The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (51 page)

’Twas dark, yet Dain knew when Snit was gone. He felt on his belt for the cool crystal grip of Ayas and pulled the knife free, squeezing it in his palm. Blue light emanated from the crystal as he had hoped. Rhuddlan’s magic was strong.

“Have you been hurt?” he asked, holding the dagger out far enough for the light to reach her face.

“Aye,” she said, a pained catch in her voice.

A deep chill washed through the center of his body, his fear realized. He closed his eyes in defeat and dropped his head. Utter fool that he was, on the long ride to Balor he had succumbed to desperation and prayed to her God to keep her safe, and her God, the same who had abandoned him in Palestine, had refused him again.

“But only for the pain you have suffered, Dain,” she said. He felt her hand on his cheek, the caress of her thumb. “Caradoc did not touch me with so much as a look. ’Twas you he tortured with his knife.”

His eyes opened. “He did not rape you?”

She shook her head, and relief sapped the last of his strength. Still holding her hand, he slid down the wall, until they were both sitting on the earth and stone floor of the tunnel.

“Ragnor?” he asked. “Did you kill him?”

“Aye. I slit his throat,” she said without a tremor.

“’Twas a blessing, no doubt.”

“No doubt.” She was quiet for a moment, then said, “When Snit returns, I’ll wash the blood from your face. Do the cuts pain you?”

A short laugh came up from his throat. “His intent was not to cause me pain, but to give me pleasure, the lying bastard, as if I had acquired a taste for his sickness. Like me, he is far better with a knife than he would wish. Any cuts he gives are apurpose and caused by no lack of skill.” He adjusted his position and winced. She and that Snit of hers had near squeezed the life out of him, dragging him through the tunnel. “Caradoc could shave the down off a babe’s buttocks and leave less than a blush to mark the blade’s passing.”

“I don’t understand,” she said in a softly confused voice.

He should have expected no less, but it was not easy to hear the question in her words. Still, he would not lie to her. “And I do, and mayhaps that is what you don’t understand.”

“Mayhaps,” she admitted.

A sigh that was half groan escaped him as he reached into a pouch on his belt. She must have heard the worst of Caradoc’s soliloquy and apparently wasn’t going to have the grace to lie to him either. He brought out a Quicken-tree cake and broke it in half.

“Rhuddlan swears by seedcake for all that ails a person.” He gave her a portion, then watched until she took a bite. “You heard Caradoc speak of a man, Jalal al-Kamam?”

Her gaze lifted and met his, the blue of her eyes enhanced by the light of Ayas, and for a moment he feared he would falter.

“Jalal trades in people, traveling the desert with his caravan of slaves to be bought or sold, for pleasure or pain, to whomever has gold enough to buy.” He forced his gaze not to waver from hers. “I ended my Crusade as one of those slaves, some said the best he ever had. As
bedzhaa
I was sold many times to many people, until my worth as a magician proved more to Jalal than my worth as a whore.”

Her lashes swept downward, and the hand he’d held she withdrew into her lap.

That hurt. He released another sigh. “I cannot be other than what I am, Ceri, and I cannot change what once was—though God knows I try,” he added in a disgusted mutter.

“I would have you no other way, except for the pain you have suffered.” Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. She reached out and tentatively touched the bleeding scar on his wrist.

“Ah. That was only foolishness,” he assured her with a small lie. “Nothing more. I was no child when Jalal chose me from out of Saladin’s prison, and I, too, was given a choice.” He slipped his hand around hers. “He was both savior and destroyer, and I often did not know where the one began and the other left off. He taught me the magic you like so well, Ceri, and much more besides the lowest paths of pleasure. Without Jalal, I could not have opened the Druid Door and would not have been in Wydehaw to save you.”

“A steep price to pay for the saving of an unknown maid.”

“But I know you now... and I have known you.” His thumb caressed the back of her hand, adding an intimate meaning to his words.

Tears spilled from beneath her lashes, and when he bent to kiss them from her cheeks, she moved so that their mouths met.

“You are mine, Dain Lavrans,” she whispered against his lips. “All that you once were, and all that you are, are both a part of me, will always be a part of me.”

He kissed her then, unable to resist what she offered, even as he vowed to hide the worst of it from her with at least as much success as he hid it from himself. Caradoc with his talk of knives. Christ, even the buggery had been worse than the knives. If a man wanted to be cut, Dain had not suffered any qualms in doing it. If a man wanted to be tantalized with razor-sharp daggers scraped along his skin, he’d been happy to comply, and unlike Caradoc, careful enough not to draw blood unless Jalal had been paid for blood.

But the ambrosia. When demons crawled out of his mind in the night and slid beneath his skin to make him shiver and shake, they smelled and tasted of opium-laced
kif
. The fiendish stuff had stolen more of his soul than buggery had ever stolen of his manhood.

“If yer through, I haves the water.” Snit, sounding none too happy, had returned.

Dain lifted his mouth from Ceridwen’s. They were far from safe. Truly, he would not feel so until he had taken her north.

They both drank, and Dain offered Snit a piece of Quicken-tree cake, which improved the boy’s mood.

“’Sgood.” Eyes as green as summer leaves watched Dain from above a black stripe of paint. The pair of them were marked as demons, though Dain doubted if they could conjure up a thimbleful of evil between them. A dirty
fif
braid hung down the left side of the boy’s face. Dain said nothing, but wondered if Rhuddlan knew he’d lost one of his own. Despite the deformity of his body, Snit was undeniably Quicken-tree, and young enough to still have dark hair.

“I s’pose yer looking for a way out too,” Snit said.

Dain shook his head. “A way in, to the pit, and beyond the pit to the Light Caves.”

“The pit?” Snit wrinkled up his fine nose. “’Tis a rank place, the pit, and good for naught but teasing the boars that run there.”

“Loose?”

“Not all, but one pretty much ’as his way with the place, a big, nasty boar, name of Old Groaner. Caradoc’s made a fortune off of that one, he ’as.”

“Can you take us there?”

“Aye, if yer sure that’s where ye want to go.” Snit looked doubtful.

Dain was not. “I’m sure.”

~ ~ ~

“Llynya!” Morgan yelled. Light, he needed more damn light. He’d lost her. She was as quick as she’d said, too damn quick.

The awful noise that had sent her running came again, a low, pained, and brutish groan echoing back and forth through the maze. It ended in a deep, rasping squeal that tore through the air and made the hair rise on the nape of his neck.

“Shit,” he swore. ’Twas a boar. Mayhaps, one left from the last match. A wounded boar someone had not finished off.

This far in, the pit smelled of blood spoor and offal. Debris and bones were thick upon the floor. She’d get herself lost for sure. No one could smell their way through such a stench, and the light offered by the few smoking torches along the walls did little to illuminate the maze. He kicked aside a rotting carcass.

“Llynya!” He strode forward, sword at the ready, wishing he had a spear. Meeting a wounded boar with no more than the length of a sword between them would be a quick death.

He swore again, determined to find her. They had traversed most of the maze with her unerringly leading the way. Why she had spooked with the boar’s groaning, he did not know. One instant she’d been next to him, and in the next, she’d been gone. Disappeared in a twinkling.

“Llynya, damn you! Answer me!” he bellowed, demanding a reply. If he drew the boar, so much the better, for he’d formed a sudden, inexplicable attachment to the sprite and would not have her harmed.

A softly sung song came to him then, winding its way through the maze on a melody of lilting notes. Could only be she. He followed the sound, and as he came closer to the source, noted the strange words of the verse:

“Fai quail a’lomarian, es sholei par es cant...”

A tremor of fear trickled through her voice. A blue light shone up ahead, around a bend in the walls, and he broke into a run.

“
Pwr wa ladth... Pwr wa ladth... Pwr wa ladth
...” Her song became a nervous chant or a pleading.

Morgan skidded to a halt at the turn. ’Twas Llynya, aright, cornered by the boar in a dead end of the maze, holding him off with the wrong end of her dagger, which was doing the most peculiar thing. It was glowing.

Magic. He swore and crossed himself. Just his luck to fall for a pagan maid who wielded magic with the grip of her blade. She had the beast transfixed with the crystal light and her song.

Something was going wrong, though, for the rangy old boar was tossing his head, slicing at the air with his tusks, and stepping closer, his cloven hooves stamping up small puffs of dust. Her voice faltered.

Morgan did not hesitate, but moved in with his sword held high and brought it crashing down in a mighty blow, slashing into the beast’s neck with the force of every muscle in his body. The cut was deep, severing the animal’s spinal cord and dropping him paralyzed to the floor. The boar’s eyes rolled back at him as blood gushed from the wound.

“’Twas my duty... Rhuddlan told me... protect you,” Llynya babbled breathlessly. Morgan put his boot to the animal’s flanks and shoved the beast off his blade. “I thought to bait the boar, to keep you safe. I thought I could—”

With his sword free, he took two strides to her, gripped her chin, and silenced her with a kiss. She grew utterly still, and when he moved his mouth over hers, her lips parted, so soft and lush, for him to take his taste.

When the kiss was over, he raised his head and gazed into her eyes. “Sweet,” he said, and would have said more, for all he’d felt, but words eluded him. She was sweet, aright, like nectar before honey, and warm, with her heat spreading out to wrap around him like a velvet cloak. Her eyes were the green of forest leaves and shallow seas, filled with stars, beckoning, beckoning. He bent his head to touch his mouth to hers once more.

“Morgan?” The call came from behind. He looked over his shoulder and swore for the kiss he would not have. ’Twas Dain, and Ceridwen, safe.

He turned back to Llynya. “When Balor is behind us, I will come for you,” he promised. At her nod, he let her go and stepped aside:

L
lynya led them out of the maze and into a honeycomb of cave-ins and debris that marked what had once been the path to the Light Caves from Carn Merioneth. Rhuddlan had been right, Dain thought, the destruction had obscured any clearly marked passage, leaving only rubble to be picked through and narrow cracks to be squeezed through and even narrower ledges to be traversed above seemingly bottomless chasms. Without the sprite guiding them from above and the Quicken-tree working from below, they never would have found their way. Snit had not come with them, but had disappeared within moments of leading him and Ceridwen through the pit and to Morgan and Llynya.

Long after Llynya had brought them out of the pit, they’d glimpsed another blue light shining in bits and pieces through the dark up ahead. “’Tis Bedwyr,” she’d said, and been proven right when they’d finally spoken with the Quicken-tree man through a pile of rocks and broken beams blocking the tunnel. He’d helped each of them through with a warning to be careful, for the other side was naught but a rock slide into a yawning chasm, revealing to Dain for the first time the true breadth and depth of the caverns. The path they’d taken the night before with Rhuddlan, through the winding shafts of the Canolbarth, had not shown so much.

As they neared the Light Caves, they were hailed by others of the Quicken-tree, Liosalfar scouting the farthest reaches of the caverns, each carrying a dreamstone crystal blade. Trig was among the five to reach them.

“You’ve done well,” he said to the sprite, then gave orders for one of the other men to backtrack Llynya’s path with Bedwyr and guard the trail. Two others of the Liosalfar he directed with a gesture and a raised voice. “You know where you are needed. Go, and tell Rhuddlan all are safe.”

The blue lights converged in a line down the rocky slope, flickering with each curve in the trail, until they disappeared into the abyss of darkness.

To the remaining man he gave a piece of material he pulled out of a pouch on his belt. ’Twas white cloth, finely spun wool, patched together and sewn with a shimmery thread of the Quicken-tree gray and green. “Give this to Aedyth and see what she can make of it. Tell her we found it near the Crwyn Track.” The man left, and Trig turned to them. “We will await Rhuddlan at the scrying pool so there will be no delay in the ceremony.”

“So soon?” Llynya asked, casting a glance in Morgan’s direction before returning her attention to Trig. “They are tired and have been through much. I thought there would be time for all to rest.”

“They can rest after the ceremony, if Caradoc is not already upon us. He will not lose Ceridwen without a fight. Nor will the monk.”

“But Dain has been hurt.”

Trig lifted his dagger for light to see by and swore under his breath.

“It looks worse than it is,” Dain assured him.

“It looks like butchery.” The Quicken-tree man’s voice was grim.

“Caradoc calls it artistry. Do not worry overmuch, Trig. I still have the strength for Rhuddlan’s hour of magic, though the ceremony part of his door-opening ritual might need to be expunged. I do not relish another ‘purification’ so soon after the last.”

“There is no time for purification,” Trig said. “Rhuddlan and the others have already been engaged beneath the keep, and though they have beaten back Balor’s men, the victory is far from complete.”