The Chalice and the Blade (The Chalice Trilogy) (9 page)

A gurgling sound from the man startled her into speech.

“Hound” was the only word she knew to use and “come.”

Her voice, weak and scratchy, barely carried the necessary distance, but it was enough to gain the dog’s attention. Pale blue eyes turned on her.

“Come,” she repeated, and gestured with her hand.

The dog, a levrier, sleek and lean and powerfully built, complied, releasing the old man into a heap on the floor and returning to Ceridwen’s side.

The graybeard coughed, dragging up spittle he wiped on his sleeve. He touched his throat, and his fingers came away smeared with blood. Ceridwen expected him to leave, but he reached instead for a shallow pan on the brazier and refilled the cup he’d spilled.

“The jongleur’ll owe me for this.” He pressed the cup back to her mouth and leveled a beady gaze on the dog. “Watch yerself, Numa, or one night ye’ll find yerself skewered and hangin’ o’er the flames of hell.”

Numa, Ceridwen thought, wondering at the strangeness of the name. She’d heard another odd name in this place. Dain, that’s what the sweet prince had called himself. Dain.

A smile flitted across her mouth. In her dream, he’d kissed her.

“Drink,” the graybeard said, tipping the cup higher and pouring a few drops past her lips. “I’ll not have ye dyin’ on me watch.”

Death had been in her dream too, but ’twas clear now she hadn’t died, and if she hadn’t died, she was still betrothed to the Boar of Balor. Despair found a foothold in the thought. She would be going home, but Carn Merioneth was no more. The wooden palisades of that fair place had long since been razed in fire and replaced with the stone blocks of Balor. The flames still burned in her nightmares, reaching past the skies to the heavens and the vengeful God who had unleashed Gwrnach, Caradoc’s father, upon them.

Those who had escaped the flames had been butchered in the bailey, ending the beautiful dream that had been Carn Merioneth. All had died except for the two who had been lost, she and her dear sweet brother, Mychael, and the one who had found them. Moriath had been the name of the maid, and she had disappeared years ago. Except for the letters Ceridwen treasured as life itself, Mychael had also been lost to her, from the day Moriath had put him in the monastery at Strata Florida.

She swallowed the wine the old man had given her and pushed his hand away. “No more.”

“All of it.”

She shook her head and lifted her other hand to ward him off. She was more successful than she’d hoped. He jumped back out of reach.

“Be careful with that demned thing,” he hollered, then swore a jumble of curses.

With a sense of bemused wonder, she became aware of the serpent stone still clasped in her hand. Its green depths caught the first rays of morning sunshine streaming in through the windows and reflected it back, casting prisms of light against the striped damask draped at the corners of the huge bed in which she lay.

Brochan’s Great Charm. She opened her fingers and let it float in her palm, as real as day. And if the stone was real, why not the place it had taken her, the sweet oblivion of a faerie’s death-sleep?

She lowered her lashes and closed her hand around the stone, drawing it to her breast. Aye, better to try the faerie death again than to find herself in Caradoc’s cruel grasp. He wanted her at his mercy, not her hand in marriage. She’d read it, read it in a book that held the key to the Boar’s dark, impossible desires. Only Mychael could save her. Mychael, sweet saint, was unassailable by evil. Mayhaps if she’d shown more religious fervor, she, too, would have been beyond Caradoc’s reach.

She had not, however, and God had forsaken her, set her adrift in the strange world of men with little to help her find her way.

A wave of languor washed through her, muddling her thoughts. She wanted sleep, and that was where her heart led her, back to the heavenly lair of Dain, the dark-eyed prince of the Light-elves. Letting out a soft breath, she gave herself up to the welcome heaviness seeping into her limbs and showing her the way to the stars.

Erlend held the half-f cup and clucked in disapproval. She hadn’t finished the draught. ’Tweren’t his fault, not a bit of it, but he’d be demned if there was anyone else to step for’ard and take the demn blame.

~ ~ ~

The misty light of dawn filtered through an ancient grove of oak and hazel in the Wroneu Wood, capturing the form of a young man running through the trees. Morgan ab Kynan watched the sentry from the open flap of the tent where he’d gotten barely two hours of sleep. He could tell by the irritated expression on Rhys’s face that Dain had been sighted, no doubt already breaking the boundaries of the camp with his levrier hounds running alongside.

“Lavrans?” he called out, grimacing as he pulled on his boots. His jaw tightened against the old pain in his right leg.

“Aye. Below the falls,” the young man said, coming to a stop in front of the tent, breathless from his sprint up the mountainside.

“I asked to know of his coming before he reached the river.”

The sentry fought to hide a grim smile. “Ye know as well as me that e’en in broad daylight he’s like a shadow in the night.”

Morgan nodded. “And Ceridwen?” He reached for the wineskin he’d hung on the carved and tasseled tent pole and took a mouthful. He rinsed and spat the wine out onto the ground.

“No sign beyond the ravine. She’s still on this side, and we’ll find her. Dafydd is scouting west of the camp.” Rhys used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow. A shock of brown hair fell back over his forehead. “I’ve never seen a maid so skittish about marriage.”

Morgan’s mouth tightened. “You haven’t met Caradoc.” He cinched his belt around his waist and reached for his bow.

“Then why do you take her to him?”

The sentry’s eyes revealed a disapproval he didn’t dare voice. It was a problem Morgan remembered well from his youth, the penchant to fall in love easily and usually where one shouldn’t. He understood Rhys’s attraction. Ceridwen ab Arawn was reasonably fair of face and had all her teeth. It took little more to get a boy’s blood running, yet Ceridwen had more—a sweet smile when she chose to use it, which wasn’t often, and a voice like cool water running through a forest glade. She also hadn’t used her voice often in the past sennight, except to accuse or plead.

Her pleading was not his problem this morning, finding her was, the troublesome wench. He and his band of five men had combed the hills the whole night long, but neither luck nor skill had been enough to bring her safely back to camp.

“She goes to Caradoc,” Morgan said in answer to Rhys, “because the most powerful prince in all of North Wales wills it, so she can bear her sons on the land of her ancestors. ’Tis the same reason Caradoc wants her, to be doubly bound by blood to the land he’s won.”

“Won by treachery and betrayal, and God knows what else.” Rhys shuddered. “Some say ’twas his own blade that hewed Gwrnach from gullet to cock.”

“Some say,” Morgan agreed. He’d heard the tales, and he knew the hatred Caradoc had nursed for his father, but he also knew how the smallest twist of the blade and the merest shift of intent could turn a killing into a mutilation. Two thousand seven hundred Moslems had been slain by the Lionheart’s Crusaders at Acre. Decapitation had been the order, but by the end of it, they’d all been hacking away at the hostages, slogging through blood and gore up to their knees. How many had he killed and how many mutilated? He would never know. Death was death, and by the sword ’twas never pretty.

He slipped his quiver over his shoulder and took off with long strides toward where the horses were tied.

Rhys followed alongside, his boy’s jaw jutting out. “Methinks she would have been happier remaining with the nuns at Usk.”

If Rhys would rather protect her than bed her, Morgan thought, there was hope for him yet, for it was always the bedding that caused young men to completely lose their senses.

“Have Rhodri and Drew cross the river, and send Owain to me,” Morgan ordered, ignoring Rhys’s summation of the situation. The boy was a good tracker, and with time he would become even better, but his feelings for the maid had clouded his judgment. Ceridwen was no nun, not yet. “She heads for Mychael and Strata Florida.”

“Why?” the young sentry asked, surprised. “The monks won’t take her even if her brother is one of their order.”

“She doesn’t go for sanctuary, but to rouse Mychael out of his monkish ways, to put a sword in his hand.”

“She thinks Mychael will fight for Balor?” Rhys’s tone implied a hefty share of doubt.

Morgan shared those doubts. He’d known Ceridwen’s brother since his birth, and Mychael was more likely to be sainted than knighted. The boy had taken to the monkish life with a fervor. “When her father had it,” he answered, “’twas called Carn Merioneth, and if Ceridwen could win it back, Mychael would no doubt let her have the castle and no lord a’tall, or mayhaps the lord of her choice.”

“And has she chosen?” A betraying amount of hope crept into the young voice.

Morgan stopped short of his destination and flashed the sentry a reproving grin. “She asked me, cub, but I don’t think her heart was in it.”

Accusation glared from Rhys’s eyes. “Then why did she run?”

Another knowing grin spread across Morgan’s face. “I told her I had more to offer a woman than my sword arm. Should she but care to notice and make me an offer with more... um, heat in it, she might gain what she hoped.”

Rhys, no stranger to the bawdy inclinations of camp life, was plainly shocked by his lord’s brazen overture.

“You could have wed Ceridwen ab Arawn, the most beautiful, sweet, and kindly maid in all of Christendom, and you offend her with lewd and—” He stopped abruptly, his gaze shifting to a place beyond Morgan’s right shoulder. A bright flush coursed over his cheeks. “I’ll give Owain and Drew your orders,” he said curtly, and turned on his heel, striding back to the camp.

“You are a hopeless romantic,” a distinctive voice—one capable of mangling both French and Welsh with equal ease—said from behind him.

“And you are a hopeless cynic,” Morgan said, slowly turning to face his friend.

“
Du kommer sent
.” Dain pushed off the oak tree where he’d been waiting and listening. “You’re late. I expected you before St. Winnal.”

The Welshman winced. “Every time you speak a saint’s name, I expect a bolt of lightning to strike nearby.”

Dain laughed. “Lightning, Morgan? At dawn? For a mere heretic?”

“You’re more than a heretic. You’re pagan. Maybe worse.”

“An infidel?”

“Easily, by anyone’s definition, Christian or Moslem.” A reluctant smile curved his mouth.

The dark-robed Dane stepped out of the shadows into a shaft of sunlight, striding into the clearing with a natural elegance that some mistook for softness—until they’d seen the grace and power of it behind a blade. Morgan had seen it as such, more times than he cared to recall.

“The forest is alive early this morn, mostly with your men,” Dain said, offering the wineskin he carried. A horse, fifteen hands of dappled white and gray, stood quietly in the trees behind him. “Mayhaps my wine will be more to your liking.”

Morgan accepted the skin. “None of them sighted you,” he said. “It’s a wonder our throats aren’t slit in our sleep. Where are the hounds?”

“Numa guards my chambers, and Elixir guards the Druid Door and the tower stairs.”

“Stolen yourself a rich prize, have you?” Morgan asked, part of his humor returning. His sentries had missed only Dain and his horse, not Dain, his horse, and two dogs. It was small comfort, but still comfort. The horse, he noted, had not moved, yet even now seemed to be disappearing in the shifting shadows of the forest.

“A rich prize? Mayhaps.” Dain gestured at the tasseled tent. “And what of you? Welsh war bands seldom travel in Saladin’s style.”

Morgan ignored the reference to the desert king, the past being better forgotten, especially when the present was in such a tangle.

“The tent was a gift from Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd, to another, a maid I was asked to fetch, a will-o’-the-wisp who escapes me with damning regularity.”

“Have your charms worn so thin?” Dain lifted one rose-red tassel and turned it into the light.

“No thinner than yours, I trow.” Morgan cocked a teasing eyebrow. “How is the dear Edmee?”

“Thorough.” The word sat in the air with a thousand implications while fingers skilled in the arts of enchantment sifted through the silken cords, then let them fall back against the tent. “And your maid?”

The Welshman guffawed. “Not so thorough and not even mine, despite her wishes. She goes north.”

“So she told me.” Dain watched as Morgan’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly before he controlled his surprise. Of the three of them, only Morgan had returned from the Holy Land with so much as a trace of innocence intact, but then, only Morgan—by far the youngest of the three—had taken much innocence with him.

“You have Ceridwen ab Arawn in your tower?”

“Aye. She was there all night.”

More than one maid had been seduced by Morgan’s guileless manner and fair face, and his eyes as blue as a summer sky. Dain wasn’t surprised that Ceridwen was yet another, but he was annoyed. However had she kept her maidenhead intact when it seemed she propositioned every man she met? Strange woman.

“Then I’m a dead man.” Morgan slapped a hand over his face, and a swath of dark hair fell across his brow. Just as suddenly, he jerked his head back up. “And you... no.” He paused, changing his mind. “Caradoc wouldn’t kill you, not over a woman.”

“Not even a betrothed bride?”

“Jesu, Dain,” Morgan swore. “She told you and you still debauched her? Have you no honor left at all?”

The answer to that was so obvious as to make a reply redundant, yet Dain did reply.

“I make my way in the world. Nothing more.”

“It’s been four years since we left Jaffa, seven since Acre. Can’t you forget?”

“Can you?”

Morgan held his gaze, then swore again and took a long swallow of the wine.

“It matters not,” he said, handing the skin to Dain. “I still want her back.”