Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (27 page)

“Aye, ’twas,” the captain confirmed.

“You know I should be with Rhuddlan,” Mychael
said, his attention back on Trig. “I can lead him to the war
gate.”

“Rhuddlan can smell a war gate at four lan,
boy. He’ll not be needing ye to find it.”

“Then I would go for myself,” Mychael
insisted, which got him naught but more of the captain’s cold,
unwavering stare.

Looking at them, Llynya wouldn’t have
believed the archer capable of imposing his will on Trig.
Battle-scarred and tattooed, the captain was every inch the
warrior, with the added advantage of a good three stone on the
younger man—most of it in muscle.

“Ye’ll not be goin’ below for yerself,” Trig
said with an unbreachable finality. Then he turned his fearsome
gaze on her. “Nor will ye, sprite. And if either of ye think to
drop yerself down some hole in the hills or in Riverwood ye believe
I don’t know about, ye better think again.”

Mychael said naught, only meeting Trig’s gaze
and looking like a good wind would blow him down.

Though his was no doubt the wiser course,
Llynya could not accept such a dismal edict in silence. “Trig,” she
protested. “I—”

Mychael spoke quick enough then, even as his
hand grasped her shoulder to silence her. “She’ll not be going into
the deep dark. Will you, Llynya?” The squeeze he gave her, though
not physically discomfiting, was reminder enough of what else had
transpired between them.

She squirmed away and shot him an annoyed
glance he did not acknowledge. Plague archer, she thought. He was
that and more if he thought to rule her, and a double plague to
make her breath catch and her mind to wander where it should not
go. He was naught but trouble—for himself as well as her.

“Aye,” Trig said. “She’ll not see the deep
dark again until she can smell friend from foe and count
Sha-shakrieg and skraelpacks with a whiff.”

“You—” She whirled on Mychael, but was
stopped by Trig.

“ ’Twas not the boy, sprite. I would have
figured it out myself, if not for the thread wounds sappin’ me
strength. ’Tis Rhuddlan who forbids ye in the caverns, but he gave
me leave to use ye as a scout in Riverwood. As for ye”—he turned to
Mychael—“Rhuddlan’s orders are clear. Ye are to Lanbarrdein in a
day’s time. If ye’d be a captain, it will be of Ebiurrane pack
ponies. A string was spotted this morning coming down from the
north, led by Tabor Shortshanks himself. They’ll make the castle
walls by early afternoon. If any can get the beasts laden in half
the time and headed down a dark trail, ’tis Llyr’s pony-master. He
knows ways in and out of Lanbarrdein others couldna even guess, and
none save him ever got a pony past the old worm when we needed them
in the deep dark. If it comes to that, he can do it again. ’Til
then the hall must be provisioned, and a camp set up to supply
those goin’ below.”

Mychael knew Tabor Shortshanks and his
noxious ponies. Tabor had led a pack train down from the Ebiurrane
summering grounds in late spring. Mychael had gone back north with
them—and with a few pains along the way. Tabor was good company,
well versed in elfin lore and full of a thousand tales that he took
great delight in telling, but the ponies were another story
altogether. An
uffern
breed claimed in the last Wars and not
fully turned to an elfin hand, they bit, bold as brass when the
urge took them, desiring a mouthful of man as if naught else could
get the grass taste out of their teeth. The shaggy brutes kicked
too, their sharp hooves striking out at seeming whim, but always
hitting their mark, which more times than he cared to recall had
been his shin. The thought of taking them into the caves and being
trapped with them in the narrow passages of the Canolbarth was
enough to churn his gut.

He met the captain’s gaze, a protest on his
lips, but was forewarned by the glint in Trig’s eye. Dissent would
be dealt with by a heavy hand, and Trig had the heaviest when he
was of a mind to use it. ’Twas by no accident that he was captain.
As to what had happened on the beach by the Serpent Sea, the
madness had put him up against the older man, and only the work of
thread poison had left him unscathed. He pledged vassalage to none
in Merioneth, but he owed Trig his allegiance. Better to take his
punishment in pony bites than lose a friend, if Trig could still be
called such.

“To Lanbarrdein on the morrow, then,” he
said, conceding, if only somewhat. From there he would do as he
wished. He, too, knew a few ways in and out of the Hall of Kings
he’d never seen the Quicken-tree use.

’Twas a chance he had to take.

The captain nodded, satisfied with Mychael’s
answer, but apparently with little else about him. “Yer a mess,
boy. Llynya”—he shifted his attention to the maid—“take him to
Aedyth and have her put somethin’ together to get the green haggish
look off ’im. When he’s set, come back here for yer post.”

She blanched, albeit slightly, and opened her
mouth as if to say something, but was stopped by a shout from one
of the guards on the battlements. The captain looked to the great
wall. ’Twas with more effort that Mychael dragged his gaze from
Llynya to the top of the portcullis. Pwyll, a young Quicken-tree,
stood atop one of the gate towers. The boy made a quick sign, and
Trig nodded.

“Go on with ye, then,” the captain ordered,
returning his attention to them.

Mychael stepped aside to allow Llynya the
lead, having no wish to linger in Trig’s presence. Apparently of
the same mind, she turned on her heel.

Trig watched them go, then lifted his gaze
hack to Pwyll. The boy made another sign, more urgent, and Trig
called for Wei.

Once on the wall-walk, Pwyll directed their
gazes to the southern end of Riverwood.

“It started not more’n a moment afore I
called you,” the boy said, pointing at a line of trees along the
river. The upper branches of the alders on the banks of the Bredd
were leaning oddly against the wind, the top leaves of the coppice
fluttering in opposition to the prevailing breeze. A faint scent of
danger mingled with alder wafted in over the wall.

Trig needed no more to tell him what was
amiss. “They’ve caught something.”

“Someone more like,” Wei said, “and no
cottar.”

“Aye,” Trig said. “We best go see what
they’ve got and what we can make of it.”

M
ychael followed
Llynya along the path she chose, through the fields toward the
tower gallery in the eastern wall. At its other end the gallery
emptied into the lower bailey, where Aedyth’s hut stood in a copse
of saplings. Trig had given an order, not made a request, but
Mychael had no intention of obeying. Aedyth would probably as soon
poison him as not. Moreover, he was still hurting from the night
and Madron’s concoction yet ran through his blood. God knew what
another dose of some female’s herbal might do to him. The maid
looked a bit mutinous herself, her mouth a thin line, her gaze
steady on some distant spot—avoiding his. Her strides were long and
determined; the quicker to get rid of him, he was sure.

Tall stalks of
jhaen
warmed in the
morning light, filling the air with the scent of ripe grain and
brushing their shoulders as they passed. The harvesters were
working the west side of the field, their voices a silvery murmur
beneath the swaying of the grass.

Llynya was not like the other girls in
Merioneth. Seeing her with Edmee and Massalet had sent that point
home with a clarity that had been missing the other times they’d
been together. No flirtation ever fell from her lips, even on a
dare. He’d seen no smile cross her mouth except for the one she’d
given Shay’s doves. Not even Shay had been graced with such. As for
himself, under circumstances dire or benign, she looked at him with
naught but a darkly serious gaze, and if she ever laughed, it had
not been where he could hear it. Odd for one known as sprite.

Was the loss of Morgan so great?

It troubled him to think so, and not because
he would have her for himself, though there was that. He knew the
pain of loss. He’d lived with it unabated throughout his childhood,
the gnawing ache in the middle of his chest, the hard lump in his
throat that inevitably led to tears. As a child in Strata Florida,
if perchance he fell asleep dry of eye, he’d awaken before dawn and
find his cheeks wet with tears, for his heart never forgot the
deaths of Merioneth even when his mind wandered from grief.

He looked down at the solemn warrior by his
side and wondered if she cried herself to sleep at night. He
fervently hoped not. He’d seen no tears those nights in the caves,
yet she didn’t smile, and she never laughed, so pretty and serious
was the elf-maid from the Yr Is-ddwfn.

“I’d not be going to Aedyth for simples, if I
were you,” she said, breaking the silence with a warning.

“Why?”

“The healer thinks you’re a darkling beast,
and there’s no telling what she might give you.”

“Aye, and she’s right enough.” His easy
agreement garnered him a pair of raised eyebrows and a sidelong
glance.

“I’d not go believing everything I hear about
myself either, were I you.” ’Twas an admonishment, as if she knew
better than he which rumors to hold and which to belie.

She was piqued aright, but ’twas not his
fault, not totally. She’d been found out and banned, and unlike
him, her chances alone in the dark were near to naught.

“There’s herbs aplenty in the east tower,”
she continued, then paused for a long moment as if in indecision.
“If it suits you, I can mix you a simple as well as the healer.”
This last was spoken quickly, with barely disguised reluctance.

He grinned. Poor chit. She’d have naught to
do with him if she could, but her conscience couldn’t leave him to
old Aedyth.

“Aye, your simples suit me better than most,”
he told her.

Color flushed her face, entrancing him. No
rose blushed as prettily, and no girl ever for him. He would have
her for his own, he realized of a sudden, whether ’twas love or not
that held him in her grip.

“Trig let you off damned lightly for mutiny,”
she said, keeping her gaze forward even as her blush deepened.

“Better to ask why Rhuddlan let me off.
Naught happens here except by his order.”

She glanced up at that, her gaze going
straight to the stripe in his hair. “Aye. I guess he has reason
enough to keep you safe.”

Side by side, they passed under the arch of
the gallery, a narrow hall running ten yards along the inside of
the great wall. Square windows looking onto the bailey lit the
murky interior, showing gray stones damp with seepage. Green moss
grew in the roughly dressed cracks. A yard down the gallery’s
length, a stairwell opened up into the east tower.

“ ’Tis not Rhuddlan or Trig who concerns me,”
he said. “Nor Aedyth if it comes to that.”

“Nor anyone, I’ll bet.” He barely heard the
soft muttering as she turned into the tower.

He followed close behind, his grin
broadening. After the brightness of the sunlit fields, he was
briefly blinded by the dark, and the thought came to him that he
was ever following her into dark and winding places.

In the next instant, as he turned the first
curve in the stairwell, all his thoughts deserted him. Light from
an open doorway in the room above spilled partway down the stairs,
and by the grace of God and an errant breeze a bit of her bare leg
flashed above the tops of her hose with each stride she took. He
froze on a narrow step, staring up at her, transfixed by sudden
yearning.

Christe
. The breath left his lungs.
The petals of meadowsweet and rose in her raiment glittered as if
with dew. Thus she sparkled, and shimmered, and beckoned, tripping
up the stairs with light steps, showing that silky skin. He
swallowed hard, resisting the urge to reach out and touch her.

She’d kill him for certes.

Aye, he warned himself, taking off after her
before she could disappear. Sticking his hand up her skirts or
pouncing on her like some lust-crazed drake was unlikely to gain
him much, being too crude even for one of his inexperience. And
there was her knife to consider, and her present mood, neither of
which boded well for an illicit caress or tower dalliance. In his
forest imaginings, there had usually been a certain amount of
desire on the wood nymph’s part (actually, an inordinate amount), a
creature so beguiling and seductive she had burned through every
ounce of his (admittedly fragile) will and had her way with him in
every manner he could devise.

But that had been before he’d seen Llynya
lying in a tree bound with river mist. Naught in his imagination
had ever compared to the reality of her.

“Nay,” he belatedly said, recalling her
accusation that he was concerned with no one. “There is one I think
about overmuch of late.”

The words were no sooner out than she made an
abrupt about-face on the stairs. He nearly ran into her.
Unfortunately, he was far too quick to run into someone
accidentally, and she was far too surefooted to stumble, even on
narrow, rough-hewn stairs.

“Who?”

He’d trapped himself. He could hardly tell
her that ’twas she he thought about day and night. That he’d awoken
that morn without the scent of lavender about him and had felt,
along with all his other aches, a distressing sense of loss; or
that the taste of her fingers had done more to restore him than any
simple.

Or that the sight of her bare leg was enough
to turn him into a lusting beast.

When he didn’t answer, he sensed a stiffening
in her stance.

“Massalet?” she demanded, standing far too
close for reason to take hold.

Kiss her
, was all he could think.

“If she’s made you a promise,” Llynya went
on, “ ’twill come to naught. An Ebiurrane man awaits her in the
north.”