The Last Light of the Sun (30 page)

The bonfire made his decision for him. He placed his father’s necklace over his head and slipped it inside his tunic. The necklace was meant to tell him that it was a friend (his father a friend, the irony in that) who’d taken him out of Esferth. If he was
supposed
to be out of Esferth, that meant trouble inside. And he knew there was trouble, they’d seen it this morning, passing through the gates amid the crowds for the fair. They had planned
to stay only tonight, learn what they could in the taverns, ride back to the coast in the morning, carrying their message—and warning.

And now a message in fire was lighting the night. This was, in no possible way, a safe place to be coming ashore to raid. The
burh
was walled and garrisoned, they already knew that, and Esferth was thronged to bursting. He had that message to deliver, above anything else. He took a breath, put aside, as best he could, the fierce, hard awareness that his father was out here somewhere in the night not far away, and had, evidently, carried him to this place like a child. Bern turned his back on torchlit Esferth and entered the stream to cross it.

He was midway into the river, which wasn’t cold, when he heard voices. He dropped down instantly, silent amid reeds and lilies, only his head above water in the dark, and listened to the voices and the pounding of his heart.

Alun had seen the glimmering twice on the journey east, travelling here with Ceinion. Once in the branches of a tree, when they’d camped by a stream running out of the wood and he awoke in the night, and once on a hillside behind them, when he looked back after dark: a shining at twilight, though the sun had set.

He’d known it was her. Wasn’t sure if he’d been meant to see, or if she’d come closer than she’d intended. Cafall had been restless all through that coastal journey. The Erling had thought it was the nearness of the spirit wood.

She was following him. He ought, perhaps, to have been afraid, but that wasn’t what he felt. Alun had thought about Dai, the night he died, that pool in the wood, souls lost and taken, and it had occurred to him that he might never make music again.

His mother had taken to her chambers when he and Gryffeth and the cleric had brought the tidings home. She had stayed there a fourteen-night, opening only to her women. When she’d come out her hair had changed colour. Not as a faerie’s did, shimmering through hues, but as a mortal woman’s did, when grief has come too suddenly.

Owyn had covered his face with a hand, Alun remembered, and turned and walked away, at first word of Dai’s death. He had drunk a great deal for two days and nights, then stopped. Had spoken after, privately, with Ceinion of Llywerth. There was a history there, not entirely a benign one, but whatever lay behind the two men seemed altered by this. Owyn ap Glynn was a hard man, everyone knew that, and he was a prince with tasks in the world. Brynn had said that same thing to Alun, too. He had a new role, himself. He was heir to Cadyr.

His brother was dead. More than that. Those who told him that time and faith would assuage, meaning well, drawing on experience and wisdom—even his father, even King Aeldred, here—were unaware,
had
to be unaware, of what Alun knew about Dai.

Armoured in faith, as Ceinion and the Anglcyn king were, you could anneal the burning of loss with a belief that the souls of those who had gone were with Jad and would be until all the worlds ended and the god’s purposes were revealed and fulfilled.

Faith was no help at all when you knew your brother’s soul had been stolen by faeries on a moonless night.

Alun prayed, as required, morning and evening, with urgency. It seemed to him sometimes that he heard his own voice echoing oddly as he chanted the responses of the liturgy. He
knew
things, had seen what he had seen. And heard the music in that forest clearing, as the faeries passed him by, moving across the water.

There was a blue moon tonight, spirit moon, high above the woods, hanging over them like some dark blue candle in a doorway. These were part of the same forest they had skirted to the south. A valley sliced westward, pushing the trees back halfway down to the sea, and the old tale was that the colder danger lay in the south, but this was still named a ghost wood, whatever the clerics might say.

He stood a moment, looking at the trees. He needed to walk through this doorway. Had known he would, from first sighting of her that night when he’d woken, and again on the hill two days later, at twilight.
Forbidden, heresy:
words that meant much, but so little to him now. He had seen her. And his brother. Dai’s hand in the faerie queen’s, walking on water, after he died. Alun was unmoored and knew it, a ship without rudder or sails, no charts by which to navigate.

He had left the king’s feast, made his excuses as courteously as he could, aware that the Anglcyn court—alerted by Ceinion—would feel genuine compassion for what they thought was his pain.

They had no idea.

He’d bowed to the king—a compact man, trimmed grey beard, bright blue eyes—and to the queen, made his way from that crowded, loud, smoky room, dense with the living and their concerns, and gone alone to the chapel he’d seen earlier in the day.

Not the royal one. This one was small, dimly lit, almost an afterthought on a street of taverns and inns, and empty this late at night. What he needed. Silence, shadow, the sun disk above the altar barely visible in this still space. He had knelt, and prayed for the god to lend him the power to resist what was pulling him. But in the end, rising, he gave himself dispensation for being mortal, and frail, and so not strong enough. There was a need in him, and there was also fear.

He had a thought, a memory, and paused by the door of the chapel. In that gloom, lit only by a handful of guttering lamps too far apart on the walls, Alun ab Owyn unbuckled his dagger and belt and set them down on a stone ledge in the half-darkness. He’d worn no sword tonight. Not to a royal feast, as an honoured guest. He turned in the chapel doorway, looked back in the gloom a last time to where the sun disk hung.

Then he went out into the night streets of Esferth. Cafall fell in beside him, as always now. He spoke to a guard at the gates and was allowed to pass. He’d known—with certainty—that it would be so. There were forces at work tonight, beyond any adequate understanding.

Alun went into the meadow beyond the Esferth gates and walked steadily west. The direction of home, but not really. Home was too far away. He came to the stream, crossed through, water to his waist, Cafall splashing beside him, and on the other side he stopped and looked at the woods and turned to Brynn’s dog—
his
dog—and said quietly, “No farther now. Wait here.”

Cafall pushed his head against Alun’s wet hip and thigh, but when he said it again, “No farther,” the dog obeyed, staying there beside the rushing water, a grey shape, almost invisible, as Alun went alone into the trees.

SHE KNOWS THE INSTANT
he enters among the first oaks and alders, apprehending his aura before she sees him. She stands in a glade by a beech tree, as she did the first time, a hand laid on it for sustenance, sap-strength. She is afraid. But not only that.

He appears at the edge of the glade and stops. Her hair goes to silver. Purest hue, essence of what she is, what they all are: silver around them in the first mound, gleaming. Now lost, undersea. They sing to greet the white moon when it rises.

Only the blue one tonight, hidden from where they stand within the wood. She knows exactly where it is, however. They always know where both moons are. The blue is different, more … inward; hues one does not always share with others. Just as she has not shared her coming east, this journey. She took a soul for the queen at the beginning of summer, will not suffer for this following. Or not at the hands of the Ride. There are others in the wood, though, nearby and south. To be feared.

She sees him step forward, approaching over grass, amid trees. A dark wood, far from home (for both of them). There is a
spruaugh
somewhere about, which had angered and surprised her, for she dislikes them all, their green hovering. She’d shown her hair violet to him earlier, and seethed, and he’d retreated, chattering, agitated. She scans with the eye of her mind, doesn’t find his aura now. Didn’t think he would be anywhere near after seeing her.

She makes herself let go of the tree. Takes a step forward. He is near enough to touch, to be touched. Her hair is shining. She is all the light in this glade, the trees in summer leaf occluding stars and moon, shielding the two of them. A shelter, between worlds, though there are dangers all around. She remembers touching his face on the slope above the farm and the blood-soaked yard, as he knelt before her.

The memory changes the colour of her hair again. It is not only fear she feels. He does not kneel this time. No iron about him. He has left it behind, coming to her, knowing.

They are silent, leaves and branches a canopy above, the grass of the glade shimmering. A breeze, slight sound, it dies away.

He says, “I saw you, twice, coming here. Was I meant to?”

She can feel herself tremble. Wonders if he sees it. They are speaking to each other. It is not to happen. It is a crossing-over, a transgressing. She doesn’t entirely understand his words.
Meant to?
Mortals: the world they live within, time different for them. The speed of their dying.

She says, “You can see me. Since the pool.” Isn’t sure if that is what he meant. They are speaking, and alone here. She reaches a hand backwards, after all, touches the tree again.

“I should hate you,” he says. Said that, also, the other time.

She answers, as before, “I don’t know what that means. Hate.”

A word they use … fire in how they live. A flame and then gone. That fire a reason she has always been drawn. But unseen, until now.

He closes his eyes. “Why are you here?”

“I followed you.” She lets go of the tree.

He looks at her again. “I know. I know that. Why?”

They think in this way. It has to do with time. One thing, then another thing from it, and then a next. The way the world takes shape for them. She has a thought.

ALUN FELT AS IF HIS MOUTH
were dry as earth. Her voice, a handful of words, made him despair again of the idea of making music, of ever hearing anything to match. There was a woodland scent to her, night flowers, and the light—changing, always—about her, in her hair, the only illumination here, where they were. She was shining for him in a forest, and he knew all the tales. Mortals entangled and ensnared within the half-world who never made their way back or were found all changed when they did, companions and lovers dead, or aged, bent into hoops.

Dai was with the faerie queen, walking upon water amid music, coupling in the forested night. Dai was dead, his soul stolen away.

“Why are you here?” he managed.

“I followed you.”

Not his answer. He looked at her. “I know. I know that. Why?”

She said, “Because you put away … your iron when you came up the slope to me? Before?”

A question in it. She was asking him if this was good enough, as an answer. She spoke Cyngael in the old fashion, the way his grandfather had talked. It frightened him to think how old she might be. He didn’t
want
to think of that, or ask. How long did faeries live? He felt light-headed. It was difficult to breathe. He said, a little desperately, “Will you do me harm?”

Her laughter then, first time, rippling. “What harm could I do?”

She lifted her arms, as if to show him how delicate she was, slender, her fingers very long. He could not have named the colour of the tunic she wore, could see the pale, sleek curve of her below it. She extended a hand towards him. He closed his eyes just before she touched his face with her fingers for the second time.

He was lost, knew he was, whatever the tales might say in warning. He had been lost when he left the chapel to come out from behind mortal walls and enter this wood where men did not go.

He took her fingers in his hand, and brought them to his mouth and kissed them, then turned her palm to his lips. Felt her trembling, as leaves did in wind. Heard her say, very faintly, music, “Will you do me harm?”

Alun opened his eyes. She was a silver shining in the wood, beyond imagining. He saw the trees around them and the summer grass.

“Not for all the light in all the worlds,” he said, and took her in his arms.

There was very little light in the great hall now: amber pools spilling from the two fires, or where a cluster of men continued to throw dice at one end of the room, and another pair of lamps at the head table where two men remained awake and talking and a third listened quietly, A fourth figure slept there, snoring softly, his head on the board among the last uncleared platters.

Aeldred of the Anglcyn looked at the sleeping cleric from Ferrieres and then turned the other way, smiling a little.

“We have exhausted him,” he said.

The cleric on his other side set down his cup. “It is late.”

“Is it? Sometimes sleep feels wrong. A surrendering of opportunity.” The king sipped his own wine. “He quoted Cingalus at you. You were very kind, then.”

“No need to embarrass him.”

Aeldred snorted. “While he was citing you to yourself?”

Ceinion of Llywerth shrugged. “I was flattered.”

“He didn’t know you wrote it. He was patronizing you.”

“That wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been right in what he argued.”

A small sound at that, from the third man. Both turned to him, both smiling.

“Not weary of us yet, my heart?” Aeldred asked.

His younger son shook his head. “Weary, but not of this.” Gareth cleared his throat. “Father’s right. He … didn’t even have the quotation properly.”

“True enough, my lord prince.” Ceinion was still smiling, still cradling his wine. “I’m honoured that you knew it. He was doing it from memory, in fairness.”

“But he turned the meaning. He argued against you with your own thought turned backwards. You wrote the Patriarch that there was no error in images unless they were
made
to be worshipped, and he—”