Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  Trig was quick, smoothing his hand over the curved arch of the nearest tunnel to find the signs of the lock while Mychael watched, then sliding the crystal hilt of his blade into the notches keyed by Rhuddlan. When the ether, a pearlescent gossamer sheath that covered the entrance, lifted away from the sand, Mychael helped him slide Bedwyr inside. Trig removed the blade from its last notch in the rock and the sheath fell back into place, truly a death shroud for the old warrior, and not one that skraelings or Sha-shakrieg could breach.

  They turned to leave, and Trig’s attention was drawn to Llynya. The sprite was standing at the bottom of the path, uncommonly still and watching them with an intensity that made Trig uneasy. ’Twould do neither of them any good should she decide to come to his defense against the boy. Yr Is-ddwfn aetheling or nay, he would not give her much of a chance against Mychael on this day. When he walked toward the path and her gaze did not shift, he realized it wasn’t him at all that held her attention, but the tunnel gate.

  Mourning for Bedwyr, he thought, as did they all.

  ~ ~ ~

  Late. They had been too late. Skraelings run like the wind for blood, they’d said. Ten leagues in a single night, they’d said, and then the craven bastards had taken a sennight and missed their chance at the shrouded strangers and a whole friggin’ mess of Quicken-tree—and the lavender woman who would be his.

  Couldn’t be helped, Wyrm-master, they said. Needs to wait for Slott of the Thousand Skulls.

  Wyrm-master. He, Caradoc, the Boar of Balor, had been reduced to Wyrm-master; and he, too, waited for Slott, the thousand-skulled cretin who had caused the delay and cost him the lavender woman.

  The skraelings had brought him something for his leg, a roughly wrapped package offered with a sly nod. He took the bundle and limped over to a bench hollowed out of a wall in the rough and dirty cave they’d brought him to. ’Twas a day’s march from the wormhole, on the same northern route they’d taken in the spring. The skraelings sat all around the cave, some on other benches or outcroppings of rock, some on the floor at the edge of a murky pool. Smoke from their fires wafted in the cross-breeze flowing down from a vast cavern two days farther north. Rastaban, they called the cave, Eye of the Dragon. The place had been long abandoned the first time he’d seen it, with piles of bones half-turned to dust and great swaths of cobwebs hanging like cathedral curtains from giant stone chairs and the huge, thick pillars flanking them. Each bench in Rastaban was big enough to sleep three men. Stairs had been carved from the cold rock with risers as high as his knees, leading up into the fathomless dark of the ceiling. And now ’twas to Rastaban they would return.

  A few of the skraelings were still scavenging food from out of the rat cage no skraelpack traveled without, roasting the vermin on the tips of the same pointy sticks and swords they used for murder and mayhem. Most were finished feeding and had taken to picking their teeth with the bones.

  A more motley bunch he’d ne’er seen. The man to his left was pasty-faced, so pale the veins showed beneath his skin, blue rivers running under a bulbous nose and lumpy cheeks and into erratically placed wisps of hair. Caradoc had seen a few others like him. Next to the fire a group of three dark men, their skin different shades of gray ranging from fine ash to charcoal, played a game of knuckle-bones. Greasy black hair stuck out from under their iron helmets.

  The most cunning of the troops by far were the greenlings, called such for the green tinge to their skin. Two of these were cooking rats over the fire. A third was spitting one of the pale, eyeless lizards that inhabited the caves. Two more milled from one group to the next. There were twenty skraelings in all, five more than had taken him north in the spring. Each of them had teeth of unnatural length and sharpness for a man, but men they were, or mostly so. To call them beasts would have been an affront to the animal world.

  Aye, only men had eyes that darted and shifted with a skraeling’s speed and suspicion. Only men wore knives and daggers though they had fingernails the size and shape and toughness of bear claws.

  He recognized four of the pack from the spring: Blackhand Dock, a tall greenling with black claws curving out from the tips of his left-hand fingers and yellow claws curving out from his right; Igorot, whose ash gray skin was as smooth as river rock, except where the side of his face had been burned raw and healed badly; Beel, the ugliest, the pasty-faced one, the one he’d caught chewing on his arm when he’d come about on the beach. Beel was missing one of his teeth from that encounter. Caradoc had kept it as a dagger and had it shoved in his belt. The last that he knew was the captain, Lacknose Dock, a greenling.

  The ragged edge of Igorot’s sleeve revealed three black bands around his forearm and a nasty scar that could be naught but a brand, a fresh and weeping one, in the crude shape of a thunderbolt. All of the greenlings were marked with muddy blue lines and a finer, well healed version of the thunderbolt brand. Beel was branded, but not tattooed. Igorot was the largest in the troop, the one who had carried him most of the way north before.

  Caradoc hadn’t liked being away, hadn’t liked it a’tall. The wormhole had a hold on him, and he’d suffered for not being near the swirling abyss. But he’d made it back, and the skraelings had returned, and together they would track down the Quicken-tree and force them to unlock the seals and show him the way back into the hole. That was his reward for watching and waiting and sending word. Then the power would be his again and the skraelings could go to hell.

  He unwrapped the package they’d given him, and a ripple of unease circled around the cavern. Beel grunted and moved away from him on the bench. Thus ’twas with care that Caradoc peeled away the outer layer of leather to reveal a leaf-encased pot. One by one he lifted the leaves and watched them crumble into dust. The thing was old, very old—plunder from a long ago war, they’d told him—probably too old to do him any good. The pot was made of clay and was cracked in a hundred places, and it crumbled away as well when he removed the last layer of leaves. All that remained was a hardened lump of some transparent golden resin, smoothed into a flat-topped ball by the pot.

  He started to taste it, but Igorot made a harsh sound and gestured toward his leg. Caradoc put it there instead, inside his chausses next to his wound, and lo and behold, the pain immediately lessened. Not so much at first, but enough to note the difference. Slowly, the stuff melted against his skin. The faintest smell of the forest drifted up to him, a fragrant, leafy ribbon winding through the foul stench of the skraelings.

  Igorot and the others moved farther away, taking their knuckle-bones to the other side of the fire. Beel heaved his bulk up and trundled to the far end of the cave. Only one came near him, the captain, Lacknose Dock, whose mostly missing nose had been replaced by a silver half-cone.

  The greenling stopped by the bench and reached out for a handful of Caradoc’s hair, grabbing up in his long-clawed fist the copper stripe that ran through the dirty yellow strands.

  “We go now to Slott, Wyrm-master,” Lacknose Dock said, and tugged on the length of hair.

  Caradoc jerked free with a snarl and rose to his feet. ’Twas about time. He would bargain with Thousand Skulls and be done with underlings.

  Lacknose Dock did naught but smile, a fearsome, toothy thing, and, growling a set of orders, led the way out of the cave.

  Chapter 8

  Rhuddlan strode across the upper bailey of Carn Merioneth, a full quiver held tightly in his fist, his destination the ancient yew by the northwest tower. The Liosalfar had brought sore tidings up from the caverns this night: Bedwyr dead and Nia captured; Trig and Math wounded; Sha-shakrieg back in the deep dark—and worse.

  Worse, aye, enough to bring an end to them all: damson shafts cracked and smoking, and skraelpacks.

  No skraeling would venture into the caverns of Merioneth on a dare or for treasure. Nay, they only came for blood, and only when driven by a master. The trick for Rhuddlan would be to find out who wielded the whip.

  As for why the spider people had returned, he had t
o look no farther than himself. Many years had passed since the price on his head had lured Sha-shakrieg into the deep dark, yet he had known they would come again, a new set of warriors to test their mettle against the Scourge of the Wasteland. He oft wondered if spider children still sang songs of Rhuddlan’s Retribution and his march to the Salt Sea. The day he burned Deseillign to the ground and poured a hundred years’ worth of the Sha-shakrieg’s water into the sands had been the end of the Wars of Enchantment, just as the Wars of Enchantment had been the end of so much that had gone before—or so he’d thought.

  He would burn the skraelings out of the caverns, if needs be, but the smoke rising from the crystal seals would require another’s intervention—Ailfinn Mapp’s. The seals were the Prydion Magi’s most ancient watch, and he feared only a great distance or great travails could have kept her from her duty.

  Throughout the castle grounds, the Quicken-tree were hanging lanterns on their willow huts and in the trees, bringing a semblance of the stars down to earth on the crisp autumn night. While the Liosalfar awaited him at the yew, others moved here and there, tending the groves they had planted in the spring, saplings of oak, hawthorn, and hazel, of rowan and fir brought from Riverwood. Lilting evensongs filled the air, sung to keep the young trees warm the whole night long, to entice three years’ growth out of one. Honeysuckle and elder had been planted along the inside of the wall. Wild grasses had been strewn throughout the wards and had reached the golden ripeness of their first harvest.

  There was no rot inside the great wall of Carn Merioneth, but Riverwood was decaying at an alarming rate. The bramble would not be enough to save it, and now Rhuddlan knew why.

  “Owain.” He greeted the man striding toward him from across the bailey.

  “When did Trig get back?” Owain asked, falling in beside him. The man’s rough-hewn face wore age beyond his years and scars of battles past. He was stocky and dark-haired, larger than any Quicken-tree, which had proven a boon when they’d fought Balor, a boon soon to be needed again.

  “Early this eventide,” Rhuddlan answered.

  “Morgan?”

  The Cymry captain always asked, holding out hope that one day when the Liosalfar came up from the caves they would have tidings of his prince.

  “No,” Rhuddlan replied. “War and worse.”

  “I’ve not come across worse than war.”

  “You will shortly, if you choose to stay,” Rhuddlan said grimly. “Are there still villeins south of the Dwyryd?”

  “Aye, but they’ll be gone a’fore winter sets in too hard.”

  Owain had proven to be an invaluable liaison between the tylwyth teg and the few of Balor’s cottars that remained. In the aftermath of battle, when the Quicken-tree had claimed Carn Merioneth from Caradoc, the keep and castle grounds had been looted and pillaged by both the free men and villeins of Balor, an action encouraged by Rhuddlan. He’d wanted nothing of Caradoc’s and for a fortnight had kept his soldiers well out of sight in the caves. The deserted castle had been easy pickings for even the faintest-hearted serfs. The thieves had not been inclined to stay in the demesne and await their new lord’s displeasure.

  As to the farms, Merioneth’s legendary bounty had perished under Balor’s rule with the prifarym sealed behind the weir, until naught but the most meager subsistence could be wrung from the ground. There had been little to hold the people of Balor to the lost keep, especially in the spring when winter stores had grown thin.

  “And the band of thieves seen lurking in Riverwood a sennight past?” Rhuddlan asked.

  “Wei and I set ’em a running, and for certes they’ll have tales to tell.”

  Rhuddlan knew that many who had fled Balor had tales to tell of the strange new ruler in Merioneth. For the rest, time and the bramble would do the deed as Cara Merioneth slid farther and farther from men’s minds. The forest would grow and become impassably dense, until men remembered only that ’twas easier to get to the sea by going north or south around the woods, until Carn Merioneth became no more than a memory. Within the span of those years, any remaining cottars would die, their children would leave, and according to Madron, a vital link would be lost between this world and the other, between Men and their gods.

  Rhuddlan had once thought so too, that naught but the passing of time tamed a land’s gods, and he’d been willing to enhance time’s passing and thus disappear more rapidly into a veiled existence embodied by myth—an inevitability he’d foreseen long ago for the tylwyth teg. Men, he’d reasoned, would find another way to manifest the natural laws, or they would break those laws and suffer their own demise.

  A time of Quicken-tree and the other clans, of Fir Bile and aes sídhe, would come again, a time when the voices of trees would be heard once more, a time when to lay one’s hand upon the earth would be to feel the heartbeat of the Mother, a time when stones would speak of Deep Time.

  Aye, he’d thought all those things and reasoned himself right in his decisions, no matter that Madron did not agree. This night, Trig had proved him wrong. Waning gods needed to fear another force besides time. It came padding into his woods on wolves’ feet and snaked out of the ground on wisps of smoke, and if left unchecked would destroy them all.

  Too many years had passed since he’d looked beyond the borders of his own lands. For too many years he’d given way before the world of Men, feeling the end of the Fifth Age drawing nigh. He’d been wrong. The last battle of enchantment had not been fought.

  Together, he and Owain neared the yew tree where the Liosalfar were waiting. Trig was with them, along with others of the Quicken-tree, three Ebiurrane, and Madron.

  “How’s the boy?” Owain’s naturally hoarse voice took on an edge.

  “He’s well enough,” Rhuddlan said, knowing Owain asked of Mychael. The two had formed a bond, the older man and the younger one, both Cymry, the one trained in battle, the other learning. “Moira has him. He’s tired and needs stitching, but fared better than most.”

  The truth of that was easily seen in the welts running across Trig’s and Math’s skin. The wounds had turned purple, and Rhuddlan knew they burned and ached far worse than a knife cut. A thread had caught Trig across the face, singeing a line through his left eyebrow. Hair would not grow there again.

  The worst of Math’s wounds were around his neck and down his arm. He was being cared for by Aedyth and Elen in a lean-to not far from the yew. Unlike Trig, a grizzled silver-haired warrior who had long since been beyond the limits of suffering, the younger man’s eyes had been glazed with pain when they’d reached the surface. Trig’s eyes had shown only anger. Nearly three days had passed since the battle in the quarterlan cavern, and the worst of the thread’s damage was done. Soon naught would be left but the scars.

  Rhuddlan looked toward the lean-to as they passed. Aedyth was pulling Math’s long dark hair up and away from his neck and applying a fresh coat of rasca and salves. Under the healer’s guidance, Elen was bandaging the young man’s arm with dark green Quicken-tree cloth, the purest available, without a trace of the older silver threads running through it.

  Like to heal like, Rhuddlan thought, for the base material of the cloth and the Sha-shakrieg fighting threads were the same, the larval silk of pryf. The Quicken-tree used the silk in its natural state. The spider people carried theirs deep into the wasteland, to a place far past Deseillign where sulphurous poisons bubbled up from the ground. There they let it steep in vats of bia sap through the cycles of the moon before winding it up into deadly whorls.

  No Liosalfar had been marked by fighting threads since the Wars of Enchantment, when the Sha-shakrieg had fought by the Dockalfar’s side, not since Rhuddlan had earned his own such scars.

  Rhuddlan stopped at the yew and faced the warriors who had gathered to await his orders. He saw Llynya scoot farther into the shadows, as if that would hide her from his gaze. She would have to be watched, with skraelings loose in the land. Kneeling, he shook out the quiver of arrows, letting them fall on the
grass beneath the tree. One of the Ebiurrane, a fair-haired woman named Fand, her face marked with a diagonal stripe of blue woad, leaned in and chose the first arrow. Its shaft was straight and true, born in the heart of an ash tree and marked with runes. Its flights came from the black wingtip feathers of snow geese, its deadly point from beneath the dragon-back of Tryfan—elf shot.

  “I will go to Llyr in the north, and tell him the tale told here this day,” she vowed, then rose to her feet and in a twinkling had melted into the shadows and was gone.

  Llyr had lost both a son and a daughter in the Wars. Rhuddlan knew he would come.

  A Liosalfar of the Quicken-tree, Prydd, chose next. Brown haired, he was past the stages of youth, entering his middlin years. “To Brittany, Rhuddlan, as ye command,” he swore, holding up an elf shot arrow. “To the Daur-clan, to tell them of Sha-shakrieg in the deep dark and skraelings, and of worse to come.” He stood, and Rhuddlan dismissed him with a nod.

  Too many years had passed since he’d last seen any of the Daur-clan. Rhuddlan knew not if they would come, or even if Prydd would find them. The seas had changed and pushed the Daur-clan farther inland on the continent. Rhuddlan had seen for himself how the ocean had risen up and swallowed the forest of Mount Tombe, making it an island surrounded by quicksands and coveted by Christian priests. Nemeton had been the last traveler from Brittany.

  Madron walked out of the shadows of the yew and knelt by the scattered arrows. Rhuddlan tensed. He knew what she was about, and he would not allow it.

  Graceful fingers grasped an arrow, and the white silken sleeve of her kirtle flowed down across the top of her hand. “To Anglesey,” she said, meeting his gaze. Her eyes were green like a Quicken-tree’s, but she claimed no lineage other than that of her Druid father. Her hair, a burnished auburn, was held back from her face by a gold fillet wrought in the same pattern as the golden crests emblazoned on her butter-colored gown.