Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  Wildness everywhere and not a dragon in sight.

  Mychael slogged through the wet sand, gritting his teeth against exhaustion and the flame of heat licking at him from beneath his skin. The damn stuff had come upon him in his sleep when they’d made a brief camp after the previous evening’s meal, slipping into his consciousness on the fleet, fiery wings of a dream—and on the breath of war.

  Sha-shakrieg. Spider people. He feared he’d found his enemies, the source of his river of blood.

  He ran his hand back through his hair, then wiped at the sweat beading on his upper lip. He’d had the elf-maid’s kiss in the dream, before it had turned into a nightmare, a kiss and much more, but the sweetness had been short-lived, ending in the flames that had found purchase in his veins.

  She should not have been a part of it, that remnant of the fiery vision that had first come upon him in Strata Florida. Down to his bones, he knew no good could come to her from him, but since their closeness in Crai Force when she’d tended him, he hadn’t been able to shake free of her. The feel of her soft skin lingered on his fingertips like Nemeton’s magic. The scent of lavender met him at every turn, whether she was near or far. For certes she’d marked him somehow, no doubt with her elfin magic in hopes of bending him to her will.

  Christe. As if he would have any will left when the fire finally took him and the shadows rose into legions. Against that day, her will stood no chance a’tall—and neither did he without Ddrei Glas and Ddrei Goch to fight by his side. And he was doomed to fight. The surety of that truth tightened around him with each passing breath. He would fight. There would be blood. He’d taken the bait of the dragon lure, and the price would be paid.

  A thin curl of pain raced down his arm, one of many threatening to undo him. He stopped it with a swift clench of his fist, swearing beneath his breath. The blood-churning madness had never before come upon him in the caves. That it had now was no good sign, and worse yet that Llynya had slipped into the heart of it. He had to get to the surface. The Quicken-tree thought him immune to the heaviness of the dark. They were wrong. He felt it, and with the fire running through his blood, ’twas near unbearable. He needed sky above him, before he was crushed by the flames and the dark and the sheer weight of the earth surrounding him.

  Aye, the madness was upon him, and delirium as well. Specters had hounded him out of the deep dark as surely as any spider people. He’d felt eyes upon him, seen fleeting shadows disappear behind him on every turn of the trail, heard scuffling where no one was to be found. And the smell. They’d brought the rotting smell of the black smoke up from the deep dark with them. It haunted his steps.

  He looked to the front of the group. Llynya and Trig were carrying Bedwyr’s body with the maid in the lead. Math plodded along beside them, his head hanging low, one arm limp at his side. With the light coming off the cliff face, Mychael saw the purple festering of Math’s wounds and the unnatural stiffness on the right side of the man’s body. The spider people possessed baleful weapons, poisoned threads and razor-sharp bolts of thullein. He knew not what Rhuddlan would come up with to fight them. Llynya spoke of elf shot, while Shay wondered if enough of it still existed in the world. The mines beneath Tryfan were said to have long since been played out.

  Mychael had thought the mines only legend, the stuff of his mother’s stories. She’d been a master tale-teller, weaving words together with her voice and a delicate power that had forever engraved them upon his heart, stories of the iron-spined, dragon-backed ranges in the north and the mountain halls of the Douvan kings, of dragons and caverns filled with treasure, and of an age of elves and men. Since his return to Merioneth, too many of those tales had proven true for him to doubt the others. With war upon them, mayhaps he would yet see the wonders of Tryfan.

  “Wonders,” he muttered to himself. ’Twas hell seeking him out, not wonders.

  Up ahead, Math staggered, falling behind, and Mychael swore again. God’s blood, but he would not lose more Liosalfar, and they could not carry another. He lengthened his stride, then broke into a run when Math’s knees buckled.

  “Llynya! Hold!”

  The maid looked back and, upon seeing Math, loosed her grip on Bedwyr and came running. Mychael reached the man first, with Shay close behind.

  “Sticks,” the boy whispered, sinking down on his knees next to his fallen comrade.

  Mychael thought worse, but said naught. Math was pale, his muscles tight with pain, his eyes squeezed shut. Strange words poured out of his mouth.

  Delirium, Mychael thought, the beginning of the end for them all. “What’s he saying?”

  “ ’Tis a prayer for the dying,” Llynya answered, dropping down next to Math and pressing her hand to the young man’s forehead.

  “He’s dying?”

  “No.” She smoothed Math’s lank dark hair back off his brow. “But he thinks he is. ’Tis an old tongue of the sídhe speaking. He’ll feel better when we’re out of the caves.”

  He wasn’t the only one.

  The maid ran her hand down the side of Math’s face, tenderness guiding her touch as she bent over him and cooed soft words of solicitude—and all Mychael could think was that if Math wasn’t dying right then and there, he might want to consider it for the kind of attention he was getting.

  “Give him your lavender simple,” he ordered gruffly, “and get him to his feet. If he wants to pray, he can do it in Merioneth.”

  A quick glance passed between Llynya and Shay, as if each thought the other should speak up on the side of reason. He quelled Shay with a look the boy knew well enough not to misinterpret. The maid, damn her, defied him.

  “Math needs rest, not just simples,” she said, her chin lifting with determination. “We all do.”

  Wrong, he could have told here. He didn’t need rest. He needed to get out of the swivin’ caves before they ate him alive.

  “If the Sha-shakrieg had been following us,” she went on, as if he didn’t already know the truth of it, “they would have attacked before we reached Mor Sarff. We’re safe here.”

  The hell they were.

  “Get him to his feet,” he growled, repeating his order to Shay, who knew better than to disobey, “or give him to the mother ocean. We’re moving out of here, and we’re moving out fast.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Left alone with Bedwyr, Trig stumbled to a halt. He tried to steady his breathing to clear his mind and think. Pain scoured a deep line across his face where he’d been wrapped by a Sha-shakrieg fighting thread. The eye it had crossed was near blind. Rasca was no balm against the spider people’s poison. The wound burned like fire on his skin, but the threads had not been steeped to a killing strength, or both he and Math would have died in Crai Force.

  Aye, dead they should be. Curious, that. He’d never known the Sha-shakrieg to take half measures.

  He looked up, instinctively turning his face toward the light, and realized they’d reached the damson cliffs and Mor Sarff. He should have known; the smell of salt was strong. ’Twas not far now. He lowered the rest of Bedwyr’s body to the beach, then watched as water lapped at the shroud they’d made of their cloaks. Behind him, he heard voices.

  “Ah, and come on now. Open up, Math.” The sprite was bent over the warrior, putting something in his mouth. When Math ate it, she closed her pouch and shoved her shoulder under his. Along with Shay, she got the fallen Liosalfar to his feet.

  “Llynya!” Mychael ab Arawn roared from up the beach, and Trig saw her stiffen. “Llynya!” he yelled again.

  With obvious reluctance, the sprite left Shay to struggle on alone with Math. She did not look well. Her face was drawn, her strides unsteady as she climbed the beach toward the headland. Mychael had pushed them hard, mayhaps too hard, but Rhuddlan would be pleased to know he had done what was needed.

  Trig’s gaze drifted back to Shay and Math. The threads had slashed open Math’s tunic and burned a line up his arm and around his neck, marking him with the purple poison from the bia tr
ee, wicked sap of the wasteland.

  “You won’t,” he heard the sprite say a moment later, her voice edged with an angry tremor. He looked up the beach. She was faced off with Mychael, her feet planted in the sand, her arms akimbo. “Nobody’s questioned you so far, but you’ll not get away with that.”

  Mychael’s back was to him, and Trig couldn’t hear his muttered reply, but he saw Llynya blanch, and he thought he had better rein the boy in. They had nothing left to give him, either in speed or strength. Mychael had gotten them to Mor Sarff in record time. No more could be asked.

  Before Trig could move, Llynya stalked off, coming back to the water’s edge. An angry flush colored her cheeks.

  “Help me get Bedwyr farther up the beach,” she said upon reaching him.

  Aye, Trig thought, she was right. His second should not be left in the surf. ’Twas well past time for rest and food. Mayhaps someone still had seedcake to share, and catkins’ dew.

  Nay, he remembered. There would be no catkins. They’d drunk the last of it when they’d made their rough camp. He would send Shay on ahead for more... and for reinforcements. Aye, for reinforcements. That was the important thing. Another damson shaft had broken, fell tidings, and the day’s trek had taken an odd turn, even withstanding Mychael’s foul mood. He’d liked not the feel of the tunnels on that last stretch up to the sea. Eyes had been watching, and even through the dense scent of the bia sap, he’d detected the stench of skraelings. That they dared to come this far south was proof of more than trouble brewing.

  Aye, he’d send Shay on ahead to Merioneth. The boy had strength to spare, and Trig trusted he would stay out of trouble, given the seriousness of their circumstances.

  “Trig?” He felt a hand cup his chin and looked up to find Llynya leaning in close and staring into his eyes. “Can you hear me, Trig?”

  “Aye,” he said gruffly, and pushed her hand away. He was not so far gone as that. “Come on, then.”

  Between the two of them, they carried Bedwyr higher up on the shore, laying him at the foot of one of the trails that wound up the dark cliffs, leading to the pryf nest. Math was leaning against the rock face with Shay supporting him and looking uncomfortably cowed. Mychael had drawn his crystal dagger and was pacing a trough in the sand in front of the cliffs, looking up at the nest twenty feet above them.

  The open catacombs writhed with the movements of the worms. Light from the crystalline headland shone on their slick greenish black bodies, revealing which tunnels were active and which were open. The trick in getting through the pryf nest was in choosing the right trail from the beach to get to an open tunnel. In times bygone, before they’d been sealed in the weir, the pryf had been easy to herd. Now ’twas a good day to make it up to the nest without having a worm come rushing down the trail and sending everyone scrambling for the beach. Like all creatures that had tasted the weir, they wanted back in the hole. The only thing keeping them out was Rhuddlan’s seals.

  “Shay, take Math up. Hold to the left,” Mychael ordered, pointing out a path. “Llynya, go with them.”

  The two young men started out, but the sprite didn’t move. She had a stubborn set to her mouth, though not enough to offset the wariness in her eyes. ’Twas not the path worrying her, Trig knew. Any one of them would have chosen the same. Still, she was hesitating and looking to him.

  “Go on, girl,” Trig said. “Mychael and I will carry Bedwyr.”

  Her gaze shifted to Mychael, seeking something the boy was unlikely to give. Assurances had not been his strong suit on the trek.

  “Go,” Mychael said, dismissing her with a gesture and a harsh tone. “You’ll not want to be part of this.”

  The sprite turned and fled, leaving Trig to wonder what Mychael meant. ’Twas not like Llynya to run off if she had something to say. He wished his mind were clearer. There would be no time for rest and food if they started up to the nest now. He should order a halt, for everyone’s sake, even Mychael’s. Mayhaps especially for Mychael. There was an unhealthy edginess about the boy.

  Mychael looked at him then, turning away from watching Llynya as she reached the others. Trig found himself staring at a stranger’s face framed by a mane of disheveled yellow and copper-colored hair. The caverns were cool, the shore of Mor Sarff even more so, yet sweat dampened Mychael’s forehead and cheeks. His skin was flushed, his muscles tight with strain, and when their eyes met, a cold, hard knot formed in Trig’s stomach. He instinctively made a warding sign... Shadana.

  The younger man noticed the flicker of movement, and his mouth twisted in disgust. “I thought better of you, Trig.”

  He’d thought better of himself too, that Bedwyr’s worries were overblown and that Naas’s vision would come to naught. He’d been wrong.

  “Then ye have not seen yerself this day.” Trig knew men’s gazes, knew what lurked behind the dark centers, and he saw chaos in Mychael ab Arawn’s, the heated frenzy of Ddrei Goch’s breath stirring in the boy’s spine.

  For all the frenzy of his gaze, Mychael eyed him dispassionately. “In truth, I have seen too much of what I am and fear it not near so much as what I shall become.”

  Aye, Trig thought, holding back from making another warding sign. Naas’s vision had spoken true, and there was reason to fear. The grim portent of the boy’s words spoke of at least a measure of sight. Rhiannon must have known. Yet if those women of old had sent their blood down through generations of novitiates until such time as one bore a son, their plans had gone dangerously awry.

  Trig looked at the ragged hem of the Welshman’s tunic, at the monk’s wool leggings he wore and the Quicken-tree boots. No ancient priestess would have condoned the raising of one of her acolytes in a Christian monastery. They had fought the hooded brothers and their bloodstained God on every quarter. Nor would the Druid women have liked any better the giving over of him to the Quicken-tree—with good reason. Rhuddlan would use the boy as well as any, if he could. With Mychael by his side, the Quicken-tree leader need not wait for time to take Carn Merioneth beyond the reaches of Men. Time would come to him, drawn by a dragon-born seer on the night of Calan Gaef. Except the dragon-born seer had not been trained by the one who bore him, and more likely than not, Rhuddlan would set him to the task anyway and they would all be swept into a vortex without end.

  Trig stifled a curse. Madron had created this stew. She’d stolen Rhiannon’s children during the battle fifteen years ago and hidden them away behind the Christ’s sanctified walls where no Quicken-tree dared go. For her trouble, they must all now deal with a man whose loyalties were torn and whose powers not even he could control.

  And the look of him, with that fire dancing in the depths of his eyes...

  Trig tamped down his surging unease, refusing to call it fear, and reached for Bedwyr. He had not blanched at the dark smoke in the broken damson shaft. He would not let himself be unnerved by a fledgling. Still, there would be no argument or orders for rest and seedcakes. ’Twas best to leave as quickly as possible. With that goal in mind, he took hold of Bedwyr’s shroud.

  “Leave him be,” Mychael said.

  “Ye can’t carry him alone.” Trig bent to the task and was stopped by a forceful hand on his shoulder.

  “Leave him on the sand,” Mychael said, the command spoken through gritted teeth, with naught of a request about it.

  The cold, hard knot in Trig’s stomach grew even colder. Damn the boy for his gall, that he dared to challenge a Liosalfar captain. Priestess creature or nay, Arawn’s son went too far if he thought to rule here. Trig had been blooded in battle before Mychael’s father had been born, before his grandfather.

  Shaking off Mychael’s hand, Trig straightened to his full height, wincing at the pain the effort caused. “The Quicken-tree do not leave their dead in the dark.”

  “I am not Quicken-tree, old man. Leave him.”

  Old man. Trig bit back an oath and reached for his blade. Before he could find his knife, Mychael grabbed his hand and pulled it up between them.
The pain near put him to his knees.

  A snarl curled Mychael’s lips. “I can still smell the black smoke where it touched you, Trig. Would you have it taint us all? We’re leaving Bedwyr and making our run to Merioneth. If you would have it otherwise, gainsay me with your steel.”

  Out of the corner of his good eye, Trig saw the flash of the crystal blade in Mychael’s other hand. He was half-blind on his left side, and though he carried daggers on both sides and had a longsword, Mychael’s dreamstone would win the day before he could draw any of them. The only question was where the boy would strike and how deep.

  He held Mychael’s gaze and feared the answers he saw. The mad fool might kill him, and that would do none of them any good. Swallowing the bile of defeat, he muttered a curse and pulled away, and knew that he was no longer captain of the Liosalfar. Nor did he deserve to be, if he wasn’t quick enough to overcome a nestling, even if ’twas Ddrei Goch’s. He, a hero of the Wars of Enchantment, had been taken without a fight, but that was the only shame he’d bear. The boy could cut him down where he stood, but he was not leaving Bedwyr on the sand, not with a skraelpack lurking so near.

  He shifted his one-eyed gaze to Mychael. “I’m puttin’ him in one of the tunnels. Ye might or might not ’ave noticed we was being followed, but those that was doin’ it like nothing better than a bite o’ tylwyth teg.”

  That made the boy blanch. “Bedwyr, is no child,” he said.

  “The stinkin’ beasts don’t care if ’tis mutton or lamb when it comes to Quicken-tree flesh. Dinna ye smell ‘em?”

  The boy slanted his gaze to the path they’d taken up from the dark, proving that he had.

  “ ‘Skraelings,’ they be called,” Trig said, “and twisted, evil men they be. I’ve been smelling ’em for two lan.”

  From his expression, so had Mychael. “Do what you will with Bedwyr, but be quick about it.”