Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Page 26

  Licking his face, she tasted him down to the bone and felt a love so intense, she feared she could die of it. She breathed him in, every scent he’d ever had, and was caught in a whirlwind of flames. For a fleeting instant she was afraid, but his arms were around her, holding her safe. For a fleeting instant she heard a keening cry coming from deep in the heart of the fire, but then ’twas gone and all she could hear was Mychael whispering a litany of love in her ear. When she could take no more, he stopped moving. Buried to the hilt of his shaft inside her, he grew utterly still, and within the space of a breath, from the deepest place of their joining, a wave of pure erotic bliss rose up and washed through her, a dark ocean of pleasure that swept her away.

  She clung to him in the aftermath, shocked by the tears running down her face. He kissed her over and over again, murmuring her name, his body bonelessly limp beside her. Their legs were entangled. His arm was across her in a protective gesture, a useless gesture—for naught could protect her from him.

  ~ ~ ~

  Was it love they’d made? Llynya wondered, watching him sleep in the cool light of a nascent dawn. Or had it been something else, something more elemental than love—if such was possible? She finished pulling on her second boot and nimbly ran the ties through the silver rings, bereft of answers.

  ’Twas love she felt for him, she knew that. She looked at him and ached with love, and therein lay a danger all its own. More so than Morgan, a thousand times more so, she’d bound herself to Mychael, and now she needed to unbind herself before any damage was done. How could she have been so heedless as to give in to her desires? How could she not have known what mating with him would mean? She was going down the wormhole, going deep, and she’d not have him suffer for her deed.

  Rising to her feet, she took one last look at him. His face was soft in sleep, his breathing even, his hair a tangled mess of gold. She’d heard the dragons and felt their fire when he and she had been joined. Their essence ran deep in him, creatures awash with seawater and universal salts, winding through him with every breath, winding through her as well with each breath they’d shared. The dragons had cried out to her through him, and she’d known then what she’d heard in the apple orchard the night Naas had walked the ramparts, her old white eyes looking far out to sea. The dragons were coming. Coming for him.

  The end of his quest was nigh. Soon he would have the beasts to heel.

  With effort, she resisted the urge to kiss him and took off into the forest. She needed Ailfinn. Only a Prydion Mage would know how to untangle such a mighty spell as they’d woven in the night.

  Chapter 16

  Caerlon followed Redeye Dock through the northern passages leading into Rastaban, cursing him all the way.

  “Skraelings.” The word was lodged behind his clenched jaws. “You left him with skraelings. Imbecile! Cretin! The rotting skraelings eat Quicken-tree. If they’ve eaten this one, your hide will be the next one to lengthen Slott’s vest, your rotting thick skull the next one to hang from his braids.”

  The threat was real. Caerlon’s hand was ready on his knife. If there was naught left but the young warrior’s bones when they reached the small cavern ahead, Caerlon would drop Redeye like a stone, sever his throat, and let the skraelings chew on him while he bled to death.

  They rounded the last turn, and Caerlon held his red-hearted dreamstone high. A rush of relief washed through him. The Liosalfar was still in one piece.

  “Grazch!” he ordered, and the two beast-men watching the prisoner backed off from the trussed bundle lying in a heap on the cavern’s floor.

  Caerlon strode forth and with a flick of his blade cut the rope securing the hood over the Quicken-tree’s head. He pulled the hood off, and a long dark fall of hair tumbled out over the Liosalfar’s shoulders. Like black silk it was, with a fif braid twisted into one side. Fierce green eyes flashed up at him, and a thrill of nervous pleasure went through Caerlon to his core.

  “Get him to his feet,” he ordered, and Redeye hauled the Liosalfar up.

  He’d been poorly handled. Caerlon could see it in the bruises marking the boy’s face. His hands were bound behind his back, and he’d been cut, a slash across his chest. The blood had already dried and crusted on the Quicken-tree cloth, proving the wound not too deep.

  “When did this happen?” he asked Redeye, pointing to the slash mark.

  “In battle, milord. They’ve lost no skill since the Wars. We were hard-pressed.”

  Of course they’d been hard-pressed, Caerlon thought in disgust, a skraelpack of fifty men against twenty Quicken-tree.

  “Their losses?”

  “Two dead, five wounded, and this one captured.” Caerlon hated to ask, but he was their leader and needed to know. “And how did you fare?”

  “Twenty-two dead, milord, including the five I finished off myself.”

  Caerlon nodded. A badly wounded skraeling was a dead skraeling. ’Twas all Caerlon could do to keep his army in rats. There were no rations to be had for those who could not fight.

  “Where’s the elf shot?”

  Redeye gestured, and one of the skraelings lumbered toward them with a pack. He spilled the contents on the floor. Naught but elf shot was there, the black, highly lustrous stone used by the Quicken-tree and other clans of tylwyth teg for making arrowheads. Caerlon had harbored a hope there might be more.

  “Preparing for war?” he asked the Liosalfar. He expected no answer and got none. “How was Tryfan? Still full of good stone, I see.”

  He ran the toe of his boot across the pile on the chance he might have missed something. No, there was only shiny black stone.

  “No luck finding the Douvan Throne Room, eh?” Too bad, he thought. The riches of the Douvan kings were legendary, but more than one kind of magic had sealed the mountain fastness. Rumor had long held that naught but the passage of years would open the Throne Room’s doors, bound as they’d been by a time-cast spell.

  With a long-suffering sigh, he signaled for the skraelings to repack the elf shot. They had to be killed, of course. He couldn’t take any chance of Slott learning about the Liosalfar captive. He had his hands full keeping Wyrm-master off the Troll King’s plate. The Quicken-tree sapling wouldn’t last through the introductions, let alone supper, and Caerlon would have discourse with the boy.

  “Redeye,” he said when the skraelings were bent to their task. He made a killing motion with his knife.

  The Dockalfar understood the need and nodded. Redeye had knocked the boy out cold a halflan from Rastaban and told the other skraelings from Tryfan that the captive had died. Caerlon would have to reward him for that bit of brilliance, even as he resented that Redeye knew his weakness.

  He turned to the prisoner. Five long centuries he’d been without a suitable companion. Five long centuries spent in the company of his books, a few deformed Dark-elves, and the brutish offal of Men. Nay, he would not lose his prize to Slott’s insatiable hunger.

  Where to keep him, though, posed a problem. There was only one place safe from the rattish nosiness of the skraelings—the oubliette. And it was occupied.

  “Take the pack to my quarters,” he said to Redeye, keeping his gaze on the Liosalfar. “I’ll gift the elf shot to Slott at the evening’s feasting.”

  Fear flickered to life in the Quicken-tree’s eyes at the Troll King’s name, and Caerlon smiled, satisfied.

  “Aye, milord.” Redeye gave a short bow of his head and herded the skraelings out of the small cavern.

  “What’s your name, Light-elf?” Caerlon asked his prisoner, expecting an answer this time. When he got none, he stepped behind the boy and slashed his sleeve open from shoulder to wrist, marking a line of blood on the young warrior’s skin. One look told him what he wanted to know.

  With the tip of his blade, Caerlon turned the boy’s head to meet his gaze. A pleased smile curved his mouth.

  “Welcome to Rastaban... Shay.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “Tabor! Hold up!” Mychael called out
, then gritted his teeth and shoved at the pony standing on his foot. “Swivin’ beast. Move!” Tansy was her name, and she no more resembled a buttonlike flower than did he. ’Twas a delusion of Tabor’s. He called all the rude beasts by sweet names. Saffron, Twitch, and Hollyhock, Eyebright and Heartsease, and the damnable Tansy were the last of the bunch to be taken up out of the caves. If an assault was to be made on the spider people and the bunch called skraelings that Rhuddlan was searching out, the Hall of Kings was ready.

  Mychael could not say the same for himself.

  She’d left him. Damn her.

  She’d left him on the shores of Bala Bredd without so much as a by-your-leave. ’Twas Trig alone who had dared to approach him in the bailey that morn, Trig alone who had kept him from tearing Carn Merioneth asunder to find her.

  Just ahead on the trail, a wall of luminescent flowstone marked a narrow route leading off a main passage of the Canolbarth and back toward Lanbarrdein, the third such that they’d passed and the last to be had. ’Twas the reason he’d come, to give Tabor the slip and go on alone, to lose himself in the deep dark. Yet when the first little-used passage had loomed into view, a dark opening with a bit of wind blowing through it, he’d not had the heart for it. ’Twas too steep, he’d told himself, and with the water that ofttimes slickened its floor, the most dangerous of the three. He would wait for the next.

  The next, when they’d reached it, had held no more allure than the first. Something about the smell had dissuaded him. A faint trace of pryf had been in the air, making him believe that mayhaps the worms had broken through into the passage from their nest. Pryf in a passage were not necessarily dangerous. They were not wont to run over people or grind them up like the old worm, but they could definitely get in a person’s way and cause countless delays.

  The smell had not been skraelings. He and Tabor had both been on the lookout for sign of them and had seen naught this side of the Hall of Kings. The skraelings were all in the deep dark. But the third passage was upon him, and instead of taking his pack and making a run for it, he was calling out to Tabor.

  “Ho, boy!” the lanky pony-master called back. The man’s eyes were bright, his lean face creased with a smile. A tousled fall of youngish brown hair was loosely braided down his back, belying his age as his name belied his long-limbed stature. He wore a dark green vest over his gray Ebiurrane tunic. “What say you? Has Tansy balked on ye again?”

  Balked? She wanted to climb into his arms and be carried the rest of the way to the Dragon’s Mouth. Bright beast, knowing the impossibility of such a notion, she made do by standing on his foot.

  “Aye!” he hollered back, and waited for Tabor to prove his worth. He did not have to wait long. A soft humming filled the air, a prelude of “Hum, hum, fey-oh” and “Hum, hum, oh-fey.” At the end of the refrain, Tabor sang in a high, clear voice that ran like the chime of silver bells along the Canolbarth’s granite walls.

  “Tansy, lass, the green grass waits

  High in the mountains of Eryri

  With sweet running water and Moira’s bannock cakes

  For pony bones that’re weary!”

  Tansy snorted and with a short, hopping jump was back to moving up the trail with her harness bells jingling in concert with Tabor’s song.

  “Tansy, lass, the stars shine bright

  High in the mountains of Eryri

  Where a meadow bed waits in the silvery moonlight

  For pony bones that’re weary!”

  “Pony bones,” Mychael muttered, reaching down to rub his foot. ’Twas a marching song and a refrain no pack animal could resist. Tabor’s voice, so sweet and pure, filled the passage, echoing down its length and spurring the ponies on to a good clip.

  With a few limping strides, Mychael caught up with Tansy and reached for a draw hitch on her load. A quick tug on the end of the rope loosed his pack. He stopped and slung it over his shoulder, letting Tabor and the animals continue on without him.

  “Tansy, lass, no wolves run

  High in the mountains of Eryri

  Where the trolls were long ago turned to stone

  And the ponies taken all by faeries!”

  Mychael had heard the tale from Tabor’s own lips, about the ending of the last great war, when the taking of the ponies had turned the tide against the Dockalfar. The next verse in the song was drowned by the sound of hooves striking a stretch of rock. The one after was fainter still, lost in a bend of the trail.

  Mychael released a deep breath and looked around. To his right was the cascade of flowstone and the entrance to the tunnel leading back to Lanbarrdein. ’Twas where his future lay, whatever he was to have of one.

  He brought his hand up to feel the pocket over his left breast. Madron’s phial was there, refilled to the brim with the potent mixture of his salvation. A pouch on his belt held another such simple, one mixed by Llynya. He’d found it hanging on his tower door just before he’d left with Tabor. He’d known ’twas hers by the heavy dose of lavender in it and by the smell of wildflowers lingering on the cloth and drawstrings—and by the friggin’ fact that he would know anything made by her hand because he knew her.

  He stood and stared into the dark, his jaw tight.

  She’d left him. He’d given her his heart—verily a glimpse of his soul—and she’d walked away. If such was what came from love, he was better off without it. Yet he still hurt; he still raged inside.

  Worse, he feared he knew why she’d left. He’d felt the rash of ungodly heat that should not have been between them. He’d heard the keening cry, so brief, so damning—and so must have Llynya.

  Madron had made him no promises when he’d gone to see her, only told him the brew in the phial would work to cool the dragonfire when it came upon him—work to a point, and she knew not where the limit lay. As to the potion’s price, she’d said naught, only advised him to win one battle at a time. An adverse portent, and a measure of his desperation that he’d taken it anyway.

  Aye, Merioneth was filling up with adverse portents of late: Sha-shakrieg, skraelings, the monk captured in Riverwood. He’d heard the man’s head was shaved much in the manner of Balor’s dead evil-mongering leech, and that like the leech, he wore the robes of a Culdee from Ynys Enlli. The monk was traveling with a mare laden with books, and Madron had voiced a strong interest in the tomes.

  A light gust of wind swirled out of the opening and blew cold across his cheek. He had not much time for reading anymore, but he knew exactly where he needed to pick up his search—in the cavern of the damson shaft where Rhuddlan should be even now at the war gate. The flat slab of stone he’d spied high on the glittering wall was a guidepost of some sort; he was sure of it. ’Twas too incongruous within a sheet of crystal to be any work of nature. The long shadow to its right could be naught but a sideslip, an opening so narrow a man had to enter it sideways.

  The caverns were full of writings and direction marks, but by the sheer difficulty of its placement, Mychael guessed that what he’d seen in the damson shaft led to something significant, or why else bother to fit smooth stone into a crystal wall?

  Aye, there were plenty of reasons for him to go into the dark: a chance at the wormhole now that he knew how to open Rhuddlan’s seals, the surety of a battle finally to be fought, and mayhaps a mark of sanctuary beyond “Ammon” to be found in the damson shaft. Aye, there were plenty of reasons to go and only one reason not to—Llynya.

  He swore softly, and his hand instinctively went to the pouch of wildflowers hanging from his belt. The cloth was supple, sensual against his skin. His light touch released the fragrance of flowers, and the scent, so sweet with memories, twined around him.

  The wind gusted again, a cool draft swirling through the flowery essence and blowing up the tunnel. Mychael followed it with his gaze to where Tabor and the pack train had disappeared. He could still hear the clip-clop of hooves and the gentle jingling of bells on harnesses. By nightfall, the ponies would he grazing with Rhuddlan’s mares in
the meadows of Merioneth’s baileys. Tabor would be drinking honeymead at the hearthfire, and despite the preparations for war, stories would be told, songs sung. The stars would be shining, the moon waning—and Llynya would be there, part of it all.

  She was what held him back. Despite that she’d left him, more than anything he wanted to be with her, to hold her, to once again feel the softness of her lips beneath his.

  Half-mad fool.

  He shrugged into his pack, adjusting its weight across his back, then unsheathed his crystal blade. Holding it high, he slipped into the narrow opening next to the flow-stone. Llynya or nay, he knew where he must go—across the Magia Wall and into the dark. If he was ever to be free of the dragons, or break them to his will, he first had to find them.

  ~ ~ ~

  Home, was all Nia could think. She wanted to go home, and she wasn’t particular about which home she went to: Deri with the great oak of Wroneu, Carn Merioneth with Riverwood, or Kerach in the north. Any forest would do. Verily, any tree.

  Aye. That’s what she needed—a tree.

  “Hold!” Varga’s muffled command came back to her. She stopped crawling, swearing bitterly under her breath while another bit of hope died in her breast.

  She and Varga had waited on the Rift but an hour before a message had arrived from the Lady Queen of Deseillign, setting them on this doomed path. The Grim Crawl was a thousand times worse than the Kai Crack, a thousand times longer, a thousand times less forgiving. Nia wondered that the squeeze had ever been mapped. A quarterlan back, her heartiest curses had gone out to the long-ago Sha-shakrieg who had blazed the trail she and Varga followed. A sturdy bunch, for certes, and fearless, to have pressed on through the confining darkness with its seemingly endless twists and turns. A new feature, a bladelike ridge of limestone on the floor of the tunnel, cut into her with each push forward. Dust tainted with the faint smell of Varga’s blood filled her nostrils, proving that he, too, wasn’t escaping unscathed from the ordeal of the Crawl.