by Tara Janzen
And thus she drove the dragons forth to fight Dharkkum.
~ ~ ~
From her perch on the trail to the pryf nest, Naas watched the dragons and the Starlight rider disappear into the churning tunnel of darkness. The roots of the land trembled with the force of that first clash, and in the ensuing eruption of smoke and blackest night, she caught a bare glimpse of the dragons wheeling about for another attack—and so it went.
Drenched by the rain and huddled against the rock wall at her back, Naas took up a priestess chant. Arianrod Agah had promised her a fierce creature, and Naas had never seen one fiercer than that which Mychael ab Arawn and Ddrei Goch had become—beastly, huge, feral, but not fell. The Druid boy was no skraeling, and he and the Red Dragon were both of the cauldron born. Truly, there was power here, a shape-shifter conjured from millennia past, brought forth by dragons in the present, a calling to the blood set by a Prydion mage’s spell.
Auch. She’d lived to see more than she’d dreaded, more than she’d hoped, dragons and their shape-shifting lord battling the ancient enemy for the fate of the world.
The seas grew wild, rising high with the tide and the storm of war and sweeping clean the beaches. When the smoke grew thick and the night-black threads snaked through the cavern, even the doughtiest of the Liosalfar retreated to the nest and cowered in fear. But when the dragons pushed the darkness back and the wind blew them a freshening breeze, all took heart and fought again. Skraelpacks that escaped beyond the Wall were hunted down and killed in the deep dark. Those that fled aboveground to Merioneth were mired in the spreading rot and died in Riverwood. The Liosalfar were relentless in their pursuit, and the skraelings were leaderless. Yet all would be for naught if Dharkkum overcame the rider and the dragons.
Naas never left her place, and her hope never waned. She’d seen the past a thousand times in the flames, and all the stories had led to the one playing out in the cavern. But with the coming of Corvus Gei, she’d seen the future—solid and whole and clearer than any vision she’d ever conjured in her fires. Aye, and he did her heart good when all the world was darkness and the screaming cries of dragons filled the air. She might have feared all would soon be lost, except for him, the traveler, his mere existence proof that Dharkkum would not prevail, not in this time.
Tightening her cloak around her, she closed her eyes and shivered against the storm—and she waited for victory.
~ ~ ~
Darkest terrors of the night, a deep scent path filled with the smell of blood and rotted offal and all things too terrible and pestilent to name—it pained Llynya to breathe. Her body ached with exhaustion, her muscles and limbs were stretched near to their breaking point where she held to her place on Ddrei Glas’s back. In all the world, there was naught but darkness cut only by the beast’s fiery breath and the faint flicker of her dreamstone blade. Of Mychael and the Red Dragon, she’d seen nothing, not for an eternity—for there was no time in Dharkkum, neither past nor future, only an endless, instant present that simply was.
She fought. Nothing more. Nothing less. She fought with the strength of her heart and the mighty beast she rode.
Darkness and the rushing wind of beating wings—a deadly race to the end of time. Pure instinct ruled the Red Dragon, to devour, to destroy, to feed on the darkness that dared to breach what he’d been born to protect. The battle raged in all-consuming night rent by his fiery breath, flames of shifting shades of color coalescing into a blinding white light to obliterate the smoking, blanketing void feared as Dharkkum.
When the wretched force of destruction retreated, he followed with scorching speed, racing in pursuit through the labyrinth of fjords and tunnels in the deeper caverns, following the shores of Mor Sarff.
“Fight with me!” he roared, his voice harsh and guttural, far from human. Yet he knew the one he called would understand. She rode the Green Dragon at his side. A faint bluish light flickered in her hand, the only guide he had, besides the inky, fluid center of the darkness that pulled him ever onward to fight or die.
Time slipped away in the dark war, and when the dragons disappeared into the lost lands beyond Mor Sarff, following Dharkkum, Naas could do naught but wait and chant. The storm of battle still raged about her in the cavern and beyond, but even through the maelstrom of sound and fury, she heard the cracking of rock and the screams of the beasts, and once, she heard a fair, trembling voice faint on the wind... Heln heln criy-darr... ba!
‘Twas a chant for the doom of Dharkkum, and she prayed it meant Llynya yet lived.
At the end of the fifth day, the last traces of the empty void of night cleared once more and no new smoke arose to take its place. ’Twas only then that Naas roused herself and shuffled to the edge of the trail to look north, towards the far reaches of Mor Sarff. Two more days she waited for the dragons and the rider, but the dragons ne’er did return.
Trig it was who found Mychael and Llynya lying on the sands of a cove hidden deep in the secret passages of Mor Sarff. Long gashes rent their tunics, as if they’d fought with demons. Firemarks singed their skin, clothes, and hair, but the Druid boy was whole as a man. They were sorely wounded, aye, and pale beneath the layers of soot and grime covering them, but they were alive.
Chapter 28
The winter became a time of healing for the land and for the tylwyth teg. As the deep dark rid itself of the smell of Dharkkum, Liosalfar troops explored farther and farther, searching for Ailfinn and Rhuddlan. But though they scoured the tunnels and caverns from the Rift to the Wall, no sign of the mage or her companions was ever found. Ailfinn was lost to them, along with the Elhion Bhaas Le. The King of the Light-elves was dead... long live the king!
The prifarym no longer churned in wildness, and Mychael and Llynya spent the long months setting the nest aright. He left her once in mid-November, traveling north to a monastery in Gwynedd to have a mass said for Owain. The stalwart Welshman had befriended him in a time of need and was sorely missed. Mychael would not have Owain’s soul troubled by the enchantment surrounding his death. After the winter solstice, he and Llynya descended into the dragon nest below Lanbarrdein to prepare it for the mating that would take place on Beltaine in the spring. One year hence, Ddrei Glas would return from the dragons’ far northern lair to spawn and die, and a year later, Ddrei Goch would come for the hatching and join her in death. There would be new dragons to raise then, two culled from the pryf larvae. And so the cycle of the dragons would once more be united with the rhythms of Merioneth.
Calan Gaef had come at the end of October, a sennight after the smoke had cleared, and a small ceremony had been held in the Cavern of the Scrying Pool. With Madron by his side, Mychael had drunk the dragon wine and opened the doors of time, becoming the Beirdd Braint of the Quicken-tree, but not their king.
That night the dragons had sung out on the Irish Sea, and he and Madron both had seen a future that would take him away from the land of his mother. Nemeton’s steps were his to follow, not Rhuddlan’s, and ’twas to Wydehaw Castle he and Llynya would go after Beltaine, to the Hart Tower. Within the coming years, there would be journeys to Yr Is-ddwfn. In February, at the fire festival of Imbolc, Moira set out on that trail herself, taking news of Ailfinn’s passing and the promise of Llynya’s return.
Unexpectedly, after so many months of freedom, the elf-maid’s malaise came upon her at Alban Eiler, the vernal equinox, when darkness gives way to light. Holding her in his arms, Mychael, too, felt Morgan’s endless fall through time. For two nights and a day, he gave her what strength he could to keep her from her terror, talking to her as the damnable force that bound her to the Thief threatened to consume her. In time, the malaise passed. And in time, the day for leaving Carn Merioneth came.
~ ~ ~
The groom, Noll, was the first to see the ethereal pair appear as if by magic out of the early morning mist. Like spirits they came, riding faerie horses of purest white, their green hoods draped low over their faces. To any and all who ever asked, he said their m
ares had walked across the top of the Wye that morn, their hooves naught but breaking the surface of the river.
He stumbled more than once in his haste to reach the great hall and arrived at his lord’s table covered in muck from both the lower and the middle baileys.
“Milord, milord,” he said breathlessly, collapsing in front of the dais where Soren D’Arbois was breaking his night’s fast. The Lady Vivienne, it was to be supposed, was still abed, mayhaps suckling the heir born three months past. “Riders approach!”
“How many?”
“Two, milord.”
“Their standard?”
“None, milord, but they’re from Faerie for certes.” After his tangles with the mage of Wydehaw, who had disappeared a year past and—it was hoped—would never return, Noll had become the resident expert below the salt on all things magical.
Above the salt, his reputation did not carry quite so much weight.
The Baron of Wydehaw looked down his hawklike nose and waved him away. “Begone, knave, until you have your wits about you.”
Noll started to protest, but was waylaid by instinctive self-preservation. The baron’s mood had improved mightily over the last year, but he was not without his cruel streak.
Being gone, though, did not of necessity mean leaving the hall. Noll scrambled back from the dais, finding a place with the dogs among the rushes.
Soren called for more ale, doing his best to ignore the groom’s absurd announcement, yet keeping one eye on the door. Mages, wizards, witches, wild folk, and faeries—he’d had his fill. ’Twas the damn Hart Tower that drew them, Nemeton’s tower. The blasted thing had been empty only a year. Was it possible another sorcier would come so quickly to take the Dane’s place?
He prayed not. He’d near lost his wife, not to mention a small piece of his soul, to Dain Lavrans.
He lifted his freshly filled cup to his mouth, but stopped before he’d finished the draught, the fine hairs on the back of his neck rising.
The mesne at the tables below did not seem to notice anything amiss. Nor his seneschal. The priest was there that morn, Father Aric, and he twitched a bit, but the man had not been quite right since the Maying a year past.
Nay. None seemed to notice the subtle change in the air that set Soren alert. He sensed it, though, a clearing of the morning light, a brightening of the tapers lit to dispel the hall’s gloom. The ale tasted sharper. The scent of the rushes was sweeter.
When his guard came to announce visitors, he found himself inexplicably rising, and he the lord.
Two cloaked and dew-bespeckled figures walked through the great oak door at the end of the hall and awaited his bidding. He beckoned them forth through the chaos of the knights and squires at their meal. Silence descended on the men as the two passed, and Soren found himself wondering if mayhaps the groom had been right. At the foot of the dais, the two removed their hoods.
In all his years to come, Soren never forgot his first sight of the Lady Llynya. Even after she and Mychael ab Arawn had long left Wydehaw, he could recall with startling clarity the fathomless depths of her green-eyed gaze holding his across the table; the twists and braids of her ebony hair and her supple crown of leaves; the shimmering silkiness of her clothes, all green and silver and more like rain sheeting down than any cloth he had ever seen. Her face had been regally serene, yet with a hint of mischief playing about the corners of her mouth. He had instantly fallen in love with a purity of heart he had thought long lost to such a sinner as he.
She asked for little, no more than the Hart Tower, and when he explained that the tower was not truly his to give, but could be won only by whoever could open the Druid’s Door, she merely smiled and gestured to the Prince of Merioneth.
The deed was done in record time, and Soren D’Arbois found himself living once more in the midst of magic.
~ ~ ~
In the fall of the year, Mychael and Llynya made one final trip to Deri, the summering grounds of the Quicken-tree. Trig and the others had already left for Carn Merioneth. Mychael and Llynya had seen them off with a promise to come at Calan Gaef and bring Madron and Edmee, who had spent the summer in their cottage in Wroneu Wood.
Of all the joys in Mychael’s life, few compared to watching the elf-maid gather flowers, or sing to honeybees, or tell strange and wondrous stories to the chickadees. She’d taken quite well to living in the Hart rather than the woodlands, though she had planted an acorn in the alchemy chamber when they’d first arrived in Wydehaw, and the thing was already pushing up through the main solar’s floor. The tower would someday be consumed by a great oak.
He stretched out on a bed of fallen leaves, looking up between the branches of the mother oak where Llynya sat on a limb weaving her tale to an enchanted audience of small birds.
“There were those of fair, kind hearts, Whistler, White-Eye, and Mast, brave chickadees, who heard the frightened cries, and daring all against the storm flew into the brunt of it to save the maids. Other birds followed, swooping down to the sea, where two dozen to the princess, they plucked the hapless sisters from the waves and saved them all. And if any should doubt the tale, the whole of the valorous flight is forever engraved in the hallowed halls of Fata Morgana’s palace.”
The chickadees preened themselves, as always, at this sure sign of their bravery. When they were all thoroughly fluffed, they chirped in chorus and flew off to roost for the night. That was what Mychael wanted to do, roost for the night in a nest of leaves with Llynya.
She dropped down from the limb with a lightness he’d learned as well as any elf, and he smiled up at her, welcoming her into his arms. She came to him with an easy willingness that never failed to amaze him.
“Shall we stay out under the stars tonight? Or back to Wydehaw?” she asked, molding her lithe body along the length of his and pressing a light kiss to his cheek.
“Stars,” he said, content to lie between the gnarly roots of the oak and watch the night fall around them. There was always work to be done in the tower: formulas to decipher, distillations to be made, books to be read. Nemeton had set a course of study into the Blue Book of the Magi, and Madron was ever wont to come to the Hart and see how he was getting on with his lessons.
Llynya kissed him again, sweetly on the tip of his nose, and his smile broadened. With a slight shift of his body, he had her fully on top of him, pressing down on all the right places to conjure and maintain a steady hum of arousal. He arched his hips to settle her more deeply against him, and the hum became a subdued roar of anticipation.
She knew the worst of him, had seen his darkest side in their fight with Dharkkum, and yet she loved him. She let him come into her body for both pleasure and succor. She lived with him day to day, worked by his side, tended his hurts, and shared his meals—and she knew. She knew what he had become in the battle.
Her mouth came down on his, not so lightly, and he opened himself to her wondrous ravishment, to the gentle thrusting of her tongue meeting his. ’Twas always magic when they touched. No sensory perception could match the speed with which the merest brush of her arm traveled through his entire body, focusing his awareness on her.
She liked to kiss. He’d never in his life dreamed of being the recipient of the number of kisses as she had to give, the sweet, light ones for hello, good-bye, I’m here, you’re there, and so I’ll kiss you; the wondrously rich and deep ones of drugging intensity when she would bind him to her with her green sorcery; and all the kisses in between.
She was a brave lover indeed to seduce a dragon—for that was what he had become within the cloaking darkness of Dharkkum. Not just in heart and mind, but in all ways a roaring devourer of the darkness; no less destructive than Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas, for he had been them—and Llynya had been his master, the temper on his rage, the shining light he’d followed.
They’d both been aged in those dread days, but they’d found youth again in Wydehaw, whiling their days away together in Wroneu Wood. Madron’s and Edmee’s sadness was o
ne they shared for the loss of Rhuddlan, yet they loved and made love and had found their healing in each other.
When her kisses had driven him beyond distraction, and the soft weight of her on top of him would no longer suffice, he rolled her beneath him. She slid her hands under his tunic and pushed his braies off his hips, freeing him into her palm. A low groan escaped him as she stroked him to hardness, her moves firm yet tender. Being loved by her was everything he’d ever dreamed of and more than he could have imagined. She’d taken him in her mouth that morning, and the soft, wet suction she’d plied on his shaft had been pure enchantment. ’Twas not the first time she’d taken him such, but it always felt like the first time. For himself, he’d kissed her everywhere, tasted her nectar with his tongue and filled himself with exquisite pleasures. They were becoming one.
He removed her braies while she tantalized him with her hand, and at her urging he joined his body to hers. Shared kisses set his rhythm, the silent communication of love that brought them to climax. Even at the end of it, he kissed her, the kisses a benediction on the act and of gratitude to the God who had made her so that he could sleep each night with her in his arms.
In the quiet hours before dawn, she awoke beside him with a start and a soft cry. His hand immediately went to his knife; all his senses alert. Deri was protected by a bramble, yet ’twasn’t inconceivable that a stranger had breached the wooded glade.
“Nay,” she said, reaching a hand out to him. She’d sat up, and her other hand was pressed against her breast, above her heart. “ ’Tis not danger.”
He scanned the trees to the river and sensed no intrusion on their idyll. His attention came back to her. “Are you hurt?” he asked, smoothing his palm over her cheek.
