The Wandering Fire (40 page)

He also knew who this was.

“My lord Arthur,” said Diarmuid painfully, “you do not have to do this. It is neither written nor compelled.”

Arthur lowered his hands. His gaze never left the face of the man who lay on the stone.

“He will be needed,” he said. “He cannot but be needed. I should have known it was too soon for me to die.”

“You are willing your own grief,” Paul whispered.

Arthur turned to him at that, and his eyes were compassionate. “It was willed long ago.”

Looking on Arthur Pendragon’s face in that moment, Paul saw a purer nobility than he had ever seen in his days. More, even, than in Liranan, or Cernan of the Beasts. Here was the quintessence, and everything in him cried out against the doom that lay behind this monstrous choice.

Diarmuid, he saw, had turned away.

“
Lancelot!
” said Arthur to the figure on the bed of stone.

His eyes were brown. He was taller than Paul had first thought. His voice was mild and low and unexpectedly gentle. The other surprising thing was the dog. Paul had thought Cavall’s loyalty would make him hostile, but instead he’d come up to the dark-haired man with a quiet sound of joy. Lancelot had knelt to stroke the torn grey fur, and Paul could see him register the presence of the scars. Then he had walked in silence between Paul and Diarmuid back up to the living world.

He had only spoken at the very beginning. After he had first risen to the Warrior’s command. Risen, as if, truly, he had only been asleep and not dead so very, very long.

Arthur had said, “Be welcome. We are at war against the Dark in Fionavar, which is the first world of all. I have been summoned, and so now are you.”

And Lancelot had replied with courtesy and sorrow, “Why have you done this, my lord, to the three of us?”

Arthur had closed his eyes at that. Then opened them and said, “Because there are more at risk than the three of us. I will see if I can have us fight in different companies.”

And Lancelot had answered mildly, “Arthur, you know I will not fight save under you and by your side.”

At which point Arthur had turned on his heel to walk away, and Diarmuid and Paul had named themselves and, with Lancelot, had followed the Warrior back from the place of the dead amid the pounding of the sea.

Loren had risen. His cloak lay covering the body of Matt Sören. The mage, his face numb with weariness and shock, listened as Diarmuid and Arthur made plans for their departure. He hardly acknowledged Lancelot’s presence, though the men of South Keep were whispering among each other with awe.

It was, Paul gathered, still daylight outside. Not long after noon, in fact. It seemed to him as if they had been on the island forever. In a way, he supposed, a part of him would always be on this island. Too much had happened here. They were going to be leaving almost immediately, it appeared. No one was minded to spend a night in this place.

Loren turned. Paul saw him walk over to one of the torches. He stood there with the pages of a book in his hand, feeding them one by one to the flame. Paul went over to him. Loren’s face was streaked with the tracks of tears and sweat, running down through the soot and grime stirred up when the last bolt fell. Matt’s last, Paul thought. And Loren’s too. His source was dead. He wasn’t a mage any more.

“The Book of Nilsom,” said the man who had bade them cross with him so long ago. He gave Paul a number of pages. Together they stood, reaching up in turn to set each page alight.

It took a long time and they did it carefully. Somehow eased by the shared, simple task, Paul watched the last leaf burn; then he and Loren turned back to the others.

Who were staring, all of them, at one place in the Hall.

There were over forty men in that place but Paul couldn’t hear any of them breathe. He walked toward Lancelot through the ring of men, saw the pure, unyielding will in his eyes, watched the color begin to drain from his face, and he began to grasp the magnitude of this man who was trying to surmount, by sheerest resolution, the movement of the wheel of time and the shuttling of the Loom. They stood very close; he saw it all.

Beside him, Loren made a strangled sound and a gesture of denial. Paul heard the flap of wings. Even here.
Thought, Memory
.

“Loren, wait!” he said. “He did it once before. And this is Cader Sedat.”

Slowly, the mage advanced, and Paul with him, to stand a little nearer yet. A little nearer to the place where Lancelot du Lac, newly wakened from his own death, knelt on the stone floor with the hands of Matt Sören between his own, and held up to his brow.

And because they were closer than the others, he and Loren were the first to see the Dwarf begin to breathe.

Paul could never remember what it was he shouted. He knew that the cry that went up from the men of Brennin dislodged yet more stones from the walls of Cader Sedat. Loren dropped to his knees, his face alight, on the other side of the Dwarf from Lancelot. The dark-haired man was white but composed, and they saw Matt’s breathing become slowly steadier.

And then the Dwarf looked up at them.

He gazed at Loren for a long time, then turned to Lancelot. He glanced at his hands clasped in the other’s, still, and Paul could see him grasp what had happened. Matt looked up at their hovering, torchlit faces. His mouth twitched in a remembered way.

“What happened to my other eye?” Matt Sören said to Lancelot, and they all laughed and wept for joy.

It was because of where they were, Lancelot explained, and because he was so newly wakened from death himself, and because Matt had suffered no killing wound, only a draining of his life force. And, he added in his courteous, diffident way, because he had done this once before at Camelot.

Matt nodded slowly. He was already on his feet. They clustered close to him, unwilling to leave him alone, to have any distance come between. Loren’s tired face glowed. It eased the heart to look on him.

“Well,” said Diarmuid, “now that we have our mage and source back, shall we sail?”

There was a chorus of agreement.

“We should,” said Loren. “But you should know that Teyrnon is now the only mage in Fionavar.”

“What?” It was the Dwarf.

Loren smiled sadly. “Reach for me, my friend.”

Slowly they saw Matt’s face drain of color.

“Easy,” Loren cautioned. “Be easy.” He turned to the others. “Let no one grieve. When Matt died our link was broken and I ceased to be a mage. Bringing him back could not reforge what had been severed.” There was a silence.

“Oh, Loren,” Matt said faintly.

Loren wheeled on him and there was a fire in his eyes. “Hear me!” He spun again and looked at the company. “I was a man before I was a mage. I hated the Dark as a child and I do so now, and I can wield a sword!” He turned back to Matt and his voice deepened. “You left your destiny once to link it with my own and it led you far from home, my friend. Now, it seems, the circle is closing. Will you accept me? Am I a fit companion for the rightful King of Dwarves, who must go back now to Calor Diman to reclaim his Crown?”

And they were humbled and abashed at what blazed forth from Loren in that moment, as he knelt on the stones before Matt.

They had gathered what there was to gather, and had begun to leave the Hall. So much had happened. Every one of them was bone-weary and stumbling with it. So much. Paul thought he could sleep for days.

He and Arthur seemed to be the last ones. The others were walking up the corridor already. There would be light outside. He marveled at that. Here there were only the torches, and the smoldering embers of the fire that had burned beneath the Cauldron of Khath Meigol.

He saw that Arthur had paused in the doorway for a last look back. Paul turned as well. And realized that they were not the last of the party, after all. Amid the wreckage of that shattered place a dark-haired figure stood, looking up at the two of them.

Or, not really the two of them. He saw Arthur and Lancelot gaze at each other and something so deep he could never have tried to name it passed between the two of them. Then Arthur spoke, and there was sorrow in his voice and there was love. “Oh, Lance, come,” he said. “She will be waiting for you.”