by Janzen, Tara
~ ~ ~
The end was near. Dain could hear it in the waves crashing on an unseen shore up ahead in the dark. He smelled it in the salt spray filling the air and his lungs as he ran. He felt it in the sand beneath his boots. There was an ocean at the center of the earth as his dream had foretold, and beyond the ocean, his death lay waiting. Stumbling into the pryf nest had been their undoing, for the worms had hounded them unmercifully, cutting them out of some tunnels and opening up others—their tapered tails retracting into blunted bodies—leaving them but one passage to follow, the one that would wash them out onto the ocean’s shore.
Damn Madron, for ’twas as the witch that she’d shown him his life’s end. Yet as Moriath, a fierce weir goddess of the Quicken-tree, the same woman had given him the Philosopher’s Stone. He touched the pouch hanging from his belt. He would soon see whose magic was stronger.
Ceridwen raced beside him, the dogs were at his heels, and ahead of them Morgan and Llynya sped through the passage, for they were not alone. Helebore had followed them into the same trap and was being herded toward the sea with them. ’Twas a damnable turn of events that the pryf he and Ceridwen had freed were the catalyst of their demise. The Balormen were close, so close they could hear their running footfalls. So close Llynya was choking on the leech’s stench.
Too damn close.
A crossbow bolt came zinging out of the darkness behind him and embedded itself in the tunnel wall. Dirt flew. Chips of rock scattered into the air. Ceri let out a short cry, telling him she’d been cut by the sharp flakes of stone. The second bolt near impaled him, and he felt more than saw Elixir turn. Numa moved up to Ceridwen’s side with a long, easy lope. A man’s agonized cry sounded Elixir’s dark victory, and in moments, the levrier was back guarding his flank.
As on Lanbarrdein, the tunnel ended high on the cliff face, a piece of information relayed to them by Llynya, along with an order to jump when they reached the ledge. The beach, she swore, would not be too far below. Following her own command, the sprite did not hesitate, but ran right off the edge, her dreamstone blade held high. For an instant she hung in the air, backlit by a faint damson glow coming off the opposing cliff face, a violet-hued headland jutting into an abyss of darkness. The scent of salt was strong, as was the sound of waves washing up and breaking on the shore somewhere below. Llynya spread her arms wide, and her cloak floated about her like butterfly wings. She was sidhe, faerie, purest grace flying through the air. Morgan had the sense to hesitate, but not for long. He skidded to a short stop, giving Llynya just enough time to land on the beach and show him how far down it was before he leaped. Dain took not even that much time, but grabbed Ceridwen’s hand and lofted them both out into space.
They’d no sooner landed than a shout came from above.
“Lavrans!” ’Twas Caradoc. “Give me the ab Arawn woman and you may yet go free.”
Dain shoved Ayas deep into the sand, extinguishing the blade’s light. Llynya had done the same with her knife, but the damson crystals encrusted on the sea cliffs had already picked up enough of the dreamstone luminescence to cast a faint glow.
“We are eleven to your four,” Caradoc warned him. “And two of your band are but women. Sacrifice her for the good of all, Dain, or I will kill you every one.”
Llynya had the Boar’s answer for him before Dain could speak, releasing an arrow from her bow and killing her first man. Morgan got another, shooting from the sprite’s side.
“Dain!” Llynya yelled, and when he looked, she pointed to a curve in the cliff rising up out of the long crescent-shaped beach. “Take her!”
He shifted his gaze and saw what she meant. A cave opening showed black against the amethystine rock wall, one of many he could see. And so death begins.
He had not time to dwell on the consequences of his actions, he just acted, shoving Ayas into his belt and closing his hand even tighter around Ceridwen’s as they scrambled to their feet and took off at a run.
Ceridwen looked back once, and saw Caradoc and his men jumping down onto the beach, firing on Morgan and Llynya, who were running full out across the sand for another of the sea cliff caves. She feared they would not make it, for other Balormen were sprinting along a path in the cliff face, racing to intercept them.
As Caradoc’s men landed on the beach, they met Elixir and Numa, their canine hearts primed with blood lust for the fight. They worked as a team to bring their first man down, a small one who had his neck snapped with a shake of Elixir’s head. Numa’s teeth were still in him when she was cut on the haunch. Growling deep in her throat, she turned, fangs bared to meet her new foe and his blade. ’Twas Caradoc, and he proved quicker than the bitch, blinding the dog in her right eye with a slash from his dagger even as he gutted her on his sword.
Ceridwen cried out as if she herself had been impaled, her first thought to run to the dying animal. Dain would have none of it and dragged her into the nearest dark hole.
~ ~ ~
“Khardeen!” Llynya let out her war cry. She’d slung her bow to the ground and was meeting the enemy with two hands on her sword. She and Morgan had been cut off from their escape and were fighting hand-to-hand with three of Balor’s best. Morgan was fast with a blade, thank the gods, but even at that, Llynya feared they’d met their end. He’d been cut twice in the thick of it, and she felt blood running down her own arm. Numa was dead. Elixir grappled with a man on the beach, and Ceridwen and Dain had slipped into a hole. May the gods light their path and the old worm be with them, she prayed, for Caradoc, the evil monk, and two others were after the pair.
She swung her sword in a high arc at the man she fought, leaving herself open—her first and probably her last mistake, she realized. He lunged, and she rallied to block the blow.
She knew instantly she would not be quick enough, but with his sword a handspan from her head, the man dropped the weapon and did naught but stare at her, speechless from the arrow lodged in his throat, the only unprotected place on his helmeted and mailed body.
Trembling, but still on guard, she dragged a breath into her lungs and watched him drown in his own blood. On her second breath, she joined Morgan’s fight, evening the odds. The Balorman she chose lasted for no more than a blow before falling to another well-placed arrow. She jerked her head around to see how Dain fared. Only it wasn’t Dain shooting from the cliffs, but a stranger.
He was dressed all in white, with a bright copper streak running through his golden hair, a pure flame against the glowing violet wall, and he was drawing his bow for another shot.
Morgan’s last opponent went down with a strangled cry.
“We have a savior,” she said to him between breaths.
“Then let him save Dain and Ceridwen as well. Come.” Morgan turned and ran toward the caves.
Llynya looked once more to the man high on the sea cliff before she followed Morgan.
~ ~ ~
There was power here. No trace of magic, but the raw essence. Dain felt it immediately upon entering the cave, and the feeling increased with each step as they ran deeper into its depths. The darkness quickly gave way to a luminescence that radiated from the rock itself—an occurrence he no longer found strange. The walls were bored smooth, almost silky in their evenness, and colored in shifting shades of heliotrope and green. Running was difficult because of the perfect circular curve of wall, floor, and ceiling, yet they dared not slow their pace.
Well into the cave, a gaping passage cut across the tunnel they were in, its dark, crudely bored walls a stark contrast to the smooth, lucent rock surrounding them, and its size much larger than what they’d seen in the pryf nest. Looking down the passage, he could see where it intersected with another green-and-heliotrope tunnel. A quick glance the opposite way showed yet another tunnel, all of them angling in toward something, like spokes in a wheel angling toward a hub, and all of them cut through by the rough-walled passage looming on either side of them.
He had a bad feeling about the gigantic tunnel
and wondered if it was possible that a pryf—so much larger than he’d expected—could truly get that big.
He didn’t have to wonder for long.
A slow, deep rumbling announced the creature’s arrival, a tremor of sound that shook the earth around them. He and Ceridwen stumbled forward, bracing themselves where they could. A clattering of mail and a poorly aimed crossbow bolt careening off the walls proved they were not alone.
Dain looked over his shoulder and saw the band of four after them. The first was the crossbowman, struggling to reload and maintain his balance in the intersection of the great shaft. No keening cry came to warn him of his fate, but a basso profundo hum. Dain saw him turn toward the opening, saw the look of horror that washed over the man’s face in the instant before he was swept on by the gargantuan worm barreling through the shaft. No sleek-skinned pryf this, but a gnarly, ragged beast, scarred and marked as if by a thousand millenniums spent in the nethermost reaches of the earth. In remotissimo angulo terrae.
They were there, the remotest corner, with the weir gate lying just ahead. He looked to Ceridwen and saw the dawning realization in her eyes.
An awful scream echoed through the tunnels, and they both turned back to the worm. Scraping and crunching noises came next. With little effort, Dain could imagine the pulverizing action of being dragged and rolled between the ancient pryf and the walls, how such action would grind a man’s bones to dust inside his skin.
“’Tis just the one man,” he said, avoiding her gaze as he caught his breath. “The others were not taken, but are still a danger to us. I might could kill them all without you coming to harm, but I fear that one or the other would find a way to take what they have long wanted—your blood.” He glanced over at her. She carried his babe and had felt the life of it the same as he had. She would know he was right in what he had to say. “I might well die here, Ceri, but I would rather not leave Caradoc with power like Rhuddlan’s, nor Helebore, not in this place. Leave me now and my chances improve for the fight. They cannot outflank me in this narrow shaft as mayhaps they can at the weir.” None would get by him. “Rhuddlan will come for you.”
“Aye,” she agreed, her expression grim, resolute, “but I have not the strength for leaving you to face them alone.” She pulled the Damascene, and he knew this time the quicksilver maid would not make her escape.
“You should run for your life,” he said angrily. Did she not know it?
“As should you.” She would not be moved, and time was running out. The pryf was near through, with the tapering of its tail leaving a breach of light at the top of the tunnel.
“Then we go on together.”
~ ~ ~
The passage narrowed before emptying onto the ledge of a large domed cavern filled with the power Dain had felt pulling him onward. A bolt of lightning crackled in the center of the cavern, shooting up out of the earth through an immense hole that consumed most of the cave floor.
The weir gate. Shreds of the emerald seal fluttered around the rough-hewn rock that rimmed the hole, and down the length of the hole, the sides writhed with prifarym. Another flash of lightning lit the darkness from below, sparkling bluish-white and purple, and leaping across the chasm from rock rim to rock rim. The reflection of it off the dome above filled the cavern with jacinth light of murky dark blue.
’Twas as they remembered, a yawning abyss, a trap, yet at their feet rather than placed before them as it had been through the scrying pool. And it was bigger, much bigger.
Dain immediately felt the lure of the abyss reaching out for him on soft tendrils of rich, sweet breath, the promise it held, as if his weakness were the weir’s greatest desire. Damned swiving place. It would be the death of him. But before the abyss took him, he was feeding it Caradoc and Helebore, piece by bloody piece if needs be.
Off to his right, a wavering circle of heliotrope-and-green light revealed another passageway like the one they’d come through. There were others, barely discernible in the strange blue glow that filled the cavern. A much darker, more ragged opening between two of the smooth shafts close to them proved that the ancient pryf ruled in the inner circle as well as the outer. They had come to the end. Domh-ringr or nay, his future, if he had one, would be decided here.
Another sweet-earth breath blew up at his back, tickling his skin, eager to please. A muffled curse of despairing frustration was torn from him. He would not survive this. He would not. He had given too much of his soul to Jalal’s dark ambrosia. Morgan had suspected as much; Moriath had known he was not whole.
And she’d given him the Stone.
He tightened his hold on Scyld with one hand and reached for the pouch with the other. Fingers trembling, he dug the Stone out and grasped it in his fist—and felt nothing.
Still, he did not let go.
“Lavrans!” the Boar called, advancing upon them from out of the passageway with his sword drawn, his gait slowed by a pained limp. Helebore’s cadaverous face showed behind the Boar, and he, too, had a sword at the ready. “I will have her, Dain!”
“You’ll have death first.” He lifted Scyld, and ’twas the dream come true: the wormhole at his feet, the gleaming edge of his blade, and the hopeless hope to save a woman with his courage and his steel.
Caradoc grabbed the lone guardsman left at his side, shoving him forward with a simple command: “Kill the mage, if you can. Die hard, if you can’t.”
“Boar!” The cry came from Morgan who entered the domed cavern from another shaft with Llynya at his side.
~ ~ ~
Helebore whirled at the sound of the unexpected voice, then did his best to escape the dark-haired fury bearing down on him. Of the two they’d left on the beach, ’twas the woman who singled him out, the very thought of which made him recoil in horror. He’d taken a sword from the man who had fallen to the dogs, and now used it to hold her off as best he could, retreating step by step, meeting her blows as she beat away at him, but unable to make a strike of his own.
She was relentless, her blade clanging against his from first one side, then the other, as she forced him back onto the rim of the abyss. More of the heavenly pryf scent was filling the cavern, richer than before. He wanted to shout the truth of it at Caradoc and thereby wring from the Boar his overdue accolades. That the man treated him as no more than a leech had long been a thorn in Helebore’s side. But no more. He’d found the maid, as he’d said he would; he’d found the pryf as promised, and had the both of them together. A quick cut, a taste of blood, and the world was his, if not in this age, then the next, or the next, for time was the treasure. While fools dabbled in doubling gold, and Caradoc looked for riches and lands to rule, Helebore, the leech, had discerned the essence of it all. Time.
The woman cut him, a neat slice across the top of his arm, and he fell to his knees, shocked by the pain. He was not a base brawler to be treated so. Behind him, the leathery, scarred creature who had taken the crossbowman moved out into the inner circle. Its faceless head slowly slid by him, so close and silent, and curved back into the next hole. Lovely, beautiful thing. Pryf. He’d first seen the word on a shaft beneath Ynys Enlli.
Dragons, ach. He did not need dragons. He had worms, beasts of mythical proportions to bore him a path to the center of the cosmos.
She cut him again, the bitch, and sent him reeling. He flung a hand out and caught himself on the dark hide of the pryf. Cool and solid it was, a fair support. Blood ran from the side of his face.
He lifted his sword and made an ineffectual stab at the maid. What a demon she was, hacking away at him. The pryf moved again, the great thing, and Helebore found himself moving along with it, his fingers curled tightly into a deep scar on the creature’s side.
Her blade sank into his thigh, and the agony was beyond any he had ever known. “Christ’s blood,” he swore, and struggled to free himself, but the pryf seemed to have taken hold of him. The worm bulged and heaved, dragging him along the floor. Seeing him move along must have frightened the woman, for
she backed away, finally subdued into retreat.
A demonic sneer twisted his lips. His victory would be complete. A mighty heave of the worm near pushed him over the edge of the hole, causing him a moment’s panic, but his hand held, saving him from the abyss. He laughed aloud, riding his wave of glory and the undulations of the worm, until he realized with an odd sense of detachment that he was going to be dragged into the tunnels and crushed between the worm and the wall.
Llynya stumbled back, her sword arm throbbing and hanging limp at her side, and though her hand still gripped the haft of the blade, the point scraped the stone floor.
Gulping great breaths of air, she watched the monk. The old worm had him now, and not an instant past the evil one had understood exactly what that meant. His fleeting look of triumph had turned to stark, raving fear.
“Help me! Don’t let— Aaauuugggh...” He squirmed and rolled, trying to free himself. “Bitch, filthy, whoring bitch.” She had wanted him dead, had been willing to fight to the death to see it so. Such rage as he engendered was a new and awful feeling for her. It left her trembling and hurting with a strange, all-encompassing pain. “You will burn, slut. Burn! Please, help me, cut the pryf, cut me, please, don’t—”
His screams started then, as the old worm dragged him behind the wall, and she turned away. Holding her side against a cramp, she looked for Morgan through the shadowy blue light, and when she found him, she began to run.
Morgan felt his strength ebbing with every blow he blocked. His boots were slick with his own blood, making each step treacherous. His shirt and tunic were soaked along the right side with more blood, and his chausses too. Caradoc fared little better, but the Boar had the advantage of two stone more in weight and an extra ten years of living with a blade in his hand.
It would be enough this time.
Caradoc landed a bone-cracking blow to his ribs, and Morgan stumbled on the rim of the abyss. He clenched his teeth against the white-hot pain. Christ have mercy, Christ have mercy, the litany began. He shook his head to clear his sight, and was hit again, this time with a cutting edge. His mouth filled with blood, and the next blow sent him flying.