Chalice 2 - Dream Stone (8 page)

“
Malashm
, sprite.”

“ ’
Lashm
, Shay.” Her eyes filled with
sudden tears. So much had changed since she’d last seen him. She’d
grown so old and in truth was a child no more. One salty drop
spilled over to run down her cheek, and she swiped at it with the
back of her hand. It seemed she cried for no reason at all
anymore—one of the more annoying changes.

“Llynya?” He lowered himself to her branch
and crouched in front of her, his long hair flowing over his
shoulders. His smile faded. “What’s this?” He took her chin in his
hand and wiped away another tear with his thumb.

“ ’Snothing.” She squeezed her eyes shut and
willed the tears to stop, embarrassed. She’d never cried in front
of Shay before, except for once when she’d gashed her knee near to
the bone while chasing after him in Wroneu. She still carried the
scar from that escapade.

“You smell of lavender,” he said, and she
felt him lean in close, so close his breath blew across her cheek.
Then came a touch, soft and brief.

A kiss? Her eyes opened. From Shay? Aye,
indeed things had changed, and not for the better.

Unbidden by intent, she looked to the
copse—and found it empty. A sense of loss enveloped her, a feeling
as inexplicable as her tears, which had stopped as suddenly as they
had begun. She wiped the last of them away, looking all the while
to the overgrown birch where Mychael ab Arawn had stood.

He was gone, disappeared without a trace, and
she’d not had the courage to so much as say hullo. Vexation thinned
her mouth into a tight line. She needed better of herself.

“Rhuddlan is waiting at Carn Merioneth, and
Moira has sweet bannocks for you,” Shay said, breaking into her
thoughts. He rose to his feet and took her hand to pull her up.
“I’ll race you to the postern in the keep’s east wall.” The
challenge came with a grin, but before she could answer, a rustling
of leaves below had him reaching for a higher branch and levering
himself out over the limb on which they stood. “Good morn, Aedyth,”
he called down.

The old woman rose to sitting, brushing
leaves off here and there as she looked up into the tree. “Good
morn, Shay. Have you come to see us home then?” Her graying blond
hair was plaited in a crown around her head with parts of the braid
worked loose from sleep, but a tuck or two put the strands aright.
Her eyes were bright, her fingers nimble, the signs of age showing
mostly in the lines on her face.

“Aye, and give you first greeting. You made
good time coming north.” He dropped out of the tree and landed
lightly on his feet in front of her.

“As if these old bones would not,” Aedyth
exclaimed in mock affront, accepting the hand Shay offered. Once on
her feet, she brushed her skirts down. “If ’tis a race to the
postern you want, I warrant I can give you one, if you would but
even out the years a bit.”

His grin broadened. “What would you have me
do?”

“Drink the river dry and cross over the moon
while make I straightaway for the castle.”

“And I would still win,” he boasted with an
ingenuous laugh.

The old woman shooed him off, smiling, and
Llynya followed him into the trees. For the morning at least, she
was free.

~ ~ ~

Madron walked quickly through Riverwood, her
Quicken-tree cloak veiling her in the mist-bound shadows of the
forest morn, the hood pulled up to cover the loose flow of her
auburn hair. Not all of Balor’s cottars had run away when the keep
had fallen to Rhuddlan, and she did well to take care.

Sunshine broke through the gloom in places,
but did naught to lighten her mood. The day had barely begun and
had already gone awry. Mychael ab Arawn had slipped free of her yet
again. Recalcitrant, obstinate youth. She could help him, if he
would let her, but he would forever go his own way, or Rhuddlan’s,
playing into the elf-man’s hands as neatly as a hooked fish.
Despite the Quicken-tree leader’s interference, she would not lose
the boy, not as she’d lost his sister.

She came to a small stream, a freshet, and
lifted the hems of her cloak and dark green gown before stepping
nimbly across and continuing on her way.

Shay and Llynya were running in the forest
this morn. She’d let them pass her by a quarter league back. The
two of them had appeared carefree, but for the girl at least, ’twas
bound to be a fleeting state. The sprite’s destiny was about to
meet her head-on. Which brought Madron to her present problem and
her woodland task, forced on her by the Quicken-tree and their
damned brambling and tangling of the trees. ’Twould only get worse
with the coming of Ailfinn Mapp—if the mage ever did come.

And if she did not, where did that leave
Llynya? That Ailfinn had grown so powerful that she dared ignore
Rhuddlan’s summons was not out of the question. That she would
desert her acolyte, flighty as the maid could be, was out of the
bounds of reason. Yr Is-ddwfn aethelings were not so thick on the
ground, and Prydion Mages even less so.

Nay, whatever promise Llynya had shown for
the
magia mysterium
would not be lightly cast aside by
Ailfinn Mapp. The mage would come, if only for the sprite—and just
by her mere presence be a hindrance to Madron.

Rhuddlan would have Carn Merioneth slip into
the mists, hide it completely from the rest of the world with his
arboreal dabbling, and mayhaps after the debacle of Balor Keep he
was right. Mayhaps ’twas time to let Carn Merioneth fade from the
memories of Men, but a path had to be left open. One path must
always be left open, for there were travelers besides Prydion Magi
who needed passage into Merioneth. If Rhuddlan couldn’t see the
need for it, she could, and she would ensure that a path did stay
open.

At the river, she turned south, following a
worn track along the bank, her soft Quicken-tree boots leaving nary
a mark. The Bredd grew narrower and deeper before it plunged
beneath a giant’s cairn of tumbled boulders on the southern edge of
Riverwood, never to surface again. The waters of the river flowed
down into caverns, winding through a labyrinth of corridors and
passages before reaching Lanbarrdein, a cavern of near unimaginable
size and riches deep in the earth. From Lanbarrdein, part of the
river cascaded over a cliff into Mor Sarff, the Serpent Sea. The
rest of the river disappeared into the deep dark, a place of
mysteries and mazes that had never been fully mapped, not even by
the Quicken-tree.

The boulders marked her father’s, Nemeton’s,
southernmost path into Merioneth, a path he had laid with traces of
magic, and ’twas with the
antes magicae
she had learned from
him that she kept it open. She knelt dose to the cairn by the
river’s edge and performed a ritual with fire, using the contents
of the four pouches hanging from her belt. At the end of it, she
spoke a few warding words and scattered forest debris over the
small patch of scorched earth. ’Twas no safeguard against Rhuddlan
discovering her trespass on his bramble, but ’twould hide it well
enough from others. The Quicken-tree leader wouldn’t countenance
her breach, and if he found the path, he could undo her spell with
little more than a flick of his wrist. As quickly as that the stems
would begin to turn and the branches wind around one another.

Damned elf-man. He was forever tripping her
up.

She reached for another handful of twigs and
leaves, but inadvertently dug too deep and came up with black muck
as well.

A soft curse left her lips. Here was
Rhuddlan’s true bane; the richness of summer had spilled over into
rotting ripeness. Winter could come none too soon this year, nor
the icy blasts of the north wind to freeze the blight from the
earth.

She stared at the sodden remains of decayed
vegetation, letting it drip from her open palm onto the ground
where she’d made her elemental potion. Each drop sizzled and smoked
as it hit the sanctified earth. Strange, wicked stuff, its presence
in Riverwood kept Rhuddlan awake at night. Coupled with Mychael ab
Arawn’s heated, nocturnal pacings, Carn Merioneth never knew a
moment’s peace.

Rhuddlan was sending Mychael and the
Liosalfar into the deep dark on the morrow to see what they could
find. An ill-advised move, she’d argued. The youth’s time could be
better spent with her, exploring Druid wisdoms and teachings. How
else was he to learn to call the dragons and take his mother’s
place? Or, she’d asked, did Rhuddlan now believe Druids to be as
irrelevant as Men in the course he would take?

Damn Rhuddlan. He would have them all slip
into the mists and no longer move even through the shadows of men’s
lives, and a graver error he hardly could make. For all his great
knowledge of the past, Rhuddlan knew little about the future, and
’twas that aspect of the world that she would protect. The ways
must be left open. ’Twas her duty and her desire.

As to the deep dark, she already knew what
they would find: worms still churning, things still coming undone,
the scrying pool lifeless and murky and useless for her needs.
’Twould take more than warriors and a wild boy to unriddle
Riverwood’s malady.

In truth, ’twould take the Prydion Mage,
Ailfinn Mapp.

Another curse escaped her. She would have to
be on her guard with that one running loose in Merioneth.

Leaning forward, she immersed her hand in the
river and watched as the last of the black rot was washed into the
current and carried downstream. Change and turmoil were afoot in
the deep earth, a new chaos that she feared had been loosed when
Ceridwen and Dain Lavrans had freed the
pryf
; a chaos that
seeped upward into the light of day, bringing the rot and wildness.
Five months had passed since the emerald seal had been broken and
the gate of the
pryf’s
prison opened. Five months and still
the worms turned deep in the earth, the frenzy of the
prifarym
having abated not one whit. Five months of things
coming undone, and of Madron’s growing doubts as to the wisdom of
their deed.

Five months, and still Rhuddlan was a dragon
keeper with no dragons to keep, and with no priestess from the
ancient line of Merioneth to call them home. Rhiannon was dead.
Ceridwen had taken herself north with Lavrans.

Rhiannon’s son, Mychael, could do it—she
would swear by him—if he would but give himself over to Druid
teachings.

The corruption thinned out into gelatinous
strings before slipping over the last of the river rock and
disappearing beneath the giant’s cairn, returning from whence it
had come. Mychael ab Arawn had been there, traveling the caverns
and the deep dark alone for months before the battle for Balor, a
feat no Quicken-tree could match. He’d seen fissuring in the damson
shafts—dread augery—and met the old worm. He’d been in the
wormholes and discovered the secret of dreamstone. And he’d
survived, proving himself to be far more than she’d thought.

She knew the legends of this place above the
Irish Sea, the stories born there and the stories brought from
Eire. Mychael, named for the archangel of the Christian God,
Rhiannon’s unforetold son who had come into the world by sharing
the womb with his sister. He should not be, except for some strange
grace of fate and the magic arts of a woman long lost in time.
Ailfinn would know the truth of it. One look would reveal the boy’s
forbidden origins to the mage.

Rhiannon must have been mad, or too far under
the Christian yoke of her faithless husband, to have let a son be
born from her womb. ’Twas what came from allowing love to make a
match. With one set of ill-fated vows, Carn Merioneth had lost its
firm hold on the past and been laid bare before the temporal world,
a world that had destroyed what time had held inviolate.

Nay, Madron thought, Mychael ab Arawn should
not be, but he was, and she would not lose him, not to Rhuddlan,
not to Ailfinn Mapp, and not to the wildness reaching up for him
from the depths of the earth. Without him she could not open the
doors between the worlds and look beyond her time. Without him she
could not take her father’s place and be a watcher of the
gates.

M
ychael returned to
Carn Merioneth well after dark, flashing his dreamstone blade to
make himself known to the guard at the postern gate. No other light
shone the same clear blue. ’Twas as different from lantern flame or
torchlight as crystal was from fire, and impossible for the Welsh,
or the English, or any man to duplicate.

He had spent the rest of the day in Riverwood
with Owain, a Welshman who had fought with the Quicken-tree and who
had not left for Gwynedd after the battle for Balor, choosing
instead to stay in Merioneth. They had found a trail of wolves and
men running together in the northern woods and followed it as far
as the Bredd, where the hunters had crossed the water. ’Twasn’t the
first time the strange mix of tracks had been found. Rhuddlan had
long since doubled the scouts in Riverwood.

Owain had headed back to the keep hours
earlier, yet Mychael had stayed out, letting the night come to him
in the forest. He’d been restless since the morn and would have
slept in the woods as well, wolves or nay, if not for the necessity
of preparing for the coming journey into the caverns. Aye, that and
mayhaps one other thing had brought him back inside the wall, a
teller of tales with forest green eyes and shimmering curves.

Passing through the gate, he greeted the
guard in the elfin tongue and resheathed his blade. Lanterns
flickered throughout the upper bailey, casting amber light and
shadows on the trees and the willow huts built by the Quicken-tree,
the only structures left inside the wall. A few women were gathered
about the hearthfire, serving the evening pottage, a not unpleasant
stew of grains and berries. He and Owain had roasted squirrels over
a campfire in the woods for their supper. ’Twas an act of barbarism
to the Quicken-tree, but one he and the Welshman indulged in
regularly.