Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (17 page)

“By the grace of God I survived, but I would
not trust your life to the same. Nor would Rhuddlan. You know as
well as I that the wormholes are forbidden to the Quicken-tree.”
And there was the end of it. Rhuddlan had forbidden him the same,
but he felt no compulsion to obey. He was not Quicken-tree.

“I am only half Quicken-tree,” she said,
sending his unvoiced argument back at him with a hint of challenge,
as if she dared him to gainsay her to do whatever she willed.

A fierce chit, aright, he thought as he rose
to his feet, sure to give someone trouble. He’d been wise to avoid
her up to now, and as soon as he got her out of the caves, he’d
take to doing it again. No good could come from trailing after her.
He’d meet someone else to kiss, someone who was not in love with
another.

“And the other half?” he asked, handing back
her dreamstone blade.

“Yr Is-ddwfn.” She stood up and took the
knife.

Mychael had heard the name before. ’Twas
another tribe of
tylwyth teg
, the same as Ailfinn Mapp, the
mage Rhuddlan searched for, and mayhaps explained her pointed
ears.

“Then I’ll make sure Rhuddlan also forbids
your Yr Is-ddwfn half from coming below.”

“ ’Tis not so easy to forbid the Yr
Is-ddwfn.”

“Mayhaps not,” he conceded, sheathing his own
dreamstone blade in preference of the iron dagger, “but I’m sure
Rhuddlan is more than equal to the task.” No maid, however
brokenhearted and bent on self-destruction, would get past
Rhuddlan. Nor would she get past him. With a gesture for her to
follow, he started back down the tunnel.

~ ~ ~

Llynya stared after him, crossing her arms
over her chest and bringing the warm crystal hilt of her blade
close to her heart. Arrogant sapling, she thought, soaking up the
soothing light. He had called her
girl
. She was Liosalfar.
Hadn’t the truth of it been running down the side of his face? No
girl could have cut him so well. No girl could have cut him
twice.

Mayhaps no girl would have cut him at
all.

There was a thought, was there not? Mayhaps
she’d wounded his pride more deeply than his cheek.

They had not gotten off to a good start, but
pride could be mended, wardings apologized for, wounds healed.
Gods, since first seeing him she’d done naught but make her task
more daunting. If there were another to whom she could turn, she
would abandon Mychael ab Arawn out of hand, but there was no other.
’Twas either him or no one, and his trick with the wall proved him
well worthy of better effort on her part.

Of course, he’d turned down her treasures
too, proving he was unacquainted with the value of such things.
Madron’s Druid had much to learn.

The archer’s blue light faded as he turned a
corner, and she took off after him. She would not fail this side of
her own grave in conquering the time weir of the great wormhole.
Mychael had told her nothing she had not already known, neither of
its forbidden nature or its dangers, and she was dissuaded by
neither. ’Twould take another’s peace to steer her from her
course—and the Thief of Cardiff had not found peace.

She balled her free hand into a fist to keep
it from a sudden trembling. Gods save her, she feared Morgan was
still falling. The sensation of it would come upon her at the
oddest moments, visceral and fearsome, and change even the
brightest day into darkest night. No amount of lavender could save
her then.

’Twas because of her last fight that Morgan
had been lost to this world, to his world. She had deserted him,
left him to face the Boar of Balor alone instead of fighting by his
side as Rhuddlan had sworn her to do. She’d left him to slay a
hairless devil-priest, but the nightmare of Morgan’s falling had
not left her. She had to find him, as much for her own salvation as
his.

She caught up to Mychael at the end of the
tunnel, and they stepped out onto the stairs into a flood of
dreamstone light. Below them, Shay, Trig, and Math stood on the
cavern floor with their blades held high. The joy she felt at
finding them safe was quickly dispelled when her gaze fell to
Bedwyr at their feet. The sight of the old warrior lying motionless
in death nearly undid her.

There had been so much death of late, death
and trouble and an unraveling of the threads of life. Time was when
autumn had meant gathering the earth’s bounty for the long winter
months of storytelling in Kerach—the Quicken-tree wintering ground.
Summer had been a time of the sun
in excelsis
and warm, lazy
days for doing what one pleased, and spring a time of glorying in
the supreme magic of blossoms.

The glory had been short-lived this year,
lasting barely long enough to greet the dawn of Beltaine before the
Quicken-tree had descended into battle, and naught had been the
same since.

~ ~ ~

They tracked the Sha-shakrieg for a half day
deeper into the dark, hoping to catch them with Nia still alive,
but such was not to be. The spider people had left Crai Force by
way of a passage hidden behind the waterfall. The trail was
rough-floored, cold, and damp. They did not blind scout, but kept
their blueknives glowing strong and hot, forging ahead across
ice-crusted pools and coming out through another sheet of water
that poured from a hole above them into a damson shaft of cavelike
proportions—and ’twas there they were forced to concede defeat.

A web had been strung across the narrow end
of the shaft, a thickly spun obstruction. Trig approached it with
caution. The others followed.

“What is it?” Shay asked, coming up beside
the captain.

Mychael wondered the same. He’d not seen its
like in all the months he’d spent in the deep dark.

“A war gate, the bastards,” Trig said,
tight-mouthed. He’d been cut across the face and one eye, a purple
welt attesting to the stinging lash of the spider people’s fighting
threads. Other cuts marked his arms, and his hose were torn.

Mychael stepped forward and felt the web.
’Twas made out of wide, strong strips of material, darkish gray,
tattered along the edges and not at all like true spider silk. The
web itself was divided into eight triangular pieces put together
and woven around and around with a double spiral. The outside edge
was attached to the damson shaft by dropped loops, a sticky
substance holding the threads to the jagged protrusions of
amethystine rock. Four wide threads crossed all the others, three
going straight from the ceiling to the floor and the fourth cutting
diagonally across the three. Two thinner threads were knotted
around where the diagonal and the middle vertical thread met.

Shay pulled a knife to take to the ominous
thing, but Trig caught the boy’s wrist before he could strike.

“Leave it be,” the captain said. “Unless ye
would bring the Sha-shakrieg up out of the wasteland to the very
shores of Mor Sarff. From there ’tis but a day’s march into
Merioneth, and they well know the way.”

“But what of Nia?” Shay demanded.

“Aye, Trig, what of Nia?” Llynya also
asked.

“The two knots on the web are for the two
deaths,” Trig said, ignoring the hint of rebellion in their voices.
“One on each side. ’Tis a sign of fair balance. They don’t mean to
kill Nia.”

“So we just let them have her?” Shay did not
sound willing.

“Not even a Liosalfar captain can pass a war
gate without permission from Rhuddlan,” Trig said, not sounding any
more willing than Shay to leave Nia.

Behind them in the cavern, Math called out,
“Trig. Come quick.”

Shay and Trig retraced their steps to where
Math knelt on the floor, leaving Mychael alone with Llynya at the
war gate.

The elf-maid turned back to the web and
slanted him a look. “I am not a Liosalfar captain,” she said. “Are
you?”

Trouble and more trouble, he thought. He
understood what she wanted. He understood why, but when she lifted
her blade to the web where Trig could not see, he grabbed her hand
and spoke to her under his breath. “Trig is right. We have one lost
and one dead, and I would not have more. Rhuddlan will gather a
fighting force, and we’ll return.”

Her gaze slowly lifted from where he held
her, and her eyes met his through the jacinth light.

“You cannot keep me from what I must do,” she
said, and he knew she spoke not of the war gate, but of the
wormhole.

“I can keep you from this,” he said with
utter certainty.

Her gaze slid to the thickly spun web, then
back up at him. “Aye. For now ’tis best,” she conceded, and he let
go of her knife hand. She did not immediately turn and leave as
he’d expected, but continued looking at him as if she would say
more. When she did not, he tensed.

She was thinking something, but he’d be
damned if he knew what. Finally, after what seemed like a small
eternity, she turned on her heel and left him at the gate.

He let out his breath. ’Twas the last time he
dealt with her. He swore it. Whatever tears he thought he’d seen
were long dried. Whatever concerns or imaginings he’d had of her
had all been misplaced. She didn’t need a hero. She needed a
keeper, but ’twould not be him. He would stay with the Liosalfar to
the surface and see her banned from the caves, then would come back
on his own.

The elf-maid stopped next to where Math and
the other Liosalfar knelt on a smooth stretch of the shaft
floor.

Her shadow rose above the others on the far
wall of the cave, a slim darkness fragmented by the dreamstone
light streaking through the crystals in a chaotic pattern. Only one
place on the wall was free of the confusion.

Mychael lifted his blade higher, tossing
light against the patch of darkness. Llynya knelt with the others,
removing her shadow from the chaos, but the darkness remained. A
crack or an opening perhaps? To one side he detected an unusual
flat surface of rock, a chiseled plane, and on it mayhaps a
mark.

The Liosalfar changed position in their
search, and the entire rock face danced and weaved with the light
and shadows thrown by their dreamstone blades. With the new
patterns of chaos, the dark place disappeared. Had it been no more
than a trick of the light then?

He tried to find it again and couldn’t.
Still, ’twas a place he would remember and return to when he
could.

He walked over to where the others knelt on
the floor. In their rush toward the web, none had noticed the
glasslike shards scattered across the water-smoothed rock next to
the stream. This was what Math showed them, and ’twas what led them
to the break hidden in the jagged peaks and valleys of the rich
rock encrusting the rest of the floor.

’Twas why they’d come to the deep dark, to
see if other damson shafts had broken like the one Mychael had
found before the battle for Balor.

Trig muttered something under his breath and
leaned forward to put his hand in the gaping crack. His fingers no
sooner breached the surface than a chill ran up Mychael’s spine.
’Twas hard to see clearly in the shifting light of dreamstone
blades, but he would swear a wisp of darkness tore away from the
blackness deep in the fissure. It reminded him of nothing so much
as the picture in the painted cavern, and like the graceful ochre
deer and the thundering herd of bulls, he wanted to run. Another
wisp tore away, and this time there was no doubt of its rising up
out of the fracture. Trig let the smoky stuff flow over his hand,
feeling it with his fingers. A foul curse escaped him. Math made
the sign Mychael had seen Shay make earlier. The boy was doing the
same. Llynya was motionless, staring into the new-fledged
chasm.

Looking grim, Trig rose to his feet and eyed
them one by one. “We’re three days past Lanbarrdein,” he said, “and
must make it back in two. The Sha-shakrieg would not risk their
lives to come to the deep dark and then leave without
thullein
. Carrying the ore will slow them down. With haste,
we can return and catch them before they reach Deseillign.” His
gaze shifted to the web, and his jaw hardened. “We’ll know then why
they crossed the Magia Wall into the deep dark, breaking the treaty
forced on them five hundred years ago when they lost the Wars of
Enchantment.” With no more said, he raised his hand into the air,
giving the command to march.

Math followed him out, then Shay. Mychael
made sure Llynya went before him. She gave the war gate a brief
glance, but made no more move to disobey.

At the edge of the waterfall, Mychael looked
back too, his gaze searching the wall and finding naught. Then he
looked to the seeping crack in the floor. A faint burnt smell
wafted up from the fracture with the smoke, reminding him of the
broken fireline when the old worm had come at them, for it bore a
similar scent. ’Twas redolent of rot and decay, and the chill
rippled through him again.

He turned and followed Llynya, plunging
through the running water to the path beyond, knowing ’twas no good
thing he left behind.

~ ~ ~

Deep in the shaft on the other side of the
war gate, Varga of the Iron Dunes, leader of the Sha-shakrieg,
watched the Quicken-tree leave. The Liosalfar had seen the breaking
of the earth, as he’d intended. ’Twas far worse in the south, the
tunnels there filling with dread smoke, the portent of doom, the
coming of Dharkkum—unless it could be stopped.

Skraelpacks from Rastaban had passed the
eastern edge of the Rift into Deseillign a month earlier. The same
were ranging west, where a Sha-shakrieg troop had found debris from
a skraeling encampment in the outlying
thullein
basin. The
Quicken-tree would feel their bite soon enough and know the danger
that was awakening.

The Liosalfar had an Yr Is-ddwfn aetheling
with them, proving that old alliance still intact. Fair tidings,
mayhaps, and fair tidings were in short supply this day, especially
for the Lady Queen of Deseillign.