The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (50 page)

Dain seemed made of stone, or death. His eyes were closed, and not even breath seemed to move his body.

“I was proved wrong about depravity,” Caradoc went on, “as were you, I fear. Do you remember marking a man thus? With the bare tip of a watered steel blade? The trick of the pleasure, they told me, is to do it without drawing blood.” The knife wavered, and Ceridwen saw Dain’s fingers tighten into a white-knuckled grip around the chair arms.

He lived.

“I never did manage it without the blood,” Caradoc said. “I would cut them, no matter how carefully I wielded the knife, without breathing, without hardly moving it, trying so desperately to keep the edge and tip on the bare surface of the skin. Yet I always cut, and they would curse me and beat me and tell me of Jalal al-Kamam’s Swan from the far north. Ahh, they would sigh, silky chestnut hair like a woman’s, soft brown eyes like a camel’s, and the touch—Praise Allah!—the touch of a king’s mage.” Caradoc stopped and lowered his gaze down Dain’s body in a wickedly debauched visual caress that made Ceridwen’s stomach roll. “They say Jalal awaits you still.” He stroked Dain’s face with the blade, without leaving a mark. “Do you remember the first time your master sold you to a man?”

Dain did not speak, and Caradoc started a new cut on his neck below the last.

“Nor I. They had a drink the first time, sweet like ambrosia, more potent than wine, a simple mixed to steal a man’s mind. They were generous in the beginning, not so later.” He hesitated with the blade. “Surely you remember the ambrosia? Its sickly sweet scent, how they burned it to fill your nose and mouth with smoke when ’twasn’t in the wine. A person could kill for another taste of such heaven, eh, Lavrans?”

Ceridwen bit her lip and began easing the crossbow around into her lap, being careful not to scrape it against the tunnel walls.

“What say you, Lavrans?” Caradoc inquired softly, tightening his hand in Dain’s hair and pulling his prisoner’s head back an extra degree. “What of the worst comes upon you in the night and makes you sweat? Which nightmare haunts you more than the others?”

Still Dain said nothing. The Boar swore, and in a lightning-quick move, the knife went up and down, cutting Dain on the face and slicing through the bonds holding his right arm to the chair. Two cuts, one bloody, the other rash.

Caradoc shoved his face into his captive’s, holding Dain’s free hand in a fierce grip. “I heard the whispers that you’d been sold the same as me,” he hissed, “and I wondered—is Lavrans holding out, is he stronger, braver, more of a man than I turned out to be?” He turned Dain’s hand into the light and traced a shallow path with his knife, making a red line to cover the white scar already there.

“Not in the end, it seems. For what besides utter weakness could have brought you to this,
bedzhaa
?”

Ceridwen knew what the scar meant.
Dear God
. How had she not seen it before? The mirror had spoken true; there was boundless pain in his wisdom, and he had seen the darkness on men’s souls. A desolate novice had once damned herself to everlasting hell by cutting such a line upon her wrist. That Dain had faced such desperation for the strange deeds Caradoc talked about tore at her heart.

“Did you gag in your dreams and wake to the same foul stench as I?” Caradoc demanded. “Did you?”

“I did not dream.” Dain’s first words were spoken with dead calm, and she prayed ’twas true; that he had not dreamed. She was not so naive that she didn’t understand what Caradoc was talking about. The images made her hands shake and her face flush. A pain pressed deep in her chest, a hurtful, dark pain.

With the bow free, she gestured to Snit to help her span it. ’Twas more difficult than she’d imagined, taking their combined strength. There would be time for only one shot.

She heard Caradoc speak again. “Tell me you were no better than I, and I will let you live.”

“Like Ragnor and your father? I think not.”

“Father?” Caradoc snorted in disgust. “Gwrnach tithed me to Saladin,, and I tithed him to hell. ’Twas a fair trade for father and son. As for Ragnor, the chit put a blade to his throat and he no longer lives to give me pleasure. Mayhaps you should take his place.” There was a menacing pause, then a guttural sound that could have come only from Dain. Ceridwen swiped at a tear with her knuckles. “Aye, Dain, think on it. I could cut on you for a sennight, before you would need the support of a wooden cross.”

The bow was finally loaded. Snit laid in the bolt along the groove, and she raised the whole of it to her cheek to peer down the sight. There was no room for error, yet her hands still shook. Dain was bleeding from a new cut.

Snit looked once to the pair below and back to the bow. Then, with a confidence she found encouraging, he changed the angle of the crossbow stock, pushing it a few degrees away from himself and the ceiling. At his nod, she pulled the trigger, and Caradoc went down screaming, shot through the thigh. She looked to Snit, and he shrugged. Dain leaped up and used his right hand to swing the chair around, smashing it into the wall and breaking himself free.

By the time Helebore snapped out of his stupor, she had tossed
rihadin
and
aqua ardens
into his coals. The instantaneous flash of flame and burst of color sent him diving for the floor.

“Dain!” she yelled. His head came up. After he sighted her, he reached for his knives and a sword that had lain by the chair. Then he climbed to the top of the table and jumped up to catch a beam. Guards were shouting and pounding on the door, their noise adding to the confusion of fire bursts and screams.

Dain reached the opening of the tunnel, breathless and bleeding, and as the guards broke through the door, she and Snit grabbed him by his gambeson and pulled him into the shaft.

~ ~ ~

Morgan slipped along the inside passage of the southwest tower, his jaw set, his mood dangerous. He had done naught but chase his tail this night. The walls on either side of him were timbered and led him down toward the pit. He’d searched the lower and upper baileys and the garrison and had found no one and nothing, but given the happenings earlier in the night, he had not gone over the wall. If there was to be more trouble, it would take place in the southwest tower, and if Dain and Ceridwen were together, Dain would bring her there. As it was, they both seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.

The tower was strangely empty, with most of the castle guards scurrying around the baileys and swarming over the keep. Even at that, they were a loose-fingered bunch. There had been the sound of battle around midnight, the clash of swords unmistakable in the air. He’d raced back along the wall only to find himself too late. Dain had been taken and the maid lost, so shouted the captain deriding Balor’s mesnie.

Where Dain had been taken had been easy to deduce. Balor was no great castle. Breaching the keep had also been relatively easy, with only one man killed in the process. Getting to Helebore’s damned dungeon and finding himself again too late, because hell had already broken loose and Dain was gone, had not been easy. He’d been quick enough to be part of the group breaking down the door, and anonymous enough in the dead man’s helmet and hauberk. He had been quick enough to hear a woman’s cry and to see Dain disappear—of all the damned things—into a tunnel hole near the ceiling of the damned smelly room.

But so help him God, no matter how hard he’d tried, he had not been able to squeeze himself through the same hole. Being no bigger than Dain, he didn’t know how his friend had done it.

The sound of approaching footsteps had him drawing his dagger. Dawn’s light filtered down into the hall through the cracks in the timbering, enough to see and be seen, but he was in no mood to hide and possibly too eager to fight. Each man of Balor killed now was one fewer to face later.

The footsteps faded down a different corridor, giving the man another day of life, and Morgan continued on toward the pit and the ironclad door that sealed it. Beyond the maze of the pit he would search for the passage that led to the caves below. Mayhaps Dain and Ceridwen would show up there from their sojourn through the guts of Balor’s keep.

As he neared the door, he tilted his head to one side to listen. He had been to the pit only when Caradoc was taking wagers and fighting animals. Be they boars, bears, dogs, cocks, or a combination thereof, men were always stationed at the door during the spectacles to confiscate weapons in an effort to keep the bloodletting in the pit itself and out of the gallery. Whether there would be guards at dawn, he did not know.

Someone coughed up ahead beyond where he could see, and he cursed to himself. His luck was holding at bad. At least one man guarded the door.

Wisdom dictated that he proceed with caution, but he gave wisdom not a pittance of consideration. Tossing his dagger into his right hand, he drew his sword with his left. He was going through the damn door, no matter how many blocked the way. His strides were long despite his limp, and as he rounded the last corner, a quick glance proved the odds not in his favor.

There were three guards.

He did not hesitate, but clasped his two hands together, melding dagger hilt to sword grip, and swung a mighty blow at the first man, hitting him on the side of the head and knocking him senseless into the wall. The man slid down the timbers, blood running from beneath his helmet, yet even as Morgan raised his sword to block the second man’s blade, he lunged in with his dagger and cut the first man’s throat. There would be no dealing with the same guard twice.

The third man flanked him, and near hacked Morgan’s arm off with his initial attack. Morgan countered with a quick cut up the man’s forearm as part of his defensive parry. He met blow after blow, pressing his attack on two fronts with his sword and dodging in close to wound any unprotected flesh with his dagger. The lack of maneuvering room threatened him more than either of the mediocre swordsmen, but it was a true enough threat with the two of them bearing down on him. He blocked a thrust and ducked beneath another while the scrape of metal against metal rang in his ears. Then, of a sudden, the third man slammed back against the timbers, impaled by an arrow. The remaining guard was dispatched by another even as he gawked at his comrade.

Morgan let his sword arm fall, but kept his dagger up. That had been close. The swivin’ flight of the second arrow had brushed his cheek, he’d swear it. Breathing heavily, sweat running down under his stolen hauberk, he looked down the hall for his rescuer—or his next opponent.

’Twas Llynya who stepped into the dusty stream of sunlight.

“
Malashm
,” she said, looking unkempt and yet wildly pretty by the light of day.

Surprised, he lowered his dagger. Her hair was dark, as he would have guessed, but from what he’d seen of her in the night, he would not have guessed her so lovely, her eyes so green, or her mouth so lush. “Good shot,” he said, wiping the sweat off his brow. “Both of them.”

“Ceridwen?” she asked.

He shook his head, still catching his breath. “Might have heard her voice. Couldn’t tell for sure.”

“Dain?”

“Alive. Last saw him diving into a tunnel on his way out of Helebore’s dungeon.”

“Aye, the place is riddled with holes snaking through the ground.” She walked over to the first dead man and rolled him onto his back. Quickly efficient, she patted him down for keys. When they weren’t on his belt, she went to the next man.

Morgan watched, very aware of the shortness of her skirts and the graceful length of her legs as she bent over each guard. Her clothes moved with the fluidity of water. The twigs and leaves in her hair gave her a woodland nymphish look he had not noticed in their haste to scale Balor. But now, with the heat of battle flowing through him and dawn’s light revealing her face, he wondered if she knew how perfect the moment was for a kiss.

She looked up then, and he had his answer. The sprite had no notion of the fetching picture she made, or of the path his thoughts had taken. Yet such innocence could be transformed with even a chaste kiss and a caress. He knew the way of it well enough.

“And you, Morgan ab Kynan,” she said. “How do you fare?”

He grinned. There would be no kissing of dark-haired maids this morn. “I am but warmed and ready for the next foe,” he assured her.

“Then let’s hope the third man has the key.” She gestured to the body at his feet.

He dropped to one knee and searched the guard. “There are none.”

“Sticks!” she swore, though ’twas her tone rather than the word that let him know she was cursing.
Sticks?
He’d said worse as a babe.

He rose to his feet and gave the lock a thoughtful look, then reached into her hair for one of her sturdier twigs. “Oak?”

“Aye.” She nodded, and a silky loop of curls tumbled down the side of her face.

Morgan near swore himself then, to counteract the sudden lurch he felt in his heart. He forced his attention back to the necessary deed, and with the tip of his dagger and the stick, contrived to release the lock.

“Stay light on your feet,” he warned her, opening the door a bare crack and peering inside. “The pit is known for traps and wild boars, either of which could kill you in a heartbeat.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Mayhaps you should stay here. I’ll come back for you, if the way is clear.”

She gave him a look that plainly said she was not staying anywhere, and pushed by him. “You have not seen light on your feet, until you have traveled with me, ab Kynan. As for boars, I know their tricks better than the sows that dropped them.”

There was naught for Morgan to do but follow her into the pit and pray she told the truth.

~ ~ ~

Dain pulled Ceridwen to a stop as soon as they reached a place where he could stand.

“Wait,” he said, leaning his back against the wall, one hand gripping hers tightly, the other arm wrapped around her waist.

“Snit,” she called ahead to her strange companion. He’d caught a glimpse of the boy before they’d dragged him into the tunnel, if boy he was. “Can you get some water?”

“Aye.”