Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  “Good.” He pulled a leaf-wrapped seedcake out of her pack and held it out to her, but when she reached for it, he didn’t immediately let it go.

  She lifted her gaze to his in question.

  “You’re Liosalfar,” he said, as if reminding her.

  “Aye.”

  “And strong?”

  “Stronger than those who are not.”

  He released the cake and gestured with a lift of his chin. “Show me your arm.”

  Another short hesitation followed his request. Then she stuck the cake between her teeth and pushed up her sleeve, showing him the tattoos he’d hoped to see.

  “Good. Good.” His gaze tracked the hazel leaves embedded in her skin and the single rowan leaf high on her shoulder. The mark for Deri was below. Her name was in runes between her elbow and her wrist. Nia. “Have you been through the Kai Crack?” he asked, naming a crawlway off the main passages in the Canolbarth.

  Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You know much of Liosalfar training if you know of the Kai Crack.”

  “Every man knows his enemies. Rhuddlan could tell you more of me than my own captains.”

  She seemed to give that some thought, then nodded. “Aye. I’ve been through the Crack and a couple of other squeezes besides.”

  “Then you’ll not have any trouble with the Grim Crawl.”

  She looked dubious. “Grim Crawl?”

  “Ghranne Mekom in my language, a squeeze that bypasses the Kasr-al Loop. To take a hundred soldiers through is too slow, even provided that you have a hundred who won’t freeze up in the tighter spots. But two travelers can cut half a day going that way. Don’t worry. It’s not much worse than the Crack.”

  The skeptical look she threw him did much to increase his confidence in her. No one who had struggled through the tight and narrow crawlways called “squeezes” underestimated their danger. Getting stuck in a tunnel so small that the ceiling pressed down on your back while the floor pressed up against your chest was a real threat, and the natural urge to panic in that situation spelled death.

  “How do we cut the other two and a half days?”

  “We’ll gain a half day roping down into the Mindao River Slot. The water isn’t running too high. We’ll get wet, but we won’t be washed over the falls.”

  Her eyebrows rose again, even higher, but she made no protest. “And what do we have to do to save the other two days? Leap a flaming gorge? Climb one of these canyon walls with our bare hands?”

  ’Twas his turn to hesitate. Unlike with the other two shorter routes, he had no reassurances to offer with the third. They would drop down off the trail into jeopardy, and the threat would deepen around every turn until they reached the caves where the Light-elves ruled.

  “No,” he finally said. “Though you may wish it were so. The third route lies through the Dangoes.”

  She visibly paled, and her fingers moved in a quick sign. He said nothing, but knew it would take more than a warding to keep them safe. From the look of fear in her eyes, so did she.

  “Eat your cake,” he told her, “and I’ll tell you the tale of the Starlight-born as it is written in the Elhion Bhaas Le.”

  “You know the Indigo Book of Elfin Lore?” she asked, a bit of her fear giving way to surprise. She was not easily cowed, not for long, he was heartened to see.

  “Aye, the very same. Listen well, for such a time as it speaks of is now.”

  And so he began. The story was an old one, the oldest, for it told of the beginning, of the star and the darkness, of the Ages of Wonders and the Dark Age that had followed. The story told of the Prydion Magi and the Seven Books of Lore—and it told of the making of the dragons from a star-metal cauldron and how the mighty serpents had devoured the darkness.

  “But beasts of war are ever hungry,” he said, drawing the story to its close, “and even as the dragons spawned their first brood on the shores of the nether sea, the magi forged a peerless sword to rule them, its edge tempered with star-wrought metal, its hilt crowned with stones of light. A bloodspell was then cast over the people of the Earth so that forever after those who could wield the blade would come forth in time—Aethelings of the Starlight, bound by celestial ether.” He finished and looked at her. “Stept Agah was such a one. ’Tis said he was bound to the blade by a Chandra priestess and though he died, the sword yet delivered its killing blows.”

  “ ’Tis a druaight blade that will fight when its master is dead,” Nia said, a note of apprehension in her voice.

  “Aye, and it takes a druaight master to wield such a sword.”

  Nia lowered her gaze to the trail, hiding her fear and the sudden pounding of her heart.

  She knew an aetheling, the only one, Llynya.

  ~ ~ ~

  In his private quarters above Rastaban, Caerlon stood in front of an opening that looked out on the court of the Troll King. Below, Slott ranged through the assemblage, a mountain of flesh and hair and clinking skulls, and long, twitching tail. Near the west wall, Lacknose Dock was readying a troop for a morning raid into Merioneth. They would leave within the hour and make Riverwood by the next day’s dawn. Blackhand Dock had taken a force of skraelings and a wolfpack into the deep dark the previous night. With Sha-shakrieg daring to breach Quicken-tree territory, time was running short. An alliance between the old enemies was unlikely, but Caerlon was not taking any chances. Every possible obstacle to victory had thus far been removed—every possible one—and he would not let delay be his undoing. The aetheling had returned from Deri less than a fortnight past and with all else ready, ’twas time to bring her into the fold. Whether aboveground or below, he would have her, a succulent boon for Slott, before he rid the world forever of her kind.

  One other troop had been sent the day before, a skraelpack to Tryfan, led by Redeye Dock. The Quicken-tree would go there for elf shot, but Caerlon was going to give them a taste of war.

  He turned from the opening toward the room. Light from the torches and fires in the great cavern spread an orange glow around him, revealing curved, stone walls and Slott’s newest vassal sleeping on the floor.

  Wyrm-master. A despicable name for one held so dear, yet Caerlon himself had to admit that Rhiannon’s son was less than inspiring. In truth, he looked far different than Caerlon had imagined him, far worse, even with the clean tunic and hose Caerlon had procured for him. Yet the stripe was there, and he was golden-haired, and he’d been found in the deep dark, where no other man could have survived. His coming had meant the end of Caerlon’s long wait—five hundred years of wait. “Troll’s Bane,” the man was called, and as had been told, the breaking of the damson crystal seals had drawn him nigh.

  Bloody hard work that had been. A thousand spells Caerlon had cast, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them for naught, each requiring rare configurations of metals and stone and crystal, before he’d been able to put so much as a hairline fracture in one of the seals. But he had prevailed, and the crystals had cracked. Half a year past, even the mighty seal on Kryscaven Crater had given way before his sorcery. ’Twas then he’d begun amassing his army from the ranks of men, one warped soul at a time, in readiness for when the final breaks began and the smoke arose, the dark effluence of another age that had power over the enchantments of the Prydion Magi.

  Below walked the proof of it. When he’d taken the smoke to Inishwrath and poured it over the rocky headland that had been Slott, it had released the Troll King. He’d brought Slott home a fortnight earlier to strike fear in the hearts of the Quicken-tree and the Sha-shakrieg—and the friggin’ skraelings. He’d needed a king to hold them in check before he dared gather all of them together in Rastaban, just as he needed the golden-haired man to hold the dragons in check; for as sure as the darkness came, the beasts would come to destroy it.

  So there the great sword wielder lay, branded and lame, and not so young as Caerlon had thought he would be. Sworn to Slott he was now, and no longer Troll’s Bane. Naught was left to keep Caerlon from his desire—the We
ir Gate, the great wormhole. So he had read in his closely held book, and so he believed. To fall into the future took no great skill, but no redemption awaited Caerlon in the future, no glories to overcome his shame. For that he needed the past. The dragons could place him there, the book had revealed, him and all his host in one great breach of power. Brought to heel in the doorway of time, Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas could turn the worms, all of them, the whole golden clew, and open a window onto the Wars of Enchantment, onto a time before the death of the true king, Tuan of the Dockalfar, the sovereign Caerlon had failed with his bloodspell.

  Mad, Caerlon remembered, his hand tightening into a fist. They’d all gone mad, the Dockalfar, to a man, woman, and every child, and in their madness died with his potion running through their veins.

  No smoke could bring the old bones of the Dark-elves to life. Naught but a return to the past could do the deed, and soon Caerlon would hold the reins of time. The way of it had been revealed by the one he held below. Fitting justice, for she was the one who had betrayed him with the bloodspell. She had written on a page where there should have been naught, and thus he’d gone one step too far in his conjuring. The damning ink had faded from his sight even as the Dark-elves drank his draught, and he’d been too late to stop them.

  Cursed Ailfinn Mapp. Cursed, cursed mage. She’d dared to deface the Elhion Bhaas Le, the Indigo Book of Elfin Lore, and the Dockalfar had paid the price.

  Now she paid, and when the Quicken-tree all lay dead about her, he would count her penance done. Until then, she was his to torture, as she had been since she had come to Merioneth and found him lying in wait.

  He’d known she would come. Though a thousand years should pass, she would come for the book he’d stolen. Her book. The Elhion Bhaas Le.

  It had been a fortnight since he’d gone down to see her. There had been no time, what with his business at Inishwrath, and the calling of the skraelings from all points north and south, and the bringing in of Troll’s Bane. No doubt she was languishing on the edge of death, for that was where he kept her, suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, in a place where no skraeling dared go, a place where the twilight sleep of forgetfulness reigned—the oubliette of Rastaban.

  Aye, he would go see her and take her some foul sustenance, and upon his return he would unleash Lacknose Dock to sniff out the aetheling in Riverwood.

  Chapter 14

  The forest was asleep when Mychael struck out from the castle for Bala Bredd, a small lake high in the mountains, the source of the River Bredd that wound through the wooded glens of Merioneth. He and Owain oft went there together, though the older man had declined to leave a warm and cozy bed this night for a trek into the hills.

  Tabor Shortshanks had indeed reached the curtain wall early that afternoon, and he and his ponies would be rested and ready for the journey into Lanbarrdein come morning—only a few hours off. The pony-master had been pleased that Mychael would be his companion, far more pleased than Mychael was himself. He’d already been kicked once and stepped on twice while helping Pwyll and a couple of others unload the packs, and he doubted he would fare any better in the caverns.

  Llynya had not been there to help with the ponies. Nor had she been at the hearthfire for the feast Moira had ordered in Bedwyr’s honor. The old warrior’s body had been brought up from Mor Sarff and on the morrow would be taken to Deri for burial at the base of the great mother oak.

  Elen and two kitchen boys had baked loaf upon loaf of kel bread for the feast, and well into evening the upper ward had still smelled of hot ovens and fresh manchets. Seedcakes had abounded, soaked in honey and sweetly crunchy. Redbuck pottage had been served with blackberries and cream from the cottars’ cows. The largest cauldron on the fire had held a great stew of porray herbs and vegetables: leeks and neeps, wild lettuce, wurtys, peas and purslane. Nuts and murrey had rounded out the meal, along with platters of Moira’s delicate mushroom pasties.

  It had been a feast for kings and Mychael had barely eaten a bite. Next to the elf-maid’s kiss, food held no allure. He had spent the day searching for her in every nook and cranny and bailey tree, inside the castle walls and out, wanting to make amends, wanting to see her again, even if ’twas only an apology he would have on his lips and not her kiss. But it had proven to be true that a sprite who did not want to be found, could not be found.

  He had waited in the ward for twilight, thinking for certes that the singing would draw her out, that she would brave his presence out of respect for Bedwyr. He’d been wrong, and that pained him, for he knew only a great loathing could have kept her away. No doubt the only reason she hadn’t run right off in the tower was because she was too young to have known what was happening. When she had realized, she must have been horrified in the least, and at the worst, frightened.

  All the more reason he needed to talk to her. He would not have it on his conscience that he’d forever put her off love. Despite what was certain to be naught but an embarrassment to himself, he had to assure her ’twas nothing but his own foolishness she’d suffered. Aye, the longer he thought about it—and in truth, he’d thought of little else all day—he’d practically attacked her. He was lucky to still be of a piece.

  The singing was behind him now, the sound of lute and lyre, of bodhran drums and silver flutes and Quicken-tree voices. Tabor’s voice could be heard above the rest, singing a lament for Bedwyr. The sweet, clear notes of the pony-master’s song and the soft din of the accompanying music traveled on the night wind, slipping o’er the stone curtain and into the forest, yet fading farther away with each long stride Mychael took through the trees.

  A scout line had been set up all along the river, and as he neared the Bredd, he grew more cautious. ’Twas not an easy thing to elude Quicken-tree scouts, but the last thing he wanted was for some youngish elf on his first patrol to startle at a broken twig and blow his horn. He would never reach the lake then.

  To the south was the arbor copse where, Mychael had been told, the trees had captured a monk. Mychael had considered going to see the stranger, but time was short, and he would as soon spend it at Bala Bredd.

  He reached the lake with the half-moon full risen. The final stretch was a rocky climb through a cascade of boulders and the small streams that gathered ’round them before running down the mountainside. As he neared the top, the boulders gave way to a boggy fen with a string of beaver ponds marking where the water flowed out of a small vale and the streams began.

  The lake was bordered by a great forest on the north and west, the last outpost of Riverwood. On the east, the steep scree slopes of Glyder Mawr rose to a towering summit spiked with pinnacles of stone. An island floated in the middle of the lake, with a precarious bridge of fallen, half-submerged trees linking it to the westernmost shore.

  The island was Mychael’s destination. ’Twas haunted, according to local legend and with good reason. Strange noises could oft be heard sighing and hissing through the island’s trees. Clouds of mist would sometimes appear at the base of its rugged limestone cliffs and then glide, ghostlike, out over the water.

  Tonight was one of those “sometimes.” A whole bank of dense fog lay about the cliffs and their environs, parts of it wisping off to float on the lake. The wind was carrying odd sounds with it across the fen.

  Mychael grinned, recognizing the faint hiss of steam coming from the geyser pool at the heart of the island. The spring that fed it was running high to have made such a fog. There would be hot water aplenty.

  He was across the tree bridge and had dropped onto the island’s sandy shore when he heard the crack of a breaking branch behind him in the forest. He instantly crouched down, his senses alert, and peered across the moonlit lake into the woods. A gust of wind came up suddenly and blew through the trees, their limbs dipping and swaying. Nearly as quickly as it had come up, the wind was gone. After waiting a good while and seeing and hearing nothing more, he turned away and headed into the trees, making for the pool.

  Lly
nya watched him from the low bough of a trembling pine, still not believing that she’d broken one of the tree’s branches. Yet there the thing was, right under her foot with half of it sticking out from beneath her boot. The tree trembled again, up from the roots and down every limb, shaking her and stirring up another wind. It wanted her gone, but she dared not leave its cover until Mychael was good and away. She’d followed him, wanting to know where a Druid boy went of a cool dark night, but she didn’t want to be caught sneaking along behind him.

  “Sticks,” she swore at herself, dropping out of the tree when he finally disappeared into the island’s small wood. A branch brushed up against her backside with a light swat at the same time as a pinecone bounced off the top of her head.

  “All right, all right,” she muttered, brushing herself off. Such had never happened to her. She was the sprite, the light-foot, the one whom all the trees had graced with a leaf for her hair, not some clumsy oaf who went crashing through the forest. The trees expected better of her.

  The day she’d returned to Carn Merioneth, Mychael had kept to the forest well into the night, and she’d wondered where he had lingered. If he knew about Bala Bredd, she figured ’twas likely he’d been here that night as well. ’Twas a healing place, where the wild berries grew and gave fruit nearly up to the winter solstice, what with the pool to keep the bushes warm. Those of the world of Men avoided the vale, though not strictly because of the mysterious hot spring. Rhuddlan had long claimed the lake as his own and woven a warding around the island, enough to make Men uneasy when they first stepped upon the fen, or if they set foot on the western slope of Glyder Mawr.

  Riverwood held its own enchantment, of the deep forest and of old growing trees that had long listened to the Mother. There were parts of Riverwood where even the bravest of men felt the ponderous weight of arboreal eyes and the warning to beware, and one of those parts bordered the western shores of Bala Bredd.