Free Chalice 2 - Dream Stone by Tara Janzen

the iron
stars, throwing disks with sharp points like the rays of a star.
They were an ancient weapon, not much in use since the Wars, but
the Druid boy had taken to them. Shay called Mychael friend. Madron
had use of him, dire use that it seemed she could not convince him
of—this learned in another confidence from Edmee—and Rhuddlan would
rule him, if he could. As for herself, she knew exactly what she
would have from him; he knew the dark. She needed no other reason
to search him out.
    So what had stayed her? ’Twas not bodily harm
she feared, yet twice she’d sensed danger in his presence.
    Unexpectedly, he came back out of the tower,
and a wash of relief ran through her. Her hand, still absently
rubbing the strange ache in her chest dropped to her side. He was
not yet for sleep and dreams, and she would have no more hesitation
from herself.
    His long strides quickly brought him abreast
of the gatestones in the inner wall. He passed through just below
where she stood on top, heading toward the portcullis by the looks
of the weapons hanging off his belt. She’d seen the Liosalfar
there, grinding their blades to a keen edge for the morrow. On his
current path, Mychael would pass by the keep’s well. If she was
quick, she could intercept him there.
    In a twinkling, she was up and gone, before
another warning had the chance to sound in her head and keep her
from her fate.
    ~ ~ ~
    Mychael strode across the ward, listening to
the night wind sough through the tall grass, the mainstay of
Quicken-tree meals. The sounds of laughter and shared conversations
drifted to him on the breeze, coming from the hearthfire and the
portcullis at the far end of the bailey. All of the Quicken-tree
had voices like cool running water, and to hear them mixed together
whether in speech or song was to hear the sweet babbling of brooks
and the rushing tumble of rivers down mountainsides. He had no
place among them, and he oft wondered if they would stay when he
claimed the land as his own. His fight was truly not with them, nor
even with Madron or Rhuddlan, but with a nameless, faceless enemy
he’d sensed only once the night he’d walked the cloisters of Strata
Florida and been beset by the vision. Heresy, to be sure, what he’d
seen of the pagan deeds threatening to damn his soul, yet the whole
of it had drawn him in and with every passing day tightened its
hold.
    All men fought the demons inside themselves,
and the night of his vision he’d thought the battle he saw was of a
spiritual nature, and—more blasphemy—that he’d be sainted in four
hundred years for having had it.
    But the pull of the damn thing had been
relentless and real, dragging him hack to Merioneth where he’d
found dragon sign and remembered dragon tales of old, things
learned at his mother’s knee, long forgotten yet always known.
’Twas not sainthood awaiting him, he’d realized, for if the dragons
were real and the vision not a metaphor for man’s struggle with
sin, he would become that for which he had no heart, a warlord like
his father, though far worse. In the vision he’d seen himself
wading through a river of blood that poured from the bodies of his
slain enemies, a sword in his hand dripping the same blood, and
above the destruction, the dragons screaming their victory across a
night sky rent by white light and sundering dark flame.
    Aye, the dragons had called him home aright,
not for sainthood, but to fight. He who had been raised a man of
peace in a religion that relegated the beasts to myth was to fight
as lord of a land he had not claimed, against an enemy he did not
know—or so he prayed.
    What if ’twas the Quicken-tree he must purge
from Merioneth? The question came to him now and again. Could it be
that they had betrayed his parents and then found the new rulers
not to their liking? Doubtful, but possible. After the rout of
Balor, no one else was clamoring for the demesne, leaving a dearth
of enemies.
    To their favor, Madron abided