The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (38 page)

“And this makes you sad?”

Her gaze lifted at Llynya’s question. She hadn’t meant to reveal her feelings about Mychael—in truth, she was surprised the girl had discerned them—for mixed in with her sadness was a shame she would rather keep hidden.

But the truth would out with the green-eyed maid. “’Tis not his goodness that makes me sad,” she confessed, “but that I must use it to save myself. I am in desperate need of a saint.”

“Dain would not suffice?” the sprite asked with naught but the utmost innocence.

“Dain?” Ceridwen’s eyebrows arched, and her hands stilled. Did Llynya not know that even now Dain Lavrans stalked her woods as the Demon? He was no saint in any way, shape, form, thought, or deed.

“Aye. Do you not find his goodness also troublesome?” The girl brushed aside a twig that had slipped partway free from her hair to dangle over her eyes. The success of the action was short-lived, with the tiny stick falling back into her face.

“Goodness? What goodness?” Ceridwen exclaimed.

“Why, the goodness that keeps him chaste.”

Ceridwen colored. Had she no secrets left anywhere in the whole of Wales?

Llynya worked the twig free and stuck it back in her hair higher up.

“Why not drop it into the rushes and be done with it?” Ceridwen asked, grateful to change the subject.

“’Tis rowan from the Deri grove. Wearing it helps the other trees recognize me.”

Of course. Fanciful child.

Sure that Llynya would have another fanciful answer, Ceridwen didn’t bother to ask what blessings the rest of the twigs in her hair granted, or the leaves, arboreal badges that none of the other Quicken-tree seemed to require. Instead, she hurried to provision herself with a cloth sack of bread and cheese.

“What do you think, Ceri?” the sprite asked, rising to her feet. “Are the dogs prepared to leave with me?”

Prepared? “I don’t think they like being trapped here any more than I.” She gave her honest opinion, while wondering what possible preparations a couple of dogs would need to make.

“So you think they’re ready?” Llynya still sounded in need of reassurance. She was petting the dogs and scratching their ears and ingratiating herself with cooing noises. How could the hounds not want to leave with her?

“Are they not yours?” Ceridwen asked, becoming a little perplexed.

“Rhayne? Mine? Oh, no.” Llynya laughed. “And Conladrian? They say he belongs to no one, but answers to Rhuddlan out of respect. ’Tis Rhuddlan who calls them home now. I am merely the messenger.”

“Then I say they adore the messenger and would follow you to the ends of the earth,” Ceridwen said, settling the matter. The quicker they left Wydehaw, the better.

“’Tis not so far that they must go.” Llynya grinned. “Only into the woods, then north in the morning. Come then, let us be off and see if what you say is true.”

North. Mychael and Strata Florida lay to the north.

“
O Rhayne, Conladrian ges
,” the sprite began to sing, swinging into an easy march down the stairs. Sure enough, the dogs followed behind. “
Anna bellammenaseri-i-i-i
...”

Ceridwen looked once around the Hart, checking to see that she had forgotten nothing, and giving one last glance to where Dain had sat at the table and turned himself from sorcerer to demon. Even as the demon-beast, a part of her had wanted him. His pull on her was beyond venial sin, tempting her into damnation with lures so sweet she knew even now she would abandon her faith for one more kiss.

“Christ save me,” she murmured. For the sake of her soul, her escape was coming not a moment too soon.

I
n the heart of Wroneu, a half league north of Deri on the southern flank of Wyche Elm Pass, a fern-covered opening on the side of a hill led into the cavern of the Quicken-tree. Deep inside the dark, airy space, where limestone walls gave way to feldspar and quartz, was a grotto, and ’twas from there that Dain felt darkness complete its hold on the land above. The quietness of birds roosting and animals bedding down for the night permeated the rock and spoke to him of the rising moon; the subtle scent of a cooling forest clarified the air. It had been such with him all through the day, with hour after hour of messages from the natural world stealing upon him with the softest of treads. The earth was heavy with spring, and naught could hold back all she had to say and give.

He sat with the men of the Quicken-tree in a circle around a dying pyre, chanting in an ancient tongue, entranced as much by exhaustion and hunger as by the low steadiness of voices filling the air around him. Trig and Wei, two of the Liosalfar, were on either side of him. All the men were drinking from a shared bowl, passing it from one to the other. If ’twas consecrated wine or magic elixir, Dain had never been able to tell. The scent of grape was in it, but so were many other things he could not identify. An unusual sludge of leaves and whatnot had settled into the bottom of the mazer, and the faraway looks in the men’s eyes proved the libation to be more potent than in years past. For himself, he abstained. He knew too well the destination arrived at by ingesting sacred potions. Jalal had introduced him to a number of such simples, though without the accompanying spiritual rites, and few were as benign as Catholic wafers and wine.

There were plants and herbs that could give a man visions of the future and help him recall the past, even the far distant past. There were concoctions that could take a man to an unimagined heaven and concoctions that could take him to his most horribly imagined hell. Ofttimes they were one and the same, with a little bit of the ecstasy of heaven granted for an eternity in hell.

The wooden bowl came around again, smelling of bitter fruit and oddments, and Dain passed it to Trig. The Liosalfar bowman was older than the other men in the grotto, younger only than Rhuddlan. His face was hard set among the fair people, his body marked with woad tattoos and the scars of battle. He lifted the mazer to his mouth and drank, and for an instant Dain saw the bowman’s eyes mist over and turn a milky green. Though naught else visibly happened to Trig, Dain classified the occurrence as a warning. None of Jalal’s potions had ever had the power to change the color of a man’s eyes.

His gaze fell to his own hands as the ancient words of the Quicken-tree chant filled him, their rhythm pulsing beneath his skin like a heartbeat. ’Twas a long night he faced, balanced between one world and the other.

The chant changed with the leaving of daylight, and with the change came a new awareness. In the grove south of the cavern, the women of the tribe were performing their own ceremony. Their voices reached Dain through the avenues of the earth, the melody of their song much fairer than the darkly ponderous one echoing through the grotto; a song so fair, ’twas sure to bring them the blessings of the deities they invoked. The men, for certain, would come to them in the grove, and in the coming together, the nightfire of Beltaine would be lit and the rites of spring begun.

Long before night, while the sun had still been high in the sky, Rhuddlan had called Dain forth as the Demon, and he had done his part, feeding the flames with
rihadin
and roiling up the brightly hued smoke into a swirling tower that had reached farther than it ever had before, past the light of the pyre and into the darkest, highest recesses of the cavern. The Liosalfar had poured water from the grotto’s warm pool onto the stones of the fire ring, and the resulting steam had saturated all of them to their skin. Stripped naked, they had then taken up the chant.

Only after the water from their bodies had cleansed them and the songs had been sung into the air, had Dain been prepared by a white-haired woman for his descent to the river running deep in the earth. Old hands curled with age, but soft with their touch, had marked him with woad, beginning with circles in the centers of his palms and drawing serpentine swirls up the underside of his arms to his chest, where the lines curved over each other thrice before separating for the long course down his legs to the soles of his feet. The same trembling fingers had painted his face, banding him like the Quicken-tree with one broad blue stripe across his eyes. A loincloth of the softest deer hide had been hung about his waist.

The crone’s last act had been to have him kneel at her feet for the braiding of his hair. Five widths of chestnut strands from above his left ear she’d used to weave the plait, finishing it with tightly bound thread of Quicken-tree cloth.

Now, while he and the others chanted, she did much the same to Rhuddlan, painting him as Belenos, the Sun-God, down the front of his body, but she did not stop there. From the soles of his feet, her aged fingers slid up the backs of his legs and across his buttocks. Singing softly, she continued up and over his hipbones and circled his groin with bold blue strokes. She drew an arrow coming out of the circle up to his left rib cage and painted the sign of the sun above his genitals, marking him as the mate of the Goddess. No leather touched Rhuddlan’s body. A cloth of leaves, oak, and the mountain ash, rowan, was brought forth to garb him.

“
Malashm
,” Dain heard her murmur as she knotted the leafstalks around the blond man’s waist. She spoke a few more words in the ancient language, the melody of them clear to him above the monotone of the chant, and Rhuddlan smiled.

With the surety of his instincts, Dain knew the woman had once been the Goddess for the Quicken-tree leader. Given her age, mayhaps she had been Rhuddlan’s first.

Off to his right, Dain sensed a parting of the dark and another person entering the grotto. Elen, a young woman of Moira’s family, walked into the circle of men, bearing a golden chalice encrusted with jewels. Chrysolite and jacinth, amber and sapphire gems sparkled along the rim, and below them, a row of amethyst. Dragons were chased into the metal, some with emerald eyes, others with ruby. Topaz and diamond fire rolled out of their sharp-toothed mouths. Their bellies were softly lustrous with pearls.

The woman came directly toward him, and Dain rose to his feet. Elen smiled shyly, and as she gave him the cup, their fingers touched. Dain returned her smile, for she was lovely, far lovelier than he remembered from a fortnight past. Silky brown curls escaped from her crown of braids and caressed cheeks as soft and as prettily blushed as peaches. Her lips were alluring with the red stain of berry juice upon them. Her body was lush beneath her shimmering gray-green dress. Here was a being to grant a man oblivion.

Unbidden by conscious reasoning, he let his hands linger on hers, holding them around the golden cup, making a promise he had not made before. There were no restrictions against his taking a Quicken-tree woman, and the time had come. Tonight he would mate in the forest with the others. Like the earth, his body was heavy with spring, and he had much he wanted to give: the touch of mouth upon mouth, the outer warmth of two bodies pressed close together, the inner warmth of hearts meeting in a place beyond the boundaries of the skin that held them. Tonight he would share these things with the Quicken-tree woman; he would learn of her secrets and give her secrets of his own—for she was here, a part of the grove, and Ceri would always be beyond his reach.

Always.

Elen stepped away from him and melted into the shadows of the grotto, taking her shy smile and her secrets with her. He lifted his hand to stop her from leaving, then let it fall back to his side with a soft curse. He did not normally indulge in futile, sentimental acts. The ceremony was a set piece; he would not see Elen again until they met in the grove—if they met in the grove. He’d left Ceri locked in the tower while the taste of her kiss had still been on his tongue. Centaury smoke had not banished it, neither had the river water.

“Lavrans.” Rhuddlan’s cool, clear voice broke into his thoughts. He turned to where the man stood on the other side of the flames. “’Tis time, my friend.”

My friend.
I would spare you, my friend
, Ceri had said.

Rhuddlan gestured toward the tunnel leading to the subterranean riverbank, but Dain did not move. He could not have her, yet he dared to want her. The question was, did he dare enough to return to the tower and take her?

She had talked of love.

“Come, Dain,” Rhuddlan called to him. “You will find your answers in time. Come. Bring the wine and do what must be done.”

To do what must be done
. Had that not been his creed? And tonight, with or without Ceri, he must be Ceraunnos for the Quicken-tree. More than the debt he owed, or the promise of future gain, he was compelled by the ritual itself. On Beltaine, he was the Lord of the Animals, and this year the wild creatures of the earth were calling to him more strongly than ever before. They stirred, and he felt it; they breathed, and air flowed into his lungs. They spoke, and ’twas the sound of her name he heard.

“Ceridwen,” he whispered. She was everywhere inside him.

Within his hands, the cup warmed, drawing his gaze downward. No leaves marred the purity of the chalice wine. ’Twas translucent, allowing the gold to reflect through the crimson liquid. Beautiful, deadly stuff.

The men began rising about him, and to do what must be done, he moved forward. The stone floor was smooth beneath his feet. The scent coming from the river was fresh and beckoning, until he reached the tunnel entrance. He hesitated there, stilled by a sudden shift in the air and by a silent warning arising from deep in his mind. He tried to trace the warning to a source, and came up with naught but vague fragments of Madron’s dream. Frustrated, he looked back at Rhuddlan, and the moment of wariness passed as quickly as that, eased back into the pleasant drone of the chant by the calm verdancy of the Quicken-tree man’s eyes.

One step inside the narrow passage and the sweat cooled on his skin. Water churned against the rocks below, the sound reaching him half a league from where the river broke free from its underground bearing and plunged into the gorge above Deri. Candles, fine, tall beeswax tapers, had been lit and placed along the twisting path to the river’s edge. Dain followed the lighted curves and turns, avoiding the tunnel’s many offshoots that made the tract beyond the cavern a dangerous maze. ’Twas said a Quicken-tree child had been lost in the labyrinth once, never to be heard from again.