Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (31 page)

He turned from the opening toward the room.
Light from the torches and fires in the great cavern spread an
orange glow around him, revealing curved, stone walls and Slott’s
newest vassal sleeping on the floor.

Wyrm-master. A despicable name for one held
so dear, yet Caerlon himself had to admit that Rhiannon’s son was
less than inspiring. In truth, he looked far different than Caerlon
had imagined him, far worse, even with the clean tunic and hose
Caerlon had procured for him. Yet the stripe was there, and he was
golden-haired, and he’d been found in the deep dark, where no other
man could have survived. His coming had meant the end of Caerlon’s
long wait—five hundred years of wait. “Troll’s Bane,” the man was
called, and as had been told, the breaking of the damson crystal
seals had drawn him nigh.

Bloody hard work that had been. A thousand
spells Caerlon had cast, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them for
naught, each requiring rare configurations of metals and stone and
crystal, before he’d been able to put so much as a hairline
fracture in one of the seals. But he had prevailed, and the
crystals had cracked. Half a year past, even the mighty seal on
Kryscaven Crater had given way before his sorcery. ’Twas then he’d
begun amassing his army from the ranks of men, one warped soul at a
time, in readiness for when the final breaks began and the smoke
arose, the dark effluence of another age that had power over the
enchantments of the Prydion Magi.

Below walked the proof of it. When he’d taken
the smoke to Inishwrath and poured it over the rocky headland that
had been Slott, it had released the Troll King. He’d brought Slott
home a fortnight earlier to strike fear in the hearts of the
Quicken-tree and the Sha-shakrieg—and the friggin’ skraelings. He’d
needed a king to hold them in check before he dared gather all of
them together in Rastaban, just as he needed the golden-haired man
to hold the dragons in check; for as sure as the darkness came, the
beasts would come to destroy it.

So there the great sword wielder lay, branded
and lame, and not so young as Caerlon had thought he would be.
Sworn to Slott he was now, and no longer Troll’s Bane. Naught was
left to keep Caerlon from his desire—the Weir Gate, the great
wormhole. So he had read in his closely held book, and so he
believed. To fall into the future took no great skill, but no
redemption awaited Caerlon in the future, no glories to overcome
his shame. For that he needed the past. The dragons could place him
there, the book had revealed, him and all his host in one great
breach of power. Brought to heel in the doorway of time, Ddrei Goch
and Ddrei Glas could turn the worms, all of them, the whole golden
clew, and open a window onto the Wars of Enchantment, onto a time
before the death of the true king, Tuan of the Dockalfar, the
sovereign Caerlon had failed with his bloodspell.

Mad, Caerlon remembered, his hand tightening
into a fist. They’d all gone mad, the Dockalfar, to a man, woman,
and every child, and in their madness died with his potion running
through their veins.

No smoke could bring the old bones of the
Dark-elves to life. Naught but a return to the past could do the
deed, and soon Caerlon would hold the reins of time. The way of it
had been revealed by the one he held below. Fitting justice, for
she was the one who had betrayed him with the bloodspell. She had
written on a page where there should have been naught, and thus
he’d gone one step too far in his conjuring. The damning ink had
faded from his sight even as the Dark-elves drank his draught, and
he’d been too late to stop them.

Cursed Ailfinn Mapp. Cursed, cursed mage.
She’d dared to deface the
Elhion Bhaas Le
, the Indigo Book
of Elfin Lore, and the Dockalfar had paid the price.

Now she paid, and when the Quicken-tree all
lay dead about her, he would count her penance done. Until then,
she was his to torture, as she had been since she had come to
Merioneth and found him lying in wait.

He’d known she would come. Though a thousand
years should pass, she would come for the book he’d stolen. Her
book. The
Elhion Bhaas Le
.

It had been a fortnight since he’d gone down
to see her. There had been no time, what with his business at
Inishwrath, and the calling of the skraelings from all points north
and south, and the bringing in of Troll’s Bane. No doubt she was
languishing on the edge of death, for that was where he kept her,
suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, in a place
where no skraeling dared go, a place where the twilight sleep of
forgetfulness reigned—the oubliette of Rastaban.

Aye, he would go see her and take her some
foul sustenance, and upon his return he would unleash Lacknose Dock
to sniff out the aetheling in Riverwood.

T
he forest was
asleep when Mychael struck out from the castle for Bala Bredd, a
small lake high in the mountains, the source of the River Bredd
that wound through the wooded glens of Merioneth. He and Owain oft
went there together, though the older man had declined to leave a
warm and cozy bed this night for a trek into the hills.

Tabor Shortshanks had indeed reached the
curtain wall early that afternoon, and he and his ponies would be
rested and ready for the journey into Lanbarrdein come morning—only
a few hours off. The pony-master had been pleased that Mychael
would be his companion, far more pleased than Mychael was himself.
He’d already been kicked once and stepped on twice while helping
Pwyll and a couple of others unload the packs, and he doubted he
would fare any better in the caverns.

Llynya had not been there to help with the
ponies. Nor had she been at the hearthfire for the feast Moira had
ordered in Bedwyr’s honor. The old warrior’s body had been brought
up from Mor Sarff and on the morrow would be taken to Deri for
burial at the base of the great mother oak.

Elen and two kitchen boys had baked loaf upon
loaf of
kel
bread for the feast, and well into evening the
upper ward had still smelled of hot ovens and fresh manchets.
Seedcakes had abounded, soaked in honey and sweetly crunchy.
Redbuck pottage had been served with blackberries and cream from
the cottars’ cows. The largest cauldron on the fire had held a
great stew of porray herbs and vegetables: leeks and neeps, wild
lettuce, wurtys, peas and purslane. Nuts and murrey had rounded out
the meal, along with platters of Moira’s delicate mushroom
pasties.

It had been a feast for kings and Mychael had
barely eaten a bite. Next to the elf-maid’s kiss, food held no
allure. He had spent the day searching for her in every nook and
cranny and bailey tree, inside the castle walls and out, wanting to
make amends, wanting to see her again, even if ’twas only an
apology he would have on his lips and not her kiss. But it had
proven to be true that a sprite who did not want to be found, could
not be found.

He had waited in the ward for twilight,
thinking for certes that the singing would draw her out, that she
would brave his presence out of respect for Bedwyr. He’d been
wrong, and that pained him, for he knew only a great loathing could
have kept her away. No doubt the only reason she hadn’t run right
off in the tower was because she was too young to have known what
was happening. When she had realized, she must have been horrified
in the least, and at the worst, frightened.

All the more reason he needed to talk to her.
He would not have it on his conscience that he’d forever put her
off love. Despite what was certain to be naught but an
embarrassment to himself, he had to assure her ’twas nothing but
his own foolishness she’d suffered. Aye, the longer he thought
about it—and in truth, he’d thought of little else all day—he’d
practically attacked her. He was lucky to still be of a piece.

The singing was behind him now, the sound of
lute and lyre, of bodhran drums and silver flutes and Quicken-tree
voices. Tabor’s voice could be heard above the rest, singing a
lament for Bedwyr. The sweet, clear notes of the pony-master’s song
and the soft din of the accompanying music traveled on the night
wind, slipping o’er the stone curtain and into the forest, yet
fading farther away with each long stride Mychael took through the
trees.

A scout line had been set up all along the
river, and as he neared the Bredd, he grew more cautious. ’Twas not
an easy thing to elude Quicken-tree scouts, but the last thing he
wanted was for some youngish elf on his first patrol to startle at
a broken twig and blow his horn. He would never reach the lake
then.

To the south was the arbor copse where,
Mychael had been told, the trees had captured a monk. Mychael had
considered going to see the stranger, but time was short, and he
would as soon spend it at Bala Bredd.

He reached the lake with the half-moon full
risen. The final stretch was a rocky climb through a cascade of
boulders and the small streams that gathered ’round them before
running down the mountainside. As he neared the top, the boulders
gave way to a boggy fen with a string of beaver ponds marking where
the water flowed out of a small vale and the streams began.

The lake was bordered by a great forest on
the north and west, the last outpost of Riverwood. On the east, the
steep scree slopes of Glyder Mawr rose to a towering summit spiked
with pinnacles of stone. An island floated in the middle of the
lake, with a precarious bridge of fallen, half-submerged trees
linking it to the westernmost shore.

The island was Mychael’s destination. ’Twas
haunted, according to local legend and with good reason. Strange
noises could oft be heard sighing and hissing through the island’s
trees. Clouds of mist would sometimes appear at the base of its
rugged limestone cliffs and then glide, ghostlike, out over the
water.

Tonight was one of those “sometimes.” A whole
bank of dense fog lay about the cliffs and their environs, parts of
it wisping off to float on the lake. The wind was carrying odd
sounds with it across the fen.

Mychael grinned, recognizing the faint hiss
of steam coming from the geyser pool at the heart of the island.
The spring that fed it was running high to have made such a fog.
There would be hot water aplenty.

He was across the tree bridge and had dropped
onto the island’s sandy shore when he heard the crack of a breaking
branch behind him in the forest. He instantly crouched down, his
senses alert, and peered across the moonlit lake into the woods. A
gust of wind came up suddenly and blew through the trees, their
limbs dipping and swaying. Nearly as quickly as it had come up, the
wind was gone. After waiting a good while and seeing and hearing
nothing more, he turned away and headed into the trees, making for
the pool.

Llynya watched him from the low bough of a
trembling pine, still not believing that she’d broken one of the
tree’s branches. Yet there the thing was, right under her foot with
half of it sticking out from beneath her boot. The tree trembled
again, up from the roots and down every limb, shaking her and
stirring up another wind. It wanted her gone, but she dared not
leave its cover until Mychael was good and away. She’d followed
him, wanting to know where a Druid boy went of a cool dark night,
but she didn’t want to be caught sneaking along behind him.

“Sticks,” she swore at herself, dropping out
of the tree when he finally disappeared into the island’s small
wood. A branch brushed up against her backside with a light swat at
the same time as a pinecone bounced off the top of her head.

“All right, all right,” she muttered,
brushing herself off. Such had never happened to her. She was the
sprite, the light-foot, the one whom all the trees had graced with
a leaf for her hair, not some clumsy oaf who went crashing through
the forest. The trees expected better of her.

The day she’d returned to Carn Merioneth,
Mychael had kept to the forest well into the night, and she’d
wondered where he had lingered. If he knew about Bala Bredd, she
figured ’twas likely he’d been here that night as well. ’Twas a
healing place, where the wild berries grew and gave fruit nearly up
to the winter solstice, what with the pool to keep the bushes warm.
Those of the world of Men avoided the vale, though not strictly
because of the mysterious hot spring. Rhuddlan had long claimed the
lake as his own and woven a warding around the island, enough to
make Men uneasy when they first stepped upon the fen, or if they
set foot on the western slope of Glyder Mawr.

Riverwood held its own enchantment, of the
deep forest and of old growing trees that had long listened to the
Mother. There were parts of Riverwood where even the bravest of men
felt the ponderous weight of arboreal eyes and the warning to
beware, and one of those parts bordered the western shores of Bala
Bredd.

A shrubby margin of brambled hazel, hawthorn,
and bracken rose up on the hills to mark the beginnings of the lake
forest. She could not speak for the hawthorns, but the hazel trees
were old beyond their time, their long life a gift from Rhuddlan
for some ancient deed. The lake forest birklands were her favorite.
Made up of lofty golden beech trees and the occasional giant
sycamore, they were lovely places to while away an afternoon or an
evening, especially when a full moon dappled the leaves with
silver. ’Twas like a fairyland then, with the light dancing all
around.

When she could no longer detect movement
through the trees on the island, she made a quickety-split dash
across the bridge. Mychael was no doubt heading for the pool at the
base of the cliffs. If he was going for a swim, he really should
have a lookout, so ’twas just as well she’d followed him out of the
castle.

In truth, she’d been following him all day,
keeping him in sight while keeping out of his. Her fascination with
him had doubled over on itself half a dozen times since being with
him in the tower. She was thoroughly dismayed with her reaction to
a single bout of kissing—and thoroughly smitten with him, she
feared.