Read The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) Online
Authors: Tara Janzen
Tags: #Historical Fantasy, #Wales, #12th Century
Trig was wrong. Naas was not blind, only too replete with the past to see beyond the memories of her race. Those memories ran through her veins and filled her eyes with visions of life from a long-ago world, a world she brought forth through burning heat and the light of the moon. Rhuddlan needed such knowledge if he was to keep the wolves from the wall. He needed to know what darkness threatened Merioneth, for the heralds of darkness were there, creeping into his woods and lapping at the shores of the River Bredd with black rot.
Yet ’twas not the rot in his woods or the strangely mixed wolfpack they’d seen that night that stole his sleep and put Trig on edge. Dangerous though they were, the men were yet true Men; they had not been turned. Of the danger he did fear, there had been no sightings. He’d sent scouts as far north as Finn’s Road and as far south as the white horse and none had seen sign of skraelings, the fierce and dirty beast men that were all that remained of the fell legions conjured by the Dockalfar, an ancient enemy that had once ruled the caverns below. Nor had there been any reports of disturbances in the troll fields of Inishwrath.
Nay, ’twas not wildmen and wolves he feared, but things unseen yet still felt. In the sky the tension had played itself out in thunder and lightning,
mellt a tharanau,
a summer of storms. Nearer to earth, the air held a certain heaviness, the ground a certain softness, as if the earth herself was giving way to some greater force. Verily, one part of the earth had given way. In spring, after the battle to reclaim Merioneth, Mychael ab Arawn had reported the breaking of a damson shaft in the caverns. The damson shafts were pure veins of crystal set into the matrix of the Earth by the mages of old. That one would crack was a grim portent, but how grim, Rhuddlan could not judge. The crystal shafts harkened back to time long, long before his, but not beyond the reach of Naas’s vision. To this end, he’d set the old woman to her fire. Five months past, he’d looked to another for answers. He had sent runners to the four directions in search of Ailfinn Mapp, the last of the Prydion Magi. The wandering mage was e’er difficult to find, but that he’d had no word in nearly half a year of looking, and that not even the old men of Anglesey had seen her since the winter solstice, was yet more cause for worry.
Naas added another stick to the fire, and Rhuddlan looked to the sky. Dawn still lay beyond the mountains, but not for much longer. The morning stars were rising.
“Nothing lost, nothing gained. All is change. All is change,” Naas muttered, drawing his attention. She reached out with a rowan branch to stir the cauldron nestled in the coals.
Rhuddlan followed the meandering path she drew in the boiling water. Steaming ribbons of vapor curled around her gnarly wand and drifted upward into the stars, streaming through smoke and sparking flames. Of asudden the old woman cackled, a dry laugh bespeaking of grim satisfaction rather than delight, and a chill went through him.
“There ye are, my pretty one. There ye are,” she crooned, gently stirring, stirring, stirring.
Rhuddlan saw no change in the water, only in Naas, and moved to her side. Sweat had broken out on her age-spotted brow; her eyes were wide and staring, reflecting the dance of flames in the brazier. She’d started her fire at dusk, building it piece by flaming piece to show her the path he’d asked her to tread, and finally, at dawn’s edge, it seemed she’d taken a step.
“What do you see?”
“A woman,” she said, her voice thinning to a raspy whisper. “She’s weeping, she is, with blood running out of her mouth.”
Blood.
Rhuddlan cursed to himself. He’d seen enough blood in his life.
So had Naas, rivers of it from out of the past, but she’d not seen blood like this. ’Twas shimmering, with a pale iridescence about it, yet she knew ’twas blood that stained the woman’s yellow gown and dripped from the chunk of red, scaly flesh in her hand. In her other hand, the woman held a knife, a steel-edged dagger from a lost age.
Rhuddlan asked her another question, but she waved him off, paying him no mind. Bothersome man. He’d asked for a vision, and by the grace of the gods she’d conjured one in her cauldron. Touch and go, it had been, touch and go the whole night long, but she’d done it, and now he could wait until it was finished.
“Aye, a vision they ask, but does they ask the price?” she grumbled under her breath, all the while stirring the small, twisted branch through the bubbling brew of water and whatnot. Days were the price, a day off her life for every minute she would look, and she knew well the passing of a minute. She counted them in heartbeats and breaths—such was the cost of looking into the past.
She knew the woman as well, not by sight, but by her presence. Naas had seen High Priestesses before in her cauldron. In truth, within the borders of Merioneth, it was a rare stew that did not have a High Priestess floating in it. This was their place, and though there were none left in the carn, they had not let it go.
“Tears and blood. Tears and blood,” she murmured in a singsong cadence. ’Twas the way of the cauldron to show moments when the world had hung in the balance and lives had hung by a thread. Rarely, Naas was given a mundane glimpse into the past, but there was nothing mundane about a bloody, sobbing priestess. “What’s happening here, then, hmm?”
Steam swirled across the water, and Naas stirred, each curved arc and loop of her stick marking the pool with another word of ancient script, clearing a path for the moonlight. Years peeled away within the reflection of the celestial orb, the centuries slipping through her cauldron more quickly than lightning strikes.
Ah, we’ve reached a little deep we have,
she thought, feeling heat press into her skin from the wand and flow up into her arm. Sweat ran off her face and down between her breasts. The past was a thing of heat, always heat, and more often than not brought a little gut-churning nausea with it. Though her gaze remained steady on the water, the rest of her trembled like a wind-beaten leaf. She inhaled a fire-warmed breath, fighting the sickness, and in time the priestess lifted her arms up through the years and revealed her name.
Arianrod. Arianrod Agah.
Aye, deep. A thousand thousand years into the past. Beyond the beginnings of the current age to the death of the last. Deep enough to burn.
Fingers singed, Naas continued stirring her chant—loop, curve, stroke; loop, curve, stroke – and felt herself sink ever deeper into the glimmering, beckoning pool of the cauldron. Welcoming water. She kept her breathing soft and deep, until Arianrod’s cry welled in her throat and broke through the final barrier, near choking her with a rush of pain:
I have drunk the dragon’s blood, reduced to desperation and despair. The darkling shadow has been sealed again, but at such a cost! Stept Agah is dead, his life given that we may live.
I have drunk the dragon’s blood, letting it fill my mouth and descend into my body. The darkness feeds on the fire in the earth, conjuring itself in myriad deathly ways that the Prydion Magi had not foreseen.
Uffern
trolls arose with the smoke, and ravening wolves, and fear shadows in many forms. All were smote down by the Magia Blade wielded with the force of Stept Agah’s hand, the last of the true Starlight-born.
I have drunk the dragon’s blood and eaten of his flesh, and Ddrei Goch yet writhes on the shores of Mor Sarff with the pain of my taking. Half-aetheling only are left and they will not have the power to prevail over the Dark when next it comes, nor the power to wield the blade. They will need another whose beginnings even now I feel running through my veins—
Savage brew searing a course beneath my skin!
My blood shall be as one with the Red Dragon’s, steeped to a potent mix in my womb and sent forward through my children and my children’s children until in time the fierce creature of my conjuring will be brought forth to battle in the coming age. Pray then that a half-aetheling still resides on Earth to stand by his side. Pray now that I have not damned myself for all eternity by delving into the forbidden arts of the Prydion bloodspell.
Shadana... shadana...
“Shadana…”
Naas gasped and clutched her hand to her breast, letting the rowan wand fall. The priestess faded into the pool, her golden hair becoming a river of silver water, her eyes losing their despair and becoming the deep blue calm of the ocean, a water woman.
Naas pulled a hard breath into her lungs.
So, pretty one, you thought to drink dragon’s blood and send a rare creature down to me—and for this ye died before yer time.
The story was an old one and Naas knew it well, but she’d never seen it before this night, never seen
gwaed draig,
dragon’s blood. Iridescent it was, rainbow-hued, seven colors played together in one potent elixir.
A weak smile curved her mouth. ‘Twas good to know there were still surprises to be had at her age. Rainbow blood. She should have guessed as much, for the beasts had been born in a star-wrought cauldron—so the oldest stories told. She doubted them not; Naas’s life was filled with old stories. They ran through her days in endless abundance, enriching some, destroying others. Arianrod’s story had cost her dear. The fire was gone from the brazier, the cauldron cooling in the bed of coals.
Aethelings, half-aethelings.
She snorted. The Priestesses of Merioneth had always made much of blood and its purity, to their eventual demise. Yet ‘twas the preoccupation with blood that had led Arianrod to drink her bit from Ddrei Goch’s flesh. The old beast could not have liked that.
The last remnant of the vision took flight, and thus released, Naas slumped against the parapet. A pair of strong hands caught her. An extra cloak was wrapped around her shoulders. She needed rest, only a moment’s rest, then must add one more deed to the day’s toll.
“Naas?”
’Twas Rhuddlan. She recognized his voice. He must be told, all of it. She just needed to catch her breath. Then she had to find the boy, that wild boy who prowled through Carn Merioneth both above and below, ramparts and caverns alike, Mychael ab Arawn. She had to find him and give him a knife.
’Twas time to call the dragons home.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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