Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (23 page)

Slott of the Thousand Skulls
—human
skulls and animal skulls, each one of the little bone-white things
braided into the giant’s hair, hundreds of calcified ribands
twining through wiry locks and weighing down his beard.

Caradoc faltered at the sight. A ring of
fiery braziers encircled the dais where the monstrous beast
overflowed his huge stone throne. Against Caradoc’s will, and over
the harsh sounds of his threats, Lacknose Dock and Igorot
half-carried, half-dragged him down a great flight of stairs into
the cavern hall. As they crossed to the dais, the chant died down
into murmurs, and then silence. The only sound to be heard was the
clink and clatter of the thousand skulls as Slott swung his big
head down to spy him with a milky black eye.

The giant was hunched in his chair, his arms
reaching past his knees. His knuckles scraped the ground. Hairs the
size of bristles stuck out of the backs of his hands. A matted
brownish black pelt covered the rest of him, including his long,
twitching tail. Slott wore no shirt or tunic or shoes, only a vest
made of stretched skins, some furred, some pale and hairless, some
gray... some tinged green. Salt crusted his beard and made white
streaks on his skin and clothes. Strings of bladdery kelp clung to
the skulls twisted into the greasy strands of his hair.

His face was broad and smashed-looking, his
lips overly large and glistening with drool. Warts the size of
potatoes clustered along the curve of his nose—and Caradoc realized
with a bolt of terror that he had seen the beast before. Aye, he’d
seen Slott in the wormhole, where futures were written and pasts
collided, where all of time stretched out in an infinite banquet,
where the histories of all who had ever been or who would ever be
ringed the abyss in a golden swirl. The giant had been there, a
fleeting image stretched thin by the speed of the light running
through it, but there nonetheless, too large to remain unseen in
the chaos of faces, too horrific to forget.

“Bow to the Troll King,” Lacknose Dock
growled, pushing Caradoc to his knees. “Abase yourself and swear
fealty to your lord. Now!”

“My lord,” he gasped, encouraged by the twist
Igorot gave his arm. Everything was wrong. Wrong. He was to have no
master. None. The power of the wormhole was to be his.

“Swear by the Stones of Inishwrath,” Lacknose
Dock demanded, his nose flashing silver in the torchlight.

“By the Stones.”

“
By the Stones!”
Slott roared in a
voice so harsh it near took the skin off Caradoc’s face. He drew
back in the wake of the Troll King’s breath, choked by stench and
fear.

The skulls rattled and jangled as Slott
turned his head and bore down on him with his keener eye.

“Caerlon!” the king called, and from the
other side of the dais a tall greenling strode forth, fair of face
and with no long, sharp teeth, no long, sharp claws.

“By the Stones, lord,” Caerlon said, dropping
down onto one knee, his short brown hair falling across his
forehead.

“Am I not risen from the smoke and the rock?”
Slott asked, each word sounding like a sloppy tumble of bricks
caught in a backwash.

“Aye, lord. I took the smoke myself to
Inishwrath to break the power that steeped the king’s host in
deathlike sleep. To unbind the dire enchanting art of the spell
that was cast in the Wars. To set you free, lord.”

“Why?”

“When the smoke arises the skraelings shall
have a king. Such has it been told since the Wars.”

“And what would a king have?”

“Glory, sire.”

“And what is the greatest glory?” The giant
reached out and with two huge fingers pinched the copper stripe
running through Caradoc’s hair.

“Time, milord,” Caerlon said, rising with a
short bow and putting on a thick leather glove that had been
hanging from his belt.

Slott handed the greenling his scepter, and
upon noting it, Caradoc felt his last shred of hope seep out of his
pores. ’Twas a thick shaft of iron with a zig-zag bolt of lightning
welded to the pommel. ’Twas the brand, the instrument of
carnage.

Caerlon turned to the nearest brazier, and
Slott pushed his face closer to Caradoc’s, each of his stinking
breaths like a cold north wind sent to freeze a man’s bones. Even
Igorot and Lacknose Dock backed off, though they still held
him.

“Would you steal my glory, skraeling?”

“I—I am n-no s-skraeling,” Caradoc stammered,
feeling a wet warmth run down his leg.

Slott leaned even closer, and a dark flame
came to light in his eyes. “You soon will be,” he promised in his
guttural rasp, “and whatever you’ve taken, you will give back to me
tenfold.”

Caerlon turned from the brazier, his gloved
hand holding the red-hot scepter. A wan smile crossed his lips.

Caradoc began to struggle, desperately.
Igorot and Lacknose Dock seized him with renewed force, forcing him
to the floor, his arm outstretched in homage to his lord.

The brand was pressed onto his skin, and the
stones of Rastaban echoed with his screams. Then he heard
nothing.

“Wyrm-master,” Slott said contemptuously,
rolling the ragged, little man over onto his back. He smelled of
roasting meat. “I should eat him.”

“No, milord,” Caerlon advised, kneeling
beside the prostrate form. “Not this one. See?” He lifted a swath
of hair, and copper strands fell through his fingers along with the
gold. “He is as was long ago foretold, Troll’s Bane, born of
Merioneth, a golden-haired youth with an auburn blaze marking him
as a traveler, a—”

Slott grunted. “He is not so young.”

“ ’Tis a relative thing, sire. For the span
of his life, nay, he’s not so young, but compared with your great
years, he is but a babe.”

Slott accepted the explanation with another
grunt, and Caerlon continued.

“—with the strength of a thousand men—”

“He’s lame,” Slott interrupted again.

Caerlon released the slightest breath of
exasperation.

“Aye, milord. He’s lame, but I had some salve
given to him, and by all accounts he’s getting better.”

Slott waved him on.

“—and the knowledge of time.” Caerlon shook
the copper strands. “Such is the heir to Stept Agah’s sword, the
Magia Blade. We have him, milord, and now he’s sworn to you.”

“Why not just eat him and be done with it?”
Slott licked a finger and smudged it around on the man’s cheek
before sticking it back in his mouth.

Caerlon positioned himself more carefully
between his king and the unconscious morsel.

“He has worth, sire, ever so much more worth
than supper.” He saw the doubt in Slott’s keen eye, and in the
milky one too. “Revenge, milord,” he quickly elaborated. “Is not
your lady-wife still frozen in stone on the shores of
Inishwrath?”

“Aye.” Slott’s brow furrowed and lowered into
a hairy ridge.

“With this one, victory will be ours, sire.
Whatever knowledge he has taken from the weir, whatever power comes
to him through the dragons, can be ours. With the son of Merioneth
to mark the way, we can go back, the whole horde, and win the Wars
of Enchantment.”

Understanding dawned in the Troll King’s
gaze. “I am only half-awake, Caerlon,” he admitted.

“I know, sire. But we have returned to
Rastaban, and the ways are open into the deep dark. The damson
shafts are breaking, and the fell smoke of Dharkkum rises from its
ancient prison, the promise of darkness for a dark lord. And is
that not you, sire?”

“Aye,” Slott agreed in a low grumble. “I am
the darkest lord.”

“And dear dark lord, victory shall be yours.
Whoever wields the blade rules the dragons, and now you rule the
blade-wielder. Have him hold the dragons in check. Let Dharkkum
destroy what it will and wipe the earth clean of our enemies. Even
now the Sha-shakrieg venture forth, the wretched betrayers, and
Light-elves search the deep dark for broken damson crystals. We
shall have them all, lord, the spider people and the Quicken-tree,
the Ebiurrane, the Daur, the Kings Wood, the Red-leaf, the Wydden,
and the wicked Yr Is-ddwfn. All who denied us before shall die in
darkness.”

“What of us?” the troll interjected, looking
doubtful.

“We won’t be here, milord,” Caerlon said,
brightening with a winsome smile. “We’ll be in the past, fighting
the Wars, and when this day dawns again, we’ll unleash the dragons
on our side, to clear the world for the Troll King’s Dynasty.”

Slott leveled his gaze on Caerlon. “How long
was I asleep on Inishwrath?”

“Five hundred years, sire.”

“And you woke me because you saw hope in
this?” He poked at the golden-haired man.

Caerlon hesitated but a moment, then said,
“And in the aetheling.”

Slott’s gaze instantly sharpened.
“Aetheling?”

“Aye. From Yr Is-ddwfn. All the signs are
here, milord. And with Dharkkum to come, and the blade to be
reforged—”

“Why would they send an aetheling now?” Slott
interrupted.

“To better battle the darkness, Lord,”
Caerlon supposed. “To stand by the bloodling son of the priestess
line and call forth the starlight. To fight by the side of the one
who wields the blade, or mayhaps to take the blade herself and
bring the dragons to heel in the doorways of time. Mayhaps they
make a bid for the future, sire, just as we must make our bid for
the past.”

A bid for the past. Caerlon made it sound so
simple, Slott thought. Blades and dragons, aethelings and
priestesses. Except it wasn’t simple. Slott remembered that well
enough, how things had gone awry in the Wars. How the lines had
broken and the Quicken-tree had gotten through to Deseillign. How
the Lady Queen’s house had been destroyed and the Sha-shakrieg had
deserted in droves to save her. How the Dockalfar had all gone mad
and left him with nothing but skraelings and his own too few trolls
to carry on the fight.

How the Prydion Magi, aided by their Yr
Is-ddwfn aethelings, had turned him and those he loved into
stone.

No. War was never simple—and naught but
victory ever sufficed.

He again nudged the fallen man. Wyrm-master.
“Stept Agah wielded the blade as a Dragonlord,” he said to Caerlon.
“Not a Wyrm-master.”

“ ’Tis but Lacknose Dock’s jest,” Caerlon
said, shooting the captain a withering glance. “I recognized the
man for what he was right off, but Lacknose Dock dared to doubt and
call him Wyrm-master.”

No, Slott thought again, war was never
simple, and in those last months of battles, he remembered oft
wondering if Caerlon had gone as mad as the rest of the
Dockalfar.

Take an army into the past to win a war long
lost? ’Twas madness itself—but then, what was war, if not madness?
And what was madness, if not the coming of Dharkkum?

A slight shiver sent a tremor across his
shoulders. With his sorcery Caerlon had devised a crack in the
damson crystal shafts. Clever, clever Caerlon, to bring the wrath
of Evil Incarnate up from the bowels of the earth on them. But
could the elf-mage control what he had wrought?

Slott slanted a hooded glance in the elf’s
direction. Time would tell.

He looked down at his freshly branded vassal
and gave the man a testing push with his toe. “The aetheling will
die, if she has naught but this to fight by her side,” he said.

“Aye, lord,” the fair greenling agreed, a
faint smile curving his lips. “We can only hope it so.”

D
awn crept into
Riverwood from over the mountains, gliding into shadows and grykes
and transforming night-drowsy dew into sunstruck drops of
brilliance. The almond scent of warming meadowsweet filled the air,
along with the fresh, rushing sound of water.

Nennius stopped every few feet along the
banks of the Bredd, the light licking ahead as he observed some new
twist in the foliage. Long stretches of the wood had been made
impassable by the twining and winding of shrub branches and flower
stems, grass stalks and petioles. Even the tree limbs appeared to
be reaching for one another, closing in and battening down the
woodland hatches.