Chalice 2 - Dream Stone

by Tara Janzen

  Far out on the sea, he saw a shifting flash of color, first red, then green, and the blood quickened with a frightening intensity in his veins.

  Thule, he’d been about to tell her. They could go to Thule, to Ceridwen. With luck, ’twould be years before the death of Dharkkum breached the northern wastelands. But their luck, what little they had, had run out. She felt it too, her hand suddenly reaching for his.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Get back. Back against the wall.” He pulled her behind him and looked up and down the trail for an opening. They needed cover, and they needed cover fast.

  The widening of her eyes and the slackening of her jaw told him ’twas too late. He whirled around to face the sea and saw dragons rising up out of the deep, mighty creatures whose churning pulled the tides, whose blood had called him home.

  Ddrei Goch.

  Ddrei Glas.

  Golden eyes glowed like dreamstones, casting light down their twisting, scaly hides. One dread serpent was ruby red, the other pale green. Both of them huge beyond belief. No painting etched into cave walls, no drawing in the book of fates, but Behemoth and Leviathan incarnate. Fangs and claws and leathery fins, long trailing whiskers and ribbed wings sprouting from their backs like caps of thunderclouds. They swam toward the shore, and every ship left on Mor Sarff was subsumed in their wake.

  The Daur who had yet been moored at Lanbarrdein scrambled up the cliffs, their silvery drakars and blue painted kharrs crashing against the rocks beneath them. In deeper water the skraeling halvskips and their crews were tossed and broken by the dragon-made swells.

  Panic broke out on the beach, with soldiers of both armies racing for cover into the pryf nest or around the other side of the damson cliffs. Watching the dragons, Mychael feared the whole headland would be torn asunder, but the serpents turned before reaching the sand, sending up a wave that dragged half a pack of skraelings back into the surf to drown. Only one person stood unmoving on the beach. Naas.

  “The sword, Llynya. Where’s the sword?” He turned to her. He had to stop the dragons before they destroyed everything.

  “The Magia Blade? ’Twas to be made here, for you. Trig said Varga had sent for the Edge of Sorrow, but Deseillign has fallen and the blade never arrived. There is no sword, Mychael.”

  He looked to the sword in his hand. It had failed him in the Dangoes and would do the same here. It had not been steeped in the magia mysterium. It had no ancient, glorious past, no magic. Wei had forged the blade just last summer. Mychael had made the grip himself out of leather-wrapped wood. The only sorrow it had seen had been since he’d left Tabor above Lanbarrdein.

  And even if it had been beholden of some unknown power, he’d yet to learn the ways of magic. Yet ’twas the only sword he had, and if the dragons were to be ruled by a sword, it would be his.

  The dragons made their turn in the channel currents and started back toward the damson cliffs. An opening into the inner maze of the nest was not too far down the trail. Mychael took Llynya to the tunnel entrance and kissed her once.

  “Go deep into the nest,” he told her, but got no farther before the look in her eyes registered. Wind whipped her hair and the rain drove against them, each drop stinging when it hit, but the elements of the storm were no more fierce than her gaze.

  “We’re better off together,” she said, and when he started to protest, she held up her hand. “Nay, ’tis not sentiment, Mychael, nor even love, but the truth. I am the Aetheling, Starlight-born, and if you would be a Dragonlord, you are best served with me at your side.”

  He hesitated no more than a second before agreeing, partly because there was no time to argue, and partly because he knew she was right. Whatever bound them had begun long ago, long before he’d first set eyes on an elf-maid wrapped in river mist.

  On the shore, Naas had made her way through the dead soldiers and the increasing haze of smoke to Caradoc’s body, and was staring at the strange, dazzling sword sticking out of the Boar of Balor. ’Twas to her they went. Trig and a few others of the Liosalfar were doing the same, hurrying down from the pryf trails to intercept them on the beach.

  The old woman looked up as he and Llynya drew near, and her gaze narrowed. Silvery strands of hair floated out around her head, given life by the wind. Her cloak was sodden with the rain, her brown gown clinging to her bony frame.

  “Give me yer sword, quickety-split now, boy.” She stretched her hand out to Mychael, and he placed the grip of his weapon in her palm.

  Trig reached them then, giving him a quick once-over even as his attention turned to Naas.

  “By the gods, woman, can he set the beasts to their task? Or will we all be choked before this day is done?”

  “He’ll have to,” she said simply, lifting the sword into the dreamstone light coming off the cliffs and peering down its edge. “Hmmph.”

  Mychael glanced toward the sea. The dragons were cresting again. Ddrei Goch rose up beneath a halvskip and sent it flying through the air like a piece of driftwood. Ddrei Glas slashed at another one with her snout and it crashed into one of the Daur’s drakars. Indiscriminate destruction marked their path, and their path led straight toward the beach.

  “Am I to have Caradoc’s sword then?” he asked curtly. He could think of no other reason for Naas to be by the Boar’s body. The thought repulsed him, that he would come to his duty by Caradoc’s sword, despite the weapon’s brilliant dreamstone-studded grip and its ability to cut through mail.

  “Nay.” Naas shook her head. “ ’Tis a Deseillign blade on it aright, mayhaps the one that was intended for the Magia Blade, but ’tis an abomination now, cobbled together by a dark mage for a fell purpose.”

  “A mage? It has magic then?” Given a choice between a half-magic blade blessed with sorcery, fell or otherwise, and his own plain weapon, Mychael could put his scruples aside.

  “Auch, and men always like to think they’ve got a little magic in their blades.” She made a dismissive gesture and knelt down to scour his leather-gripped sword in the sand. “Don’t speak to me of magic blades, Druid boy. ’Tis never the sword that gives victory, but the arm that wields it.”

  She swirled the sword around, working it clean.

  “I couldn’t cut the smoke threads in the Dangoes, not with that sword,” he voiced his failing and his fear.

  “Ye had no dragons with ye in the Dangoes, boy, and when I’m done with ye, yer arm will not be so weak. Aye, magic blades, magic blades,” she muttered. “I’ll give ye a magic blade.”

  With that, she rose to her feet, wiped his sword on her skirts and in one neat swipe, cut him from shoulder to elbow. The shock of the deed froze him to the spot. What ran out of the thin, neat line she’d made on his skin set his hair on end. ’Twas blood, but like no blood he’d ever seen. It ran down his arm in a narrow stream of shimmering iridescence. Rainbow blood... dragon’s blood.

  His sword sizzled with it.

  “Aye, he’ll do,” the white-eyed woman said, then nodded to the elf-maid. “They’ll need your blood as well to heed the call, child. Let them taste the starlight.”

  Llynya did not hesitate, but drew her dreamstone knife down her arm, loosing her blood into the tide lapping at their feet. The cut was not so deep as Naas had made on him, but ’twas deep enough for Llynya’s blade to crackle and smoke.

  And so they came, sea dragons from the deep beyond, guardians of the gates of time, called by the blood of the Starlight-born to the very shores of Mor Sarff.

  Trig, Naas, and the other Liosalfar held their ground on the beach, until the sea wave created by the dragons’ approach began to rise like a wall before them. Mychael didn’t see the Quicken-tree leave, but he sensed when he and Llynya were alone, two against the serpent beasts.

  Their monstrous heads rose from the swell, Ddrei Glas’s eyes piercingly bright, her long, bewhiskered snout cutting across the surface. Ddrei Goch had eyes like the harvest moon, a deep, multi-hued amber, and the force of the creature’s gaz
e locking on to his was fierce and powerful, intoxicating with the promise of bloodlust and war.

  ~ ~ ~

  Llynya felt Ddrei Glas’s power surge into her. Blood of her blood, they were both born of the starlight. Dragons from the star-wrought cauldron. Her race from the celestial fire set in the nether sea. They were both born to fight Dharkkum.

  She lifted her sword with a battle cry. Mychael matched her, and the dragons rose out of Mor Sarff, their wings unfurling from the white-capped foam and beating against the billowing clouds of smoke, bringing them to flight.

  Ddrei Goch roared his rage, his screams echoing from the vault to the waves in the lightning-rent cavern of the Serpent Sea. Ddrei Glas lifted her voice into the wind and the rain, and from out of the south, the dark pestilence sealed so long in the crystal chasms came forth to answer their call, a void of night whose touch was cold, whose shape was an ever-shifting vortex without end, and whose single purpose had always and forever been to devour.

  Like a blanket made of dancing, whirling threads, Dharkkum flattened and flowed across the surface of Mor Sarff, picking up speed before washing itself against the Wall. Where the smoke had ravaged, Dharkkum simply consumed, scouring the trail clean of every living and dead thing and taking part of the Wall, sucking everything into its core.

  The soldiers on the headland broke and ran, skraelings and tylwyth teg alike, but their efforts were as naught. One by one, threads spiraled out and pulled them into the warp of darkness, each beast and elf chosen for a death of terrors. Mychael watched in horror as their bodies were stretched to an excruciating thinness and began to dissolve into the black vortex’s core. Their cries tore through the cavern, keening to the same bloodcurdling thinness before their final silence, and still the void advanced.

  And it grew, a pulsing expansion along its edge for each lost soul it engulfed.

  A fresh infusion of fear tightened Mychael’s hand on his sword grip, and he took a step back up the beach. Sweat broke out on his brow. The foe bearing down on him was too great. There was no way to fight it, not even with dragons, no way to raise arms against such an empty terror. He saw a thread reach out and snare Treilo. The Wydden lord was dragged fighting into the undulating vortex, lashing out with his sword, his bright hair a spot of color fading into naught. Mychael retreated another step, and then another. His teeth were gritted, his muscles rigid with strain. All was lost. The black matter would be victorious.

  He backed into something lying on the beach and looked down to find himself standing next to Caradoc. The rising tide washed over the Boar’s body. The fell sword still jutted out of his chest, its dreamstone hilt casting yellowing shadows across his mailed shirt. Mychael’s gaze followed one of Caradoc’s outflung arms to his hand. Rhiannon’s ring was still on her murderer’s finger, a gold band engraved with four lines and a circle inset with a square and a triangle of carnelian. ’Twas a sign he’d seen in the tunnels of the weir, the only sanctuary he’d ever found, and that one too costly to bear. Mychael knelt and took the ring from the Boar’s finger and slipped it on his own. If he should die, he would at least reclaim a small part of what Caradoc had taken from his mother. The ring had been the slightest loss, but ’twas all that was left for him. Above him the dragons screeched, and flames burst forth from their mouths. He looked up to see clouds of smoke roiling out of their nostrils.

  The vault of the Serpent Sea glowed with their fiery breath and the reflected light of the damson cliffs. Mychael felt the heated wind of their wing beats gusting against him. He felt their fire at his back, and in the next moment felt it light the fire within him, a spark at first that raced along the tinder of his scars and made him burn.

  Bright, purifying heat filled him. Flames of dragonfire coursed beneath his skin in a sudden, exhilarating rush. His hand grew stronger on his sword grip, oddly, fiercely stronger. The dragons flew closer, screeching at him, grazing him with their scaled wing tips, and in their way, he knew they were urging him on to the end before them. When next they roared, he answered, opening his mouth and letting loose the same terrible cry. The power of it surged through him, and he roared again, lifting his voice into the rain. Wind whipped around him, tearing at his clothes and setting his hair on end, the blazing red and molten gold strands snapping and crackling like fire.

  I have drunk the dragon’s blood! The voice came to him from out of the past, a priestess’s voice from his mother’s line.

  I have drunk the dragon’s blood and eaten of his flesh, and my blood shall be as one with the Red Dragon’s, steeped to a potent brew in my womb until in time the fierce creature of my conjuring will be brought forth to battle.

  He was the fierce creature the priestess had conjured. His blood was the dragon’s blood, and the battle he faced was his to win.

  He looked to the swirling dark matter and again to his hand wrapped around the sword hilt. The blade he held would ever be the Magia Blade, because of his hand.

  He turned the sword into the light of the cliffs and felt the dragons descend on the beach behind him. They drew closer, wreathing him with fire and smoke, and the last of his fear left him. They drew closer yet, and purpose took the place of his doubts. If Dharkkum would devour, let it devour him and choke on his dragon heart, for he was the beast who would bring Dharkkum to its doom.

  In the end, he was the beast who would devour it.

  Stretching, feeling tight within his skin, he felt his muscles harden with iron strength, felt the heat and rage of the dragon’s screaming cries fill him near to bursting. When next he roared, flames shot forth from his mouth and the hand gripping his sword grew claws to match any serpent beast’s. Between the maelstrom of dragons’ screeching and the fire of flames from within and without, Mychael felt himself transform, felt the blood coursing through his veins with a power and strength he had not foreseen in his dreams. Victory or death, his path was clear. If this world would last out the day, it was into the heart of Dharkkum he must go, to destroy the black mystery at its core.

  With the fierceness of the creature he had become, he strode through the sand, and with every step, his body shifted its shape, skin hardening in sections and becoming scales, the armor he would need. His teeth pushed further out of his mouth, becoming long and sharp, his muscles bulged, straining the cloth of his tunic until it ripped apart. He was no dragon, but the half-man, half-beast of their making. Terrifying, it was, and so necessary. He paid the price with every odd and frightening change and knew there had never been a choice for him. This was his purpose.

  Screaming their rage, their wings beating against the air, the dragons rose from behind him into the heights of the cavern. They flew along the edges of Dharkkum, their jaws tearing at the dark stuff and shredding it between the glistening white curves of their fangs. As they flew and tore, the black terror began to churn, the inky, fluid darkness cycling in an ever tightening funnel to protect itself—and from within its depths, a pulsing power reached out for him, taunting him to taste the death of Dharkkum.

  Come, war-dreamer. Come, bloodspell beast. Closer. Come to the All Destroyer. Come to The End From Beyond, and let the darkness feed on you as the darkness fed on Stept Agah.

  He heard the call, and in the silence of his heart, he answered—before his death, Dharkkum would taste his steel.

  With the darkness twisting into an ever tighter skein, drawing all its threads in upon itself, the soldiers on the Wall and the trails, skraelpacks and Liosalfar alike, battled anew.

  Run, he wanted to tell them, for the true fight had yet to begin. There would be smoke and darkness aplenty soon, and none would survive it, if he failed. Least of all the light-bearer at his side, for she, too, was for the dark throat of their enemy, their course set for the blackest heart of it.

  Come, war-dreamer. Find your river of blood.

  Mychael roared and dragged one leg out of the rising tide only to plant it again and sink up to his thigh in the water. Closer, ever closer, he fought his way forward, his heaving
chest mottled with serpentine scales, his clawed hand raising his sword high.

  “Ddreigiau!” he roared. “Ddreigiau!” he called to them again. “Gorchmynnaf ichi ddyfod!” Dragons! I bid you come!

  And come they did, swooping down from the cavern’s heights. Ddrei Goch landed in the tide and sent a wave washing over the top of him, near drowning him with seawater. Smoke flowed out of the creature’s nostrils, wreathing Mychael in its sulfurous scent. Fell creatures, indeed, to smell like the gates of hell, but ’twas the dragon’s next fiery breath he felt sear him to his core. The water at his feet vaporized with the terrifying blast, the sand turned to glass, and he... and he... was consumed inside the towering flames, wrenched with terrifying swiftness from one place to the next. His heart still beat, but from within a mighty incarnadine breast covered in serpentine scales. His eyes still saw, but from a great and soaring height.

  He’d found his dragon, and the fell beast was him.

  A strangled cry escaped him, and he knew it was his last human sound. Dire portents had brought him to this, wretched dreams and priestess trickery. Too much, he screamed inside, fighting against the agony of transformation —but naught could hold it at bay. More than a dragonlord, more than a half-beast, he was the dragon. This was his fate, the true course of his blood. Ddrei Goch roared, twisting in his own fire, sharing the same searing pain, and Mychael felt every clenching of massive muscle and moving of giant bone. He felt the heat and the rage and the lust for the fight, until there was naught left of Mychael ab Arawn, until there was but one bloodspell beast to rule the day.

  His sword fell to the glassy shore, unheeded as he beat his great, leathery wings. With powerful, dread grace, he rose into the air, and Llynya came into view, racing forward to retrieve the fallen sword. Behind her, Ddrei Glas swooped low over the beach. Using elfin speed and a few light steps, the Aetheling made it onto the Green Dragon’s back, and with her dreamstone blade to light the way, she lifted the Magia Blade high and cried out, “Khardeen!”