Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (19 page)

“Trig?” He felt a hand cup his chin and
looked up to find Llynya leaning in close and staring into his
eyes. “Can you hear me, Trig?”

“Aye,” he said gruffly, and pushed her hand
away. He was not so far gone as that. “Come on, then.”

Between the two of them, they carried Bedwyr
higher up on the shore, laying him at the foot of one of the trails
that wound up the dark cliffs, leading to the
pryf
nest.
Math was leaning against the rock face with Shay supporting him and
looking uncomfortably cowed. Mychael had drawn his crystal dagger
and was pacing a trough in the sand in front of the cliffs, looking
up at the nest twenty feet above them.

The open catacombs writhed with the movements
of the worms. Light from the crystalline headland shone on their
slick greenish black bodies, revealing which tunnels were active
and which were open. The trick in getting through the
pryf
nest was in choosing the right trail from the beach to get to an
open tunnel. In times bygone, before they’d been sealed in the
weir, the
pryf
had been easy to herd. Now ’twas a good day
to make it up to the nest without having a worm come rushing down
the trail and sending everyone scrambling for the beach. Like all
creatures that had tasted the weir, they wanted back in the hole.
The only thing keeping them out was Rhuddlan’s seals.

“Shay, take Math up. Hold to the left,”
Mychael ordered, pointing out a path. “Llynya, go with them.”

The two young men started out, but the sprite
didn’t move. She had a stubborn set to her mouth, though not enough
to offset the wariness in her eyes. ’Twas not the path worrying
her, Trig knew. Any one of them would have chosen the same. Still,
she was hesitating and looking to him.

“Go on, girl,” Trig said. “Mychael and I will
carry Bedwyr.”

Her gaze shifted to Mychael, seeking
something the boy was unlikely to give. Assurances had not been his
strong suit on the trek.

“Go,” Mychael said, dismissing her with a
gesture and a harsh tone. “You’ll not want to be part of this.”

The sprite turned and fled, leaving Trig to
wonder what Mychael meant. ’Twas not like Llynya to run off if she
had something to say. He wished his mind were clearer. There would
be no time for rest and food if they started up to the nest now. He
should order a halt, for everyone’s sake, even Mychael’s. Mayhaps
especially for Mychael. There was an unhealthy edginess about the
boy.

Mychael looked at him then, turning away from
watching Llynya as she reached the others. Trig found himself
staring at a stranger’s face framed by a mane of disheveled yellow
and copper-colored hair. The caverns were cool, the shore of Mor
Sarff even more so, yet sweat dampened Mychael’s forehead and
cheeks. His skin was flushed, his muscles tight with strain, and
when their eyes met, a cold, hard knot formed in Trig’s stomach. He
instinctively made a warding sign...
Shadana
.

The younger man noticed the flicker of
movement, and his mouth twisted in disgust. “I thought better of
you, Trig.”

He’d thought better of himself too, that
Bedwyr’s worries were overblown and that Naas’s vision would come
to naught. He’d been wrong.

“Then ye have not seen yerself this day.”
Trig knew men’s gazes, knew what lurked behind the dark centers,
and he saw chaos in Mychael ab Arawn’s, the heated frenzy of Ddrei
Goch’s breath stirring in the boy’s spine.

For all the frenzy of his gaze, Mychael eyed
him dispassionately. “In truth, I have seen too much of what I am
and fear it not near so much as what I shall become.”

Aye, Trig thought, holding back from making
another warding sign. Naas’s vision
had
spoken true, and
there was reason to fear. The grim portent of the boy’s words spoke
of at least a measure of sight. Rhiannon must have known. Yet if
those women of old had sent their blood down through generations of
novitiates until such time as one bore a son, their plans had gone
dangerously awry.

Trig looked at the ragged hem of the
Welshman’s tunic, at the monk’s wool leggings he wore and the
Quicken-tree boots. No ancient priestess would have condoned the
raising of one of her acolytes in a Christian monastery. They had
fought the hooded brothers and their bloodstained God on every
quarter. Nor would the Druid women have liked any better the giving
over of him to the Quicken-tree—with good reason. Rhuddlan would
use the boy as well as any, if he could. With Mychael by his side,
the Quicken-tree leader need not wait for time to take Carn
Merioneth beyond the reaches of Men. Time would come to him, drawn
by a dragon-born seer on the night of Calan Gaef. Except the
dragon-born seer had not been trained by the one who bore him, and
more likely than not, Rhuddlan would set him to the task anyway and
they would all be swept into a vortex without end.

Trig stifled a curse. Madron had created this
stew. She’d stolen Rhiannon’s children during the battle fifteen
years ago and hidden them away behind the Christ’s sanctified walls
where no Quicken-tree dared go. For her trouble, they must all now
deal with a man whose loyalties were torn and whose powers not even
he could control.

And the look of him, with that fire dancing
in the depths of his eyes...

Trig tamped down his surging unease, refusing
to call it fear, and reached for Bedwyr. He had not blanched at the
dark smoke in the broken damson shaft. He would not let himself be
unnerved by a fledgling. Still, there would be no argument or
orders for rest and seedcakes. ’Twas best to leave as quickly as
possible. With that goal in mind, he took hold of Bedwyr’s
shroud.

“Leave him be,” Mychael said.

“Ye can’t carry him alone.” Trig bent to the
task and was stopped by a forceful hand on his shoulder.

“Leave him on the sand,” Mychael said, the
command spoken through gritted teeth, with naught of a request
about it.

The cold, hard knot in Trig’s stomach grew
even colder. Damn the boy for his gall, that he dared to challenge
a Liosalfar captain. Priestess creature or nay, Arawn’s son went
too far if he thought to rule here. Trig had been blooded in battle
before Mychael’s father had been born, before his grandfather.

Shaking off Mychael’s hand, Trig straightened
to his full height, wincing at the pain the effort caused. “The
Quicken-tree do not leave their dead in the dark.”

“I am not Quicken-tree, old man. Leave
him.”

Old man
. Trig bit back an oath and
reached for his blade. Before he could find his knife, Mychael
grabbed his hand and pulled it up between them. The pain near put
him to his knees.

A snarl curled Mychael’s lips. “I can still
smell the black smoke where it touched you, Trig. Would you have it
taint us all? We’re leaving Bedwyr and making our run to Merioneth.
If you would have it otherwise, gainsay me with your steel.”

Out of the corner of his good eye, Trig saw
the flash of the crystal blade in Mychael’s other hand. He was
half-blind on his left side, and though he carried daggers on both
sides and had a longsword, Mychael’s dreamstone would win the day
before he could draw any of them. The only question was where the
boy would strike and how deep.

He held Mychael’s gaze and feared the answers
he saw. The mad fool might kill him, and that would do none of them
any good. Swallowing the bile of defeat, he muttered a curse and
pulled away, and knew that he was no longer captain of the
Liosalfar. Nor did he deserve to be, if he wasn’t quick enough to
overcome a nestling, even if ’twas Ddrei Goch’s. He, a hero of the
Wars of Enchantment, had been taken without a fight, but that was
the only shame he’d bear. The boy could cut him down where he
stood, but he was not leaving Bedwyr on the sand, not with a
skraelpack lurking so near.

He shifted his one-eyed gaze to Mychael. “I’m
puttin’ him in one of the tunnels. Ye might or might not ’ave
noticed we was being followed, but those that was doin’ it like
nothing better than a bite o’
tylwyth teg
.”

That made the boy blanch. “Bedwyr, is no
child,” he said.

“The stinkin’ beasts don’t care if ’tis
mutton or lamb when it comes to Quicken-tree flesh. Dinna ye smell
‘em?”

The boy slanted his gaze to the path they’d
taken up from the dark, proving that he had.

“ ‘Skraelings,’ they be called,” Trig said,
“and twisted, evil men they be. I’ve been smelling ’em for two
lan.”

From his expression, so had Mychael. “Do what
you will with Bedwyr, but be quick about it.”

Trig was quick, smoothing his hand over the
curved arch of the nearest tunnel to find the signs of the lock
while Mychael watched, then sliding the crystal hilt of his blade
into the notches keyed by Rhuddlan. When the ether, a pearlescent
gossamer sheath that covered the entrance, lifted away from the
sand, Mychael helped him slide Bedwyr inside. Trig removed the
blade from its last notch in the rock and the sheath fell back into
place, truly a death shroud for the old warrior, and not one that
skraelings or Sha-shakrieg could breach.

They turned to leave, and Trig’s attention
was drawn to Llynya. The sprite was standing at the bottom of the
path, uncommonly still and watching them with an intensity that
made Trig uneasy. ’Twould do neither of them any good should she
decide to come to his defense against the boy. Yr Is-ddwfn
aetheling or nay, he would not give her much of a chance against
Mychael on this day. When he walked toward the path and her gaze
did not shift, he realized it wasn’t him at all that held her
attention, but the tunnel gate.

Mourning for Bedwyr, he thought, as did they
all.

~ ~ ~

Late. They had been too late. Skraelings run
like the wind for blood, they’d said. Ten leagues in a single
night, they’d said, and then the craven bastards had taken a
sennight and missed their chance at the shrouded strangers and a
whole friggin’ mess of Quicken-tree—and the lavender woman who
would be his.

Couldn’t be helped, Wyrm-master, they said.
Needs to wait for Slott of the Thousand Skulls.

Wyrm-master. He, Caradoc, the Boar of Balor,
had been reduced to Wyrm-master; and he, too, waited for Slott, the
thousand-skulled cretin who had caused the delay and cost him the
lavender woman.

The skraelings had brought him something for
his leg, a roughly wrapped package offered with a sly nod. He took
the bundle and limped over to a bench hollowed out of a wall in the
rough and dirty cave they’d brought him to. ’Twas a day’s march
from the wormhole, on the same northern route they’d taken in the
spring. The skraelings sat all around the cave, some on other
benches or outcroppings of rock, some on the floor at the edge of a
murky pool. Smoke from their fires wafted in the cross-breeze
flowing down from a vast cavern two days farther north. Rastaban,
they called the cave, Eye of the Dragon. The place had been long
abandoned the first time he’d seen it, with piles of bones
half-turned to dust and great swaths of cobwebs hanging like
cathedral curtains from giant stone chairs and the huge, thick
pillars flanking them. Each bench in Rastaban was big enough to
sleep three men. Stairs had been carved from the cold rock with
risers as high as his knees, leading up into the fathomless dark of
the ceiling. And now ’twas to Rastaban they would return.

A few of the skraelings were still scavenging
food from out of the rat cage no skraelpack traveled without,
roasting the vermin on the tips of the same pointy sticks and
swords they used for murder and mayhem. Most were finished feeding
and had taken to picking their teeth with the bones.

A more motley bunch he’d ne’er seen. The man
to his left was pasty-faced, so pale the veins showed beneath his
skin, blue rivers running under a bulbous nose and lumpy cheeks and
into erratically placed wisps of hair. Caradoc had seen a few
others like him. Next to the fire a group of three dark men, their
skin different shades of gray ranging from fine ash to charcoal,
played a game of knuckle-bones. Greasy black hair stuck out from
under their iron helmets.

The most cunning of the troops by far were
the greenlings, called such for the green tinge to their skin. Two
of these were cooking rats over the fire. A third was spitting one
of the pale, eyeless lizards that inhabited the caves. Two more
milled from one group to the next. There were twenty skraelings in
all, five more than had taken him north in the spring. Each of them
had teeth of unnatural length and sharpness for a man, but men they
were, or mostly so. To call them beasts would have been an affront
to the animal world.

Aye, only men had eyes that darted and
shifted with a skraeling’s speed and suspicion. Only men wore
knives and daggers though they had fingernails the size and shape
and toughness of bear claws.

He recognized four of the pack from the
spring: Blackhand Dock, a tall greenling with black claws curving
out from the tips of his left-hand fingers and yellow claws curving
out from his right; Igorot, whose ash gray skin was as smooth as
river rock, except where the side of his face had been burned raw
and healed badly; Beel, the ugliest, the pasty-faced one, the one
he’d caught chewing on his arm when he’d come about on the beach.
Beel was missing one of his teeth from that encounter. Caradoc had
kept it as a dagger and had it shoved in his belt. The last that he
knew was the captain, Lacknose Dock, a greenling.

The ragged edge of Igorot’s sleeve revealed
three black bands around his forearm and a nasty scar that could be
naught but a brand, a fresh and weeping one, in the crude shape of
a thunderbolt. All of the greenlings were marked with muddy blue
lines and a finer, well healed version of the thunderbolt brand.
Beel was branded, but not tattooed. Igorot was the largest in the
troop, the one who had carried him most of the way north
before.