Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  “Sprite.” The elf-man looked up from his apprentices and smiled. He had a long, narrow face, his skin burnt brown by the sun. “Ye look none the worse for wear. Too quick for ’em by half, I’ll bet.”

  “Too quick, or not worth the thread to burn me.”

  “Kept your guard up, did ye?”

  “Aye.”

  “And didn’t stand still like a fear-froze rabbit?”

  “Nay, I didn’t.”

  “Then ye were too quick for ’em by half.”

  “Mayhaps,” she conceded, “but ’tis true that they didn’t seem as interested in me as the others.”

  “You’re young for a Liosalfar. Could be they thought ye were yet a child.” He turned and caught a fletched shaft tossed to him by one of the apprentices. Wei looked it over, running his fingers down the smooth wood, then over the feathers.

  “ ’Tis what I thought too, Wei, but”—she paused, glancing at the two boys before lowering her voice—“don’t the spider people eat elf children? Why wouldn’t they have grabbed me for their spit?”

  A broad grin spread across Wei’s face, warning her of what was to come.

  “ ’Tis a mother’s tale only, sprite,” he said, chuckling, “conjured by women to keep their chicks firmly underfoot. Aye, and it did the trick during the Wars.”

  He laughed and patted her cheek, and she found herself twice humiliated in one day—and all before morning was done. Then his gaze caught and held hers, and his expression grew serious.

  “You’re Yr Is-ddwfn Liosalfar, Llynya, and faster than all the others tied together. Anybody tries to eat ye, ye gut ’em with your blade, girl, and if one comes after that, ye gut him too. ’Tis why ye carry iron dagger, dreamstone knife, and leaf blade sword.”

  “Aye,” she agreed, knowing ’twas true. “But Bedwyr, he was...” She stopped, her gaze shifting away. Bedwyr had been fast. They both knew that too. The blade-master had been the one to teach her the Falcon Strike and the Bear’s Feint. He’d been the fastest in Crai Force to throw a blade, and for that he’d died.

  Wei lifted her chin and used his thumb to wipe away the tear rolling down her cheek. “ ’Tis a truth without end, sprite, that warriors die in war. We’ll all be missing him, and when the Liosalfar bring him home, we’ll sing him back to the Mother.”

  He released her to catch the next fletched shaft tossed his way and looked it over with a discerning eye, rolling it in the sunlight to see if ’twas straight.

  She wiped her face with her sleeve. Damn tears.

  “I’m to Tryfan,” he told her. “If ye want a sennight of mountain travel and can carry a stone’s weight of elf shot, you’re welcome to come.”

  “I would sorely love to see Tryfan,” she said, having no trouble conjuring just the right amount of wistfulness in her voice. “But Trig has use of me, and I’ve dallied long enough. Step lightly, Wei.”

  “Aye, sprite. We’ll all be steppin’ light, though not as light as ye, I trow.”

  With a short wave, she was off and heading toward Trig.

  Now there was a gruesome sight, she thought, Trig with his green leaf eye patch and purple scars. Math was still under Aedyth’s care in one of the willow huts. The captain needed no such coddling.

  He saw her coming and dismissed the Liosalfar by his side.

  Llynya grimaced. She should not have taken so long and she hoped to the gods that she didn’t look like she’d been crying. Swallowing hard, she lifted a hand in greeting. “Ho, Trig.”

  “Llynya.” He gave her a baleful look out of his one good eye. Strands of gray glinted like silver in the long fall of his fair hair. A five-strand plait was tightly braided down the left side of his head. Trig had all the tattoos of the Liosalfar from the Wars as well as a captain’s wavy double stripe around his wrist. Woad hazel leaves wound up his arm. The rowan tree marked him high on his shoulder, and beneath it was the sign for Deri.

  Given his grim mood, she thought it best to talk fast, before he could pronounce her task or her doom.

  “I’ve spoken with Wei and would go to Tryfan, if you’ll give me leave, Trig.” ’Twas a hasty plan, but better than naught.

  “Ye think to usurp my rule too, sprite?” If anything, his glare grew even darker.

  She blanched. “Nay, Cap’n.” She stood a little taller and met his good eye a little straighter on. ’Twas no good sign for him to speak of the mutiny so openly, and did not bode well for the day.

  “Then ye’ll listen before ye speak. The mountain trek is no easy—” He halted in midsentence, his gaze shifting to a place just beyond her left shoulder. She knew what had caught his attention even before she looked. The tightening of his jaw gave it away, as did the tingling she felt on her nape. She did glance back, though, and ’twas as she’d feared. Mychael had roused himself and, still looking like Christian hell, was headed straight for them.

  She clenched her hand into a fist, not wanting to stay and face him again, but not daring to leave. Mayhaps her luck would change and Trig would dismiss her as he had the Liosalfar.

  She shifted her stance, hoping to draw his attention and a gruff “be gone with ye,” but the captain’s gaze was unwavering.

  “Trig.” Mychael’s gravel-voiced greeting announced his arrival. He stopped beside her, and Llynya did her best to ignore the blush crawling up her neck by staring resolutely at her boots. Ignoring Mychael was impossible. She tingled with awareness of how close he stood. Her ears twitched. Her nostrils quivered.

  “Boy,” the captain said, and she winced. ’Twould not be a bygones-be-bygones meeting.

  “I was turned back from the Light Caves at dawn,” Mychael said, every word seeming to cost him. He would have fared far better, she thought, if he’d taken her advice and gathered a bit of strength before facing Trig. “The sentries on duty said ’twas on your orders.”

  She looked up at that. She’d never known there to be sentries at the Light Caves, and she never would have guessed that Mychael had been up and about at dawn, or that he would have had no more sense than to go back down into the caverns in his condition. He needed a keeper.

  He glanced in her direction, as if drawn by her own wayward gaze, and she was struck anew by the wildness of his parti-colored hair and the stark beauty of his face. Her blush deepened all over again. He wanted to kiss her. She sensed it even now.

  “Aye, ’twas,” the captain confirmed.

  “You know I should be with Rhuddlan,” Mychael said, his attention back on Trig. “I can lead him to the war gate.”

  “Rhuddlan can smell a war gate at four lan, boy. He’ll not be needing ye to find it.”

  “Then I would go for myself,” Mychael insisted, which got him naught but more of the captain’s cold, unwavering stare.

  Looking at them, Llynya wouldn’t have believed the archer capable of imposing his will on Trig. Battle-scarred and tattooed, the captain was every inch the warrior, with the added advantage of a good three stone on the younger man—most of it in muscle.

  “Ye’ll not be goin’ below for yerself,” Trig said with an unbreachable finality. Then he turned his fearsome gaze on her. “Nor will ye, sprite. And if either of ye think to drop yerself down some hole in the hills or in Riverwood ye believe I don’t know about, ye better think again.”

  Mychael said naught, only meeting Trig’s gaze and looking like a good wind would blow him down.

  Though his was no doubt the wiser course, Llynya could not accept such a dismal edict in silence. “Trig,” she protested. “I—”

  Mychael spoke quick enough then, even as his hand grasped her shoulder to silence her. “She’ll not be going into the deep dark. Will you, Llynya?” The squeeze he gave her, though not physically discomfiting, was reminder enough of what else had transpired between them.

  She squirmed away and shot him an annoyed glance he did not acknowledge. Plague archer, she thought. He was that and more if he thought to rule her, and a double plague to make her breath catch and her mind to wander
where it should not go. He was naught but trouble—for himself as well as her.

  “Aye,” Trig said. “She’ll not see the deep dark again until she can smell friend from foe and count Sha-shakrieg and skraelpacks with a whiff.”

  “You—” She whirled on Mychael, but was stopped by Trig.

  “ ’Twas not the boy, sprite. I would have figured it out myself, if not for the thread wounds sappin’ me strength. ’Tis Rhuddlan who forbids ye in the caverns, but he gave me leave to use ye as a scout in Riverwood. As for ye”—he turned to Mychael—“Rhuddlan’s orders are clear. Ye are to Lanbarrdein in a day’s time. If ye’d be a captain, it will be of Ebiurrane pack ponies. A string was spotted this morning coming down from the north, led by Tabor Shortshanks himself. They’ll make the castle walls by early afternoon. If any can get the beasts laden in half the time and headed down a dark trail, ’tis Llyr’s pony-master. He knows ways in and out of Lanbarrdein others couldna even guess, and none save him ever got a pony past the old worm when we needed them in the deep dark. If it comes to that, he can do it again. ’Til then the hall must be provisioned, and a camp set up to supply those goin’ below.”

  Mychael knew Tabor Shortshanks and his noxious ponies. Tabor had led a pack train down from the Ebiurrane summering grounds in late spring. Mychael had gone back north with them—and with a few pains along the way. Tabor was good company, well versed in elfin lore and full of a thousand tales that he took great delight in telling, but the ponies were another story altogether. An uffern breed claimed in the last Wars and not fully turned to an elfin hand, they bit, bold as brass when the urge took them, desiring a mouthful of man as if naught else could get the grass taste out of their teeth. The shaggy brutes kicked too, their sharp hooves striking out at seeming whim, but always hitting their mark, which more times than he cared to recall had been his shin. The thought of taking them into the caves and being trapped with them in the narrow passages of the Canolbarth was enough to churn his gut.

  He met the captain’s gaze, a protest on his lips, but was forewarned by the glint in Trig’s eye. Dissent would be dealt with by a heavy hand, and Trig had the heaviest when he was of a mind to use it. ’Twas by no accident that he was captain. As to what had happened on the beach by the Serpent Sea, the madness had put him up against the older man, and only the work of thread poison had left him unscathed. He pledged vassalage to none in Merioneth, but he owed Trig his allegiance. Better to take his punishment in pony bites than lose a friend, if Trig could still be called such.

  “To Lanbarrdein on the morrow, then,” he said, conceding, if only somewhat. From there he would do as he wished. He, too, knew a few ways in and out of the Hall of Kings he’d never seen the Quicken-tree use.

  ’Twas a chance he had to take.

  The captain nodded, satisfied with Mychael’s answer, but apparently with little else about him. “Yer a mess, boy. Llynya”—he shifted his attention to the maid—“take him to Aedyth and have her put somethin’ together to get the green haggish look off ’im. When he’s set, come back here for yer post.”

  She blanched, albeit slightly, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but was stopped by a shout from one of the guards on the battlements. The captain looked to the great wall. ’Twas with more effort that Mychael dragged his gaze from Llynya to the top of the portcullis. Pwyll, a young Quicken-tree, stood atop one of the gate towers. The boy made a quick sign, and Trig nodded.

  “Go on with ye, then,” the captain ordered, returning his attention to them.

  Mychael stepped aside to allow Llynya the lead, having no wish to linger in Trig’s presence. Apparently of the same mind, she turned on her heel.

  Trig watched them go, then lifted his gaze hack to Pwyll. The boy made another sign, more urgent, and Trig called for Wei.

  Once on the wall-walk, Pwyll directed their gazes to the southern end of Riverwood.

  “It started not more’n a moment afore I called you,” the boy said, pointing at a line of trees along the river. The upper branches of the alders on the banks of the Bredd were leaning oddly against the wind, the top leaves of the coppice fluttering in opposition to the prevailing breeze. A faint scent of danger mingled with alder wafted in over the wall.

  Trig needed no more to tell him what was amiss. “They’ve caught something.”

  “Someone more like,” Wei said, “and no cottar.”

  “Aye,” Trig said. “We best go see what they’ve got and what we can make of it.”

  Chapter 12

  Mychael followed Llynya along the path she chose, through the fields toward the tower gallery in the eastern wall. At its other end the gallery emptied into the lower bailey, where Aedyth’s hut stood in a copse of saplings. Trig had given an order, not made a request, but Mychael had no intention of obeying. Aedyth would probably as soon poison him as not. Moreover, he was still hurting from the night and Madron’s concoction yet ran through his blood. God knew what another dose of some female’s herbal might do to him. The maid looked a bit mutinous herself, her mouth a thin line, her gaze steady on some distant spot—avoiding his. Her strides were long and determined; the quicker to get rid of him, he was sure.

  Tall stalks of jhaen warmed in the morning light, filling the air with the scent of ripe grain and brushing their shoulders as they passed. The harvesters were working the west side of the field, their voices a silvery murmur beneath the swaying of the grass.

  Llynya was not like the other girls in Merioneth. Seeing her with Edmee and Massalet had sent that point home with a clarity that had been missing the other times they’d been together. No flirtation ever fell from her lips, even on a dare. He’d seen no smile cross her mouth except for the one she’d given Shay’s doves. Not even Shay had been graced with such. As for himself, under circumstances dire or benign, she looked at him with naught but a darkly serious gaze, and if she ever laughed, it had not been where he could hear it. Odd for one known as sprite.

  Was the loss of Morgan so great?

  It troubled him to think so, and not because he would have her for himself, though there was that. He knew the pain of loss. He’d lived with it unabated throughout his childhood, the gnawing ache in the middle of his chest, the hard lump in his throat that inevitably led to tears. As a child in Strata Florida, if perchance he fell asleep dry of eye, he’d awaken before dawn and find his cheeks wet with tears, for his heart never forgot the deaths of Merioneth even when his mind wandered from grief.

  He looked down at the solemn warrior by his side and wondered if she cried herself to sleep at night. He fervently hoped not. He’d seen no tears those nights in the caves, yet she didn’t smile, and she never laughed, so pretty and serious was the elf-maid from the Yr Is-ddwfn.

  “I’d not be going to Aedyth for simples, if I were you,” she said, breaking the silence with a warning.

  “Why?”

  “The healer thinks you’re a darkling beast, and there’s no telling what she might give you.”

  “Aye, and she’s right enough.” His easy agreement garnered him a pair of raised eyebrows and a sidelong glance.

  “I’d not go believing everything I hear about myself either, were I you.” ’Twas an admonishment, as if she knew better than he which rumors to hold and which to belie.

  She was piqued aright, but ’twas not his fault, not totally. She’d been found out and banned, and unlike him, her chances alone in the dark were near to naught.

  “There’s herbs aplenty in the east tower,” she continued, then paused for a long moment as if in indecision. “If it suits you, I can mix you a simple as well as the healer.” This last was spoken quickly, with barely disguised reluctance.

  He grinned. Poor chit. She’d have naught to do with him if she could, but her conscience couldn’t leave him to old Aedyth.

  “Aye, your simples suit me better than most,” he told her.

  Color flushed her face, entrancing him. No rose blushed as prettily, and no girl ever for him. He would have her for
his own, he realized of a sudden, whether ’twas love or not that held him in her grip.

  “Trig let you off damned lightly for mutiny,” she said, keeping her gaze forward even as her blush deepened.

  “Better to ask why Rhuddlan let me off. Naught happens here except by his order.”

  She glanced up at that, her gaze going straight to the stripe in his hair. “Aye. I guess he has reason enough to keep you safe.”

  Side by side, they passed under the arch of the gallery, a narrow hall running ten yards along the inside of the great wall. Square windows looking onto the bailey lit the murky interior, showing gray stones damp with seepage. Green moss grew in the roughly dressed cracks. A yard down the gallery’s length, a stairwell opened up into the east tower.

  “ ’Tis not Rhuddlan or Trig who concerns me,” he said. “Nor Aedyth if it comes to that.”

  “Nor anyone, I’ll bet.” He barely heard the soft muttering as she turned into the tower.

  He followed close behind, his grin broadening. After the brightness of the sunlit fields, he was briefly blinded by the dark, and the thought came to him that he was ever following her into dark and winding places.

  In the next instant, as he turned the first curve in the stairwell, all his thoughts deserted him. Light from an open doorway in the room above spilled partway down the stairs, and by the grace of God and an errant breeze a bit of her bare leg flashed above the tops of her hose with each stride she took. He froze on a narrow step, staring up at her, transfixed by sudden yearning.

  Christe. The breath left his lungs. The petals of meadowsweet and rose in her raiment glittered as if with dew. Thus she sparkled, and shimmered, and beckoned, tripping up the stairs with light steps, showing that silky skin. He swallowed hard, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her.

  She’d kill him for certes.

  Aye, he warned himself, taking off after her before she could disappear. Sticking his hand up her skirts or pouncing on her like some lust-crazed drake was unlikely to gain him much, being too crude even for one of his inexperience. And there was her knife to consider, and her present mood, neither of which boded well for an illicit caress or tower dalliance. In his forest imaginings, there had usually been a certain amount of desire on the wood nymph’s part (actually, an inordinate amount), a creature so beguiling and seductive she had burned through every ounce of his (admittedly fragile) will and had her way with him in every manner he could devise.