Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (34 page)

She opened her eyes and found him watching
her with equal parts of puzzlement and amusement.

“Well, that is how it’s done,” she said in
her own defense.

“I’ve no doubt,” he said, “but I think I know
why the Druid never mastered the trick. I don’t suppose you have a
less tricky method for finding the sanctuary that was
Nemeton’s?”

“Nay,” she admitted. “Naas says Madron has
turned Merioneth apart trying to find her father’s journals, for
therein lay his maps and such, but naught has come to light.”

“Naas says?” he repeated doubtfully. “Naas
never says anything. She doesn’t even talk to Rhuddlan.”

“Well, she talks to me. We’ve been friends
from when I first came to the Quicken-tree.”

A grin twitched the corner of his mouth. “The
trees talk to you. Naas talks to you. The chickadees and the doves
talk to you. Is there anything or anybody who doesn’t talk to
you?”

“There was a man once,” she said, leaning
forward and smiling herself, “but now he’s talking to me too.”

He blushed, much to her delight.

She scooted closer and slid her fingers
through a length of his hair. His blush deepened, warming his skin
and her fingertips, and once again she was struck by his beauty—by
the high angles of his cheekbones, and the fine, near delicate line
of his nose, by his dark lashes, and the equally dark arcs of his
eyebrows, so in contrast to his fairness. He looked more from the
far north than from Wales, from beyond the North Sea where his
white-gold hair was common among men, where his cleanly carved
features were not so unique. His eyes, so palely gray, held the
barest rim of Ceridwen’s blue. Around the pupil was an even thinner
line of amber. ’Twas the amber line that was wont to light with
flame when the heat was upon him as it had been on the beach at Mor
Sarff. This night he did not look so fierce and fiery, only warm
from his swim, his body relaxed and at ease. This night he was a
man who laughed.

Fascinated by the changes wrought in the
waters of Bala Bredd, she lowered her hand and touched the small
white scar at the corner of his mouth. “How did you get this?”

“I stumbled in the garden at Strata Florida
and cut myself on a rock,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.

’Twas her touch, she knew, adding the husky
edge to his voice. His temperature rose about them both in heated
awareness, caressing her skin with the scents of desire and
longing. She’d been wrong to think he didn’t want to kiss her—for
he indeed wanted a kiss, a kiss and more.

She glided her finger over the scar before
removing her hand. “How old were you?”

“No more than five or six. ’Twas the day
Moriath took Ceri away from the monastery. When the monks locked
the gate behind them, I panicked and went off running, trying to
find another way out. Everywhere, the walls were too high for me to
breach, until I found the garden. A small gate at the end of it lay
open onto the fields, and I could see the road they’d taken.” A
trace of his smile returned. “I nearly made it, but by the time I
picked myself up from the ground, Brother John had caught me, and
he didn’t let go of me again until I was twelve and too big for him
to handle.”

Llynya had heard tell long ago about
Rhiannon’s daughter being at Usk Abbey, but no one had spoken of a
son. It had been Ceridwen herself who had told Llynya that her twin
brother was in Strata Florida.

“Was it too awful, being in such a place?”
she asked, repressing a shudder. “I’ve heard they tie women to
stakes and burn them, and that they keep their God alive in vats of
wine and bits of bread and eat and drink his flesh and blood.”

“ ’Tis true, but no one was ever burned at
Strata Florida. Our abbot did not abide by those ways. As for the
wine and wafers, ’tis not as cannibalistic as it sounds, but is
meant as a form of worship.”

“I would as soon sing the Mother’s praises
and walk gently in her woods.”

“Aye, it seems a good way,” he agreed, “and
one more suited to my nature, though in truth I suffered less harm
at the hands of the monks than I have since coming home to
Merioneth.”

“You could go back,” she said, and
immediately regretted the words.

“Nay.” A shake of his head sent the silky
length of hair she’d handled sliding over his shoulder. “I thought
so once, but no more. Most men know naught of the enchantments
living beyond the forest’s edge and beneath the hills they call
home, and mayhaps that is the way it should be. They rarely pass
into the realm of the
tylwyth teg
, and those brief
trespasses are accounted as ‘magic’ and nothing more. But I would
not go back and close my eyes to what I’ve seen.” He angled a shy
glance in her direction. “That morning at the river, I thought you
might have wings, so fey did you seem with the mist rising all
about you, talking to a flock of chickadees.”

Aye, he wanted her aright.

“No river faerie me,” she denied, mayhaps too
quickly, feeling a rare bout of shyness herself. She’d thought she
was the only one entranced that morn. As to the other, wings
weren’t so far removed from her family line that her shoulder
blades didn’t tingle now and then. “Come. Let me give you a braid
to bind you closer to the trees. I swear they’ll do you even less
harm than the monks.”

He nodded, and she took up a handful of his
hair, pleased to finally be doing him a good turn. Working from the
bottom to the top, she finger-combed the flaxen strands until they
slipped like sunlight through her hands. His hair was straight and
fine, not a wild tumble of curls like Ceridwen’s. The texture made
her work both easier and more difficult. Fine strands were less apt
to tangle up with one another, but more apt to slip free of the
plait, especially when from the top of his head to his shoulders
his hair was any number of lengths. ’Twas also any number of
colors, all blond, from yellow and honey-gold strands to subtle
swaths of lighter hues, of silver and palest ivory.

Parting off a small section, she began
plaiting a five-strand sinnet, half blond, half auburn. With the
crossing over of the outside lengths toward the middle he would
have a parti-colored braid and the most unusual plait that had ever
been seen from Riverwood to Wroneu. For his added protection,
because he was not
tylwyth teg
, she slipped a silver ring
from one of her baldric pouches into the braid about a third of the
way down. At two-thirds, she added another, small ring worked with
runes, and started twisting in a green and silver riband of
Quicken-tree cloth. Nemeton had never taken a
fif
braid.
Lavrans had done such only for the fire festivals, and those had
been before he’d dropped into the weir and his hair had
changed.

That only left one other who could have
compared.

She made another pass with a length of auburn
hair and riband, her smile fading. Wherever Morgan was, she doubted
if anyone had thought to give him a braid; and if the truth were
told, she doubted if Morgan was anywhere at all, but was yet
suspended in some awful limbo far away in time and space. She knew
little enough of what happened inside a weir, and Aedyth had known
even less. Ailfinn knew. Ailfinn knew everything, but though the
mage had been expected in Merioneth all summer, she had not yet
come. Llynya hadn’t felt the Thief falling since leaving Deri,
which might have been a fair portent, except for the unsettledness
in the vicinity of her heart that had not left her since he’d
disappeared into the wormhole.

Nay, Morgan had not landed someplace in time,
not yet.

As she neared the end of Mychael’s braid, a
gust of leaves—oak and birch, hazel, and a few straying
rowan—swirled up around the fire, encircling them in an autumn
dance of scarlets, ambers, and yellowing greens. The wind held the
leaves for a moment before they drifted back to earth, falling
about Mychael’s shoulders and in his hair.

“The trees are glad to have you, whether
Aedyth will be or nay,” she said, finishing the braid with another
silver ring and bit of Quicken-tree cloth pulled from her baldric.
Thinking of Morgan had taken the lightness from her mood. Yr
Is-ddwfn wasn’t Mychael’s sanctuary, but Nemeton’s map—if it could
be found—might lead him to a place where he could escape the fate
of his dragonfire. Her escape awaited her in the wormhole, and
Mychael had all but promised her that the wormhole, if she dared
its graven rim, would be her destruction. For certes his deep
descent of the weir had not been accomplished without risks and
harm. She, too, would have to go deep, far deeper than the path to
Yr Is-ddwfn. That morning, Mychael’s skin had still burned with the
heat of the wormhole scars. Could she bear the same, if such was to
be her fate?

Nemeton’s skin had not been marked, and he
had breached the wormhole more than once in her memory. The Druids
were ever ones with a potion, and mayhaps he had prepared himself
before going into the weir. Madron would know. She had always been
at her father’s side, conjuring with nature’s bounty. But ’twas
unlikely that Madron would tell Llynya any secrets, especially any
concerning the wormhole. The Weir Gate was the Druid’s bailiwick in
Madron’s estimation. Like the first Prydion Magi to discover its
special properties, the Druids had sent travelers through. They
watched the gate for such travelers to return, and on one night per
year, Calan Gaef, they watched a priestess of Merioneth open the
doors between the worlds and look into the depths of the temporal
flux. ’Twas because their lives were so briefly mortal that they
hungered after time, Rhuddlan had explained.

The priestesses were all gone from Merioneth
now. Ceridwen had been the last, and by most accounts she’d not had
near the power of the priestesses of old. That there had been no
one to train her was part of the problem. That she’d shared the
womb with a twin brother was considered by both Moira and Naas to
be the greater cause of her lack of skills.

Mychael—the wheel ever turned and came back
to him.

“If the braid dismays you, you’re welcome to
unplait it,” he said, reclaiming her attention, his voice
concerned.

She looked up and realized she’d given
herself away with her gloomy musings, changing his mood as well as
hers. “Nay,” she said. “ ’Tis not the plait.”

“Then what?”

In answer, she took his hand and turned it
over, revealing the scar along his inner wrist and palm. She slid
her fingers up the pinkened skin and was surprised to find it the
same temperature as the rest of his arm.

“ ’Tis cool,” she said, glancing up. “The
fire is gone.”

“Bala Bredd has a magic of sorts. ’Tis why I
come.”

“Aye, there is more healing in the waters of
Bala Bredd than in others. Still the pool must need one of Moira’s
rejuvenating infusions, if you must swim for hours on end to find
relief.”

“A good soaking usually suffices,” he
admitted, absently tossing a twig into the flames. “The swimming
was for your benefit.”

“Mine?” She didn’t understand.

His eyes held hers for a moment, before he
tossed another stick on the fire. “I looked for you everywhere
today.”

“I know,” she said. “I watched you search
Carn Merioneth from hither to yon and back again from morn to
night, pretty much following my trail.”

“
Jesu
,” he swore softly under his
breath, glancing up. “Were you so afraid I would find you?”

“Not afraid, just unsure of what to say, or
do after... after you... we...” Her voice trailed off in confusion.
Her gaze faltered. Picking up the hem of her tunic, she smoothed a
meadowsweet petal so that it would better reflect the
firelight.

“I only wanted to apologize,” he said, “and
explain... if I needed to.” There was a question in his voice, a
question she couldn’t bring herself to answer. When she said
naught, he sighed and went doggedly on. “Not that I’ve had much
luck explaining it to myself. You can be certain I never meant to
embarrass you.”

“Nor I you,” she assured him in all
earnestness, looking up.

“And I would never hurt you,” he vowed. “I
swear this on all the gods that ever were, or will ever be.”

“I was not hurt.” She hesitated slightly
before asking, “Were you?”

“Me? Hurt?” His look of surprise lasted
briefly before transforming into chagrin. He swore again and
covered his face with his hand. “Nay, sprite, I was not hurt.”

“I know ’twas not the normal course of
things,” she hurried on. “I feared when I touched you that I might
have hurt... you, when you... you—” Words failed her again. She had
witnessed all manner of couplings each Beltaine, but she’d never
heard a name put to any of them, and she—silly chit—had not thought
to ask. Nor, she now realized, had she really seen too many of the
particulars. She’d thought there was plenty of time still before
mating became of any importance.

Time had run out, though, for she was alone
with Rhiannon’s son in the soft, dark night, with the wind and the
starlight wrapping around them, the moon shining down, awaiting a
kiss she feared she might not get.

“ ’Twas foolishness, nothing more,” he said,
breaking the awkward silence and making to rise. “Come, let’s get
you home, before Aedyth sends out scouts.”

She stopped him with her hand on his wrist,
holding him. “I’m no child to do as Aedyth wishes.”

“Nor are you yet a woman for me to do with as
I wish,” he said gently, tousling her hair.

She could have hit him for that bit of
condescension, but only out of her own frustration. When he rose to
his feet, she scrambled up beside him, unwilling to let him walk
away while the scent of desire was in the air. For all his
misplaced gallantry, he still wanted to kiss her, and aye, she
could smell it, her malaise fading.