Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (7 page)

And yet ’twas a sweet, seductive fancy to
think one such as she could be his cure.

Nearer the elm now, he saw she wore a tunic
and leggings of silvery green Quicken-tree cloth. ’Twas why her
curves shimmered. Her boots were dark green with double silver
rings to cinch them closed at her ankles. She was no being conjured
of river mist, then, or of his too long unfulfilled yearnings. The
dress confirmed her
tylwyth teg
, as elfin as the seven
princesses in her story, and without doubt the reason Shay had been
out in the woods that morn. He wondered that her companions had
left her alone. And where was Shay? The boy’s quick start should
have placed him at the river long ago.

Mychael searched the clearing again, and
found not the boy or a stray traveler, but something else
altogether. From the curve of branch here, the twist of a stem
there, he could see the Quicken-tree had been working in this part
of Riverwood, no doubt at Rhuddlan’s bidding. He looked closer at
the plants growing near him. Delicate fronds of buckler embraced
spikes of hyssop. Twiggish, leaf-laden branches of broom shrub
reached into the birch and entwined themselves with the tree. All
around him the woodland flora commingled and held on to one
another. ’Twas a bramble, woven by the Quicken-tree to protect a
place, and probably why the fair elf lingered there, feeling
mayhaps overly secure. For he had found her, had he not?

His gaze returned to the wych elm. His
thoughts on enchantment had turned ’round and ’round since meeting
the Quicken-tree, but he had not seen any to match her.

Or had he? Thoroughly beguiled, he retraced
the mist’s caressing path. The leaves in her hair were green and
fresh, glittering with dew. What he could see of her delicate
profile between the braids and tangles was entrancing, the whole of
her tugging at a memory he could not bring to the fore.

“Alas,” she went on, “all the sisters but the
youngest were washed into the furious sea to be drowned or dashed
against the crag.” Her voice swelled with the desperation of the
scene; a fair mummer she. “The North Wind, rendered helpless by the
dark arts of the mage, blew his icy breath down upon the last
princess.” And here she blew, puffing her cheeks out and turning
the fog close by into a maelstrom of swirls and whirls.

“
Tee-zhay-dee-dee
,” one of the birds
blurted out.

“For certes,” the storyteller replied with a
sage nod, then went on. “But the mage had not bewitched all against
the Elfin King. There were those of fair, kind hearts, Whistler,
White-Eye, and Mast, brave chickadees, who heard the frightened
cries, and daring all against the storm flew into the brunt of it
to save the maids.” The little birds began preening themselves to
an absurd degree. “Other birds followed, swooping down to the sea,
where two dozen to the princess, they plucked the hapless sisters
from the waves and saved them all. And if any should doubt the
tale, the whole of the valorous flight is forever engraved in the
hallowed halls of Fata Morgana’s palace.”

At the mention of the legendary faerie
enchantress, Mychael nearly crossed himself, but stopped a station
or two short. In some ways he knew not what to believe anymore, and
that conundrum was quickly made more complicated. Even as he
lowered his hand, the dawn breeze swirled along the branch where
the storyteller lay, lifting loose braids and tangled strands of
hair up and away from her face and revealing the true rarity of the
creature before him.

Her ears were pointed—strangely, wondrously,
and sharply enough to make him wonder what she was besides
Quicken-tree. None other of Rhuddlan’s band had pointed ears. But
if not Quicken-tree, what?

“To this very day,” she told her avian
audience, “elfin princesses and chickadees share a bond forged with
the courage of Whistler, White-Eye, and Mast.” She might have gone
on to say more, except for the call of a lark interrupting.

She turned quickly at the sound, scanning the
forest behind her and seeming to stare right through him. ’Twas
then he recognized her. Months before, after the battle for
Merioneth, he had seen her in these very woods lift the yellow off
a buttercup with naught but her breath. At the time, he’d thought
it a fancy of the light, but now he would beg to differ. A waiflike
girl no longer, she’d well grown into the magic of the deed.

Aye, she’d changed. Sprite, she’d been called
then, and a sprite she’d been, but no more. He’d thought her gone
from Merioneth forever.

The lark’s call came again, and she pushed
herself to her feet, a supple movement seeming to require little
effort. The misconception was belied when, with the same fluid
grace, she revealed her strength and agility by swinging herself up
to a higher branch and landing in a loose-limbed crouch. The
chickadees took flight, routed by all the disturbance. The lark, he
knew, was Shay, and close by the sound of him.

Llynya was the storyteller’s name, he
recalled, first seen on the dark shores of Mor Sarff, a girl
wielding a sword with desperate fury in the heat of battle. He’d
killed his first man to save her life, drawn his bow as he ran, as
she faltered on the sands, and loosed his arrow with an unholy
prayer that it would find its mark. The man who would have hewn her
in twain had fallen, and so had the next to take up arms against
her. The one after that, he’d killed to save her companion.

“
Chirrr-rrr-up
.” Shay trilled the
lark’s song once more, and the sound of beating wings filled the
air. Ghostly pale, a flock of doves broke through the fog, flying
in from the west and making for the wych elm. As one they settled
in the tree to roost and coo about her. A smile brightened the
elf-maid’s face.

“Shay,” she called out. “I know ’tis you who
sends these fair friends my way. Ouch!” One of the turtledoves
chose to nest in her hair and immediately got itself tangled in the
silky strands. “Shay, you beast! Come help me!”

Mychael stood motionless, watching her as she
freed the dove and moved it to a safer perch. The boy was not
likely to win her heart with the bird trick, which no doubt had
been his intent. A worthy incentive for the bother of finding and
gathering a half-dozen turtledoves... or a hundred.

Shay was a romantic fool, but no more so than
himself. Cursing softly, he took a step back and looked up into the
trees. Shay could not be far.

L
lynya resettled the
dove and returned her gaze to the surrounding woods. Shay was out
there, close. She knew it, just as she knew she would be
hard-pressed to find him if he didn’t want to be found. The fog was
beginning to lift, though, which was to her advantage. Soon ’twas
possible to make out the silhouettes of the birches growing along
the river, of the alders and elms—and of a man standing alone in
the shadows of the copse.

Startled, she went for her dagger. Closing
her hand around the crystal hilt, she drew the blade partway out of
its sheath. ’Twas not Shay. Had the bramble not held and let some
wayfaring Welshman stumble upon them? Gods, had she grown so soft
in Deri that she had lost her warrior’s edge and was no longer a
fit watcher in the forest, babbling to chickadees like a child
while a stranger stood not ten yards distant? He had seen her.
There could be no doubt. He was probably watching her even now,
wondering what fool thing she would do next. She quickly looked to
Aedyth and found the old woman awake, yet well concealed and alert
to the danger. Thus assured, she settled herself in to watch and
wait. If he passed them by, so be it. If he did not, she would lead
him on a merry chase he would not soon forget. Shay must already
have the man in his sights and would not have forgotten how the
game was played.

The waiting did not take long. Sunlight
finally reached the river, sheeting down through the forest in
roseate shades of gold, and thus was the man revealed.

Llynya’s hand fell to her side, the dagger
forgotten as she stared in wonderment at whom the morning had
delivered to her bower. Mychael ab Arawn. Ceridwen ab Arawn’s twin
and the Christian God’s warrior, for he was the archer who had
saved her life on the shores of Mor Sarff...
a stranger, dressed
all in white, with a bright copper streak running through his
golden hair, a pure flame against the glowing violet wall of the
damson cliffs.

He was looking into the trees as she had, and
probably for the same reason—Shay. A swath of blue woad painted
across his eyes reached from his left temple to his right and from
above his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, marking him as
Liosalfar and half hiding his face in a maze of forest shadows, but
he yet had the look of his sister.

Aye, he was Ceridwen’s brother, and a warrior
aright, tall and lean like a Quicken-tree, but he was no
tylwyth
teg
, nor a mere Welshman. He was what had brought her north,
not Rhuddlan’s command.

Even in Deri she’d heard tales that he was
half-wild, and from the looks of him, the tales were true. His
hair, a tousled melange of copper and gold, fell every which length
to his shoulders yet was noticeably shorter on top where his monk’s
tonsure had grown. His clothes were patched and mended, his boots’
leather skinned from animals. A bow was slung across his shoulder,
and two knives were sheathed in his belt, one with a dreamstone
hilt.

He turned, his attention brought back to her
by the rising sun, and their gazes met. A frisson of warning curled
down her spine even as warmth suffused her cheeks. Disconcerted,
her first thought was to vanish into the woods, but her need of him
stayed her flight and had her peering back at him through the elm
leaves.

His was a wilder beauty than his sister’s.
His jaw was wider in the way of a man’s, his eyebrows less finely
drawn, each feature cut to a stronger, fiercer edge—and none more
fierce than his eyes. Of a paler, grayer hue than Ceridwen’s fair
blue, they were piercing and yet translucent, baring part of his
being to those with a knack for seeing it. Llynya had acquired
somewhat of the knack during her months in Deri, and would grow
into more, but in this case it took only a somewhat knack to see
beyond the surface. He was
sín
, a storm rising.

Her gaze faltered and she glanced away,
struck again by the warning she felt and the disturbing awareness
that he was not what she had expected. The man on the cliffs had
looked to be a savior. This man did not.

Yet he was Rhiannon’s son. ’Twas said Druids
of old had called storms at will, conjured them to destroy their
enemies, blizzards of snow and torrents of rain, thunder and
lightning, winds to lift river water into an impassable veil, and
fog so thick a man in the midst of it could not find himself.

Mychael ab Arawn was Druid.

She fingered a wisp of remaining fog and
dared to look at him again, wondering. His gaze had not strayed
from her, and she forced herself not to shy away. She should leave
her perch and greet him, but some instinct kept her high in the
elm. She had fallen into malaise at the end of the battle against
Balor, and for sennights following the fight her mind had chosen
not to remember anything of that day. In Deri, Aedyth had given her
no choice but to recall the whole of it, and the first thing she
had remembered was him, the archer with the unerring aim. The
healer had told her Ceridwen’s brother yet resided in Merioneth
with the Quicken-tree, and so she finally had come north again.
Redemption, if it was to be hers, could only be found by journeying
through the time weir of the golden worms—and the way of that could
only be found in the deep dark where the Yr Is-ddwfn had long ago
engraved their knowledge on the walls. Mychael ab Arawn had been
there. He knew the dreaded black maze, he’d survived the
wormholes.

He had tasted time.

The truth of it streaked through his flaxen
hair like a copper flame. The only way to get that anomaly was to
drop oneself down a live wormhole. Nemeton, the Brittany bard, had
been marked in such a manner, steel gray running through auburn.
Dain Lavrans, the magi of Wydehaw Castle, had begun to show the
signs before he’d gone north with Ceridwen, his chestnut-colored
strands turning white in a three-finger streak down the left side
of his head, and mayhaps there was one other who bore the mark, if
he had lived.

She let her gaze travel over Mychael again,
his unkempt mane, the patched clothes of white monk’s wool overlaid
with Quicken-tree grays and greens, and the eyes that revealed a
far from gentle mien. Ceridwen had told her Mychael had long been a
hooded brother of Strata Florida, those of the creed “Thou shalt
not kill,” yet he had killed to save her. Was he still a monk then?
she wondered. Or had changes come to him as they had come to her
since that fateful battle?

He wore the blue woad of the Liosalfar, but
no one had yet given him a Quicken-tree braid. She could do that
for him, if she dared. No doubt she owed him a braid or two, or a
half-dozen, and given a chance, she would start her twists and
plaits within the copper strands of his hair. Given a chance, she
would have a blazing streak of her own, a small price to pay to
taste the shifting ethers of time and reclaim what she had
lost.

Aye,
sín
or no, she had use of Mychael
ab Arawn to save another reckless soul—Morgan ab Kynan, the Thief
of Cardiff.

A shadow flitted between them, drawing her
attention overhead. Nothing else in the tree moved. The doves had
not ruffled a feather, yet she immediately found the shadow’s
owner.

“Shay.” Her voice was soft, a bare whisper as
she looked upward through the branches into a pair of eyes as green
as hers, but far more innocent. He grinned down at her from where
he sat on a limb.