Chalice 2 - Dream Stone Read online

  She wasn’t nearly as afraid of him as she was of dying deep in the earth, trapped in the rough-edged tube pressing against her from all sides. Spider people. What a strange lot to have even found the snaky hole Varga called simply “Mekom.” Watching Varga spin a web to get them out of the Mindao River Slot had revealed some of their secrets to her. ’Twas skill backed by strength and a sticky simple that allowed the Sha-shakrieg to sling pryf silk against a surface in a manner to make it hold, and hold the weight of men.

  The water in the Slot had been knee-high most of the way, rising to their waists only at the end. Smooth handholds had been carved into the Mindao cliffs at regular intervals. For safety, Varga had told her, if perchance a rainstorm up above sent water rushing down into the subterranean river. It had not, and they’d been spared the ordeal of having to climb to safety, truly like spiders on a wall.

  The Ghranne Mekom was sparing them nothing. ’Twas all she could do to hold her panic at bay. It skittered along the edge of her thoughts, taunting her with certain death if she should fail—and she still had the Dangoes to face.

  She gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to raise her head and could not. The endless miles of earth above her were less than a hairbreadth from the back of her neck. She felt rock press against her with every breath, squeezing her. Her muscles were twitching beneath her skin, clamoring for a release she couldn’t give them. She was packed into the earth.

  “Varga,” she said, wondering what was taking him so long, and yet knowing. He was stuck. Naught else could have kept him in the same stick-forsaken spot for so long. She should go back. Save herself. Yet the way back was not so simple. Other small tunnels connected to the Mekom. If she backed herself into one of them, she might forever be lost. Shadana.

  “Hold,” came the command again. “I’m almost through.”

  “V-varga. I... I...” The words lodged in her throat, choking her. She coughed, and a tiny flume of dust kicked up from the floor, making her cough more. Great misery!

  Varga cursed under his breath and tried in vain to move his lodged shoulders. His lie had done him no good. She was faltering. In the Mekom, fortitude was the prerequisite of survival, and hers had run out. He’d thought the Quicken-tree warrior could beat the squeeze. It seemed he’d been wrong.

  He swore again and tried once more to shift his shoulders in a manner that would free him from the turn that held him tight. When he’d felt the way grow too narrow, he’d tried going back, and ’twas then he’d been caught, his shoulder snagging on a projection of rock that had allowed him to enter the turn, but would not allow him to retreat.

  He had come this way before. Why not this time? he wondered. He had twisted and squirmed, relaxed some muscles and tightened others, yet still was held firm. He was no heavier, no bigger. Verily, he’d lost some of his bulk since the end of the Wars. Yet ’twas even less likely that the Crawl had changed.

  Or was it?

  Had he not seen with his own eyes the great tear through the crystal seal of Kryscaven Crater? The earth had trembled deep to create such a chasm, and with deep trembling were not other changes possible? Changes so minute that they would go unnoticed until a man who had once passed through the Mekom could no longer pass?

  He swore softly between his teeth. They both would die—unless he told her to go back and she had the strength to do it.

  “Pwr wa ladth.” He heard the faint sound of her voice attempting song between bouts of coughing. A ragged song would do him no good. What he needed was a cursed double-jointed shoulder.

  “Pwr wa ladth. Fai quall a’lomarian.”

  She struggled on behind him, her song wavering with the tide of her fear. He was afraid too, but of failure, not death.

  “Es sholei par es cant. Pwr wa ladth. Pwr wa ladth.”

  ’Twas one of the Quicken-tree’s green songs, a chant of sunlight—not of its brightness and beauty, but of its power beyond the glories of sight, the power of sunlight in dark places, be they of the heart or the world.

  Aye, he knew the songs of his enemies well. He shifted himself again and moved nary a finger’s width, while she sang behind him:

  “Run deep. Run deep.

  Pwr wa ladth. Pwr wa ladth.

  Wind through leaf and stem and root.

  Fai quall a’lomarian.

  Flow like a river into the earth.

  Es sholei par es cant.

  Run deep. Run deep.

  Pwr wa ladth. Pwr wa ladth.”

  He’d thought the Dangoes would be their greatest challenge, but it seemed the frozen place would not get another chance at Varga of the Iron Dunes. He would die in the Crawl like a worm.

  But she need not.

  “Nia—” He no sooner spoke her name than the first tremor hit, scarce stronger than her voice, an odd whisper through the rock. The second tremor was even fainter, but he felt something give way. Another fierce twist and he was free. He crawled at double speed for the end of the tunnel, pushing his pack in front of him. A gust of wind announced the Kasr-al Loop, and in a trice he was through the Mekom, tumbling out into the small cavern that led to the main trail. He turned to go back for her, but was stopped short by the sight of a square, dirt-encrusted hand scrabbling for a hold on the rim of the Crawl. Relief flooded through him.

  He reached down and pulled her free, and she came to her feet, shaky but able to stand on her own.

  “Shadana.” The word blew from her lips. “Pwr wa ladth.” She tucked a lanky strand of hair behind her ear and set about dusting herself off.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “Nay. And you?”

  “Of a piece. I’ve felt earthquakes in the caverns before, but never while in the Mekom.”

  She looked up with an annoyed frown. “ ’Twas no earthquake, spider man. ’Twas me singing you out of that snag you’d gotten yourself hung up on. And if—What’s that?” she asked suddenly, growing still.

  Taken aback by what she’d said, it took Varga a moment to pick up on what had riveted her attention. Only a moment, though, then he wondered how he’d missed it.

  “Skraelings,” he said. The stench was wafting into the cavern from the trail.

  She went for her blade like a warrior and came up empty-handed. Her expression darkened. “Ye cannot leave me unarmed, Varga, not with skraelings on the trail.”

  No faltering there, he thought, admiring the speed of her response. And for all she didn’t know, she knew the danger of skraelings.

  “Aye,” he agreed, and unsheathed her dreamstone dagger from his belt. He gave it and her sword to her without another word, then walked over to where the cave emptied out onto the tail end of the Kasr-al Loop. If she would go for his back, he would as soon know it now. He slipped into his pack and knelt on the trail. The causeway from which they would enter the Dangoes lay not a lan from the cave.

  She came up beside him and held her lightblade out over the trail. “They’re moving west, toward Merioneth.”

  “Aye, and look here.” He pointed to a place close to the tunnel wall where the finer dirt was wont to settle. A paw print was clearly pressed into the dust.

  “Wolves.” She touched the edge of the track.

  “Uffern wolves,” he corrected her. “Wolves twisted to a skraeling master’s bidding. There’s no other way to get them to run in the caves.”

  She glanced back to the Crawl.

  “Nay,” he told her. “There’s naught for us but to go forward.”

  “I wouldn’t do otherwise,” she assured him, her affront showing in the squaring of her shoulders, “but if it comes to retreat, I’d like to have a place where they can’t follow.”

  He nodded. “The Crawl would suffice, but we’ll be far better served by the Dangoes. The ice caverns are not a place for skraelings and their kind. If we make the causeway, we’ll descend immediately.”

  “If?”

  He lifted a pinch of dust off the trail and brought it to his nose. “The tracks are f
resh. ’Tis only the switchbacks in the trail that keep the sound of the skraelpack from us.”

  “And how many do you think there are?”

  He shrugged and let the dirt fall from his fingers. “More than enough to give us both a hero’s death.”

  Chapter 17

  So there he was, Llynya thought, staring down from her high perch at the man held captive in Riverwood and the mare grazing by his side. Early morning light filtered into the alder copse that held him, revealing thick twinings of branches, boughs nesting together into impassable walls, and the dense weave of shrubbery that left him no escape. The man had entered the forest three days past, setting the trees to trembling and filling the woods with warnings of danger. Day and night the leaves fluttered Beware, until Merioneth felt beset all around. Wolves and their kith ran free through Riverwood along with all manner of cutpurses and robbers, but not he, and Trig wanted to know why. To that end the captain had succumbed to necessity and brought her down to the river with the morning patrol. The man had answered no questions put to him, and Trig would have her match her deep-scent skill against his reticence.

  Damn grateful she was to be let out of Carn Merioneth, if only for an hour or so. Mychael ab Arawn had started a turmoil in her heart that she scarce could bear. She’d sent prayers of thanks to the gods when he’d left for Lanbarrdein the day before, for there had been some doubt that he would.

  She’d expected him to he angry when he awoke and realized she was gone. She had not expected the storm that had descended on Merioneth with his return from Bala Bredd. He’d stood in the bailey and cried her name, until not a soul in the castle could doubt what they had done.

  She’d weathered the storm by hiding on the wall-walk with Naas. And then he’d left with Tabor, and the storm had passed, except for the havoc wreaked on her heart. She’d done the right thing, of that she had no doubt. Her only doubt was whether she would survive it. Ailfinn would come, though, and set her free.

  Until then, she would be haunted by memories of Bala Bredd. Already they slipped into her dreams and wound through her days, remembrances of his touch, his kisses, until all she wanted was to put her mouth once more to his and fall into the wondrous wonder that was Rhiannon’s son and no one else. She wanted him pressed against her, to feel the lithe strength of his body and the heat of his skin. She wanted to taste him and feel his breath flow into her. She wanted to kiss him and love him again—and she wanted it with a fierce ache she couldn’t assuage. No one else would do. She, a Liosalfar warrior, had become little more than a love-bit maid, a sorely love-bit maid. Pitting her skills against the Riverwood captive’s wits would be a welcome diversion from the sorrows of such love.

  Trig had warned her that the captive was a bald Culdee like Helebore, but to Llynya’s relief, all similarity ceased with his religious bent and his pate. The monk in the alders had fine white teeth he’d bared at the scouts, and a firm mouth he’d used to voice his threats, of which he had many, some so bloodcurdling—especially those detailing the methods of evisceration he would apply to each and every one of his captors that he caught—that a few of the younger scouts had not held up. ’Twas another reason Trig had been forced to bring her. Having been blooded in battle, she was unlikely to falter under a frightful diatribe no matter how gruesome.

  She climbed to another branch to better her view. Below her, the monk sat on a downed limb, his finely arched eyebrows drawn together in a fierce scowl, his dark eyes flashing in icy rage. ’Twas a wonder to her that the trees had held him at all. From what she’d heard, he’d done everything except rip the alders out by their roots to get free. He’d thrashed about the enclosing coppice until Trig had feared for his safety, though all to no avail. The forest would have him for its own, until Rhuddlan released him. How he’d gotten in with the bramble nearly complete was apparently a question Madron would answer. Trig had found faint signs of enchantment not far from the alders, on a path leading to the giant’s cairn where the Bredd flowed into the earth.

  Nay, he was not like Helebore, Llynya thought, looking him over. The man’s body was not crooked and bent, but strong and straight. His face was not wrinkled with age and stained with debauchery, but was fashioned with clean, angry lines. ’Twas no young man’s face, but ’twas not so old either, despite the loss of his hair. As a child in the woods, she had used a child’s form of deep-scent a few times on men and found that those who skulked through forests usually had hearts full of hunger or fear, depending on whether they were the hunter or the hunted. The monks traversing the woods were equally divided between piety and avarice, incense and ale. Some few had lust on their minds. She’d come across a group of lepers once, and they’d smelled of slow death, rotten flesh, and pain. Moira had shooed her away and then gone back with rasca to tend them. Princes smelled of battles fought, pilgrims’ thoughts were of the Christian God. Traders smelled of the road and their goods. ’Twould be interesting with her now greater skill to see what this one was about.

  He knew they were there, a half-dozen of them hidden in the trees. She could smell the awareness on him, see the subtle cocking of his ears and the tension in his muscles, held so still beneath his brown cloak.

  She slipped down another branch to bring herself closer to him, and Trig signaled a warning. The man, too, shifted in his alertness, his head coming up a bare degree. No fool, this, if he’d sensed her silent step.

  She had a bit of lavender in one of her baldric pouches, but not enough to set her apart from what grew wild in the woods. She’d not needed it of late. ’Twas as if Mychael’s kiss had turned her mind from malaise—though she would be the last to suggest that the turn had been for the better. A fine choice it was between malaise and lovesickness, for the two were much alike, except one could be ameliorated with lavender and the other by naught but a kiss.

  As for the man, he smelled clean and of the forest, rare enough for a monk. The Quicken-tree had brought him seedcake and catkins each day, and he smelled of those too. The trees had given him plenty of room to prowl. He’d paced a path from one end to the other of his arboreal prison, and the scents of crushed vegetation rose up around him in a green swirl.

  She inhaled more deeply on her next breath and let her eyes drift closed. He had distilled salts on him and dried meat—her nose wrinkled in distaste—which explained the smell of blood. His wineskin held grape of uncommon strength; the scent alone was nearly intoxicating, fruit with a sharp, pungent underlayer. His heart held little more than an all-consuming anger. He had pouches of herbs, some she recognized and, oddly, some she did not. After the herbs came the first trace of deep-scent, a redolent melange of spices from faraway lands, saltwater seas, and the smell of dust coming off an endless, winding road. A pilgrimage, she would have thought, except the spices she smelled were from beyond any point of Christian pilgrimage. They spoke of the east to her, a place far, far away, past the goddess mother mountain and the great grass plains, a place where no man of Wales had ever gone.

  Curious, she leaned closer. The leaves around her fluttered in warning. She wondered at that and anchored herself more firmly to the branch. Slowly, she breathed him in, one layer after another, her nose sifting through the thousand mundane scents of life and his more exotic wanderings, until she came to the end of them into a space of nothing.

  Absolutely nothing.

  Not even the smell of his anger was in that space.

  She opened her eyes and gave him a quizzical glance. Was he blocking her? And if so, how? Her training was only half-completed at best, but Aedyth had not mentioned any way to block scent. Llynya tried again and did no better. He had an angry present, a few rich and exotic years before that, and then nothing, as if his life had barely begun.

  Strange, she thought. No man stepped full grown onto the earth’s stage. Every man had a past—except this one.

  Reason enough, mayhaps, for the trees to tremble and keep him from Merioneth.

  From the other side of the clearing, Trig questio
ned her with a hand signal. Unready to concede defeat, she shrugged and made a motion to wait. Riverwood had captured a fine mystery indeed. Death stole a man’s future. What could steal a man’s past? Naught that she could think of, for even if a man forgot himself and all that had come in his life, his past did not forget him. It clung to him, a gossamer sheath impressed upon his soul.

  She looked at the captive more closely, wondering. He had a present, and his future was proven by his every passing breath. Within the protective copse ’twas certain he would live to see another day. ’Twas only his past he’d lost.

  Or escaped.

  “Shadana,” she whispered, drawing herself back with sudden understanding. ’Twas time. He’d lost his past by coming through time.

  A surge of excitement coursed into her veins, and in a twinkling she’d dropped down another branch. There should be a scent somewhere. Hadn’t she smelled as much on Mychael? The faint trace of ether from out of the weir that yet lingered on him? If what she thought was true, this man should have even more, not nothing.

  At her movement, the alderwood captive suddenly turned, staring up into the thickly woven tree branches. She stayed perfectly still, balancing on a supple limb, watching him. With his head now in the sunlight, she could see what forest shadows had hidden from sight—he was not bald, not truly, not like Helebore had been. An all-over stubble sprouted on his pate like dark spring grass. His head had been shaved.

  For piety’s sake? she wondered. Or for subterfuge?