by Janzen, Tara
Off in the distance, through the jacinth light, a pair of green eyes met his, eyes set in a dark angel’s face. Llynya... He reached for her as he fell.
~ ~ ~
Dain put a boot on the dead guardsman and yanked Scyld out of the man’s chest. He had died hard as ordered by his lord. A quick look toward the source of the screams filling the air proved Helebore to be doing the same. Only one other battle still sounded in the cavern, and when Dain saw it, his heart stopped for one agonizing, awful moment.
“Morgan,” he whispered, starting forward. “Morgan! Morrr-gannn!”
Llynya, too, screamed, but she was too late, too late. With a beautiful, dying grace, his body arcing out over the abyss, the Thief of Cardiff fell into the weir. A blinding flash of blue-white lightning welcomed him, crackling and sizzling up from out of the wormhole to dance upon the dome even as a dark cloud of mist and thunder rolled up to suck him in.
Llynya faltered, her gaze fixed in horror on the skittering bolt of heat and light that marked Morgan’s passing. Her sword fell to her side, her breath came in pained, shocked gasps. She stood for an eternity, trembling, but unable to move, until a great wave of sadness washed over her and sank her to her knees.
He was gone.
~ ~ ~
Morgan was falling, falling falling as in the worst of dreams, endlessly. Fear had locked up his mind to where he couldn’t even think, and he didn’t have so much as his sword to hold on to. The blade had been left on the rim. He could see it hanging half off the rock, glinting in the bright flash of lightning. He had heard Dain call his name, and Llynya too.
But now he was alone. So alone. And cold.
The warm wind of his falling had suddenly turned cold, incredibly cold. He felt a frigid numbness start at the base of his spine and work its way up and spread out like cracks in the ice on a lake, covering his back and curving round his ribs, reaching out into his arms and legs and up his neck. He was freezing solid, from the outside in, and quickly.
Amazingly, the realization brought no new sense of terror. In truth, it came more as a blessing. The icy numbness was soothing away all the pains he’d gotten in the fight with... with... He had forgotten who, but there had been a fight, and he’d been hurt, but he didn’t hurt anymore, and that was a blessing from the cold.
He was no longer afraid; the cold had frozen his fear out of him. In truth, he could no longer remember what it was that had frightened him. There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.
His fingers grew numb, then his toes, and he felt the iciness slip completely up over his head and come down onto his brow and cheeks and chin. In truth, the only parts of him that weren’t freezing were his breath and a patch of skin on the left side of his chest.
Ahhh, he remembered. The leaf. He had put it there, beneath his shirt. He even remembered the one from whom he’d stolen it—Llynya, the sprite. A smile curved his cold lips and brought the warmth of the summer forests down into the center of his heart.
Veritas. He was the Thief of Cardiff. And he was on his way to the stars.
~ ~ ~
Dain broke into a run, filled with all the berserk fury of his ancestors. Morgan was gone, sentenced to God knew what fate. Strange death, Moriath had said, and Dain wanted to scream his rage. Of them all, Morgan least deserved death, least deserved strangeness in any form.
Caradoc stood at the weir, sweat running down his face, his chest heaving with the exertion of murder, yet he turned to meet his enemy. Their swords rang out with a clash. The force of Dain’s attack sent the bigger man reeling, and Dain used his advantage to beat at the bastard, striking blow after blow, sparing nothing, driving Caradoc along the edge of the weir, working with each swing of his blade to feed the Boar a length of steel.
’Tis too soon for you to die, Dain, Morgan had said, for you are damned, and it was all true. He was damned to have seen Morgan die. He would be twice damned if he did not see Caradoc do the same.
Blood, the Boar wanted. He would give him blood. Dain would drown him in it.
Caradoc’s limp was in his left leg, and Dain cut him there, once at the ankle, once at the knee, a deep cut meant to sever tendons, crippling him. The Boar fell into a heap on the rim, and Dain readied his killing strike, but such was not to be, for the tide of battle shifted inexplicably, or mayhaps not so. Dain found no purchase on the rock with his next step, only air fluttering with the green shreds of the seal. He lost his balance, and Scyld left his hand in a whirling rotation of the blade around the haft that carried it out over the center of the wormhole before it fell. When Dain felt himself begin to follow, he lunged for the Boar and dragged his foe down over the edge with him.
~ ~ ~
In the abyss, there was chaos, a raging storm swirling through the vortex, both hot and cold. Here was Rhuddlan’s journey through time without the ameliorating presence of the chant. Dain was pummeled and pressed by the wind, ripped at by forces that had no name—and he had lost Nemeton’s Stone, dropped it in his killing fury.
He could hear the sound of his own rough breathing and that of Caradoc’s below him as the Boar scrabbled for a hold on Dain’s boot. They had not fallen cleanly into the hole, but slid down the side of it. Dain’s fingers were dug into the earth and rock, his toes pressed into a hollow above a protrusion of stone, while not an arm’s length away, the prifarym slid in a spiral dance around the circumference of the dark cylinder, creating thunder and tremors that threatened to shake him from his perch. But he clung, and kicked at Caradoc, who was trying to drag him down.
“Lavrans! Dain!” Caradoc pleaded, and within the dark space, the Boar’s voice ebbed and flowed like storm-tossed tides. “Dain!” Caradoc screamed, and Dain looked.
Terror defined the Boar’s face, etching white sparks in the frigid greenish-blue of his eyes, incising deep lines on each side of his face from nose to mouth. Terror ran along the strands of his hair, turning each one into a writhing, fiery flame. He was hell personified in rage, fury, lust, and desire.
Above, another called to him, her voice broken with fear. Dain looked up, and ’twas as if he lay on the bottom of a river with the flow of water making a thin, fluid barrier between them. She was reaching for him when a lightning bolt crackled in the depths below, sending a white flash of light streaking upward. He saw the bright outriders of luminescence stream by him and pass through her body, and he heard her soul-wrenching cry as she fell back from the rim.
... kissed by the worm in his mother’s womb.
Second and third bolts rose from the thunder of the first, roiling up from below with great heat before encasing him. No stars burned as brightly, nor as completely. The light passed through him with a purity that seared his soul, shooting from the soles of his feet through the top of his head like an unleashed ray of the sun, catching him in the life stream and transforming the basest elements of his existence. He could not move, or breathe, or speak, but was held in the chasm from whence came the world, transfixed by a power no weakness could survive.
This, then, was life and death together, one into the other.
Chapter 28
Ceridwen lay as if in a dream. Colored lights flashed off the dome and swirled around the perimeter of the cavern; white light streamed from the weir, while vaporous fog poured out of the abyss and snaked across the ledge. The cool mists swept over her in waves where she’d fallen on the rim, dampening her face and chilling her body. Everything was quiet except for the low rumble of thunder emanating from the hole. No more screams and death cries reverberated off the walls, no more swords dashed. The battle was done, and all had lost.
Llynya sat in a crumpled heap not too far distant, utterly still, her head bowed, her knees splayed, the only sign of life being the white-knuckled grip she maintained on her sword. Behind her, Elixir dragged the body of Numa through the low-lying fog. Sweet bitch, Ceridwen thought. There was naught she could do for the hound. Light had pierced through her when she’d reached for Dain—how long ago had it b
een?—and left her feeling not completely of this world, but caught somehow betwixt and between.
She shifted her gaze to the weir gate. He was still there, caught in the light. She knew it.
By sheer force of will, she made her hand slide across the rim and claim Morgan’s sword. ’Twas stained with Caradoc’s blood, which made her love it all the more. She needed to get back into the luminous stream, and the sword was going with her, for if Dain was alive, so Caradoc might be. Beneath the hilt of the blade was another treasure —Nemeton’s Stone. She claimed it too, dragging it close and slipping it into her pouch with the elf shot. Mayhaps it would yet prove its worth, for she did not believe Moriath had given Dain a worthless thing. Charms, the mage had taught her, were delicate baubles, useful only in their predestined niche. Verily, the trick itself was to find the niche. Thus she would hold to Nemeton’s Stone.
The sound of rapid footfalls drew her head around and quickened her heartbeat, giving her a welcome surge of life. Had a Balorman survived? she wondered. She struggled to her knees, gritting her teeth, and used Morgan’s sword to leverage herself to her feet. Time was of the essence. The truth of that was everywhere around her, yet time was so elusive, slipping through her fingers more easily than water.
Before her, the lightning had coalesced into a solid sheet of brightness. She reached her hand out to touch it, and was stopped by the calling of her name.
“Ceri! No!”
Fifteen years had changed the timbre of the voice, but not the quality of it. Stunned, she turned and saw him, a man running out of the mists, dressed all in white.
“Mychael.” The name fell from her lips in a hoarse whisper. Pale blue eyes met hers across the length of the cavern. His hair was to his shoulders, a rich mélange of golds and silvers with the addition of a strange copper stripe down the right side. His nose and mouth were near replicas of her own, only not so softly defined. His chin and jaw had naught to do with her, for both were purely man.
The fog rolled up on either side of him as he ran, opening a path to the weir, and his gaze shifted from her to the hole.
“How many are in?” he asked when he stopped at the rim. Though he had the look of an angel, she could tell by his labored breathing that he was merely a mortal, one who had run far.
“Two,” she answered, “but there is only one that I want back.”
He glanced up. “Then pray, gefell, that I choose correctly, for I cannot enter the same live wormhole twice, and neither can you.”
He’d called her twin.
Kneeling, he shrugged off a length of rope looped across his chest and began threading it through an intricately incised groove in the rock, one of many she had not noticed before. When he reached the edge of the weir, he threw the rest of the rope off into the hole and reached down with his hand. The briefest smile of satisfaction crossed his mouth.
“What is it?” she asked.
“The temperature is stable. ’Tis neither hot nor cold, meaning they haven’t slipped into the past or the future, but should still be here, somewhere.” The light skittered across the white wool of his tunic, picking out threads and making them shimmer blue and purple against the cloth.
The past and the future, Ceridwen thought. The flow of time.
A sudden fear seized her. ’Twas what Dain had long sought, the mastery of time. She could not hold him against that, yet she could not let him go.
She fell to her knees and grabbed Mychael before he slipped over the edge. “Bring him back to me,” she ordered, her face close to his, her fingers tightening on his shoulder. “As you are my brother, bring him back to me.”
~ ~ ~
The Boar was no longer with him. Dain knew that the same as he knew that he, too, would not last much longer. The light that held him was also drawing him down. Strange stuff. Bliss and terror both had a place in the luminescence. He watched them play across his emotions as if from a distance. Whatever he was—and a thousand thousand ideas on that score had come to mind—he was at his core something beyond the extremes of feeling, something beyond the conflagration of life and death raging around and through him, something beyond the visible movement of time.
Yet, if given a choice, he would choose life, sweetest blessing, the catalyst and nurturing medium of change, and he would choose the time of the quicksilver maid. Aye, he knew this with all his heart: He would choose life and Ceridwen.
... and from within the most brilliant flux came that which he had thought beyond his grasp, salvation. A golden arm, garbed in white, reached down into the abyss and took his hand.
~ ~ ~
Rhuddlan and Moira knelt by the trail of blood in the sand. They had found others, but this one was too dark to pass by, speaking as it did of death.
“Rhayne,” Moira told him, looking up, her green eyes growing sad.
Dead men lay all around, but they were of Balor and not of the Quicken-tree company. The Ebiurrane elves were dragging them out to sea, letting Mor Sarff have their bodies to feed the fishes and return them to salt water.
Trig called from the headland caves, having found the trail through the heavy mists pouring out of all the openings. The presence of so much turmoil could not bode well for what had taken place at the weir.
“Come,” Rhuddlan said to Moira, touching her lightly. “You will be needed.”
Inside the shaft were other signs of carnage. A Balorman had been crushed, and they could hear another one being ground up even as they entered the domed cavern of the weir. The old worm had roused himself mightily to come up from the deep dark.
“Math, find Conladrian,” Rhuddlan ordered, though he feared the hound had chosen a path from whence he would not return.
“Rhuddlan!” ’Twas Shay calling, and when they reached him, they found him with Llynya, holding her close and looking far more frightened than he had at any time during the battle.
Rhuddlan dropped to her side and gently took her face in his hands. His palms grew wet with her tears. “Llynya?” He spoke her name softly, but received no response.
“What happened here?” Trig demanded, running up, his tone far gruffer than he would normally take with his leader. Rhuddlan understood. For all her wildness, the little one was expected to become Liosalfar. Aye, and mayhaps she already had.
He smoothed his thumbs across her cheeks, watching her intently. There was life and warmth behind the closed veil of her lashes. “She has fought herself beyond exhaustion; that is all.” He rose to his feet and called for Wei. “Help Shay take her back to the Light Caves and give her to Aedyth.”
Wei laid his hand upon her cheek, and slanted him and Trig a questioning look.
Rhuddlan nodded, and Trig grew grim, reaching down to feel Llynya’s brow for himself. There was more wrong with the sprite than exhaustion. She had suddenly grown older. Rhuddlan had felt the sadness on her heart, but did not want to frighten Shay any more than he was, for all knew sadness could crush a person as thoroughly as the old worm could.
Wei took her in his arms and started off at an easy lope toward one of the shafts with Shay at his heels.
The rest of them ran forward through the jacinth-hued cavern, fog washing up against them to their knees and higher, the vaporous tendrils winding through the air and obscuring their view. Yet they all knew where they were needed, for nothing could hide the wall of light streaming up from the weir.
There were three on the rim when they reached it.
~ ~ ~
Dain groaned and rolled over onto his back, and for an instant thought he was seeing double. Two identical faces loomed over him, both fair, though only one was crying; both golden-haired, though only one had an odd streak of a copper-colored auburn running through the tresses.
“Ceri?” he asked, and the sweet face wet with tears bent down and began smothering him in kisses. He let himself sink into the warm, healing pleasure of having her pressed against him, showering him with love. ’Twas so easy to take it all and for once not wonder about the nature
of the God who had answered his prayer, but merely accept that it had been done.
Others gathered around—Quicken-tree, he could tell by the sound of their voices and the green scent of them—and the need for leaving became clear.
Moira knelt by their sides and spoke to them both, and when their mouths parted from their kiss, she gave them each another on their cheeks.
“The tide is coming in,” she said. “We must hurry. Can you walk?”
“Aye,” Dain said, but Ceri shook her head.
“Do not worry,” Moira said at Dain’s stricken look. “She is but with child, and what she has done this day would have exhausted even the strongest. Indeed, it has.”
“Llynya?” Ceri asked, her voice soft with concern, even as Dain wondered how Moira knew about their child.
“Llynya has killed many times since this battle began,” Moira said. “Each death takes something from us no matter how worthy we deem the cause. Wei and Shay have already started for the Light Caves with her. Tomorrow I will take her to the forests. ’Tis from the trees that Llynya will regain her strength and find her peace again.”
“Morgan?” Dain asked, and Moira shook her head, confirming what he’d already known. That hurt would take time to heal. “What of the battle itself?”
Moira responded by handing Ceri one of a pair of small gourds she had taken off her pack. The other she gave to him. “Drink it, every drop.” When they started, she answered his question. “Balor is no more, and all of its men are dead. ’Tis Carn Merioneth above, and you are its lady, Ceridwen.”
His love looked to him before speaking. “Do you fancy yourself lord of a castle keep?”
He knew his answer without having to dwell on it. “’Tis a wondrous strange place you have here, Lady of Merioneth, and what you offer is most men’s dream, but in truth, I would take you north and be lord of no one.”
“Then ’tis north we go, Moira,” she said to the Quicken-tree woman, “and rather than a Lady Ceridwen, you will have a Lord Mychael, for I think ’tis my brother Rhuddlan needed all along.” She slanted her gaze up at the Quicken-tree leader and her brother, and the other two followed her lead.