fade into the background as she tracked the wanderers across the heavens and waited for his return.

  Chapter 15

  The wind had picked up by the time Llynya awoke, rising out of a drowsy slumber to find Mychael sitting across the fire from her, finishing the last of a handful of raspberries and looking very elfin in his new clothes. Firelight danced along the shimmering cloth, picking up the colors of the flowers and the leaf blades, and giving them a faint metallic sheen to match the copper stripe in his hair. The line of his scars had been clearly visible earlier in the moonlight, but had done naught to takeaway from his appeal. He was marked, but with time, the magic elixir of life. It suited him well.

  “Hullo,” he said, looking over when she stirred and extending his hand with the berries.

  “Nay, thanks.” She shook her head at his offer and eased her shoulders with a stretch. Some protector she was, she thought, sleeping away while he walked all about, drying off and changing clothes, buckling and unbuckling his baldric and belt and probably snapping all kinds of twigs and branches while he’d picked his berries.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.

  She thought she detected a teasing note in his voice, and sure enough, when she glanced over, a grin was curving the corner of his mouth.

  Much to her irritation, she felt her cheeks grow hot. Bothersome boy.

  “ ’Tis rare work Moira did on your tunic and chausses,” she told him, pushing herself up to a sitting position and ignoring his gibe. “Not many tylwyth teg can weave whole plants into their Quicken-tree cloth.”

  “Not many of them break the branches of trees they’re hiding in, either,” he said, and his grin broadened, warming the cool gray d
epths of his eyes. “What’s the matter, sprite? Losing your touch?”

  “Touch. Posh.” She set about tucking a few straying braids back into the tumble of her hair, as much to hide her blush as to accomplish any tidying up.

  “ ’Twas you I heard, then. Banging and clattering through the woods behind me.”

  “I’ve ne’er banged and clattered in my life,” she declared in mock affront.

  “Aye,” he agreed, opening a gourd of catkins’ dew he’d brought with him to the fire. “ ’Twas what I told myself, that it couldn’t possibly be you, but mayhaps an old, lumbering boar bear, or a staggering hart with his rack all tangled in the bracken, or mayhaps a great questing beast the likes of which bay at the moon. But there’s no beast here, only you.”

  He was clearly enjoying himself, and so was she for all her show of discontent. ’Twasn’t often that he smiled, and even less often, if ever, that he teased, yet he was teasing her.

  “And there you are wrong,” she assured him. “There’s a questing beast here, come to Bala Bredd to devour the fruits of the forest. Mayhaps she’ll come for you next, when the raspberries run out, so you’d best eat your fill and be gone.”

  His grin flashed again, and he laughed. “I’ve oft searched for questing beasts in the woods and never yet found one, so I think I’ll wait and take my chances.”

  The sound of his laughter so surprised her, running through her like clear, cool water, that her pulse quickened and her ears pricked up and twitched forward. She could do naught but gaze at him, dumbstruck—gaze and yearn for his kiss. For that was the trick, wasn’t it? And the real reason she’d come? To steal a kiss from him, if she dared.

  She could have quickety-splitted one off him, but a quick kiss was not what she wanted. She wanted one of those slow, wandering-all-over kisses he’d given her in the tower. And now she wanted another kind of kiss, one with laughter in it. Sweet mystery of desire, to want to kiss, and touch, and taste his delight, to press her lips to the teasing curve of his smile and sigh and laugh with him, sharing the same warm breath. Aye, the truth of it was very clear when she sat this close to him. She’d come for a kiss.