Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (52 page)

The ice music became a screech, losing its
melody in the chaos. The mist entwined with smoke, black and
fearsome, and a death scent blossomed in the maelstrom, the smell
of burning rot and decay. ’Twas the same as at the broken damson
shaft, but far more intense, far more alive. ’Twas a darkness with
intent.

Ara flashed on the edge of the smoke in one
blinding bolt before the light was swallowed by the dire night.
Fear broke through his icy numbness and took hold of his heart. He
reached the floor with a final jump and heard the sounds of a
struggle. Smoke and fog blinded him, the two roiling up in thick,
vaporous bands swirling around each other.

“Llynya!” he screamed, slashing at the
wind-driven smog with the dagger. “Llynya!”

“Mychaellll... ” she cried out, her voice
coming from a distance and growing fainter.

He raised the dreamstone high, running toward
the sound, dodging the columns of the dead. Around one roughly
formed block of ice he saw a flash of blue light. Around the next,
he caught sight of her legs, kicking and struggling as she was
swiftly dragged behind the next column. Sprays of ice fanned up
around her, and he could hear her cursing.

When next he saw her, he dove for her feet,
caught hold, but couldn’t stop her rapid slide across the ice.
Whatever had hold of her pulled them both on a sure course toward
some fearful end. Through the ice spray and windblown vapors, he
glimpsed a bony curve, and then another —knucklebones, but ten
times larger than the knuckles of the fingers that had dogged them
through the upper trails. These were the mother bones.

Llynya squirmed within the awful grip, her
arms pinned to her sides. Ara was still bound to her hand, but the
Quicken-tree cloth was rapidly unraveling in the mad slide over the
ice. Yellow light from the Dockalfar blade flashed with each thrust
he made at the Dangoes bones, but the fingers were replaced as
quickly as he could quell them. The smell of death grew stronger.
He made a final stabbing lunge, and was attacked from behind.

Like the cracking of a whip, he was jerked
away from her by an unseen hand and sent sliding off in a different
direction. A great howling set up in the cavern, adding to the
raucous din of the storm. When he was able to stop himself, he
scrambled to his feet and took off at a run, back toward
Llynya.

He had no room for thought, only action. A
faint light flickered off to one side of him, and he raced toward
it. Without warning, a wall of clear ice loomed up out of the
whirls of fog and smoke. He dropped to the floor of the cavern,
trying to slow the speed of impact. Blessed grace, he didn’t hit,
but came to a sliding stop in a worn hollow of ice in front of the
wall. White light fell over him from above, and when he turned and
looked up, his already ragged breath caught in his throat.

’Twasn’t a wall that had stopped him, but a
tomb, one far different from the other gruesome pillars of ice.
This one glowed. Its occupant was long and slender, laid out on her
side, and she was pure white. ’Twas a hound, frozen in watery
splendor. He could see her wounds, but no blood stained her
hide.

The howling behind him had degenerated into
fierce barking and growling, coming from the same direction as the
greatest fury of the storm. He tried to get to his feet, but ’twas
as if the light weighed him down. It grew brighter and brighter,
and all around him the black smoke rose higher on the walls,
leaving a sooty residue on the ice. A swirling length of darkness
took shape near the ceiling, shattering the icicles and silencing
the screeching music, leaving only the roar of the wind.

He watched the cloud form, a long, black
funnel of force shaping the chaos and dragging Dangoes bones into
its whirling center. Some of the pillars began to crack, and he
feared the dead would be loosed upon him... upon her.

“Llynya.” Her name was a rough whisper. He
clawed for a hold on the edge of the hollow, but was denied.
Collapsing onto his back, he stared up into the churning heart of
the darkness and knew a cold more frigid than the ice. ’Twas an
eternity of night he saw above him, an emptiness too complete to
ever be filled.

The light from the tomb brightened even more,
casting a pool of luminescence that spread out to every corner of
the cavern. In the middle of it, the funnel cloud ebbed and flowed
and churned, a dark, undulating flame sundering the light.

’Twas his vision, only far bleaker than what
he’d seen that long-ago winter night.

The future laid itself bare before him, and
he saw naught but bones and darkness, and then even the bones were
devoured, sucked into the black well. The swart cloud swirled in a
ponderous, hypnotic spiral, and heat kindled in his breast.

One thread of darkness loosed itself from the
flame to dance and twine about him, and the scars along his body
quickened, heeding the call of the dread night.

This was his fate.

This was his fight.

He felt the thread pull him to his feet, and
he unsheathed his sword, but the sword was wrong, all wrong. It
didn’t fit his hand. It couldn’t cut the thread.

“Llynya!” he cried out, her name the one
talisman to which he clung.

And she was there, holding him to the ice
against the force of the thread, holding the sword with him, a
black hellhound at her side. Her hair was flying out in all
directions, braids and knots and twists, her leaves trembling in
the draft of the funnel cloud’s wake. Her face was streaked with
icy patches of white, but her eyes were green. Green and
fierce.

She lifted her voice into the wind, shouting
in an elfin tongue, and the black flame wavered above them. The
light from the tomb became a piercing disk of brightness, forcing
the darkness higher.

With a mortal groan, the smoke wound itself
tighter and tighter, dragging its loose thread back into itself,
until ’twas naught but a frenzied, twisted cord, humming with its
own furious power. In an instant the cord unraveled, each strand
flying off to disappear in the cavern.

The white light ebbed, and Mychael fell to
the ice. Llynya removed her hand from the sword grip and caressed
his face. He thought he heard her sob. He felt so strange. The
hound moved in close to nuzzle him where he lay.

“Elixir,” he murmured, raising his hand to
the dog’s sleek coat. Lavrans had told him of the hound, how it had
fought hard and to victory in the Battle of Balor and had helped
save Ceridwen’s life—much as he had saved Llynya’s from the Dangoes
bones.

“He is called Conladrian by the
Quicken-tree,” she told him, her voice a strained whisper.

“And Numa?” he asked, looking to the tomb.
The white bitch had been Ceridwen’s boon companion when she had
stayed in the Hart Tower with Lavrans before coming to Balor as
Caradoc’s bride. The hound had died in the final moments of the
battle, holding the enemy at bay on the sands of Mor Sarff.

“She is Rhayne,” Llynya said. “I—I didn’t
know he’d brought her here.”

“When I heard the howling, I thought ’twas
death itself, and the growling... ” His voice trailed off. It had
been such a vicious sound. He’d thought Llynya had met her end in
some cavern beast’s jaws.

“Death was here,” she said simply, and
another sob broke free.

Aye, death had been there.

The river of blood he’d so long feared was as
naught compared to the dark night he’d seen. The skraelings would
die, hundreds by his sword alone, dull as it was, too dull to cut a
dark thread, yet sharp enough to cut down skraelings. Their blood
would run like a river. The Dockalfar would die, the
Sha-shakrieg... and the Quicken-tree, he thought with a pang of
despair. The Red-leaf and Wydden, the Daur and Ebiurrane, the Kings
Wood elves—any and all who answered Rhuddlan’s summons would die.
Men, too, would die in droves, overrun with plague and pestilence.
Every creature of the forest and the water would die in the
darkness. And when naught else walked upon the land or swam in any
ocean, the trees would die and with them every last green living
thing.

This was what he’d seen in the heart of the
darkness, a void that ate life down to the last spark of light.

He would fight. ’Twas what he’d been born to
do. And the dragons would come, Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas, for
’twas what they’d been born to do as well—to fight the darkness.
But would they come to him? He had not the blade to rule them, only
a weak edge that could not cut through a tendril of smoke.

They had been conjured for this one deed, the
three of them. Blood of their blood, he needed them as he’d always
known he did, for without them his fate was sealed. He would
die.

He was so cold. He hadn’t realized it afore,
but he ached with the cold. The way was clear before them now, the
smoke gone and the ice free of bones. They should be leaving the
Dangoes.

He struggled to his feet with Llynya helping
him and Elixir pacing back and forth at his side.

“Will he come with us, do you think?” he
asked.

“Nay.” Llynya shook her head and wiped the
back of her hand across her cheek. “ ’Tis a vigil he keeps for his
sister.” She was crying.

He wanted to touch her, to comfort her, but
felt strangely removed from his surroundings. He bent down to pick
up his sword and halted with his fingers outstretched. His hand was
deathly pale, his skin tinged blue. The hair falling over his
shoulders was frost white. Even his weir stripe had been
transformed, dulled to a rusting iron gray.

’Twas a destiny he had not foreseen, that he
would be so changed, and it gave him a moment’s pause to see his
flesh limned in shades of icy death. But the moment passed, for in
truth it did not matter. He had been born to fight, a dread warrior
conceived not in his mother’s womb, but in an ancient past. All
else was as naught.

Except Llynya.

She was a loss he would mourn.

He turned to her, understanding now her
tears, but having nothing to offer—for certes not his ice-riven
hand.

“Come,” he said. “Battle awaits.” ’Twas the
only thing he knew.

Elixir led them up out of the Dangoes and
took them to where a rough path began its switchbacks up to the
causeway. The hound whimpered and yapped while Llynya knelt by his
side to say good-bye. He licked her face, and she sang some elfin
song into his car. When the song was finished, the hound turned and
descended back into the cave.

The climb was steep and grueling, but the
temperature around them gradually rose. At the top, they were
finally free of the ice. Pools of seawater marked the track, and
beyond the track, they could see ships, elfin ships. Their silver
hulls rode the black waves of Mor Sarff. Their sails were full with
the wind, marked with runes proclaiming them of the Daur-clan.
Their decks were aglow with dreamstone light, the daggers of three
ships’ crews held brightly to light the way across the subterranean
Serpent Sea.

Llynya was cheered to see the small fleet and
used Ara to signal them. Hundreds of blades were lifted in return
and a chant taken up by the sailors. When the words reached them,
Mychael saw her face pale.

“What are they saying?” The words were in a
language he didn’t know, though its rhythms were purely elfin.

“They are Daur,” she said, giving him a
brief, tearstained glance before returning her gaze to the sea,
“And they are calling for a Dragonlord. They are calling for
you.”

~ ~ ~

Caerlon marched his army south from the
Kasr-al Loop and caught sight of three Daur ships sailing away from
the Dangoes and rounding the southern point of the deep dark.

They were on the run, and none too soon, he
thought with grim satisfaction.

If they’d thought to attack him from the
shores of Mor Sarff, they were too late. He’d barely made it the
last stretch off the Loop himself. Any skraeling who dawdled
wouldn’t make it at all. The wretched smoke was seeping into every
cave and tunnel. His last reports out of Deseillign had the whole
desert basin filled with the stuff. Not only was it pouring out of
Kryscaven Crater through the southern Rift at a much faster rate
than he had planned, it was also finding its way over the northern
Rift and back-washing into Rastaban.

The boy would be lost, and Ailfinn.

Any plan he’d had to return had to be
abandoned. There was time now only for winning the Weir Gate—and
damn little time for that.

He turned, and with a lift of his hand
signaled the skraelings to begin launching the ships, save for
Slott’s barge. The Troll King would bring up the rear.

“
Grazch!
” The Dockalfar started the
skraelpacks down to the sea, each pack rolling its own ship.

A wisp of smoke wafted by him, making for the
open water. ’Twas rotting stuff, the herald of Dharkkum. Thick as
it had become, the fell darkness could not be far behind.

He stepped forward with his whip and lashed
the nearest skraelings, exhorting them to greater speed. Before the
coming battle was over, the gates would be the only safe place left
on Earth.

R
astaban was
deserted. A fouler place Rhuddlan had never seen nor smelled since
the last time he’d been there, and it was growing ever fouler with
the invading wisps and scent of Dharkkum’s dread smoke. His scouts
had reported a large movement of skraelpacks to the south, but a
few stragglers had been captured by the Liosalfar. A few more had
been caught deserting from the main force. Loyalty was not a
skraeling attribute.

Nor did they talk much. Grammar being a gift
from the gods, ’twas not surprising the godless skraelings could
barely speak. Wei knew their ways well enough though, and with
Owain’s ax hanging over the beastly men’s heads, the two had
gleaned as much information out of the skraelings as could be
gotten.