Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (30 page)

“We’ll cut even more if you do not shackle
mc.”

“We could,” he agreed, “but you’re Liosalfar,
and I remember enough of the Wars to take extra care.”

“What care?” she chided in her anger. “You
risk certain death to go to Merioneth.”

Unbelievably, he appeared to smile beneath
the gauze. “Not so certain as all that. Rhuddlan will not
underestimate the importance of what has brought me out of the
desert.”

Nia’s ears pricked up. Here was the answer
that had eluded her all these last long days. The Wars were
centuries past, the realms of enchantment at peace. Those who had
battled for supremacy, the Dockalfar, had fought to their death,
each and every one, ensorcelled by their mad leader with a
bloodspell gone awry. No contact had been made between the
Quicken-tree and the Sha-shakrieg for five hundred years—until
Varga had captured her in the dark.

“Why did you come?” she asked.

Varga gave the Liosalfar warrior a measuring
look and was reassured by what he saw. He’d stopped drugging her
that morning, replacing the lightly poisoned rope he’d used on her
wrists to keep her manageable on the trek. He’d dared not continue
with it. He needed her strong for the run they would make to
Merioneth, and within a half day’s time, she was rebounding in
health and vigor. The dullness had gone from her eyes, leaving them
a pure, clear green, the color he’d oft seen Quicken-tree eyes in
battle when they shone as bright as their dreamstone blades. Her
hair was a dark chestnut brown, proving her young, barely out of
swaddling clothes by
tylwyth teg
standards, yet she was tall
and leanly muscular and old enough to have been carrying daggers
and a sword.

The answer to her question held risks, but
also rewards. If he could bring her to his side, the shackles could
be left off and her chances of making it home would increase
tenfold. For all that the Liosalfar had seen the smoke and the
broken damson shaft, after the debacle in Crai Force not even Varga
of the Sha-shakrieg wished to walk into Merioneth without a
hostage. ’Twould do him far better not to have his captive dead in
his arms when that day came, if there was to be a hope of an
alliance.

In a matter of days, the
thullein
they’d brought home would be forged into blades and given an Edge
of Sorrow by the desert smiths, with one blade made more deadly
than all the others combined. No skraeling could withstand even the
weakest of the desert smith’s swords. With the Lady’s leave, he
would offer the swords to Rhuddlan in return for a fighting force.
Together they could put the skraelings in a vise.

And still it would all be for naught.

A foul curse lodged in his throat.
With
the Lady’s leave
—The curse escaped him in a low hiss. Her
long-held hate would be the death of them all. Rhuddlan had nigh
destroyed her once, but the King of the Light-elves was her only
hope now.

The great crystal seal on the abyss in
Kryscaven Crater had been broken by enchantment, and ’twas from
there that the mortal danger arose. Dharkkum. None could withstand
it, not skraelings nor trolls, nor the fell mage who had wrought
such malevolence.

To win the battle against the all-consuming
darkness of Dharkkum they would need Rhuddlan’s dread beasts, and
they dare not draw the dragons down upon themselves without a lord
to rule them. The King of the Light-elves was a fair dragon keeper,
or had been before Merioneth had been lost and the nest emptied,
but to wield the Magia Blade took the fire and fury of youth, and
Rhuddlan had near as many years as Varga himself.

The aetheling he’d seen in Crai Force had
fire in her, starfire. ’Twas in her blood, but the bloodlust fury
for the fight was not. He’d watched her fight, and aye, none were
faster or cleaner with a blade. Warring with dragons, though, took
madness, and he’d seen naught of that about her. There must be
another aetheling, a Dragonlord, and that one, he knew, would be
Rhuddlan’s bane.

“Do you know the story of the
Starlight-born?” he asked in answer to the Liosalfar’s
question.

“Bits and pieces, aye,” she said. “They ruled
the Douvan Kingdoms, but that was a long time ago, too long ago to
be remembered.”

Yes, she was young, he thought.

“ ’Twas even before the Thousand Years War,”
she said, adding the reference as if he might need one. He smiled
beneath his mask of gauze. He’d had a child once who had been as
young as she, but no more. All his children had been lost in the
Wars of Enchantment.

“The Thousand Years War gave the elves two
kingdoms of their own, that of the Liosalfar and the Dockalfar,” he
said. “ ’Tis said the Wars of Enchantment had their beginning in
the ending of the Thousand Years War.”

“Aye, I’ve heard the same.”

“Such is often the case with wars,” he went
on. “One leads into another. For the Starlight-born ’twas the same,
but the span of time between wars was far greater, encompassing
whole ages. The time between the Thousand Years War and today would
be naught compared to those ages. Time enough for all the world to
forget the war that came before and to be unprepared for the war
that comes again.”

“War is coming?” He heard the quickening in
her voice and took it as a good sign. She would fight, as would
Quicken-tree and Ebiurrane and Yr Is-ddwfn, and all of the
tylwyth teg
, fight for their lives.

“War, but unlike any you have known, unlike
what any of us have known—Sha-shakrieg, Liosalfar, and those of Men
who trade in memories even more ancient than the Douvan
Kingdoms.”

“You don’t know much of men, if you think
they see beyond their bellies and the short span of their lives,”
she said, arching one of her eyebrows to make her point.

A warrior, he thought, but no scholar. Yet
for what he needed, ’twas the warrior who would do.

“They are there,” he promised her, “in every
corner of the world. Holy men and women who guard the secrets of
the past so that they will not be forgotten, whose sacred duty is
to their gods, but whose sacred trust is the knowledge left by
those who came before, age after age since the world began.
Rhuddlan knows them in your land, even as the Lady of Deseillign
knows them in hers.”

“You speak of an alliance?” She sounded
incredulous, and both of her eyebrows rose, as if she thought him
crazed beyond saving.

“Aye.”

She dismissed him with a rude noise.

Hiding a smile, he shrugged out of her pack.
“It is in my best interest as well as yours to return to Merioneth
as quickly as possible. If you think on it, you’ll know I speak the
truth. You’ll not be guiding me into the heart of the Quicken-tree
stronghold, as I already well know the way. And there’ll be no
surprise to your kind. Rhuddlan is not one to forget his old
enemies, and on the war gate I left him a sign that I would return.
He’ll remember enough of knotwork to read what is there, and
remember me well enough to know that if I’d meant you harm, I would
have left you
en chrysalii
for him to find with the
message.”

Her gaze, so bravely contemptuous before,
filled with fear. Yes, she understood what he’d said, even if she’d
never seen the ancient torture. Mayhaps the Quicken-tree told their
campfire stories as well as the Sha-shakrieg. No child of
Deseillign did not know of Rhuddlan, Scourge of the Wasteland.

“So I offer you a truce,” he said. “Your word
against these.” He lifted the chains, and light glinted off the
razor-sharp barbs.

“Aye, and you’ve got it,” she said after only
a moment’s hesitation. How truthful she was being remained to be
seen, but even if her agreement was half a lie, ’twould be enough
to see them through. The route he planned would leave her little
time or inclination for escape.

“Good.” He pulled a leaf-wrapped seedcake out
of her pack and held it out to her, but when she reached for it, he
didn’t immediately let it go.

She lifted her gaze to his in question.

“You’re Liosalfar,” he said, as if reminding
her.

“Aye.”

“And strong?”

“Stronger than those who are not.”

He released the cake and gestured with a lift
of his chin. “Show me your arm.”

Another short hesitation followed his
request. Then she stuck the cake between her teeth and pushed up
her sleeve, showing him the tattoos he’d hoped to see.

“Good. Good.” His gaze tracked the hazel
leaves embedded in her skin and the single rowan leaf high on her
shoulder. The mark for Deri was below. Her name was in runes
between her elbow and her wrist. Nia. “Have you been through the
Kai Crack?” he asked, naming a crawlway off the main passages in
the Canolbarth.

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You know
much of Liosalfar training if you know of the Kai Crack.”

“Every man knows his enemies. Rhuddlan could
tell you more of me than my own captains.”

She seemed to give that some thought, then
nodded. “Aye. I’ve been through the Crack and a couple of other
squeezes besides.”

“Then you’ll not have any trouble with the
Grim Crawl.”

She looked dubious. “Grim Crawl?”

“Ghranne Mekom in my language, a squeeze that
bypasses the Kasr-al Loop. To take a hundred soldiers through is
too slow, even provided that you have a hundred who won’t freeze up
in the tighter spots. But two travelers can cut half a day going
that way. Don’t worry. It’s not much worse than the Crack.”

The skeptical look she threw him did much to
increase his confidence in her. No one who had struggled through
the tight and narrow crawlways called “squeezes” underestimated
their danger. Getting stuck in a tunnel so small that the ceiling
pressed down on your back while the floor pressed up against your
chest was a real threat, and the natural urge to panic in that
situation spelled death.

“How do we cut the other two and a half
days?”

“We’ll gain a half day roping down into the
Mindao River Slot. The water isn’t running too high. We’ll get wet,
but we won’t be washed over the falls.”

Her eyebrows rose again, even higher, but she
made no protest. “And what do we have to do to save the other two
days? Leap a flaming gorge? Climb one of these canyon walls with
our bare hands?”

’Twas his turn to hesitate. Unlike with the
other two shorter routes, he had no reassurances to offer with the
third. They would drop down off the trail into jeopardy, and the
threat would deepen around every turn until they reached the caves
where the Light-elves ruled.

“No,” he finally said. “Though you may wish
it were so. The third route lies through the Dangoes.”

She visibly paled, and her fingers moved in a
quick sign. He said nothing, but knew it would take more than a
warding to keep them safe. From the look of fear in her eyes, so
did she.

“Eat your cake,” he told her, “and I’ll tell
you the tale of the Starlight-born as it is written in the Elhion
Bhaas Le.”

“You know the Indigo Book of Elfin Lore?” she
asked, a bit of her fear giving way to surprise. She was not easily
cowed, not for long, he was heartened to see.

“Aye, the very same. Listen well, for such a
time as it speaks of is now.”

And so he began. The story was an old one,
the oldest, for it told of the beginning, of the star and the
darkness, of the Ages of Wonders and the Dark Age that had
followed. The story told of the Prydion Magi and the Seven Books of
Lore—and it told of the making of the dragons from a star-metal
cauldron and how the mighty serpents had devoured the darkness.

“But beasts of war are ever hungry,” he said,
drawing the story to its close, “and even as the dragons spawned
their first brood on the shores of the nether sea, the magi forged
a peerless sword to rule them, its edge tempered with star-wrought
metal, its hilt crowned with stones of light. A bloodspell was then
cast over the people of the Earth so that forever after those who
could wield the blade would come forth in time—Aethelings of the
Starlight, bound by celestial ether.” He finished and looked at
her. “Stept Agah was such a one. ’Tis said he was bound to the
blade by a Chandra priestess and though he died, the sword yet
delivered its killing blows.”

“ ’Tis a
druaight
blade that will
fight when its master is dead,” Nia said, a note of apprehension in
her voice.

“Aye, and it takes a
druaight
master
to wield such a sword.”

Nia lowered her gaze to the trail, hiding her
fear and the sudden pounding of her heart.

She knew an aetheling, the only one,
Llynya.

~ ~ ~

In his private quarters above Rastaban,
Caerlon stood in front of an opening that looked out on the court
of the Troll King. Below, Slott ranged through the assemblage, a
mountain of flesh and hair and clinking skulls, and long, twitching
tail. Near the west wall, Lacknose Dock was readying a troop for a
morning raid into Merioneth. They would leave within the hour and
make Riverwood by the next day’s dawn. Blackhand Dock had taken a
force of skraelings and a wolfpack into the deep dark the previous
night. With Sha-shakrieg daring to breach Quicken-tree territory,
time was running short. An alliance between the old enemies was
unlikely, but Caerlon was not taking any chances. Every possible
obstacle to victory had thus far been removed—
every possible
one
—and he would not let delay be his undoing. The aetheling
had returned from Deri less than a fortnight past and with all else
ready, ’twas time to bring her into the fold. Whether aboveground
or below, he would have her, a succulent boon for Slott, before he
rid the world forever of her kind.

One other troop had been sent the day before,
a skraelpack to Tryfan, led by Redeye Dock. The Quicken-tree would
go there for elf shot, but Caerlon was going to give them a taste
of war.