Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  “Caradoc.”

  “Christ’s bones,” Owain swore, striding forward and stabbing the pile with the point of his sword. He lifted a tunic and bared his teeth. “So the wormhole spit him out, did it? I would have a go at the bastard, aye, and I think I’ll string him up before I bloody the whoreson with my blade. What say you, Varga? Do ye have any of those wicked threads to spare?”

  “For Caerlon’s ally? Yes.” The Sha-shakrieg smiled beneath his gauze coverings. Varga never took the bandages off, not completely, only arranged them differently for eating, or to add warmth, or to shield his eyes. In this he was no different from any of the spider people. The starshine of Deseillign burned with a force that sank deep into exposed skin, making it far wiser to stay covered. Desert city dwellers enjoyed more freedom from the need of bandages, but Varga was a man of the sand, Varga of the Iron Dunes, and his cautions were well ingrained.

  “Come,” Rhuddlan said, turning away from the solar above the Troll King’s court. “We have our task before us and not much time to see it done.”

  They met the Liosalfar doing a final check on the first level, and Rhuddlan sent them on their way to join Treilo. The four of them split up then, Wei and Varga checking cells and tunnels to the north, Rhuddlan and Owain descending into the warren of the lower dungeons via a long curve of stairs.

  Cell by stinking cell they worked their way through the levels. Owain checked every seam and crack in the rock. If any had ever wondered where Rastaban’s privies were, Owain and Rhuddlan found them. The Quicken-tree man gave Owain a length of cloth to bind over his nose and mouth to help stem the stench.

  Finding naught on the second level, they went down to the next. At the bottom of the stairs, a wide corridor opened to the south. Fouled rushes littered the floor. Owain’s torch had guttered itself, and Rhuddlan set a new one alight for him with his dreamstone.

  “Check the cells on the east side,” he told Owain. “I’ll go down the west.”

  “Aye,” Owain said, his voice a muffled grunt beneath the cloth.

  Rhuddlan turned to the west, and Owain entered the first eastside cell, crossing himself as he did.

  “Bloody skraelings,” he muttered, crossing himself again. For extra measure he moved his fingers in a warding sign he’d learned at his mother’s knee in Denbigh in northern Wales. Denbigh’s priest had taught him a few others, the man being more Celtic than Catholic, and Owain used them all as he worked his way down the cells. Grim tortures had taken place in the dark holes. Rusted fetters and gyves were bolted to the walls and floors. Barbed chains with dangling hooks hung from the ceilings. Fire pits had been dug in some, and charred bones were to be found in their ashes. A broken rack testified to one cell’s past.

  Toward the end of the passage, sweat broke out on Owain’s brow, and an eerie, tingling sensation crept along his skin, making the hairs rise.

  “Hold on, man. Hold on,” he cautioned himself in a low whisper. He’d seen many a strange and ofttimes wondrous thing since joining up with the Quicken-tree. God’s truth, though, in his whole life and countless battles he’d not seen anything as gruesome as the offal sumps and dungeons of Rastaban.

  He dragged his torch over the back wall of a cell and found nothing. When he entered the last cell in the block, the eerie sensation heightened to an alarming degree.

  Rhuddlan was far behind him in the passage, working more slowly, which gave Owain pause. If something awful was going to happen of a sudden, or if he was going to see a troll the likes of Slott, he’d as soon have Rhuddlan close by. Ever since the Liosalfar had brought word of the Troll King, Owain had felt a special dread at the thought of the Thousand Skulled One. In all his life, he’d never imagined anything like the pryf, but he’d imagined trolls quite clearly as a wee lad, and he was shamefully afeared of ’em.

  Shamefully.

  His one weapon against them had been his firm grip on a reality that did not include children’s nightmares. Then the Liosalfar had returned from the Dangoes, and his nightmare had become real. Slott of the Thousand Skulls, Troll King of Rastaban, not only existed, but was loose upon the land.

  “Hold, man,” he muttered again, casting a wary eye about him. Seeing naught, he swept the east wall with light in search of oddities, but got no farther than halfway across when the southern wall began to hum. ’Twas a low, rumbling sound, seeming to come from deep below. A troll sound, by God, if he’d ever heard one.

  He turned with a shout on his lips, torch held high. “Rhuddlan!”

  The elf-man was already running toward the cell. A faint trembling shook the floor. Or mayhaps ’twas just him, Owain thought. For certes he was trembling from every hair, though he was frozen still as stone where he stood. Christ, but the troll would make short work of him. Down him in one easy bite, the beast would, and leave naught but his boots still stuck to the granite floor.

  “Rhuddlan!” he yelled again, and the Quicken-tree King was beside him.

  “ ’Tis naught to fear, Owain,” Rhuddlan said, a note of excitement in his voice. The Quicken-tree touched him on the arm as he passed, and Owain found he could move. He took a step back, waved away by Rhuddlan’s hand.

  “Stand clear,” the elf-man said.

  A weak skittering of golden light danced down the humming wall. A crack opened up in the stone and grew wider, wide enough for a man to slip through. Rhuddlan leaped toward it and disappeared.

  Owain didn’t move, dazzled as he was by the skittering, dancing light bursting out of the opening. The crack continued to widen, the slow, grinding noise it made adding a rough resonance to the humming sound. He took another step back just as Wei and Varga came rushing into the cell.

  Owain flushed to have been caught in retreat, but Wei and Varga didn’t seem to notice.

  “Asmen taline!” Wei hollered over the growing noise and the high whining bursts the flashing lights seemed to make. Then he and the Sha-shakrieg leaped through the crack in the stone and disappeared.

  Owain forced himself to step forward. ’Twasn’t a troll, he knew that, but ’twas sorcery nonetheless, a great sorcery to make such fires that flashed and burned and crackled.

  Girding himself for the dash, he drew his sword. With a final command to “hold on,” he leaped into the light-bound breach—and near toppled into the waiting abyss. He stopped himself with a flailing of his arms, stumbling backward to safety on the landing.

  “God’s balls,” he swore, staring down into the oubliette. The humming and scattering of light was coming from a shaft of golden light that shone down the center of the prison. Great sparks of color flew out of the shaft and lit the walls, painting them in reds, greens, and golds. On the far side of the prison, he could see Wei and Varga racing down a curve of stairs hewn out of the rock. Around the other side of the golden light, Rhuddlan was kneeling on another landing, and beside him was Shay.

  From where Owain stood, he saw Rhuddlan raise his sword over the boy and bring it crashing down. His breath stopped in his throat as icy blue sparks flew up from the boy’s chains. Then Shay was free and on his feet.

  ~ ~ ~

  Rhuddlan paced the landing, watching Ailfinn turn within the light of Tuan’s Stone. ’Twas the charged force of the crystal holding her, that and some rotting sídhe dust Caerlon had thrown into the mix. Given time, he would wait until the new moon to free her, when the crystal’s strength would be weakest for lack of sunlight, either direct or reflected. But there was no time for waiting.

  Below Ailfinn the pages of the Elhion Bhaas Le whipped back and forth in a fury. He could help her, if he could get to her, yet there was naught on her flat-topped prison that he could see for him to throw a rope around, and ’twas a rotting long way to jump.

  Behind him, he heard Owain make his way onto the landing. A choking sound immediately followed. He turned and found the Welshman white-faced, staring at Varga’s arm as the Sha-shakrieg rolled up his sleeve. Tightly coiled whorls covered the spider man’s flesh, all of them shining damp
ly in the golden light.

  Rhuddlan lifted his eyes and met the Sha-shakrieg’s dark-eyed gaze in silent understanding. There was a way.

  Varga chose a gray coil to start and dug his fingers in around its edge to pull it off. Fluid oozed up to fill the space, and Owain choked again.

  “ ’Tis only pryf silk and bia seepage,” Rhuddlan told the Welshman, “and naught to lose your supper over.”

  With the coil in his hand, Varga eyed the distance to Ailfinn’s rocky pillar. His throw sent the whorl flying out over the abyss. The silken thread uncoiled in loop after graceful loop, the gray glinting like silver in the flashes of light, until it hit the side of the pillar with a resounding thwack—and stuck.

  Two more threads followed in quick succession, one below the first and the next below the second. Varga secured each end of the threads to the wall above the landing.

  “ ’Tis not a web, but will work as a bridge. If you can free her, it will hold you both.”

  Rhuddlan tested his weight against the threads. They were like silk, so thin, yet tough, and growing harder now that they’d been exposed to the air. He’d crossed Sha-shakrieg webs in the Wars. Some of them had been traps, with killing threads woven in with the web threads. He’d seen more than one tylwyth teg meet a painful death in a sizzling, poisoned, tangled knot of some Sha-shakrieg’s making.

  He stepped out onto the bridge and when it held, sprinted across. When he reached the pillar, he gestured for Shay to come. He would need help if Ailfinn was unable to walk—if he could free her. The boy made nimble work of the crossing and came to stand by his side.

  “The pages weren’t moving so fast a few days past when they started turning,” Shay said.

  “Aye.” Rhuddlan ran his hand over the curve of golden light. The power of it pressed back against his palm. “Is she looking for a spell?”

  “No spell.” Rhuddlan shook his head. “She doesn’t need more magic, she needs less. Wei!” he called back over the abyss. “Give me your blade!”

  Wei moved to the edge of the landing and with a sideways toss slung his dreamstone dagger out toward the pillar. Shay caught it in the air.

  “Heat it up,” Rhuddlan commanded, and Shay tightened his fist around the crystal. Rhuddlan’s own blade was pulsing under the pressure of his grip. He believed what he’d told Shay, that less magic was needed, not more. For certes he was no mage to conjure a loosing spell, but with force of arms, he hoped to break the binding spell Caerlon had cast.

  A call from the landing had him lifting his head. Wei gestured to the far side of the prison, pointing up toward the door. Rhuddlan looked and nodded, then turned back to Ailfinn’s prison with grim determination. The smoke of Dharkkum was drifting into the oubliette. Caerlon might yet win the day and lose the world, the mighty fool.

  “Bring your blade in behind mine, and by the trees, do not cut Ailfinn. We’ll see if dreamstone magia can break the hold of Tuan’s Stone.”

  Shay nodded, and Rhuddlan slashed into the golden shaft. Blue sparks flashed all across the line of the cut and showered down on them. Rhuddlan cut again through the light with his crystal blade. A wisp of white smoke arose from Ailfinn’s robe where the fresh sparks landed.

  Shay shadowed his every move as he sliced line after line through the golden light. More smoke billowed up around them, ’til Ailfinn was discernible only as a still and floating form imprisoned in luminescence.

  The graceful arcs of colored fire falling into the abyss grew larger and more frequent. Though Ailfinn was not moving, Rhuddlan could feel the strength of her will forcing the fiery light away from the shaft, creating the rainbows of falling stars. He cut again, and thousands of the sídhe dust-motes burst into flame and flew outward, extinguishing themselves in the inky darkness of the pit.

  On the next flashing stab of his blade, a woman’s voice cried out, Ailfinn’s voice.

  “Dana Lianei!”

  A wind rose from the abyss, swirling around the pillar of rock. Rhuddlan stepped back and held his hand out to stay Shay’s blade.

  “Astareth!”

  The golden light wavered.

  “Conc de Le!”

  The white smoke spiraled up around her, and as Rhuddlan watched, Ailfinn’s left hand slowly curled into a fist, tighter and tighter, until the tendons in her wrist stood out in stark relief against her pale skin. The remaining motes of sídhe dust floated toward her and slipped between her fiercely held fingers, disappearing one by one into her fist. When the last mote was captured, she flung her hand open.

  The lights went out, all the lights. Rhuddlan’s blade as well as Tuan’s Stone. The torches on the landing stopped flaming. Wei’s blade ceased to burn.

  There was nothing but utter and complete darkness from every quarter. Darkness and the faint scent of Dharkkum.

  Then Ailfinn’s voice. “Take me to Kryscaven Crater, Elf King. We have work there.”

  ’Twas the Prydion, for certes, Rhuddlan thought, a smile breaking across his face. Though little given to sentiment, he was thoroughly heartened that she had the strength to command. Nonetheless, the tidings were dire. “It is lost, Ailfinn. The crystal seal was broken in midsummer, and all the southern basin is filled with pestilence.”

  Her voice came again out of the darkness, thin and acerbic. “And if it wasn’t, would I be needed? Fie, Caerlon. What of Deseillign, Rhuddlan?”

  “Overrun with the same ravaging smoke that threatens us here. We must be gone. Battle awaits us at the Weir Gate.”

  “Aye, we’re leaving, but to Kryscaven Crater. The battle at the gate is for another to win or lose, Elf King. Know it and obey,” she said, intoning words of Prydion prophesy. “Gird yourself, Rhuddlan, for ’tis no mere skraelings or Dockalfar you must face, but Dharkkum. Give me your hand.”

  He reached out and frail, cold fingers wrapped around his, but no colder than his had suddenly become. Rhuddlan of the Quicken-tree feared nothing on earth, yet there was no denying the dread he felt at Ailfinn’s chosen course.

  “Meshankara mes,” she muttered, rising to her feet. “Battle is, indeed, upon us. Lift your blade.”

  Rhuddlan complied, and the light rekindled in the dagger’s dreamstone heart and burst forth, filling the oubliette with a shining radiance.

  “Khardeen!” came the cry from the landing.

  Ailfinn glanced up at Wei.

  “They are ready to fight, eh?” she asked Rhuddlan.

  “Aye,” he said. “But not for what you ask.”

  “They will be,” she said. She appeared unchanged from her ordeal, except for the pallor of her face. Fair of brow, the mark of the Star was upon her. Her eyes were a deep emerald green, belying the years attested to by the cloud of white hair falling past her shoulders. Her gown was the same emerald green beneath her tawny cloak. Her kirtle was silver shot through with gold, matching the gold-inlaid silver rings and bracelets adorning her fingers and wrists.

  From a pouch on his belt, he offered her seedcake. She took a small bite, and a much larger drink from his catkins gourd.

  “We have no time for delay, Ailfinn. Shall I carry you?” he asked, and for his efforts received a long, slanted look from beneath her lashes.

  “Unlike you, Rhuddlan, I have no contention with the faerie folk, and as Tuan’s Stone both held and sustained me, so did the sídhe dust. You could eat the stuff as well as I, if you could keep from choking on it.” She turned to Shay. “Come here, boy.”

  The young Liosalfar took a step closer, looking both hesitant and awed, and she reached up and smudged him beneath each eye with her left thumb. Saffron-colored dust shimmered on his skin.

  “You’re not afraid of faeries, are you now?” she asked, and Shay shook his head. “Good.” She took his hand. “Now light your blade.”

  Shay squeezed the dreamstone in his other hand, and Wei’s dagger shot forth light. On the landing, the elf-man reignited Owain’s and Varga’s torches with a sulfur twig from his fireline kit.

  “ ’Twas y
ou who woke me, fair child, with your whispered songs,” she said, “and for that I’ll set you to the lighter task. To Riverwood it is with you, and from there to the Weir Gate. Tell the elfin lords their king is to Kryscaven. Caerlon will have reached the far shore of Mor Sarff hours past, and if the tylwyth teg have troops there, the battle will have begun.” She looked to Rhuddlan, and he nodded. She returned her attention to Shay. “But you will not miss all. Blood and gore there will be aplenty before the day is won.”

  “The dragons?” Rhuddlan asked, knowing their task was hopeless without Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas. ’Twas no minor breach of crystal the mage would face with him and the others, but a ravaging plague of darkness said to twist the mind and steal the last breath from a body, a darkness that could not be fought with either will or blade.

  “They will not have forgotten the way home or their life’s labor,” she answered him. “They are the devourers of darkness.” She made a dragon sign across her breast. “With the stench of Dharkkum on the air, their blood will draw them back to the nest as the dragon-spawned son of Rhiannon is drawn. Destruction is the name of the three together, and as their joined power grows, Dharkkum will seek them out. Fight they will, to the death and beyond as Stept Agah did, but if we fail to seal the Crater, the darkness will eventually overcome even the dragon born. You had best set your mind to Kryscaven, Rhuddlan, and the seal we must conjure out of the mother rock, for ’tis the deed we manage in that deep and fiery pit that will tell the tale for many a long year.”

  Chapter 26

  “Here? Or there?” Naas murmured to herself, looking from one narrow crack in the quartz to the next one farther down on the tunnel wall.

  “There,” a voice said from over her shoulder. Snit was his name, so he’d told her, and ’twas a bargain he’d made for his freedom.

  A sturdy little trap it had been, Naas thought with satisfaction. He liked his cloak well enough, and for the price of a new tunic and boots—with runic-inscribed silver rings tinkling from their laces—he’d promised his help and his company on their trek to the gates.