Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (36 page)

Licking his face, she tasted him down to the
bone and felt a love so intense, she feared she could die of it.
She breathed him in, every scent he’d ever had, and was caught in a
whirlwind of flames. For a fleeting instant she was afraid, but his
arms were around her, holding her safe. For a fleeting instant she
heard a keening cry coming from deep in the heart of the fire, but
then ’twas gone and all she could hear was Mychael whispering a
litany of love in her ear. When she could take no more, he stopped
moving. Buried to the hilt of his shaft inside her, he grew utterly
still, and within the space of a breath, from the deepest place of
their joining, a wave of pure erotic bliss rose up and washed
through her, a dark ocean of pleasure that swept her away.

She clung to him in the aftermath, shocked by
the tears running down her face. He kissed her over and over again,
murmuring her name, his body bonelessly limp beside her. Their legs
were entangled. His arm was across her in a protective gesture, a
useless gesture—for naught could protect her from him.

~ ~ ~

Was it love they’d made? Llynya wondered,
watching him sleep in the cool light of a nascent dawn. Or had it
been something else, something more elemental than love—if such was
possible? She finished pulling on her second boot and nimbly ran
the ties through the silver rings, bereft of answers.

’Twas love she felt for him, she knew that.
She looked at him and ached with love, and therein lay a danger all
its own. More so than Morgan, a thousand times more so, she’d bound
herself to Mychael, and now she needed to unbind herself before any
damage was done. How could she have been so heedless as to give in
to her desires? How could she not have known what mating with him
would mean? She was going down the wormhole, going deep, and she’d
not have him suffer for her deed.

Rising to her feet, she took one last look at
him. His face was soft in sleep, his breathing even, his hair a
tangled mess of gold. She’d heard the dragons and felt their fire
when he and she had been joined. Their essence ran deep in him,
creatures awash with seawater and universal salts, winding through
him with every breath, winding through her as well with each breath
they’d shared. The dragons had cried out to her through him, and
she’d known then what she’d heard in the apple orchard the night
Naas had walked the ramparts, her old white eyes looking far out to
sea. The dragons were coming. Coming for him.

The end of his quest was nigh. Soon he would
have the beasts to heel.

With effort, she resisted the urge to kiss
him and took off into the forest. She needed Ailfinn. Only a
Prydion Mage would know how to untangle such a mighty spell as
they’d woven in the night.

C
aerlon followed
Redeye Dock through the northern passages leading into Rastaban,
cursing him all the way.

“Skraelings.” The word was lodged behind his
clenched jaws. “You left him with skraelings. Imbecile! Cretin! The
rotting skraelings
eat
Quicken-tree. If they’ve eaten this
one, your hide will be the next one to lengthen Slott’s vest, your
rotting thick skull the next one to hang from his braids.”

The threat was real. Caerlon’s hand was ready
on his knife. If there was naught left but the young warrior’s
bones when they reached the small cavern ahead, Caerlon would drop
Redeye like a stone, sever his throat, and let the skraelings chew
on him while he bled to death.

They rounded the last turn, and Caerlon held
his red-hearted dreamstone high. A rush of relief washed through
him. The Liosalfar was still in one piece.

“
Grazch!
” he ordered, and the two
beast-men watching the prisoner backed off from the trussed bundle
lying in a heap on the cavern’s floor.

Caerlon strode forth and with a flick of his
blade cut the rope securing the hood over the Quicken-tree’s head.
He pulled the hood off, and a long dark fall of hair tumbled out
over the Liosalfar’s shoulders. Like black silk it was, with a
fif
braid twisted into one side. Fierce green eyes flashed
up at him, and a thrill of nervous pleasure went through Caerlon to
his core.

“Get him to his feet,” he ordered, and Redeye
hauled the Liosalfar up.

He’d been poorly handled. Caerlon could see
it in the bruises marking the boy’s face. His hands were bound
behind his back, and he’d been cut, a slash across his chest. The
blood had already dried and crusted on the Quicken-tree cloth,
proving the wound not too deep.

“When did this happen?” he asked Redeye,
pointing to the slash mark.

“In battle, milord. They’ve lost no skill
since the Wars. We were hard-pressed.”

Of course they’d been hard-pressed, Caerlon
thought in disgust, a skraelpack of fifty men against twenty
Quicken-tree.

“Their losses?”

“Two dead, five wounded, and this one
captured.” Caerlon hated to ask, but he was their leader and needed
to know. “And how did you fare?”

“Twenty-two dead, milord, including the five
I finished off myself.”

Caerlon nodded. A badly wounded skraeling was
a dead skraeling. ’Twas all Caerlon could do to keep his army in
rats. There were no rations to be had for those who could not
fight.

“Where’s the elf shot?”

Redeye gestured, and one of the skraelings
lumbered toward them with a pack. He spilled the contents on the
floor. Naught but elf shot was there, the black, highly lustrous
stone used by the Quicken-tree and other clans of
tylwyth
teg
for making arrowheads. Caerlon had harbored a hope there
might be more.

“Preparing for war?” he asked the Liosalfar.
He expected no answer and got none. “How was Tryfan? Still full of
good stone, I see.”

He ran the toe of his boot across the pile on
the chance he might have missed something. No, there was only shiny
black stone.

“No luck finding the Douvan Throne Room, eh?”
Too bad, he thought. The riches of the Douvan kings were legendary,
but more than one kind of magic had sealed the mountain fastness.
Rumor had long held that naught but the passage of years would open
the Throne Room’s doors, bound as they’d been by a time-cast
spell.

With a long-suffering sigh, he signaled for
the skraelings to repack the elf shot. They had to be killed, of
course. He couldn’t take any chance of Slott learning about the
Liosalfar captive. He had his hands full keeping Wyrm-master off
the Troll King’s plate. The Quicken-tree sapling wouldn’t last
through the introductions, let alone supper, and Caerlon would have
discourse with the boy.

“Redeye,” he said when the skraelings were
bent to their task. He made a killing motion with his knife.

The Dockalfar understood the need and nodded.
Redeye had knocked the boy out cold a halflan from Rastaban and
told the other skraelings from Tryfan that the captive had died.
Caerlon would have to reward him for that bit of brilliance, even
as he resented that Redeye knew his weakness.

He turned to the prisoner. Five long
centuries he’d been without a suitable companion. Five long
centuries spent in the company of his books, a few deformed
Dark-elves, and the brutish offal of Men. Nay, he would not lose
his prize to Slott’s insatiable hunger.

Where to keep him, though, posed a problem.
There was only one place safe from the rattish nosiness of the
skraelings—the oubliette. And it was occupied.

“Take the pack to my quarters,” he said to
Redeye, keeping his gaze on the Liosalfar. “I’ll gift the elf shot
to Slott at the evening’s feasting.”

Fear flickered to life in the Quicken-tree’s
eyes at the Troll King’s name, and Caerlon smiled, satisfied.

“Aye, milord.” Redeye gave a short bow of his
head and herded the skraelings out of the small cavern.

“What’s your name, Light-elf?” Caerlon asked
his prisoner, expecting an answer this time. When he got none, he
stepped behind the boy and slashed his sleeve open from shoulder to
wrist, marking a line of blood on the young warrior’s skin. One
look told him what he wanted to know.

With the tip of his blade, Caerlon turned the
boy’s head to meet his gaze. A pleased smile curved his mouth.

“Welcome to Rastaban... Shay.”

~ ~ ~

“Tabor! Hold up!” Mychael called out, then
gritted his teeth and shoved at the pony standing on his foot.
“Swivin’ beast. Move!” Tansy was her name, and she no more
resembled a buttonlike flower than did he. ’Twas a delusion of
Tabor’s. He called all the rude beasts by sweet names. Saffron,
Twitch, and Hollyhock, Eyebright and Heartsease, and the damnable
Tansy were the last of the bunch to be taken up out of the caves.
If an assault was to be made on the spider people and the bunch
called skraelings that Rhuddlan was searching out, the Hall of
Kings was ready.

Mychael could not say the same for
himself.

She’d left him. Damn her.

She’d left him on the shores of Bala Bredd
without so much as a by-your-leave. ’Twas Trig alone who had dared
to approach him in the bailey that morn, Trig alone who had kept
him from tearing Carn Merioneth asunder to find her.

Just ahead on the trail, a wall of
luminescent flowstone marked a narrow route leading off a main
passage of the Canolbarth and back toward Lanbarrdein, the third
such that they’d passed and the last to be had. ’Twas the reason
he’d come, to give Tabor the slip and go on alone, to lose himself
in the deep dark. Yet when the first little-used passage had loomed
into view, a dark opening with a bit of wind blowing through it,
he’d not had the heart for it. ’Twas too steep, he’d told himself,
and with the water that ofttimes slickened its floor, the most
dangerous of the three. He would wait for the next.

The next, when they’d reached it, had held no
more allure than the first. Something about the smell had dissuaded
him. A faint trace of
pryf
had been in the air, making him
believe that mayhaps the worms had broken through into the passage
from their nest.
Pryf
in a passage were not necessarily
dangerous. They were not wont to run over people or grind them up
like the old worm, but they could definitely get in a person’s way
and cause countless delays.

The smell had not been skraelings. He and
Tabor had both been on the lookout for sign of them and had seen
naught this side of the Hall of Kings. The skraelings were all in
the deep dark. But the third passage was upon him, and instead of
taking his pack and making a run for it, he was calling out to
Tabor.

“Ho, boy!” the lanky pony-master called back.
The man’s eyes were bright, his lean face creased with a smile. A
tousled fall of youngish brown hair was loosely braided down his
back, belying his age as his name belied his long-limbed stature.
He wore a dark green vest over his gray Ebiurrane tunic. “What say
you? Has Tansy balked on ye again?”

Balked? She wanted to climb into his arms and
be carried the rest of the way to the Dragon’s Mouth. Bright beast,
knowing the impossibility of such a notion, she made do by standing
on his foot.

“Aye!” he hollered back, and waited for Tabor
to prove his worth. He did not have to wait long. A soft humming
filled the air, a prelude of “
Hum, hum, fey-oh
” and “
Hum,
hum, oh-fey
.” At the end of the refrain, Tabor sang in a high,
clear voice that ran like the chime of silver bells along the
Canolbarth’s granite walls.

“
Tansy, lass, the green grass waits

High in the mountains of Eryri

With sweet running water and Moira’s bannock
cakes

For pony bones that’re weary!”

Tansy snorted and with a short, hopping jump
was back to moving up the trail with her harness bells jingling in
concert with Tabor’s song.

“
Tansy, lass, the stars shine bright

High in the mountains of Eryri

Where a meadow bed waits in the silvery
moonlight

For pony bones that’re weary!”

“Pony bones,” Mychael muttered, reaching down
to rub his foot. ’Twas a marching song and a refrain no pack animal
could resist. Tabor’s voice, so sweet and pure, filled the passage,
echoing down its length and spurring the ponies on to a good
clip.

With a few limping strides, Mychael caught up
with Tansy and reached for a draw hitch on her load. A quick tug on
the end of the rope loosed his pack. He stopped and slung it over
his shoulder, letting Tabor and the animals continue on without
him.

“
Tansy, lass, no wolves run

High in the mountains of Eryri

Where the trolls were long ago turned to stone

And the ponies taken all by faeries!”

Mychael had heard the tale from Tabor’s own
lips, about the ending of the last great war, when the taking of
the ponies had turned the tide against the Dockalfar. The next
verse in the song was drowned by the sound of hooves striking a
stretch of rock. The one after was fainter still, lost in a bend of
the trail.

Mychael released a deep breath and looked
around. To his right was the cascade of flowstone and the entrance
to the tunnel leading back to Lanbarrdein. ’Twas where his future
lay, whatever he was to have of one.

He brought his hand up to feel the pocket
over his left breast. Madron’s phial was there, refilled to the
brim with the potent mixture of his salvation. A pouch on his belt
held another such simple, one mixed by Llynya. He’d found it
hanging on his tower door just before he’d left with Tabor. He’d
known ’twas hers by the heavy dose of lavender in it and by the
smell of wildflowers lingering on the cloth and drawstrings—and by
the friggin’ fact that he would know anything made by her hand
because he knew
her
.

He stood and stared into the dark, his jaw
tight.

She’d left him. He’d given her his
heart—verily a glimpse of his soul—and she’d walked away. If such
was what came from love, he was better off without it. Yet he still
hurt; he still raged inside.