Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (45 page)

Flee
, was her only thought, but before
she could push herself free of the two dead skraelings, she was
caught. A hand reached down through the tumble of bodies and hauled
her to her feet.

She knew. In an instant she knew, even before
she smelled him or saw the fall of golden hair, ’twas Mychael
pulling her to his side.

With a quick, upward stroke, he slit
Ratskin’s throat, silencing the Dark-elf’s screams. His next strike
cut the last of her bonds. Then he released her and sheathed his
knife to nock an arrow into his bow.

“What’s the best way out of here?” he asked,
his breathing ragged, his attention on the small pouch he was
ripping from his belt. He skewered the pouch with the arrow and a
burst of lavender and roses suffused the air.

“To the south,” she said, recognizing the
simple she’d given him.

He nodded once, then drew his bow and sent
the bag of flowers flying into the north tunnel. Petals fluttered
from the rent in the cloth, laying a false trail for the rapidly
approaching skraelings.

He grabbed her and made to run, but was too
late. The pack was nearly upon them. The south tunnel ran straight
for a quarterlan; they would be spotted before they could make the
first bend in the trail. He turned instead to a large crack on the
northside wall and pushed her toward it. The only thing worse
Llynya could think of was to be recaptured by the skraelings.

Swearing silently to herself, she dashed to
retrieve Ratskin’s dreamstone and her sword, then in she went,
pushing deep to make room for Mychael. The wisdom of the course was
proved when a skraeling passed the opening at almost the same
moment that Mychael climbed in behind her. She shoved Ratskin’s
dagger inside her tunic, praying that the wavering light of the
skraeling’s torch had hidden the crystal’s fading glow.

They would know soon enough.

For a crack, their hiding place was generous,
but still no more than a tear in the rock. She and Mychael were
jammed together at the farthest end they could reach, both of them
breathing heavily, the smell of blood and fear swirling around
them.

Outside, the skraeling disappeared without so
much as a glance in their direction, assurance that he’d not seen
the light. Relief flooded through Llynya, sweet, weakening relief.
Her knees buckled, and Mychael caught her to him, his arm
encircling her waist and pulling her close. ’Twas not a good time
for tears, but they came, hot and wet, sliding down her cheeks as
she clung to him—so like a maid, so unlike a warrior.

Ratskin was dead.

Mychael had saved her.

She’d thought never to see him again, never
to be with him again. She’d avoided him after their tryst in the
forest, not trusting herself to be strong enough to walk away a
second time. His kisses had touched her too deeply. His desire had
aroused her own too quickly, and the sense of completion she’d
found in his arms had been too profound. ’Twas the one thing she
had no room for in her life, for she knew ’twas the one thing that
could sway her from her course—the blossoming of desire into
love.

Yet he was here with her now, and she would
not let him go again.

More of the enemy piled up in the passage
with Frey in their midst, shouting and swearing. It wasn’t the loss
of Ratskin he bewailed, but the loss of her. The aetheling. Slott’s
supper. She trembled anew each time the Dark-elf called her such,
and each time, Mychael pulled her closer. Closer ’til she felt his
every breath in the rise and fall of his chest. Closer ’til her
senses were filled with him, the scent and wonder of him—and the
heat.

Too much heat.

She looked up, wiping at her tears. He was
still watching the tunnel, his face drawn in dark, beautiful lines,
the flashes of passing torchlight casting him in harsh shadows that
deepened the angles of his cheekbones and turned the stripe in his
hair to molten copper.

With her other hand, she touched his left
side, where he was scarred, and she knew immediately what ferocity
had impaled Ratskin to solid stone—dragonfire. Mychael’s body was
alive with it, his muscles hardened in the flames of it. He
flinched under even her gentle touch, but she did nor remove her
hand. Rather, she slipped it beneath his tunic and pressed harder,
trying to absorb some of the heat into herself.

“Sticks,” she muttered. ’Twas a hopeless
tactic, a skill beyond her training, and he’d destroyed the simple
she’d given him.

Outside in the forked passageway, Frey took
the bait of the northern tunnel and ordered the pack to march.
Torches moved across the face of the crack, filling the opening
with alternate bands of light and darkness, and Llynya dared to
hope. If whatever had terrified the tua did not attack them from
behind before the skraelpack was gone, they might yet escape.

When the last torch passed, Mychael turned
from watching the passage and locked his gaze onto her. ’Twas
fierce and unnaturally bright. Instinct compelled her to retreat,
despite the rock wall at her back, but his arm tightened around
her.

He was wild, aright, wilder than even
Rhuddlan knew. The truth of it burned like a living flame in his
eyes.

With a deliberateness she didn’t at first
understand, he brought his hand to her brow and drew one finger
down the middle of her face to the tip of her nose. Still holding
her gaze, he traced the curve of one eyebrow, arcing the line
across her temple and down her cheek to the center of her chin—and
with that sinuous caress, his meaning became clear. Warmth suffused
her. Her pulse raced, though not with fear. Lastly, he smoothed his
thumb across her lips, gently, from one side of her mouth to the
other.

’Twas the silent language of a Liosalfar
warrior, and his words were simple—
you... are... mine.

“Aye,” she whispered, knowing the truth of it
down to the core of her being. She was his.

He touched her mouth once more, then bent his
head to kiss her, to take the prize he’d won. She welcomed him with
parted lips, rising against him and melting into his embrace. The
Druid boy was her love, and she would have him.

He smelled of blood and the fight, and of
time and the forest, and she accepted it all, let all that was
Mychael flow through her senses. He smelled of desire, the path of
mystery into enchantment. She would take him there again, into the
enchantment they had made, and show him wonders no mortal man had
yet imagined.

Aye, when his mouth moved over hers, she
longed for the chance to make him hers forever. She would bind him
with spells, and potions, and soft words of love, and in the
binding, herself be bound to his dragon’s heart.

M
ychael and Llynya
stopped at the end of the southern tunnel, both of them breathing
hard from their long run. Thousands of tua had stopped with them
and clung to the walls all around, their delicate, pale throats
pumping, their smoothly eyeless heads bobbing. Like the cavern far
behind them, the tunnel emptied out onto the Magia Wall via a
sheer, vertical drop through a hole in the floor. Four times on
their run, she and Mychael had fought their way through a dense
infestation of the cave lizards, only to have the little buggers
overtake them in a panicked wave and alight a quarterlan ahead of
them. Now there was no place left to run.

They’d lost Frey and his skraelpack, and for
that Llynya was grateful, but they were far from safe. She had only
to look to the tua to know that. Tension skittered like chain
lightning between the small reptiles, and Lacknose was somewhere on
the Wall with skraelings of his own.

“What drives them?” Mychael begged to know.
He fell back against the wall with a pained gasp, one hand wrapped
around his middle. Tua scattered in all directions.

Sweat beaded his brow. Exhaustion lined his
face, and Llynya wished they dared stop long enough for him to
rest.

They did not. The lizards were amassing again
even as she watched, making ready for another dash, with the only
way
down
.

“Sticks,” she swore under her breath, pacing
the edge of the wide hole at their feet. The tua might survive a
willy-nilly drop down its throat, but she and Mychael would
not.

To him, she said, “I don’t know. The
pryf
avoid Dripshank Well because of the open water, so they
don’t often get into the tunnels north of the nest. And for certes
the old worm couldn’t be chasing tua down the narrow track we took
out of Dripshank.”

“I don’t smell any worms,
pryf
or
otherwise,” Mychael said. “I smell tua, and the smell is stronger
behind us than it is in here where we’re surrounded by them.”

’Twas an odd truth, what he said. The pungent
musty scent was more potent where they’d been than where they were,
where she couldn’t move a step without a hundred tua skittering
away. She cast a wary glance back into the tunnel. Something was
back there. The tua knew what, and it frightened them.

Of a sudden, the lizards went from frightened
to terrorized and launched themselves down the dark hole in droves,
wave after wave, scrambling over one another in their desire to
flee. Startled, Llynya grabbed for Mychael, and they held
themselves against the rushing tide of white-skinned beasts. In
seconds ’twas over, and the two of them were alone, except for the
few tua who had not made the desperate leap through the hole in the
Magia Wall—mayhaps, like Llynya herself, doubting that the great
cavern would give them safety.

“Godsblood,” Mychael swore, staring down the
dark passage from whence they’d come.

“
Shadana
,” she agreed.

They looked at each other, and Mychael
shrugged off his pack.

“You first,” he said, snapping out the length
of rope hooked to the outside of his pack. With a few quick moves,
he secured the rope to a projection of rock, using a modified
hitch.

“No, you go first,” she insisted. “You’re
hurt.”

He met her gaze with a grim smile curving his
mouth. “I’m not hurt. I’m on fire,
cariad
.”

The endearment, though roughly spoken, was
not missed even when tied to his dire revelation. She reached out a
hand in comfort, and his smile faded. In a step, he had her pulled
into his arms, his mouth coming down on hers. What there was
between them could not be sated with a kiss, yet Llynya felt a deep
and healing relief to touch him so, to share the heat of his mouth
as she would share all of him.

Lost in his embrace, she was nearly a second
too late in escaping the danger that snaked out of the tunnel.

Warned by the tail end of a raspy hiss, she
yelped and leaped back, pushing Mychael toward the wall with the
same action.

He swore and ducked as the long carnelian
sliver of a tongue lashed out again from the black depths of the
tunnel, its forked tip searching for warmth and a taste of prey.
Like a whip, it was, the crack of it softened by sibilant hissing.
A fear-frozen tua was its first victim, snapped off the wall with a
lightning-quick flick, snared by the sticky tip that recoiled into
the tunnel with its flailing supper in tow.

Mychael grabbed her in the reprieve and
shoved her into the hole. She slid down the chimney of rock on the
rope, barely touching the walls, praying Lacknose wasn’t at the
bottom waiting for them. Mychael was coming down behind her, and
coming down behind Mychael was the red tongue, searching to and fro
with each uncoiling. Of the beast who owned the dread thing, they
saw naught.

Llynya came out of the hole and dropped a
good ten feet to the rock plain flanking the great Magia Wall. She
landed on her feet and looked first to the west. Her own dreamstone
blade flickered back at her in the darkness, a small dot of blue
light among the torches making their way along the Wall. Her mouth
tightened. She wanted her blade back, but it wasn’t to be hers on
this day. There were too many of them for her and Mychael to
fight—and there was the beast above them.

Unlike where she and Shay had descended from
the other cavern, the Wall beyond the southern tunnel was a huge,
open passage with a ceiling ten times higher than the walls of Carn
Merioneth, with the mighty ridge of the Magia Wall running for
miles down its entire length. The rock plain on either side of the
ridge was beset with gaping, rough-edged canyons whose sides were
littered with boulders fallen from the ceiling. Vitreous rose
quartz ran through the walls and across the floor between thick
bands of granite, picking up the yellow dreamstone and adding a
faint glow to the passage. When Mychael dropped out of the shaft,
his blue light joined hers, and the cavern took on a greenish
cast.

His first word upon landing was an oath. His
second was a command.

“Fireline!”

Aye, she thought. Let Lacknose deal with the
tua’s terror.

They ran a short distance and began a line
out of reach of the tongue, until the beast itself should emerge
from the chimney. The torches coming down the Wall from the west
were advancing more quickly, drawn, she guessed, by Ratskin’s
blade. The hissing grew in strength as the creature climbing down
the shaft labored closer and closer. Mychael had the only fireline
makings, Llynya having been banned from the caves. She took his
gourd of
hadyn draig
and shook the seed out onto the floor.
’Twas no sense trying to incise a groove in quartz and granite, so
the dragon seed fell where it would with Mychael doing his best to
cover it with
roc tan
.

When time was to be had, a fireline was
layered to add depth and longevity to the flames, steps four and
five of Trig’s teachings. Step six was the addition of color to
name the maker of the line. Llynya started the step four layer
against Mychael’s protest.