Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (25 page)

Mychael ab Arawn did naught but squint at her
through one eye, then let his head fall back into his hands with an
audible groan. Moira had worked a fine piece of stitchery on his
cheek, using only the greenest threads. Llynya knew the woman well
enough to know he’d been fed as well, but up close he looked worse
than peaked. Gold and auburn strands of hair stuck out wildly from
his head, run through with his hands and glistening with the water
he’d poured over himself. Morning sunlight limned his face, giving
him a wanly luminescent look, as if the light shone through his
skin, not on it. Besides the stitchery on his left cheek, which had
left him bruised, there were other bruises she could not explain.
Blue smudges of weariness colored the skin beneath his eyes.

What had he done in the night, she wondered,
to have worked himself into such a state? For certes, his brief
encounter with Gwydion may have cost him more strength than he had
to spare.

“You look like Christian hell,” she said,
deliberately glib to hide her concern. Her bluntness got her
another bleary-eyed glance. She reached behind him and plucked a
sprig off the pennyroyal growing up the wall. “You might take a
chew of this.”

He brushed the pungent leaves away with an
indecipherable grumbling.

He looked feverish and uncommonly pale for
one who had been in the caves less than a sennight. She stuck the
pennyroyal in her own mouth, chewing it up with the sage, and gave
him a closer scrutiny. What she saw only increased her alarm. His
tunic was half unlaced and torn across the shoulder; his chausses
were loose and sagging. A livid mark on the inside of his left
wrist snaked out from under his sleeve and across his palm, and she
wondered how far up his arm it went. Whatever fury he’d had on the
march had burned through him well and good. He was no longer a
storm rising, but a storm spent. If Trig had a use for him at the
portcullis, she hoped it wouldn’t require quick thinking.

Then again, Trig might have something really
awful in store for him. Naught had been said during the meeting the
night before of the mutiny at Mor Sarff. With only her and Shay to
witness, she’d been relieved that the subject hadn’t come up, but
it would. Trig would have his due. Better that the captain had
taken it out of Mychael’s hide on the sands than this morn, when he
didn’t look to have much left in him to take.

She glanced over her shoulder into the yard.
Mayhaps ’twould be best if he wasn’t sitting out in the middle of
the bailey where anyone who was looking could find him. True, he’d
already been caught by Gwydion and summoned, but the boy had gone
in the opposite direction of the portcullis. If reporting back to
Trig had been his chore, he’d forgotten, and if naught else, she
could buy Mychael an hour or two to pull himself back of a piece.
’Twouldn’t hurt to put herself into his better graces either—if
such was possible.

“There’s an old fosse outside the wall that
overlooks the sea,” she said. “ ’Tis hedged with a deep hazel
brake. I could take you there, and Trig need ne’er know whether the
boy found you or not.”

“I’m not afraid of Trig,” came the muttered
reply.

Of course not, she thought. He didn’t have
enough sense to be afraid.

“Would you like some honey?” she asked,
pulling a honey-stick out of a packet tucked into her belt.

He shook his head without bothering to look
at her offering. ’Twas fresh clover honey packed inside a rough
horsetail stem. She stuck it in her mouth and dug into one of her
pouches for a pinch of lavender. ’Twas the last she had, and it had
bits of stem and leaves mixed in with the petals. ’Twas still a
potent simple, and good for whatever strange malaise ailed him, she
was sure.

Holding the lavender in her palm, she took
the honey-stick out of her mouth and squeezed a glob onto the
sweet-smelling debris. She worked the whole of it into a small ball
and gave him a measuring glance. ’Twould do him good to eat it. The
trick was getting it in him.

He might bite her head off, or worse.

But she was Yr Is-ddwfn Liosalfar, was she
not?

Aye, she thought, she was a warrior from the
kingdom across the timeless sea.

Still, ’twas with a cautious hesitancy that
she reached up and took hold of his hand, pulling it away from his
face. Her trouble brought her under the close regard of two very
bloodshot eyes.

“ ’Twill do you good. I swear it,” she said
in a coaxing manner, even as she wondered what she was about. Spent
or not, he was still a storm, and ’twas usually no undertaking of
hers to coax storms into the palm of her hand.

Daring all, she pressed the sticky stuff
against his lips and instantly knew she’d made a mistake. He did
not bite, but opened his mouth to take the lavender and her fingers
inside. Startled, she made to pull back, but could not. He caught
her hand in his, holding her still as his lashes swept down across
his cheeks.

Sticks!
She scarce could breathe. His
tongue was unexpectedly soft... and warm... and wet, and the slow
slide of it across her skin, sucking the honey off her fingers,
sent a wash of heat flooding down her body.
Double sticks!
She had not known that one stroke of the Druid boy’s charmed tongue
would weave such a dangerous spell.

“La,” a voice exclaimed. “What’s this?”

Llynya whirled around, jerking her hand free
of his. A guilty blush stole up her cheeks. Her heart was
pounding.

Two of the harvesters had come upon them,
Massalet, a young Ebiurrane woman, and Edmee, Madron’s daughter.
Gods, Llynya thought. Edmee would not miss much. Her friend had one
side of her silvery green tunic hitched up through her belt and was
carrying a birch basket full of raspberries. Massalet, brown eyes
all atwinkle, held a wooden bowl full of cream.

Both maids were smiling broadly—much to
Llynya’s mortification—and Edmee set her basket down so she could
make words with her hands. Llynya’s blush deepened. She and Edmee
had devised the language years ago, basing it on the silent signals
of the Liosalfar, and she understood Rhuddlan and Madron’s mute
daughter all too well.

“Moira would have you eat these,” Massalet
said, interpreting for Mychael and trying hard not to giggle, “in
case ye canna make a full repast of Llynya’s fingers.”

“Be gone with you.” Mychael’s voice was
hoarse and gravelly, revealing a fatigue that went far beyond what
Llynya had seen in his face, but she dared not look at him again.
She wanted to run, felt the need of it twitching in her heels, yet
felt equally compelled to stay. Damn Druid. He had ensorcelled her.
Hadn’t she told herself to beware of his kiss?

But who would have thought he would kiss her
fingers?

“Oh, aye, we’ll leave ye be,” Massalet said,
grinning, undaunted by his gruff demeanor. “Just be sure ye eat
something besides the sprite.” With a laugh, she set the bowl down
on the bench and took off. Edmee, however, was not so easily
dismissed.

Finger sucking?
she said, giving
Llynya a lift of her eyebrow and the barest hint of a smile as she
sat down next to her and settled the raspberry basket next to
Mychael. She was fair-skinned with auburn hair like her mother, and
had eyes as green as rowan leaves.
The ab Arawn boy and I have
been studying the Druid wisdoms together since May, and he’s not
tried to suck my fingers.

Just as well, Llynya thought, sending her
friend a vexed look that she hoped disguised her inner turmoil.
Though Edmee’s hearing was fine, Llynya answered her in their
silent language, hoping Mychael would simply ignore them.
I was
administering a simple, nothing more.

Edmee’s grin broadened as she gestured to the
berries and cream, offering them to Llynya.
Nor, as far as I
know,
she continued,
has he been sucking on anyone else’s
fingers, though a few would be willing.

Llynya ate some berries and drank some cream
and didn’t taste either. Neither did she deign to answer the quip,
guessing Massalet was one of the maids holding herself forward for
the archer’s attention.

Has he kissed you yet?
Edmee
asked.

“No,” she blurted out, then cast a glance at
Mychael. The intentness of his gaze on her was far worse than
Edmee’s gentle teasing, and she quickly looked away. She was ready
to run away as well, no hesitation.

He will, you know,
Edmee continued.
Once a man has sucked your fingers halfway down his throat, he’s
going to want a kiss.

“Oh, sticks and bother,” she said, though she
already knew the truth of it. Hadn’t she sensed as much in Crai
Force?
Look at him, Edmee. Does he look to be in any condition
to kiss anyone?

Edmee considered the question for a moment,
slanting a glance at Mychael.
He looks in need of a kiss,
she finally signed.
But I would that it was not you who gave it
to him. He’s—

Mychael’s hand shot out and covered her
fingers. “You go too far, silent one.”

Llynya near expired on the spot, her
mortification complete.

If Edmee was surprised by Mychael’s reading
of their hands, she gave no sign other than her considering
gaze.

“Tell your mother I would speak with her
today,” he added, releasing the maid.

Edmee rose to her feet, and Llynya scrambled
to hers, not wanting to be left alone with him. Gods, what had she
and Edmee been about? Speaking of kissing in front of him as if he
were blind.. Trig had taught him the Liosalfar signals. He’d even
used them with her. To discern the rest of their language was not
so much for the quick-minded.

Trig. She near swore. ’Twas well past time
for her to get to the portcullis.

Edmee signed a repetition of Moira’s
instructions for Mychael to eat, then with a teasing smile was
gone, walking back toward the harvest fields. Awkward in her haste
to do the same, Llynya handed Mychael the cream and muttered
something about hoping the lavender helped, all without once
looking at him. Then she took off, only too glad to escape.

Mychael watched her leave and wondered if
traces of the previous night’s madness yet flickered through his
veins. What else could have compelled him to such a rash act? He’d
tasted her, slid his tongue around her fingers and sucked the honey
from their tips, and if not for Edmee’s untimely arrival, he would
have had his kiss. He’d heard the catch in Llynya’s breath, felt
her pulse racing. There had been no resistance in her, nor any
lascivious fire, only a soft giving he could have drowned in.

He’d near died in the night. Whatever was
happening to him, he no longer had the strength to control it.
Worse, ’twas Madron who had saved him, filling him with some
nameless potion and chanting songs that had taken him away from his
pain—taken him from his dark and fiery vision to a place outside
the flames. Aye, he’d risen above it and looked back and seen
himself still lying in his tower room, swathed in shadows and
sweat. Whither he’d gone he could not say, but a cool, waveless sea
had been close on one side of him and a dense mist-laden forest on
the other. Though a pale sun had shone above it all, to the west
there had been night, a dark lake of sky with the rind of the moon
and blue-white stars floating in it, stars unlike any he’d ever
seen over Wales. In all that stillness, naught had moved until the
lure of the west bade him take a step. To the dark he’d gone,
following the shore, cloaking himself in moonbeams and feeling time
shift with the sand beneath his feet. Into the dark he’d gone, a
traveler clothed in white, treading a path marked by starlight.

After a long hour the wind had come up,
rising over the water, swirling about him and turning his gaze from
the moon. From across the sea he’d watched the witch blow her
breath into his mouth—not a kiss—and thus cool his blood even more.
With the last of the heat gone, he’d returned, awakening as if from
a dream.

Except none of it had been a dream. When he’d
finally stirred at dawn, he’d found a half-empty phial holding a
dark concoction nestled in the bedclothes. He had it with him,
secreted in a pocket Moira had sewn in the lining of his tunic. He
would ask Madron what it was she’d poured down his throat, and what
his price would be for having drunk it. For the witch’s brew would
have a price; there was no doubt about that, just as there was no
doubt about its effectiveness.

Aye, the damned stuff had worked. The Druid
woman would have him yet.

He turned his gaze to the field of grass. So
would Llynya have a price, one he’d already begun to pay. The taste
of honey and lavender lingered on his tongue, and the taste of her
skin. He’d been mad indeed to set his mouth to any part of her.
Still he knew he would taste her again.

~ ~ ~

From up on the wall-walk, Madron watched
Mychael slowly get to his feet, obviously still aching from his
ordeal by fire. Dragonfire. She’d stayed with him until dawn, until
she was assured he would suffer no added ill effects from her
potion. Thus she’d spent the night sitting by his side reading the
Fata Ranc Le
.

The boy had not let anyone near the Red Book
of Doom since Ceridwen had given it to him. Where he kept it hidden
had been beyond Madron’s ability to find, until she’d watched him
return it that morning to Balor’s boar pit, not a place she would
willingly go. Last night, blessed fate of its own, he’d had the
book in his room, open and ready for her to peruse at her
leisure.

Disappointingly, no more of Mychael’s fate
had been revealed beyond his place in the priestess line and the
circumstances of his birth. Proof enough that like Madron, he was a
carrier of the book, not a part of it. Such was the book’s magic,
set into it by she-whose-name-could-not-be spoken, the greatest of
all the Prydion Magi, that when an heir laid his or her hand upon
the
Fata Ranc Le
, their fate would begin to reveal itself on
the pages within, and the book would pass into that person’s hands.
Sometimes bits and pieces came to light within other stories, if
the fates were entwined. Sometimes the stories were short, barely a
page. The book was highly illustrated and ofttimes illuminated,
making it a thing of beauty. Many of the languages in the
Fata
had died or been lost, and not even her father had been
able to read all of the stories.