The Wandering Fire Part 17

"As many here," said Arthur. "If it please you, High King, Cavall can give tongue for both triumph and loss."

Aileron nodded. Arthur spoke to the dog.

Grey Cavall walked to an open s.p.a.ce by the riverbank where the snow was neither trampled down nor red with wolf or dog or human blood. In a white place among the bare trees he lifted his head.

But the growl he gave was no sound of triumph nor yet of loss.

Dave would never be sure which caused him to turn, the dog's snarled warning or the trembling of the earth, raster than thought he spun.

There was an instant-less than that, a scintilla of time in the s.p.a.ce between seconds-and in it he had a flash of memory. Another wood: Pendaran. Flidais, the gnomelike creature with his eerie chants. And one of them: Beware the boar, beware the swan, the salt sea bore her body on.

Beware the boar.

He had never seen a creature like the one that rumbled now from the trees. It had to be eight hundred pounds, at least, with savage curving tusks and enraged eyes, and it was an albino, white as the snow all around them.

Kevin Laine, directly in its path, with only a sword and a wounded shoulder, wasn't going to be able to dodge it, and he hadn't a hope in h.e.l.l of stopping the rush of that thing.

He had turned to face it. Bravely, but too late, and armed with too little. Even as the bizarre memory of Flidais exploded and he heard Diarmuid's cry of warning, Dave took two quick steps, let go of his axe, and launched himself in a lunatic, weaponless dive.

He had the angle, sort of. He hit the boar with a flying tackle on the near side shoulder, and he put every ounce of his weight and strength into it.

He was bounced like a Ping-Pong ball from a wall. He felt himself flying, had time to realize it, before he crashed, pinwheeling, into the trees.

"Kevin!" he screamed and tried, unwisely, to stand. The world rocked. He put a hand to his forehead and it came away covered with blood. There was blood in his eyes; he couldn't see. There was screaming, though, and a snarling dog, and something had happened to his head. There was someone on the ground and people running everywhere, then a person was with him, then another. He tried to rise again. They pushed him back. They were talking to him. He didn't understand.

"Kevin?" he tried to ask. He couldn't form the name. Blood got in his mouth. He turned to cough and fainted dead away from the pain.

It hadn't actually been bravery, or foolish bravado either-there had been no time for such complex things. He'd been at the back and heard a grunt and a trampling sound, so he'd been turning, even before the dog barked and the earth began to shake under the charge of the white boar.

In the half second he'd had, Kevin had thought it was going for Diarmuid and so he yelped to get its attention. Unnecessary, that, for the boar was coming for him all the way.

Strange how much time there seemed to be when there was no time at all. At least somebody wants me, was the first hilarious thought that cut in and out of his mind. But he was quick, he'd always been quick, even if he didn't know how to use a sword. He had no place to run and no way on earth of killing this monster. So, as the boar thundered up, grunting insanely and already beginning to raise its tusks to disembowel him, Kevin, timing it with coolest precision, jumped up in a forward somersault, to put his hands on the stinking white fur of the boar's huge back and flip over it like a Minoan bull dancer, to land in the soft snow.

In theory, anyway.

Theory and reality began their radical bifurcation around the axis formed by the flying figure of Dave Martyniuk at precisely the point where his shoulder crashed into that of the boar.

He moved it maybe two inches, all told. Which was just enough to cause Kevin's injured right arm to slip as he reached for the hold that would let him flip. He never got it. He was lying sprawled on top of the boar, with every molecule of usable air cannonballed out of his lungs, when some last primitive mechanism of his mind screamed roll, and his body obeyed.

Enough so that the tusk of the animal in its vicious, ripping thrust tore through the outer flesh of his groin and not up and through it to kill. He did his somersault in the end and came down, unlike Dave, in snow.

There was a lot of pain, though, in a very bad place and there were droplets of his blood all over the snow like red flowers.

It was Brock who turned the boar away from him and Diarmuid who planted the first sword. Eventually there were a number of swords; he saw it all, but it was impossible to tell who struck the killing blow.

They were very gentle when it came time to move him and it would have been rude, almost, to scream, so he gripped the branches of his makeshift stretcher until he thought his hands had torn through the wood, and he didn't scream.

Tried one joke as Diarmuid's face, unnaturally white, loomed up. "If it's a choice between me and the baby," he mumbled, "save the baby." Diar didn't laugh. Kevin wondered if he'd gotten the joke, wondered where Paul was, who would have. Didn't scream.

Didn't pa.s.s out until one of the stretcher bearers stumbled over a branch as they left the forest.

When Kevin came to, he saw that Martyniuk was in the next bed, watching him. Had a huge blood-stained bandage around his head. Didn't look too well, himself.

"You're okay," Dave said. "Everything intact."

He wanted to be funny but the relief was too deep for that. He closed his eyes and took a breath. There was surprisingly little pain. When he opened his eyes he saw that there were a number of others in the room: Diar and Coll and Levon. Tore, too, and Erron. Friends. He and Dave were in the front room of the Prince's quarters, in beds moved close to the fire.

"I am okay," he confirmed. Turned to Dave. "You?"

"Fine. Don't know why, though."

"The mages were here," Diarmuid said. "Both of them. They each healed one of you. It took awhile."

Kevin remembered something. "Wait a minute. How? I thought-"

"-that the sources were drained," Diarmuid finished. His eyes were sober. "They were, but we had little choice. They're resting now in the Temple, both Matt and Barak. They'll be all right, Loren says." The Prince smiled slowly. "They won't be around for Maidaladan, though. You'll have to make it up to them. Somehow."

Everyone laughed. Kevin saw Dave looking at him. "Tell me," the big man said slowly, "did I save your life or almost get you killed?"

"We'll go with the first," Kevin said. "But it's a good thing you don't like me much, because if you did, you would have hit that pig with a real tackle instead of faking it. In which case-"

"Hey!" Dave exclaimed. "Hey! That's not... That isn't..." He stopped because everyone was laughing. He would remember the line, though, for later. Kevin had a way of doing that to him.

"Speaking of pigs," Levon said, helping Dave out, "We're roasting that boar for dinner tonight. You should be able to smell it."

After a moment and some trial sniffs, Kevin could. "That," he said from the heart, "is one big pig."

Diarmuid was grinning. "If you can make it to dinner," he said, "we've already arranged to save the best part for you.

"No!" Kevin moaned, knowing what was coming.

"Yes indeed I thought you might like from the boar what it almost had from you."

There was a great deal of encouragement and loud laughter, fueled as much, Kevin realized belatedly, by inner excitement as much as by anything else. It was Maidaladan, Midummer's Eve, and it showed in every other man in the room. He got up, aware that there was a certain kind of miracle in his doing so. He was bandaged, but he could move and so, it seemed, could Dave. In the big man Kevin read the same scarcely controlled excitement that flared in all the others. Everyone but him. But now there was something nagging at him from somewhere very deep, and it seemed to be important. Not a memory something else...

There was a lot of laughter and a rough, boisterous humor all around. He went with it, enjoying the camaraderie. When they entered the Movran meeting house-a dining hall for the night-spontaneous applause burst forth from the companies of Brennan and Cathal, and he realized they were cheering for him and Dave.

They sat with Diarmuid's men and the two young Dalrei. Before dinner formally began, Dairmuid, true to his word, rose from his seat at the high table, bearing a platter ceremoniously before him, and came to Kevin's side.

Amid the gathering hilarity and to the rhythm of five hundred hungry men banging their fists on the long wooden tables, Kevin reminded himself that such things were said to be a delicacy. With a full gla.s.s of wine to hand, he stood up, bowed to Diarmuid, and ate the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the boar that had almost killed him.

Not bad, actually, all things considered.

"Any more?" he asked loudly and got his laugh for the night. Even from Dave Martyniuk, which took some doing.

Aileron made a short speech and so did Shalha.s.san, both of them too wise to try to say much, given the mood in the hall. Besides, Kevin thought, the Kings must be feeling it too. The serving girls-daughters of the villagers, he gathered-were giggling and dodging already. They didn't seem to mind, though. He wondered what Maidaladan did to the women: to Jaelle and Sharra, even to that battleship Audiart, up at the high table. It was going to be wild later, when the priestesses came out.

There were windows high on all four sides. Amid the pandemonium, Kevin watched it growing dark outside. There was too much noise, too much febrile excitement, for anyone to mark his unwonted quiet.

He was the only one in the hall to see the moon when it first shone through the eastern windows. It was full and this was Midsummer's Eve, and the thing at the edge of his mind was pushing harder now, straining toward a shape. Quietly he rose and went out, not the first to leave. Even in the cold, there were couples clinched heedlessly close outside the banquet hall.

He moved past them, his wound aching a little now, and stood in the middle of the icy street looking up and east at the moon. And in that moment awareness stirred within him, at last, and took a shape. Not desire, but whatever the thing was that lay behind desire.

"It isn't a night to be alone," a voice from just behind him said. He turned to look at Liane. There was a shyness in her eyes.

"h.e.l.lo," he said. "I didn't see you at the banquet."

"I didn't come. I was sitting with Gereint."

"How is he?" He began to walk, and she fell in stride beside him on the wide street. Other couples, laughing, running to warmth, pa.s.sed them on all sides. It was very bright, with the moonlight on the snow.

"Well enough. He isn't happy, though, not the way the others are."

He glanced over at her and then, because it seemed right, took her hand. She wasn't wearing gloves either, and her fingers were cold.

"Why isn't he happy?" A random burst of laughter came from a window nearby, and a candle went out.

"He doesn't think we can do it."

"Do what?"

"Stop the winter. It seems they found out that Metran is making it-I didn't understand how-from the spiraling place, Cader Sedat, out at sea."

A quiet stretch of road. Inside himself Kevin felt a deeper quiet gathering, and suddenly he was afraid. "They can't go there," he said softly.

Her dark eyes were somber. "Not in winter. They can't sail. They can't end the winter while the winter lasts."

It seemed to Kevin, then, that he had a vision of his past, of chasing an elusive dream, waking or asleep, down all the nights of his life. The pieces were falling into place. There was a stillness in his soul. He said, "You told me, the time we were together, that I carried Dun Maura within me."

She stopped abruptly in the road and turned to him.

"I remember," she said.

"Well," he said, "there's something strange happening. I'm not feeling anything of what's. .h.i.tting everyone else tonight. I'm feeling something else."

Her eyes were very wide in the moonlight. "The boar," she whispered. "You were marked by the boar."

That too. Slowly he nodded. It was coming together. The boar. The moon. Midsummer. The winter they could not end. It had, in fact, come together. From within the quiet, Kevin finally understood.

"You had better leave me," he said, as gently as he could.

It took a moment before he realized that she was crying. He hadn't expected that.

"Liadon?" she asked. Which was the name.

"Yes," he said. "It looks as if. You had better leave me."

She was very young, and he thought she might refuse. He underestimated her, though. With the back of her hand she wiped away her tears. Then, rising on tiptoe, she kissed him on the lips and walked away in the direction from which they had come, toward the lights.

He watched her go. Then he turned and went to the place where the stables were. He found his horse. As he was saddling it, he heard bells ring from the Temple and his movements slowed for a moment. The priestesses of Dana would be coming out.

He finished with the saddle and mounted up. He walked the horse quietly up the lane and stopped in the shadows where it joined the road from Morvran to the Temple. Looking north, he could see them coming, and a moment later he watched the priestesses go by. Some were running and some walked. They all wore long grey cloaks against the cold and they all had their hair unbound and loose down their backs, and all the women seemed to shine a little in the full moonlight. They went past and, turning his head to the left, he saw the men coming out to meet them from the town, and the moon was very bright and it shone on the snow and ice, and on all the men and women in the road as they came together.

In a very little while the street was empty again and then the bells were silent. There were cries and laughter not very far away, but he carried his own deep quiet now, and he set his horse toward the east and began to ride.

Kim woke late in the afternoon. She was in the room they had given her, and Jaelle was sitting quietly beside the bed.

Kim sat up a little and stretched her arms. "Did I sleep all day?" she asked.

Jaelle smiled, which was unexpected. "You were ent.i.tled."

"How long have you been watching me?"

"Not long. We've been checking on all of you periodically."

"All of us? Who else?"

"Gereint. The two sources."

Kim pushed herself into a sitting position. "Are you all right?"

Jaelle nodded. "None of us went so far as you. The sources were recovering, until they were drained again."

Kim asked with her eyes, and the red-haired Priestess told her about the hunt and then the boar. "No lasting damage to any of them," she finished, "though Kevin came very close."

Kim shook her head. "I'm glad I didn't see it." She drew a long breath. "Aileron told me that I did send something back. What was it, Jaelle?"

"The Cauldron," the other woman replied, and then, as Kim waited: "The mage says Metran is making the winter with it from Cader Sedat, out at sea."

There was a silence as Kim absorbed this. When it sunk in, all she felt was despair. "Then I did no good at all! We can't do anything about it. We can't get there in winter!"

"Nicely planned, wasn't it?" Jaelle murmured with a dryness that did not mask her own fear.

"What do we do?"

Jaelle stirred. "Not much, tonight. Don't you feel it?"

And with the question, Kim realized she did. "I thought it was just an aftermath," she murmured.

The Priestess shook her head. "Maidaladan. It reaches us later than the men, and more as restlessness than desire, I think, but it is almost sundown, and Midsummer's Eve."

Kim looked at her. "Will you go out?"

Jaelle rose abruptly and took a few paces toward the far wall. Kim thought she'd given offense, but after a moment the tall Priestess turned back to her. "Sorry," she said, surprising Kim for the second time. "An old response. I will go to the banquet but come back afterward. The grey-robed ones must go into the streets tonight, to any man who wants them. The red Mormae never go, though that is custom and not law." She hesitated. "The High Priestess wears white and is not allowed to be part of Maidaladan or to have a man at any other time."

"Is there a reason?" Kim asked.

"You should know it," Jaelle said flatly.