Fionavar 1 (25 page)

"But the Chancellor knows, my lord. Should not your other counsellors? Forgive my presumption, but a woman I love is gone, High King."

Ailell regarded him for a long time without speaking. Then he gave a small nod. "Well spoken,"

he said. "Indeed, the only person here who truly has a right to be told is you, but I will do as you ask."

"My lord!" Gorlaes began urgently.

Ailell raised a hand, quelling him.

In the ensuing silence there came a distant roll of thunder.

"Can you not hear it?" the High King whispered on a rising note. "Listen! The God is coming. If the offering holds, he comes tonight. This will be the third night. How can we act before we know?"

They were all on their feet.

"Someone is on the Tree," Loren said flatly.

The King nodded.

"My brother?" asked Diarmuid, his face ashen.

"No," said Ailell, and turned to Kevin.

It took a moment, then everything fell into place. "Oh, God," Kevin cried. "It's Paul!" and he lowered his face into his hands.

Kimberly woke knowing.

Who kills without love shall surely die, Seithr the Dwarf-King had said to Colan the Beloved long ago. And then, lowering his voice, he had added for only the son of Conary to hear, "Who dies with love may make of his soul a gift to the one marked with the pattern on the dagger's haft."

"A rich gift," had murmured Colan.

"Richer than you know. Once given, the soul is gone. It is lost to time. There can be no passage beyond the walls of Night to find light at the Weaver's side."

Conary 's son had bowed very low. "I thank you," he said. "Double-edged the knife, and double-edged the gift. Mörnir grant us the sight to use it truly."

Even before she looked, Kim knew that her hair was white. Lying in bed that first morning she cried, though silently and not for long. There was much to be done. Even with the vellin on her wrist, she felt the day like a fever. She would be unworthy of the gift if she were undone by mourning.

So she rose up, Seer of Brennin, newest dreamer of the dream, to begin what Ysanne had died to allow her to do.

More than died.

There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.

This, Kim thought, is what Ysanne had done. With an act of love so great-and not just for her-it could scarcely be assimilated, she had stripped her soul of any place it held in time. She was gone, utterly. Not just from life, but more, much more, as Kim now knew-from death as well; from what lay after in the patterns of the Weaver for his children.

Instead, the Seer had given all she could to Kim, had given all. No longer could Kim say she was not of Fionavar, for within her now pulsed an intuitive understanding of this world more deep even than the knowledge of her own. Looking now at a bannion, she would know what it was; she understood the vellin on her wrist, something of the wild Baelrath on her finger; and one day she would know who was to bear the Circlet of Lisen and tread the darkest path of all.

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Raederth's words; Raederth whom Ysanne had lost again, that Kim might have this.

Which was so unfair. What right, what possible right had the Seer had to make such a sacrifice?

To impose with this impossible gift, such a burden? How had she presumed to decide for Kim?

The answer, though, was easy enough after a while: she hadn't. Kim could go, leave, deny. She could cross home as planed and dye her hair, or leave it as it was and go New Wave if she preferred. Nothing had changed.

Except, of course, that everything had. How can you tell the dancer from the dance? she had read somewhere. Or the dreamer from the dream, she amended, feeling a little lost. Because the answer to that was easiest of all.

You can't.

Some time later she laid her hand, in the way she now knew, upon the slab below the table, and saw the door appear.

Down the worn stone stairs she went, in her turn. Lisen's Light showed her the way. The dagger would be there, she knew, with red blood on the silver-blue thieren of the blade. There would be no body, though, for Ysanne the Seer, having died with love and by that blade, had taken herself beyond the walls of time, where she could not be followed. Lost and forever. It was final, absolute.

It was ended.

And she was left here in the first world of them all, bearing the burden of that.

She cleaned Lokdal and sheathed it to a sound like a harpstring. She put it back in the cabinet.

Then she went up the stairs again towards the world that needed her, all the worlds that needed what it seemed she was.

"Oh, God," Kevin said. "It's Paul!"

A stunned silence descended, overwhelming in its import. This was something for which none of them could have prepared. I should have known, Kevin was thinking, though. I should have figured it out when he first told me about the Tree. A bitterness scaling towards rage pulled his head up. . . .

"That must have been some chess game," he said savagely to the King.

"It was," Ailell said simply. Then, "He came to me and offered. I would never have asked, or even thought to ask. Will you believe this?"

And of course he did. It fit too well. The attack was unfair, because Paul would have done what he wanted to, exactly what he wanted to, and this was a better way to die than falling from a rope down a cliff. As such things were measured, and he supposed they could be measured. It hurt, though, it really hurt, and-

"No!" said Loren decisively. "It must be stopped. This we cannot do. He is not even one of us, my lord. We cannot lay our griefs upon him in this way. He must be taken down. This is a guest of your House, Ailell. Of our world. What were you thinking of?"

"Of our world. Of my House. Of my people. He came to me, Silvercloak."

"And should have been refused!"

"Loren, it was a true offering." The speaker was Gorlaes, his voice unwontedly diffident.

"You were there?" the mage bristled.

"I bound him. He walked past us to the Tree. It was as if he were alone. I know not how, and I am afraid here speaking of it, as I was in the Godwood, but I swear it is a proper offering."

"No," Loren said again, his face sharp with emotion. "He cannot possibly understand what he is doing. My lord, he must be taken down before he dies."

"It is his own death, Loren. His chosen gift. Would you presume to strip it from him?" Ailell's eyes were so old, so weary.

"I would," the mage replied. "He was not brought here to die for us."

It was time to speak.

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"Maybe not," Kevin said, forcing the words out, stumbling and in pain. "But I think that is why he came." He was losing them both. Jennifer. Now Paul, too. His heart was sore. "If he went, he went knowing, and because he wanted to. Let him die for you, if he can't live for himself. Leave him, Loren. Let him go."

He didn't bother trying to hide the tears, not even from Jaelle, whose eyes on his face were so cold.

"Kevin," said the mage gently, "it is a very bad death. No one lasts the three-it will be waste and to no point. Let me take him down."

"It is not for you to choose, Silvercloak," Jaelle spoke then. "Nor for this one, either."

Loren turned, his eyes hard as flint. "If I decide to bring him down," he said driving the words into her, "then it will be necessary for you to kill me to prevent it."

"Careful, mage," Gorlaes cautioned, though mildly. "That is close to treason. The High King has acted here. Would you undo what he has done?"

None of them seemed to be getting the point. "No one has acted but Paul," Kevin said. He felt drained now, but completely unsurprised. He really should have known this was coming.

"Loren, if anyone understood this, it was him. If he lasts three nights, will there be rain?"

"There might be." It was the King. "This is wild magic, we cannot know."

"Blood magic," Loren amended bitterly.

Teyrnon shook his head. "The God is wild, though there may be blood."

"He can't last, though," Diarmuid said, his voice sober. He looked at Kevin. "You said yourself, he's been ill."

A cracked, high laugh escaped Kevin at that.

"Never stopped him," he said fiercely, feeling it so hard. "The stubborn, brave, son of a bitch!"

The love in the harsh words reached through to all of them, it could not help but do so; and it had to be acknowledged. Even by Jaelle and, in a very different way, by Loren Silvercloak.

"Very well," said the mage at last. He sank into a chair. "Oh, Kevin. They will sing of him here as long as Brennin lasts, regardless of the end."

"Songs," said Kevin. "Songs only mess you up." It was too much effort not to ache; he let it sweep over him. Sometimes, his father had said, you can't do anything. Oh, Abba, he thought, far away and alone inside the hurt.

"Tomorrow," Ailell the High King said, rising again, gaunt and tall. "I will meet you here at sunrise tomorrow. We will see what the night brings."

It was a dismissal. They withdrew, leaving the King sitting at the last alone in his council chamber with his years, his self-contempt, and the image of the stranger on the Tree in his name, in the name of the God, in his name.

They went outside into the central courtyard, Diarmuid, Loren, Matt, and Kevin Laine. In silence they walked together, the same face in their minds, and Kevin was grateful for the presence of friends.

The heat was brutal, and the sour wind abraded them under the sickly, filtered sun. A prickly tension seemed woven into the texture of the day. And then, suddenly, there was more.

"Hold!" cried Matt the Dwarf, whose people were of the caverns of the earth, the roots of mountains, the ancient rocks. "Hold! Something comes!"

And in the same instant, north and west of them, Kim Ford rose, a blinding pulse in her head, an apprehension of enormity, and moved, as if compelled, out back of the cottage where Tyrth was laboring. "Oh, God," she whispered. "Oh my God!" Seeing with distorted vision the vellin bracelet writhing on her wrist, knowing it could not ward what was coming, what had been coming for so long, so terribly, what none of them had seen, none, what was here, now, right now! She screamed, in overwhelming agony.

And the roof of the world blew up.

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Far, far in the north among the ice, Rangat Cloud-Shouldered rose up ten miles into the heavens, towering above the whole of Fionavar, master of the world, prison of a god for a thousand years.

But no more. A vast geyser of blood-red fire catapulted skyward with a detonation heard even in

Cathal. Rangat exploded with a column of fire so high the curving world could not hide it. And at the apex of its ascent the flame was seen to form itself into the five fingers of a hand, taloned, oh, taloned, and curving southward on the wind to bring them all within its grasp, to tear them all to shreds.

A gauntlet hurled, it was, a wild proclamation of release to all the cowering ones who would be his slaves forever after now. For if they had feared the svart alfar, trembled before a renegade mage and the power of Galadan, what would they do now to see the fingers of this fire raking heaven?

To know Rakoth Maugrim was unchained and free, and could bend the very Mountain to his vengeance?

And on the north wind there came then the triumphant laughter of the first and fallen god, who was coming down on them like a hammer bringing fire, bringing war.

The explosion hit the King like a fist in the heart. He tottered from the window of the council chamber and fell into a chair, his face grey, his hands opening and closing spasmodically as he gasped for breath.

"My lord?" Tarn the page rushed into the room and knelt, terror in his eyes. "My lord?"

But Ailell was beyond speech. He heard only the laughter on the wind, saw only the fingers curving to clutch them, enormous and blood-colored, a death cloud in the sky, bringing not rain but ruin.

He seemed to be alone. Tarn must have run for aid. With a great effort Ailell rose, breathing in high short gasps, and made his way down the short hallway to his rooms. There he stumbled to the inner door and opened it.

Down the familiar corridor he went. At the end of the passageway, the King stopped before the viewing slot. His vision was troubled: there seemed to be a girl beside him. She had white hair, which was unnatural. Her eyes were kind, though, as Marrien's had been at the end. He had managed to win love there after all. It was patience that power taught. He had told that to the stranger, he remembered. After ta'bael. Where was the stranger? He had something else to say to him, something important.

Then he remembered. Opening the slot, Ailell the King looked into the Room of the Stone and saw that it was dark. The fire was dead, the sacred naal fire; the pillar carved with images of Conary bore nothing upon its crown, and on the floor, shattered forever into fragments like his heart, lay the stone of Ginserat.

He felt himself falling. It seemed to take a very long time. The girl was there; her eyes were so sorrowful. He almost wanted to comfort her. Aileron, he thought. Diarmuid. Oh, Aileron. Very far off, he heard thunder. A god was coming. Yes, of course, but what fools they all were-it was the wrong god. It was so funny, so funny, it was.

And on that thought he died.

So passed, on the eve of war, Ailell dan Art, High King of Brennin, and the rule passed to his son in a time of darkness, when fear moved across the face of all the lands. A good King and wise, Ysanne the Seer had called him once.

What he had fallen from.

Jennifer was flying straight at the Mountain when it went up.

A harsh cry of triumph burst from the throat of the black swan as the blast of fire rose far above to separate high in the air and form the taloned hand, bending south like smoke on the wind, but
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not dissolving, hanging there, reaching.

There was laughter in the sky all around her. Is the person under the mountain dead? Paul Schafer had asked before they crossed. He wasn't dead, nor was he under the Mountain anymore. And though she didn't understand, Jennifer knew that he wasn't a person, either. You had to be something more to shape a hand of fire and send mad laughter down the wind.