The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy)

by Janzen, Tara

  “I thought it best for all, to ensure the sanctuary of Cain Merioneth. I would have been here to see that no harm befell you.” Moriath spoke without so much as a hint of apology, enduring Ceridwen’s inquisition with galling grace.

  “You did not tell me who you were that night in Wroneu, in your cottage. Why?”

  “But I did, Ceri,” the witch chided, her smile softening. With a small movement of her hand, she called Numa forth. The hound responded without hesitation, padding forward to circle around the witch twice with nuzzles and sweet growls.

  Ceridwen accepted the refutation and Numa’s desertion with her own good grace, for in her heart she had to admit the truth in Moriath’s words: Deep in the dream, the crone had shown herself as the maid from her childhood, the trusted nurse who had found her and Mychael and protected and cared for them until she had left them with the nuns and monks.

  “That Ragnor captured you was not meant to happen,” Moriath continued, absently directing the hound back to Ceridwen’s side with another slight gesture. “Nor that you were taken to Wydehaw and put under Dain’s care. These things created trouble and discord where there would have been none, if you had come to Carn Merioneth and taken your rightful place.”

  Ceridwen glanced at Dain. “In this you are wrong, Moriath. That I was given to Dain is the only thing to have saved me. We are but here now to open a door for Rhuddlan, then we go north, together. Carn Merioneth is a memory. ’Tis Balor, with all its wickedness, that rules above.”

  Moriath’s answering smile held a hint of sadness, but no offense. “There is more than a door, little one. Open it, and you will see.” She came forward and touched Ceridwen’s face, a light caress of fingertips, the gentlest gesture of affection. “I gave you a dream in my cottage. Use it, and mayhaps you can save the man you love.”

  “Enough, Moriath,” Rhuddlan cautioned. “I will not see harm done to either of them, as well you know.”

  “Nor to yourself,” the witch said, her smile fading. “Yet even now you bleed from the battle your course has brought down upon us. I would not have had men with their killing swords in the caves again.”

  Moira stepped between the two, the solemnity of her demeanor and her sloe-eyed glances admonishing them both. In her hands she held a chalice chased with jeweled dragons, its golden cup full to the brim. “’Tis time for words to end and the ceremony to begin. They must drink.”

  Dain looked at the transparent, incarnadine potion and thought not. Not for himself, and certainly not for Ceridwen. “I have drunk your gwin draig, Moira, and can guarantee we will accomplish nothing this day if I drink it again.”

  “The second drink is not like the first,” she said. “’Tis more like wine and less like the dragon.” A smile touched her mouth and brought a rosy glow to her cheeks, proof that her chastisement over delay had naught to do with him—truly, never did a woman look more the sweet mother—but Dain was not reassured.

  “You must drink,” Rhuddlan said. “As must Ceridwen, if we are to free the pryf from the caves below the Canolbarth, a place difficult to reach in body, and a door even more difficult to breech, for ’tis a weir gate made of the ethers of the earth and the tides that locks the pryf in their bore hole. Far better to journey there through the scrying pool and use its power for the work.”

  “Ethers,” Dain repeated, not liking this turn of things. Ethers were a tricky affair at best, and journeying through scrying pools even more so, if not impossible. Jalal had alluded to such journeys of the spirit, but had shown no inclination to make them himself, or to teach others how. “You, more than most, Rhuddlan, must know the limits of my magic.”

  “Your magic, if you choose to call it such, will suffice,” Rhuddlan said. “The dragon wine will ease the way of it in your mind.”

  Dain shifted his gaze to Moriath, his jaw suddenly tight. The witch knew. “I have had my mind eased before, Rhuddlan, and still pay the price for the pleasure of oblivion. I will not drink.”

  Rhuddlan acquiesced. “I cannot force you. ’Tis not our way. But if you will consent to being cut, your blood can forge a path through the pool.”

  Blood. Worse and worse.

  Dain swore to himself. Ceri had shown him dragons, and now Rhuddlan wanted blood. The significance was not lost on him. Damn Moriath and Rhuddlan both.

  “And if I do not consent?” he asked.

  “You will,” Rhuddlan said. “We made a bargain, both sides of which will be kept or broken. I gave you the maid, Lavrans. Give me my hour of magic.”

  Blood, dragons, and magic, his salvation and his plague, the swivin’ mystery of his life.

  And the bargain. Did him no good to remember he had made his promise in the heat of lust. That he had been snared by that far-flung net again, even for Ceridwen, was salt in the wound. He looked around the cavern. Trig had called the Dragon’s Mouth sanctuary, but Dain feared ’twould not be so for him and Ceri. A hundred Quicken-tree and Ebiurrane lined the ledges of the Canolbarth, and no less than fifteen Liosalfar encircled the pool. There would be no escape.

  “You may have your magic, Rhuddlan, for all that it is worth.” He pushed up his sleeve and offered the man his arm. He would allow no one to take Ceridwen away from him. They would survive Rhuddlan’s hour of magic and then be gone.

  Rhuddlan was quick to accept, drawing his dagger and making a fast, clean cut from Dain’s elbow to his wrist, Blood immediately welled up from the wound, enough to prove the cut beyond a scratch. Ceridwen gasped as Dain flinched.

  “If you go as deep on Ceridwen,” he said between gritted teeth, “I will come for you, Quicken-tree man.”

  “Ceridwen will drink,” Moriath said hastily. “No, Dain, do not look so,” she added when he turned on her. “Gwin draig is in her blood, already a part of her, and will not harm her. The wine will only help her see her way clear.”

  “And my blood?” he asked, watching it drip off his hand into the pool.

  “Your blood will mix with the wine she pours into the water and bind you more completely to her so that, supposedly”—she cast a glance at Rhuddlan—“if you followed her, you could help her or protect her.”

  “Protect her from what?” he demanded. “Pryf?”

  “No. She needs no protection from pryf. But Rhuddlan fears Ceridwen’s nature may not yield enough to complete the journey or the task at hand—whereas you, Dain, know the way of yielding well, whether it be in strength or in weakness. This is what Rhuddlan uses of you, the same skill that kept you from being destroyed in the place where the wind blows hot off the sea and all the mountains are made of sand.”

  A fair enough description of Akabah and the Nefud Desert. “So you did poke and stir around in my mind that night in your cottage.”

  “I touched you, aye, and saw the things you have done.” Her gaze fell away from him for a moment, and so help him, a blush stained her cheeks.

  “Do not judge me, Moriath,” he cautioned her.

  “I do not. I swear.” Her eyes lifted to his. “But no matter your nature or your strength, Dain, ’tis your weakness that endangers you. Believe me, in remotissimo angulo terrae is not a destination for you to seek. Let her go, mage, and do not follow.”

  The remotest corner of the earth, he translated. Latin, like so much in Nemeton’s tower. The witch was as learned as her father, but sorely mistaken in her advice.

  “Untold suffering awaits you there,” she warned him further. “Mayhaps death.”

  “And mayhaps the power Moriath would keep for herself,” Rhuddlan interrupted. “She fears you would take her father’s place here as you have in the Hart and in Deri.”

  “Is that why you gave me the dream?” he asked, turning to Moriath. “To keep me from this remote corner, where you say I must not go?”

  “I didn’t give you the dream,” she told him “I but looked, and it was there.”

  An ill-omened sign, he thought, for such a dream to lie unbidden in the depths of a man’s mind.

  “
Can Ceridwen yield and still be strong enough to return?” he asked, knowing that despite all their talk of yielding, ’twas strength Ceri would need if Moriath proved to be right and he met his death in the deep caves—for he would follow her to hell and back if needs be. Mayhaps he was stronger than the witch allowed. For certes, even with a look into his past, she could not have seen all that it had taken to survive.

  “She is Rhiannon’s daughter,” Moriath said with a return of confidence. “Born and bred to make many such journeys in her life’s time.” She paused, and her voice took on a less sure tone. “Listen not to Rhuddlan, Dain, for my fear is real. You are not Druid, and it has always been a Druid who has forged a union with the priestess through the wine. Nemeton and Rhiannon were the weir amidst the chaos for many years, and before that, ’twas Nemeton and Teleri, Ceridwen’s grandmother.”

  Ceridwen had been listening in silence and liking none of what she heard. Her part in the ceremony had been ordained by her birth. That the Quicken-tree had used Dain’s blood much as Caradoc would have used hers was an abomination. That Dain would be put in danger, she would not allow.

  “Moriath is right, Dain,” she said, stepping forward and taking the chalice from Moira. “You will not come. Rhuddlan will drink with me.” She cast a cold glance at the Quicken-tree man. “Let his be the nature that yields, if yielding it takes.” ’Twas no request she made, but an order, and before anyone could stop her, she lifted the gold cup to her lips for a long swallow.

  When she was finished, she gave the cup to Rhuddlan. Pale gray eyes rimmed in green shone at her over the golden chalice. “You are strong, as I thought,” he said. “Let us hope you also know the way of yielding, if yielding it takes, and prove me wrong in the other.” He took his drink.

  “That is unlikely,” Moriath said with exasperated churlishness, “if we are all run through by Caradoc and do not survive the day. Sweet maid, Rhuddlan has it all his way. It mattered not if he drank. He goes when and where he might in the caves, doing whatever he wishes, excepting for opening the weir gate he made the night Carn Merioneth fell. For that he needs you, and you have drunk, as well you should have, but there is no escape for Dain, unless he devises it himself and chooses not to follow you. Moira herself started his blood in the pool. Rhuddlan has but thickened the mix. The two of you are bound, and for that we have a war beneath the keep.”

  “Watch the water, Ceridwen,” Rhuddlan commanded, draining the chalice into the pool. He looked to Moriath. “You shall have your chance. If she can see her way to the weir gate, I will not interfere. If she cannot, I will drag both her and Dain there myself and put them to the task.”

  “She will see.”

  Ceridwen looked to Dain and prayed that she would see, and that she would finish her task before anything could go amiss and he tried to follow. Moira was already sealing his wound with rasca, which gave her heart. His pain would soon be gone.

  “You are not needed here, Dain. I do know the way of this.” She spoke the lie confidently, her gaze steady, and he smiled in that way of his.

  “You are alkemelych, Ceri, the small magical one. More than any other, my faith is in you.”

  She had not fooled him.

  The sound of the drums grew louder as she lowered her gaze to the pool and prayed for guidance, though who she prayed to was a mystery. She could no longer put a name to God.

  Wisps of vapor rolled and curled across the dark water like storm clouds brewing far out to sea, nebelmer. She felt nothing of the wine, until... until the pool beneath the steaming mist quieted itself and she not only saw the quietness, but sensed it slipping inside her.

  Daughter of Rhiannon... The words slid into her veins along with the dragon wine, soothing her, showing her the way. Daughter of Teleri, daughter of Mair, Nessa, Esyllt, daughter of Heledd and Celemon from the line of Arianrod.

  Her vision of Arianrod was clear. She rose from the stillness of the pool with a river as her hair and eyes the deep blue calm of the ocean, she whose essence was as one with the waters of the earth. There was power in water, sweet elixir of life.

  Beloved daughter of Don, called Dana, Dana of the light, Domnu of darkness who has the earth as her womb.

  A chant rose and fell around her in a lilting, hypnotic rhythm, a hundred voices singing. “Dommmm-nu, Dommmm-nu, Do-amm-nu. A matria patro leandra, eso a prifarym, Domnu.” Stone Mother, lead us to the deep cave of pryf.

  Aye, she knew where the heart of the earth lay, in remotissimo angulo terrae, and she knew she must go there. She bent down and dipped her fingers into the pool, and the water became a part of her, lapping at her skin and sinking through her pores. She had fought this place, this moment, this responsibility, and all of her fighting had been misspent, for there was nothing to fear. ’Twas her duty and her right to open the weir gate and all doors that came before her. Her mother had done it, and her mother’s mother, opened doors and seen through gateways farther into the distance than any horizon could hold. The Light Caves and the Canolbarth were her ancient home. ’Twas where she belonged, Ceridwen of the Cauldron, blessed chalice.

  And yet she would not stay, for north was where her future lay—north, with Dain.

  “Domnu, Domnu, Domnu,” she sang, rising to her feet and letting the water flow back into the pool, taking her essence with it.

  The vaporous steam slowly stretched into ethereal strands and rose into the darkness, released from the water one by one and in pairs. Without the misty veil, the depths of the pool became visible, and ’twas in those depths that Ceridwen saw the abyss.

  She reached out with her hand, thinking how easily she’d found the place where she must go.

  ~ ~ ~

  In a crystal cavern far beneath the Canolbarth, a man strode along the length of a gaping chasm in the floor. He had to keep his head low to miss the ceiling, and hold his quiver in front of him to keep it from being ripped to shreds by the sharp, jagged walls. His unstrung bow he held by his side, his hand wrapped around the leather grip, which was finished at each end with strips of white wool bound with grayish-green thread. A length of rope was looped across his chest.

  The shattered damson stones on either side of the chasm picked up light from the blue crystal he carried and cast their amethystine glow before him, into a tunnel of darkness. Two months past, the floor had been unbroken. He’d watched the crack begin, and grow, and zigzag its way across the cavern; and he’d felt the final giving way of the crystal as it had been torn apart by the twisting and turning of the giant wyrms trapped in the bowels of the earth below. Change was the way of all things, but he sensed doom at the breaking of the damson shaft. He’d tried everything he knew to free the pryf and guessed at half of what he hadn’t known, taking chances whose risks went far beyond life and death, and still the weir gate defied him.

  He reached the end of the low place and slipped into a larger darkness lit only by his crystal. Behind him the damson continued to glow. Without slowing his gait, he slung the quiver over his shoulder. Men were fighting above the Canolbarth, and though the fight was not his, his instincts were running rampant with the need for him to be there.

  Chapter 26

  Ceridwen put her hand into the rising mist. At her feet, the scrying pool was glass smooth, yet the steam continued to thicken and swirl about her like a cloud, bringing the vapor up into the air. ’Twas warm and growing warmer, and smelled of salt. She stared down into the clear depths of the water, entranced. The sealed weir gate floated there, in the abyss, colored the deepest green, a perfect circle set into the huge bore hole, round and pulsing, a shimmering thing.

  “She’s taking too long.”

  ’Twas Rhuddlan’s voice, but he was wrong. No more than a minute had passed since she’d felt the stillness of the wine.

  “’Tis her first time, elf-man. Patience.”

  Around her the song to Domnu swelled and receded, the chant sung with a resonance and depth that made her tremble inside, and above and below and beyond the song
were the bodhran drums and the sound of a word... a word of power and grace. She had felt it upon her lips in Moriath’s dream, while she’d searched for the way into the pryf nest, into the dragon nest. Now the heard it for the first time—Ma-rahm, ma-ma-rahm.

  She looked to Dain through the wisps of vapor. “Ma-rahm,” she told him, smiling. “Not sezhamey.”

  He reached for her hand, but she denied him with a shake of her head.

  “Do not follow where I go. There is no need.” She was Rhiannon’s daughter.

  The deepening fog spiraled up around her, round and round, with her body as the axis of its orbit, warming her skin and heating her soul, until with an artful sweep of her arm, she parted the veil of white and was at the weir gate.

  Aye, she thought, her smile broadening, she knew the way of this. ’Twas in her blood, through and through.

  She stood on the threshold of the gate and looked upward to its farthest reaches; seven times her height it was, solid, though with the fluid look of melted glass. The shimmery emerald-green door filled the bore hole, with naught else to be seen except for the rim of rough-hewn rock encaging it.

  ’Twas a thing of heat. Warmth radiated from it like the rays of the sun. Rich, verdurous light pulsed and streaked away from its outer edges, crackling and resounding in the heights and depths of the vaporous clouds billowing about her. Where the green light faded, heliotrope began, in eight spokes of slowly circling brilliance. She watched the lights flicker and shine and suffuse the mist with color, and thought with awe that Rhuddlan had made this marvelous, extraordinary thing with naught but ethers and the magic of the tylwyth teg, for she had heard Moriath call him elf-man.

  Filled with wonder, and commanded by a presence she instinctively knew to be Rhuddlan—aye, and she could almost love him, for he was faerie—she lifted her hand to the seal. Ancient markings covered its surface, line after line of mystery flowing down its face in the ridges and curves of bas-relief. She pressed her palm to the shimmering plane, and the annals began sliding beneath her hand, revealing their secrets of dragon keepers, and time watchers, and eon upon eon of Quicken-tree history: a time when Liosalfar and Dockalfar had been one and their place had been Yr Is-ddwfn; tales of the Wars of Enchantment and of the tylwyth teg’s coming to man; a record of the time of trees. The emerald surface spoke of beginnings long lost to the most ancient memory: of the Sun and the stars and the vault of the heavens, of the Moon, and of the Earth, great orb of celestial dust... vessel of matter and thought, of the eternal mystery and miracle of life, death... circling, ever circling and being coiled round and warmed by a great serpent devouring its own tail... held in the grip of wisdom, lightning of the cosmos, sword of the gods, One is All—Ouroboros... The flood of deep knowledge poured into her, pulsed through her in a blaze of searing light, and she pulled her hand back with a pained cry.