Dream Stone Paperback - 2000

Excerpt

Mychael silenced the boy with a finger to his lips. They were not alone.  He tilted his head to one side, listening beyond the weak sound of  Bedwyr's dying breaths and beneath the rushing of the waterfall. He did  not have a Quicken-tree's sense of smell, but his hearing was keen, and he  heard something, a high-pitched, continuous hum seeming to come from  above, beginning directly overhead and running to the north. Rising to his  feet, he signed for Shay to stay with Bedwyr and set a course for the  falls. Four other Quicken-tree needed to be found, mayhaps some who could  be saved.

Quick and silent, he wove a path through the dripshanks hanging from the  ceiling and jutting up from the floor, skimming his fingers over their  smoothly rippled surfaces to mark his way and gauge his distance from  Shay.

Bedwyr was dying, killed by an unknown foe. Four Quicken-tree were  unaccounted for. He told himself a quarterlan cavern would make no easy  end of Trig and the others, for a small cave could not hide much, even in  darkness, but he feared the worst.

The noise came again from above, louder and closer, and he froze in  place, not daring to breathe. His fist tightened on the iron knife.  Whatever was up there, he'd not encountered it before, and mayhaps it was  as good at blind scouting as he and Shay, needing little more than a scent  or a sound to find its prey.

Or mayhaps 'twas a dragon.

A thrill of excitement coursed into his veins, speeding up his pulse. The  beasts could kill. He knew that as surely as he knew the same awful truth  about himself. But would they hum? In his dreams, they only ever screamed,  letting out sky-scorching flames with keening cries that nigh cut through  his heart.

The second noise faded to the north as had the first, and he followed,  moving swiftly before he lost the way. He tracked it to a narrow arch made  of two large dripshanks welded together at the top. Slipping through, he  held his dagger at the ready. Spray from the waterfall misted the air on  the other side, wetting the rock underfoot and dampening his face--and  bringing to him a scent he'd feared he would not find . . . lavender.

She was near. He could only hope the others were with her and she was not  alone.



Llynya crouched in the curve of a rock wall on the far side of the falls,  having forded the stream to escape Trig's fate. Her captain lay bound and  gagged somewhere to the south, completely wrapped in Sha-shakrieg threads.  The same had happened to Math and Nia--but they'd taken Nia, hauled her to  the roof of the cavern and stolen her away.

They'd killed Bedwyr. Llynya knew that for sure. She'd seen the silver  bolt cut through the dreamstone light in a blinding flash and slice into  Bedwyr's chest. "Thullein,"  the bolt was called, named for the  substance from which it was made, an ore mined by the Sha-shakrieg and  forged in the far reaches of the desert with underling magic. Before the  Wars they would come to the deep dark to dig for thullein, taking  it back to the wasteland beyond. She'd been on her guard for nearly an  hour, wracking her memory for bits and pieces of the Sha-shakrieg stories  told around the campfires in Deri, and she'd come up with very little to  cheer her. The spider people had been banished after the Wars of  Enchantment, after their allies the Dockalfar had been overcome by the  Liosalfar, which made the Sha-shakrieg unlikely to favor any Quicken-tree.  'Twas said elf shot, a precious stone mined by the tylwyth teg  beneath the dragon-back of Mount Tryfan, was the surest way to kill them,  but she had no elf shot arrows. Not many carried them since the Wars had  been won. Rhuddlan had a quiver full, but Rhuddlan wasn't anywhere near  the stick-forsaken deep dark.

A high-pitched hum streaked through the air above her, and she  instinctively ducked, though logic told her a half-hand less of height  would make her no more invisible when she smelled like a perfumery. 'Twas  her saving grace, the lavender she carried, and had become a curse as  well. She needed to keep herself so well infused in the caverns that she  couldn't smell her way out of bed. None had guessed this newfound  weakness, or recognized her need of the herbal for what it was. Rhuddlan  would have forbidden her to come if he'd known, and Trig would have  refused to bring her, both with good reason. How many Sha-shakrieg were in  the cavern and their location was as big a mystery to her as why they had  not already tracked her down and bound her. She could smell naught besides  herself.

"Sticks," she swore under her breath. She was near as helpless as a babe,  yet she dared not falter. Sha-shakrieg or no, if she could not master the  labyrinthine heart of the darkness and find the written words of the  Prydion Magi, the great wormhole would forever be beyond her reach.

When Ailfinn had first brought her to Merioneth, the trail she and the  mage had taken from Yr Is-ddwfn had wound around the wormhole's outer  walls, a trail hidden in the abyss of time. She'd felt the power of the  hole then, swirling in the inner core just beyond where they walked.

The path she would take now was far more dangerous, for it wasn't that  slip along the side into Yr Is-ddwfn, but a leap straight down the  wormhole's throat. To survive the plunge into the flux of time took  preparation. To not only survive, but to follow in Morgan's tracks, would  take the knowledge of the ancients.

For certes Rhuddlan had not helped her cause. He'd sealed the eight  tunnels leading into the wormhole with gossamer sheaths, one for each  shimmering, pearlescent spoke of the weir gate, lucidly transparent but  seals nonetheless. Seals she did not know how to open or break.

And Mychael ab Arawn would scarce look at her. 'Twas the warding sign  she'd given him, she was sure, that had offended him beyond measure. In  four days, she had not managed to speak one word to him, let alone enlist  his aid. Every glance she gave him was met with his turning away, yet she  found herself glancing at him more and more often. The Liosalfar did not  shadow-paint themselves for descent into the caverns, and without the woad  on his face he didn't look so fierce, but bore a deeper resemblance to his  sister--silver-haired and golden-skinned and uncommonly fair of face, the  way she also remembered Rhiannon, his and Ceridwen's mother. His eyes  shone blue in dreamstone light, not gray, furthering her memory of the  beautiful Lady of Merioneth. Long before Rhiannon had become a mother,  she'd told her tales to Quicken-tree children. Llynya remembered a  soft-voiced maiden and the enchantment woven by her songs and the melodies  she played upon her harp. She remembered, too, the wondrous stories of  faraway places and faraway times, of magical beasts and the women who  tamed them, of wild, fell creatures and the heroes who slayed them.

'Twas with that same sense of enchantment that she oft found herself  watching Rhiannon's son. He was no darkling beast as Aedyth had warned,  yet Llynya could not help but wonder if he could be tamed to a woman's  hand. Not hers, of course. Her future--what little there was of it--lay in  a far different direction, and even if it had not, she was singularly  lacking in womanly skills. No, 'twould be for another to give him the  gentle succor of a female's touch, which he sorely needed. Any child could  see that.

Still she would speak with him if she could, and try to win him to her  cause, but even Shay had been unable to parlay a meeting between them.  Trig, being captain, was an unlikely candidate for such a mission, and  Bedwyr did naught but watch him with unconcealed animosity.

Or rather, he had watched Mychael ab Arawn. No mortal man concerned the  warrior now.

The reality of her situation descended again. Mychael had saved her once,  but none was likely to find her now. Even she didn't know where she was;  she'd run blindly. She'd tried to cut Trig free, and Math. Threads had  snagged her each time, not enough to hold her, but she'd lost her pack in  the last tangling up, and with it her biggest stash of lavender. 'Twas  best now to bide her time, to wait while the Sha-shakrieg made their  retreat, which she thought the humming noises were a part of--the shooting  of threads from one part of the cavern's ceiling to another in the making  or unmaking of a web.

She started at a scraping sound to her left. 'Twas the second time she'd  heard such beneath the rush of the falls. She peeked over the wall as she  had before, squinting her eyes as if that would help in the darkness, but  she saw naught and smelled naught, so she quickly scrunched herself back  down into her damp cubbyhole, making herself as small as possible.

'Twas said spider people ate elf children if they caught them in the deep  dark, and she wondered if they would recognize that she was no longer a  child. Nia was not a child. They would not eat her, but Llynya shuddered  to think what other tortures they might inflict. Poor Nia!

Her hand trembling, she dipped into her baldric pouch for a pinch of her  herbal. She'd touched one of the spider people on her flight to the falls,  stumbled over him, the dead one, and she'd thought to retrieve Bedwyr's  blade. The Sha-shakrieg's clothing had been fine and soft in a way much  different from Quicken-tree cloth, but when her fingers had brushed  against his skin, her blood had run cold and she'd abandoned all thoughts  of getting Bedwyr's dreamstone back. 'Twas only his arm she'd touched, and  in shape 'twas much like her own, except bigger. In texture, 'twas not.  He'd been covered all over with whorls, flat disks of spiraled flesh  running up his arm.

Shuddering at the memory, she found a flower in her pouch and placed it  under her tongue, not daring to chew. Mayhaps 'twould be a long time  before she could replenish the sack, and without the smell and taste of  lavender to hold her fears at bay, she would be overcome with despair.




Mychael had lost her scent, and something akin to panic set in. Trouble  though she might be, he would find her. She should never have been brought  so deep.

Another sin on Rhuddlan's head, for now Bedwyr was dead and the company  overcome. He reached for his dreamstone blade, but stopped with his hand  just above the hilt. Foolishness would not save her or the others. A flash  of light to guide them might also get them killed. So near to the falls he  could not hear any movement, but Llynya at least could not be far.

He turned to the south, stepping into the stream. Smooth, water-worn  rocks made poor footing, but he waded in up to his knees, into water like  liquid ice, and soon discovered why he'd lost her scent. A wall of rock or  a huge boulder--he could not tell which--curved along the streambed on the  other side, the top of it just within reach of his hand. If she'd gone  beyond the great outcrop, 'twould be enough to block the fragrance of the  lavender she chewed.

Taking care where he placed his feet, he followed the rock downstream to  where it turned back in upon itself and began rising out of the water to  higher ground. 'Twas not a boulder but a wall three handspans thick, a  gradually spiraling wall. He took up the faint trail left on the stone,  and when he turned the last curve was suddenly upon her. The rich scent of  lavender washed over him in the same instant that her blade flashed blue  and slashed open the skin on his face with a bite of steel, cutting him  high on the cheekbone.

'Twas instinct alone that enabled him to block her next blow. On the  strike that followed, he captured her knife hand and lunged for the rest  of her, grabbing her and pulling her hard against his chest. She struggled  as if 'twas death she fought, but he held tight and forced her to drop the  dagger. The clatter of steel and crystal on stone was a raucous backdrop  for her breathless cursing.

"Not a child . . . s-sand eater. Let go of me. Bedwyr. Sticks! Filthy  leaf-rotter . . . not a child--"

"Llynya." He spoke her name harshly, tightening his hold and  pressing his thumb against the inside of her wrist in warning. There is  danger in the dark, he signaled, and despite the noise and light of  her attack and what it might bring down on them, he swore most of the  danger was in his arms. She'd nicked him on the wrist when he'd blocked  her, and warm blood ran down his face. Curse him as a fool for forgetting  she was Liosalfar and not a helpless chit lost in the dark. "Llynya," he  repeated, and again pressed his thumb to her wrist.

She jerked her head up at his second warning touch, and the eyes staring  at him in the fading glow of the fallen dreamstone blade were wild with  fear. Her heart beat in a frighteningly rapid pattern against his chest.  Her breathing was uneven. The icy mist settling in his wound was so cold,  the bone beneath the cut ached, but 'twas no colder than the Quicken-tree  girl. She was shivering uncontrollably, her clothes soaked through.

Are you hurt? He signed in her palm, but got no response before  the last flicker of blue light died off her blade and plunged them once  again into darkness. He was left with a vision of her stricken gaze and  her fair face, of the dark mass of her hair falling down on her shoulders,  twisted and braided and stuck through with leaves and twigs.

Llynya, he signed, and when she still did not respond, his own  heart began beating too fast. Mayhaps he was too late. Mayhaps she'd  already been alone too long and had begun her decline. She was not as  strong as the others, not yet as hardened to the march and the weight of  the darkness.

He swore to himself, at a loss. Shay would have seen the flash of  dreamstone light and would come, but they could not stay where they  were.

As if to prove him right, the crunch and scrape of some new thing in the  dark sounded behind them, off to the east. Mychael whirled, keeping Llynya  at his side.

The smell that came after the sound was enough to decide him. He swiped  his hand up the side of her arm--come--and took off, determined not  to be caught in the trap of the curved wall with God knew what readying  itself for attack. He knelt for her blade and sheathed it with his own,  never once letting go of her. She had no choice but to come with him, but  whether she did it willingly or unwillingly, he couldn't tell. The  strength of his grip overrode any effort she might make.

He wasn't going to lose her.



Swivin' dirt and light-sucking rock. 'Twas always the same. Dirt  and rock. Dirt and rock. And a bit of worm flesh now and then. Christ save  him, how long had he been scrabbling through the dark searching, ever  searching? He'd once been strong and bold and feared. Now he  was--what?

A swivin' dirt scraper. A leg dragger.

A leg dragger whose fortunes would soon be on the rise.

A groan strangled in his throat as he grabbed the next handful of dirt  and rock and pulled himself up and forward in the tunnel. Some of the  passages he traveled grew so narrow he had to crawl out of them. Such was  this one, but this one was worth the trouble. He smelled lavender at the  end of it. He'd been smelling it for days, here and there, and he was  finally getting close, very close, to the source.

'Twas a woman. The underlying scent was unmistakable, and she was just  ahead in the dark, in a cavern he'd left a few days past because of the  strangers who had come, the newcomers. Swivin' odd they were, shrouded  figures with bandaged faces come to dig in the caves for pieces of  rock.

Fools, all fools. The treasure of the dark wasn't in the rocks. 'Twas in  the holes, if a man had the strength to endure them.

He'd endured, so help him God. Caradoc, the Boar of Balor, had endured.  And because he'd endured, the other ones, the dark soldiers, had found him  and made their twisted promises to him. Skraelings they called themselves,  and if he'd had them by his side during the battle for Balor, the land  above would still be his. The smell of them alone would have been enough  to send his enemies running. "Quicken-tree," the skraelings called the  bastards who had slaughtered his garrison and left him to die in the  bowels of the earth.

The sounds of the fighting had drawn the skraelpack south to where they'd  found him half-dead on the shores of the black sea. A dirty bit of  business they'd done there with the washed-up remains of his men, before  they'd taken him back to their tunnels in the north. Foul, stinking  places. He'd never known such stench, but they'd patched him together of a  sorts. He felt a smidge stretched, a bit askew, not quite right, but he  was alive and growing stronger and was no man's prisoner. When he'd had  all he could take of the north and demanded they bring him south  again--south to the wormhole!--by God they'd done it posthaste.

A grimace twisted his mouth as he took hold of his left knee and dragged  his leg up closer to his body, readying himself for the next pull  forward.

The newcomers were another lot altogether, wasting their strength hacking  away at dirt and rock, working by the light of their yellow lamps for  hours to gain even a small amount of stone.

He'd tried stealing a piece of their hard-won ore, thinking it precious,  but he'd not gotten far before a thin, stinging rope had been thrown  around his wrist, pulling him up short and forcing him to relinquish his  prize. They'd be paying for that soon enough. The rope had disappeared  nearly as quickly as it had come, but he'd been burned and had a scar to  show for it. Bastards. They looked more to be fighting men than miners, so  'twas a fight he would give them. Skraelings would run ten leagues in a  single night for the promise of blood, and he had sent word with the last  pack of dark soldiers that had come south that blood was to be had.

Not many who came up against a skraelpack survived in one piece,  literally. The night they found him, the stinking creatures had been  chewing on his arm when he'd come to, and he'd sent three of them flying  before they could get a good piece out of him. He had the scars from that  bit of mischief too, teeth marks the size of tally sticks. The newcomers'  swords were long and sharp, but not as long and sharp as skraeling  teeth.

The green-smelling Quicken-tree had sharp swords as well, but their days  were numbered--mark his words--had been numbered since the day Balor had  fallen to the swivin' green horde. And then they had added torture to his  torment by sealing the tunnels leading to the hole. He'd howled his misery  then. Now he and the skraelings would kill them all--all but one. One he  would keep alive, for the Quicken-tree knew much that he needed to know,  much that he would know, if he could just catch one and ask it a few  questions with his knife.

He hadn't as yet. Damn fast they were and tricky in the tunnels,  impossible to track with any consistency, and the skraelings had been  strangely reluctant to go after them. Wait, he'd been told. Wait and  watch, and he would have all their skins as his reward. So he'd waited,  and he'd watched, and he'd sent tidings of the newcomers. But his waiting  was over. The Quicken-tree had made a mistake. They'd brought one who  smelled of lavender, the scent so rich and sweet, 'twas impossible to lose  her trail. He'd have her quick enough even without the skraelings.

A pox on all women. 'Twas Ceridwen ab Arawn, his own feckless betrothed  who had cost him the life he'd known. Well enough that another of that  fair rotten sex should return him to glory of a different sort. He would  squeeze the secrets of the deep out of her, drop by perfumed drop, and  bargain with her carcass if needs be for more. They knew. The blue-bladed  bastards knew about the friggin' great hole, and they would know how he  could get back in without being burned alive.

Wicked curse! He gritted his teeth and dug his hand into the floor  of the tunnel. Then he pulled himself forward and up, shoving with his  good leg.

'Twas always there in the back of his mind, those shifting shades of  heliotrope and green flowing through the abyss, a swivin' siren's call.  But every time he'd gone near, the heat of it singed and scorched, eager  to consume him if given a chance.

Media reviews

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