The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (32 page)

Yet for all that he’d made a mummery of their ceremony, he had not left the grove unchanged. The bodhran drums had done it to him. Their pounding, driving beat had slipped beyond his defenses and found an answering rhythm in what had been left of his soul. He couldn’t remember now what had surprised him more: that he’d responded to the Quicken-tree’s pagan rites, or that Jalal had left a part of him intact.

Pagan. The word barely sufficed to describe what happened in the grove. Edmee would not be there on Beltaine. Madron never allowed it. Mayhaps he would turn to Llynya. That one’s sweet wildness had tempted him once. Or Moira. The Earth-Mother would take him in and give him comfort, bring him peace. There were others who would be willing, aye, even eager to lay down on the forest floor with the Horned One he would become—and none would be Ceridwen.

He would continue to teach her how to use her new knife, and he would show her how to distill wine into water that burned. If he dared, he could tell her somewhat of the things between a man and a woman. Though Caradoc had brought the ransom and shown concern for her well-being, he did not think the Boar of Balor would bother to ease his way into a maid’s affections before easing his way into her bed, and Dain did not want her hurt, no matter the trouble she had brought to his life.

He looked up again, watching as she worked the resin with her fingers. Her brows were drawn together in concentration, but her mouth was soft, free from worry. She was convent-bred and unused to the ways of men. After shocking her the night of his bath, he felt a certain responsibility to atone. Fear did not make a good bedmate, and it could make it especially hard for a woman. He could teach her somewhat, he supposed, teach her what he dared, but not nearly all she would allow.

A wry smile curved his mouth. She wanted too much from him. He saw it in her eyes, felt it in her touch, and she didn’t know the safe limits of such things. If naught else, though, he would open her mouth and give her a kiss. Much could be learned from a kiss, and the maid was quicker than most.

She would need to be, if she found herself often matching wits with Helebore. Before she left, he would give her the trick of using stone snake tongue to detect poison in food and wine. He had an extra mermaid’s purse or two he could part with, though he’d never actually figured out what to do with them besides intone grim-sounding chants while waving them about.

He could teach her how to do that. Truly, the chanting was his most effective “magic,” that and divining the future from chicken guts. If there were many like Erlend in Balor, the chicken trick could make her reputation, and God knew there was safety in having a reputation as a mage. His had served him well for many years, until the maid had come into his life and begun tearing it asunder from the inside out.

R
huddlan and Trig knelt by the steaming, bubbling pool deep in the heart of the caves beneath Balor. The Liosalfar touched his fingers to the stone rim, the Quicken-tree leader reached for the water itself, and what Trig smelled on his fingers when he lifted them to his nose, Rhuddlan felt in the pool.

“Desecration,” the Liosalfar said, looking up.

Green eyes met green, and Rhuddlan nodded. “Whoever rouses the
pryf
dabbles in mysteries beyond his ken. Find the paths he uses and close them off.” The foul being whose presence they sensed could not be left to run free.

Men from above had ventured into the caves many times since the fall of Carn Merioneth, some by accident, some apurpose to explore, and some to meet unexpected death. The caverns of the Quicken-tree did not readily reveal their secrets, and for that reason Rhuddlan had never bothered to challenge the presence of those whose thoughts did not go beyond tangible riches. ’Twas better for them to find nothing and return to tell the tale.

This one, though—the Quicken-tree leader skimmed his fingers across the scrying pool once more—this one did not think of gold and gemstones, but of a treasure beyond price, and he must be checked. The searcher would know someone had locked him out the next time he tried to descend into the caves, and mayhaps he had enough wits about him to devise a new way in, but that would take time and Beltaine was nearly upon them. After that good night, Rhuddlan would return with those he needed to break the seal on the weir gate, and once again he would be the ruler of the kingdom beneath the mountains, a dragon keeper.

Then let this foul being come below, and Rhuddlan would feed him to the mother ocean.

~ ~ ~

Travelers from the far north, from beyond even Denmark, arrived near Wydehaw midweek. The messenger who had sighted the peddler band in the forest and brought the news to the Hart had been scarce more than a boy. He had disappeared back into the night with his four pence clutched in his fist, leaving less trace of his passing than a shadow. For such an outrageous sum, Ceridwen had told Dain, she would be happy to run free in the woods all day and report back to him everything she saw. His reply had been that she had not done so well by herself running free in the woods, and that mayhaps she should just stay put. She did, while he left at the next dawn to go in search of the barbarian traders.

Glad she was to be alone. The tower was too small to hold a caged animal of Dain’s size, and he acted the part no less than any wild thing she’d seen caught in a trap. He no longer spoke, he growled and snapped. He no longer slept, but prowled the whole night long. Every sound brought his head up, alert and wary. Every shift in the wind had become cause for another hour spent staring out the window upon the forested hills. He had not eaten yesterday, nor broken his fast this morn.

Worst of all, his restless pacing had infected her with the same agitated excitement, the same sense of anticipation, though she knew not what to anticipate other than the escape she must contrive before Caradoc’s return. She had put it off long enough. Less than a sennight remained.

Her plan was still to make for Strata Florida, but she was sorely tempted to go back into Wroneu and find Moriath before heading north. Despite what Dain had said about the witch, Ceridwen had felt no harm coming from her, and whether she was called Moriath or Madron, she was a touchstone to the past. Mayhaps she would have tidings of Mychael.

Before he’d left, Dain had set her to work dusting the shelves in his solar. There were hundreds of earthenware vessels to be cleaned, containers made out of boiled leather, small wool pouches, open dishes and baskets holding whole herbs, glass cruets and more jugs and pots than she’d ever seen in one place. He wanted them all tidied, though she guessed his true motive was to keep her occupied and out of trouble while he was gone.

There had been a slight accident, which in no way had been her fault, that had nearly set them afire the previous day. By the time Dain had gotten them both down to smolders sans sparks, he’d been in no mood to continue her studies. The damned distilled wine was what had caused all the commotion. She might have set it too close to the brazier, but she was not the one who had spilled it into the coals, sending an inferno of flame whooshing toward the ceiling. Numa’s wagging tail had done the deed. Still, ’twas an interesting thing,
aqua ardens
, water that burned, and she was taking plenty with her when she left.

Her cleaning eventually brought her to the door that led to the tower’s upper chamber. Carved in stone above the door, nearly obscured by years of soot and grime, were Latin words. “
Amor... lux... veritas... sic itur ad astra
,” she murmured.

“Love... light... truth... such is the way to the stars.” The translation took her a moment and still left her wondering what the words meant.

If the answer lay on the other side of the door, she would have to do without it, for unlike the Druid Door, the door to the upper chamber was never opened. Never. Erlend was frightened of the place, though she didn’t know why. As much as he prattled, he wouldn’t say anything beyond “strange, demn things” when asked what it was Dain kept in the eyrie. If she probed further, he became incoherent in his mutterings. Whatever was beyond the door defied either the old man’s comprehension or his power of description, or both, and was no doubt the most interesting thing in the tower. She was sure, too, that it had something to do with Dain’s alchemical dabblings, with the Philosopher’s Stone he was never able to successfully conjure in the lower chamber—the very key to the machinations of nature, time, and transformation, he’d told her. Few of his concoctions and containers made it past the thirtieth distillation on his still, let alone the seventieth some of his receipts required.

She bent down from where she stood on a stool and tried the latch, giving it a little wiggle, then a stronger one. She put her shoulder to it, but nothing happened. It never did.

Yet the door had a lock like any other lock, and where there was a lock, there was a key. Somewhere.

Expecting nothing, she ran her hand across the stones jutting out above the door, doubting that the mage would be so predictable. She got exactly what she expected, with the addition of a bit of cobweb. She’d had the same problem at Usk, trying to get into the library. Her solution then had been a cannily wielded kitchen knife and a sturdy oak twig.

Time was running short, she told herself, looking around for a knife other than her precious Damascene. She could not afford to respect Dain’s privacy when any piece of knowledge she gained could be the one to save her.

The lock turned out to be a simple affair, yielding easily to her prodding and poking. Dain must not have thought it necessary to protect the eyrie beyond the Druid Door, for she had no doubts that he could have made it impossible to enter the upper chamber, if he had chosen to do so. Llynya had been wrong about the magic word, “sezhamey.” Ceridwen had tried it time and again to no avail.

With her strong push, the door opened on creaking hinges, revealing a stairwell filled with dim light and dripping water. She stuck her hand in and touched the curved wall. The stone was cold and wet. A pool of water glistened on the floor, a cache of rain from that morning’s shower caught in a smooth indentation of rock. She skirted it as she stepped into the stairwell. Streams of sunlight broke through the ceiling boards far above her and filtered down, setting the dust motes alight.

Halfway around the first curve, she looked up and, indeed, something strange caught her eye. Her heart skipped a beat and her breath stopped. An orb hung above her in the air, a metal ball with no visible means of support. She stepped back a stair, planning to turn and run as Erlend must have done, when the curved rod that held the orb came into view.

But what held the rod? she wondered, poised between flight and curiosity.

She continued forward, daring all, yet keeping her hand firmly on the wall to insure a quick escape if needs be.

Slowly, she crept up the stairs, listening for danger and hearing naught beyond the same breeze she’d felt in the solar. She was protected from its windy kiss in the stairwell, but she heard the fluttering of cloth in the chamber above her, and the metal ball dipped and swayed ever so slightly.

As she rounded the curve, more of the rod came into view, along with another and another, each with its own orb, though every orb was a different size. ’Twas just as Erlend had said, a strange demn thing.

Her head peeked over the topmost stair, bringing more of the room into view, and her eyes widened. “Sweet Jesu,” she whispered.

~ ~ ~

Dain hung his cloak by the hearth and glanced again toward the door to the upper chamber. ’Twas open. A smile curved his mouth. The maid was nothing if not adventurous.

He’d been caught in a rain shower at dusk, a half league from the tunnel, but the journey had been worth the dousing. He’d had news of home.

Laughter floated down the stairs, and his smile broadened. Night had fallen, and he could well imagine what brought the laughter to her lips, the same thing that had sent Erlend cowering into the alchemy chamber. He picked up the package he’d set on the table and palmed a handful of
rihadin
out of a bowl on his
materia medico
shelf, then followed the sound of her laughter.

He mounted the stairs into darkness. Halfway up, he tilted his head back and found stars spinning slowly above him. As he’d thought, she had wasted no time in lighting the orbs. Seven were larger than the rest, representing in ascending order Mercury, Venus, Earth, the moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Numerous smaller orbs, stars, circled and danced around the outside of the planets, their number, if not their arrangement, corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. The orbs themselves were made of thinly pounded copper patinated by the years to a rich verdigris and put together like two hinged bowls, each one connected by a long, slender rod to a great, skeletal framework of bronze rings, and at the center of the rings, a true wonder of the world—a smoke-smudged pillar quarried out of rock crystal, a semi-precious stone as wide as any oak tree and three times as high as a man. ’Twas a daunting thing to behold, the sphere of bronze rings set at half a dozen angles encircling the massive pillar at its core. The whole of the wondrous device was Nemeton’s celestial sphere, the bard’s heretical, heliocentric map to the cosmos, and looking at it now, he wondered if the pillar was more than the simple rock crystal he’d always thought and mayhaps had elusive and dangerous properties he had yet to encounter, like Madron’s dreamstone.

He’d long since surmised that the pillar represented Helios. The idea of the Earth and her sister planets revolving around the Sun was not new to Dain. Jalal had once taken him to an astrologer in Damascus who had seen such a diagram in an ancient manuscript said to have come from a land that was no more. The East had been full of such missives, though most were not nearly as ancient as their sellers professed. ’Twas not until the Hart, though, that he’d seen any recounting in the West of a Sun-central cosmos. Nor had he foreseen in Damascus how an old man’s ramblings would give him the key to a new life as the Mage of Wydehaw, a key in fact as well as theory. In a clever bit of wordplay, Nemeton had incised three rays of the Sun in the keystone of the stone arch around the Druid Door, showing that brightest of celestial orbs at eventide, noon, and morning rise. Three nights into his delicate assault upon the lock, Dain had forsaken the alchemical order of metals—what he’d considered his cleverest idea—and the more obvious Ptolemaic order of the cosmos, which had the Earth as its center, and begun manipulating the iron rods in the pattern of heresy. Still, it had not been an easy thing, for each rod had to be moved in a prescribed order within the circular pattern of the lock. That he had opened the door in a sennight had seemed like magic even to him, despite his endless calculations and drawings.