Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (61 page)

Calan Gaef had come at the end of October, a
sennight after the smoke had cleared, and a small ceremony had been
held in the Cavern of the Scrying Pool. With Madron by his side,
Mychael had drunk the dragon wine and opened the doors of time,
becoming the
Beirdd Braint
of the Quicken-tree, but not
their king.

That night the dragons had sung out on the
Irish Sea, and he and Madron both had seen a future that would take
him away from the land of his mother. Nemeton’s steps were his to
follow, not Rhuddlan’s, and ’twas to Wydehaw Castle he and Llynya
would go after Beltaine, to the Hart Tower. Within the coming
years, there would be journeys to Yr Is-ddwfn. In February, at the
fire festival of Imbolc, Moira set out on that trail herself,
taking news of Ailfinn’s passing and the promise of Llynya’s
return.

Unexpectedly, after so many months of
freedom, the elf-maid’s malaise came upon her at Alban Eiler, the
vernal equinox, when darkness gives way to light. Holding her in
his arms, Mychael, too, felt Morgan’s endless fall through time.
For two nights and a day, he gave her what strength he could to
keep her from her terror, talking to her as the damnable force that
bound her to the Thief threatened to consume her. In time, the
malaise passed. And in time, the day for leaving Carn Merioneth
came.

~ ~ ~

The groom, Noll, was the first to see the
ethereal pair appear as if by magic out of the early morning mist.
Like spirits they came, riding faerie horses of purest white, their
green hoods draped low over their faces. To any and all who ever
asked, he said their mares had walked across the top of the Wye
that morn, their hooves naught but breaking the surface of the
river.

He stumbled more than once in his haste to
reach the great hall and arrived at his lord’s table covered in
muck from both the lower and the middle baileys.

“Milord, milord,” he said breathlessly,
collapsing in front of the dais where Soren D’Arbois was breaking
his night’s fast. The Lady Vivienne, it was to be supposed, was
still abed, mayhaps suckling the heir born three months past.
“Riders approach!”

“How many?”

“Two, milord.”

“Their standard?”

“None, milord, but they’re from Faerie for
certes.” After his tangles with the mage of Wydehaw, who had
disappeared a year past and—it was hoped—would never return, Noll
had become the resident expert below the salt on all things
magical.

Above the salt, his reputation did not carry
quite so much weight.

The Baron of Wydehaw looked down his hawklike
nose and waved him away. “Begone, knave, until you have your wits
about you.”

Noll started to protest, but was waylaid by
instinctive self-preservation. The baron’s mood had improved
mightily over the last year, but he was not without his cruel
streak.

Being gone, though, did not of necessity mean
leaving the hall. Noll scrambled back from the dais, finding a
place with the dogs among the rushes.

Soren called for more ale, doing his best to
ignore the groom’s absurd announcement, yet keeping one eye on the
door. Mages, wizards, witches, wild folk, and faeries—he’d had his
fill. ’Twas the damn Hart Tower that drew them, Nemeton’s tower.
The blasted thing had been empty only a year. Was it possible
another
sorcier
would come so quickly to take the Dane’s
place?

He prayed not. He’d near lost his wife, not
to mention a small piece of his soul, to Dain Lavrans.

He lifted his freshly filled cup to his
mouth, but stopped before he’d finished the draught, the fine hairs
on the back of his neck rising.

The mesne at the tables below did not seem to
notice anything amiss. Nor his seneschal. The priest was there that
morn, Father Aric, and he twitched a bit, but the man had not been
quite right since the Maying a year past.

Nay. None seemed to notice the subtle change
in the air that set Soren alert. He sensed it, though, a clearing
of the morning light, a brightening of the tapers lit to dispel the
hall’s gloom. The ale tasted sharper. The scent of the rushes was
sweeter.

When his guard came to announce visitors, he
found himself inexplicably rising, and he the lord.

Two cloaked and dew-bespeckled figures walked
through the great oak door at the end of the hall and awaited his
bidding. He beckoned them forth through the chaos of the knights
and squires at their meal. Silence descended on the men as the two
passed, and Soren found himself wondering if mayhaps the groom had
been right. At the foot of the dais, the two removed their
hoods.

In all his years to come, Soren never forgot
his first sight of the Lady Llynya. Even after she and Mychael ab
Arawn had long left Wydehaw, he could recall with startling clarity
the fathomless depths of her green-eyed gaze holding his across the
table; the twists and braids of her ebony hair and her supple crown
of leaves; the shimmering silkiness of her clothes, all green and
silver and more like rain sheeting down than any cloth he had ever
seen. Her face had been regally serene, yet with a hint of mischief
playing about the corners of her mouth. He had instantly fallen in
love with a purity of heart he had thought long lost to such a
sinner as he.

She asked for little, no more than the Hart
Tower, and when he explained that the tower was not truly his to
give, but could be won only by whoever could open the Druid’s Door,
she merely smiled and gestured to the Prince of Merioneth.

The deed was done in record time, and Soren
D’Arbois found himself living once more in the midst of magic.

~ ~ ~

In the fall of the year, Mychael and Llynya
made one final trip to Deri, the summering grounds of the
Quicken-tree. Trig and the others had already left for Carn
Merioneth. Mychael and Llynya had seen them off with a promise to
come at Calan Gaef and bring Madron and Edmee, who had spent the
summer in their cottage in Wroneu Wood.

Of all the joys in Mychael’s life, few
compared to watching the elf-maid gather flowers, or sing to
honeybees, or tell strange and wondrous stories to the chickadees.
She’d taken quite well to living in the Hart rather than the
woodlands, though she had planted an acorn in the alchemy chamber
when they’d first arrived in Wydehaw, and the thing was already
pushing up through the main solar’s floor. The tower would someday
be consumed by a great oak.

He stretched out on a bed of fallen leaves,
looking up between the branches of the mother oak where Llynya sat
on a limb weaving her tale to an enchanted audience of small
birds.

“There were those of fair, kind hearts,
Whistler, White-Eye, and Mast, brave chickadees, who heard the
frightened cries, and daring all against the storm flew into the
brunt of it to save the maids. Other birds followed, swooping down
to the sea, where two dozen to the princess, they plucked the
hapless sisters from the waves and saved them all. And if any
should doubt the tale, the whole of the valorous flight is forever
engraved in the hallowed halls of Fata Morgana’s palace.”

The chickadees preened themselves, as always,
at this sure sign of their bravery. When they were all thoroughly
fluffed, they chirped in chorus and flew off to roost for the
night. That was what Mychael wanted to do, roost for the night in a
nest of leaves with Llynya.

She dropped down from the limb with a
lightness he’d learned as well as any elf, and he smiled up at her,
welcoming her into his arms. She came to him with an easy
willingness that never failed to amaze him.

“Shall we stay out under the stars tonight?
Or back to Wydehaw?” she asked, molding her lithe body along the
length of his and pressing a light kiss to his cheek.

“Stars,” he said, content to lie between the
gnarly roots of the oak and watch the night fall around them. There
was always work to be done in the tower: formulas to decipher,
distillations to be made, books to be read. Nemeton had set a
course of study into the Blue Book of the Magi, and Madron was ever
wont to come to the Hart and see how he was getting on with his
lessons.

Llynya kissed him again, sweetly on the tip
of his nose, and his smile broadened. With a slight shift of his
body, he had her fully on top of him, pressing down on all the
right places to conjure and maintain a steady hum of arousal. He
arched his hips to settle her more deeply against him, and the hum
became a subdued roar of anticipation.

She knew the worst of him, had seen his
darkest side in their fight with Dharkkum, and yet she loved him.
She let him come into her body for both pleasure and succor. She
lived with him day to day, worked by his side, tended his hurts,
and shared his meals—and she knew. She knew what he had become in
the battle.

Her mouth came down on his, not so lightly,
and he opened himself to her wondrous ravishment, to the gentle
thrusting of her tongue meeting his. ’Twas always magic when they
touched. No sensory perception could match the speed with which the
merest brush of her arm traveled through his entire body, focusing
his awareness on her.

She liked to kiss. He’d never in his life
dreamed of being the recipient of the number of kisses as she had
to give, the sweet, light ones for hello, good-bye, I’m here,
you’re there, and so I’ll kiss you; the wondrously rich and deep
ones of drugging intensity when she would bind him to her with her
green sorcery; and all the kisses in between.

She was a brave lover indeed to seduce a
dragon—for that was what he had become within the cloaking darkness
of Dharkkum. Not just in heart and mind, but in all ways a roaring
devourer of the darkness; no less destructive than Ddrei Goch and
Ddrei Glas, for he had been them—and Llynya had been his master,
the temper on his rage, the shining light he’d followed.

They’d both been aged in those dread days,
but they’d found youth again in Wydehaw, whiling their days away
together in Wroneu Wood. Madron’s and Edmee’s sadness was one they
shared for the loss of Rhuddlan, yet they loved and made love and
had found their healing in each other.

When her kisses had driven him beyond
distraction, and the soft weight of her on top of him would no
longer suffice, he rolled her beneath him. She slid her hands under
his tunic and pushed his braies off his hips, freeing him into her
palm. A low groan escaped him as she stroked him to hardness, her
moves firm yet tender. Being loved by her was everything he’d ever
dreamed of and more than he could have imagined. She’d taken him in
her mouth that morning, and the soft, wet suction she’d plied on
his shaft had been pure enchantment. ’Twas not the first time she’d
taken him such, but it always felt like the first time. For
himself, he’d kissed her everywhere, tasted her nectar with his
tongue and filled himself with exquisite pleasures. They were
becoming one.

He removed her braies while she tantalized
him with her hand, and at her urging he joined his body to hers.
Shared kisses set his rhythm, the silent communication of love that
brought them to climax. Even at the end of it, he kissed her, the
kisses a benediction on the act and of gratitude to the God who had
made her so that he could sleep each night with her in his
arms.

In the quiet hours before dawn, she awoke
beside him with a start and a soft cry. His hand immediately went
to his knife; all his senses alert. Deri was protected by a
bramble, yet ’twasn’t inconceivable that a stranger had breached
the wooded glade.

“Nay,” she said, reaching a hand out to him.
She’d sat up, and her other hand was pressed against her breast,
above her heart. “ ’Tis not danger.”

He scanned the trees to the river and sensed
no intrusion on their idyll. His attention came back to her. “Are
you hurt?” he asked, smoothing his palm over her cheek.

“Nay, ’tis not hurt I feel, but a strange
loss. The ache in my chest is gone, taken from me.”

He knew the implication of that even before
she spoke it aloud.

“Aye,” she whispered, a beatific smile
gracing her lips. “I’m free. Morgan is no longer falling through
the wormhole. He has landed.”

Mychael gathered her close, his relief
matching hers. He looked to the stars wheeling over their heads in
the vast, dark ocean of the sky and sent up a prayer of thanks.

The Thief of Cardiff had finally washed
ashore... in time.

aes sídhe
—fairies of the hills

aetheling—descendant of the
Starlight-born

Beltaine—Celtic festival falling on May Eve
and May 1

bia—poisonous distillation of sap from the
bia, a desert tree

chrystaalt—universal salt

Cymry—Welsh name for themselves

Dangoes—ice cave in the deep dark

Ddrei Goch, Ddrei Glas—the dragons of Carn
Merioneth