Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (49 page)

The Daur-clan had come by sea, their
sleek-sailed drakars and kharrs riding the waves like ocean mist.
Painted in blue and silver with cloudy gray sails, the ships were
one with the water and sky and were sorely needed for the task he
would set them.

Tages had brought tidings that the old men of
Anglesey were sworn to write the truth of the coming battle, to
record it for posterity and the unfolding ages.

Dark Ages they would be, if the dragons could
not be called. Naas had chosen unwisely to leave when he most
needed her. If Mychael ab Arawn did not survive his descent,
’twould be up to Rhuddlan himself, and he would need Naas’s
fire.

Trig had gone after Madron and Naas, but to
no avail. Damn wily Naas was not to be tracked, not even by a
Liosalfar captain. Trig had known well enough, though, where the
threesome were heading, and he’d sent a cadre of Ebiurrane
Liosalfar to stop them at the Weir Gate. Rhuddlan had seen the
troop there himself, when he and his band had left Nia there to
heal.

Wei had confirmed the brands on the
skraelings that had attacked his band in Tryfan, identifying them
as Slott’s. Rastaban was open, as Varga had told him, and Rhuddlan
feared the worst for Shay. Moira had paled at the boy’s capture, a
sore loss.

As Llynya had been, a sore and dangerous loss
to the Quicken-tree, verily to all the
tylwyth teg
, until
the pair of Kings Wood trackers Trig had sent after her and the
pair he had sent after Mychael had returned together. The four had
come in at dawn, bearing a tale of carnage and grim happenings. Yet
there was hope still for the sprite and the Druid boy.

“ ’Twas here.” The Kings Wood elf named
Kenric pointed on the map Rhuddlan had drawn on a square of linen.
They were next to the hearthfire, elfin captains and their lords
from every clan. Varga walked the ramparts alone, watching the sea.
The Sha-shakrieg was given a wide berth by all the
tylwyth
teg
, the ancient enemy in their midst.

“Dripshank Well,” Rhuddlan said. “They met
there?”

A glance passed between Kenric and the other
trackers. “ ’Twas no meeting, Rhuddlan. ’Twas where the deaths
began. No other tracks but the boy’s were to be found. He was on
his own, he was, and killed five in the tunnel, seven more in the
small cavern here”—he pointed again to the map—“and three here, one
a Dockalfar, his carcass showing the marks of iron stars.”

“And the bloody granite behind him as well,”
muttered Mael, another of the trackers. “Pinned him to the bloody
wall, the Druid did, with a bloody iron star.”

“Three bloody iron stars,” one of the other
trackers corrected.

“Aye, three.” Mael nodded.

“That’s where he took up with the aetheling,”
Kenric said. “We followed them down the south tunnel to the chimney
of rock that opens onto the Wall. Found sign of a fire lizard.” He
looked up from the map. “Haven’t seen one of those since before the
Wars, but she’s down there all right, which explains why they went
the way they did. No fire lizard is going into the Dangoes, no
matter the prize.” He bent back to the map. “The Wall is manned by
skraelpacks from here north. The fire lizard had a few for supper
back here by the chimney, but some of that pack escaped. This one
didn’t, though.” He held up a bent triangle of silver. “Kynor says
he was the Dark-elf who captured Llynya. ’Twas his nose, Kynor
says.”

Rhuddlan took the piece of metal and turned
it over in his hand. That any Dockalfar had survived Caerlon’s mad
potion was surprising. That they’d been deformed by the brew was
not. He’d noted the same during the causeway battle. Those few
Dark-elves driving the skraelings had all been scarred in some
bizarre way. ’Twould be fitting, if Caerlon’s treachery had been
turned back on the Dockalfar. ’Twas he who had first conjured a
skraeling. Such had been the parting of ways between the brightest
of the Dark-elves and his teacher, Ailfinn Mapp.

With all the
tylwyth teg
gathered,
Rhuddlan feared the worst for the mage. No one had seen her since
the winter solstice ceremony at Anglesey. That she’d not come to
Deri for Beltaine was not unusual. She’d known he was going to open
the weir, but as she’d said, he’d closed it without her, he could
just as well open it without her. Fifteen years of an ether seal
was as naught to Ailfinn, and she’d left him to his own devices.
The aftermath, though, the continued wildness of the
pryf
,
the breaking of the damson shafts, the disaster in Kryscaven
Crater—the mage could not yet breathe and not have felt that
tearing of the earth, or the unleashing of destruction.

For the first time, Rhuddlan was forced to
acknowledge that the direst circumstances had befallen Ailfinn,
that indeed, if not captured by the dark army forming in the earth,
she was dead, the last of the Prydion Magi, and her acolyte still
no more than a green sprite and in danger as grave as any.

“Harek,” he called to a captain of the Daur.
“Take a drakar and two kharrs under full sail to stand guard at the
Dangoes. If Mychael and Llynya come out of the ice, carry them to
the Weir Gate.” Whatever else happened, whether the Dark-elves
would rule again or nay, Dharkkum must be stopped, and for that,
Mychael would have to call the dragons home to their nest—if he
survived the Dangoes.

“Half of the remaining fleet will be moored
on Mor Sarff at the headlands of the weir,” he continued. “The
others in Merion Bay on the Irish Sea.” ’Twas a small inlet south
of the Dragon’s Mouth. In the Wars of Enchantment, the Dockalfar
had used long-ships to make strikes along the coast of the Irish
Sea as well as Mor Sarff. He would be prepared this time.

Rhuddlan had reached terms with Varga at the
Weir Gate and sent a messenger to make the run to Deseillign. If
the Lady Queen would have a dread warrior to wield a druaight
blade, the Edge of Sorrow would be brought to the shores of Mor
Sarff. Llyr, head of the Ebiurrane Liosalfar who he’d sent after
Madron and Naas, had orders to hold the women when they reached the
dark sea. They would help Mychael as they could, their traveler be
damned.

For himself, with the Troll King reigning in
Rastaban, all his paths led first to the Eye of the Dragon and to
the nameless foe who had dared to break Dharkkum’s crystal
seals.

T
he trail into the
Dangoes had grown ever longer and colder, and still Llynya kept on.
The dry corridors beyond the Magia Wall had given way to a single
wide tunnel running with water. It seeped out of the walls and
gathered into small cold streams. They stopped to refill their
gourds and for Llynya to put on her cloak.

“The deep ice is not far now.” Her breath
formed vaporous clouds when she spoke.

The fire lizard’s screeching cries had
reached them for a long time after they’d chosen their path, but
the giant tua had not followed them beyond the first stretch of
frost-shattered scree. There was no going back, though, and no
alternate tunnels or byways to the one they were taking. Mychael
welcomed the drop in temperature. He pressed his hand to the
thickening hoarfrost on the passageway walls, and water ran from
beneath his palm.

“No one comes this way?” he asked.

“Not by choice.” Llynya’s voice was muffled
by a swath of the hood she was wrapping around her head and the
lower half of her face.

“What else would bring them?”

“Necessity and death. ’Tis a place of ghosts
and the half-dead.”

“Half-dead what?” he asked warily, taking a
closer look around them as he slipped his pack off. ’Twas food he
was after, not his cloak. He doubted if he would ever be cold
again.

She shrugged. “Whatever was not ready to die
when death came.”

“Most of mankind is not ready when death
comes.”

“ ’Tis death’s choice to come here, not
man’s,” she said, glancing at him from over the top of the mask
she’d made out of the tail of her hood. “Much can be revealed in
the Dangoes of dying and such. The journey through is different for
every traveler, but Men, it seems, are particularly susceptible to
the despairs of the ice. If you’ll let me blindfold you and bind
your ears, I can spare you some of the grief that might await you
in the caverns.”

“I’ll not do you much good blindfolded,” he
chided, handing her a strip of murrey.

She took the dried fruit and adjusted the
mask below her mouth so she could eat. “You can’t fight despair
with the strength of your body, Mychael, nor with strength of
mind.”

“Have you been here before? Do you know what
lies ahead?”

“Nay.” She shook her head, chewing the murrey
and rummaging in one of her pouches. “Not for me, nor for you. I
only know what I learned from Ailfinn.”

The mention of the Prydion’s name gave him
pause. “The mage Rhuddlan has summoned to Carn Merioneth, you know
her?”

“Aye,” she said with an intriguing hesitancy,
and shook a few juniper berries into her palm.

“You know her well?”

“Aye.” The hesitation was there again. She
popped the berries in her mouth.

Coerced by the lift of his eyebrows, she
volunteered more cryptic information.

“She’s worthy of caution, she is, as are the
Dangoes. Let me at least bind your ears against the ice music.”

“I am not afraid of the ice, Llynya.”

“You should be.”

“Mayhaps,” he agreed, then asked pointedly,
“How do you know Ailfinn, and why caution?”

For a moment he thought she might refuse to
answer, so long was her reply in coming.

“She is my teacher,” she finally said, “...
and my grandmother.”

“Grandmother?” he repeated, nonplussed.

“Aye.” She shook more berries into her hand
and offered them to him.

“Nay.” He didn’t need juniper berries to keep
him warm.

She returned them to her pouch and moved her
mask back into place. When she started down the trail, though, he
put his hand out to stop her.

“You are to be a mage? A Prydion Mage?” Moira
had told him of their greatness, of their knowledge that spanned
the millenniums, how the primordial substances of the earth were
theirs to command. ’Twas disconcerting to think of Llynya in those
terms. She was his love, strong and fierce, but also that fair
elf-maiden of the mist—except a maiden no more. She’d given that
part of herself to him.

“Mayhaps,” she said. “In time. I have the
knack, if not the guise.” Her admission was direct.

“Yet you came to me for knowledge of the
weir? Does not Ailfinn know its ways?”

“Ailfinn would put me in chains and auction
me off to a Norman lord before she’d let one of her own go through
a weir gate.”

’Twas enough to assure the mage of Mychael’s
admiration and respect.

“We are bound, Llynya,” he told her. “If you
must find Morgan, and it’s through the weir you must go, you will
not go alone. I would have your promise that it is so.”

She nodded and gave her solemn oath. “I swear
by the trees and the stars. I’ll not have you pay the price I pay
for being bound to the Thief.”

Another direct admission, but one he could
have done without.

“You came to me a virgin,” he said, working
to keep the strain out of his voice. She was his, not Morgan’s.
Whatever hold the Thief had on her was more than Mychael wanted to
acknowledge.

“ ’Tis not love, Mychael,” she promised,
smoothing the scowl from his face with her hand, “and the kiss
Morgan and I shared was no more than a brushing of lips. ’Twas not
at all how you kiss me.”

He was heartened to hear that, though the
rest of her words near took the heart out of him.

“Something happened in those hours Morgan and
I spent together,” she went on. “Or mayhaps it was that Rhuddlan
put him in my care and I failed him. Three times in Deri I was
struck down by the sense of his falling, a terrible vertigo I
couldn’t escape, a madness where the very earth was not solid
beneath me, though I had my hands dug deep into the dirt. There was
no purchase to be had and no escape. The first time it happened, I
thought it was guilt rising up to claim me. I girded myself to
endure, yet was praying for death before it finally released me.
The second time, I was terrified that it had happened again. By the
third time, I feared the lot was mine to bear for life, and I knew
I could not. I came north to free myself as much as to save Morgan.
The weir is a torture, you say, a torment, and I know it to be
true, for as Morgan falls through its anguished depths, so have
I.”

Green eyes stared up at him, their
vulnerability masked by a stoic veneer. The urge to draw her close
and enfold her in his arms was strong, but he would give her more
than a fleeting comfort.

“Remember at Bala Bredd when you felt the
dragonfire?” he asked, dredging up a memory he’d hoped to
forget—that he’d dragged her into his bane and been soothed by her
presence there.

“Aye,” she said. “I heard the dragons cry. I
shared their breath with you. They are coming, Mychael. I saw Naas
calling to them from the ramparts of Carn Merioneth the night we
came up from the deep dark and the dragonfire took you.”

More than nonplussed, he was shocked. “You
heard them? Out in the world, not just in your mind?”

“Aye. I didn’t know what the white-eyed one
was up to, wasn’t sure what the keening cry was, until I heard it
again when we were joined.”

Excitement and dread surged into him. Was he
finally to meet the beasts whose blood ran in his veins?

“Do you know when they’re coming?”
Christe
, the dragons.

“Nay.”

Naas would. He was certain. Five months he’d
been with the Quicken-tree and not a word out of her. Then suddenly
she’d given him a dreamstone knife and a sennight later she was up
on the castle walls calling dragons?