He was very old and extremely wise, and he was half a god himself, but this was the deepest longing of his soul. “Goddess,” he said, a helpless streaming of hope within him, “I would.”
“So would I,” she said cruelly. “If you find the summoning name, do not fail to tell me. And,” said Ceinwen, letting a blinding light well up from within her so that he closed his eyes in pain and dread, “speak not ever to me again of what I owe. I owe nothing, ever, but what has been promised, and if I promise, it is not a debt, but a gift. Never forget.”
He was on his knees. The brightness was overpowering. “I have known,” Flidais said, a trembling in his deep voice, “the shining of the Huntress in the Wood.”
It was an apology; she took it for such. “It is well,” she said for the second time, muting her presence once more, so that he might look upon her countenance. “I go now,” she said. “This one I will take. You did well to summon me, for I have laid claim to him.”
“Why, goddess?” Flidais asked softly, looking at the sprawled form of Dave Martyniuk.
Her smile was secret and immortal. “It pleases me,” she said. But just before she vanished with the man, Ceinwen spoke again, so low it was almost not a sound. “Hear me, forest one: if I learn what name calls the Warrior, I will tell it thee. A promise.”
Stricken silent, he knelt again on his earthen floor. It was, had always been, his heart’s desire. When he looked up he was alone.
They woke, all three of them, on soft grass in the morning light. The horses grazed nearby. They were on the very fringes of the forest; southward a road ran from east to west, and beyond it lay low hills. One farmhouse could be seen past the road, and overhead birds sang as if it were the newest morning of the world. Which it was.
In more ways than the obvious, after the cataclysms that the night had known. Such powers had moved across the face of Fionavar as had not been gathered since the worlds were spun and the Weaver named the gods. Iorweth Founder had not endured that blast of Rangat, seen that hand in the sky, nor had Conary known such thunder in Mörnirwood, or the white power of the mist that exploded up from the Summer Tree, through the body of the sacrifice. Neither Revor nor Amairgen had ever seen a moon like the one that had sailed that night, nor had the Baelrath blazed so in answer on any other hand in the long telling of its tale. And no man but Ivor dan Banor had ever seen Imraith-Nimphais bear her Rider across the glitter of the stars.
Given such a gathering, a concatenation of powers such that the worlds might never be the same, how small a miracle might it be said to be that Dave awoke with his friends in the freshness of that morning on the southern edge of Pendaran, with the high road from North Keep to Rhoden running past, and a horn lying by his side.
A small miracle, in the light of all that had shaken the day and night before, but that which grants life where death was seen as certain can never be inconsequential, or even less than wondrous, to those who are the objects of its intercession.
So the three of them rose up, in awe and great joy, and told their stories to each other while morning’s bird-song spun and warbled overhead.
For Torc, there had been a blinding flash, with a shape behind it, apprehended but not seen, then darkness until this place. Levon had heard music all around him, strong and summoning, a wild cry of invocation as of a hunt passing overhead, then it had changed, so gradually he could not tell how or when, but there came a moment when it was so very sad and restful he had to sleep—to wake with his new brothers on the grass, Brennin spread before them in a mild sunlight.
“Hey, you two!” cried Dave exuberantly. “Will you look at this?” He held up the carved horn, ivory-coloured, with workmanship in gold and silver, and runes engraved along the curve of it. In a spirit of euphoria and delight, he set the horn to his lips and blew.
It was a rash, precipitate act, but one that could cause no harm, for Ceinwen had intended him to have this and to learn the thing they all learned as that shining note burst into the morning.
She had presumed, for this treasure was not truly hers to bestow. They were to blow the horn and learn the first property of it, then ride forth from the place where it had lain so long. That was how she had intended it to be, but it is a part of the design of the Tapestry that not even a goddess may shape exactly what she wills, and Ceinwen had reckoned without Levon dan Ivor.
The sound was Light. They knew it, all three of them, as soon as Dave blew the horn. It was bright and clean and carrying, and Dave understood, even as he took it from his lips to gaze in wonder at what he held, that no agent of the Dark could ever hear that sound. In his heart this came to him, and it was a true knowing, for such was the first property of that horn.
“Come on,” said Torc, as the golden echoes died away. “We’re still in the Wood. Let’s move.” Obediently Dave turned to mount his horse, still dazzled by the sound he had made.
“Hold!” said Levon.
There were perhaps five men in Fionavar who might have known the second power of that gift, and none in any other world. But one of the five was Gereint, the shaman of the third tribe of the Dalrei, who had knowledge of many lost things, and who had been the teacher of Levon dan Ivor.
She had not known or intended this, but not even a goddess can know all things. She had intended a small gift. What happened was otherwise, and not small. For a moment the Weaver’s hands were still at his Loom, then Levon said:
“There should be a forked tree here.”
And a thread came back with his words into the Tapestry of all the worlds, one that had been lost a very long time.
It was Torc who found it. An enormous ash had been split by lightning—they could have no glimmering how long ago—and its trunk lay forked now, at about the height of a man.
In silence, Levon walked over, Dave beside him, to where Torc was standing. Dave could see a muscle jumping in his face. Then Levon spoke again:
“And now the rock.”
Standing together the three of them looked through the wishbone fork of the ash. Dave had the angle. “There,” he said, pointing.
Levon looked, and a great wonder was in his eyes. There was indeed a rock set flush into a low mound at the edge of the Wood. “Do you know,” he said in a hushed whisper, “that we have found the Cave of the Sleepers?”
“I don’t understand,” said Torc.
“The Wild Hunt,” Levon replied. Dave felt a prickling at the back of his neck. “The wildest magic that ever was lies in that place asleep.” The strain in Levon’s usually unruffled voice was so great it cracked. “Owein’s Horn is what you just blew, Davor. If we could ever find the flame, they would ride again. Oh, by all the gods!”
“Tell me,” Dave pleaded; he, too, was whispering.
For a moment Levon was silent; then, as they stared at the rock through the gap in the ash, he began to chant:
The flame will wake from sleep
The Kings the horn will call,
But though they answer from the deep
You may never hold in thrall
Those who ride from Owein’s Keep
With a child before them all.
“The Wild Hunt,” Levon repeated as the sound of his chanting died away. “I have not words to tell how far beyond the three of us this is.” And he would say no more.
They rode then from that place, from the great stone and the torn tree with the horn slung at Dave’s side. They crossed the road, and by tacit agreement rode in such a way as to be seen by no men until they should come to Silvercloak and the High King.
All morning they rode, through hilly farmland, and at intervals a fine rain fell. It was badly needed, they could see, for the land was dry.
It was shortly after midday that they crested a series of ascending ridges running to the southeast, and saw, gleaming below them, a lake set like a jewel within the encircling hills. It was very beautiful, and they stopped a moment to take it in. There was a small farmhouse by the water, more a cottage really, with a yard an
d a barn behind it.
Riding slowly down, they would have passed by, as they had all the other farms, except that as they descended, an old, white-haired woman came out in back of the cottage to gaze at them.
Looking at her as they approached, Dave saw that she was not, in fact, so old after all. She made a gesture of her hand to her mouth that he seemed, inexplicably, to know.
Then she was running towards them over the grass, and with an explosion of joy in his heart, Dave leaped, shouting, from his horse, and ran and ran and ran until Kimberly was in his arms.
PART IV
THE UNRAVELLER
Chapter 15
Diarmuid, the Prince, as Warden of South Keep, had a house allocated to him in the capital, a small barracks, really, for those of his men who might, for any reason, be quartered there. It was here that he preferred to spend his own nights when in Paras Derval, and it was here that Kevin Laine sought him out in the morning after the cataclysms, having wrestled with his conscience a good part of the night.
And it was still giving him trouble as he walked from the palace in the rain. He couldn’t think very clearly, either, for grief was a wound in him that dawn. The only thing keeping him going, forcing resolution, was the terrible image of Jennifer bound to the black swan and flying north into the grasp of that hand the Mountain had sent up.
The problem, though, was where to go, where loyalty took him. Both Loren and Kim, unnervingly transformed, were clearly supporting this grim, prepossessing older Prince who had suddenly returned.
“It is my war,” Aileron had told Loren, and the mage had nodded quietly. Which, on one level, left Kevin with no issue at all to wrestle with.
On the other hand, Diarmuid was the heir to the throne and Kevin was, if he was anything at all here, one of Diarmuid’s band. After Saeren and Cathal, after, especially, the look he and the Prince had exchanged when he’d finished his song in the Black Boar.
He needed Paul to talk it over with, God, he needed him. But Paul was dead, and his closest friends here were Erron and Carde and Coll. And their Prince.
So he entered the barracks and asked, as briskly as he could, “Where’s Diarmuid?” Then he stopped dead in his tracks.
They were all there: Tegid, the company from the journey south, and others he didn’t know. They were sitting soberly around the tables in the large front room, but they rose when he entered. Every one of them was dressed in black, with a red band on his left arm.
Diarmuid, too. “Come in,” he said. “I see you have news. Let it wait, Kevin.” There was quiet emotion in the usually acerbic voice. “The grief, I know, is yours most of all, but the men of the South Marches have always worn a red armband when one of their own dies, and we have lost two now. Drance and Pwyll. He was one of us—we all feel it here. Will you let us mourn for Paul with you?”
There was no briskness left in Kevin, only a compounding of sorrows. He nodded, almost afraid to speak. He collected himself, though, and said, swallowing hard, “Of course, and thank you. But there is business first. I have information, and you should know it now.”
“Tell me, then,” the Prince said, “though I may know it already.”
“I don’t think so. Your brother came back last night.”
Sardonic amusement registered in Diarmuid’s face. But it had indeed been news, and the mocking reaction had been preceded by another expression.
“Ah,” said the Prince, in his most acid tones. “I should have guessed from the greyness of the sky. And of course,” he went on, ignoring the rising murmur from his men, “there is now a throne up for the taking. He would return. Aileron likes thrones.”
“It is not up for the taking!” The speaker, red-faced and vehement, was Coll. “Diar, you are the heir! I will cut him apart before I see him take it from you.”
“No one,” said Diarmuid, playing delicately with a knife on the table, “is going to take anything from me at all. Certainly not Aileron. Is there more, Kevin?”
There was, of course. He told them about Ysanne’s death, and Kim’s transformation, and then, reluctantly, about Loren’s tacit endorsement of the older Prince. Diarmuid’s eyes never left his own, nor did the hint of laughter sheathed in their depths ever quite disappear. He continued to toy with the dagger.
When Kevin had finished, there was a silence in the room, broken only by Coll’s furious pacing back and forth.
“I owe you again,” said Diarmuid at length. “I knew none of this.”
Kevin nodded. Even as he did, there came a knocking at the door. Carde opened it.
In the entranceway, rain dripping from his hat and cloak, stood the broad, square figure of Gorlaes, the Chancellor. Before Kevin could assimilate his presence there, Gorlaes had stepped into the room.
“Prince Diarmuid,” he said, without preamble, “my sources tell me your brother has returned from exile. For the Crown, I think. You, my lord, are the heir to the throne I swore to serve. I have come to offer you my services.”
And at that Diarmuid’s laughter exploded, unchecked and abrasive in a room full of mourners. “Of course you have!” he cried. “Come in! Do come in, Gorlaes. I have great need of you—we’re short a cook at South Keep!”
Even as the Prince’s sarcastic hilarity filled the room, Kevin’s mind cut back to the pulse beat of time that had followed his first announcement of Aileron’s return. There had been sharp irony in Diarmuid then, too, but only after the first instant. In the first instant, Kevin thought he had seen something very different flash across the Prince’s face, and he was almost certain he knew what it was.
Loren and Matt had gone with Teyrnon and Barak to bring the body home from the Tree. The Godwood was not a place where soldiers would willingly go, and in any case, on the eve of war the last two mages in Paras Derval saw it as fit that they walk together with their sources, apart from other men, and share their thoughts on what would lie in the days ahead.
They were agreed on the kingship, though in some ways it was a pity. For all Aileron’s harsh abrasiveness, there was in his driven nature the stuff of a war king of old. Diarmuid’s mercurial glitter made him simply too unreliable. They had been wrong about things before, but not often in concert. Barak concurred. Matt kept his own counsel, but the other three were used to that.
Besides, they were in the wood by then and, being men acquainted with power, and deeply tuned to what had happened in the night, they walked in silence to the Summer Tree.
And then, in a different kind of silence, walked back away, under leaves dripping with the morning rain. It was taught, and they all knew the teachings, that Mörnir, if he came for the sacrifice, laid claim only to the soul. The body was husk, dross, not for the God, and it was left behind.
Except it hadn’t been.
A mystery, but it was solved when Loren and Matt returned to Paras Derval and saw the girl, in the dun robes of an acolyte of the sanctuary, waiting outside their quarters in the town.
“My lord,” she said, as they walked up, “the High Priestess bade me tell you to come to her in the Temple so soon as you might.”
“Tell him?” Matt growled.
The child was remarkably composed. “She did say that. The matter is important.”
“Ah,” said Loren. “She brought back the body.”
The girl nodded.
“Because of the moon,” he went on, thinking aloud. “It fits.”
Surprisingly, the acolyte nodded again. “Of course it does,” she said coolly. “Will you come now?”
Exchanging a raised-eyebrows look, the two of them followed Jaelle’s messenger through the streets to the eastern gate.
Once beyond the town, she stopped. “There is something I would warn you about,” she said.
Loren Silvercloak looked down from his great height upon the child. “Did the Priestess tell you to do so?”
“Of course not.” Her tone was impatient.
“Then you should not speak other than what you were charged to say. How
long have you been an acolyte?”
“I am Leila,” she replied, gazing up at him with tranquil eyes. Too tranquil; he wondered at the answer. Was her mind touched? Sometimes the Temple took such children.
“That isn’t what I asked,” he said kindly.
“I know what you asked,” she said with some asperity. “I am Leila. I called Finn dan Shahar to the Longest Road four times this summer in the ta’kiena.”
His eyes narrowed; he had heard about this. “And Jaelle has made you an acolyte?”
“Two days ago. She is very wise.”
An arrogant child. It was time to assert control. “Not,” he said sternly, “if her acolytes presume to judge her, and her messengers offer messages of their own.”
It didn’t faze her. With a shrug of acceptance, Leila turned and continued up the slope to the sanctuary.
He wrestled with it for several strides, then admitted a rare defeat. “Hold,” Loren said, and heard Matt’s snort of laughter beside him. “What is your news?” The Dwarf, he was aware, was finding this whole exchange richly amusing. It was, he supposed.
“He is alive,” Leila said, and suddenly there was nothing amusing about anything at all.
There had been darkness. A sense of movement, of being moved. The stars very close, then impossibly far away, and receding. Everything receding.
The next time there was an impression, blurred as through rain on glass, of candles wavering, with grey shapes moving ambiguously beyond their arc. He was still now, but soon he felt himself slipping back again, as a tide withdraws to the dark sea wherein there lie no discontinuities.
Except the fact of his presence.
Of his being alive.
Paul opened his eyes, having come a long way. And it seemed, after all the journeying, that he was lying on a bed in a room where there were, indeed, candles burning. He was very weak. There was astonishingly little physical pain, though, and the other kind of pain was so newly allowed it was almost a luxury. He took one slow breath that meant life, and then another to welcome back sorrow.