The Wandering Fire (27 page)

The voice in her mind was infinitely otherwise. Its mourning was for no symbolic loss, but for the Beloved Son. Jaelle rose, aware that she was trembling, still not quite believing what she heard. But the sound was high and compelling, laden with timeless grief, and she was High Priestess and understood what had come to pass.

There were three men sleeping in the front room of her chambers. None of them stirred as she passed through. She did not go into the corridor. Instead she came to another, smaller doorway and, barefoot in the cold, walked quickly down a dark narrow hallway and opened another door at the end of it.

She came out under the dome, behind the altar and the axe. There she paused. The voice was loud within her, though, urgent and exultant, even in its grief, and it carried her with it.

She was High Priestess. It was the night of Maidaladan, and, impossibly, the sacrifice had come to pass. She laid both hands on the axe that only the High Priestess could lift. She took it from its rest, and swinging around, she brought it crashing down on the altar. Hugely, the sound reverberated. Only when it ended did she lift her own voice in the words that echoed within her being.

“
Rahod hedai Liadon!
”
Jaelle cried. “Liadon has died again!” She wept. She grieved with all her heart. And she knew every priestess in Fionavar had heard her. She was High Priestess.

They were awakening now, all those in the Temple. They were coming from their sleep. They saw her there, her robe torn, blood on her face, the axe lifted from its rest.

“
Rahod hedai Liadon!
”
Jaelle cried again, feeling it rise within her, demanding utterance. The Mormae were all there now; she saw them begin to tear their own robes, to rend their faces in a wildness of grief and she heard them lift their voices to lament as she had done.

There was an acolyte beside her, weeping. She carried Jaelle’s cloak and boots. In haste, the High Priestess put them on. She moved to lead them away, all of them, east, to where it had come to pass. There were men in the room now, the two mages, the Kings; there was fear in their eyes. They stepped aside to let her pass. There was a woman who did not.

“Jaelle,” said Kim. “Who is it?”

She hardly broke her stride. “I do not know. Come!” She went outside. There were lights being lit all over Morvran and down the long street leading from the town she saw the priestesses running toward her. Her horse had been brought. She mounted up and, without waiting for anyone, she set off for Dun Maura.

They all followed. Two on a horse, in many cases, as the soldiers bore with them the priestesses who had leaped, crying, from their beds. It was midsummer and the dawn would come early. There was already a grey light when they came up to the cave and saw the dog.

Arthur dismounted and walked over to Cavall. For a moment he gazed into the eyes of his dog, then he straightened and looked at the cave. At the entrance Jaelle knelt among the red flowers now blooming amid the snow, and there were tears streaming down her face.

The sun came up.

“Who?” asked Loren Silvercloak. “Who was it?”

There were a great many people there by then. They looked around at each other in the first of the morning light.

Kim Ford closed her eyes.

All around them the priestesses of Dana began, raggedly at first, but then in harmony, to sing their lament for the dead Liadon.

“Look!” said Shalhassan of Cathal. “The snow is melting!”

Everyone looked but Kim. Everyone saw.

Oh, my darling man
,
thought Kimberly. There was a murmur surging toward a roar. Awe and disbelief. The beginnings of a desperate joy. The priestesses were wailing in their grief and ecstasy. The sun was shining on the melting snow.

“Where’s Kevin?” said Diarmuid sharply.

Where, oh, where? Oh, my darling
.

PART IV—Cader Sedat

Chapter 12

Oldest of three brothers, Paul Schafer had a general sense of how to deal with children. But a general sense wasn’t going to be much good here, not with this child. Dari was his problem for the morning, because Vae had her own griefs to deal with: a child’s loss to mourn and an almost impossible letter to write to North Keep.

He’d promised to see that the letter got there, and then he had taken Dari outside to play. Or, actually, just to walk in the snow because the boy—he looked to be seven or eight now, Paul judged—wasn’t in a mood to play and didn’t really trust Paul anyhow.

Reaching back fifteen years to a memory of his brothers, Paul talked. He didn’t push Dari to say or do anything, didn’t offer to toss him or carry him; he just talked, and not as one talks to a child.

He told Dari about his own world and about Loren Silvercloak, the mage who could go back and forth between the worlds. He talked about the war, about why Shahar, Dari’s father, had to be away, and about how many mothers and children had had their men go away to war because of the Dark.

“Finn wasn’t a man, though,” said Dari. His first words that morning.

They were in the woods, following a winding trail. Off to the left Paul could see glimpses of the lake, the only unfrozen lake, he guessed, in Fionavar. He looked down at the child, weighing his words.

“Some boys,” he said, “become like men sooner than others. Finn was like that.”

Dari, in a blue coat and scarf, and mittens and boots, looked gravely up at him. His eyes were very blue. After a long moment he seemed to come to a decision. He said, “I can make a flower in the snow.”

“I know,” said Paul, smiling. “With a stick. Your mother told me you made one yesterday.”

“I don’t need a stick,” Darien said. Turning away, he gestured toward the untrodden snow on the path ahead of them. The gesture of his hand in the air was duplicated in the snow. Paul saw the outline of a flower take shape.

He also saw something else.

“That’s . . . very good,” he said, as evenly as he could, while bells of alarm were going off in his head. Darien didn’t turn. With another movement, not a tracing this time, simply a spreading of his fingers, he colored the flower he’d made. It was blue-green where the petals were, and red at the center.

Red, like Darien’s eyes, when he made it.

“That’s very good,” Paul managed to say again. He cleared his throat: “Shall we go home for lunch?”

They had walked a long way and, going back, Dari got tired and asked to be carried. Paul swung him up on his shoulders and jogged and bounced him part of the way. Dari laughed for the first time. It was a nice laugh, a child’s.

After Vae had given him lunch, Dari napped for most of the afternoon. He was quiet in the evening too. At dinner-time, Vae, without asking, set three places. She, too, said very little; her eyes were red-rimmed, but Paul didn’t see her weep. After, when the sun set, she lit the candles and built up the fire. Paul put the child to bed and made him laugh again with shadow figures on the wall before he pulled the curtains around the bed.

Then he told Vae what he had decided to do, and after a while she began to talk, softly, about Finn. He listened, saying nothing. Eventually he understood something—it took too long, he was still slow with this one thing—and he moved closer and took her in his arms. She stopped talking, then, and lowered her head simply to weep.

He spent a second night in Finn’s bed. Dari didn’t come to him this time. Paul lay awake, listening to the north wind whistle down the valley.

In the morning, after breakfast, he took Dari down to the lake. They stood on the shore, and he taught the child how to skip flat stones across the water. It was a delaying action, but he was still apprehensive and uncertain about his decision of the night before. When he’d finally fallen asleep, he’d dreamt about Darien’s flower, and the red at its center had become an eye in the dream, and Paul had been afraid and unable to look at it.

The child’s eyes were blue now, by the water, and he seemed quietly intent on learning how to skip a stone. It was almost possible to convince oneself that he was just a boy and would remain so. Almost possible. Paul bent low. “Like this,” he said, and made a stone skip five times across the lake. Straightening, he watched the child run to look for more stones to throw. Then, lifting his glance, he saw a silver-haired figure ride around the bend in the road from Paras Derval.

“Hello,” said Brendel as he came up. And, then, dismounting, “Hello, little one. There’s a stone just beside you and a good one, I think.”

The lios alfar stood, facing Paul, and his eyes were sober and knowing.

“Kevin told you?” Paul asked.

Brendel nodded. “He said you would be angry, but not very.”

Paul’s mouth twitched. “He knows me too well.”

Brendel smiled, but his tell-tale eyes were violet. “He said something else. He said there seemed to be a choice of Light or Dark involved and that, perhaps, the lios alfar should be here.”

For a moment, Paul was silent. Then he said, “He’s the cleverest of all of us, you know. I never thought of that.”

To the east, in Gwen Ystrat, the men of Brennin and Cathal were entering Leinanwood and a white boar was rousing itself from a very long sleep.

Behind Brendel, Dari tried, not very successfully, to skip a stone. Glancing at him, the lios said softly, “What did you want to do?”

“Take him to the Summer Tree,” Paul replied.

Brendel went very still. “Power before the choice?” he asked.

Dari skipped a stone three times and laughed. “Very good,” Paul told him automatically, and then, to Brendel, “He cannot choose as a child, and I’m afraid he has power already.” He told Brendel about the flower. Dari had run a few steps along the shore, looking for another stone.

The lios alfar was as a quiescent silver flame amid the snow. His face was grave; it was ageless and beautiful. When Paul was done, he said, “Can we gamble so, with the World-loom at risk?”

And Paul replied, “For whatever reason, Rakoth did not want him to live. Jennifer says Darien is random.”

Brendel shook his head. “What does that mean? I am afraid, Pwyll, very greatly afraid.”

They could hear Dari laughing as he hunted for skipping stones. Paul said, “No one who has ever lived, surely, can ever have been so poised between Light and Dark.” And then, as Brendel made no reply, he said again, hearing the doubt and the hope, both, in his own voice, “Rakoth did not want him to live.”

“For whatever reason,” Brendel repeated.

It was mild by the lake. The waters were ruffled but not choppy. Dari skipped a stone five times and turned, smiling, to see if Paul had been watching him. They both had.

“Weaver lend us light,” Brendel said.

“Well done, little one,” said Paul. “Shall we show Brendel our path through the woods?”

“Finn’s path,” said Dari and set off, leading them.

From within the cottage Vae watched them go. Paul, she saw, was dark, and the lios alfar’s hair gleamed silver in the light, but Darien was golden as he went into the trees.

Paul had always been planning to come back alone with a question to ask, but it seemed to have worked out otherwise.

As they came to the place where the trees of the lake copse began to merge with the darker ones of the forest, Dari slowed, uncertainly. Gracefully, Brendel swept forward and swung him lightly up to his shoulders. In silence, then, Paul walked past both of them as once he had walked past three men at night, and near to this place. Carrying his head very high, feeling the throb of power already, he came into the Godwood for the second time.

It was daylight, and winter, but it was dark in Mórnirwood among the ancient trees, and Paul found himself vibrating inwardly like a tuning fork. There were memories. He heard Brendel behind him, talking to the child, but they seemed very distant. What was close were the images: Ailell, the old High King, playing chess by candlelight; Kevin singing “Rachel’s Song”; this wood at night; music; Galadan and the dog; then a red full moon on new moon night, the mist, the God, and rain.

He came to the place where the trees formed a double row, and this, too, he remembered. There was no snow on the path, nor would there be, he knew; not so near the Tree. There was no music this time, and for all the shadows it was not night, but the power was there, it was always there, and he was part of it. Behind him, Brendel and the boy were silent now, and in silence Paul led them around a curve in the twin line of trees and into the glade of the Summer Tree. Which was as it had been, the night they bound him upon it.

There was dappled light. The sun was high and it shone down on the glade. He remembered how it had burned him a year ago, merciless in a blank, cloudless sky.

He put away his memories.

He said, “Cernan, I would speak with you,” and heard Brendel draw a shocked breath. He did not turn. Long moments passed. Then from behind a screen of trees surrounding the glade a god came forward.

He was very tall, long of limb and tanned a chestnut brown. He wore no clothing at all. His eyes were brown like those of a stag, and lightly he moved, like a stag, and the horns on his head, seven-tined, were those of a stag as well. There was a wildness to him, and an infinite majesty, and when he spoke there was that in his voice which evoked all the dark forests, untamed.