The Wandering Fire (28 page)

”I am not to be summoned so,” he said, and it seemed as though the light in the glade had gone dim.

“By me you are,” said Paul calmly. “In this place.”

Even as he spoke there came a muted roll of thunder. Brendel was just behind him. He was aware of the child, alert and unafraid, walking now about the perimeter of the glade.

“You were to have died,” Cernan said. Stern and even cruel he looked. “I bowed to honor the manner of your death.”

“Even so,” said Paul. There was thunder again. The air seemed tangibly charged with power. It crackled. The sun shone, but far off, as if through a haze. “Even so,” Paul repeated. “But I am alive and returned hither to this place.”

Thunder again, and then an ominous silence.

“What would you, then?” Cernan said.

Paul said in his own voice, “You know who the child is?”

“I know he is of the andain,” said Cernan of the Beasts. “And so he belongs to Galadan, to my son.”

“Galadan,” Paul said harshly, “belongs to me. When next we meet, which will be the third time.”

Again a silence. The horned god took a step forward. “My son is very strong,” he said. “Stronger than us, for we may not intervene.” He paused. And then, with a new note in his voice, said, “He was not always as he is.”

So much pain, Paul thought. Even in this. Then he heard, bitter and implacable, the voice of Brendel: “He killed Ra-Termaine at Andarien. Would you have us pity him?”

“He is my son,” said Cernan.

Paul stirred. So much darkness around him with no raven voices to guide. He said, still doubting, still afraid, “We need you, Woodlord. Your counsel and your power. The child has come into his strength, and it is red. There is a choice of Light we all must make, but his is gravest of all, I fear, and he is but a child.” After a pause, he said it: “He is Rakoth’s child, Cernan.”

There was a silence. “Why?” the god whispered in dismay. “Why was he allowed to live?”

Paul became aware of murmuring among the trees. He remembered it. He said, “To make the choice. The most important choice in all the worlds. But not as a child; his power has come too soon.” He heard Brendel breathing beside him.

“It is only as a child,” Cernan said, “that he can be controlled.”

Paul shook his head. “There is no controlling him, nor could there ever be. Woodlord, he is a battlefield and must be old enough to know it!” Saying the words, he felt them ring true. There was no thunder, but a strange, anticipatory pulsing ran within him. He said, “Cernan, can you take him through to his maturity?”

Cernan of the Beasts lifted his mighty head, and for the first time something in him daunted Paul. The god opened his mouth to speak—

They never heard what he meant to say.

From the far side of the glade there came a flash of light, blinding almost, in the charged dimness of that place.

“Weaver at the Loom!” Brendel cried.

“
Not quite
,”
said Darien.

He came out from behind the Summer Tree, and he was no longer a child. Naked as Cernan, he stood, but fair-haired as he had been from birth, and not so tall as was the god. He was about the height, Paul realized, with a numbing apprehension, that Finn had been, and looked to be the same age as well.

“Dari ...” he began, but the nickname didn’t fit any more, it didn’t apply to this golden presence in the glade. He tried again. “Darien, this is what I brought you for, but how did you do it alone?”

He was answered with a laugh that turned apprehension to terror. “You forgot something,” said Darien. “You all did. Such a simple thing as winter led you to forget. We are in an oak grove and Midsummer’s Eve is coming on! With such power to draw upon, why should I need the horned god to come into my power?”

“Not your power,” Paul replied as steadily as he could, watching Darien’s eyes, which were still blue. “Your maturity. You are old enough now to know why. You have a choice to make.”

“
Shall I go ask my father
,”
Darien cried, “
what to do?
”

And with a gesture he torched the trees around the glade into a circle of fire, red like the red flash of his eyes.

Paul staggered back, feeling the rush of heat as he had not felt the cold. He heard Cernan cry out, but before the god could act, Brendel stepped forward.

“No,” he said. “Put out the fire and hear me before you go.” There was a music in his voice, bells in a high place of light. “Only once,” Brendel said quietly, and Darien moved a hand.

The fire died. The trees were untouched. Illusion, Paul realized. It had been an illusion. He still felt the fading heat on his skin, though, and in the place of his own power he felt a helplessness.

Ethereal, almost luminous, Brendel faced the child of Rakoth. “You heard us name your father,” he said, “but you do not know your mother’s name, and you have her hair and her hands. More than that: your father’s eyes are red, your mother’s green. Your eyes are blue, Darien. You are not bound to any destiny. No one born, ever, has had so pure a choice of Light or Dark.”

“It is so,” came Cernan’s deep voice from the trees.

Paul couldn’t see Brendel’s eyes, but Darien’s were blue again and he was beautiful. No longer a child but young, still, with a beardless open face, and so very great a power.

“If the choice is pure,” said Darien, “should I not hear my father as well as you? If only to be fair?” He laughed then, at something he saw in Brendel’s face.

“Darien,” said Paul quietly, “you have been loved. What did Finn tell you about the choice?”

It was a gamble. Another one, for he didn’t know if Finn would have said anything at all.

A gamble, and he seemed to have lost. “He left,” said Darien, a spasm of pain raking across his face.
“He left!
”the boy cried again. He gestured with a hand—a hand like Jennifer’s—and disappeared.

There was silence, then a sound of something rushing from the glade.

“Why,” said Cernan of the Beasts again—the god who had mocked Maugrim long ago and named him Sathain—“why was he allowed to live?”

Paul looked at him, then at the suddenly frail-seeming lios alfar. He clenched his fists. “To choose!” he cried with a certain desperation. Reaching within, to the throb of power, he sought confirmation and found none.

Together, Paul and Brendel left the glade and then the Godwood. It had been a long walk there; it seemed even longer going back. The sun was westering behind them when they came again to the cottage. Three had gone out in the morning, but Vae saw only two return.

She let them in, and the lios alfar bowed to her and then kissed her cheek, which was unexpected. She had never seen one of them before. Once, it would have thrilled her beyond measure. Once. They sat down wearily in the two chairs by the fire, and she made an herbal tea while they told her what had come to pass.

“It was for nothing then,” she said when the tale was done. “It was worse than nothing, all we did, if he has gone over to his father. I thought love might count for more.”

Neither of them answered her, which was answer enough. Paul threw more wood on the fire. He felt bruised by the day’s events. “There is no need for you to stay here now,” he said. “Shall we take you back to the city in the morning?’

Slowly, she nodded. And then, as the loneliness hit home, said tremulously, “It will be an empty house. Cannot Shahar come home to serve in Paras Derval?”

“He can,” said Paul quietly. “Oh, Vae, I am so sorry. I will see that he comes home.”

She did weep, then, for a little while. She hadn’t wanted to. But Finn had gone impossibly far, and Dari now as well, and Shahar had been away for so long.

They stayed the night. By the light of candles and the fire, they helped her gather the few belongings she had brought to the cottage. When it grew late they let the fire die, and the lios slept in Dari’s bed and Paul in Finn’s again. They were to leave at first light.

They woke before that, though. It was Brendel who stirred and the other two, in shallow sleep, heard him rise. It was still night, perhaps two hours before dawn.

“What is it?” Paul asked.

“I am not sure,” the lios replied. “Something.”

They dressed, all three of them, and walked out toward the lake. The full moon was low now but very bright. The wind had shifted to the south, blowing toward them from over the water. The stars overhead and west were dimmed by the moon. They shone brighter, Paul saw, in the east.

Then, still looking east, he lowered his glance. Unable to speak, he touched Brendel and Vae and then pointed.

All along the hills, clearly visible in the light of the moon, the snow was starting to melt.

He hadn’t gone far, nor been invisible for long—it wasn’t a thing he could sustain. He heard the god go off in the guise of a stag and then the other two, walking slowly, in silence. He had an impulse to follow but he remained where he was among the trees. Later, when everyone had gone, Darien rose and left as well.

There was something, like a fist or a stone, buried in his chest. It hurt. He wasn’t used to this body, the one he had accelerated himself into. He wasn’t used to knowing who his father was either. He knew the first discomfort would pass, suspected the second would. Wasn’t sure how he felt about that, or about anything. He was naked, but he wasn’t cold. He was deeply angry at everyone. He was beginning to guess how strong he was.

There was a place—Finn had found it—north of the cottage and high up on the highest of the hills. In summer it would have been an easy climb, Finn had said. Darien had never known a summer. When Finn took him, the drifts had been up to Dari’s chest and Finn had carried him much of the way.

He wasn’t Dari any more. That name was another thing lost, another fragment gone away. He stood in front of the small cave on the hill slope. It sheltered him from the wind, though he didn’t need shelter. From here you could see the towers of the palace of Paras Derval, though not the town.

You could also look down, as it grew dark, on the lights in the cottage by the lake. His eyes were very good. He could see figures moving behind the drawn curtains. He watched them. After a while, he did begin to feel cold. It had all happened very fast. He couldn’t quite fit into this body or deal with the older mind he now had. He was still half in Dari’s shape, in the blue winter coat and mittens. He still wanted to be carried down and be put to bed.

It was hard not to cry, looking at the lights, and harder when the lights went out. He was alone then with only moonlight and the snow and the voices again in the wind. He didn’t cry, though, he moved back toward anger instead.
Why was he allowed to live?
Cernan had said. None of them wanted him, not even Finn, who had gone away.

It was cold and he was hungry. On the thought, he flashed red and made himself into an owl. He flew for an hour and found three night rodents near the wood. He flew back to the cave. It was warmer as a bird and he fell asleep in that shape.

When the wind shifted he woke, because with the coming of the south wind the voices had ceased. They had been clear and alluring but now they stopped.

He had become Darien again while he slept. Stepping from the cave, he looked all around him at the melting snow. Later, in the morning light, he watched his mother leave, riding off with the lios and the man.

He tried to make himself into a bird again but he couldn’t. He wasn’t strong enough to do it so soon. He walked down the slope to the cottage. He went inside. She had left Finn’s clothes and his own. He looked at the small things he had worn; then he put on some of Finn’s clothing and went away.

Chapter 13

“And so, in the middle of the banquet that night, Kevin walked out. Liane saw him on the street and she says”—Dave fought for control—“she says he was very sure, and that he looked . . . he looked . . .”

Paul turned his back on them all and walked to the window. They were in the Temple in Paras Derval: Jennifer’s rooms. He had come to tell her about Darien. She had listened, remote and regal, virtually untouched. It had moved him almost to anger. But then they had heard sounds outside and people at the door, and Dave Martyniuk and Jaelle herself had come in and told them what had happened to make the winter end.

It was twilight. Outside the snow was nearly gone. No flooding, no dangerous rising of rivers or lakes. If the Goddess could do this, she could do it harmlessly. And she could do this thing because of the sacrifice. Liadon, the beloved son, who was . . . who was Kevin, of course.

There was a great difficulty in his throat, and his eyes were stinging. He wouldn’t look back at the others. To himself and to the twilight he said:

“
Love do you remember My name?

I was lost In summer turned winter

Made bitter by frost.

And when June comes December

The heart pays the cost
.”

Kevin’s own words from a year before. “Rachel’s Song,” he had called it. But now—now everything had been changed, the metaphor made achingly real. So completely so, he couldn’t even grasp how such a thing could come to pass.