Free Chalice 2 - Dream Stone by Tara Janzen Page B

her side. Instead he turned his feet
to the north to skirt the well. He had come back to the keep to
find her, and he had. He had wanted one more look, and it had been
given. ’Twould have to suffice.
    ~ ~ ~
    Llynya pulled the bucket up onto the rim of
the well and balanced it there, glancing toward the field from
whence Mychael ab Arawn would come. A not-so-chance meeting left a
few things up to chance nonetheless, and a little care was not
misplaced. She did not want him to pass by unnoticed.
    She picked up a silver cup and dipped it into
the bucket for a drink. The night breeze off the Irish Sea wafted
over the outer curtain wall, caressing her cheeks and tangling
through her hair, and setting the grass aflutter. She smelled the
salt tang of it, so unlike the verdured winds that came down out of
the mountains. Turning her face a bare degree, she happened upon
another scent and stilled.
    ’Twas him, moving through the fields, his
essence mingling with the grasses, so different from the tylwyth
teg .
    She closed her eyes, waiting, breathing him
in. His was a richly layered scent, warm and animal, bespeaking a
life beyond her ken, of years spent behind cloistered walls filled
with smoking tallow candles and the pious chants of men. Faint but
true, she read his history on the wind. The forest was there,
winding through his days. The sea had come and gone in his life,
and far and away beyond it all there was a scant strain of that
which she sought—the ether of time, dark-edged and dangerous... a tremor ran through her, sinew and bone, a stark shadow of fear
cracking open an abyss at her feet. She leaped back, away from the
sharp edge and into a pool of light —and came up against the
well wall. Water spilled onto her hand. Her eyes flew open.
    “ Shadana ...” The prayer fell from her
lips. She’d learned a bit of sight in Deri, naught to rival
Moira’s, but enough apparently to give herself a good jolt. Well
enough warned, she chided herself, to go using deep-scent on a
man-child of Merioneth, a Druid whether he willed it or nay.
    He came out of the fields then, and the first
sight of him confirmed the wisdom of caution. Gods, but he was
wondrously strange. No two parts of him matched. Even his boots
were made from the skins of two different kinds of animals. She
recognized rabbit fur tufting out of his left boot and vair out of
the right. His left stocking was mostly white monk’s wool, his
right mostly Quicken-tree cloth, the both of them patched and no
doubt the cause of his elusive light-and-shadows stride. A wide
leather belt worked with silver was buckled around his waist,
holding his sheathed knives and a short-bladed sword.
    He was going a bit awry of the path, and left
alone, he was sure to miss the well.
    ’ Twould be better to let him go , an
inner voice whispered. She shunted it aside and called out,
“ Malashm , ho!”
    He slowed to a stop and looked up to where
she stood, hesitating for a long moment before starting in her
direction. If he returned her greeting, she did not hear it.
Mayhaps he nodded, mayhaps not. ’Twas hard to tell with the light
against her and his face shadow-painted with woad. He stopped again
not too far from her. There was yet an inch or two of empty space
behind her, enough to accommodate a small retreat, though not
enough to calm the racing of her pulse. Standing on a level with
him, she realized it had been an intuition more powerful than
cowardice that had earlier kept her on the wall.
    No savior here, for certes, but mayhaps a man
who indeed had spent too long alone in the depths of the earth. He
was taller than she’d thought, lean and feral with an air of wary
tension about him, and broader across the shoulders than any tylwyth teg . The stripe in his hair was startling when seen
up close, a bright swath of copper and bronze glittering in the
lantern light with an odd metallic sheen.
    He was stone silent, standing at the edge of
the light, and she wondered if he