Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  “Aye,” she said with an intriguing hesitancy, and shook a few juniper berries into her palm.

  “You know her well?”

  “Aye.” The hesitation was there again. She popped the berries in her mouth.

  Coerced by the lift of his eyebrows, she volunteered more cryptic information.

  “She’s worthy of caution, she is, as are the Dangoes. Let me at least bind your ears against the ice music.”

  “I am not afraid of the ice, Llynya.”

  “You should be.”

  “Mayhaps,” he agreed, then asked pointedly, “How do you know Ailfinn, and why caution?”

  For a moment he thought she might refuse to answer, so long was her reply in coming.

  “She is my teacher,” she finally said, “... and my grandmother.”

  “Grandmother?” he repeated, nonplussed.

  “Aye.” She shook more berries into her hand and offered them to him.

  “Nay.” He didn’t need juniper berries to keep him warm.

  She returned them to her pouch and moved her mask back into place. When she started down the trail, though, he put his hand out to stop her.

  “You are to be a mage? A Prydion Mage?” Moira had told him of their greatness, of their knowledge that spanned the millenniums, how the primordial substances of the earth were theirs to command. ’Twas disconcerting to think of Llynya in those terms. She was his love, strong and fierce, but also that fair elf-maiden of the mist—except a maiden no more. She’d given that part of herself to him.

  “Mayhaps,” she said. “In time. I have the knack, if not the guise.” Her admission was direct.

  “Yet you came to me for knowledge of the weir? Does not Ailfinn know its ways?”

  “Ailfinn would put me in chains and auction me off to a Norman lord before she’d let one of her own go through a weir gate.”

  ’Twas enough to assure the mage of Mychael’s admiration and respect.

  “We are bound, Llynya,” he told her. “If you must find Morgan, and it’s through the weir you must go, you will not go alone. I would have your promise that it is so.”

  She nodded and gave her solemn oath. “I swear by the trees and the stars. I’ll not have you pay the price I pay for being bound to the Thief.”

  Another direct admission, but one he could have done without.

  “You came to me a virgin,” he said, working to keep the strain out of his voice. She was his, not Morgan’s. Whatever hold the Thief had on her was more than Mychael wanted to acknowledge.

  “ ’Tis not love, Mychael,” she promised, smoothing the scowl from his face with her hand, “and the kiss Morgan and I shared was no more than a brushing of lips. ’Twas not at all how you kiss me.”

  He was heartened to hear that, though the rest of her words near took the heart out of him.

  “Something happened in those hours Morgan and I spent together,” she went on. “Or mayhaps it was that Rhuddlan put him in my care and I failed him. Three times in Deri I was struck down by the sense of his falling, a terrible vertigo I couldn’t escape, a madness where the very earth was not solid beneath me, though I had my hands dug deep into the dirt. There was no purchase to be had and no escape. The first time it happened, I thought it was guilt rising up to claim me. I girded myself to endure, yet was praying for death before it finally released me. The second time, I was terrified that it had happened again. By the third time, I feared the lot was mine to bear for life, and I knew I could not. I came north to free myself as much as to save Morgan. The weir is a torture, you say, a torment, and I know it to be true, for as Morgan falls through its anguished depths, so have I.”

  Green eyes stared up at him, their vulnerability masked by a stoic veneer. The urge to draw her close and enfold her in his arms was strong, but he would give her more than a fleeting comfort.

  “Remember at Bala Bredd when you felt the dragonfire?” he asked, dredging up a memory he’d hoped to forget—that he’d dragged her into his bane and been soothed by her presence there.

  “Aye,” she said. “I heard the dragons cry. I shared their breath with you. They are coming, Mychael. I saw Naas calling to them from the ramparts of Carn Merioneth the night we came up from the deep dark and the dragonfire took you.”

  More than nonplussed, he was shocked. “You heard them? Out in the world, not just in your mind?”

  “Aye. I didn’t know what the white-eyed one was up to, wasn’t sure what the keening cry was, until I heard it again when we were joined.”

  Excitement and dread surged into him. Was he finally to meet the beasts whose blood ran in his veins?

  “Do you know when they’re coming?” Christe, the dragons.

  “Nay.”

  Naas would. He was certain. Five months he’d been with the Quicken-tree and not a word out of her. Then suddenly she’d given him a dreamstone knife and a sennight later she was up on the castle walls calling dragons?

  And they had answered her.

  He’d almost died that night. Without Madron he might have breathed his last. He touched the phial still nested in his tunic. ’Twas a slim guard against dragons, yet he would have them come.

  Aye, he would have them come and know his fate. Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas—their names alone quickened the heat beneath his skin.

  He took Llynya’s hand in his, letting her feel the pulsing warmth. “We are bound, cariad, but I would not have you be part of this. If Morgan’s falling comes upon you again, I’ll be with you, but if the dragons come and their desire is to rage against me, the weir may be the only safe place. You saw as well as I how Trig broke Rhuddlan’s seals on the tunnels leading to the great Weir. If the need arises, take your mystery path back to Yr Is-ddwfn.”

  Llynya looked at him and nodded. Aye, if the need arose, she would take the path to Yr Is-ddwfn and pray that Morgan did not call out for her as she traversed the narrow trail down the wormhole. For certes she would be lost then, her wish granted with one misstep. But if such dire need arose, and the dragons were ravening beasts come for Mychael’s blood, she was taking him down the worm’s throat with her.

  “Come,” she said. “Before we meet dragons, we must first get through the ice.” Thus she turned and led him into the frozen wasteland.

  Chapter 24

  “No time. No time,” Caerlon muttered as he strode down a long tunnel leading to Rastaban’s dungeons, carrying a fully laden pack and a short whip of braided leather. With each stride, he tapped the whip against the side of his leg. ’Twas the one thing the skraelings understood, the crack of the lash. Beasts.

  As the time for battle had grown nearer, the skraelpacks had grown more mutinous and unruly—and hungry, always hungry. They were eating him out of rats, and Slott, dear Slott, was eating him out of skraelings. There was no time to waste. No time to lose, or his whole army would be naught but troll droppings.

  “No time. No time.” His mutterings took on a singsong quality as he hefted the pack higher on his shoulder. “No time to lose.”

  He came to a fork in the tunnel and took the long curve of stairs leading into the lower dungeons. His light steps made nary a sound on the cold hard stone. At the bottom of the stairwell, a wide corridor opened to the south. Cells lined either side of the passageway, cells for branding, cells for racking, cells for shackling, cells for slow roasting—the skraelings’ favorite. By the end of the Wars of Enchantment, there had been damn little enchantment, only the grisly horrors of battles and death.

  Caerlon passed them all, heading toward a small holding cell at the end of the corridor. The iron bars of its door grated against the stone floor as he pulled it open. Tufts of old rush were scattered about the interior, a thin comfort to any who might be incarcerated in its gloomy depths.

  He held his dreamstone high and passed the light over the far wall, looking for the curved incision in the rock that marked the door he sought. Even knowing where it was, ’twas difficult to find.

  There, he thought, spying a crack in
the stone. He stepped forward and smoothed his hand along the curve. At its apex, he pushed and felt the inner latch give way. The door swung open.

  A dizzying sight greeted him, one that never failed to delight, the abyss of Rastaban’s oubliette stretching out below in all its bleak, black glory. From the landing where he stood, stairs swirled around and down the sheer-sided granite walls, ending in another stone landing that hung above a pool of inky darkness measuring over a hundred feet across. Out of the darkness thrust a single pillar of rock, the top of which was lit by a shaft of soft golden light glittering with faerie dust, each mote a testament to Caerlon’s courage and resolve. Fifty years he’d spent in the wilderness collecting the stuff, searching every sídhe from Cymru to Eire.

  The light that held the dust shot down from a long rod of yellow dreamstone as thick as the trunk of an oak tree. ’Twas Tuan’s Stone, taken from the watery depths of the King’s Pool in Lanbarrdein, the only treasure saved before the advancing Quicken-tree had won the great cavern. Caerlon and his maimed Dockalfar had unearthed it from its long hiding place in a cavern south of Rastaban in the early summer, and embedded it in the land above to act as a window between the surface world and the table of rock jutting up out of the darkness, creating the perfect prison for the perfect prisoner.

  Dreamstone light and faerie dust. Could any lovelier half-death be devised?

  Caerlon thought not, but Ailfinn appeared perfectly oblivious to the luxury of her prison, a testament to his success. He had sacrificed for her. Indeed he had, baiting his trap with the Elhion Bhaas Le. The trap was long sprung now and the bait closed within, taken from him.

  Nonetheless he smiled as he always did when he looked upon Ailfinn. There she hung, suspended by light and air, unable to reach the key to her freedom though it lay literally at her feet. The irony of his teacher’s demise gave him nearly as much pleasure as had the Indigo Book itself during all the years he’d pored over its pages, searching for the manner of her downfall.

  She looked a bit like a butterfly, her white hair with its single, subtle stripe of gold twining upward into the aureate light, her tawny, rune-marked cloak billowing about her like wings, the sparkle of faerie dust giving her an ethereal air. Her face was remarkably unlined for a woman of her great age. Some female necromancy, no doubt, and vanity, for certes. Her eyes had closed under his induced sleep, but he remembered them well, as green as any of her beloved Quicken-tree’s, with thick golden lashes.

  Rotters. In his excitement, he’d forgotten to bring her a piece of meat.

  She never ate it, of course, wouldn’t have even if she’d been in a condition to eat, but he liked to think the stench of the decayed flesh he threw on the rock added to her misery. She had a very delicate nose. Even trapped in a sleeping death, he was sure she could smell the putridness of his offerings.

  As to his other prisoner, Caerlon was doing his best not to offend him. The chains that held the young Liosalfar to the lower landing’s wall were an undeniable offense, but a necessary one. Caerlon hoped to make it up to him with the food he’d brought: sweetcakes and honeycomb, mead and hazelnuts, enough to restore the boy and tide him over for a sennight. By then the Weir Gate would be secured, and Caerlon would have all the time he wished, an eternity of it. Time to win, time to waste... time to play.

  He smiled again and started down the stairs. A pale, eyeless lizard skittered across his path. “Tua,” the Quicken-tree dared to call the reptiles, a deliberate insult to the great king who had once ruled the rocky depths of all the caverns from Anglesey to the Brecon Beacons.

  So much had been lost.

  So much more was about to be regained.

  Caerlon and his army were off to war, his captains above forming packs in the Eye of the Dragon for their march to the Dangoes. There they would launch their ships into Mor Sarff and make sail for the Weir Gate.

  Deseillign had fallen, the Desert Queen routed and fleeing to the east, beyond the roots of the mountains and the known edge of her kingdom. The Dockalfar captains had proven glorious in battle, holding the west against her and bringing Caerlon the last great swordblade to come from the desert smith’s forge—the Edge of Sorrow for the Magia Blade. Whatever bargain the Lady might have made with Rhuddlan would be left undone. The Blade and the Blade’s master were Caerlon’s now.

  Lacknose had not returned from Riverwood, presupposing defeat, and the Quicken-tree had fought Blackhand’s pack to a draw on the causeway. Rhuddlan’s confidence would be high, despite his captain’s defeat beneath Tryfan. And why not? Caerlon thought with a flicker of disgust. The Quicken-tree still had the aetheling—the one fly in his ointment.

  This time, though, Rhuddlan’s confidence would be his undoing. He would make for Rastaban, from whence all his troubles had so far come, taking the quickest route, overland through Riverwood. His instincts would drive him to Slott and the Eye of the Dragon, while all of Rastaban would be making for the Weir Gate with the Wyrm-master and the Magia Blade to call the dragons.

  Or most of the Magia Blade, Caerlon conceded. He’d broken five precious rods of dreamstone trying to cobble a sword grip onto the sorrowful edge, a difficult day’s work. In the end, he’d settled for leather-wrapped wood embedded with roughly smoothed cabochons of the broken crystals.

  He drew on a level with Ailfinn and gave the floating mage a glance. She looked a bit wan, but there was no help for it. The dreamstone light had sustained her these many long months, as it would sustain the Quicken-tree warrior for a time, but Caerlon had never supposed that it would grant her life indefinitely.

  A few steps farther down, he came to the landing. A stream of water trickled down the wall at its edge, filling a small pool before it overflowed into the abyss. He’d chained the boy close enough to the pool for him to drink and splash his face, if that would give him pleasure.

  “I’ve brought food,” he said, shrugging out of the pack.

  No sign of welcome lit the Liosalfar’s eyes, no words of gratitude fell from his lips. He’d washed himself, though. His face, scrubbed clean, was of a Quicken-tree’s particular delicacy, slightly slanted green eyes and a fine nose upturned at the end. He’d replaited his fif braid, and Caerlon could almost hear the song he’d probably sung while doing it... pwr wa ladth, pwr wa ladth.

  Songs would not help him in the oubliette. Caerlon had been careful to seal the prison against sacred sounds, lest Ailfinn talk in her sleep and accidentally mutter an incantation or two.

  He knelt down and began emptying the pack.

  “I’ll be gone for a while, so I’ve brought food for a sennight, mayhaps a sennight and a half, if you’re careful.” Still nothing from the boy.

  Caerlon wanted to touch him, badly, but held himself to lifting a length of silky black hair. He got a murderous look for his trouble.

  “When I return, it will be as king of all you hold dear, Shay. Mayhaps then we will parlay for your favors.”

  A foul curse escaped the boy, an inadvertent slip of the tongue as it were, and Caerlon laughed.

  “Aye, that’s exactly what I had in mind. That and more of the same, when I return.” A huskiness he couldn’t control slipped into his voice. He let the strands of the Liosalfar’s hair slide through his fingers and lowered his hand to rest on the young warrior’s thigh. The muscles beneath his tunic were hard and lean, his leg well formed.

  The boy’s stony gaze shifted to Ailfinn.

  “She can’t help you,” Caerlon said softly, allowing his hand to slide beneath the tunic to bare skin, then to the boy’s braies.

  Shay’s gaze came back to him, blandly indifferent, though sweat was breaking out on Caerlon’s brow and upper lip. He pulled his hand back and swore silently to himself. The indifference had cost the boy, he was sure.

  The Liosalfar would not be easy to break—and what Liosalfar was? But Shay would break, and he would break to Caerlon’s hand.

  In a single, fluid movement, he rose and turned on his heel, leaving the pack behind.
He took the stairs two at a time up out of the oubliette and did not look back when he closed the stone door. With nary a soul but a half-dead mage for company, no doubt the Quicken-tree boy would be better pleased to see him the next time he came.

  No doubt.

  Shay waited until he heard the stone door grind closed before he gave in to a ripple of despair. He brought one knee up from his cross-legged position and rested his forehead on it with a pained breath.

  Sticks. With all else he had to bear, his captor was a bugger.

  The scent of honey came to him in his misery, heartening him. His stomach growled, and he lifted his head. A sennight, the Dark-elf had said, and Shay wondered if Caerlon truly thought he was going to dispatch Rhuddlan and the gathering tribes in seven days. For all that Wei had been forced to retreat from Tryfan with his wounded, the skraelings had suffered the worst losses.

  He reached for the mead Caerlon had brought and took a sip, pacing himself and eyeing his small store of food. He took another sip, and his gaze drifted to the shaft of golden light holding the darkness at bay.

  He knew who she was, the lady in the light. He’d known the instant he’d seen her, Ailfinn Mapp. How a few Dark-elves and a bunch of skraelings had captured a Prydion Mage was a mystery, but in the three days he’d been in Rastaban’s deepest dungeon, Shay had come to think it might have something to do with the large book at the woman’s feet.

  Even as he watched, one of the thick cream-colored pages lifted up into the light. It wavered for a moment, bathed in glittering motes, then floated down to lie smooth on the other side of the book—a page turned. ’Twas the fourth time such had happened since he’d been chained to the landing, and ’twas Ailfinn doing it. There was no wind in the oubliette. Though she didn’t move herself, not so much as a finger twitch that he had seen, the pages in the book were turning.

  And that was where Shay’s hope lay.

  “Es sholei par es cant,” he whispered into the darkness. “Pwr wa ladth. Pwr wa ladth.”

  Run deep. Run deep.

  ~ ~ ~