The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy)

by Janzen, Tara

  There was no pretense in the blush that flamed in Vivienne’s cheeks. The color was caused by true emotion, excitement strummed to life by the dark timbre of his voice.

  “Shall we meet this afternoon?” She would have wine brought up from the cellar, and more of Renaud’s apple tartlets baked. There should be a coverlet or two discreetly arranged on one of the benches. No sense in dirtying a gown.

  “Aye,” he answered. “Let us meet this afternoon.” He smiled, and Vivienne near swooned with the thrill of it.

  “Then excuse me, milord, and I shall go see what keeps my husband.” And if needs be, Vivienne would shake the chit Ceridwen free of whatever hidey-hole she’d found so she could present the pale, scarred thing to her betrothed. With his mind thus eased, there would be no distractions in their tryst, and certainly no competition for his favors.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Have you found her?” Caradoc no sooner shut the door to his chambers than he asked the question of Helebore.

  “Aye, she’s here now.” The leech did not look up to answer, but continued staring into his silver-rimmed mazer, a maple scrying bowl he filled with water and other less pleasant things when he wanted to see what could not be seen.

  “What do you mean now?” Caradoc asked.

  Helebore glanced over his shoulder. “She was not in Wydehaw when we arrived, but she is here now,” he explained. “They will find her soon enough, and then they will call for us.”

  Caradoc was both irritated and relieved. “Where was she?”

  “I do not know.”

  “And her health? Is it good?”

  “I do not—”

  “Damn you, man! Do not tell me that you do not know.” His anger slipped the bounds of irritation and became rage. He raised his hand to strike, but was stopped by Helebore’s warning gaze.

  “’Tis a fascinatingly difficult thing to see inside the Hart Tower,” the leech said, his voice calm, though his eyes reflected an ominous caution. “I have never encountered such a maze of veils, one after the other, like the layers of an onion. I know she’s in there, and Lavrans too, but I cannot see clearly beyond the Druid Door. Will be interesting, indeed, to study it up close.”

  “We are not here to study doors,” the Boar said tightly, and Helebore noted the effort it took for the man to lower his hand. Cretinous brute. He cared naught what Caradoc thought. The opportunity was too ripe to miss. Helebore planned on studying and touching the door, and smoothing his hands over its wood, if wood it was. Study it and learn it, feel it and devour it, for the door had been made by Nemeton, he whose name had been whispered even in Ynys Enlli. The Brittany bard had been well known among men for whom arcane mysteries and secret knowledge were the breath of life. Blasphemy, the Culdees had said, and had thrown Helebore into the sea—only him, though, when there should have been another to drown at his side, for it took two to whisper.

  His lips twisted at the memory. Blasphemy to search for the source of God’s power, a God Helebore believed in unequivocally, but not blasphemy to murder a brother monk? And for unjust causes? Saints, indeed. Frightened fools was more the truth, satisfied to glut themselves on piety and allegories of the abstract, when the abstract was waiting to be seized by a strong hand. Life everlasting was exactly that. Immortality was within a man’s grasp. Life here and now, and then and forever. If God had not wanted man to search, He would not have made some men into searchers.

  Helebore was a searcher.

  Nemeton was a finder. He had not died, Helebore’s fellow whisperer had said, and neither need they, if they could discover the Druid’s path and the source of the pryf, the very key itself. Through pryf a man could be transformed. A past could be forgotten, a new future could be forged. The bard had known the way of it, the soft-spoken Culdee had said, and had merely slipped free of the bonds of time. Beneath Balor Helebore had seen for himself marks of the Druid’s path. How much more would the Hart Tower reveal?

  “I’ve heard the door’s magic is strong,” he said to the Boar, “put there by a Brittany bard and well worth close examination.”

  “Magic.” Caradoc dismissed the word with a wave of his hand and wished he could dismiss the whole of it as easily. He would rather take what he wanted with his sword as he’d always done; and he would have, if Helebore had not washed up on the shores of Balor and shown him how much more he could win with magic. Unfathomable mysteries were hidden deep in the earth beneath his keep, mysteries of wealth guarded by strange and wondrous creatures: gold, jewels, and riches beyond most men’s imagination. His father had been a fool, risking all to take Carn Merioneth for vengeance and the bounty of its land, and then allowing—nay, encouraging—the murder of the lady Rhiannon, who’d been the key to finding the even greater fortune below. Gwrnach had died as much for his lack of vision as he had for the twisted cruelty he had honed upon his son.

  Helebore arched a brow. “What is it you think you keep me for, if not for my magic, milord?”

  The leech’s “milord” had the ring of sarcasm about it, but Caradoc could live with sarcasm. What he could not live with was failure. Helebore had promised him the power to take all of Wales, which was nothing compared to what the leech planned on keeping for himself. He’d heard the medicus mumbling and muttering to himself of a treasure untold, but if Helebore thought he could outwit the Boar of Balor, he would soon learn the feel of a blade in his gullet.

  “I keep you for your wisdom, priest, and your wiles.”

  The leech had known the importance of Rhiannon’s children, how their blood could call the beasts forth, and even more importantly, he had known they lived. Rumors of a fair-haired novice at the monastery of Strata Florida who bore a striking resemblance to a fair-haired novice at Usk Abbey had been brought to Ynys Enlli by a wandering Carmelite friar who had seen them both. It had been a stroke of Caradoc’s own brilliance and a good portion of his meager fortune that had convinced the Prince of Gwynedd to sanction his marriage to Ceridwen ab Arawn, the first of the twins to be found.

  His visit to Strata Florida had not gone as well. Mychael had left his monastery, and his whereabouts remained a mystery, but not for long. Caradoc had stepped up the search for Rhiannon’s son. The latest news to reach the north had placed him near Cardiff, and thus Caradoc had set out to capture them both. One way or another, the Boar of Balor would have a child of Rhiannon’s blood.

  “Is she virgin?” he asked Helebore. One way or another.

  “Virgin, yea, virgin, nay, it matters not,” the leech answered. “Blood is blood. We will use whatever we get from her and distill it on my athanor into a potion strong enough to lure the pryf up from their lair. If it’s the boy’s we get, we will do the same. All that matters is that the blood comes from the line of the Magus Druid Priestess. It must have a familiar taste to the creatures, or they will not obey.”

  Caradoc knew the taste of blood, and he knew the smell of it and the feel of it running over the hilt of his blade onto his hand, but he liked not Helebore’s easy dismissal of virginity. He would not be cheated out of that small spill of blood. He would mix his line with that of the Magus Druid Priestess and create a dynasty the likes of which no monk dared to imagine for fear of burning in eternal damnation.

  “You will have enough of her blood to call the pryf, but no more,” he said, returning the leech’s warning look in full measure. “Remember this, priest. Before she becomes your sacrifice, she will be my bride.”

  Chapter 14

  Putting his arm and his back into it, Dain opened the trapdoor leading from the alchemy chamber to his solar. Erlend had let the fire go out in the athanor, ruining a batch of distillations he’d been working on for seven days, and his mood was poor. The hinges creaked, the dogs pushed out from underneath his raised arm, and a gratifying but short scream of fear escaped Erlend, only to deteriorate quickly into a bout of coughing and swearing.

  “Demn dogs, demn dogs.” The old man cussed and flailed at the hounds. “Get yerself off me. Demn
ye, Numa. Swivin’ bitch.”

  A fine homecoming, indeed, Dain thought, continuing up the stairs until he was far enough to push the trapdoor over onto the floor. It landed with a loud bang, kicking up a cloud of dust and chaff.

  The albino had Erlend by the chausses and was tugging at them, while growling deep in her throat. The old man’s soiled and tattered braies were coming down along with the drooping hose, a sight Dain could have gone three or four lifetimes without having to endure.

  “Numa.” Averting his gaze, he called the dog off and pointed to the hearth. A giggle came from behind him. He glanced back over at Erlend and saw him struggling to rearrange his undergarments over his bony buttocks. The old man had backed himself into the wooden shelves lining the curved stone wall, and his every move caused the pots and jars to jiggle and shake. Ceridwen let out another laugh, more of a snort this time than a giggle. He was glad she was in such good humor after their long night in Wroneu. For himself, he felt like hell.

  “Be gone, Erlend,” he commanded, thoroughly disgusted with the old man’s filth, Ceridwen’s good cheer, and the course his life had taken.

  “I’d be gone,” Erlend groused. “I’d ha’ been long gone, if ’tweren’t fer the demned castle guards layin’ siege to me.”

  “Siege?” The word was no sooner out of Dain’s mouth than he heard the commotion on the other side of the Druid Door. Voices were rumbling. The sound of feet could be heard going up and down the tower stairs. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “They want the maid,” Erlend said. “I let the first one in, that Noll, but he left in such a fuss when he din’t find the girl that I daren’t let another pass. They been out there since sunup. Yellin’ and threatenin’ and raisin’ a ruckus on the door, but I locked ’er down tight and I hain’t lettin’ another one in. If’n I was ye, I’d be demn careful.”

  “Locked her down?” Dain questioned.

  Erlend nodded. “Tighter’n a drum.”

  Dain swore and strode over to the door, tossing the folded Quicken-tree cloth on the bed as he passed. Fool man. D’Arbois would not hesitate long in taking a battering ram to the door, for all the good it would do him. He would do naught but seal the door even tighter by trying to breach it. The plates activated by the levers of the lock were embedded six feet into the curving tower walls on either side. The only way through the Druid Door was by destroying the tower itself.

  The old baron had thought the tower sacred. He had allowed no one to disturb his bard’s chambers, despite the man’s falling from grace. Soren had no such constraints. Superstition had held him at bay for a few months after his father’s death, until his curiosity could no longer be denied. The Hart Tower had been said to hold a treasure trove, to be a repository of man’s greatest riches. It had also been said to be cursed, and thus Soren had devised his reward to induce another to do the actual opening, if they could but find the way. A hundred marks had seemed a small price to pay for the ill fortune to fall on someone else’s head.

  That someone had been Dain, and if there was a curse, he had not felt it until a fortnight ago, when Ceridwen ab Arawn, most cherished and sought after jewel in all the land, had inadvertently fallen into his keeping.

  Damn the chit, and damn the old man.

  He ran his hand over the planks of the door, feeling the pattern of iron rods pushed into the wood. After a minute, he breathed a sigh of relief and looked over his shoulder at Erlend. The man knew nothing. He’d meant no more than the securing of the crossbar. If the door had been truly locked down “tighter’n a drum,” it would have taken Dain himself a sennight to open it back up. That was how long it had taken him to open it the first time. Since then, he’d not locked the door past the second minor level, and that only once. The first minor level was adequate for most circumstances. It had kept Ceridwen in.

  “It’s him, ye know,” Erlend said, making not much sense as usual.

  “Who?” Dain asked, only half listening. The third minor level of iron rods was flush with the oak planks, their exposed ends making the symbol for Venus and copper within the circular pattern of the lock.

  “The pig whose troth was’t plighted.”

  Dain’s eyebrows drew together in a deep furrow. The pig whose troth was’t plighted? Erlend’s blubbering would soon give him another headache. A quick visual survey assured him the first and second minor levels, being the Sun and gold, and Mercury and mercury, respectively, had not been tampered with. The fourth minor level, the heretical placement of Earth, was... Pig.

  His hand stilled on the oak planks. Caradoc had come for the maid. His breath grew short as he turned his head to look back over his shoulder. Ceridwen had understood. Her face had paled beyond white to ghostly.

  “I—I am not ready,” she stammered.

  His heart beat too quickly in his chest. His thoughts were a tangle. Caradoc had come for the maid. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words would form.

  “You promised me magic,” she told him, blending accusation with her plea.

  Magic? He had no magic. He had nothing. Had she not seen through him yet?

  A great pounding started on the door, sending hard and heavy vibrations up his arms. ’Twas the ram he’d expected, a ridiculously short one, given the available maneuvering room in the stairwell, but one sturdy enough to do damage.

  “Cretins,” he hissed, his anger rising out of the morass of his mind and taking hold of his thoughts. He whirled on Ceridwen with a command. “Take your clothes off and hide yourself in the bed.”

  Erlend immediately brightened, a toothless grin forming upon his face.

  “Get below, old man,” Dain warned, shifting his attention to the lecherous servant, “or your next breath will be your last.”

  The ram hit the door again. Hollow echoes sounded through the chamber, curving around the tower walls and leaving a tinny resonance hanging in the air.

  Bastards.

  “Move!” he barked. Erlend jumped, but Ceridwen held her ground.

  “Let me go,” she said.

  “No.”

  “My ankle is near healed. Let me return back through the tunnel and make my escape.”

  “To where?” he demanded. “Strata Florida? Caradoc would have you run down before you could clear the river.”

  “Then through the woods to Deri. Rhuddlan would keep me.”

  “For his own purposes, not yours.” Foolish girl. Did she trust everyone more than she did him?

  The ram struck home a mighty blow.

  “What about your friend, Madron?” Her voice took on a desperate edge. “Her serving woman liked me well enough. Mayhaps they would hide me until I can get word to my brother.”

  “Madron is no friend of mine, or of yours,” he snapped. “She was disguised as the crone, and while you slept, she looked upon you long enough to pronounce you the perfect bride for the Boar of Balor.”

  She stared at him, her hands growing limp at her sides, his words taking the fight out of her.

  “The crone? But I remember a woman coming, a special woman. I felt her presence in the cottage.” Her voice was unsure again. “I... I thought ’twas someone else.”

  “There is no one to help you except me.” They did not have time for this debate. “Get yourself into the bed, or I will be done with you.”

  His threat had the desired effect, and she began stripping off her gown.

  He threw off his cloak and reached for the lacings on his gambeson. They were already half undone, giving him a moment’s pause and making him wonder what else Madron had seen in the night besides his mind. The witch had better beware.

  He finished freeing the laces and removed the gambeson. He needed physick and a simple to make Ceri sleep, and elderberry, chamomile, and lime to make her sweat. Blood would be good for visual effect, but he had none at hand.

  Except for Erlend’s.

  He looked at the old man shuffling toward the trapdoor and started forward. Some of what he thought must have shown on h
is face, for the servant quickened his steps, making it a close race as to who would reach the stairs first. Erlend won with a sprightly jump that no doubt left a little of the needed blood on the floor of the alchemy chamber. Dain grimaced at the waste of it, then shut the trapdoor and kicked the bolt home with his foot. Pudre ruge would have to do.

  He dipped a cup of water out of the cauldron steaming on the hearth and began pulling pots and bottles off the shelf, this and that, all the herbs he needed and half of what he didn’t. The battering ram hit again, a resounding, percussive thud. A bottle slipped from his fingers and crashed to the floor, splintering glass and spilling a vile-smelling concoction. The castle guards were putting their hearts into it. Mayhaps D’Arbois had gotten out his whip. Dain bent to pick up the pieces of glass and swore when he cut himself. Now he had the damn blood. It ran down his finger and pooled in his palm. He grabbed a pile of bandages, making sure to spread the blood as far as possible, and turned to Ceridwen.

  To his dismay, she was still standing in the middle of the chamber. Her gown was gone, but not so her kirtle and chemise.

  “Why aren’t you in the bed?”

  “What are you doing?” was her reply, no answer a’tall.

  He lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Her resolve had rehardened in his few moments of inattention. Though still obviously frightened, she had that sharp-tongued look about her. Would serve Caradoc well to give him the maid in such a mood.

  Then why not do it? he asked himself. Why not be done with her? Her betrothed waited, if not in the stairwell, then in the great hall. He could not have her for himself—Madron had made sure of that—so why not give her to the man who could?

  Because she is too ill to travel. He lied to himself with amazing ease, knowing that if ’twas not yet the truth, it ’would be soon enough, after she drank his potion.

  “I am mixing an infusion to make you sweat and vomit,” he explained patiently, working hard to keep himself from going over and shaking her. “Mayhaps I’ll also give you the runs and make you delirious. I am going to wrap your head with bloody bandages, smear your scars with pudre ruge, and rub ashes into your teeth and gums.”