Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (6 page)

Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas, the red dragon and
the green, conjured the wildness in his breast that slipped ever
more often into delirium. Their siren call had lured him home,
crying out to him from within the maelstrom of his dire vision and
the long-forgotten dreams of his childhood; home to where ancient
legend said the dragons had been born of the very earth of
Merioneth, yet they had not returned to be by his side. To the
depths of his thrice-cursed heart he knew naught but the dragons
could save him.

Unless ’twas Nemeton’s elusive path into
sanctuary.

Stifling another curse, he turned his face
from the dawn-lit sea and stared down the dark throat of the
Dragon’s Mouth. Power of another sort awaited there, the power of
timeless knowledge, raw and dangerous, and that yoke and those
reins he would grasp with all his wild, damned heart, if he but
could. ’Twas the
magia mysterium
of a religion thought to be
long dead, the religion of another age. In truth, its life flowed
as surely and strongly as the Savior’s blood had flowed upon the
cross.

Blood. That was his first curse, the bane
that twisted through him like rivers of fire when the madness was
upon him. He was Magus Druid by blood, his mother’s blood, and the
blood had begun to tell.

A movement in the far shadows of the cave
caught his eye, and for an instant his pulse quickened. Then a
clear voice called to him from out of the darkness.

“
Malashm
. Good morn.”

No dragon this, he realized, his mouth
curving in wry concession. Grim musings were unlikely to bring him
what his months of searching had not, and he was filled with little
but grim musings these days. Aye, and he was probably a fool
indeed, looking for beasts that in truth were most likely conjured
out of naught but a slip of sight and the beginnings of
madness.

The speaker drew nearer, discernible only by
the pale daylight glancing off silvery green cloth, but soon enough
Mychael saw Shay’s ready grin and the blue woad slashing diagonally
across his face. No one else would bother to search him out. The
rest of the Quicken-tree thought his heart too dark. He’d heard
their whispers of Dockalfar, and knew they spoke of an ancient
enemy that had once ruled the caverns below.

“You’re up early,” he said by way of
greeting, easing his arm away from his side and hoping the pain
would not come again.

Shay’s grin broadened. “I came down to watch
you brood, for no one does it better than thee.” Eyes greener than
a forest full of trees flashed with amusement. A five-strand
fif
braid was worked into Shay’s hair on the left side of
his head, a silky black plait amongst the loose strands hanging to
his shoulders. In his hand he held a small pot of woad, its wax
seal broken.

“Early though you be, you’re too late by
half,” Mychael chided him. “My morning brood is over, and I shall
not partake again until eventide.”

“My good luck, that,” the boy said, walking
out onto the cave’s ledge and into the watery light reflecting up
from the sea. A high wall of rock on the north side protected the
natural bowl of the opening, allowing tufts of vegetation to take
hold in the crevices: sea campion and thrift, scurvy grass and
vetch. “There are fair tidings on the wind this morning,” Shay went
on, picking a leaf to chew, barely concealing his excitement.
“Travelers. We could take to Riverwood and be the first to find
them. Might be our last chance for a while.”

Riverwood was the Quicken-tree name for the
forest that spread on either side of the River Bredd along
Merioneth’s eastern border. The trees had previously been clear-cut
from the castle walls for defense, but Rhuddlan and his clan were
coaxing them back.

The mention of travelers sparked Mychael’s
interest. It also explained the boy’s painted face. Rhuddlan
commanded they all be marked thus when they ventured beyond the
great wall. Much was afoot in the woods these days.

’Twas true also what Shay said about their
last chance. They were to the deep dark again on the morrow, a
place beyond the world of Men, though unlike the forest and
mist-bound prison Rhuddlan would contrive for Merioneth. ’Twas
beyond and below a mighty ridge line demarcating the deeper cavers
that Moira, one of the Quicken-tree women, had told Mychael was
called the Magia Wall. Time in the forest would be good preparation
for the days ahead without the warmth and light from the sun, while
they searched for broken damson shafts in the deep dark. Rhuddlan
had shown great concern over the broken shaft Mychael had found
back in the spring, and not a fortnight passed that he didn’t send
a troop of Liosalfar into the caverns to look for more. Mayhaps,
Mychael thought, in Riverwood’s cool bowers he would find some
succor for the night’s besetting aches. For certes, there was no
better excuse for avoiding those who would bend his ear with their
talk of duty.

“Have you food?” he asked before agreeing.
Shay was ever hungry, having reached the age when no amount of
eating seemed to suffice, and there was naught like an empty
stomach to bring adventure to a quick halt.

“Enough to share,” Shay assured him, patting
the pouch hanging from his belt.

“Then we are to Riverwood.”

Grinning, Shay tossed him the small pot of
woad.

~ ~ ~

East of the Dragon’s Mouth, deep in a
forested glen, a heavy blanket of fog drifted over the River Bredd
in the pale light of dawn. The thick stuff curled through the
rushes lining the river’s bank and wound its way ’round the leaves
and limbs of the overhanging trees.

Llynya, sprite of the Quicken-tree clan, lay
splayed in the crotch of a wych elm, resting her head on her arm,
lazily dragging her hand through the vaporous mist and leaving tiny
whorls in the wake of her fingertips. Below her, old Aedyth snored
softly in a leafy bower tucked next to the trunk. ’Twas a
homecoming of sorts that day. The healer and she had been in Deri
to the south since mid-May, and though Aedyth had done her work
well, Llynya knew she still had much of her strength to reclaim,
much of herself to mend.

A heavy sigh escaped her, the breath of it
blowing the tiny whorls to smithereens. She was not ready to face
all that awaited her in Carn Merioneth, to face the changes wrought
in herself these past months, but the day would see itself come
whether she was ready or nay, and in truth, she dared not delay any
longer. Ailfinn had been summoned, and the mage would not
countenance Llynya’s quest; indeed, she had the power to keep
Llynya from it. For all the mage’s many enchantments and calling
upon of unseen forces, she was a pragmatic soul, and Llynya’s needs
had never weighed against Ailfinn’s plans.

Her gaze fell on the runes and leaves
encircling her wrist and trailing up her arm to disappear under her
tunic’s sleeve. The tattoo was fully healed, leaving naught but the
dark blue of woad marking her skin. Aedyth had performed the
ancient rite in Deri. There had been pain, but Llynya did not fear
pain. Pain could be borne. That she had failed in her sworn duty
could not. She had come back to right a wrong, or meet her death in
the trying of it.

“And what of you, my fat little sweetings?”
she asked the row of plump birds gathered on a nearby branch
watching her. “
Chick-a-dee-dee-dee
, hmm?
Zzhee-chee-chee
.”

She reached out her hand and tickled one soft
white breast, and the bird fluffed itself into a ball of feathers.
The middle one flew onto her finger, and the last hopped closer to
the first to wait its turn. Llynya didn’t disappoint, but gave them
each a thorough going-over, rubbing their throats and the crowns of
their black-capped heads.

“Pretty babes,” she crooned. “Shall I tell
you a story while Aedyth sleeps the morn away?”

Dark eyes watched her expectantly and not so
much as a twitter or a tweet of dissent escaped the birds, all of
which Llynya took for acquiescence.

And so she began, “A long time ago, in a land
far and away across the waters, there lived a great Elfin King who
had seven fair daughters...”

~ ~ ~

Mychael and Shay heard the voice at the same
time. Dawn had not yet spilled into the deeper reaches of the
glens, and they walked through a woodland made ethereal by night
shadows and drifts of fog that grew thicker the closer they came to
the river.

“ ’Tis a woman,” Mychael said as they both
stopped.

“Mayhaps,” Shay said, looking puzzled. He
raised his nose into the soft breath of a dawn breeze.

For Mychael there was no mayhaps. The lilting
tones could belong to naught except a woman. How could Shay doubt
it? He knew the boy’s hearing was as keen or keener than his
own.

“Aye, I think you’re right,” Shay finally
agreed, sounding worried. “I fear there is naught left of the child
in her. It may be that I am too late.”

Too late for what, Mychael didn’t have a
chance to ask. Nor did he have time to ask the identity of her.
Shay disappeared before any of the words could form on his lips. He
slipped into the fog as quickly as that, leaving not a trace of his
passing, a common occurrence when one consorted with
tylwyth
teg
, the wild folk by one name, and elves by yet another. He’d
spent time with the Ebiurrane clan farther north these last few
months and found them no different, except in the deep dark. Even
those among the Quicken-tree who were Liosalfar warriors, the
Light-elves, stuck close to one another in the deep dark.

Druids and elves.
Jesu
, but he’d
thrown in with a pagan lot.

Trusting Shay to his own path, Mychael waited
in the copse of hazel, listening. His hand absently touched the new
and wondrous dagger on his belt. ’Twas sharp-edged steel with a
dreamstone hilt, a Quicken-tree knife, the fighting blade of a
Liosalfar. It had been a gift that morn from the ancient white-eyed
woman, Naas. She’d caught him and Shay as they’d crossed the bailey
on their way to Riverwood, saying naught but the name
Ara
when she clapped it into his hand. That done, she’d disappeared
back into the shadows of the great wall.

Dain Lavrans—the man who had saved his sister
from the Boar of Balor, who had helped her open the Weir Gate, who
had taken her away to the far north—had owned such a blade, a
dagger he’d won off Rhuddlan in a fight. Mychael knew not why the
old woman had given one of the rare knives to him. Shay hadn’t
balked at the priceless gift, but some of the other Quicken-tree
might. Mychael knew Naas was a bit touched, and mayhaps it had been
a mistake, an act of mild derangement. Mayhaps she’d thought he was
someone else. The old woman was blind.

Already, though, the dagger seemed like a
part of him, and he would not easily give it back. It felt right in
his hand, the weight of it, the coolness of the crystal, and the
heat of it when he held it just so. It felt like it belonged to
him, as if Naas had returned something he’d lost.

The woman’s voice came again, diverting him,
and he set off after it. ’Twas a faerie wood through which he
tracked the storyteller weaving her tale of betrayal and
enchantment, a landscape rich in buckler ferns and spleen-wort,
primrose and pasqueflower. The smell of lavender drifted to him,
while the sound of the river continually grew louder, a low rushing
of water beneath the voice that led him onward through the
trees.

At the edge of a clearing where the Bredd
eddied around a bend, he halted by an overgrown birch, his trail
come to an end. Shay was not to be seen, but the woman was there on
the other side of the small meadow—if woman she was.

Stirred by the warming air, white drifts of
fog washed up against a wych elm, alternately concealing and
revealing the storyteller where she lay along the length of a thick
branch. Wisps of the vaporous mist rolled down her body, skimming
along her back, sliding over shimmery, feminine curves, and casting
her in a pearly luster. Her hair, dark like Shay’s, was filled with
leaves and twigs, the whole of it tangled and twisted and braided
in an artless, falling-down pile on her head. So fey was she,
seeming only partly of this world and mostly of another, he would
not have been surprised to see ephemeral wings arcing gracefully
from her shoulders.

Fair maid, this, he thought. She was the
beginning and end of a young man’s dreams—but was she woman or
river nymph?

Shay had mentioned travelers, but Mychael saw
only the one, the dulcet-voiced being, conjured from mist and
mayhaps his own imagination, telling her tale to a band of
chickadees huddled on the branch in front of her.

“... and ’twas then the sea grew angry and
sent its waves crashing o’er the rocky crag,” she was saying,
dramatizing the scene by scooping a handful of fog into a sizable
wave and pushing it over the branch where she lay. “The sisters
clung to one another, their slippered feet bruised by the sharp
stones, their hearts growing cold with despair. ‘All is lost,’ the
eldest cried, but the youngest beseeched her sisters not to lose
hope, for surely there was yet some brave soul to save them.”

As he watched her, the last of Mychael’s grim
thoughts died, charmed to their demise by her grace. In their place
came a sense of bemused wonder that grew as he moved closer. She
looked to have taken a tumble from higher up in the tree with all
her leaves and twigs, but other than that she appeared to be of a
piece—a rare and lovely piece. He would gladly listen to her faerie
lore and any other tales she might choose to tell. In truth, how
often as a youth had he lain in a similar woodland place, far from
prying eyes and monkish vows, and dreamed of one such as she to
come and seduce him with love and a warm mouth?

Too often to suit many at Strata Florida
Abbey, he thought wryly, though no dream of his had ever been
answered except by his own hand. In its beginnings he’d thought
that the wildness in him was lust left too long unappeased, but
he’d learned differently each time its hungering edge sharpened to
a cruel degree and spread beyond his loins.