Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (51 page)

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They were lost. Lost in the ice.

Mychael had Llynya pulled close under his
cloak on his left side, sharing with her what warmth remained from
his dragonfire. They needed to stop and rest, but he was delaying
as long as possible. Sleeping in the Dangoes was at best a mixed
bag of grief and dreams, dreams of death. At the worst, ’twas a
deadly danger, and not only from the cold.

Fell spirits moved through the ice, shadows
rippling beneath the frozen surface of the walls. In places,
spidery cracks released the spirits’ breath, and the breath would
twine and twist its way into vaporous bones that snagged and
snared. ’Twas always Llynya the bony little fingers went for, never
him. They curled ’round her ankles and tried to circle her wrists.
They caressed her skin and left it pale and icy to the touch. A
quick flash of dreamstone light or a slash with a blade was enough
to hold them at bay, but it took diligence, and exhaustion was no
friend to diligence. As a precaution, he’d taken Ara and bound the
dagger to Llynya’s hand with a strip of cloth cut from his cloak.
He’d taken the Dockalfar dagger for himself, having less faith in
its desire to protect a Light-elf.

Their food was running low, and both their
strengths. All of the deep dark did not seem as long as the trail
they’d made wandering through the frozen caverns of the
Dangoes.

“No more, Mychael,” she said when they came
out of a tunnel into yet one more small cave. The weariness in her
voice brought him to a halt. “We have to rest.”

Aye, she was right. He looked around them,
checking the ice. Three other tunnels led out of the cave. He moved
the dreamstone blade in a slow arc, and yellow light reflected back
at him in a shape-shifting circle. The walls were clearer here than
in other places they’d been, and for certes ’twould do him good
just to hold her.

“We’ll make tea, and I have some murrey.”
’Twas the best offer he could make. She could sleep, if she wished,
but he preferred not to slip into dreams again while still in the
ice.

Yet sleep did come to him after their slim
repast. With Llynya bound inside his cloak and his arms, and the
smell of lavender teasing his memories, he dreamed of her and
grassy meadows, of warm sunshine and the wind rustling through the
trees. Then, in a dark transformation, the warmth became heat, and
the sunlight became flames licking up around him. The sound of the
wind in the trees became the sound of battle, the clashing of arms
and the cries of men. He looked for dragons in the sky and found
none, only the walls of Merioneth burning down around him.

His father, Arawn, was on the wall-walk, his
face a stark mask of dread. Mychael followed his line of sight to
the upper bailey, and with terrifying clarity realized ’twas no
fantastical Dangoes death-dream he was seeing, but the actual fall
of Carn Merioneth. A giant of a blond-haired man was butchering a
path across the yard, Gwrnach, his mother’s cousin. Mychael
remembered him from childhood. The stables had been set afire, and
the screams of horses cut through the rising dawn. Bloody combat
raged in every corner, but ’twas to the doorway of the keep that
Arawn lifted his hand and commanded him to look.

Mychael tried not to, tried to pull himself
back from the hot, reeking vision, knowing ’twas some horrific act
of carnage awaiting him between the great oak doors of Merioneth’s
hall.

But see it he would.

His father’s name rang out in a keening wail,
in his mother’s voice, and Mychael’s head jerked around. A scream
tore from his own throat, but too late, too late. He saw Rhiannon’s
eyes in that last moment between rape and death, saw the light and
the terror fade from their soft gray depths. The last of her tears
streamed across her fair cheeks and ran in salty rivulets down her
neck to pool in the tender hollow of her throat. Her hand lay on
her breast, a feeble protection from the blade that had pierced her
heart. On her middle finger was a ring engraved with symbols of the
weir, and after taking her life, her murderer took her ring.

Mychael looked up to see the man’s face. Wild
blue-green eyes shot through with icy flecks of white and gold
stared back at him. Long blond hair whipped around the man’s
contorted visage, but the features were instantly recognizable and
forever fixed in Mychael’s mind. He was the destroyer’s son,
Gwrnach’s spawn. He was Caradoc, the Boar of Balor.

He lunged for the man’s throat and awoke with
his own battle cry echoing up and down the cave. Slabs of ice slid
off the walls and crashed onto the floor, shaken from their eternal
hold by the fierce agony in his voice.

A frozen rain showered down on him where he
stood, covering him in white shards of ice. He looked around,
blindly searching, but his hands were empty. Caradoc was gone. The
dream was over.

The sprite was on her feet, turning away from
him, her sword drawn against a danger that was only in his heart.
When naught came out of the tunnels, she lowered her blade.

Mychael fell to his knees, fearing he was
going to be sick. His mother, his beautiful mother. Her golden hair
streaked with blood. Her body hewn and defiled. The pain was too
much to bear. He covered his face with his hands, rocking back and
forth, and raised his voice in an anguished cry. More ice crashed
down from the ceiling.

Llynya looked to Mychael, her heart pounding
in her chest, her breath coming short and fast. He wasn’t hurt;
there was no mark of blood on him, yet death itself was in his cry.
She checked the tunnels again, her sword point dragging in the ice.
She’d jumped away from him when he’d let out his first
bloodcurdling yell, expecting an attack. But there was naught, only
Mychael, her beloved Mychael, beset by the Dangoes
death-dreams.

To her left, a huge chunk of ice sloughed off
the wall with a ripping roar and crashed against the wall on the
right. It broke into a thousand pieces, filling up the northern
tunnel with frozen rubble. Shards of the ceiling rained down all
around.

Shadana!
He was going to bury them
with his pain.

She tried singing to him, but without him
holding her, she was too cold. Her teeth chattered and she couldn’t
draw enough of the freezing air into her lungs to make a clear
note.

And still his cries shook the ice.

A crack split open at her feet, snaking down
the length of the cavern and growing ever wider.

She leaped to his side of the crack and
grabbed hold of him. “Mychael!” The floor shook beneath her, and
her voice grew frantic. Gods! What had he seen? “Mychael! W-we have
to leave! N-now!”

Another slab of the ceiling came crashing
down, spraying them with stinging bits of ice. They were going to
be trapped. The next fall of ice exploded at her feet, shattering
into millions of sharp-edged crystals, and in the midst of the
frozen rain, his keening cries became sobs.

She dropped to her knees beside him.
“Mychael. Mychael.”

He didn’t answer her other than to draw her
into his arms and hold her close. He buried his face in the crook
of her neck, his hair falling in a golden skein across his
shoulder.

“Mychael,” she crooned, warmed by his touch
and his tears.

With every creak and groan of the walls, she
expected a final fall of ice to crush them both. Still she held
him, working her way deeper into his arms, taking of his warmth and
giving him comfort, and letting time pass them by.

She dozed and awoke to silence, except for
the sound of their breathing. The walls had stopped creaking. Piles
of broken ice littered the cavern floor, and the northern tunnel
was completely blocked. They’d come out of the western passageway.
So the decision of which way to go had been narrowed to the south
and the east.

“Mychael?” She roused him gently. They had to
get out of the ice.

“Aye.” He tightened his hold on her and
kissed the side of her neck, then her cheek. His arms were strong
about her, his muscles flexing with iron hardness, but his voice
was hoarse.

“We have to go on.”

He nodded and silently rose to his feet,
helping her up and shouldering his pack. Without so much as a
glance around the cave, he chose the eastern tunnel, his steps
surer than they’d been in three days, as if he knew the way
out.

The passageway gradually curved from east to
southeast, and the ice changed. The tunnels became wider, the ice
more flowing and trickier to navigate. Above them, the ceilings
were filled with long, thin needlelike icicles, each one looking
sharp enough to impale a man or a Light-elf. As they passed beneath
them, the icicles set up a vibration, a low humming that caused the
hair on Llynya’s nape to rise. Ice music.

Mychael strode resolutely forward, seemingly
oblivious to the eerie sound that grew ever louder.

“Can you hear the ice?” she asked when the
noise took on a melody. ’Twas making her twitch inside, insinuating
itself into her thoughts and creating a sense of aloneness. She
tightened her grip on his hand.

“Aye. I can hear it.” He pulled her closer. “
’Tis a sad and despairing thing, but we’re not far now. Hold on.
I’m with you.”

Not far from the end of the Dangoes? she
wanted to ask. And how did he know? But if the path had come to him
in his dream, she was leery of reminding him, especially with those
needles poised above them. She would ask him someday what
death-dream he’d seen in the ice cave, but she preferred to hear
his answer under an open sky, surrounded by trees.

The next turn in the passage wiped the
questions from her mind. Mychael stopped as suddenly as she, the
two of them halting on the frozen lip of a huge cavern. It
stretched out below them, mayhaps a thousand feet across, its walls
streaked with great ribbons of sea-green ice running through layers
of white frost. Its ceiling was hundreds of feet above them and
completely encrusted with slender, trembling icicles. A frigid wind
and waves of ice music rushed out of the cave and washed over them,
the cold breath of the earth and a wordless symphony of sound.
Somewhere in the far distance, they could hear the sea. The ice was
ending, but no words of relief came to her, only a calm horror at
what she saw.

The cave was a burial ground. Columns of
dreadfully clear ice rose from the floor, and inside each column
was a body frozen in its death throes.

“Sticks,” she whispered.

Mychael surveyed the cavern’s gruesome
gallery dispassionately, his heart nearly as frozen as the
ice-encased souls below. After watching his mother die, he dared
not feel anything beyond his determination to get Llynya out of the
Dangoes. They would have to rope down with her rope, their
last.

There were no dripshanks for a belay, and the
walls were all smooth ice. Under his direction, they used their
dreamstones to melt a small pool of water. It quickly froze again,
but with the tail of Llynya’s rope in it.

“You first,” he said, testing the rope
against his weight. She eyed the long drop. “I went first last
time.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” he assured her,
apparently to no avail.

“Why don’t we go down together?”

“The rope won’t hold both of us. I’m not even
sure it’s going to hold one of us.”

She looked over the edge again, concern
furrowing her brow.

She was no coward. He knew that down to his
bones, but something was bothering her.

“They’re all dead, Llynya.”

“Aye, I know. But something’s moving around
down there.”

He walked over to the edge and knelt down,
taking a good look. The wind was picking up, batting the rope
against the cliff face, and the ice music was spiraling to a
crescendo. Wisps of icy vapor that smelled of the sea were blowing
around the cavern, swirling up here and there, but of an actual
something moving around, he saw naught. Their dreamstones were
casting shadows, the light glinting off the columns of dead and
throwing their own shade onto the floor, but dreamstone shadows
wouldn’t hurt them, and the bodies in the ice were frozen
solid.

’Twas the ice music that decided him.
Whatever grand finale it was building up to, he wanted to be out of
the cave before it got there. The frozen song was a despairing
force, an eerie melody that fed his weariness. And mayhaps that was
what stayed Llynya. Mayhaps the ice music was sowing her
doubts.

“We dare not delay,” he told her. “If you
want, I’ll go first.” He hated to do it. His greater weight would
weaken the rope’s hold in the ice, increasing the likelihood of her
falling.

“Nay,” she said. “You’re right. We’ll both
more safely make the floor if I go first.”

She took hold of the rope and began lowering
herself over the side. Mychael held the belay against her
weight.

When she reached the bottom, she waved once,
and he started down the icy expanse, using Ratskin’s blade for
light. There was little purchase to be had on the cliff face,
making the descent more a matter of strength than finesse. Halfway
down, the wind picked up in force, swirling the vapor into ever
thickening clouds. With each new gust, he momentarily lost sight of
Llynya. He started moving faster, sliding down the rope, the
friction burning his hands.

“Llynya!” he hollered when the mist failed to
clear after the last blast of wind.

A strangled cry was his only answer. He was
moving as fast as he dared without dropping into a dead fall
through the clouds, but it wasn’t fast enough. He still couldn’t
see her.

“Llynya!” he shouted again. He felt a quick
tug on the rope. In the next instant, he was fighting to keep his
hold as the rope was snapped and cracked by something far more
powerful than the Light-elf. Twice he was slammed into the ice. The
clouds churned and darkened beneath him, and a palpable malevolence
rose up the cliff face.