Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (16 page)

A warning sounded in her mind, making her
pull back a bare degree. Sticks! He was far more dangerous than
Aedyth thought, for she feared she could be caught in this spell.
Was her heart nor already racing in anticipation?

Proof enough of the folly of the deed, she
told herself, that she could be so easily swayed from her course.
She knew what came from kissing—at the least, ever more kissing.
Ceridwen and Lavrans had done little else after the night at the
glade. Always kissing, they’d been, and it took no great gift of
sight to realize a man was less likely to drop a lover down a
wormhole than a Liosalfar. At the other end, a kiss was no light
thing. In truth, she oft wondered if ’twas Morgan’s kiss that had
set her on her present course, for that kiss had bound them in a
way they should not have been. Better to be forewarned of Mychael
ab Arawn’s surprising charms and leave him alone.

She moved back to where she’d been and took
his chin in her hand to scrub at a recalcitrant spot. The
rasca
had stopped the bleeding and would keep the wound from
putrefying. “I could teach you how to block the strike I used,” she
said, feigning ignorance of his state and applying common sense to
her own.

“I did block you.” He showed her the proof,
the bleeding cut on his wrist.

She released his chin and turned his wrist
into the light. Not only had she sliced his face open, but his
knife hand too. She’d probably ruined any chance she’d had of
getting him to help her. He’d saved her and she’d done naught but
hack into him.

“ ’Tis no great wound,” he said, pulling
away.

She shook her head, denying him. “No, I
sliced you open well enough. The arm’s not so bad, but your face is
a mess.” She returned her attention to his cheek. “The cut’s a deep
one, an even swipe from stem to stern. Most would have let up on
the high end, but Trig taught me to wield a blade when I was scarce
old enough to... well, scarce old enough to hold one, but he’s
going to have my hide for this bit of work.”

Mychael’s pride, which had gone amissing
while he’d been mooning over Llynya’s leaves and hair and eyes,
rankled back to life under her bold summation. Sliced him open well
enough, had she? Wasn’t he the one who had saved her? And what had
that long look at his mouth been all about? When she’d moved in
closer, he’d nearly kissed her. Now he wished he had and saved
himself her thoughts on how well she’d cut him up.

Aye, he knew the way of a kiss, but he did
not know the way of her. He was beginning to think the fragile
loveliness that so enchanted him was more illusion than fact.
Mayhaps the warrior he’d discovered in Crai Force spoke more truly
of her nature. Warning enough for him to take heed where she was
concerned.

“The captain could stitch you closed,” she
went on, “but if ’twas me, I’d wait for Moira.” She paused for a
moment, and her voice grew less sure. “Truth is, archer, neither of
us comes out good in this.”

Especially him it seemed. Cut by a maid with
a bloodthirsty blade and a sweet mouth.

“Where neither of us comes out good is in
this rockbound trap,” he said. “We’re getting out of here.” He made
to rise, but she stopped him with her hand on his leg. It was
enough to freeze every muscle in his body. Had the girl no sense at
all?

“Nay, you don’t. Stay put while I finish.
’Tis safe here. Sha-shakrieg prefer the open caverns, where they
can throw their wicked threads to make webs.”

Webs. That’s what he’d heard, the slinging of
webs across the cavern ceiling, not dragons.

“And the other?” he asked, relaxing when she
removed her hand to bind his wrist with a bit of gauze pulled from
another pouch. It, too, smelled of
rasca
. “The thing on the
far side of the river that scrabbled up out of the dark? What does
it prefer?” They weren’t safe. He was sure of it.

She shook her head, dislodging another shower
of water droplets.
Jesu
. Every move she made was designed to
enchant, and he was a fool for noticing.

“I know not what that was,” she said.
“Tua?”

“No tua ever smelled like that.”

“Mayhaps not,” she agreed. “But the walls
were written on along the stairs, marking this place as a sanctuary
of old, when the track was well used.”

Sanctuary? This? He looked around the barren
walls, his spirits sinking. ’Twould be better to die of wildness
than to spend the last of his days in such a place. He reached out
and pressed his palm to the rock behind him, checking, and
thankfully felt nothing. The Dragon’s Mouth called to him more
strongly than this lost hole.

“Whatever safety this place held, is long
past,” he told her.

Her gaze lifted from his hand to his eyes,
and one of her eyebrows arched a fraction higher than the other.
“You can read the walls without marks?”

He shrugged, dismissing the skill. Madron
knew he could follow her father’s path. She was the one who had
explained the traces of magic to him. Until then he’d thought ’twas
something in the air that made one place feel different from all
the rest, or mayhaps something in him. Now he knew it was Nemeton’s
doing.

“Is that how you get into the wormholes?” Her
voice had become a whisper filled with equal parts awe and hope,
neither of which he found auspicious. He preferred to keep the
wormholes, and his knowledge thereof, to himself—a preference
Rhuddlan cared not one whit to honor.

“No,” he said with no intention of
elaborating. Madron and Rhuddlan offered naught but warnings when
it came to wormholes, but Mychael knew when the holes were safe to
enter, feeling it in a way far more graphic than he felt Nemeton’s
magic. The bard’s marks were subtle, there for an instant and then
not again. The power coming out of a wormhole was not so coy. The
holes said enter, or they said beware, and since the freeing of the
pryf
, the Weir Gate always and only said beware.

“No?” She sounded vaguely disappointed, then
even more curious. “There is a way of it, though, isn’t there? One
you could teach?”

“Teach?” He cast her a narrowed glance.
Mayhaps he had not seen the truth of her even yet. Not an enchanted
forest faerie or a Liosalfar warrior, for if she sought those
swirling depths she was simply crazed. They would eat her alive
more surely than any spider people. She had to know that. No
Quicken-tree was allowed below who didn’t know the dangers of
wormholes.

“We could make a trade,” she went on.

“For what?” he asked incredulously. She had
naught that he wanted except a kiss, but a bargained for kiss was
worth nothing. Cloistered as he’d been, even he knew that much.

She quickly reached for her pouches and began
emptying them. “I have treasures.”

Twigs, acorns, and bits of grass spilled onto
the tunnel floor, followed by wet wads of feathers and thistledown.
A few crystal shards rolled free.

He looked at the piles of matted fluff and
miscellanea, and his patience ended. She’d cut him and enticed him
and mocked him with her offer to teach him how to block her strike.
Wasn’t he the one who had disarmed her, taken her knife away from
her? Who would have been cutting whom then, if that had been his
purpose?

And now she’d proven herself no different
from the others. Everyone wanted his knowledge of the
wormholes.

“I have no need of your simples, girl, and
we’ve lingered here overlong.”

“Girl?” She glanced up at that, and there was
no mistaking her ire at his rude dismissal. “Have you heard of the
Dangoes,
boy
? Or the Pillars of Manannan? Do you really know
all that is in the deep dark, and can you find what you want
without knowing?”

“If it exists, I can find it. Which is more
than I would suppose of you. Does Trig know you can’t find your way
in the dark?” He was not looking for a companion on his search, and
if he had been, she would be the last he’d choose. She muddled his
brain more surely than wine. And how did she know he was looking
for anything? Rhuddlan and Madron were the only ones he’d talked
with—or rather, been forced to confide in. The Quicken-tree man was
not one to let a stranger or a secret linger in his domain; and
dangerous as she was, Madron was his only likely ally.

Whatever argument Llynya had been ready to
offer next died on her lips.

Aye, he thought. They had come to the crux of
the matter, which for all his fascination with her was not about a
kiss.

“Does he?” he asked again, though he knew the
answer.

“I can find my way,” she said, and changed
the subject by dipping two of her fingers into the remaining salve
and smearing it on his face wound. “Now hold still.”

He wasn’t dissuaded. “You’re scent-blind. You
can’t smell friend from foe, or north from south, or danger when
it’s upon you.” He winced at the roughness of her healing touch.
Moira did not hurt a person so. What a fractious elf the girl was.
For certes he had to have been mooning not to have noticed her
faults before.

“ ’Tis a passing thing.” She made her
admission brief and scooped up another dab of
rasca
.

He caught her hand when she raised it to his
cheek. “Then until it passes, you should not be allowed beyond
Lanbarrdein. Bedwyr lies dead in the dark, and I would not have the
same happen to you. Nor would Trig.”

“Trig doesn’t know.” She pulled her arm free
with a quick jerk even as he released her.

“He will soon enough.”

“Not if you keep your silence. A simple
promise could—”

“Promises made in the dark are easily broken
in the light of day,” he told her, then immediately wished he
hadn’t. The words had naught to do with what she’d asked; they were
oft-quoted advice for the lovelorn, which of course she was not.
Nor was he, he added in silent disgust. The trouble he suffered
from, while not all lust, was most decidedly not love.

“Mayhaps,” she answered, “but I would have
yours.”

Sweet innocent. She nearly swayed him with
the hesitancy of her request, as if she knew his promise might come
with a price, but his course was clear—and did not include her.

“No.”

Her mouth tightened, and after wiping the
last of the
rasca
back onto its bed of leaves, she began
retying the petioles. “Some say you ought not to run free with the
Liosalfar in the caves.”

He knew that to be true. Bedwyr had been one
of them, but if she would bluster at him, she’d have to find a
heftier threat to wield.

“And soon they will say the same of you.”

She had no immediate reply to that, and for a
moment he thought he and common sense had prevailed, but she
gathered her wits and proved him wrong yet again.

“I would stand with you, Mychael ab
Arawn.”

Not so much as a flicker of emotion inflected
her words, but ’twas the first time she’d spoken his name, and he
was not unaffected. Just as quickly, he renamed himself a fool.
’Twas idle banter at best. Rhuddlan would not listen to a
lavender-addled maid should the tide of opinion turn against
him.

“I stand alone.” He always had, since he’d
been five years old and ripped from family and hearth, and he saw
no end in sight until Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas were at his
side.

“So will I, if needs be,” she said, pinning
him with her gaze. Emotion aplenty inflected that statement, and it
was all coolly convincing. She was the warrior again.

Stubborn wench, he thought, stifling an
aggravated sigh. No Quicken-tree alive would choose to travel alone
past Mor Sarff. Except for this one, it seemed, the one least
likely to survive the journey.

“Why?” he asked. “What calls you so strongly
into the dark?” She’d already gotten herself lost and half-frozen
and frightened, and was scent-blind into the bargain. The spider
people were still skulking about, and she knew she was their
preferred first course. So what compelled her?

No answer was forthcoming. Silently, she
repacked her acorns and fluff into the pouches, her movements stiff
with unconcealed frustration. There was a truth to be found in her,
and ’twas obviously not what he’d been thinking these last five
days, nor was it what he’d thought in the last hour.

His gaze skimmed the contours of her face,
and for once he did not allow himself to be misled by her delicate
beauty. Rather, he noted the furrowing of her brow and her eyes,
grown old before their time, and the resolute line of her mouth as
she bent to her task. The years did not lie as tenderly upon her as
he’d thought. The sadness he’d first seen months past in the oak
grove above Carn Merioneth, and again in Riverwood, was still with
her, a sadness that had begun when Morgan ab Kynan had been
defeated by another’s blade.

Aye, she’d lost a friend.

Or had Morgan been her lover?

The sudden question formed all too clear a
picture in Mychael’s mind, and he swore to himself. He’d been
ludicrously naive. He had known Morgan, and the Thief’s easy way
with women, and Llynya was of age. Both Ceridwen and Lavrans had
still been mourning Morgan’s loss when they’d left to go north.

The elf-maid must be mourning too, and
mayhaps contemplating a foolhardy venture into the wormhole that
would surely bring her death. Did she think she would find Morgan
in there? His expression grew grim as he watched her pull the last
pouch closed by its double loop and tuck the ends into her
belt.

“There is no margin for error in a wormhole,
Llynya,” he said, restraining himself from grabbing her and shaking
some sense into her. “None, especially in the Weir Gate. No safe
passage if a traveler missteps, and the cost of failure is higher
than any sane soul would choose to pay.”

“You are here,” she countered, her chin
lifting.

’Twas true, but she did not know the price
he’d paid for his dalliances. Moira and Madron had seen the scar
that ran the length of his body, an extension of the blaze in his
hair, his gift from the wormholes.