Fionavar 1 (40 page)

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 and 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

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
Page 154

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 grayness 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 Coil'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.

Page 155

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 gray 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
Page 156

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.

"Oh, Rachel," he breathed, scarcely a sound. Forbidden once, the most forbidden name. But then intercession had come, before he died, and absolution allowing grief.

Except that he hadn't died. A thought like a blade pierced him at that: was he alive because he'd failed? Was that it? With an effort he turned his head. The movement revealed a tall figure standing by the bed gazing down at him from between the candles.

"You are in the Temple of the Mother," Jaelle said. "It is raining outside."

Rain. There was a bitter challenge in her eyes, but it couldn't touch him in that moment. He was beyond her. He turned his head away. It was raining; he was alive. Sent back. Arrow of the God.

He felt the presence of Mörnir then, within himself, latent, tacit. There was a burden in that, and soon it would have to be addressed, but not yet, not yet. Now was for lying still, tasting the sense of being himself again for the first time in so very long. Ten months. And three nights that had been forever. Oh, he could go with joy a little ways, it was allowed. Eyes closed, he sank deep into the pillow. He was desperately weak, but weakness was all right now. There was rain.

"Dana spoke to you."

He could hear the vivid rage in her voice. Too much of it; he ignored her. Kevin, he thought. I want to see Kev. Soon, he told himself, after I sleep.

She slapped him hard across the face. He felt a raking nail draw blood.

"You are in the sanctuary. Answer!"

Paul Schafer opened his eyes. With cold scorn of his own, he confronted her fury. This time, Jaelle looked away.

After a moment she spoke, gazing at one of the long candles. "All my life I have dreamt of hearing the Goddess speak, of seeing her face." Bitterness had drained her voice. "Not me, though. Not anything at all. Yet you, a man, and one who turned from her entirely for the God in his wood, have been allowed grant of her grace. Do you wonder why I hate you?"

The utter flatness of her tone made the words more chilling than any explosion of anger would have been. Paul was silent a moment, then he said, "I am her child, too. Do not begrudge the gift she offered me."

"Your life, you mean?" She was looking at him again, tall and slender between the candles.

He shook his head; it was still an effort. "Not that. In the beginning, perhaps, but not now. It was the God who gave me this."

"Not so. You are a greater fool than I thought if you know not Dana when she comes."

"Actually," he said, but gently, for it was a matter too high for wrangling, "I do know. In this case, better than you, Priestess. The Goddess was there, yes, and she did intercede, though not for my life. For something else before the end. But it was Mörnir who saved me. It was his to choose. The

Summer Tree is the God's, Jaelle."

For the first time he read a flicker of doubt in the wide-set eyes. "She was there, though? She did speak? Tell me what she said."

"No," said Paul, with finality.

"You must." But it was not a command now. He had a vague sense that there was something he should, something he wanted to say to her, but he was so weary, so utterly drained. Which
Page 157

triggered a completely different realization.

"You know," he said, with feeling, "that I haven't had food or drink for three days. Is there . . . ?"

She stood still a moment, but when she moved, it was to a tray on a low table by the far wall. She brought a bowl of cool soup to the bed. Unfortunately it seemed that his hands didn't work very well yet. He thought she would send for one of the gray-clad priestesses, but in the end she sat stiffly on the bed beside him and fed him herself.