The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (60 page)

The sound of rapid footfalls drew her head around and quickened her heartbeat, giving her a welcome surge of life. Had a Balorman survived? she wondered. She struggled to her knees, gritting her teeth, and used Morgan’s sword to leverage herself to her feet. Time was of the essence. The truth of that was everywhere around her, yet time was so elusive, slipping through her fingers more easily than water.

Before her, the lightning had coalesced into a solid sheet of brightness. She reached her hand out to touch it, and was stopped by the calling of her name.

“Ceri! No!”

Fifteen years had changed the timbre of the voice, but not the quality of it. Stunned, she turned and saw him, a man running out of the mists, dressed all in white.

“Mychael.” The name fell from her lips in a hoarse whisper. Pale blue eyes met hers across the length of the cavern. His hair was to his shoulders, a rich mélange of golds and silvers with the addition of a strange copper stripe down the right side. His nose and mouth were near replicas of her own, only not so softly defined. His chin and jaw had naught to do with her, for both were purely man.

The fog rolled up on either side of him as he ran, opening a path to the weir, and his gaze shifted from her to the hole.

“How many are in?” he asked when he stopped at the rim. Though he had the look of an angel, she could tell by his labored breathing that he was merely a mortal, one who had run far.

“Two,” she answered, “but there is only one that I want back.”

He glanced up. “Then pray,
gefell
, that I choose correctly, for I cannot enter the same live wormhole twice, and neither can you.”

He’d called her twin.

Kneeling, he shrugged off a length of rope looped across his chest and began threading it through an intricately incised groove in the rock, one of many she had not noticed before. When he reached the edge of the weir, he threw the rest of the rope off into the hole and reached down with his hand. The briefest smile of satisfaction crossed his mouth.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The temperature is stable. ’Tis neither hot nor cold, meaning they haven’t slipped into the past or the future, but should still be here, somewhere.” The light skittered across the white wool of his tunic, picking out threads and making them shimmer blue and purple against the cloth.

The past and the future, Ceridwen thought. The flow of time.

A sudden fear seized her. ’Twas what Dain had long sought, the mastery of time. She could not hold him against that, yet she could not let him go.

She fell to her knees and grabbed Mychael before he slipped over the edge. “Bring him back to me,” she ordered, her face close to his, her fingers tightening on his shoulder. “As you are my brother, bring him back to me.”

~ ~ ~

The Boar was no longer with him. Dain knew that the same as he knew that he, too, would not last much longer. The light that held him was also drawing him down. Strange stuff. Bliss and terror both had a place in the luminescence. He watched them play across his emotions as if from a distance. Whatever he was—and a thousand thousand ideas on that score had come to mind—he was at his core something beyond the extremes of feeling, something beyond the conflagration of life and death raging around and through him, something beyond the visible movement of time.

Yet, if given a choice, he would choose life, sweetest blessing, the catalyst and nurturing medium of change, and he would choose the time of the quicksilver maid. Aye, he knew this with all his heart: He would choose life and Ceridwen.

... and from within the most brilliant flux came that which he had thought beyond his grasp, salvation. A golden arm, garbed in white, reached down into the abyss and took his hand.

~ ~ ~

Rhuddlan and Moira knelt by the trail of blood in the sand. They had found others, but this one was too dark to pass by, speaking as it did of death.

“Rhayne,” Moira told him, looking up, her green eyes growing sad.

Dead men lay all around, but they were of Balor and not of the Quicken-tree company. The Ebiurrane elves were dragging them out to sea, letting Mor Sarff have their bodies to feed the fishes and return them to salt water.

Trig called from the headland caves, having found the trail through the heavy mists pouring out of all the openings. The presence of so much turmoil could not bode well for what had taken place at the weir.

“Come,” Rhuddlan said to Moira, touching her lightly. “You will be needed.”

Inside the shaft were other signs of carnage. A Balorman had been crushed, and they could hear another one being ground up even as they entered the domed cavern of the weir. The old worm had roused himself mightily to come up from the deep dark.

“Math, find Conladrian,” Rhuddlan ordered, though he feared the hound had chosen a path from whence he would not return.

“Rhuddlan!” ’Twas Shay calling, and when they reached him, they found him with Llynya, holding her close and looking far more frightened than he had at any time during the battle.

Rhuddlan dropped to her side and gently took her face in his hands. His palms grew wet with her tears. “Llynya?” He spoke her name softly, but received no response.

“What happened here?” Trig demanded, running up, his tone far gruffer than he would normally take with his leader. Rhuddlan understood. For all her wildness, the little one was expected to become Liosalfar. Aye, and mayhaps she already had.

He smoothed his thumbs across her cheeks, watching her intently. There was life and warmth behind the closed veil of her lashes. “She has fought herself beyond exhaustion; that is all.” He rose to his feet and called for Wei. “Help Shay take her back to the Light Caves and give her to Aedyth.”

Wei laid his hand upon her cheek, and slanted him and Trig a questioning look.

Rhuddlan nodded, and Trig grew grim, reaching down to feel Llynya’s brow for himself. There was more wrong with the sprite than exhaustion. She had suddenly grown older. Rhuddlan had felt the sadness on her heart, but did not want to frighten Shay any more than he was, for all knew sadness could crush a person as thoroughly as the old worm could.

Wei took her in his arms and started off at an easy lope toward one of the shafts with Shay at his heels.

The rest of them ran forward through the jacinth-hued cavern, fog washing up against them to their knees and higher, the vaporous tendrils winding through the air and obscuring their view. Yet they all knew where they were needed, for nothing could hide the wall of light streaming up from the weir.

There were three on the rim when they reached it.

~ ~ ~

Dain groaned and rolled over onto his back, and for an instant thought he was seeing double. Two identical faces loomed over him, both fair, though only one was crying; both golden-haired, though only one had an odd streak of a copper-colored auburn running through the tresses.

“Ceri?” he asked, and the sweet face wet with tears bent down and began smothering him in kisses. He let himself sink into the warm, healing pleasure of having her pressed against him, showering him with love. ’Twas so easy to take it all and for once not wonder about the nature of the God who had answered his prayer, but merely accept that it had been done.

Others gathered around—Quicken-tree, he could tell by the sound of their voices and the green scent of them—and the need for leaving became clear.

Moira knelt by their sides and spoke to them both, and when their mouths parted from their kiss, she gave them each another on their cheeks.

“The tide is coming in,” she said. “We must hurry. Can you walk?”

“Aye,” Dain said, but Ceri shook her head.

“Do not worry,” Moira said at Dain’s stricken look. “She is but with child, and what she has done this day would have exhausted even the strongest. Indeed, it has.”

“Llynya?” Ceri asked, her voice soft with concern, even as Dain wondered how Moira knew about their child.

“Llynya has killed many times since this battle began,” Moira said. “Each death takes something from us no matter how worthy we deem the cause. Wei and Shay have already started for the Light Caves with her. Tomorrow I will take her to the forests. ’Tis from the trees that Llynya will regain her strength and find her peace again.”

“Morgan?” Dain asked, and Moira shook her head, confirming what he’d already known. That hurt would take time to heal. “What of the battle itself?”

Moira responded by handing Ceri one of a pair of small gourds she had taken off her pack. The other she gave to him. “Drink it, every drop.” When they started, she answered his question. “Balor is no more, and all of its men are dead. ’Tis Carn Merioneth above, and you are its lady, Ceridwen.”

His love looked to him before speaking. “Do you fancy yourself lord of a castle keep?”

He knew his answer without having to dwell on it. “’Tis a wondrous strange place you have here, Lady of Merioneth, and what you offer is most men’s dream, but in truth, I would take you north and be lord of no one.”

“Then ’tis north we go, Moira,” she said to the Quicken-tree woman, “and rather than a Lady Ceridwen, you will have a Lord Mychael, for I think ’tis my brother Rhuddlan needed all along.” She slanted her gaze up at the Quicken-tree leader and her brother, and the other two followed her lead.

“You have been in the wormhole?” Rhuddlan was asking, looking at Mychael with a keen interest that was being returned in equal measure, with an added degree of wariness and mayhaps a hint of threat.

“Aye, many times,” Mychael answered, and Ceridwen thought how strong and beautiful her brother had become. His hair was peculiar, and not just because of the streak. He’d been tonsured as a monk, and though most of his hair fell to his shoulders, there was a good bit on top that had grown out only partway. Regardless of length, though, the stripe was consistent.

Rhuddlan smiled, a bare curve of mouth. “And you have survived them all, thus far. We have much to talk about.”

“If you are Rhuddlan of the Quicken-tree or Llyr of the Ebiurrane,” was Mychael’s measured reply.

Rhuddlan’s smile broadened. “Not many know Llyr of the Ebiurrane, but I am Rhuddlan.”

The tension flowed out of her twin, and though he did not smile, he removed his hand from the dagger shoved into his belt. “Aye, then Rhuddlan.” He nodded. “We do have much to talk, about.”

“But not here,” Rhuddlan said. “Bedwyr, Nia, take the lady before we are washed out on the tide with Balor’s dead.”

~ ~ ~

The journey through the
pryf
nesting grounds was much smoother with Liosalfar leading the way and clearing the tunnels as they wished. Despite their great size and what Ceridwen had perceived as a general intractability, the worms responded to commands from the Quicken-tree warriors, though the voice they used was unlike any she had ever heard. ’Twas a deep, resonant, multi-toned thing that seemed to come from deeper in their throats than normal sound. Mayhaps it came from someplace even deeper still, for it set up a vibration she felt strongest in an unnameable area in the center of her torso. They stopped in Lanbarrdein to refresh themselves before making the great climb up the wall to the Canolbarth, and from there the trek to the Light Caves was grim.

Most of Balor had died in the midland caves, and though the bodies were proof of their great victory, none of the Quicken-tree or the Ebiurrane took pleasure in the deaths. Through every passageway and gallery, the
tylwyth teg
sang a song meant to ease the passing of souls, and to hear those fair voices raised in a mournful dirge was near more than Ceridwen could bear. There had been too much loss, and ’twas not all Balor. Amongst the piles of hauberked and mailed bodies were those of elves clad in shimmery cloth.

By the time they reached the Light Caves, dusk was falling over the Irish Sea. From the Dragon’s Mouth, Ceridwen watched the sun slip below the western horizon. Behind her a fire burned brightly, casting shadows on Ddrei Goch and Ddrei Glas, and beside her was Dain, sitting with her on a pile of soft rugs, holding her hand in his.

“We can stay if you wish, Ceri,” he said. “You must be thinking of it.”

“Aye,” she admitted, “but I believe I spoke more truth than I knew at the weir. Look.” She directed his attention to the group talking farther back in the caves. ’Twas Mychael and Rhuddlan and half the Liosalfar, speaking of the keep and the castle wall, and of a wild boar and perhaps a bear reported loose in the caves, and speaking also of things she did not understand, of what was beyond the deep dark and the damson shafts being torn asunder there.

“I have wondered, Dain. In the abyss... What happened to you?”

He grew thoughtful for a while. “Words can bare describe it, Ceri,” he finally said.

“I felt the light go through me,” she said.

“I felt it too, a flood of light, and I know not if it came from God or another, or from nothing at all except the earth and what it is. Either way, ’twas a glimpse of something beyond what I knew before. I know I had to give up a measure of my cynic’s heart to get out.”

She smiled and kissed his face. “Aye, and I’ll miss that I’m sure.”

“Mayhaps I can no longer play the demon,” he said, giving her an ingenuous look from beneath his lashes. At her crestfallen expression, he laughed. “Aye, and you
would
miss that, wouldn’t you, Ceri.”

Her blush was sweet, and he laughed again, pulling her into his lap for a kiss that had naught to do with demons and much to do with mouths and the sharing of breath, one into the other, with the feel of her in his arms and the even greater softness she promised.

“So you will go north with me?” he asked when she lifted her head.

“Aye,” she whispered, her eyes languid. “We will build a palace out of ice, and every night melt it with our love.”

“Rhuddlan has arranged for us to travel with the Ebiurrane.”

“Good,” she said, and snuggled closer.

“We will leave in a sennight. Does that give you enough time with your brother?”

“Enough,” she murmured against his neck.

Breath by breath, limb by limb, she slowly drifted into slumber. He held her and lazily stroked her back, watching the last shades of sunlight fade from the peaks of the waves until all was night over the open sea. Out above the northern horizon, a single star flashed in the new dark sky and fell toward the water in a glittering arc of celestial dust. ’Twas the sign of a child to be born, his child by the quicksilver maid. He cupped her face in his palm and placed a kiss upon her mouth. There was life in love, and as he gave, so would he drink it from her lips.