The Wandering Fire Part 21

It was very quiet behind him, and he wondered if they had gone. But then he heard Jaelle's voice. Cold, cold Priestess. But she wasn't now, it seemed. She said, "He could not have done this, not have been found worthy, had he not been traveling toward the G.o.ddess all his life. I don't know if this is of aid to you, but I offer it as true."

He wiped his eyes and turned back. In time to see Jennifer, who had been composed to hear of Darien and tautly silent as Dave spoke, now rise at Jaelle's words, a white grief in her face, her mouth open, eyes blazing with naked pain, and Paul realized that if she was opening now to this, she was open to everything. He bitterly regretted his moment of anger. He took a step toward her, but even as he did, she made a choking sound and fled.

Dave stood to follow, awkward sorrow investing his square features. Someone in the hallway moved to block the way.

"Let her go," said Leila. "This was necessary."

"Oh, shut up!" Paul raged. An urge to strike this ever-present, ever-placid child rose fiercely within him.

"Leila," said Jaelle wearily, "close the door and go away."

The girl did so.

Paul sank into a chair, uncaring, for once, that Jaelle should see him as less than strong. What did such things matter now? They shall not grow old, as we that are left...

"Where's Loren?" he asked abruptly.

"In town," Dave said. "So's Teyrnon. There's a meeting in the palace tomorrow. It seems... it seems Kim and the others did find out what was causing the winter."

"What was it?" Paul asked tiredly.

"Metran," Jaelle said. "From Cader Sedat. Loren wants to go after him, to the island where Amairgen died."

He sighed. So much happening. His heart wasn't going to be able to keep up. At the going down of the sun and in the morning...

"Is Kim in the palace? Is she okay?" It suddenly seemed strange to him that she hadn't come here to Jennifer.

He read it in their faces before either of them spoke.

"No!" he exclaimed. "Not her too!"

"No, no, no," Dave rushed to say. "No, she's all right. She's just... not here." He turned helplessly to Jaelle.

Quietly, the High Priestess explained what Kimberly had said about the Giants, and then told him what the Seer had decided to do. He had to admire the control in Jaelle's voice, the cool lucidity. When she was done he said nothing. He couldn't think of anything to say. His mind didn't seem to be working very well.

Dave cleared his throat. "We should go," the big man said. Paul registered, for the first time, the bandage on his head. He should inquire, he knew, but he was so tired.

"Go ahead," Paul murmured. He wasn't quite sure if he could stand up, even if he wanted to. "I'll catch up."

Dave turned to leave but paused in the doorway. "I wish..." he began. He swallowed. "I wish a lot of things." He went out. Jaelle did not.

He didn't want to be alone with her. It was no time to have to cope with that. He would have to go, after all.

She said, "You asked me once if there could be a sharing of burdens between us and I said no." He looked up. "I am wiser now," she said, unsmiling, "and the burdens are heavier. I learned something a year ago from you, and from Kevin again two nights ago. Is it too late to say I was wrong?"

He wasn't ready for this, he hadn't been ready for any of what seemed to be happening. He was composed of grief and bitterness in equal measure. As we that are left...

"I'm so pleased we've been of use to you," he said. "You must try me on a better day." He saw her head snap back.

He pushed himself up and left the room so she would not see him weep.

In the domed place, as he pa.s.sed, the priestesses were wailing a lament. He hardly heard. The voice in his mind was Kevin Laine's from a year ago in a lament of his own: "The breaking of waves on a long sh.o.r.e, In the grey morning the slow fall of rain, Oh, love, remember, remember me."

He walked out into the fading light. His eyes were misted, and he could not see that all along the Temple slope the green gra.s.s had returned and there were flowers.

Her dreams were myriad, and Kevin rode through all of them. Fair and witty, effortlessly clever, but not laughing. Not now. Kim saw his face as it must have been when he followed the dog to Dun Maura.

It seemed to her a heartbreaking thing that she could not remember the last words he had said to her. On the swift ride to Gwen Ystrat he had ridden up to tell her what Paul had done and of his own decision to let Brendel know about Darien. She had listened and approved; briefly smiled at his wry prediction of Paul's likely response.

She had been preoccupied, though, already moving in her mind toward the dark journey that lay ahead in Morvran. He must have sensed this, she realized later, for after a moment he'd touched her lightly on the arm, said something in a mild tone, and dropped back to rejoin Diarmuid's men.

It wouldn't have been anything consequential-a pleasantry, a gentle bit of teasing-but now he was gone and she hadn't heard the last thing he'd ever said to her.

She half woke from the hard dreams. She was in the King's House in Morvran. She couldn't possibly have stayed another night in the sanctuary. With Jaelle gone, with the armies returned to Paras Derval, the Temple was Audiart's again, and the triumph in the eyes of that woman was more than Kim could bear.

Of course they had won something. The snow was melting everywhere-in the morning it would be gone and she, too, would set forth, though not to Paras Derval. There had been a victory, a showing forth of Dana's power to balk the designs of the Dark. The power had been paid for, though, bought with blood, and more. There were red flowers growing everywhere. They were Kevin's, and he was gone.

Her window was open and the night breeze was fresh and mild with the promise of spring. A spring such as never before, burgeoning almost overnight. Not a gift, though. Bought and paid for, every flower, every blade of gra.s.s.

From the room next door she heard Gereint's breathing. It was slow and even, not ragged as before. He would be all right in the morning, which meant that Ivor, too, could depart. The Aven could ill afford to linger, for with the winter ending the Plain lay open again to the north.

Was everything the G.o.ddess did double-edged? She knew the answer to that. Knew also that, this once, the question was unfair because they had so desperately needed this spring. She wasn't minded to be fair, though. Not yet. She turned over in bed and fell asleep, to dream again. But not of Kevin this time, though his flowers were there.

She was the Seer of Brennin, dreamer of the dream. For the second time in three nights she saw the vision that was sending her away from everyone she knew. It had come to her two nights ago, in Loren's bed, after a lovemaking they would each remember with grat.i.tude. She had been inside this dream when Jaelle's voice, mourning the death of Liadon, had awakened them.

Now it came again, twisting, as such images always did, along the timeloops of the Tapestry. There was smoke from burning fires and half-seen figures beyond. There were caves, but not like Dun Maura: these were deep and wide, and high up in the mountains. Then the image blurred, time slipped through the lattice of her vision. She saw herself-this was later-and there were fresh lacerations scoring her face and arms. No blood, though, for some reason, no blood. A fire. A chanting all around. And then the Baelrath flamed and, as in the dream of Stonehenge, she was almost shattered by the pain she knew it would bring. Worse, even, this was. Something monstrous and unforgivable. So immense a blazing to so vast a consequence that even after all that had come to pa.s.s her mind cried out in the dream the racking question she thought had been left behind: Who was she that she should do this thing?

To which there was no answer. Only sunlight streaming in through the window and innumerable birds singing in the light of spring.

She rose up, though not immediately. The aching of her heart cut hard against the flourish of that dawn, and she had to wait for it to ease. She walked outside. Her companion was waiting, with both horses saddled and ready. She had been planning to go alone, at first, but the mages and Jaelle-united for once-had joined Aileron in forbidding this. They had wanted her to have a company of men, but this, in turn, she had refused. What she was doing had to do with repaying a debt and not really with the war, she told them. She hadn't told them the other thing.

She'd accepted one companion because, in part, she wasn't sure of the way. They'd had to be content with that. "I told you from the beginning," she'd said to Aileron. "I don't follow orders very well." No one had laughed or even smiled. Not surprisingly. She hadn't been smiling herself. Kevin was dead, and all the roads were parting. The Weaver alone knew if they would come together again.

And there was another parting now. Ivor's guard led out the blind shaman, Gereint, toward where the Aven waited with his wife and daughter. Liane, Kim saw, was red-eyed, still. So many smaller griefs there were within the larger ones.

Gereint, in his uncanny way, stopped right in front of her. She accepted the sightless touch of his mind. He was weak, she saw, but not finished yet.

"Not yet," he said aloud. "I'll be fine when I've had a haunch of eltor meat on the gra.s.s under the stars."

Impulsively, Kim stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. "I wish I could join you," she said.

His bony hand gripped her shoulder. "I wish you could too, dreamer. I am glad to have stood with you before I died."

"We may do so again," she said.

He made no reply to that. Only gripped her shoulder more tightly and, stepping nearer, whispered, so only she could hear, "I saw the Circlet of Lisen last night, but not who was wearing it." The last phrase was almost an apology.

She drew a breath and said, "That was Ysanne's to see, and so it is mine. Go easy, Gereint, back to your Plain. You will have tasks enough waiting there. You cannot be everything to all of us."

"Nor can you," he said. "You shall have my thoughts."

And because of who he was, she said, "No. You won't want to share what I think I'm about to do. Send them west, Gereint. The war is Loren's now, and Matt's, I think. In the place where Amairgen died."

She let him reach into her, to see the twin shadows of her dream. "Oh, child," he murmured and, taking her two hands between his own, raised them to his lips and kissed them both. Then he walked away as if weighted by more than years.

Kim turned around to where her companion waited patiently. The gra.s.s was green, the birds sang everywhere. The sun was well above the Carnevon Range. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the light.

"Are we ready?" she asked.

"We are," said Brock of Banir Tal.

She mounted up and fell into stride beside his horse for the long ride to Khath Meigol.

Traveling toward the G.o.ddess all his life, Jaelle had said of Kevin, and, alone of those in the room, Jennifer had truly understood. Not even the High Priestess could know how deeply true that was. Hearing the words, Jennifer felt suddenly as if every nerve within her had been stripped of its sheath and laid open.

All the nights, she saw now with terrible clarity. All the nights she had lain beside him after the arc of lovemaking was done, watching Kevin struggle to come back from so far. The one uncontrolled thing in him she had never understood, had feared. His was a descent, a downward spiral into pa.s.sion, that her soul could not track. So many nights she'd lain awake, looking at the simplified beauty of his face as he slept.

She understood now, finally.

And so there was a last sleepless night for her shaped by Kevin Laine. She was awake when the birdsong began outside the Temple, and she had parted her curtains to watch the morning come. The breeze was fresh with the scents of spring, and there were leaves budding on all the trees. Colors, a great many colors in the world again, after the black branches and white snow of winter. There was green once more, so bright and alive it was stronger, at last, than the green unlight of Starkadh. As her eyes looked out on the spring, Jennifer's heart, which was Guinevere's, began to look out as well. Nor was this the least of Kevin's legacies.

There came a knocking at her door. She opened it to see Matt Soren with a walking stick in one hand and flowers in the other.

"It is spring," he said, "and these are the first flowers. Loren is meeting in the palace with a great many people. I thought you might come with me to Aideen's grave."

As they walked around the lower town and then struck a path to the west, she was remembering the story he had told her so long ago. Or not really as long as it seemed. The story of Nilsom, the mage who had turned evil, and of Aideen, his source, who had loved him: the only woman since Lisen to be source to a mage. It was Aideen who had saved Brennin, saved the Summer Tree, from Nilsom and the mad High King, Vailerth. She had refused to be source for her mage at the end. Had denied her strength to him and then killed herself.

Matt had told her the tale in the Great Hall at Paras Derval. Before she went riding and found the lios alfar. Before Galadan had, in turn, found her and given her to the swan.

Westward, they walked now, through the miracle of this spring, and everywhere Jennifer looked there was life returning to the land. She heard crickets, the drone of bees, saw a scarlet-winged bird take wing from an apple tree, and then a brown rabbit dart from a clump of shrubbery. She saw Matt drinking it in as well with his one eye, as if slaking a long thirst. In silence they walked amid the sounds of hope until, at the edge of the forest, Matt finally stopped.

Every year, he had told her, the Council of Mages would curse Nilsom at midwinter when they met. And every year, as well, they would curse Aideen-who had broken the profoundest law of their Order when she betrayed her mage-even though it had been to save Brennin from destruction, and the Tree that lay within this wood.

And every spring, Matt had said, he and Loren would bring the first flowers to this grave.

It was almost invisible. One had to know the place. A mound of earth, no stone, the trees at the edge of Mornirwood for shade. Sorrow and peace together came over Jennifer as she saw Matt kneel and lay his flowers on the mound.

Sorrow and peace, and then she saw that the Dwarf was weeping, and her own tears came at last from the heart that spring had unlocked. For Aideen she wept, and bright Kevin gone; for Darien she cried, and the choice he had to make; for Laesha and Drance, slain when she was taken; for all the living, too, faced with the terror of the Dark, faced with war and the hatred of Maugrim, born into the time of his return.

And finally, finally by Aideen's grave in Kevin's spring, she wept for herself and for Arthur.

It lasted a long time. Matt did not rise, nor did he look up until, at length, she stopped.

"There is heart's ease in this place," he said.

"Ease?" she said. A weary little laugh. "With so many tears between the two of us?"

"The only way, sometimes," he replied. "Do you not feel it, though?"

After a moment she smiled as she had not done for a very long time. He rose from near the grave. He looked at her and said, "You will leave the Temple now?"

She did not reply. Slowly the smile faded. She said, "Is this why you brought me here?"

His dark eye never wavered from her face, but there was a certain diffidence in his voice. "I know only a few things," said Matt Soren, "but these I know truly. I know that I have seen stars shining in the depths of the Warrior's eyes. I know that he is cursed, and not allowed to die. I know, because you told me, what was done to you. And I know, because I see it now, that you are not allowing yourself to live. Jennifer, of the two fates, it seems to me the worse."

Gravely, she regarded him, her golden hair stirred by the wind. She lifted a hand to push it back from her face. "Do you know," she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear, "how much grief there was when I was Guinevere?"

"I think I do. There is always grief. It is joy that is the rarest thing," said the onetime King of Dwarves.

To this she made no reply. It was a Queen of Sorrows who stood with him by the G.o.dwood, and for all the earnest cert.i.tude of his words, Matt knew a moment of doubt. Almost to himself, for rea.s.surance, he murmured, "There can be no hope for anything in a living death."

She heard. Her gaze came back to him. "Oh, Matt," she said. "Oh, Matt, for what should I hope? He has been cursed to this. I am the agent of the Weaver's will. For what should I hope?"

Her voice went to his heart like a blade. But the Dwarf drew himself up to his fullest height and said the thing he had brought her there to say, and there was no doubt in him for this.

"Never believe it!" Matt Soren cried. "We are not slaves to the Loom. Nor are you only Guinevere-you are Jennifer now, as well. You bring your own history to this hour, everything you have lived. You bring Kevin here within you, and you bring Rakoth, whom you survived. You are here, and whole, and each thing you have endured has made you stronger. It need not be now as it has been before!"

She heard him. She nodded slowly. She turned and walked with him back to Paras Derval through the profligate bestowing of that morning. He was not wrong, for the Dwarves were wise in such things.

Nevertheless.

Nevertheless, even as they walked, her mind was turning back to another morning in another spring. Almost as bright as this, though not so long awaited.

There had been cherry trees in blossom all around when she had stood by Arthur's side to see Lancelot first ride into Camelot.

Hidden among the trees on the slopes north of them, a figure watched their return as he had watched them walking to the grave. He was lonely, and minded to go down to them, but he didn't know who they were and, since Cernan's words, he was deeply mistrustful of everyone. He stayed where he was.

Darien thought the woman was very beautiful, though.

"He is still there," said Loren, "and he still has the Cauldron. It may take him time to put it to another use, but if we give him that time, he will. Aileron, unless you forbid me, I will leave to take ship from Taerlindel in the morning."

Tense sound rippled through the Council Chamber. Paul saw the High King's brow knitted with concern. Slowly, Aileron shook his head. "Loren," he said, "everything you say is true, and the G.o.ds know how dearly I want Metran dead. But how can I send you to Cader Sedat when we don't even know how to find it?"

"Let me sail," the mage said stonily. "I will find it."

"Loren, we don't even know if Amairgen did. All we know is that he died!"

"He was sourceless," Loren replied. "Lisen stayed behind. He had his knowledge but not his power. I am less wise, far, but Matt will be with me."

"Silvercloak, there were other mages on Amairgen's ship. Three of them, with their sources. None came back." It was Jaelle, Paul saw. She glittered that morning, more coldly formidable than ever before. If there was an ascendency that day, it was hers, for Dana had acted and the winter was over.

They were not going to be allowed to forget it. Even so, he felt sorry for his last words yesterday evening. Hers had been a gesture unlikely to be repeated.

"It is true," Aileron was saying. "Loren, how can I let you go? Where will we be if you die? Lisen saw a death ship from her tower-what mariner could I ask to sail another?"

"This one." They all turned to the door in astonishment. Coll took two steps forward from his post beside Shain and said clearly, "The High King will know I am from Taerlindel. Before Prince Diarmuid took me from that place to serve in his company, I had spent all my life at sea. If Loren wants a mariner, I will be his man, and my mother's father has a ship I built with him. It will take us there with fifty men."

There was a silence. Into which there dropped, like a stone in a pool, the voice of Arthur Pendragon.