Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (55 page)

“H
ere? Or there?”
Naas murmured to herself, looking from one narrow crack in the
quartz to the next one farther down on the tunnel wall.

“There,” a voice said from over her shoulder.
Snit was his name, so he’d told her, and ’twas a bargain he’d made
for his freedom.

A sturdy little trap it had been, Naas
thought with satisfaction. He liked his cloak well enough, and for
the price of a new tunic and boots—with runic-inscribed silver
rings tinkling from their laces—he’d promised his help and his
company on their trek to the gates.

’Twas taking a bit longer than Naas had
planned, though, to find the cache she sought. They had been up one
side of the Canolbarth and down the other, a good trick of late.
Soldiers were everywhere, and she knew she, too, must soon hasten
to the weir. Sounds of battle were echoing through the rock. The
tylwyth teg
could hold against the skraelings, of that she
had no doubt, but Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas were cresting the waves
of the Irish Sea, and none alive were prepared for the dragons in
their battle against Dharkkum, not even Mychael ab Arawn, not
yet.

Messengers were continually being sent from
Mor Sarff to Merioneth, and she heard the passing news. Fighting
was rampant all along the eastern wall of the Serpent Sea and north
along the Wall into Dripshank Well. Twice the skraelings had been
repelled from the damson cliffs, but the
pryf
nest had been
invaded and a skraelpack was yet holding out in the labyrinth.
Lanbarrdein had been breached from beneath the falls by boat and
barge, and Slott was sitting upon the King’s Pool throne.

The Druid boy had come out of the ice. He and
Llynya had sailed onto the sandy shores beneath the gates mere
hours ahead of the Troll King and his Dockalfar captains.

“There, ye think?” she asked, pointing down
the tunnel to the next band of rose quartz.

Snit nodded at her side. A raggedy man-boy he
was, more fully grown than he appeared, sharp-eyed and sharp-nosed,
with dark scraggly hair and thickly lashed green eyes. He had a
fif
braid tied with a Quicken-tree riband, and his dagger
was always ready to hand.

“It’ll be a squeeze,” she warned. “But if ye
find the book, the reward will be great.”

“Boons and prizes, ye said.” The retort came
back at her with a narrowed gaze.

Naas cackled. “Oh, I’ve got baubles and
pretties aplenty for ye. Aplenty, oh, aye.”

Following along behind them, Madron watched
the byplay with barely restrained impatience. Naas and the boy had
searched a hundred places in the Canolbarth so far, all to no
avail. They were looking for a book, and though Naas had not named
the tome, Madron knew there were few books of such importance that
they could keep the old woman from the battle raging below. ’Twas
one of the Seven Books of Lore. It had to be, specifically, the
Chandra Yeull Le
, the Yellow Book of Chandra, the Merioneth
priestesses’ book.

Three of the Seven Books had been presumed
lost for centuries, if not millennia. Naas, though, would not have
kept the
Elhion Bhaas Le
from Ailfinn, and in truth, no
lonely hole in stone could have kept the Indigo Book hidden from
the Prydion Mage on its own. Great intent had been required to
conceal the mage’s book of secrets. The
Treo Veill Le
, the
Green Book of Trees, had been lost in the weir, lost in time,
leaving only the priestess tome unaccounted for.

Why Naas suddenly needed the
Chandra Yeull
Le
when she’d known—at least generally—where it was, and why
she hadn’t brought it forth before now, was a mystery Madron would
like answered, though ’twould surely be at Naas’s discretion. The
crone did not bend to anyone’s will, and she’d spoken to no one
except Snit since they’d come below. Nearly as intriguing, and for
certes more disturbing, Naas had taken Mychael’s Red Book of Doom
from the Druid boy’s hiding place in the boar pit and brought it
with them, along with the newly recovered Blue Book of the
Magi.

Madron had thought it a blessing to have
known the whereabouts of the Red Book, but to be suddenly close to
having three of the seven at hand gave rise to all sorts of
possibilities. There was power in knowledge, and the Seven Books
were steeped in knowledge from the Ages of Wonders and the Dark
Age, times so far in the past they were lost to this world—except
mayhaps in dreams, where memories that were passed down through the
blood were wont to rise.

As to Naas’s newfound confidant, Madron had
known about the will-o’-the-wisp and somewhat of his origins, but
unlike Naas, she had not felt a need to trap him. Ceridwen and
Lavrans had both spoken of their friend in need who had seen them
safely through the bowels of Balor during the battle, and then
disappeared.

“Up with ye then,” Naas said when they
reached the second vein of quartz and its narrow crack.

Corvus Gei came forward and helped the ragged
boy up into the opening.

Madron watched the small hunchbacked figure
disappear into the luminescent stone with Naas’s dreamstone. ’Twas
on the hilt of her dagger like the other Quicken-tree’s, but Madron
kept hers on a gold chain. For her purposes, a necklace was a more
subtle means of enchantment.

At her side, Corvus did not appear to be
suffering from the same impatience that beset her. He’d been very
subdued since descending into the caverns.

And who in his position wouldn’t be? she
thought, knowing what awaited him. The pouch of universal salts
she’d been instructed to bring weighed heavily on her mind, if not
her girdle. Rhuddlan had sealed the tunnels that led into the Weir
Gate, but Naas was not concerned with ether seals. The battle was
to be considered, but battle alone was no deterrent to their goal.
Morgan ab Kynan, the Thief of Cardiff, had met his doom in the very
midst of battle.

A journey through hell, Corvus had called the
wormhole, and his greatest desire to descend again was near to
being granted. Madron knew all the Christian visions and levels of
hell, having spent many years in Usk Abbey in South Wales. Corvus
must know the same from his time on Ynys Enlli, yet he still used
the horrific place to describe what awaited him.

“Hand me your light, child,” Naas said, her
hand out for Madron’s dreamstone.

Madron slipped the chain over her head and
gave the crystal to the old woman, as anxious as she to see if the
book would be found.

“How are ye, Snit?” Naas called into the
nether regions of the crack.

The muttered reply she got in return seemed
to suffice. She set up a tuneless humming and absently looked up
and down the tunnel. When her gaze settled again on the opening,
she bent forward and rapped Madron’s dreamstone on the quartz, and
a sudden vibration set the whole vein of rock humming, the sound of
it streaking down into the darkness behind the little hunchback,
until a cracking sound rent the air and he let out a squeal.

“Well, there ye have it,” she said. “Just a
cheap priestess spell.”

“ ’Twas a seal?” Madron asked, surprised.

“Aye. One not meant to last so long.”

“For the
Chandra Yeull Le
?”

Naas shot her a discerning glance. “Don’t
look so smug, child.”

“But I thought the book was stolen by a
Douvan king.”

“And what do you think the price was for its
return?”

The price must have been great, Madron
thought. No king would squander such a prize, and no wonder the
priestesses had hidden it and let the world go on believing it lost
to thievery.

But would it still be where they’d put it?
Thousands of years had passed. Their Age and all its glory had
disappeared but for the remnants lingering in Merioneth. For certes
their seal had not held—if the white-eyed woman had finally chosen
the right spot to look.

Naas suddenly cocked her head.

“Rich, rich, rich,” came the sound of Snit’s
voice echoing off the crystal walls of the narrow passage through
the rock. ’Twas accompanied by the soft tramping of his feet.
“Baubles, she said. Pretties, she said. Rich, rich, rich.”

Corvus stepped forward, and Naas lifted
Madron’s dreamstone high to light the opening. Quick enough, Snit
was there and handing over a cloth-bound package nearly half his
size.

Naas’s hands trembled as she set it on the
floor and began untying the ribands holding the wrapping in place.
Slowly, the layers of silvery green cloth slipped away, revealing
the unmistakable luster of gold and a fortune’s worth of sapphires,
amethysts, garnets, and pearls. The jewels encrusted the hammered
gold cover in a symmetrical pattern, leaving hardly a place bare of
brilliance. Beads of gold outlined the border and drew the eye into
the cover’s central gold figure, a naked woman. Stars shot out from
the hands of her outstretched arms; a crescent moon crowned her
head. Rivers of milk flowed from her breasts. From her womb came
the peoples of the earth and all the beasts, man and animal alike
twined ’round with flowering vines that sank their roots deep into
the earth she stood upon. Radiance surrounded her, fine lines
depicting light chased into the gold like the sun’s rays.

“Now we can go to the gates of time,” the old
woman said, gathering the priestess book into her arms.

~ ~ ~

Mychael slogged through the sands of Mor
Sarff. Dead skraelings were everywhere, and indeed, in places their
blood poured like small rivers into the Serpent Sea. Battle had
helped bring him around from his odd detachment, as had the sleep
he had gotten on the Daur ship, but his blood still ran strangely
cold, and his skin was not so warmly flesh-toned as it should have
been. He had an icy grip on his sword. ’Twas as if his dragonfire,
the source of so many of his doubts and so much of his pain, had
gone out, smothered by the dark smoke.

If ’twas true, he should feel free, when all
he felt was bereft. He’d lost something vital in the Dangoes,
something of his life. It had been taken by the swart thread of
darkness that had descended in the ice cave.

Llyr shouted at him from up on the wall of
the
pryf
nest, pointing to the southeast. Mychael looked,
then waved back at the Ebiurrane lord. The Kings Wood elves were
returning from Dripshank Well, and Mychael had been given orders to
use them to hold the eastern shore.

The Dockalfar and their skraelpacks had
retreated back onto their ships. ’Twas the third time the
tylwyth teg
had repelled them. Each time it took the enemy
longer to regroup, and Llyr had ordered rest and food in the
interim before the next assault.

Fires were lit all along the shoreline, from
the rocky cliffs of Lanbarrdein to where the Magia Wall bordered
Mor Sarff on the east. The great expanse of the damson cliffs
shimmered with dreamstone light, with flames from the fires
reflecting on the crystal trails cut into its face. Treilo of the
Wydden had arrived during the last attack and his troops had routed
Slott from the King’s Pool throne. The Troll King now sat on his
barge, floating again on the Serpent Sea. He was such a daunting
sight, overlarge with his tail slapping against the waves and
raising fountains of water, his cries of hunger sending a shiver
down every elf’s spine, that Llyr had wondered aloud if he’d not
been better left in Lanbarrdein where none could see him.

There were still skraelings in the
pryf
nest, but those the worms hadn’t crushed were being
searched out by the Red-leaf clan.

The Daur had moored their ships along the
coast, from Lanbarrdein to the crystal-cliffed headland of the Weir
Gate. The ships of the Dockalfar had clashed with theirs on every
assault, with two kharrs lost to three of the skraeling halvskips.
Those of the Daur crews who hadn’t drowned were fighting with the
Quicken-tree on the sands, for ’twas Trig who had held the gates of
time against the repeated invasions.

Everywhere along the shore and cliffs,
Liosalfar were taking their repast and tending to their wounds. At
the first notice of battle, Nia had been taken to Merioneth to be
cared for by Aedyth and Moira. Few others were left above beyond
mothers and children.

Llynya was with the Quicken-tree on the sand.
She was sitting with a group of Liosalfar around one of the fires,
sharing a silver flask of the Red-leaf’s potent brew. Her hair was
messier than usual, more unbound, dark swaths of it falling to her
waist. Dirt streaked her face. Mychael started to lift his hand to
her as he passed, but a chill rippled through him, killing the
impulse before he could act on it, and his hand remained at his
side.

She’d been hurt. One of the warriors was
tending a cut on her arm. She winced as the Liosalfar smoothed
rasca
on the wound, and a spark of some nameless emotion
flickered in his breast. Then it, too, passed, and he walked on,
rubbing a hand down his left side, trying to bring warmth to the
cold scar that had once held dragonfire.

Shay had come only a few hours behind Treilo,
bearing both joyous and somber tidings. The mere sight of him had
cheered the Quicken-tree. Ailfinn had been found and freed, he told
them, which heartened all the
tylwyth teg
, for even the most
battle weary among them smelled the thickening smoke drifting up
from the south. ’Twas to this, the deadliest threat, that the
Prydion Mage had set herself, taking Rhuddlan, Wei, Owain, and the
Sha-shakrieg as her companions to Kryscaven Crater. The elves would
not have their king to lead them in this battle—and mayhaps never
again. None underestimated the danger Ailfinn was leading her
company into by taking them to the southern basin.

Mychael, too, smelled the reeking smoke. He’d
seen the dark, ephemeral wisps floating in on the waves, forming
and re-forming with the vagaries of the wind. He’d felt their cold
caress during battle, tiny brushes of the lifeless night blown
leeward onto the shore.