The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (59 page)

Still, he did not let go.

“Lavrans!” the Boar called, advancing upon them from out of the passageway with his sword drawn, his gait slowed by a pained limp. Helebore’s cadaverous face showed behind the Boar, and he, too, had a sword at the ready. “I will have her, Dain!”

“You’ll have death first.” He lifted Scyld, and ’twas the dream come true: the wormhole at his feet, the gleaming edge of his blade, and the hopeless hope to save a woman with his courage and his steel.

Caradoc grabbed the lone guardsman left at his side, shoving him forward with a simple command: “Kill the mage, if you can. Die hard, if you can’t.”

“Boar!” The cry came from Morgan who entered the domed cavern from another shaft with Llynya at his side.

~ ~ ~

Helebore whirled at the sound of the unexpected voice, then did his best to escape the dark-haired fury bearing down on him. Of the two they’d left on the beach, ’twas the woman who singled him out, the very thought of which made him recoil in horror. He’d taken a sword from the man who had fallen to the dogs, and now used it to hold her off as best he could, retreating step by step, meeting her blows as she beat away at him, but unable to make a strike of his own.

She was relentless, her blade clanging against his from first one side, then the other, as she forced him back onto the rim of the abyss. More of the heavenly
pryf
scent was filling the cavern, richer than before. He wanted to shout the truth of it at Caradoc and thereby wring from the Boar his overdue accolades. That the man treated him as no more than a leech had long been a thorn in Helebore’s side. But no more. He’d found the maid, as he’d said he would; he’d found the
pryf
as promised, and had the both of them together. A quick cut, a taste of blood, and the world was his, if not in this age, then the next, or the next, for time was the treasure. While fools dabbled in doubling gold, and Caradoc looked for riches and lands to rule, Helebore, the leech, had discerned the essence of it all. Time.

The woman cut him, a neat slice across the top of his arm, and he fell to his knees, shocked by the pain. He was not a base brawler to be treated so. Behind him, the leathery, scarred creature who had taken the crossbowman moved out into the inner circle. Its faceless head slowly slid by him, so close and silent, and curved back into the next hole. Lovely, beautiful thing.
Pryf
. He’d first seen the word on a shaft beneath Ynys Enlli.

Dragons, ach. He did not need dragons. He had worms, beasts of mythical proportions to bore him a path to the center of the cosmos.

She cut him again, the bitch, and sent him reeling. He flung a hand out and caught himself on the dark hide of the
pryf
. Cool and solid it was, a fair support. Blood ran from the side of his face.

He lifted his sword and made an ineffectual stab at the maid. What a demon she was, hacking away at him. The
pryf
moved again, the great thing, and Helebore found himself moving along with it, his fingers curled tightly into a deep scar on the creature’s side.

Her blade sank into his thigh, and the agony was beyond any he had ever known. “Christ’s blood,” he swore, and struggled to free himself, but the
pryf
seemed to have taken hold of him. The worm bulged and heaved, dragging him along the floor. Seeing him move along must have frightened the woman, for she backed away, finally subdued into retreat.

A demonic sneer twisted his lips. His victory would be complete. A mighty heave of the worm near pushed him over the edge of the hole, causing him a moment’s panic, but his hand held, saving him from the abyss. He laughed aloud, riding his wave of glory and the undulations of the worm, until he realized with an odd sense of detachment that he was going to be dragged into the tunnels and crushed between the worm and the wall.

Llynya stumbled back, her sword arm throbbing and hanging limp at her side, and though her hand still gripped the haft of the blade, the point scraped the stone floor.

Gulping great breaths of air, she watched the monk. The old worm had him now, and not an instant past the evil one had understood exactly what that meant. His fleeting look of triumph had turned to stark, raving fear.

“Help me! Don’t let— Aaauuugggh...” He squirmed and rolled, trying to free himself. “Bitch, filthy, whoring bitch.” She had wanted him dead, had been willing to fight to the death to see it so. Such rage as he engendered was a new and awful feeling for her. It left her trembling and hurting with a strange, all-encompassing pain. “You will burn, slut. Burn! Please, help me, cut the
pryf
, cut me, please, don’t—”

His screams started then, as the old worm dragged him behind the wall, and she turned away. Holding her side against a cramp, she looked for Morgan through the shadowy blue light, and when she found him, she began to run.

Morgan felt his strength ebbing with every blow he blocked. His boots were slick with his own blood, making each step treacherous. His shirt and tunic were soaked along the right side with more blood, and his chausses too. Caradoc fared little better, but the Boar had the advantage of two stone more in weight and an extra ten years of living with a blade in his hand.

It would be enough this time.

Caradoc landed a bone-cracking blow to his ribs, and Morgan stumbled on the rim of the abyss. He clenched his teeth against the white-hot pain
. Christ have mercy, Christ have mercy
, the litany began. He shook his head to clear his sight, and was hit again, this time with a cutting edge. His mouth filled with blood, and the next blow sent him flying.

Off in the distance, through the jacinth light, a pair of green eyes met his, eyes set in a dark angel’s face.
Llynya
... He reached for her as he fell.

~ ~ ~

Dain put a boot on the dead guardsman and yanked Scyld out of the man’s chest. He had died hard as ordered by his lord. A quick look toward the source of the screams filling the air proved Helebore to be doing the same. Only one other battle still sounded in the cavern, and when Dain saw it, his heart stopped for one agonizing, awful moment.

“Morgan,” he whispered, starting forward. “Morgan!
Morrr-gannn
!”

Llynya, too, screamed, but she was too late, too late. With a beautiful, dying grace, his body arcing out over the abyss, the Thief of Cardiff fell into the weir. A blinding flash of blue-white lightning welcomed him, crackling and sizzling up from out of the wormhole to dance upon the dome even as a dark cloud of mist and thunder rolled up to suck him in.

Llynya faltered, her gaze fixed in horror on the skittering bolt of heat and light that marked Morgan’s passing. Her sword fell to her side, her breath came in pained, shocked gasps. She stood for an eternity, trembling, but unable to move, until a great wave of sadness washed over her and sank her to her knees.

He was gone.

~ ~ ~

Morgan was falling, falling falling as in the worst of dreams, endlessly. Fear had locked up his mind to where he couldn’t even think, and he didn’t have so much as his sword to hold on to. The blade had been left on the rim. He could see it hanging half off the rock, glinting in the bright flash of lightning. He had heard Dain call his name, and Llynya too.

But now he was alone. So alone. And cold.

The warm wind of his falling had suddenly turned cold, incredibly cold. He felt a frigid numbness start at the base of his spine and work its way up and spread out like cracks in the ice on a lake, covering his back and curving round his ribs, reaching out into his arms and legs and up his neck. He was freezing solid, from the outside in, and quickly.

Amazingly, the realization brought no new sense of terror. In truth, it came more as a blessing. The icy numbness was soothing away all the pains he’d gotten in the fight with... with... He had forgotten who, but there had been a fight, and he’d been hurt, but he didn’t hurt anymore, and that was a blessing from the cold.

He was no longer afraid; the cold had frozen his fear out of him. In truth, he could no longer remember what it was that had frightened him. There was nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.

His fingers grew numb, then his toes, and he felt the iciness slip completely up over his head and come down onto his brow and cheeks and chin. In truth, the only parts of him that weren’t freezing were his breath and a patch of skin on the left side of his chest.

Ahhh, he remembered. The leaf. He had put it there, beneath his shirt. He even remembered the one from whom he’d stolen it—Llynya, the sprite. A smile curved his cold lips and brought the warmth of the summer forests down into the center of his heart.

Veritas.
He was the Thief of Cardiff. And he was on his way to the stars
.

~ ~ ~

Dain broke into a run, filled with all the berserk fury of his ancestors. Morgan was gone, sentenced to God knew what fate. Strange death, Moriath had said, and Dain wanted to scream his rage. Of them all, Morgan least deserved death, least deserved strangeness in any form.

Caradoc stood at the weir, sweat running down his face, his chest heaving with the exertion of murder, yet he turned to meet his enemy. Their swords rang out with a clash. The force of Dain’s attack sent the bigger man reeling, and Dain used his advantage to beat at the bastard, striking blow after blow, sparing nothing, driving Caradoc along the edge of the weir, working with each swing of his blade to feed the Boar a length of steel.

’Tis too soon for you to die, Dain
, Morgan had said,
for you are damned
, and it was all true. He was damned to have seen Morgan die. He would be twice damned if he did not see Caradoc do the same.

Blood, the Boar wanted. He would give him blood. Dain would drown him in it.

Caradoc’s limp was in his left leg, and Dain cut him there, once at the ankle, once at the knee, a deep cut meant to sever tendons, crippling him. The Boar fell into a heap on the rim, and Dain readied his killing strike, but such was not to be, for the tide of battle shifted inexplicably, or mayhaps not so. Dain found no purchase on the rock with his next step, only air fluttering with the green shreds of the seal. He lost his balance, and Scyld left his hand in a whirling rotation of the blade around the haft that carried it out over the center of the wormhole before it fell. When Dain felt himself begin to follow, he lunged for the Boar and dragged his foe down over the edge with him.

~ ~ ~

In the abyss, there was chaos, a raging storm swirling through the vortex, both hot and cold. Here was Rhuddlan’s journey through time without the ameliorating presence of the chant. Dain was pummeled and pressed by the wind, ripped at by forces that had no name—and he had lost Nemeton’s Stone, dropped it in his killing fury.

He could hear the sound of his own rough breathing and that of Caradoc’s below him as the Boar scrabbled for a hold on Dain’s boot. They had not fallen cleanly into the hole, but slid down the side of it. Dain’s fingers were dug into the earth and rock, his toes pressed into a hollow above a protrusion of stone, while not an arm’s length away, the
prifarym
slid in a spiral dance around the circumference of the dark cylinder, creating thunder and tremors that threatened to shake him from his perch. But he clung, and kicked at Caradoc, who was trying to drag him down.

“Lavrans! Dain!” Caradoc pleaded, and within the dark space, the Boar’s voice ebbed and flowed like storm-tossed tides. “Dain!” Caradoc screamed, and Dain looked.

Terror defined the Boar’s face, etching white sparks in the frigid greenish-blue of his eyes, incising deep lines on each side of his face from nose to mouth. Terror ran along the strands of his hair, turning each one into a writhing, fiery flame. He was hell personified in rage, fury, lust, and desire.

Above, another called to him, her voice broken with fear. Dain looked up, and ’twas as if he lay on the bottom of a river with the flow of water making a thin, fluid barrier between them. She was reaching for him when a lightning bolt crackled in the depths below, sending a white flash of light streaking upward. He saw the bright outriders of luminescence stream by him and pass through her body, and he heard her soul-wrenching cry as she fell back from the rim.

... kissed by the worm in his mother’s womb.

Second and third bolts rose from the thunder of the first, roiling up from below with great heat before encasing him. No stars burned as brightly, nor as completely. The light passed through him with a purity that seared his soul, shooting from the soles of his feet through the top of his head like an unleashed ray of the sun, catching him in the life stream and transforming the basest elements of his existence. He could not move, or breathe, or speak, but was held in the chasm from whence came the world, transfixed by a power no weakness could survive.

This, then, was life and death together, one into the other.

C
eridwen lay as if in a dream. Colored lights flashed off the dome and swirled around the perimeter of the cavern; white light streamed from the weir, while vaporous fog poured out of the abyss and snaked across the ledge. The cool mists swept over her in waves where she’d fallen on the rim, dampening her face and chilling her body. Everything was quiet except for the low rumble of thunder emanating from the hole. No more screams and death cries reverberated off the walls, no more swords dashed. The battle was done, and all had lost.

Llynya sat in a crumpled heap not too far distant, utterly still, her head bowed, her knees splayed, the only sign of life being the white-knuckled grip she maintained on her sword. Behind her, Elixir dragged the body of Numa through the low-lying fog. Sweet bitch, Ceridwen thought. There was naught she could do for the hound. Light had pierced through her when she’d reached for Dain—how long ago had it been?—and left her feeling not completely of this world, but caught somehow betwixt and between.

She shifted her gaze to the weir gate. He was still there, caught in the light. She knew it.

By sheer force of will, she made her hand slide across the rim and claim Morgan’s sword. ’Twas stained with Caradoc’s blood, which made her love it all the more. She needed to get back into the luminous stream, and the sword was going with her, for if Dain was alive, so Caradoc might be. Beneath the hilt of the blade was another treasure —Nemeton’s Stone. She claimed it too, dragging it close and slipping it into her pouch with the elf shot. Mayhaps it would yet prove its worth, for she did not believe Moriath had given Dain a worthless thing. Charms, the mage had taught her, were delicate baubles, useful only in their predestined niche. Verily, the trick itself was to find the niche. Thus she would hold to Nemeton’s Stone.