The Harrowing of Gwynedd (63 page)

May I
see
him, then!

That favor is not mine to grant
.

Then, will you let me pass!

The risk is great to mortals
—
even those of thy race
.

I
know
the risk! You gave me the keys to read it for myself!
Evaine cried.
But
, he
is mortal, too, and I know he is not wholly free
.

He chose his fate
, the being replied.

Aye, without knowing fully what he chose. Let me free him! Holding him serves no purpose
.

For a long moment, the being simply gazed into Evaine's eyes, the beautiful face clouded with an expression of incredible compassion. The depth of that gaze reached into her very soul, stripping away all subterfuge, laying bare all strengths and failings. When Evaine thought she could bear it no longer—though pulling away was unthinkable—the peridot eyes shifted to the cups.

Instinctively Evaine held out her hands as the cups tilted toward her, catching at a weightless froth of cobweb-fragile stuff as it billowed over her hands. Gradually it solidified into a silklike strip like a scarf or stole that would not settle down to any one color. It trailed nearly to the ground from both her hands, both burning and chilling, at the same time, and she sought the being's eyes in question.

Take this token as a sign that thou hast passed this portal with my blessings
, the being said.
Thou must seek a higher One than I, and thou must be prepared to give whatever price is asked. Thou shalt have but one chance. To falter is to perish utterly, along with him and those who aid thee. To persevere may also cost thy life and the lives of others, if thou hast not the strength to do what must be done. Thou alone canst attempt this thing, but thou shalt not suffer alone, if thou failest. Dost thou understand?

Nodding, Evaine clutched the rainbow to her bosom, fearing for Joram and Queron now, though her own fear was gone utterly.

I understand
, she whispered.
What must I do?

For answer, the being merely smiled sadly and backed between the Pillars, to vanish in a shrinking point of light.

Very well. She had her answer. As she had suspected all along, she must pass between the twin Pillars of Severity and Mercy, making of her own body and soul the Middle Pillar of Equilibrium. Only in perfect harmony, in perfect balance, might she dare to essay the crossing to that Higher One to whom her guide had alluded. Only in perfect equilibrium might she hope to gain audience with the Force that held her father balanced between the worlds.

She cast the rainbow over her hair like a veil as she prepared to step between the Pillars. Mist lay just beyond, but she paid it no heed as she set the balances. The fog was cold and close as she took a first step and then a second, and a brief moment of vertigo clutched at her stomach, but it passed quickly. For a moment she could make out nothing. But then the fog began to melt away in strips and she could see.

She seemed to stand at the edge of a vast, open plain beneath a star-clogged sky. Frost made the very air crackle, and crunched beneath her bare feet, but she did not feel the cold. Far on the horizon before her, something darker blotted out the stars. It grew larger as she started walking toward it, and her feet seemed to grow heavier with every step she took.

Gradually, the shape became a massive trilithon, two great, upright stones supporting a third. The space beneath the capstone reminded her of the niches in the
keeill
, and she wondered whether its builders might have drawn their inspiration from just such a vision as she now was experiencing. As she drew nearer, her feet felt as if each new step was trying to shift the Earth itself, until she realized she was drawing near to the very Gate of Earth.

And beyond the Gate of Earth lay the realm of the Archangel of Earth, the mighty Uriel, whose provenance was not only the mountains and caverns and craggy cliffs but the bounty of growing things, and the cycle of death and rebirth, of flesh as well as vegetation—even the bringer of life to a close, and transition, and the bringer at last to the Nether Shore, where souls passed to their judgment. It was Uriel she must face—Uriel, declining to manifest when they set the Wards, waiting for her to cross into
his
territory.

She would oblige, then—for was this not what she had come to do, to discover the Force that bound her father's soul and bargain for his release? The opening beneath the trilithon was the entrance to that other realm. She breathed a last prayer for courage as she crossed her hands on her breast and stepped inside. Closing her eyes then, for she knew the Angel would not communicate by sight or sound, she opened her mind to stillness and waited.

Pressure. Power. A swooping, stifling sensation, as if buried inside living rock, constricting, restraining—and then—limbo. She did not struggle through any of it, only opening herself to the rhythm of the earth, riding its tides, passively attentive.

After a time, a query formed in her mind. How dared she come here? What good could she hope to gain? He whom she sought was well enough content where he was, though more constrained than he might have been, had he been able to wield the energies correctly. He had not passed over to the Nether Shore, into true death, but neither was he entirely free to walk upon the earth. Nor would he wish to return as mere mortal, having tasted the potential of his present state, constrained though it was by his blunder and limited to only occasional forays back across the great Divide.

Ponderously, Evaine tried to comprehend, only gradually coming to fathom just what her father had done. His spell had worked—to a point. Camber had bypassed Death, but only at a terrible cost. In exchange for the freedom to move occasionally between the worlds, continuing in spirit the work no longer possible in his damaged body, he had forfeited, at least for a time, the awesome ecstacy of union with the All High. Had he been more canny with his spellbinding, he might have won both, at once free to come and go in the Sacred Presence and to walk in both worlds as God's agent and emissary.

But Camber had not fully understood the spell he wove, in that moment of imminent death. Death had not bound him, no. But he was bound, nonetheless. By the fierce exercise of his extraordinary will, he had sometimes been able to break through to the world and make his presence felt, but those times were rare indeed, and costly on a level only comprehensible to those who have glimpsed the Face of God—or been denied that glimpse. And until the balance should be set right, by the selfless sacrifice of someone willing to pay in potent coin, that Face might remain forever hidden from Camber Kyriell MacRorie.

Evaine lingered hardly at all over her decision. She had guessed for some time that it would come to this. Bringing Camber back to life clearly was out of the question, and mere death would but set him back on the Wheel, to start again in another incarnation without benefit of any of the wisdom gained so dearly in this life—no insurmountable calamity for so advanced a soul as Camber, but a most untimely loss for human and Derynikind just now, whose cause he had served so faithfully and so long.

So she must release him to that joyful purpose beyond life, in which great adepts chose their work and eschewed the Great Return in preference for specialized assignments, teaching mankind to grow in the likeness of God. For herself, the choice would mean death of the body, for mortal flesh could not sustain the outpouring of energy she must make to send
him
on into that next dimension; but she had known the sacrifice was likely. Others had gone fearlessly unto death; so would she.

And there would be Rhys, waiting for her when her work was done, and her beloved Aidan—and other friends and partners in the Great Dance who had also fallen in the cause of the Light. It was not an ignoble end. Nor was it even an end at all.

Humbly she laid her decision before the One who had granted her a hearing. In peace, she came to know how it must be done. All in centeredness, she willed herself back into her body, imparting the information to Queron in the same thought with which she forbade him to try to stop her. The Healer's hands trembled on her shoulders, but he did not raise his head, only helping her maintain her deeply centered state as she opened her eyes upon the physical world once more and made herself look at her brother.

“I'm ready, Joram,” she said softly, her love for him welling up in her breast as he looked up at her with a start. “Open a gate to the North, and we'll be done with it. Remember the night that Cinhil died. This once, please don't argue. Just do it—for me.”

The color drained from his face as she rose, Queron's arm still around her shoulders, and walked slowly to the near side of her father's bier, passing easily between the Pillars this time—the Pillars that only
looked
like stacks of tiny cubes of ivory and ebon. Somehow she knew that Queron had not made the same passage, though physically he still supported her on her right.

Joram did not argue, either. He had opened his mouth as if to speak, but then he only closed it and bowed his head over his sword, shifting his right hand to its hilt as he turned to face the North. A moment he paused, the sword extended diagonally across his body with the point resting at the edge of the circle, where the shimmering dome met the edge of the dais. Then he slowly drew the blade upwards and across, sweeping down to his right, cutting an arching doorway in the very fabric of the circle. A darker darkness yawned outside, and then a gust of wind carried a flurry of dead leaves into the circle—altogether real and substantial!

Joram looked stunned at that, but still he made no protest, only backing reluctantly to the left, clear of the opening, to sink to one knee. He braced the sword against the upraised one and leaned his cheek against the hilt, but he would not turn his face toward her. He would be expecting Camber to pass beyond the circle. She hoped he would not be too angry when she went on instead.

Smiling, Evaine turned back to her father, bidding Queron withdraw with a grateful caress of mind to mind. He inclined his head in acceptance before stepping back from the bier, his hands at his sides, no longer even making pretense that he intended to try to heal Camber's wounds. She sensed Joram's tension at the movement, but he did not turn around—a mercy for which she blessed him.

Gathering all of her love and hope and power, she laid her hands on her father's hands, surrounding the cupped curve, molding her own hands to fit his, easing the curve apart. At the same time, she eased her mind into the pattern of the spell he had woven, seeking the binding, touching a flicker of his awareness of what she was doing, reassuring him that her choice was freely made, in an ultimate service of their cause and of her love for him.

You shall go on, and I shall go on, in separate paths for the present, but ultimately to meet in the Light
, she told him.
It is meet. It is fitting. You have your work, and I have mine. I love you, Father, but there is another man waiting for me, and he and I have been parted for far too long
.

She would not allow his protest, for she sensed that other's coming, outside the circle—and that Other, familiar now, Who waited as
he
had done before, when a king passed by. It was time. She was ready.

Closing her eyes, she let herself settle even deeper into concentration, reaching for the energies she now knew how to tap—searching out that other power nexus, close beneath his heart, where all his binding to this physical plane was centered. It was simple, really. All she had to do, to make the balance right, was to reach out with her mind, just—so.

She let herself become a living channel as the power began to flow, bidding it funnel through her hands and into
him
, building and building,
pushing
the energy as the speed and pressure of the flow increased, even though she knew she did irreparable damage to a body of mere flesh. She felt no pain at all. She drew power from the Warding energies, from the reservoirs of the cubes beneath his body, from the very depths of her own lifeforce—and beyond. The completion was sudden and profound, like a deep organ note sounding through her entire body, or a gong left reverberating on the silence after blessing.

For just an instant, she gained one final sensory impression: an overwhelming visual image of her father, all his wounds healed and a semblance of youth restored, opening his eyes to smile up at her in love, compassion, understanding, even forgiveness and gratitude for the inestimable price she had paid for his release.

Then he was simply gone, and she was turning her face to the gateway in the circle, where a dearly beloved man with unruly red hair and laughter in his amber eyes beckoned to her with one outstretched hand, a giggling nine-year-old perched precariously astride the green-mantled shoulders. She gave no further thought to the body she left behind, as it collapsed softly into Queron's arms like a spent set of sails. She had eyes only for the man, the boy—and then the great Light that beckoned from beyond the shadows as she passed outside, caught up in a flutter of green-black wings.

Joram did not see her go, too intent on her fainting body to turn his Sight outward, but Queron Saw. It was the last thing he saw with eyes or Sight for three days, and a sight he would remember until his dying day.

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