Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (11 page)

Mychael heard the serpentine beast sliding in
a slow rumble toward the other end of the cavern below, avoiding
the flames they’d spiked with dragon seed,
hadyn draig
. The
old worm knew better than to tangle with dragon matter.

Mychael brought his cupped hand to his mouth
and drank. Water dripped off his chin, and he wiped it away with
his sleeve.

A repeating arc of blue light cut through the
darkness on the far side of the mist, catching his eye. ’Twasn’t
too far distant, coming from above a tunnel fire that was just
starting to flame. Shay was finished with his last fireline.
Mychael reached for his blade and returned the signal. ’Twas time
to go. He dipped his hand in the stream for another quick drink
before rising and loping down the passage that led away from the
cliff face.

He and Shay had set their rendezvous point at
a place where four tunnels converged in a cavern filled with animal
paintings: graceful ochre and umber deer raced across the ceiling;
a bear ran neck and neck with a bristling boar; a herd of bulls
thundered in a swift curve over the top of one of the passages. All
of them were fleeing a dark, hidden place depicted by slashed
strokes of paint pouring out of a black crevasse.

When Mychael had asked what the images meant,
Shay had made a warding sign with his fingers, muttering something
about a place where even gods died. No matter how he pushed, the
boy had not said more.

He’d found many such mysteries when he’d been
alone in the caves. For those months, he’d been naught but a
searcher following the path his heart set, a path that wandered
through a world unlike any he had imagined. The Dragon’s Mouth and
the Light Caves below it had been as he remembered from childhood,
but beyond the cavern of the scrying pool, at the end of the
mazelike tunnels of the Canolbarth, was a cave of wonders he now
knew was called Lanbarrdein, the Hall of Kings. ’Twas there he’d
first held a chunk of bluish white crystal and felt it grow warm as
it began to glow; and thus the fathomless abyss of darkness that
had loomed in front of him—an abyss that he’d feared was the
absolute edge of the earth from which all else fell into chaos—had
been transformed into a heavenly palace wrought from the mother
rock, alive with the light of dreamstone. And Lanbarrdein had been
only the beginning of the wonders of the deep.

Yet for all that he had found, he had not
found dragons.

Rhuddlan said he need not search, that the
dragons would find him, if indeed he’d been called.

His jaw tightened. He had been called aright.
This thing that churned through his blood, the restless yearning,
had only grown in strength since his sister had freed the
pryf
. The last time, the night before they’d come below, it
had been more than a calling. He’d felt the heat of it, the pumping
of his blood freshly hot from his heart—wild, damned dragon heart
that he’d feared since reading the red book Ceridwen had given
him.

Fata Ranc Le
, Madron called it, the
Red Book of Doom, an inauspicious title, but accurate, for it
certainly foretold his. He’d read it after Ceridwen and Lavrans had
left, the sections in Latin and Welsh, and what he’d read had cost
him many a night’s sleep. A particular Latin passage had revealed a
spell created by a long ago priestess, using dragon’s blood to
conjure a son out of the Druid priestess line of Merioneth. He’d
been born of the Druid priestess line of Merioneth, and no son’s
name had been written in it until his.

Dragon’s blood from his mother. That was what
coursed through the paths of his body, what had filled him with a
delirious dream four nights past. At the height of the nightmare
that mirrored his vision, the heat had suddenly vanished, along
with the delirium, and he had been left lying cold and shivering in
his bed, beset by memories of the vision he wished had not been
his.

Cursed blood.
Pryf
were dragon
spawned, and he knew ’twas no coincidence that their stirring in
the earth stirred him as well. The balance of power had shifted
within the wormholes when Ceridwen and Lavrans had broken the
emerald seal on the Weir Gate. The holes he’d had access to, the
smaller ones, had all closed up, been sucked back into the great
wormhole, drawn by its growing strength and the steady hum of
activity. ’Twas a lure for any man, a beckoning to come nearer and
partake of its secrets.

He needed those secrets, needed the power
conjured by the warm, swirling clew of worms that ringed the abyss
and grew ever more golden the deeper one went, into the place where
“whatever was” and “whatever will be” met and mixed. ’Twas there,
in the timeless flux, that he’d found his only peace since coming
north.

Rhuddlan had taken that away from him. The
Quicken-tree leader had sealed the tunnels to the Weir, gate of
time, forbidding anyone to go near the wormhole, saying it had
become far too dangerous.

’Twas true. Mychael had felt that for
himself, that the one great hole would as soon burn him alive as
let him in, but the way would not be barred forever. Trig had
taught him to read the ancient common tongue and elfin runes lining
the passages of the deep dark, and told him that somewhere therein
lay the keys to all the secrets of the abyss, though none had found
them for a thousand thousand years: how to control the worms and
the temperature fluctuations caused by their activity, how to
direct their course and thus the course of the one who would enter
the Weir and descend into the wormhole, how—in the end—to place
one’s self in time.

He could find the keys, he knew he could, and
after the last bout of madness, he dared not delay. He would take
what knowledge he had and begin his search. Unlike the
Quicken-tree, he could stay below for sennights on end, following
one hint of script to the next. Trig had shown him the way, how to
read the marks in the rock and where things in the dark were not
what they seemed but led to places stranger than what he’d already
found.

Rhuddlan said there were times and ways to
enter wormholes, and as a man bided the one, he must learn the
other, or the rewards were not worth the dangers. Rhuddlan said he
was lucky to have survived thus far. Rhuddlan said there had been
only one dragon keeper in living memory of the Quicken-tree, and
that was Rhuddlan himself.

Rhuddlan said. Rhuddlan said.
Mychael
had long since reached the point where he cared not what Rhuddlan
said. He’d been called. The truth of it could not be denied, not
even by the Quicken-tree man. He’d been called, and he had come. He
would know why the wormhole and the Weir Gate and the dragons were
all tangled in this maze of a puzzle that had become his life.

He reached the painted cavern before Shay,
but not by much. A thin crescent of blue light appeared in the dark
ahead of him, illuminating the curve of a passage that lay beyond
the glow of his own dreamstone blade. ’Twas high on the wall above
a scree slope that led down into the cavern.

Mychael leaned back against the wall and
waited, breaking himself off a piece of seedcake and watching the
curve of light slowly widen on the other side of the cave. He’d
eaten a few unsavory things when he’d been alone underground,
mostly tua—blind lizards—when he could catch the little beasts, but
since meeting up with the Quicken-tree he’d been well supplied with
food: seedcakes and catkins, strips of dried berry mash wrapped in
green leaves—which they called murrey and which was not unlike the
sweet pottage he knew by the same name—honeysticks, acorns, apples.
’Twas all good fare, if a little short of meat.

“
Malashm
,” he called out as Shay
ducked through the low opening and entered the cavern on his hands
and knees. The crescent of the boy’s dreamstone light expanded into
a full, glowing circle when released from the tunnel, lighting up
the herd of bulls above the passage and making them appear to move
in the shifting blue light.

“
Malashm
,” Shay called back, signaling
him before starting across the scree slope. The boy trekked over
the pile of shifting rubble and rocks with a sureness of foot
inherent in all the wild folk. Tightly wrapped chausses covered his
legs down to short boots closed with silver rings. He wore a fitted
shirt under his tunic. In dreamstone light, the clothes took on the
look of liquid silver patinated with verdigris, and Shay’s green
eyes shone aqua.

As did Llynya’s. Rhuddlan had sent her into
the deep with the Liosalfar, much to Mychael’s chagrin.

“Let’s take the deer path,” the boy said as
he dropped to the floor. A leaf-bladed short sword was stuck in his
belt, angling down his thigh nearly to his knee. “There’s a
connecting tunnel between it and Trig’s route we can cut across.
Save ourselves some time in catching up with them.”

“Aye, we’ve taken too long as it is,” Mychael
agreed, pushing off the wall and heading toward the opening beneath
the running deer. ’Twas the last day of their time below, and he
was as ready as the next to begin their ascent. ’Twould not be
long, though, before he was drawn back to the dark. He was always
drawn back.

“Is that one of Moira’s bannocks?” Shay
asked, gesturing at the seedcake in Mychael’s hand.

Mychael grinned and handed the food over.
“I’ve got naught but a handful of acorns after this, so make it
last.”

“Aye, I will,” Shay promised, then put the
whole of it in his mouth in one bite.

Mychael shook his head, still grinning, and
followed the boy out.

The passage of the running deer was
high-ceilinged and broad enough to walk four abreast, a luxury in
the deep dark, if one didn’t mind the odd bit of worm slime. Shay
and Mychael strode along its ample corridor, making good time. The
first vibration hit them when they were a halflan from the painted
cavern. ’Twas a sensation too familiar to be mistaken for anything
other than what it was —the old worm on a run.

Mychael looked to Shay, who swore and dropped
to one knee, laying his hand flat on the tunnel’s floor. Mychael
didn’t need to use his hand. He felt the wave of power ripple up
through the soles of his feet from the bare rock, a steady basso
profundo trembling that quickly spread to every part of his
body.

“Fireline broke and he’s heading this way,”
the boy said, looking up with a sheepish grin. “Race you to the
next tunnel.” Before the words were out of his mouth, Shay had
scrambled to his feet and was racing down the deer passage.

Mychael swore and took off at a run. ’Twasn’t
one of his firelines that had broken, nor was it the first time one
of Shay’s had, the boy’s attention to detail being less than
desirable.

’Twas a long way to a passage small enough to
give sanctuary, nearly another full lan. Others were closer, but in
the wrong direction with neither of them of a mind to try to beat
the old worm to a safe hole by running toward him.

When the beast was less than a quarterlan
behind them—and still picking up speed—Shay collapsed against the
rock wall.

“Sticks!”

Mychael skidded to a halt opposite him. They
weren’t going to make it, not this time. Damn. His breath came in
labored gasps. His body was doubled over from the stitch in his
side. He looked across the passage and found Shay to be in the same
pained, breathless position, except the Quicken-tree boy had a grin
on his face.

“Fancy yerself as worm fodder, do ye?”

Mychael grinned back despite himself. Forget
dragons and doom. Shay was going to be the death of him.

The old worm turned the last curve behind
them, and the rumble of his movements rippled down into the tunnel
where they stood, sending a fresh wave of vibrations up their
legs.

“Fireline,” Mychael gasped, still fighting
for his breath.

They both dropped to their knees. Mychael
pulled two sealed gourds off his pack strap while clenching his
other fist around the haft of his dreamstone dagger, heating up the
light. Shay did the same. Trig had drilled them a hundred times on
the making of a fireline. There were seven steps:

One—heat your blades. Worms don’t like
light.

Done.

Two—draw a line across the cavern floor with
your dagger; incising a shallow groove to hold the makings of your
fireline.

He and Shay each carved a jagged slash on the
floor, their steel blades scraping off each other when the knives
met in the middle of the tunnel.

Three—pour a small amount of
hadyn
draig
out of gourd number one into the groove. Follow with gourd
number two, shaking enough
roc tan
onto the
hadyn draig
to sustain a strong fire. Be careful!
Roc tan
has been
known to spontaneously burst into flame.

Mychael smashed his gourds against the tunnel
wall, one after the other, and tossed the whole of them onto the
floor. He looked to Shay and found the boy frozen in place, staring
wide-eyed into the dark ahead.

Mychael looked too, and a queasy feeling
roiled up from his stomach. ’Twasn’t the dark that had frozen Shay.
’Twas the black face of the old worm filling up the hole and coming
right at them. An odd smell pervaded the air, of worm and must and
something burnt. He grabbed Shay’s gourds and broke them against
the floor.

Four, five, six
—forget it.

Seven—there are three ways to successfully
ignite a sulfur twig. First, holding the twig tightly between your
thumb and first finger—

Mychael pulled a handful of the twigs out of
a pocket sewn into his tunic and scraped them across the rock wall.
He only needed one to light.

One did.

He threw them on the fireline, grabbed Shay,
and ran like hell. A wall of heat slammed into them before they’d
gotten ten paces. They stumbled, righted themselves, and kept on
running. Behind them, they heard the old worm screeching and
sliding, fighting himself to a stop, the sound of it like a cold
iron bolt being forced into a too small hole, a deep, pained, heavy
grating that echoed up and down the passage and spurred them on to
greater speed.