Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (44 page)

Trolls were another worry altogether. The
enmity ’tween trolls and elves went back to the Douvan Age, an
ancient, bitter feud. When the Dockalfar had allied themselves with
Slott to turn the tide of battle in the Wars of Enchantment, they
forever set the rest of the
tylwyth teg
against them. Trolls
picked their teeth with elfin bones. Slott braided their skulls
into his beard, with one dread plait made up solely of the royal
line of Yr Is-ddwfn. When Ailfinn Mapp had turned the trolls to
stone on Inishwrath, it had been a corps of Yr Is-ddwfn aethelings
that had brought the wretched giants to heel for her on the rocky
shore.

Trolls were a curse, a fearful, frightful
curse, and knowing Slott again walked the earth was to know evil
had been resurrected.

She had to escape before they reached
Rastaban. She still had her pack and could easily find her way
home. The gods save her, she would not have her head hanging from
the Troll King’s wiry locks.

Another skraeling reached for her flowers,
and Frey cut him with his knife. “Back off, ye beast.”

They were all beasts—stupid, beastly men to
have given themselves over to the Dockalfar for a promise of
plunder. What had they thought, she wondered, when the Dark-elf
potions had begun to work their monstrous changes on them?

For certes they thought little enough now.
They were cunning, aye, but only when it came to feeding the
hungers that had been contorted inside them to an insatiable
degree—greed and gluttony. The Dockalfar had stripped them of all
other desires and ruled them with that cardinal pair. A skraeling
ran on avarice and the keenness of his appetite and naught
else.

Not so the Dockalfar. If she had a blade,
Ratskin would be dead a hundred times over for all his touching of
her. Netherworld dweller or nay, he knew flowers for what they were
and the difference between such and gemstones. He touched her for
his own pleasure, foolishly ignoring the murderous gleam in her
eye. Unless Slott ate her whole, still bound and gagged, she would
have at least one moment of freedom before she died. Since
Ratskin’s last lewd caress, she planned to use that moment to slit
his gullet. She had the knife for the deed all picked out. ’Twas
the pearl-handled dagger hanging over Frey’s right hip. He and
Ratskin both had a half-dozen blades sheathed in their belts, some
hilted with wych-elm roots bound in silver, others with carnelian
hilts, still others with runic oak. Ritual knives, though she dared
not guess what rituals Dark-elves practiced.

The freshening breeze came to her again,
winding its way through the reek of skraelings. The barest scent of
the greenwood lingered on it, telling her they were still above the
Wall and that other tunnels lay ahead. No forest smells came up
from the deep dark. She closed her eyes and breathed in the faint
wind, using it to ease the pains of being bound. Her hands and feet
were numb, her jaw achingly sore from the dirty rag stuffed in her
mouth.

A shouted order from up ahead announced the
pack’s arrival in a cavern. When a call came for ropes, she knew
exactly which cavern they’d reached and lost another measure of
hope. The cave was small and emptied out onto the Wall by way of a
treacherously steep chimney of rock. Other tunnels led out of it,
though she knew not to where. She and Shay had once made the
chimney descent without ropes, a feat beyond the ability of any
skraeling. Halfway down, she’d feared it was beyond her’s and
Shay’s ability as well, but if continuing down had seemed
overwhelmingly difficult, going back up had been impossible. They’d
made it to the bottom of the abyss, but just barely. Even with
ropes, Lacknose was bound to lose a few of his less agile soldiers.
With her slung over the Dark-elf’s shoulder, her chances were
little better than the clumsiest skraeling’s.

By the time she and Frey reached the cave’s
entrance, over half of the skraelings had descended the
chimney—some too quickly and to no good end. The deaths had created
confusion in the cavern. The Troll King’s soldiers milled about the
ropes, looking into the abyss and grumbling. Lacknose was already
down. She could see the faint light of her dreamstone reflecting up
the chimney and keenly felt its loss.

Ratskin had loosed a whip from his belt and
was using it to herd the remainder of the skraelings over the edge.
Each crack of the braided leather ended in a grunt or a squeal, and
above the stench of the pack, Llynya could smell the scent of fear
taking over the cavern. Frey, too, must have sensed the growing
resistance, for he lifted his yellow dreamstone and shouted above
the din, “
Grazch! Kle, drak, dhon, vange!
”

A few of the skraelings responded to the
order to form up, until Ratskin snapped his whip at them as well.
With the abyss threatening on one side and Ratskin on the other,
anarchy found a foothold in the middle.

Frey tried again to hold the line against
chaos. “
Grazch!
” he shouted, spreading more dreamstone light
over the cavern by climbing a boulder. Shafts of golden
luminescence cut through the flickering torchlight and clouds of
smoke, and a more motley troop Llynya had ne’er seen—rough, and
smelly, and undisciplined.

From their new vantage point, she and Frey
were among the first to hear the terrible cry that rang out from
the tunnel behind them. ’Twas fearful and sudden, and cut
unnaturally short. The Dark-elf turned toward the sound, and Llynya
had to peek under his arm to see what was happening. She feared
some dread cavern beast or a troll was coming upon them.

Of the skraelings still in the tunnel, half
turned back with their weapons drawn. ’Twas a beast then, she
surmised, thinking they would not draw on a troll. She tried to
wiggle free and was squeezed all the harder by Frey.
Sticks!
She was going to die if she couldn’t escape.

The other skraelings in the tunnel joined the
melee forming on the cavern floor.

“
Grazch!
” Frey shouted to no avail,
trying to organize the newcomers. Without Lacknose to rule it, the
skraelpack was degenerating into an unruly mob.

Llynya struggled and kicked and tried to work
the rag out of her mouth. If Frey dropped her, could she squirm her
way into one of the other tunnels to hide? There would be some
sharp rock somewhere for her to cut through her bonds.

At the clashing of swords and another
skraeling voice cut off in midcry, she ceased her struggles.

Swords? Her ears pricked up. No cavern beast
carried a sword. Mayhaps Trig had come for her after all.

The influx of new soldiers quickly overfilled
the cavern with pushing and shoving skraelings and harsh words
backed by sharp blades. Three more were sent over the edge without
the benefit of a rope, and a groundswell of panic blossomed inside
the cave.

Frey muttered a foul curse under his breath
and called for Ratskin to come take his burden.

Llynya cursed too, though none could hear it,
and she struggled anew when the transfer was made. The echoing
clangs of steel striking steel grew louder behind her, her only
hope. Then even that was taken from her. Ratskin hauled her over
his shoulder and headed for another tunnel as Frey descended into
the melee, shouting his orders for the ranks to form up. Ratskin
gestured for two skraelings to follow him through the dark portal
he’d chosen, and with a dread beyond terror, Llynya knew she would
be denied the clean death of a hero.

After the chaos of the cavern, the tunnel
seemed unnaturally quiet. She could plainly hear the skraelings’
grunts and snuffles and Ratskin’s labored breathing. They sped
along the corridor, as if the Dark-elf knew he had not much time
for his wicked deed.

The walls of the tunnel were not purely
solid, but riven with a strange tracery of cracks, some large, some
small. Piles of dirt and stones from the making of those cracks
littered the floor of the passageway along with trails of tua
droppings. An odd, musty smell filled the tunnel, but with a
pungent edge she’d not noted in tua droppings before. The lizards
themselves skittered here and there and all over. She’d not seen so
many in one place, but she remembered from her and Shay’s
expedition that the little-used passages beyond Dripshank were
their homeground. The onslaught of the skraelings must have chased
them all into this one section.

At a fork in the trail, Ratskin called a halt
and dropped her to the ground. She lay in the curve of stone where
the tunnel wall met the floor, watching, but not fighting—not yet,
though her heart was racing. Her legs were tied at her thighs,
calves, and ankles, with the rope around her ankles also tethering
her feet to her bound wrists. Her arms had been securely tied to
her sides, leaving her little maneuvering room. Ratskin was going
to have to cut more than one set of her bindings to get the
satisfaction he sought. Skraeling guards or nay, each rope he cut
would bring her closer to freedom.

He barked an order for the two skraelings to
hold her. The soldiers grabbed her and held her back against the
rock wall. Their bulky bodies blocked all but flickers of Ratskin’s
yellow dreamstone light. She heard the Dockalfar whispering under
his breath, his excitement growing, and a cold knot formed in her
belly. She’d see him dead. She swore it by the gods and the
trees.

The sound of running feet came to her from
back in the tunnel, but she had no hope that it was other than more
skraelings. Their hue and cry was getting louder in the cavern, and
cowards that they all were, she expected that some would attempt to
desert rather than dare the chimney, especially since two of their
kind had already come this way.

Ratskin was tearing at his clothes, muttering
about the disgusting things he’d soon do to her. If the swords
she’d heard in the other tunnel had come for her, she feared they
would be too late.

She drew her feet in close as if that could
save her from the Dark-elf’s vile intent, and a tua ran over her
toes, then another and another. A new light, rushing noise entered
the passage, softly, like a wind from the west. Five more of the
lizards streaked over her feet, their tiny steps all together
making the breezy sound. She stayed perfectly still, even when a
half-dozen skittered up her legs and perched on her knees, and
three others did the same on her shoulder. Five more raced up her
hip and darted across her lap.

She had naught against tua, and they were not
wont to bite, but she’d ne’er been in a swarm of them. Three more
skimmed up her right arm and ran down her left. Their closeness
didn’t worry her, but the sudden increase in numbers did. Something
was terribly wrong to put them all on the run.

She looked to the far tunnel wall, peering
between the two brutes holding her, and a different edge of panic
seeped into her veins. Hundreds of the small beasts were pouring
out of the cracks, falling down the walls and over each other in
their haste to get away.

Away from something behind them in the
rock.

Another dozen streaked over her, heading for
the southside fork in the trail—none for the north.

“
Beli... Beli... Beli
,” she murmured,
her eyes widening as the next wave of tua gushed out of the walls.
The signal to flee had been sent, a primitive pulse that every
lizard sensed. Couldn’t the skraelings see what was happening
around them?

Ratskin’s daggers clattered to the tunnel
floor when he dropped his belt, and Llynya calculated from the
sound where each one had fallen. The closest was next to her left
hip.

But even if she had them all, it wouldn’t be
enough to save her from whatever was coming.

Without warning, one of the skraelings
slumped against her and near crushed the breath from her lungs. The
other skraeling lunged to his feet, but was taken by an arrow
through the throat and fell back against the wall.

Ratskin swore and reached for her, but he had
no sooner moved than his right hand was caught by an iron star and
pinned to the wall next to her head. He screamed, and Llynya
ducked, her heart pounding. On either side of her, the skraelings
were groaning in their death throes. Above her, the iron star
hummed from the throw that had impaled the Dark-elf.

Shadana
, she thought. No Quicken-tree
she knew could pierce rock with an iron star. She wiggled partway
from underneath the miserable, dying skraelings, trying to see
around Ratskin, and noted with an odd curling sensation in her
stomach that the tua were gone, all of them.

Not so the daggers. She grabbed the closest
and sliced through the rope binding her wrists to her ankles, then
set about freeing her legs. That done, she started to push herself
up, hand raised to slice Ratskin’s middle with the pearl-handled
blade, but she stopped in midstrike, alerted by a subtle change in
the air.

She cast a wary glance toward the main
passage, peering beyond the skraelings and Ratskin. With the
stealth of a falcon in full swoop, another iron star whistled out
of the darkness, then another, and another, all of them skimming by
her to catch Ratskin and impale him against the wall. Each impact
resounded with the Dark-elf’s disbelieving scream and the solid
thud of iron sinking into rock.

Llynya scrambled for the other daggers.

Ratskin’s screams transformed into vicious
curses. Agony contorted his face. He tried to free himself, but
every jerk and tug did naught but increase his pain. His dreamstone
dagger lay to the south, its light glinting off the rivulets of
blood running down his body and throwing macabre yellow-tinged
shadows up on the wall.

The guttural cry of “
Aetheling! Find the
aetheling!
” echoed from the cavern, and Llynya knew Frey had
discovered her disappearance. The clatter of half a horde of
skraelings coming after her filled the tunnel.