Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (54 page)

Shamefully.

His one weapon against them had been his firm
grip on a reality that did not include children’s nightmares. Then
the Liosalfar had returned from the Dangoes, and his nightmare had
become real. Slott of the Thousand Skulls, Troll King of Rastaban,
not only existed, but was loose upon the land.

“Hold, man,” he muttered again, casting a
wary eye about him. Seeing naught, he swept the east wall with
light in search of oddities, but got no farther than halfway across
when the southern wall began to hum. ’Twas a low, rumbling sound,
seeming to come from deep below. A troll sound, by God, if he’d
ever heard one.

He turned with a shout on his lips, torch
held high. “Rhuddlan!”

The elf-man was already running toward the
cell. A faint trembling shook the floor. Or mayhaps ’twas just him,
Owain thought. For certes he was trembling from every hair, though
he was frozen still as stone where he stood. Christ, but the troll
would make short work of him. Down him in one easy bite, the beast
would, and leave naught but his boots still stuck to the granite
floor.

“Rhuddlan!” he yelled again, and the
Quicken-tree King was beside him.

“ ’Tis naught to fear, Owain,” Rhuddlan said,
a note of excitement in his voice. The Quicken-tree touched him on
the arm as he passed, and Owain found he could move. He took a step
back, waved away by Rhuddlan’s hand.

“Stand clear,” the elf-man said.

A weak skittering of golden light danced down
the humming wall. A crack opened up in the stone and grew wider,
wide enough for a man to slip through. Rhuddlan leaped toward it
and disappeared.

Owain didn’t move, dazzled as he was by the
skittering, dancing light bursting out of the opening. The crack
continued to widen, the slow, grinding noise it made adding a rough
resonance to the humming sound. He took another step back just as
Wei and Varga came rushing into the cell.

Owain flushed to have been caught in retreat,
but Wei and Varga didn’t seem to notice.

“
Asmen taline!
” Wei hollered over the
growing noise and the high whining bursts the flashing lights
seemed to make. Then he and the Sha-shakrieg leaped through the
crack in the stone and disappeared.

Owain forced himself to step forward.
’Twasn’t a troll, he knew that, but ’twas sorcery nonetheless, a
great sorcery to make such fires that flashed and burned and
crackled.

Girding himself for the dash, he drew his
sword. With a final command to “hold on,” he leaped into the
light-bound breach—and near toppled into the waiting abyss. He
stopped himself with a flailing of his arms, stumbling backward to
safety on the landing.

“God’s balls,” he swore, staring down into
the oubliette. The humming and scattering of light was coming from
a shaft of golden light that shone down the center of the prison.
Great sparks of color flew out of the shaft and lit the walls,
painting them in reds, greens, and golds. On the far side of the
prison, he could see Wei and Varga racing down a curve of stairs
hewn out of the rock. Around the other side of the golden light,
Rhuddlan was kneeling on another landing, and beside him was
Shay.

From where Owain stood, he saw Rhuddlan raise
his sword over the boy and bring it crashing down. His breath
stopped in his throat as icy blue sparks flew up from the boy’s
chains. Then Shay was free and on his feet.

~ ~ ~

Rhuddlan paced the landing, watching Ailfinn
turn within the light of Tuan’s Stone. ’Twas the charged force of
the crystal holding her, that and some rotting
sídhe
dust
Caerlon had thrown into the mix. Given time, he would wait until
the new moon to free her, when the crystal’s strength would be
weakest for lack of sunlight, either direct or reflected. But there
was no time for waiting.

Below Ailfinn the pages of the
Elhion
Bhaas Le
whipped back and forth in a fury. He could help her,
if he could get to her, yet there was naught on her flat-topped
prison that he could see for him to throw a rope around, and ’twas
a rotting long way to jump.

Behind him, he heard Owain make his way onto
the landing. A choking sound immediately followed. He turned and
found the Welshman white-faced, staring at Varga’s arm as the
Sha-shakrieg rolled up his sleeve. Tightly coiled whorls covered
the spider man’s flesh, all of them shining damply in the golden
light.

Rhuddlan lifted his eyes and met the
Sha-shakrieg’s dark-eyed gaze in silent understanding. There was a
way.

Varga chose a gray coil to start and dug his
fingers in around its edge to pull it off. Fluid oozed up to fill
the space, and Owain choked again.

“ ’Tis only
pryf
silk and bia
seepage,” Rhuddlan told the Welshman, “and naught to lose your
supper over.”

With the coil in his hand, Varga eyed the
distance to Ailfinn’s rocky pillar. His throw sent the whorl flying
out over the abyss. The silken thread uncoiled in loop after
graceful loop, the gray glinting like silver in the flashes of
light, until it hit the side of the pillar with a resounding
thwack—and stuck.

Two more threads followed in quick
succession, one below the first and the next below the second.
Varga secured each end of the threads to the wall above the
landing.

“ ’Tis not a web, but will work as a bridge.
If you can free her, it will hold you both.”

Rhuddlan tested his weight against the
threads. They were like silk, so thin, yet tough, and growing
harder now that they’d been exposed to the air. He’d crossed
Sha-shakrieg webs in the Wars. Some of them had been traps, with
killing threads woven in with the web threads. He’d seen more than
one
tylwyth teg
meet a painful death in a sizzling,
poisoned, tangled knot of some Sha-shakrieg’s making.

He stepped out onto the bridge and when it
held, sprinted across. When he reached the pillar, he gestured for
Shay to come. He would need help if Ailfinn was unable to walk—if
he could free her. The boy made nimble work of the crossing and
came to stand by his side.

“The pages weren’t moving so fast a few days
past when they started turning,” Shay said.

“Aye.” Rhuddlan ran his hand over the curve
of golden light. The power of it pressed back against his palm. “Is
she looking for a spell?”

“No spell.” Rhuddlan shook his head. “She
doesn’t need more magic, she needs less. Wei!” he called back over
the abyss. “Give me your blade!”

Wei moved to the edge of the landing and with
a sideways toss slung his dreamstone dagger out toward the pillar.
Shay caught it in the air.

“Heat it up,” Rhuddlan commanded, and Shay
tightened his fist around the crystal. Rhuddlan’s own blade was
pulsing under the pressure of his grip. He believed what he’d told
Shay, that less magic was needed, not more. For certes he was no
mage to conjure a loosing spell, but with force of arms, he hoped
to break the binding spell Caerlon had cast.

A call from the landing had him lifting his
head. Wei gestured to the far side of the prison, pointing up
toward the door. Rhuddlan looked and nodded, then turned back to
Ailfinn’s prison with grim determination. The smoke of Dharkkum was
drifting into the oubliette. Caerlon might yet win the day and lose
the world, the mighty fool.

“Bring your blade in behind mine, and by the
trees, do not cut Ailfinn. We’ll see if dreamstone
magia
can
break the hold of Tuan’s Stone.”

Shay nodded, and Rhuddlan slashed into the
golden shaft. Blue sparks flashed all across the line of the cut
and showered down on them. Rhuddlan cut again through the light
with his crystal blade. A wisp of white smoke arose from Ailfinn’s
robe where the fresh sparks landed.

Shay shadowed his every move as he sliced
line after line through the golden light. More smoke billowed up
around them, ’til Ailfinn was discernible only as a still and
floating form imprisoned in luminescence.

The graceful arcs of colored fire falling
into the abyss grew larger and more frequent. Though Ailfinn was
not moving, Rhuddlan could feel the strength of her will forcing
the fiery light away from the shaft, creating the rainbows of
falling stars. He cut again, and thousands of the
sídhe
dust-motes burst into flame and flew outward, extinguishing
themselves in the inky darkness of the pit.

On the next flashing stab of his blade, a
woman’s voice cried out, Ailfinn’s voice.

“
Dana Lianei!
”

A wind rose from the abyss, swirling around
the pillar of rock. Rhuddlan stepped back and held his hand out to
stay Shay’s blade.

“
Astareth!
”

The golden light wavered.

“
Conc de Le!
”

The white smoke spiraled up around her, and
as Rhuddlan watched, Ailfinn’s left hand slowly curled into a fist,
tighter and tighter, until the tendons in her wrist stood out in
stark relief against her pale skin. The remaining motes of
sídhe
dust floated toward her and slipped between her
fiercely held fingers, disappearing one by one into her fist. When
the last mote was captured, she flung her hand open.

The lights went out, all the lights.
Rhuddlan’s blade as well as Tuan’s Stone. The torches on the
landing stopped flaming. Wei’s blade ceased to burn.

There was nothing but utter and complete
darkness from every quarter. Darkness and the faint scent of
Dharkkum.

Then Ailfinn’s voice. “Take me to Kryscaven
Crater, Elf King. We have work there.”

’Twas the Prydion, for certes, Rhuddlan
thought, a smile breaking across his face. Though little given to
sentiment, he was thoroughly heartened that she had the strength to
command. Nonetheless, the tidings were dire. “It is lost, Ailfinn.
The crystal seal was broken in midsummer, and all the southern
basin is filled with pestilence.”

Her voice came again out of the darkness,
thin and acerbic. “And if it wasn’t, would I be needed? Fie,
Caerlon. What of Deseillign, Rhuddlan?”

“Overrun with the same ravaging smoke that
threatens us here. We must be gone. Battle awaits us at the Weir
Gate.”

“Aye, we’re leaving, but to Kryscaven Crater.
The battle at the gate is for another to win or lose, Elf King.
Know it and obey,” she said, intoning words of Prydion prophesy.
“Gird yourself, Rhuddlan, for ’tis no mere skraelings or Dockalfar
you must face, but Dharkkum. Give me your hand.”

He reached out and frail, cold fingers
wrapped around his, but no colder than his had suddenly become.
Rhuddlan of the Quicken-tree feared nothing on earth, yet there was
no denying the dread he felt at Ailfinn’s chosen course.

“
Meshankara mes
,” she muttered, rising
to her feet. “Battle is, indeed, upon us. Lift your blade.”

Rhuddlan complied, and the light rekindled in
the dagger’s dreamstone heart and burst forth, filling the
oubliette with a shining radiance.

“
Khardeen!
” came the cry from the
landing.

Ailfinn glanced up at Wei.

“They are ready to fight, eh?” she asked
Rhuddlan.

“Aye,” he said. “But not for what you
ask.”

“They will be,” she said. She appeared
unchanged from her ordeal, except for the pallor of her face. Fair
of brow, the mark of the Star was upon her. Her eyes were a deep
emerald green, belying the years attested to by the cloud of white
hair falling past her shoulders. Her gown was the same emerald
green beneath her tawny cloak. Her kirtle was silver shot through
with gold, matching the gold-inlaid silver rings and bracelets
adorning her fingers and wrists.

From a pouch on his belt, he offered her
seedcake. She took a small bite, and a much larger drink from his
catkins gourd.

“We have no time for delay, Ailfinn. Shall I
carry you?” he asked, and for his efforts received a long, slanted
look from beneath her lashes.

“Unlike you, Rhuddlan, I have no contention
with the faerie folk, and as Tuan’s Stone both held and sustained
me, so did the
sídhe
dust. You could eat the stuff as well
as I, if you could keep from choking on it.” She turned to Shay.
“Come here, boy.”

The young Liosalfar took a step closer,
looking both hesitant and awed, and she reached up and smudged him
beneath each eye with her left thumb. Saffron-colored dust
shimmered on his skin.

“You’re not afraid of faeries, are you now?”
she asked, and Shay shook his head. “Good.” She took his hand. “Now
light your blade.”

Shay squeezed the dreamstone in his other
hand, and Wei’s dagger shot forth light. On the landing, the
elf-man reignited Owain’s and Varga’s torches with a sulfur twig
from his fireline kit.

“ ’Twas you who woke me, fair child, with
your whispered songs,” she said, “and for that I’ll set you to the
lighter task. To Riverwood it is with you, and from there to the
Weir Gate. Tell the elfin lords their king is to Kryscaven. Caerlon
will have reached the far shore of Mor Sarff hours past, and if the
tylwyth teg
have troops there, the battle will have begun.”
She looked to Rhuddlan, and he nodded. She returned her attention
to Shay. “But you will not miss all. Blood and gore there will be
aplenty before the day is won.”

“The dragons?” Rhuddlan asked, knowing their
task was hopeless without Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas. ’Twas no minor
breach of crystal the mage would face with him and the others, but
a ravaging plague of darkness said to twist the mind and steal the
last breath from a body, a darkness that could not be fought with
either will or blade.

“They will not have forgotten the way home or
their life’s labor,” she answered him. “They are the devourers of
darkness.” She made a dragon sign across her breast. “With the
stench of Dharkkum on the air, their blood will draw them back to
the nest as the dragon-spawned son of Rhiannon is drawn.
Destruction is the name of the three together, and as their joined
power grows, Dharkkum will seek them out. Fight they will, to the
death and beyond as Stept Agah did, but if we fail to seal the
Crater, the darkness will eventually overcome even the dragon born.
You had best set your mind to Kryscaven, Rhuddlan, and the seal we
must conjure out of the mother rock, for ’tis the deed we manage in
that deep and fiery pit that will tell the tale for many a long
year.”