The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (54 page)

He reached the end of the low place and slipped into a larger darkness lit only by his crystal. Behind him the damson continued to glow. Without slowing his gait, he slung the quiver over his shoulder. Men were fighting above the Canolbarth, and though the fight was not his, his instincts were running rampant with the need for him to be there.

C
eridwen put her hand into the rising mist. At her feet, the scrying pool was glass smooth, yet the steam continued to thicken and swirl about her like a cloud, bringing the vapor up into the air. ’Twas warm and growing warmer, and smelled of salt. She stared down into the clear depths of the water, entranced. The sealed weir gate floated there, in the abyss, colored the deepest green, a perfect circle set into the huge bore hole, round and pulsing, a shimmering thing.

“She’s taking too long.”

’Twas Rhuddlan’s voice, but he was wrong. No more than a minute had passed since she’d felt the stillness of the wine.

“’Tis her first time, elf-man. Patience.”

Around her the song to Domnu swelled and receded, the chant sung with a resonance and depth that made her tremble inside, and above and below and beyond the song were the bodhran drums and the sound of a word... a word of power and grace. She had felt it upon her lips in Moriath’s dream, while she’d searched for the way into the
pryf
nest, into the dragon nest. Now the heard it for the first time—
Ma-rahm
,
ma-ma-rahm
.

She looked to Dain through the wisps of vapor. “
Ma-rahm
,” she told him, smiling. “Not sezhamey.”

He reached for her hand, but she denied him with a shake of her head.

“Do not follow where I go. There is no need.” She was Rhiannon’s daughter.

The deepening fog spiraled up around her, round and round, with her body as the axis of its orbit, warming her skin and heating her soul, until with an artful sweep of her arm, she parted the veil of white and was at the weir gate.

Aye, she thought, her smile broadening, she knew the way of this. ’Twas in her blood, through and through.

She stood on the threshold of the gate and looked upward to its farthest reaches; seven times her height it was, solid, though with the fluid look of melted glass. The shimmery emerald-green door filled the bore hole, with naught else to be seen except for the rim of rough-hewn rock encaging it.

’Twas a thing of heat. Warmth radiated from it like the rays of the sun. Rich, verdurous light pulsed and streaked away from its outer edges, crackling and resounding in the heights and depths of the vaporous clouds billowing about her. Where the green light faded, heliotrope began, in eight spokes of slowly circling brilliance. She watched the lights flicker and shine and suffuse the mist with color, and thought with awe that Rhuddlan had made this marvelous, extraordinary thing with naught but ethers and the magic of the
tylwyth teg
, for she had heard Moriath call him elf-man.

Filled with wonder, and commanded by a presence she instinctively knew to be Rhuddlan—aye, and she could almost love him, for he was faerie—she lifted her hand to the seal. Ancient markings covered its surface, line after line of mystery flowing down its face in the ridges and curves of bas-relief. She pressed her palm to the shimmering plane, and the annals began sliding beneath her hand, revealing their secrets of dragon keepers, and time watchers, and eon upon eon of Quicken-tree history: a time when Liosalfar and Dockalfar had been one and their place had been Yr Is-ddwfn; tales of the Wars of Enchantment and of the
tylwyth teg’s
coming to man; a record of the time of trees. The emerald surface spoke of beginnings long lost to the most ancient memory: of the Sun and the stars and the vault of the heavens, of the Moon, and of the Earth, great orb of celestial dust...
vessel of matter and thought, of the eternal mystery and miracle of life, death
... circling, ever circling and being coiled round and warmed by a great serpent devouring its own tail...
held in the grip of wisdom, lightning of the cosmos, sword of the gods, One is All—Ouroboros
... The flood of deep knowledge poured into her, pulsed through her in a blaze of searing light, and she pulled her hand back with a pained cry.

Looking down at the flesh of her palm, she saw that she’d been burned with a symbol she’d never before seen. It glowed on that tender space in graceful curves, and the hurt caused her to cry the tears of Arianrod. The drops of salt water splashed into her hand, healing the mark and relieving her suffering.

Moriath had been wrong. She could not open the weir alone. Woman and man together made the bond that ruled the elf-man’s gate, one into the other. There was no harm for Dain in this journey through the scrying pool.

Wiping the tears from her cheeks, she reached for him, calling his name in silence, and his hand came through the mists to take hers, the iron-and-teeth bracelets of Ceraunnos still banding his wrist. There was no hesitation in his action, no doubt in his touch, only sureness. Where their hands clasped, pale ivory light surrounded them with a soft glow...
Amor, lux, veritas
, such is the way to the stars.

But they need not go so far, not this day.

She tightened her fingers around his, looking past the pagan bracelets and into the fog. He was naught but a dark shape half-hidden within the swirling rising mists. She called to him again, and one by one the layers between them dissipated, until she could see the charm marks on his gambeson and his hair rippling like a veil in the wind of the abyss. Wisps of fog clung to him as the final mist lifted, crowning him in gossamer and trailing down the length of his body in wind-driven tatters.

“Dain.” She spoke his name, and he took her in his arms.

Strength was his magic, his body the shield and haven she needed to do what must be done—to yield, and yield yet more, with all of her being, to soften and release her mind so the ethers of the weir gate could come into her and be consumed by the fire of the sun in the Mother Goddess’s heart, and thus the
pryf
would be free and the way opened to Yr Is-ddwfn.

“You have come where Moriath has warned you not to tread,” she said, her cheek resting against the softness of his Quicken-tree cloak, “but I swear all will be well.”

“Aye.” He drew her nearer with an easy flex of his arms, bowing his head closer to hers, and his breath came warm and soft in her ear. “In the hours we have watched and waited, I feared only that you would not need me, Ceri, not that you would call for me.”

Hours, she thought, not the mere moments she’d felt. “Then have not even that fear, sorcerer”—she looked up at him—“for this door Rhuddlan has set us to cannot be breached without you. ’Tis why he bound us.”

At that, he smiled. “The one thing I have learned in this place is that we were bound long before Beltaine, Ceri. Mayhaps even before the night Ragnor brought you to Wydehaw.”

She understood. Standing before the weir gate, she felt a familiarity with him that went far beyond the time she’d known him. One short season of spring could not hold all the love of him that ran through her heart, for ’twas even more than she had for the lost Merioneth. When the time came to go north, she would be by his side; her love for Dain Lavrans would set the course of the rest of her days. She raised her mouth to his and gave him a kiss of peace, the sweetest blessing she could bestow, before turning to face the door.

Dain kept one arm around her waist, holding her close and regarding the strange place she had brought him. Jalal had never known such, nor such a woman. In these things he had surpassed his desert master.

But not Rhuddlan, elf-man, Moriath had said, and he knew it to be true. Not the elves of imagination, fanciful creatures, but a man-child of nature,
tylwyth teg
. ’Twas Rhuddlan, even more than the maid, who had forced him to the weir, waiting all these years, it seemed, for only the right bait to bring him to heel—Ceridwen ab Arawn.

The gate was nothing to fear, Rhuddlan had said as they had watched Ceridwen glide through the mist toward the weir gate. Journeying to it through the waters kept them from the gate’s dangers, of which there were many, as Moriath had warned, but what was merely seen could not harm, Rhuddlan had assured him, and what was felt would be mitigated by the scrying pool. Dain had turned to the Quicken-tree man where they both stood by the edge of the steaming water. He’d held Rhuddlan’s translucently gray gaze, and he’d known the other man had not told all. There was danger for him somewhere in this place. He sensed it strongly enough that he would have turned away rather than walk into the thick of it, if not for Ceridwen.

Aye, the elf-man had chosen well the lodestone with which to draw him in. He had glimpsed the weir through the vapors while watching Ceridwen, yet still felt awe standing before it. As he’d waited by the pool, the heat of it had emanated from the water and warmed the great cavern. Heat from the past, Rhuddlan had told him, for the weir was a thing of the past, and the past was hot. Dain trailed his hand through the mist and watched the fine strands of it leave his fingers and twist into tiny green, white, and heliotrope whorls.

This was true magic, this place out of time where Nemeton had stood. The bard’s marks were upon the emerald surface of the gate. Not all of them, not the Latin or Arabic, nor the runes Dain had found amongst all the other writings in the Hart, but only the most mysterious signs, the ones he’d never deciphered. The key to ultimate transformation? he wondered. Or that which would seal his doom?

“
Ma-rahm, maa-aa-rahm, la shadana may-am
,” the Quicken-tree chanted, drawing power into their voices from deep in their bodies, then filling the cavern with that power. “
Ma-rahm, ma-ma-rahm
.”

“Now we begin,” he heard Rhuddlan say with satisfaction.

Ma-rahm
, Ceridwen thought, and began to sing, matching her voice to the wild ones as her mother had done before her. The word had no simple translation, but she knew that in the way the song to Domnu had led her to the womb of the earth,
ma-rahm
allowed entrance, as a blossoming bud allowed entrance into the heart of the flower. ’Twas all the same, an opening and a release, the bringing of one into the other.

Dain heard Ceridwen’s voice and the echo of it off the weir. He felt the resonance of it caress his skin and set up a counter vibration inside the vortex. On the other side of the mists, the Quicken-tree chant grew stronger, the words sung into the air where they were captured by the swirling edge of the abyss and pulled down inside with him and Ceri.

He knew the use of sound and voice—was a master himself in the skill—but he had heard naught like this, a hundred voices in concert to work magic.

“
Ma-rahm, ma-rahm
,” they sang, and the drums answered with a quickening of their rhythm. A faint color change washed over the bright green surface of the weir, leaving an opalescence in its wake.

This was the way then.

“Take heed, Dain,” he heard Moriath warn him. “You can go farther than you can come back.”

Mayhaps. But his journey was yet young. He joined his voice with Ceri’s, and when she laid her hand once again upon the gate, he laid his beside it.

The gate was warm and silky to the touch.

A hand came down on his shoulder, Rhuddlan’s, and Dain felt the elf-man’s strength flowing into him, along with a pressure to hold him where he stood. Rhuddlan would have this thing done, he thought, yet no force was needed to hold him at the door. The thing had its own allure, a lush mix of history, ritual, and arcana sliding beneath his hand and being made known to him through the skin of his palm—wondrous trick. Woven through it all was a rich vein of the ageless mysteries of mankind.

Moriath’s warning came back to him, for no matter the cost, he feared he would follow that seductive thread to its core. Thus he cautioned himself to let reason be his guide, then he spread his hand wider on the door and glided it slowly, warily, across the green surface. To die for knowledge would be self-defeating at best. He would follow the vein for a moment, no more.

And so the moments passed, one after the other, each more intriguing than the one before, as he learned secrets of time and space and here and there; a map of death showing a progression of states and colors, most interesting and not what he’d imagined; and a flicker of life beneath his hand where he held Ceridwen about the waist —genesis. He looked to her and found her deep in concentration, her eyes closed, her face lifted, the light of the weir dancing over it; a woman looking inward and seeing all. She knew, beautiful woman, radiant within his embrace. The gate could be opened; he learned that. The seal, an ether concoction of earth and seawater, could be broken—if a man would but wean himself from the luxury of the door’s touch.

He continued the slide of his hand, soaking it all in, thinking not to deprive himself just yet. He was strong, and here was all he’d ever sought: the keys to transformation, redemption, salvation, even immortality—he was sure—and all of them within his reach. He pressed his hand flatter against the gate, wanting more, and it suddenly gave way, leaving nary a hairbreadth between him and the surface. An instant of fear was quickly ameliorated by a pleasurable heaviness filling his body, a sensation worth the risk and proving the wisdom of his action, for he would have more. Sweet ease. The heaviness caressed him from the inside out in deepening shades of oblivion, sinking him into a life so rich, he wondered if he was nearing the place where death began.

He removed his arm from around Ceridwen, letting her go. She need not follow him here. In fact, ’twas best if he went alone. He knew this country too well.

Another hand reached for him then, much less gentle than the one on his shoulder, and smaller, but no less strong. It cupped his chin and pulled his head up to meet a set of fiery green eyes.

“Fool man,” Moriath said, her voice as fierce as her grip on his jaw. “You are at this too long. Follow not that path in your mind—cursed thing from out of the desert. In this place, it can only lead you to a strange death. Fight for what you would have, Dain, before your weakness destroys you.”