The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (24 page)

When Madron knelt and lifted Ceri’s skirt, she realized why the maid’s gait was so easy—Quicken-tree cloth. Wide strips of it wrapped her foot, ankle, and the lower part of her leg. Rhuddlan’s generosity surprised her. The cloth had strong healing properties and was near indestructible, but the source of it had been lost the night the Quicken-tree leader had sealed the maze. That he should give so much to Ceridwen did not set well with her. She preferred the maid to have as little importance to him as Dain had suggested, until her own goals had been fulfilled.

She felt through the cloth to the ankle beneath and pressed carefully. Her fingers detected no cause for dismay and adequate justification for relief. She’d been right to let Dain keep the maid thus far. His skills were unsurpassed even by Moira, an amazing feat for such a purely mortal being. The Quicken-tree woman had added speed to the healing, but ’twas Dain who had set the bone to perfection. The maid would not limp for long.

The scar down the side of Ceri’s face was worse than she’d thought it would be, just as the stitchery was better. She gently touched the bright red line, her fingers pausing on each tiny set of marks left by Dain’s stitching. He’d worked long on the girl. Both the cut and the sewing of it followed the curve of her hairline, though Madron detected places where he’d pulled the skin and taken extra stitches to better close the wound and lessen the scarring. ’Twas a skillful courtesy.

She left the strangest injury until last. Bones were oft broken in a fight, and knives were the weapon of choice in close combat, but biting an overpowered, much smaller opponent harkened back to a vice beyond brutality. Ragnor had tasted the maid’s blood, and Madron liked that not. She’d been in the forest the day Morgan had lured the red knight into his trap. In truth, she’d helped distract D’Arbois’s other men, and she’d wished the thief godspeed in taking his prize to Caradoc.

She loosened the girl’s gown and kirtle and skimmed her fingers along the edge of the chemise to reveal the wound. The smell of
rasca
filled the air and brought a smile to her mouth. No remedy had been spared the maid.

A crescent-shaped scar came into view on Ceridwen’s shoulder, followed by its replica in opposition. Madron’s brow furrowed. The marks were oddly celestial, a waxing moon and an offset curve of a waning moon. Ragnor had a crooked jaw and an overbite, she deduced, the waxing moon being so much clearer than its waning counterpart. She liked not the look of it, but there was naught she could do. It was not festered, and for that she was grateful.

Behind her, the door of the cottage opened with a click of the latch, the accompanying breeze setting the candle aflicker. Edmee was due from Deri, and Madron turned with a welcoming smile. She’d sensed no danger, but her smile quickly faded when she saw all who entered.

She rose to her feet with regal grace, relying on a calm visage to hide her discomposure.

“Come, love,” she said to Edmee, meeting her daughter partway and enfolding her in a warm embrace. “How fared you at Wydehaw?” She tilted her head down to rub her cheek against the girl’s forehead.

Edmee’s answer brought back her smile.

“If all you do is eat Dain’s comfits, ’tis a wonder he lets you come a’tall.”

Edmee’s eyelashes lowered as pink stole over the tops of the girl’s cheeks, rousing Madron’s curiosity. If they’d been alone, she would have inquired further into the matter, but they were not alone.

“I hope Moira fed you something more substantial,” she said, gently lifting her daughter’s chin to better see her eyes.

Aye, Edmee gestured, a small grin teasing her mouth. She’d had a wonderful time in Deri. Dain had come, surprising everyone by bringing Ceridwen with him, and Edmee had been able to tell them about the maid, but she was tired now and could she please be excused to go to bed?

Madron rolled her eyes at the rush of silent words and gave her daughter a kiss on the cheek before letting the girl slip away to the loft. In winter they slept close to the fire, but the nights had gotten warmer of late. She noticed Edmee stop and touch first Dain and then Ceridwen, lightly smoothing her palm over their brows, bringing her hand down the sides of their necks, and pressing her fingers against their skin. The girl would someday have Moira’s touch.

Edmee glanced over her shoulder with a question in her eyes. Madron answered with a quick sign for sleep, nothing more than a Druid sleep, the easiest of spells to cast and the first she’d taught her daughter,

When the girl was gone, she looked up at the man standing by the door. He was tall and blond, with gray streaks running through his hair and a broad blue stripe painted across his face. She knew that if she ran her fingers through those silky strands along the left side of his head, as she had done once so long ago, she would find a
fif
braid, one woven out of five pieces, underneath the rest of his hair.

“So you actually thought to keep Ceridwen ab Arawn from me?” she asked.

“I wanted to see Rhiannon’s daughter,” Rhuddlan said, “and I wanted her to see me. She remembers nothing of the Quicken-tree.”

“She remembers elf shot,” Madron told him with a hint of smugness. The maid lacked nothing. “’Twas the first thing she chose off my table.”

“Then it is well she is here for you to remind her of the rest.” His gaze shifted to the sleeping pair. “Though I doubt if Lavrans appreciates your methods. I would not have thought him susceptible to bewitchment.”

“I’m not the one who has him bewitched.” It was a partial truth, but still truth. He had been an easy mark this night. She had tested him a few times over the years with a little of this, a little of that, and had always found him unassailable. He’d caught her once trying a bit of glamour and voice on him, and had given her a smile that had chilled her to the bone. She’d been much more careful from then on.

Something or someone had softened his cynic’s heart, though, and made him vulnerable. Her coin would be on someone named Ceridwen ab Arawn. A shame, really. Madron had always found his lack of faith in humanity one of his most endearing qualities, for it kept her on the edge, wondering if he would ever be proven wrong, if his heart would ever open with even the narrowest of cracks. Now it had happened. There had been no fanfare, no beating of drums, no falling stars—only a woman accidentally crossing his path.

“He does seem taken with the maid,” Rhuddlan said, echoing her thoughts with far too much presumption in his voice for her peace of mind.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Moira usually brings Edmee home.” It had never done her any good to be subtle with Rhuddlan, or to be patient. ’Twas far better to know his game from the start.

“You will need my help before morning, to get them back to Wydehaw,” was all he said, but she felt his reasoning fell short of the mark.

“And?” she prompted.

He looked at her from across the width of the cottage, his eyes alight with a mischief it seemed the Quicken-tree never outgrew. “I would trust you with my life, Moriath, but no further than that.”

Aye, she would trust him with her life too, but no further. So she was to be watched. Well, she thought, let him watch.

“Bring more wood in for the fire,” she said, disguising her acquiescence with a command, and her unease with an imperious manner. ’Twas never easy for her to be with him, especially alone. No one called her Moriath anymore, except for Rhuddlan. Her own daughter knew her as Madron. She’d changed her name to sever any ties between her and the twins after she’d left them in the religious houses, and so that she could live near Wydehaw without her father’s past marking her or people connecting her with Merioneth. But through Rhuddlan she was connected, to Merioneth, to the Quicken-tree, to the past and to the future and to love.

When all was ready and her uninvited guest situated where he could observe without interfering, she crossed over to the cupboard and reached up to its topmost shelf. From there she withdrew an earthenware jar.

“
Hadyn draig
,” Rhuddlan murmured. Dragon seed. She knew he had a similar jar himself, one crosshatched with ochre and woad and sealed with beeswax.

“The scent will remind her of her last night at Carn Merioneth, of the place where I found her and Mychael in the caves.”

“Will also remind her of the water track,” Rhuddlan said.

She turned to face him, her brows furrowed. “You smelt
pryf
this evening beneath the falls? As far south as this?”

He nodded and leaned forward in the chair, his elbows resting on the intricately carved arms, his fingers laced together. The Quicken-tree cloth moved with the sheen and fluidity of water over his broad shoulders and across his chest. “The fragrance was rich on the track, though it lasted but a moment. ’Twas what brought me to Deri so soon in the year, the scent of
pryf
.”

She’d wondered why he’d been so early into Wroneu and able to waylay Dain and Ceridwen. Moira had been in the oak grove since the end of Nuin, but the others hadn’t been expected until Beltaine. She kept her musings to herself as she picked up a small ritual blade, an athame, from one of the cupboard’s shelves and incised the beeswax.

“You, too, must have been feeling the turmoil in the north this last year,” he said, “especially since Ngetal.”

“Aye.” She had felt the stirrings deep in the earth, and she’d felt the crude power of the one calling to the children of Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas—too crude to be of Rhuddlan’s making, she’d decided after much deliberation—and had wondered if ’twas just the
pryf
themselves rousing into action that had made the timing of Caradoc’s summons auspicious. Now she was unsure. “But there can be no caller we do not know. Gwrnach knew naught of
pryf
, the fool, and I cannot believe it is his son, the one they call the Boar of Balor. I remember him as a youth, loud and boisterous, and lacking in any subtlety that would have hinted at influence in these matters.”

“When first it happened, I thought it was you.” Rhuddlan looked at her through eyes made evermore bright by the dark woad across his face. “Would have gone hard with you, Moriath, if I’d found that to be true.”

“No less hard than on you, if what I had first thought was true,” she warned him. “Now and again a stranger has stumbled onto a thread of mystery and attempted to follow it to Merioneth. You know yourself they cannot fully understand on their own, and without understanding, naught but danger and death awaits them beyond the Canolbarth.” She brought the jar to her nose and sniffed. A smile curved her mouth. “This should do the trick.”

“No tricks,” Rhuddlan said, pinning her with his gaze. “We have waited for Rhiannon’s daughter to become a woman and free the dragon spawn, because Nemeton’s daughter told us ’twas the best way to reclaim what we lost when Carn Merioneth fell. But Ceridwen ab Arawn is not as her mother was, even Moira will tell you this, and now someone else summons the
pryf
from their sleep. There are those who feel we made a fool’s bargain.”

“Her lineage goes all the way to Anglesey, to a Magus Druid Priestess.” She dismissed his concern with a wave of her hand, crossing in front of him on her way to the hearth. “None other than one such as she can bring the
pryf
up from the deep, no matter how they may make the serpents squirm.”

Rhuddlan was not so easily dissuaded. “We head north this night. Let us take her with us and soon enough I can tell you if she can hold her place in the gates of time. I will even put Lavrans by her side to better her chances.”

“Dain is not Nemeton,” she said coldly, liking not the turn of the conversation. She would countenance no union between Dain and the maid, least of all as part of the sacred trinity of man and woman—who truly were one—
tylwyth teg
, and the cosmos.

“Neither are you Nemeton,” Rhuddlan replied. “We need a key, and many of the Quicken-tree think Lavrans is the key to breaking the seal on the maze, especially if he has the maid’s help.”

“Then you have made him into something he is not.” Anger sharpened her voice, an anger born of fear. She and the Quicken-tree needed each other. They could not win if they were at cross purposes. “Dain is a charlatan. He plays at being a sorcerer. He plays at knowing magic. The villagers and castle folk of Wydehaw take great pleasure in believing in his charms, but his conjuring is no more than masterful trickery. He knows this and would be the first to tell you it is so.”

“And I tell you he has the gift of deep sight that the maid lacks. I would end this exile, Moriath, and see Yr Is-ddwfn once more.”

Madron bit back a rejoinder. She and Rhuddlan always argued. They had been arguing for fifteen years, ever since she’d left him for the last time. “There is more at stake here than the opening of the maze,” she said with forced calm. “What good is opening it if you can’t hold it? And you can’t hold it without also holding Carn Merioneth, a matter easily accomplished by a marriage the Prince of Gwynedd himself has sanctioned, and near impossible to accomplish any other way. Or would you go to the west and abandon all who are here?”

“I would not abandon man. ’Tis the duty of the
tylwyth teg
to be the bridge ’tween men and their gods. But with the maze open, we would have the
pryf
on our side.”

“To what end?” she asked, finally shocked out of her feigned calm. “They are not battering rams or warhorses.” Whatever in the world was he thinking? “You cannot do battle with
pryf
, nor with Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas. They are not there to serve us. We are here to protect and serve them.”

“And we are none of us here to serve Welsh princes and English lords. Yet you would do both before you would serve me.” His face grew harsh in the firelight, reminding her of all that was unfinished between them.

“I owe you much, Rhuddlan—”

“As much as you owe the damned Sheriff of Hay-on-Wye?” he demanded, pointing at the toothed and clawed bearskin.

“He gets naught from me but potions.”

“And I get naught but cold gratitude.”

She turned away in frustration and set about her business. In truth, her gratitude was not cold, at least not nearly cold enough. He had been her first man, her only man. Though others had tried to win her favors—or steal them, as had been the case with the lord of Carn Merioneth —none but Rhuddlan had ever held her heart. He tempted her so, but within that temptation lay her destruction. To be Rhuddlan’s woman was to not be her own, a price she would not pay.