Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (57 page)

He near jumped out of his skin. He did let
out a startled sound, which set the crone to cackling.

“Hear now, hear now. No need to fret. Once
yer in the hole, you’ll not keep yer wits about ye for more’n a
bit. No more’n a sleep is it after that, a nice long sleep.”

Small comfort, for he remembered “the bit”
before sleep very clearly—painfully, terrifyingly clearly.

“Eat,” she reminded him, giving his arm a
jiggle.

He looked down at the bag in his hand. “All
of it?”

Her answer startled him anew. “Well, let me
see, then.” She snatched the bag away from him and hefted it in her
hand. “Ah, now, ’tis true that havin’ the perfect weight of it in
yer body is important, quite vital. So many grains of salt for so
many stone o’ weight.” She pinched him around the middle, gauging
his weight, he supposed. A worried frown creased his forehead.
“They must’ve given ye a just so amount when they dropped ye the
first time, eh?”

And she had just told him to eat a bag’s
worth, and was now trying to figure his weight with a few hard
pinches.

“In solution,” he told her, slipping out of
his rucksack. Water ran off the pack and pooled on the floor where
he set it. Terror or no, he was going. He’d carried her books for
her, and a goodly share of their supplies, but he’d also been
allowed to bring a few of his own things. One was a scale, roughly
calibrated, true, but a scale he’d devised for just this purpose—to
measure the chrystaalt, providing he had any when the time
came.

He put the scale on the rock floor next to
the pack, and for the first time, noticed the intricately incised
grooves snaking around the rim of the weir. More mystery, he
thought, running his hand over the elaborate pattern.

“No time for that,” Naas clucked. “Get on
with it.”

He’d planned on making the leap even without
chrystaalt, but faced with the reality of the deed, he wondered if
he would have had the courage, or if the lack of it would have been
the voice of reason telling him to stay.

The precise calculations for figuring the
amount of salts were in Nemeton’s book, and Corvus had figured it
thousands of times for his body weight, checking and rechecking,
and all the while wondering where he would ever find the
chrystaalt.

He took the bag from Naas and carefully
poured some into one of the scale’s pans. It was similar to sodium
chloride, only heavier grained and with a yellow cast. The crone
knelt down and added a pinch more, then another, and another, until
the bag was empty and his roughly calibrated scale was perfectly
imbalanced.

“There ye have it.”

He looked at the tilted contraption, thinking
of the time he’d spent over the years, figuring his dose to the
nearest half a gram, and then figuring it again. He looked to the
old woman and the gourd she was holding out to him and, in a rare
act of faith, poured her measure of chrystaalt into the water, She
stoppered the gourd with her thumb and gave it a good shake.

“Now drink,” she said, handing it to him.

Before he could think, or change his mind,
Corvus lifted the gourd to his lips. When he was finished, he
looked down to find Naas going through his pack.

“Yell not need this, or these.” She tossed
aside his food kit and the leather jacks of water and brandy, his
own distillation.

“It’s a desert on the other side,” he
said.

“You’ll be found quick enough,” she assured
him, “and you’re going to need room for the Yellow Book.”

His interest piqued, and he shot Madron a
glance. The woman hadn’t let the priceless antiquity out of her
grip since Naas had given it to her to carry. No matter how badly
his fortunes had fared in the future, he could rebuild with such a
prize.

“Aye, take a good look,” Naas said. “You’ll
not be seeing it again.”

No, the White Ladies would take it from him
before he recovered his senses, but he’d robbed their temples
before and already was relishing the thought of doing it again.
Perverse bitches to have tried to exile him to this forgotten
time.

“Madron, bring the
Chandra Yeull Le
,”
Naas ordered, but as Corvus had expected, the woman balked.

“Naas...” she began, her arms tightening
around the heavy tome.

“I’m leavin’ ye the Prydion book, so don’t
bother about the priestess pages, pretty though they be. The
Chandra
and the
Fata
are needed in the future.”

With palpable reluctance, Madron obeyed.

With his pack again on his back and the
chrystaalt flowing through him, there was nothing left for him but
the wormhole. Snit, the cowering child, was off huddled against the
wall, trying to hide in his cloak.

“Come.” Naas took his arm and led him to a
place on the rim. She knelt and threaded a silvery length of
pryf
silk through the grooves on the floor, then stood and
shook out her skirts. “Would ye like me to give ye a good push? Or
do ye think ye can manage on yer own?”

No hint of compassion softened the hag’s
questions, and he knew she would as soon push him and be done with
it.

“On my own,” he said.

Muttering under her breath, she left him.

Logic told him not to look into the weir, but
logic would have also dictated that he stay in the twelfth century
of this forgotten age, and he was going. The path lay directly in
front of him.

His gaze scanned the perimeter of the rim
before daring the central depths. The worms in the deep were
golden, swirling around the weir in aureate waves. Lightning
cracked and leaped up out of the abyss, blue-white branches of pure
energy reaching for the ceiling. A dark cloud of mist formed in the
wormhole and began to rise, coming for him.

Corvus watched the cloud and felt fear take
hold of him again. His breaths shortened and quickened, adding to
his panic. Would it be like this then? he wondered. A fall through
an eternity of terror? Then, in the weir, he saw a glimmer of
light, like sunshine glinting off the sand and a flash of golden
hair... Avallyn.

From a short distance away, Madron watched
the lone traveler balance on the edge of time. She felt his
hesitation, his fear. There should have been bodhran drums and a
chanting chorus to fill the weir with the rhythms of heaven and
earth, an assurance that the fall was not out of God’s grace. Or
rather the music would have been an assurance to a mage or a Druid.
Mayhaps not for a felon.

Something assured him, though, for as she
looked on, he slowly lifted his arms to his sides. Head back, chest
lifted, he fell forward, his body making a perfect arc into the
abyss. Lightning forked out of a billowing cloud of jacinth mist,
snaring him in its tangs and dragging him down.

Madron watched him disappear, half in horror,
half in envy. Felon or nay, he had embarked on the greatest journey
the world had to offer. He was a traveler through time. Beside her,
Naas waited until the lightning simmered into faint crackles of
light.

“Come,” the old woman finally said. “We have
another world to save this day.”

~ ~ ~

“To starboard! To starboard!” Caerlon
screamed into the wind, gesturing wildly.

Slott’s barge crested again on the port side
of Caerlon’s ship, riding a towering wave, and Caerlon froze in
place, terrified that this time the barge would come crashing down
on him.

The storm had blown up out of nowhere. There
had been some rain, a bit of a breeze, but nothing to warn of a
tempest. Violent gusts of wind and rain whipped the sea into
gigantic waves and ship-sucking troughs. He’d lost three halvskips
and countless skraelings. The battle was a shambles. ’Twas every
beast for himself.

The barge slipped out of sight off the back
of the swell, and Caerlon frantically continued tying himself to
the mast. He’d wanted to get closer to the barge, but not that
close.

“Dragons!” He spit the word out, his fingers
fumbling with the wet rope. “Rotting dragons!”

They had ruined him. The Indigo Book spoke
quite clearly about the creatures, and it said where there was
Dharkkum, there would be dragons. But none had come. The pestilent
smoke was pouring onto Mor Sarff, near choking him on every breath,
and Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas could not be bothered, the
rotters.

The gates. He had to get to the gates of
time, but the shore could not be won.

He pulled one soggy rope end through a last
loop and tugged on the rope. It should hold with one end tied
around the mast and the other around himself; he needn’t fear being
swept overboard. He’d left enough slack in the rope too, so he
could move somewhat out of the way of crashing waves, if need be.
“Rotting Quicken-tree,” he muttered, looking again to the beach.
He’d seen the rotting aetheling among them, rallying them at every
turn. The warrior on the Wall was another to be reckoned with.
Icily pale and white-haired with an odd weir stripe, he was from
among the half-dead, Caerlon guessed, harvested from the Dangoes,
no doubt. And a dire day it was indeed when the fair and favored
Quicken-tree resorted to such necromancy as it must have taken to
raise him.

He had his own dread warrior, for all the
good the cripple could do him without the dragons.

“Bring Wyrm-master up!” he yelled to
Blackhand Dock, his ship’s captain.

The Dark-elf signaled the helmsman and went
below. When he returned, he had Wyrm-master with him. The
Dragonlord’s bad leg had been braced with a good strong wrap of
leather, and he’d been given a boiled bull-hide gambeson, a mail
shirt, and an iron helmet with a long nose guard. Caerlon had the
Magia Blade strapped to his own waist. He’d debated whether or not
to give it to his bedraggled Dragonlord, and decided ’twas best if
he didn’t keep it for himself. Alone, without skraelings or
Dockalfar to give him away, he could pass for a Light-elf. The
strange sword would only draw unwanted attention. His plan was to
sail to the Irish Sea, hopefully leaving the dreadful storm behind,
and from there to quickety-split—alone—through Riverwood and make
for the Weir Gate by going through Dripshank Well. There were
backways and byways aplenty in the caverns, and if he was seen,
he’d be wearing the tunic of one of the drowned Daur.

He was not deserting his army. Rather, he was
accepting the foregone end. His strength lay in strategy, not
hand-to-hand combat, and neither Slott nor his Dockalfar captains
could benefit from any more strategy, however brilliant. The best
he could do for them was to give them a Dragonlord and the Magia
Blade, such as they were.

To that end, he unceremoniously clapped the
mighty sword around Wyrm-master’s waist and sent him over the side
with Blackhand Dock into a dinghy. His suggestion to Blackhand was
to make for the barge, as the shore was certain death. Chaos
reigned on the sands, but it was a chaos overrun with
tylwyth
teg
, not skraelings.

“Hard to starboard!” he yelled above the wind
to his helmsman. The sails were reefed. ’Twould be up to the
oarsmen to get them away. The incentive was strong, to be gone from
the battle and the choking, smothering smoke.

The skraelings pulled against the wind and
the waves, turning the ship to the west and open water. Far enough
out, they headed south, fighting their way into the channel.
Halfway down the narrow mouth, they suddenly sailed out of the
storm into a sea of calm. Relief weakened Caerlon’s grip on the
mast. The storm was of Mor Sarff alone and had naught to do with
the Irish Sea. Thunder and lightning still echoed behind them, but
close to the ship there was naught. He could hear the gentle
lapping of water against the strakes with each pull of the oars.
The air was sweeter, the future brighter.

They sailed to the northernmost point of the
channel, leaving the sounds of battle to the Serpent Sea. As they
rounded the point, though, Caerlon was surprised and dismayed to
see the storm roiling again ahead of them where Mor Sarff emptied
into the open water.

A bewitchment? he wondered. Who could have
contrived it, a pool of serenity in the midst of a storm? But
mayhaps not so serene, for even as he wondered, the water began to
bubble around them. He lifted his dreamstone high against the
surrounding gloom. Yellow light glinted off the small waves churned
to life by the odd bubbling. He caught a glimpse of movement
beneath the surface, a flash of red in the liquid shadows, and
excitement surged through him. Another flash, this time of grayish
green, nearly sent him into paroxysms of giddy laughter.

They had come!

Victory was yet at hand!

He squeezed his dreamstone harder, making it
shine brighter, creating a beacon for them to follow. The dragons
had come!

But mayhaps they were coming in too fast, too
hard. A red-tinged wake parted the waves, a rippling arrow of
swells heading straight for the halvskip. Caerlon took a step back,
his tether trailing on the deck. On his next step, he tripped, his
foot tangling in the rope, and ’twas thus that he met Ddrei Goch,
flat on his back, staring up as the great beast’s head broke the
surface in a rush of bloodred scales, golden eyes, and ivory teeth
running green with seawater. Fangs the length of a ship’s mast
glowed with reflected dreamstone light, a pair of them, one on each
side of the bow, carving a death gate out of the darkness.

The skraelings dropped oars and raced to
abandon ship, but Caerlon was tied to the mast. He clawed at the
knot, fear making his fingers stiff, and in the next moment the
mighty jaws closed and the halvskip was no more.

~ ~ ~

Forced back by the driving rain and the waves
breaking against the Wall, Mychael had ordered a retreat to the
beach. He’d fought the last skraeling to come up the trail from the
south, killing him at the bridge with one cutting blow. Nearly all
the Kings Wood elves were across to the damson cliffs, a dangerous
endeavor made one man at a time, hand-over-hand on the wind-whipped
ropes.