The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (39 page)

Water lapped at his feet where the candles ended. With no further ado, he poured the sacred liquid out of the chalice into the river, and the river quieted and grew placid.

’Twas the one truly mysterious part of the ceremony. He knew many ways to make water in a container bubble and foam, but he knew of no potion to calm the natural flow of free water—except for the Quicken-tree’s, and neither Rhuddlan nor Moira would talk of their
gwin draig
, their dragon wine.

But calm the water it did, to a glassy sheen of transcendent beauty that lasted no longer than a breath before it was churned under by the returning waves, washed down the river and out to the sea. The first year, he’d near missed the instant of stillness, so busy had he been devising his next trick. The tail end of it had caught his eye, though, and the second year he’d paid closer attention. He knew of scrying pools, and was sure that was what was created with the offering, but only for someone with much quicker sight than his. The third year, he’d tasted the dragon wine before pouring it into the river, the barest bit of it from the tip of his finger to the tip of his tongue, and he had not regained his senses until dawn. No one had asked him what he’d done, though his insensate state could hardly have been overlooked, and he had not said.

’Twas the last time he’d given in to his weakness and tried to find something like
kif
to ease his mind and soul, to wash him in languor and give him peace without destroying him as the opium had been wont to do.

This night, he watched, nothing more and with the strangeness of time in a dream, the length of stillness in the water stretched three, five, mayhaps sevenfold of that in previous years. He saw nothing, but the stillness was full of anticipation, then once again a sense of warning came upon him. A moment later he knew he was not alone.

’Twas no man with him at the river’s edge, and no forest creature. A soft keening came out of the darkness, and with it a breeze, soft and rich and smelling of deep earth.

Pryf
. He knew the truth of it beyond doubt.

The candle flames flickered, tossing shadows against the rocks. The warm wind wrapped around him, swirling up from his feet to the top of his head and then slipping away, leaving him alone in the midst of the quiet. He felt tasted, strangely, seductively so.

Drawn by the scent, he stepped forward into cold water up to his shins, peering into the darkness and reaching for something. Before he could go farther, a strong hand encircled his arm.

He turned and recognized a face made macabre by the flickering candlelight. “Trig.”

The bowman grinned, revealing broad white teeth. “Unless ye can walk on water like the Christian God, I don’t recommend following the
pryf
down the river.”

Pryf
. The creatures of the red book and the universal salts. Madron’s serpents, and they’d been nearly within his grasp.

“Ye called them fine.” Trig was no longer naked, and his eyes were clear. He was dressed for travel with a heavily quilted jerkin of silver and green on over his tunic.

“What are they?” He’d smelled them, felt them, heard them, but he had not seen them.

Trig shrugged. “
Pryf
is
pryf
. Rhuddlan can tell ye more, but for now, they’ve all left for Deri, as should we.”

Dain cast a glance at the river. Rhuddlan’s mysteries ran deep. He turned to follow the Liosalfar up the tunnel passage and was disconcerted to see the beeswax tapers burned down to nubs, some of them already guttering themselves out in the earthen floor. He looked back at the river once more and saw the waves begin again, the eddies and the flow, the churning of the waters, and he wondered how long he’d stood there, transfixed by the stillness with the scent of the unknown
pryf
surrounding him and the warmth of their breath licking at his skin.

~ ~ ~

Llynya had taken Elixir and said to wait, and Ceridwen waited, nested into the curved branches of a hazelnut tree, while Numa stood guard at its base. She’d watched the moon track its course across the sky; she’d found the polestar and knew which way her path lay. North, ever north. But she dared not move ’til Llynya returned. Wildness reigned in Wroneu. The pulsing beat of drums filled forest and glen, while Dain’s warning echoed in her memory and filled her heart with wariness—
Any man who catches you will take what I have not.

She’d seen men in the forest. She and Llynya had skirted by them, and women too. Fires burned on every hillside, drawing castle folk and cottars alike into the woods. The rivers Wye and Llynfi rushed through the night, carrying voices raised in ancient verse, a beseeching of the earth for her bounty and a siren’s song to lure others into the pagan disgrace called May Eve. At Usk, they’d always spent the night in communal prayer. Now Ceridwen knew why. Any but the purest of heart could be tempted by such overt licentiousness, and Abbess Edith had shown no mercy to pregnant nuns and novices. To be with child at Usk Abbey had meant to be expelled, no matter the hardships. Not four years past, one such faithless sister had been left to her own devices outside the convent walls and had been ravaged by wolves. Naught but scraps of her had remained.

Ceridwen shivered. They had heard no wolves this e’en, nor had she the last time she’d been in these woods. Mayhaps there were none in Wroneu.

“Cerrr-i-dwennn.”

She started at the sound of her name upon the wind. Below her, Numa came to all fours.

“Hurry, Cerrr-i-dwennn. Come.”

She turned toward the voice. ’Twas coming from the northeast and sounded like Llynya. A torch flickered through the trees there, a short distance away, moving in an arc, beckoning.

She eyed the drop to the forest floor and checked to make sure her pack was securely fastened. The ground was not so far after she climbed down another branch or two, and she made an easy leap of it.

’Twas warmer closer to the earth and out of the wind. The moon was high and full, lighting a path through the brambles and thicket, with the torch acting as a beacon, telling her which way to go. Yet she hesitated.

Numa nudged her hand, but she paid the hound no mind. The night had been full of risk. In truth, her whole life had been beset with risk since Morgan’s coming, but suddenly she felt as if a threshold loomed before her, and to cross it would mean she would never again be what she was at this moment.

“
Ceriiii
.” The voice called again, and within the shortened rendition of her name, Ceridwen found the reassurance she needed to go forward. None but Llynya and Dain ever called her Ceri. Mychael had called her thus, but that had been so long ago, she oft wondered if he would remember. She feared he would not.

“
Kom
,” she said to Numa, then grimaced. She’d spent far too much time in the sorcerer’s company, if she so easily fell into the Danish tongue. ’Twas good she’d left, and if she felt any regret, ’twas only for what never could have been.

She struck out on a course around most of the bracken, expecting to quickly reach the sprite, but such was not to be. No matter how close she came, Llynya and the torch were always a bit farther on. She remembered the first night she’d met Llynya and how the girl had disappeared in a twinkling. The sprite was not moving so fast this e’en, but much to her irritation Ceridwen could not catch up with her.

“Little scalliwag,” she murmured to herself. As long as she could see the torch, no harm was done, but she wished the child were not quite so capricious. There were dangers about, and Llynya was not so young as to be overlooked by a man. Truth be told, though, the forest had become quieter.

Much quieter, she realized. She stopped to listen, and Numa halted at her side. No living creature stirred. No wind rustled the leaves. A stillness lay upon the land.

She looked behind her and was surprised by the darkness. ’Twas as if the moon didn’t shine to the south. Up ahead, the woods were full of silver light. It streamed down from the sky and poured through the trees.

Behind her, though, the forest disappeared in a black void. No May Eve fires burned on the hillsides. No sounds of song echoed in the air. An uneasy feeling swept through her, starting at the base of her spine. She bunched her skirts up in her hands, preparing to run, but then stopped short. The torch no longer bobbed and weaved a trail up ahead.

It had been there not a moment past.

Not a moment past, she swore.

“Damn you, Llynya, where have you gone?”

A skittery sound made her jerk around. She took a step back, edging away from the darkness. A small gust of wind stirred the night, and shreds of the black void broke away and reached out for her, licking at the toes of her boots.

“Sweet Jesu!” She skipped backward, her heart pounding in fear. The darkness slipped forward again—all on its own, without so much as a breath of wind behind it—and she turned to flee, following the brightest path.

~ ~ ~

The Beltaine fire crackled and snapped in the middle of Deri, a funeral pyre for all the dead rowans of the year past. Hard sap grew liquid in the blaze and ran down the burning logs in a sizzling trail, the last of it dripping into the bed of white coals at the heart of the flames.

Dain sat cross-legged on a dais covered with the hides of hart and hind, the place of the Horned One. His hands were covered with the furred paws of a bear. In one he held a torc of twisted gold, in the other a staff of rowan carved into an antlered serpent. The sweet strains of lyres and the thrumming of bodhran drums being played by Quicken-tree hands wove a net around the grove, enclosing all within a circle. Elen was there, between the tall roots of the mother oak, swaying to the music, her hair and body garlanded with fresh green leaves. He felt the pull of her promise in his groin.

Rhuddlan held court as Belenos to the west of the oak, beneath a bower of alder trees, their branches entwined overhead, their sturdy trunks standing guard beside the great oak throne from which Rhuddlan oversaw the festivities. The wood of the kingly chair had been rubbed to a deep shine and was carved from one end to the other with the leaves of the plants found growing in Wroneu. It had finials in the shape of pinecones and mighty acorns at its feet. Wild grasses were incised up its legs, and woodland ferns were fanned out across its back.

The chair beside Rhuddlan’s, a throne in its own right, was more gracefully built and carved with flowers and bees. A thousand petals each of freshly gathered tansy, cowslip, pasqueflower, daffodil, and celandine wrought into garlands with periwinkle wreathed the arms and back of the chair, giving it a most welcoming countenance. But for all its beauty, the flower throne remained empty. No Goddess yet sat at Rhuddlan’s side.

Each year, ’twas the Goddess whose lush sweetness blessed them all. She was at Her most seductive in the spring, when She urged the earth and all its plants to flourish, one within the other, pollen to pistil to make the seed of new life. ’Twas for Her that the gods came, to be quickened by Her touch, and Dain felt the lack of Her presence. Though he had not vied with Rhuddlan for Her attention in years past, without Her, the ceremony had an emptiness he found unsettling. She should have been chosen by now.

Mayhaps ’twould be Llynya. He had not seen her there, and the sprite was ready to take another step toward womanhood. So was Shay ready for the sprite. The young Quicken-tree man was walking the perimeter of the grove, gazing outward into darkness, as if he would find her in the forest. ’Twas Llynya’s favorite hiding place, out among the wild trees, but night was full fallen, and whether she was the Goddess or not, she should have been safe in Deri by now. Rhuddlan would not have allowed her to run free on May Eve, when any man from Wydehaw to Hay-on-Wye might come across her. Knowing Llynya, she was probably going from hut to hut behind Shay’s back, avoiding what would someday be inevitable.

Moira, the Goddess from a year past, stood close to the bower near a cauldron of honeymead, stirring the iron kettle with a wooden paddle and pouring cups of brew for the dancers. For dance the Quicken-tree did, their bare feet in contact with the earth, moving in a rhythm to match the driving beat of the drums. All of them wore garlands of leaves, grasses, and flowers draped around their necks, across their shoulders and chests, and tied around their waists to worship the vegetation-spirit from whence their lives flowed.

One man, Wei, did not dance, but strode through the others bearing a drinking horn frothed to the top with Moira’s mead. He brought the horn to Dain, who drank long and deep, quenching his thirst and his hunger with the rich brew before passing it back to the Liosalfar. At a signal from Rhuddlan, the drums ceased, their silence calling Dain forth as the Horned One to lead the dance, to change it with his presence into something it had not yet been.

He rose to his feet, steadier away from the grotto’s heavy influence, and stepped down off the dais, leaving the torc and serpent lying on the hides. He knew more of his part than Rhuddlan had told him, knew more of their need of him than Rhuddlan had revealed. The Quicken-tree did not eat the flesh of animals. They did not hunt. They did not make sacrifices with the blood of the earth’s beasts. Yet like all beings, they had need of the animal-spirit in their lives. On Beltaine, they welcomed that spirit into their midst with one who embodied the quickness of animal life. Dain wore the trappings of the animals and made them sacred with his acceptance of their deaths.

The Quicken-tree separated before him, opening a passage to the bonfire and making room for him to walk through untouched. There was deference in their action, and a wise degree of wariness. He was alien, the other, there for his ability to rouse latent memories of the Animal Master in each of their breasts. For ’twas as animals that they would mate in the grove, with powerful innocence, utterly compelled by the needs of flesh, bone, and sinew to re-create; and through the act of creation, through their own fertility, they would aid the blossoming of spring, most wondrous season.

Dain made his way between them, every step bringing him closer to the richly scented heat of the pyre. He felt it reaching out for him on airy tendrils of rowan smoke, felt it flowing around him and through him, flowing across his face, beneath his feet, through his skin, sliding deep into his veins and heating his blood. The rich, sweet-smelling heat was redolent of a long ago time, and it brought him to the Horned One’s mark, across the fire from the throne of Belenos. He stopped, and lifted his arms toward the night sky. Light from the pyre glinted off the claws protruding from the bear paws on his hands. His fingers were stretched out between the ursine blades, reaching for the stars and yearning for the cooling moon. She was beautiful Luna, wet and cold. She moved with Sol and pulled the tides. The oceans changed course at her command. All things female felt the force of her power. She ruled the night and the rain, as her consort ruled the day and the wind, ever in tandem.