The Wandering Fire (20 page)

After, he rested a little time and then, alone, began the thin chants again: the warnsong and the savesong, one after another. His voice was far from what it had been in the days when those of other caves would ask him to come and lead kanior for their dead. He continued, though, regardless: silence would be the last surrendering. Only when he chanted could he hold his mind from wandering. He wasn’t even sure how many of them were left in the cave, and he had no idea of what was happening in the other caves. No one had kept a count for many years, and they had been set upon in the dark.

Iraima’s sweet voice came back in with him on the third cycle of the warnsong, and then his heart went red-gold with grief and love to hear Ikatere chanting deep again with them for a little time. They spoke not, for words were strength, but Ruana shaded his voice to twine about Ikatere’s; he knew his friend would understand.

And then, on the sixth cycle through, as the twilight was descending outside where their captors were camped on the slope, Ruana touched another mind with the savesong. He was singing alone again. Gathering what little was left in him, he focused the chant to a clear point, though it cost him dearly, and sent it out as a beam toward the mind he had found.

Then the mind seized hold of the beam he threw and sent back, effortlessly, the sound of laughter, and Ruana plummeted past black, for he knew whom he had found.

Fool!
he heard, and lancets cut within him.
Did you think I would not blanket you? Where do you think your feeble sounds have gone?

He was glad he had been chanting alone, that the others need not endure this. He reached inside, wishing again that he had access to hate or rage, though he would have to atone for such a wish. He sent, along the beam the chant had made,
You are Rakoth Maugrim. I name you
.

And was battered in his mind by laughter.
I
named myself a long time ago. What power would you find in naming me, fool of a race of fools? Unworthy to be slaves
.

Cannot be slaves
,
Ruana sent. And then:
Sathain
. The mocking name.

Fire bloomed in his mind. Redblack. He wondered if he could have the other kill him. Then he could—

There was laughter again.
You shall have no bloodcurse to send. You shall be lost. Every one of you. And no one will chant kanior for the last. Had you done what I asked, you would have been mighty in Fionavar again. Now I will rip your thread from the Tapestry and wear it about my throat
.

Not slaves
,
Ruana sent, but faintly.

There was laughter. Then the chantbeam snapped.

For a long time Ruana lay in the dark, choking on the smoke of Ciroa’s burning, assailed by the smell of flesh and the sounds the unclean ones made as they feasted.

Then, because he had nothing else to offer, no access to more, and because he would not end in silence, Ruana began the chants again, and Iraima was with him, and much-loved Ikatere. Then his heart came from past black toward gold again to hear Tamure’s voice. With four they essayed the wide chant. Not in hope it would go as far as it had to go, for they were blanketed by the Unraveller and were very weak. Not to get through to anyone, but so as not to die in silence, not servants, never slaves, though their thread be torn from the Loom and lost forever in the Dark.

Hers, Jennifer understood, was a different fate from Arthur’s, though interwoven endlessly. She remembered now. From first sight of his face she had remembered all of it, nor were the stars in his eyes new for her—she had seen them before.

No curse so dark as his had been given her, for no destiny so high, no thread of the Tapestry, had ever been consigned to her name. She was, instead, the agent of his fate, the working out of his bitter grief. She had died; in the abbey at Amesbury she had died—she wondered, now, how she had failed to recognize it by Stonehenge. She had had her rest, her gift of death, and she knew not how many times she had come back to tear him apart, for the children and for love.

She had no idea, remembering only that first life of all, when she had been Guinevere, daughter of Leodegrance, and had ridden to wed in Camelot, now lost and thought to be a dream.

A dream it had been, but more than that, as well. She had come to Camelot from her father’s halls, and there she had done what she had done, and loved as she had loved, and broken a dream and died.

She had only fallen in love twice in her life, with the two shining men of her world. Nor was the second less golden than the first. He was not, whatever might have been said afterward. And the two men had loved each other, too, making all the angles equal, shaped most perfectly for grief.

Saddest story of all the long tales told.

But, she told herself, it would not unfold again this time, not in Fionavar.
He is not here
,
she had said, and known, for in this if nowhere else she had knowledge. There was no third one walking here, with the easy, envied stride, the hands she had loved.
I
have been maimed but will not, at
least, betray
, she had said, while a shower of starlight fell.

And she would not. It was all changed here, profoundly changed. Rakoth Maugrim had set his shadow between the two of them, across the Weaver’s casting on the Loom, and everything was marred. No less a grief, more, even, for her, who had seen the unlight of Starkadh, but if she could not cross to love, she would not shatter him as she had before.

She would stay where she was. Surrounded by the grey-robed priestesses in the grey tone-on-tone of where her soul had come, she would walk among the women in the sanctuary while Arthur went to war against the Dark for love of her, for loss of her, and for the children too.

Which led her back, as she paced the quiet curving halls of the Temple, to thoughts of Darien. And to these, too, she seemed to have become reconciled. Paul’s doing. Paul, whom she had never understood, but trusted now. She had done what she had done, and they would see where the path led.

Last night, Jaelle had told her about Finn, and they had sat together. She had grieved a little for that boy among the strewn cold stars. Then Kevin had come knocking, very late, had offered blood as all men were bound to do, and then had come to them to say that Paul was with Darien and so it was all right, insofar as it could ever be all right.

Jaelle had left them, after that. Jennifer had said good-bye to Kevin, who was riding east in the morning. There was nothing she could offer in response to the troubled intensity of his gaze, but her new gentleness could speak to the sadness she had always seen in him.

Then, in the morning, Jaelle too had gone, leaving her to walk in the quiet Temple, more serene than she could have ever dreamed herself becoming, until from a recessed alcove near the dome she heard the sound of someone crying desperately.

There was no door to the alcove and so, passing by, she looked and then stopped, seeing that it was Leila. She was going to move on, for the grief was naked and she knew the girl was proud, but Leila looked up from the bench where she sat.

”I’m sorry,” said Jennifer. “Can I do anything, or shall I go?”

The girl she remembered from the ta’kiena looked at her with tears brimming in her eyes. “No one can do anything,” she said. “I’ve lost the only man I’ll ever love!”

For all her sympathy and mild serenity, Jennifer had to work hard not to smile. Leila’s voice was so laden with the weighty despair of adolescence it took her back to the traumas of her own teenage years.

On the other hand, she’d never lost anyone the way this girl had just lost Finn, or been tuned to anyone the way Leila and Finn had been. The impulse to smile passed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You have a reason to weep. Will it help to hear that time does make it easier?”

As if she had scarcely heard, the girl murmured, “At midwinter full of moon, half a year from now, they will ask me if I wish to be consecrated to these robes. I will accept. I will never love another man.”

She was only a child, but in the voice Jennifer heard a profound resolution.

It moved her. “You are very young,” she said. “Do not let grief turn you so quickly away from love.”

The girl looked up at that. “
And who are you to talk?
”
Leila said.

“That is unfair,” said Jennifer after a shocked silence.

The tears were glistening on Leila’s cheeks. “Maybe,” she said. “But how often have you loved, yourself? Have you not waited all your days for him? And now that Arthur is here you are afraid.”

She had been Guinevere and was capable of dealing with this. There was too much color in anger, so she said gently, “Is this how it seems to you?”

Leila hadn’t expected that tone. “Yes,” she said, but not defiantly.

“You are a wise child,” said Jennifer, “and perhaps not only a child. You are not wholly wrong, but you must not presume to judge me, Leila. There are greater griefs and lesser, and I am trying to find the lesser.”

“Lesser grief,” Leila repeated. “Where is joy?”

”Not here,” said Jennifer.

“But why?” It was a hurt child asking.

She surprised herself by answering, “Because I broke him once, long ago. And because I was broken here last spring. He is condemned to joylessness and war, and I cannot cross, Leila. Even if I did, I would smash him in the end. I always do.”

“Must it be repeated?”

“Over and over,” she said. The long tale. “Until he is granted release.”

“Then grant it,” said Leila simply. “How shall he be redeemed if not in pain? What else will ever do it? Grant him release.”

And with that, all the old sorrow seemed to have come back after all. She could not stay it. There was brightly colored pain in all the hues of guilt and grief, and colored, also, was the memory of love, love and desire, and—

“It is not mine to grant!” she cried. “
I loved them both!
”

It echoed. They were near to the dome and the sound reverberated. Leila’s eyes opened very wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry!” And she ran forward to bury her head against Jennifer’s breast, having voyaged into deeper seas than she knew.

Reflexively stroking the fair hair, Jennifer saw that her hands were trembling. It was the girl who cried, though, and she who gave comfort. Once, in the other time, she had been in the convent garden at Amesbury when a messenger had come, toward sunset. After, as the first stars came out, she had comforted the other women as they came to her in the garden, weeping at the word of Arthur dead.

It was very cold. The lake was frozen. As they passed north of it under the shadow of the wood, Loren wondered if he would have to remind the King of the tradition. Once more, though, Aileron surprised him. As they came up to the bridge over the Latham, the mage saw him signal a halt. Without a backward glance, the King held in his mount until Jaelle moved past him on a pale grey horse. Arthur called his dog to heel. Then the High Priestess went forward to lead them over the bridge and into Gwen Ystrat.

The river was frozen too. The wood sheltered them somewhat from the wind, but under the piled grey clouds of late afternoon the land lay grim and mournful. There was a corresponding bleakness in the heart of Loren Silvercloak as, for the first time in his days, he passed over into the province of the Mother.

They crossed the second bridge, over the Kharn, where it, too, flowed into Lake Leinan. The road curved south, away from the wood where the wolves were. The hunters were gazing backward over their shoulders at the winter trees. Loren’s own thoughts were elsewhere, though. Against his will he turned and looked to the east. In the distance lay the mountains of the Carnevon Range, icy and impassible save through Khath Meigol, where the ghosts of the Paraiko were. They were beautiful, the mountains, but he tore his gaze from them and focused closer in, to a place not two hours ride away, just over the nearest ridge of hills.

It was hard to tell against the dark grey of the sky, but he thought he saw a drift of smoke rising from Dun Maura.

“Loren,” Matt said suddenly, “I think we forgot something. Because of the snow.” Loren turned to his source. The Dwarf was never happy on a horse, but there was a grimness in his face that went beyond that. It was in Brock’s eyes too, on the far side of Matt.

“What is it?”

“Maidaladan,” said the Dwarf. “Midsummer’s Eve falls tomorrow night.”

An oath escaped from the mage. And a moment after, inwardly, he sent forth a heartfelt prayer to the Weaver at the Loom, a prayer that Gereint of the Dalrei, who had wanted to meet them here, knew what he was doing.

Matt’s one eye was focused beyond him now, and Loren swung back as well to look east again. Smoke, or shadings in the clouds? He couldn’t tell.

Then, in that moment, he felt the first stirrings of desire.

He was braced by his training to resist, but after a few seconds he knew that not even the skylore followers of Amairgen would be able to deny the power of Dana in Gwen Ystrat, not on the night before Maidaladan.

The company followed the High Priestess through Morvran amid the blowing snow. There were people in the streets. They bowed but did not cheer. It was not a day for cheering. Beyond the town they came to the precincts of the Temple, and Loren saw the Mormae waiting there, in red, all nine of them. Behind and to one side stood Ivor of the Dalrei, and the old blind shaman, Gereint; farther yet to the side, with relief in their faces, were Teyrnon and Barak. Seeing the two of them, he felt some easing of his own disquiet.

In front of everyone stood a woman well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and grey-haired, with her back straight and her head imperiously high. She, too, was clad in red, and Loren knew that this had to be Audiart.

“Bright the hour of your return, First of the Mother,” she said with cool formality. Her voice was deep for a woman. Jaelle was in front of them and Loren couldn’t see her eyes. Even in the overcast afternoon her red hair gleamed. She wore a silver circlet about her head. Audiart did not.

He had time to see these things, for Jaelle made no reply to the other woman. A bird flew suddenly from the Temple wall behind the nine Mormae, its wings loud in the stillness.

Then Jaelle delicately withdrew a booted foot from the stirrups of her saddle and extended it toward Audiart.

Even at a distance, Loren could see the other pale, and there came a low murmuring from the Mormae. For an instant Audiart was motionless, her eyes on Jaelle’s face; then she stepped forward with two long strides and, cupping her hands beside the horse of the High Priestess, helped her dismount.

“Continue,” Jaelle murmured and, turning her back, walked through the gates of the Temple to the red-clad Mormae. One by one, Loren saw, they knelt for her blessing. Not one of them, he judged, was less than twice her age. Power on power, he thought, knowing there was more to come.

Audiart was speaking again. “Be welcome, Warrior,” she said. There was some diffidence in her tone, but she did not kneel. “There is a welcome in Gwen Ystrat for one who was rowed by three Queens to Avalon.”

Gravely, and in silence, Arthur nodded.

Audiart hesitated a moment, as if hoping for more. Then she turned, without hurrying, to Aileron, whose bearded features had remained impassive as he waited. “You are here and it is well,” she said. “Long years have passed since last a King of Brennin came to Gwen Ystrat for Midsummer’s Eve.”

She had pitched her voice to carry, and Loren heard sudden whisperings among the horsemen. He also saw that Aileron hadn’t realized what day it was either. It was time to act.

The mage moved up beside the High King. He said, and loudly, “I have no doubt the rites of the Goddess will proceed as they always do. We are not concerned with them. You requested aid of the High King, and he has come to give that aid. There will be a wolf hunt in Leinanwood tomorrow.” He paused, staring her down, feeling the old anger rise in him. “We are here for a second reason as well, with the countenance and support of the High Priestess. I want it understood that the rituals of Maidaladan are not to interfere with either of the two things we have come to do.”

“Is a mage to give commands in Gwen Ystrat?” she asked, in a voice meant to chill.

“The High King does.” With time to recover, Aileron was bluntly compelling. “And as Warden of my province of Gwen Ystrat, you are charged by me now to ensure that things come to pass as my First Mage has commanded you.”

She would, Loren knew, want revenge for that.

Before Audiart could speak, though, the sound of high thin laughter came drifting to them. Loren looked over to see Gereint swaying back and forth in the snow as he cackled with merriment.

“Oh, young one,” the shaman cried, “are you still so fierce in your passions? Come! It has been a long time since I felt your face.”

It was a moment before Loren realized that Gereint was speaking to him. With a ruefulness that took him back more than forty years, he dismounted from his horse.

The instant he touched the ground he felt another, deeper, surge of physical desire. He couldn’t entirely mask it, and he saw Audiart’s mouth go thin with satisfaction. He mastered an impulse to say something very crude to her. Instead, he strode over to where the Dalrei stood and embraced Ivor as an old friend.

“Brightly met, Aven,” he said. “Revor would be proud.”

Stocky Ivor smiled. “Not so proud as Amairgen of you, First Mage.”

Loren shook his head. “Not yet,” he said soberly. “Not until the last First Mage is dead and I have cursed his bones.”

“So fierce!” Gereint said again, as he’d half expected.

“Have done, old man,” Loren replied, but low, so no one but Ivor could hear. “Unless you can say you would not join my curse.”

This time Gereint did not laugh. The sightless sockets of his eyes turned to Loren, and he ran gnarled fingers over the mage’s face. He had to step close to do so, so what he said was whispered.

“If my heart’s hate could kill, Metran would be dead past the Cauldron’s reviving. I taught him too, do not forget.”

“I remember,” the mage murmured, feeling the other’s hands gliding over his face. “Why are we here, Gereint? Before Maidaladan?”

The shaman lowered his hands. To the rear, Loren heard orders being shouted as the hunters were dispersed to the lodgings assigned them in the village. Teyrnon had come up, with his round, soft face and sharp intelligence.

“I felt lazy,” Gereint said tormentingly. “It was cold and Paras Derval was far away.” Neither mage spoke nor laughed, nor did Ivor. After a moment the shaman said, in a deeper voice, “You named two things, young one: the wolves and our own quest. But you know as well as I, and should not have had to ask, that the Goddess works by threes.”

Neither Loren nor Teyrnon said a word. Neither of them looked to the east.

The ring was quiet, which was a blessing. She was still deeply drained by the work of the night before. She wasn’t sure if she could have dealt with fire again so soon, and she had been expecting it from the moment they crossed the first bridge. There was power all around her here, she could feel it, even through the green shield of the vellin on her wrist which guarded her from magic.

Then, when prepossessing Audiart spoke of Midsummer, the part of Kim that was Ysanne, and shared her knowledge, understood where the power was coming from.

Nothing to be done though. Not by her, in this place. Dun Maura had nothing to do with a Seer’s power, nor with the Baelrath either. When the company began to break up— she saw Kevin ride back into Morvran with Brock and two of Diarmuid’s men—Kim followed Jaelle and the mages to the Temple.

Just inside the arched entranceway, a priestess stood with a curved, glinting dagger, and an acolyte in brown, trembling a little, held a bowl for her.

Kim saw Loren hesitate, even as Gereint extended his arm for the blade to cut. She knew how hard this would be for the mage. For any follower of the skylore, this blood offering would be tainted with darkest overtones. But Ysanne had told her a thing once, in the cottage by the lake, and Kim laid a hand on the mage’s shoulder. “Raederth spent a night here, I think you know,” she said.

There was, even now, a sorrow in saying this. Raederth, as First Mage, had been the one who’d seen the young Ysanne among the Mormae in this place. He had known her for a Seer and taken her away, and they had loved each other until he died—slain by a treacherous King.

The lines of Loren’s features softened. “It is true,” he said. “And so I should be able to, I suppose. Do you think I could stroll about and find an acolyte to share my bed tonight?”

She looked at him more closely and saw the strain she had missed. “Maidaladan,” she murmured. “Is it taking you hard?”

“Hard enough,” he said shortly, before stepping forward after Gereint to offer his mageblood to Dana, like any other man.

Deep in thought, Kim walked past the priestess with the blade and came to one of the entrances to the sunken dome. There was an axe, double-edged, mounted in a block of wood behind the altar. She stayed in the entrance looking at it until one of the women came to show her to her chamber.

Old friends, thought Ivor. If there was a single bright thread in the weaving of war it was this: that sometimes paths crossed again, as of warp and weft, that had not done so for years and would not have done, save in darkness. It was good, even in times like these, to sit with Loren Silvercloak, to hear Teyrnon’s reflective voice, Barak’s laughter, Matt Sören’s carefully weighed thoughts. Good, too, to see men and women of whom he’d long heard but never met: Shalhassan of Cathal and his daughter, fair as the rumors had her; Jaelle the High Priestess, as beautiful as Sharra, and as proud; Aileron, the new High King, who had been a boy when Loren had brought him to spend a fortnight among the tribe of Dalrei. A silent child, Ivor remembered him as being, and very good at everything. He was a taciturn King now, it seemed, and said to still be very good at everything.

There was a new element too, another fruit of war: among these high ones, he, Ivor of the Dalrei, now moved as an equal. Not merely one of the nine chieftains on the Plain, but a Lord, first Aven since Revor himself. It was a very hard thing to compass. Leith had taken to calling him Aven around the home, and only half in teasing, Ivor knew. He could see her pride, though the Plain would wash to sea before his wife would speak of such a thing.