Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (46 page)

“We stop it here, or run our hearts out
mayhaps all the way to Tryfan,” she told him, keeping an eye on the
opening of the shaft and on Lacknose’s progress. “I don’t know what
lies ahead. Shay and I never explored this part of the Wa—”

A snout appeared out of the chimney, a long,
scaly snout. Mychael went utterly still at the sight.

“Nay,” she murmured, fighting the urge to
drop the gourd and run. “ ’Tis no dragon with that tongue. Quickly
now.”

They finished as the head came into view,
white-throated and pale on the underside with row after row of
knobby golden brown scales along the top. ’Twas a tua of monstrous
proportions. The front legs followed, and the she-beast used them
to claw and scrabble her overripe body out of the shaft.

Aye, ’twas female, from the glint of ivory
off her razor-sharp teeth to the black slash marks where her eyes
should have been; from the white star-shaped spikes jutting in a
line down her spine to the soft scales of her pregnant belly.

The tua’s golden-sheened tail slid out of the
shaft with a heavy slap on the floor, and for a moment the blind
lizard—which stood as tall as a man and nearly twice as long—did
naught but sniff the air with her tongue. Then she attacked.

Llynya felt herself being hauled back as
Mychael dropped a burning sulfur twig on the line. Flames shot up,
making a wall of fire eight feet high. Its heat was scorching even
at a distance. They turned and ran, but got no farther than a
quarterlan before they caught up with the herd of tua. The tiny
reptiles were ankle-deep on the trail, all clustered together, and
to a lizard they were facing due west, noses lifted toward the
raging fire.

She turned, afraid the monster was upon them.
It wasn’t, but what she did see was nearly as frightful.

“Mychael,” she gasped, pointing for him to
look.

He glanced over his shoulder, then turned
full on his heel, his mouth agape.

The fireline had stopped the giant tua, but
stopped her with pleasure, not pain. The golden brown beast had
wrapped herself in the flames. They tickled along her scales and
claws and wreathed her with lambent fire. The star spikes down her
back glowed red.

“Salamander,” Mychael whispered, crossing
himself with the Christian warding.

“Fire lizard,” Llynya breathed, and made her
own sign of protection.

The two of them watched, mesmerized, as the
great tua bathed herself in the
roc tan’s
incandescence, in
the combustion of the
hadyn draig
. She neither burned nor
smoked, only luxuriated in the inferno. The light sparked off her
scales, making her glitter. The darkness all around made her a
living flame in the midst of the heat.

Llynya looked down at the lizards at their
feet. They, too, were mesmerized. A cry came from the salamander, a
shrill screech that echoed up and down the Wall and made Llynya’s
blood run cold. The tiny tua started forward at the beckoning,
taking a few steps before stopping. Another screeching cry had them
skittering forward again for several more steps.

“How long do you think we have?” Mychael
asked.

“Longer than these wee beasts,” she said, an
opinion that was verified with the salamander’s next cry. The
little ones could not resist its command except in delay. They
moved forward again, a great, pale wave of trembling dainties.

“The fire will hold for six hours, mayhaps
longer.”

“It won’t matter,” Llynya said. “She won’t
move for days after gorging herself.”

“She?”

“Aye. She’s their mother, and she’s going to
eat them every one.” A shudder ran through her.

Mychael slid his arm across her shoulders,
gathering her close. “Aye, well, it’s a sight you’ll not have to
see. We must leave. The group on the Wall has seen us for certes,
though I doubt they’ll trouble us again.”

He was right. They had to leave. The way back
was denied them, so ’twas forward they must go—into the
unknown.

The fiery beast would be Lacknose’s bane.

~ ~ ~

Naas finished setting her trap in one of the
tunnels of Balor’s old boar pit. ’Twas the one place in Merioneth
Rhuddlan had not yet reclaimed. The Druid boy had reclaimed a bit
of a hidey-hole for his book, and safe enough it was there. Bones
and blood, death and fear, murder and mayhem—’twas all the same to
her, but the rest of the Quicken-tree could get a bit squeamish
about such. Trees were their touchstone, the guardians of the earth
and all green growing things. They mightily loved their leaves and
cones and flowers.

“Garland weavers,” she snorted.
“Bramblers.”

Oh, they were not averse to a good fight,
like the one racing down upon them, but the brutality, the
senseless violence of the boar pit, was beyond their capacity to
absorb—or forgive.

Not so for the will-o’-the-wisp. Like Naas,
that one did not make forgiving his business. He’d been living
carefree in the pit since May, but his time had run out as it was
running out for all the
tylwyth teg
. She was going to catch
him, she was, and set him to a task,

“A bit of the cloth,” she murmured, baiting
her trap with a Quicken-tree cloak. A tunic and boots would follow,
after she caught him. No need to overdo. Next to the cloak, she
laid a pile of seedcakes, a large pile. Goodness only knew what the
boy had been eating all these years—all these many, many years.

Aye, she knew him for who he was, had known
since he’d first been sighted by the children. He was the Wydden
child lost in the last great traverse into Yr Is-ddwfn, lost the
same year Llynya and Ailfinn had come out of the weir into
Merioneth. The trail was damned tricky, as any who had trod it
could tell, and he had slipped, much to his mother’s lament. Lost
forever to time, they’d all thought—incorrectly.

Well, she would catch him soon enough. Been
watching for him, she had. Seen him a couple of times. He had hurt
himself somewhere in the passing of years, probably in his fall.
One of his shoulders was higher than the other, a twist of his
spine.

’Twould pain him, but she would find
something in her bags and boxes to ease his hurt.

She finished the trap with a length of riband
and a twig, the hunter’s contraption being her last resort.
Skraelings and Dockalfar in Riverwood, and Llynya taken. ’Twas time
to act. She’d lain in wait for the will-o’-the-wisp three times in
the pit, luring him with sweetmeats and songs, but he was too
quick, and she too old to catch him in a foot race.

Satisfied with the look of the thing, she
left the pit and made her way up into the bailey. Plenty of trouble
up there for anyone who cared to get into the middle of it.

Madron was one who did, and—Naas admitted—she
was another, especially the trouble Trig had brought out of
Riverwood, the man named Corvus Gei.

~ ~ ~

Madron eyed the man chained to the curtain
wall. She was just out of his reach, sitting on a grassy knoll in
the lower bailey where Trig had chosen to hold him.

Corvus Gei was the name he’d given Llynya.
Nennius was the name Madron had found in one of his books, along
with an inscription from Balor’s dead leech, Helebore. Nennius was
a name familiar to her, though the man she knew by such was long
dead. He’d written a book, the dead man had, a history book. This
Nennius had stolen a book, her father’s book, from the monastery on
Ynys Enlli, Helebore’s island.

She should have thought to search the Isle of
Saints. Nemeton had ever been wont to secrete books in Christian
houses, letting the new God protect the old. The chances that the
Culdees would have granted her access to their island, though, were
naught. To the monks, women were as the Adversary.

No matter. The book had found her.

She lowered her gaze and smoothed her hand
across the gold runes and aged blue leather of the
Prydion Cal
Le
, the Blue Book of the Magi, one of the Seven Books of Lore.
Her father had shown it to her once, after they had been reunited
in Merioneth, after her long stay at Usk Abbey, but he’d been taken
from her before he’d had a chance to teach her its contents.
Precious, precious book. With the finding of it, she now had two of
the seven books at hand...
and the wheel turns
.

Of the other books, only the whereabouts of
two more were known. The
Sjarn Va Le
, the Violet Book of
Stars, was sealed in stone with the trolls on Inishwrath. Or it had
been. Tages had returned from his journey there with a tale of
destruction. The great headland of the island was gone, leaving a
ragged scar down the cliff face.

Trig had grown unutterably grim at the
tidings, and when Tages had finished telling of all he’d seen, the
captain had said only one word: “Slott.”

A good many Quicken-tree had blanched at
that, and the fears for Llynya had risen. That she’d been taken by
skraelings was a fate worthy of despair. That some of the Dockalfar
had survived, and that Slott walked the land, cast them all in the
same fate. There was not a Quicken-tree alive who did not have an
ancestor woven into the Troll King’s braids.

The
Gratte Bron Le
, the Orange Book of
Stone, was in Deseillign. Rhuddlan himself had left it there in the
Desert Queen’s hands.

The other three books were lost. The
Elhion Bhaas Le
, the Indigo Book of Elfin Lore, had
disappeared at the end of the Wars of Enchantment. ’Twas the book
Ailfinn sought in all her travels, though knowing now that some
Dockalfar lived gave Madron a good idea of where the mage’s search
had led, and mayhaps why she had not answered Rhuddlan’s summons.
Desperate tidings, indeed.

Lanbarrdein had been the great hold of the
Dockalfar. When Rhuddlan had taken it in the Wars, Tuan had moved
his court to Rastaban, the underground demesne of his ally, Slott.
’Twas in Rastaban that all the Dockalfar had supposedly died. That
Dockalfar and skraelings were making strikes on Riverwood meant
Rastaban had been reopened. The book would be there with whoever
had twisted an army of skraelings out of the dregs of men, and
mayhaps Ailfinn was there as well.

The
Treo Veill Le
, the Green Book of
Trees, had been lost through treachery, taken by
she-whose-name-could-not-be-spoken, the greatest of all the Prydion
Magi, and thrown into the weir in the Third Age. ’Twas she who had
conjured the dragons in her cauldron, she who had forged the Magia
Blade. Then the treachery—unforgiven through all the passage of
time. The
Chandra Yeull Le
, the Yellow Book of Chandra, the
book of priestesses, had also been lost through treachery, stolen
by a thief in the Age of the Douvan Kingdoms, some said by a Douvan
king.

But Madron had the two books her father had
known. With each pass of her hand, she felt his presence.

Nemeton
, the blue tome whispered.
Nemeton, bearer of the secrets of time and sanctuary. The map
inside was not what Rhiannon’s son would have hoped, but there was
hope for him in the magi’s writings—and hope for her.

And mayhaps a little hope for the man who
called himself Corvus, who despite his robes and tonsure was no
monk. He was a traveler, a man out of time, though no traveler the
Druids had sent, which made him a mystery and a danger. Trig had
told her of Llynya’s discoveries before the skraelings had
attacked, but Madron would have known regardless. Who besides a
traveler would have searched for her path? Who besides a traveler,
indeed, would have scraped up the remnants of her conjuring fire
and bothered to wrap a few crystals of universal salts into a
package?

Chrystaalt, he’d called it, and asked if she
knew where more could be found, as if she were a kitchen maid. Thus
had he revealed his desire to her.

“I can speed you on your journey,” she said,
looking up. “Or I can hold you here until your natural death.”

His attention had not wavered from her since
she’d sat down, and she found him still watching her. His interest,
as in their previous encounters, was not purely baleful, but being
long accustomed to men’s varied interests, Madron held his gaze
unperturbed.

“It would be safer for you if you sent me on
my way,” he said, his words as dispassionate as her gaze, belying
the keenness of his own. She did not make a move that he did not
mark with his eyes.

“A threat?” she asked with a lift of her
eyebrows. “You are in chains. Would it not be better to
bargain?”

A surprising smile broke across his face,
accompanied by a short laugh. “You do yourself a disservice, lady,
if you would bargain with me.”

“In what way?” she asked. He was a handsome
man, his features cleanly formed with no imperfections, his teeth
unusually white and straight, his eyes clear. The hair beginning to
grow on his head clearly showed the weir stripe, a flash of white
amidst the dark.

His smile hardened into a baring of those
straight white teeth, and he leaned forward as far as his chains
allowed. “I am a man with no honor. None. Whatever bargain we make
will only last as long as it has advantage to me.”

Madron had no need to consider his words. She
already knew them to be true. Llynya had smelled the violence of
his years, and she herself knew him to be an impostor and a thief.
Yet she would bargain for what knowledge she could.

“Answer my questions, and I’ll have no more
need of you or our bargain, Corvus. Or do they call you Raven where
you are from?”

“Some do. Some call me lord.”

He could be a lord, she silently granted. He
had the arrogance for it, and a disturbing sense of power about
him. “And where is that?”

He relaxed back against the wall, then looked
around. “About as far from here as you can get.”

“When?” she asked, the more pertinent
question.