The Wandering Fire Part 6

"What exactly are we talking about?" the Prince asked.

"Owein," Levon said tensely. There was a brightness in his face. "I want to wake the Sleepers and set free the Wild Hunt!"

It held them, if only for a moment.

"What fun!" said Diarmuid, but Dave could see a gleam in his eye, answering Levon's.

Only Gereint laughed, a low, unsettling sound. "What fun," the shaman repeated, chuckling to himself as he rocked back and forth.

It was just afterward that they noticed that Tabor had fainted.

He'd revived by morning and come out, pale but cheerful, to bid them good-bye. Dave would have stayed with the Dalrei if he could, but they needed him for the horn, it seemed, and Levon and Tore were coming with them, so it was all right. And they'd be meeting again soon in Gwen Ystrat. Morvran was the place Gereint had named.

He was thinking about Gereint's laughter as they set off south again to meet the road to Paras Derval where it began to the west of Lake Leinan. In any normal weather, Levon said, they would have cut across the grazing lands of north Brennin, but not with the ice and snow of this unnatural season.

Kevin was riding, uncharacteristically subdued, with a couple of Diarmuid's men, including the one he'd so asininely jumped the night before. That was fine by Dave; he wanted nothing to do with the other man. If people wanted to call it jealousy, let them. He didn't care enough to explain. He wasn't about to confide in anyone that he'd renounced the girl himself-to Green Ceinwen in the wood. Nor was he about to recount what the G.o.ddess had replied.

She's Tore's, he'd said.

Has she no other choice? Ceinwen had answered, and laughed before she disappeared.

That part was Dave's own business.

For now, though, he had catching up to do with the men he called his brothers, ever since a ritual in Pendaran Wood. Eventually the catching up took them to the moment in the muddy fields around Stonehenge where Kevin had been explaining to the guards in French and mangled English what he and Jennifer were doing necking in forbidden territory. It had been a remarkably effective performance, and it had lasted precisely until the moment when the four of them had felt the sudden shock of power gathering them together and hurling them into the cold, dark crossing between worlds.

CHAPTER 6.

It was, Jennifer realized, as the now-familiar cold of the crossing receded, the same room as the first time. Not the same as her second crossing, though, when she and Paul had come through so hard they had both fallen to their knees in the snow-drifted streets of the town.

It had been there, while Paul, still dazed, had struggled to his feet under the swinging sign of the Black Boar, that she had felt the first pangs of premature labor. And with these, as she grasped where he had somehow taken them, she had had a sudden memory of a woman crying in the shop doorway by the green, and her way had seemed very clear.

So they had come to Vae's house and Darien had been born, after which a great deal seemed to change within her. Since Starkadh she had become a creature of jarring angles and dislocated responses. The world, her own world, was tinted balefully, and the possibility of ever one day crossing back to ordinary human interaction seemed a laughable, hopeless abstraction. She had been carved open by Maugrim; what healing was there anywhere for that?

Then Paul had come and said what he had said, had opened with his tone, as much as anything, the glimmering of a path. However much Rakoth might be, he was not all, not everything; he had not been able to stop Kim from coming for her.

And he could not stop her child from being born.

Or so she thought until, with a lurch of terror, she had seen Galadan in their own world. And she had heard him say that she would die, which meant the child.

So she had said to Paul that she would curse him if he failed. How had she said such a thing? From where had that come?

It seemed another person, another woman entirely, and perhaps it was. For since the child had been born and named and sent out into the worlds of the Weaver to be her own response to what had been done to her, her one random weft of thread laid across the warp-since then, Jennifer had been astonished at how mild everything was.

No angles or jarrings any more. Nothing seemed to hurt; it was all too far away. She had found herself capable of dealing with others, of surprising acts of gentleness. There were no storm winds any more; no sunshine either. She moved in slow motion, it sometimes seemed, through a landscape of grey, with grey clouds overhead; at times, but only at times, the memory of color, of vibrancy, would come to her like the low surge of a distant sea.

And all this was fine. It was not health; she was wise enough to understand that much, but it was infinitely better than what had been before. If she could not be happy and whole, at least she could be... mild.

The gentleness was an unexpected gift, a compensation of sorts for love, which had been mangled in Starkadh, and for desire, which had died.

Being touched was a difficult thing-not a sharp, hurting problem, but difficult, and when it happened she could feel herself twisting inwardly, a small fragile person who had once been Jennifer Lowell and golden. Even the dissembling at Stonehenge earlier that night, where she and Kevin had deceived the guards into believing that they were Gallic lovers seeking the pagan blessing of the stones-even then it had been difficult to feel his mouth on hers before the guards came. And impossible not to let him sense this, for it was hard to hide things from Kevin. But how, from this mild grey country in which she moved, did one tell a former lover, and the kindest of them all, that he had lain with her in Starkadh, obscene and distorted, black blood dripping from his severed hand to burn her flesh? How to explain that there was no going back past that, or forward from that place?

She had let him hold her, had simulated embarra.s.sed dismay when the guards had come up to them, and had smiled and pouted mutely, as instructed, while Kevin launched into his frantic, incoherent explanation.

Then she had felt the gathering and the cold, as Kim took hold of them, and now they were in this room, their first room in Paras Derval, and it was night again.

The tapestry was the same and the torches were blazing this time, so they could make it out properly: the dazzlingly crafted depiction of Iorweth the Founder in the G.o.dwood, before the Summer Tree. Jennifer, Kevin, and Dave glanced at it, then all three of them looked, instinctively, at Paul.

Scarcely pausing to acknowledge the tapestry, he moved quickly to the unguarded doorway. There had been a guard the last time, Jennifer remembered, and Matt Soren had thrown a knife.

This time, Paul stepped into the corridor and called softly. There was a noisy clatter of weaponry, and a moment later a terrified boy, in gear a size too large for him, came forward down the corridor with a bow drawn none too steadily.

"I know you," said Paul, ignoring the bow. "You're Tarn. You were the King's page. Do you remember me?"

The bow was lowered. "I do, my lord. From the ta'bael game. You are..." There was awe in the boy's face.

"I am Pwyll, yes," Schafer said simply. "Are you a guard now, Tarn?"

"Yes, my lord. I am too old to be a page."

"So I see. Is the High King in the palace tonight?"

"Yes, my lord. Shall I-"

"Why don't you lead us to him," Paul said. It was Kevin who heard, and remembered hearing before, the crisp tone in Schafer's voice. There had been an undeniable tension between Paul and Aileron when last they had met. Apparently it still existed.

They followed the boy through a web of corridors and down one drafty flight of stone stairs before they came at length to a pair of doors that only Paul remembered.

Tarn knocked and withdrew; after a startled glance, a tall guard admitted them.

The room had changed, Paul saw. The gorgeous wall hangings had been taken down, and in their place had been hung a sequence of maps and charts. Gone too were the deep armchairs he remembered; in their place were a number of hard wooden seats and a long bench.

The chessboard with its exquisitely carved pieces was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a huge table stood in the middle of the room and on it lay an enormous map of Fionavar. Bent over the map, his back to the door, stood a man of average height, simply dressed in brown, with a fur vest over his shirt against the cold.

"Who is it, Shain?" the man said, not pausing in his scrutiny of the map.

"If you turn around you can see for yourself," Paul Schafer said before the guard could make reply.

And, very fast, Aileron did turn, almost before Paul's voice died away. His eyes above the beard blazed with an intensity three of them remembered.

"Mornir be praised!" the High King exclaimed, taking a few quick steps toward them. Then he stopped and his face changed. He looked from one to another. "Where is she?" cried Aileron dan Ailell. "Where is my Seer?"

"She's coming," Kevin said, moving forward. "She's bringing someone with her."

"Who?" Aileron snapped.

Kevin looked at Paul, who shook his head. "She'll tell you herself, if she succeeds. I think it is hers to tell, Aileron."

The King glared at Paul as if minded to pursue it further, but then his face softened. "Very well," he said. "So long as she is coming. I have... very great need of her." After a moment a wry tone came into his voice. "I am bad at this, am I not? You deserve a fairer greeting, all of you. And is this Jennifer?"

He came to stand before her. She remembered his brother and their first meeting. This one, austere and self-contained, did not call her a peach, nor did he bend to kiss her hand. Instead, he said awkwardly, "You have suffered in our cause, and I am sorry for it. Are you well now?"

"Well enough," she said. "I'm here."

His eyes searched hers. "Why?" Aileron asked.

A good question and one n.o.body had asked her, not even Kim. There was an answer, but she wasn't about to give it now to this abrasive young King of Brennin. "I've come this far," she said levelly, meeting his look with her own light green eyes. "I'll stay the course."

Men better versed in dealing with women had broken off a stare when faced with Jennifer's gaze. Aileron turned away. "Good," he said, walking back to the map on the table. "You can help. You will have to tell us everything you remember of Starkadh."

"Hey!" Dave Martyniuk said. "That's not fair. She was badly hurt there. She's trying to forget!"

"We need to know," Aileron said. Men, he could outface.

"And you don't care how you find out?" Kevin asked, a dangerous quality in his voice.

"Not really," the King replied. "Not in this war."

The silence was broken by Jennifer. "It's all right," she said. "I'll tell what I can remember. But not to you"-she indicated the King-"or any of the rest of you either, I'm afraid. I'll talk about it to Loren and Matt. No one else."

The mage had grown older since last they had seen him. There was more white among the grey of his beard and hair, deeper lines in his face. His eyes were the same as ever, though: commanding and compa.s.sionate at the same time. And Matt Soren hadn't changed at all, not even the Dwarf's twisted grimace that pa.s.sed for a smile.

They all recognized it for what it was, though, and after the brittleness of Aileron the greeting they received from mage and source marked, for all of them, their true return to Fionavar. When Matt took her hand between his own two calloused ones, Jennifer cried.

"We never knew," Loren Silvercloak said, a roughness in his voice. "We didn't know if she pulled you out. And only Jaelle heard the last warning about Starkadh. It saved many lives. We would have attacked."

"And then the winter came," Aileron said. "And there was no hope of attack or anything. We've been unable to do anything at all."

"We can offer wine to our guests," the Dwarf said tartly.

"Shain, find some cups and serve anyone who wants it," Aileron said absently. "We need Kim badly," he went on. "We have to find out how Maugrim is controlling the winter-it was not a thing he could ever do before. The lios have confirmed that."

"He's making it worse?" Paul asked soberly.

There was a silence. Loren broke it. "You don't understand," he said softly. "He is making it. He has twisted the seasons utterly. These snows have been here for nine months, Pwyll. In six nights it will be Midsummer's Eve."

They looked out the window. There was ice on the gla.s.s. It was snowing again, and a bitter wind was howling about the walls. Even with two fires blazing in the room and torches everywhere, it was very cold.

"Oh, G.o.d!" said Dave abruptly. "What's happening to the Dalrei?"

"They are gathered near the Latham," Loren said. "The tribes and the eltor."

"Just in that corner?" Dave exclaimed. "The whole Plain is theirs!"

"Not now," Aileron said, and there was helpless anger in his voice. "Not while this winter lasts."

"Can we stop it?" Kevin asked.

"Not until we know how he is doing it," Loren replied.

"And so you want Kim?" Paul said. He had walked away from the others to stand by the window.

"And someone else. I want to bring Gereint here, Ivor's shaman. To see if all of us together can break through the screen of ice and snow to find their source. If we do not," the mage said, "we may lose this war before it begins. And we must not lose this war."

Aileron said nothing. It was all in his eyes.

"All right," said Jennifer carefully. "Kim's on her way, I think. I hope. In the meantime, I guess I have some things to tell Loren and Matt."

"Now?" Kevin asked.

"Why not?" She smiled, though not an easy smile. "I'll just take some of that wine, Shain. If n.o.body minds."

She and the mage and his source withdrew into an inner chamber. The others looked at each other.

"Where's Diarmuid?" Kevin said suddenly. "Where do you think?" Aileron replied.

About half an hour earlier, shortly after Matt and Loren had left for the palace, Zervan of Seresh had lain in his bed in the mages' quarters, not sleeping.

He had no real duties left: he had built up the front-room fire to a level that should last the night, and he knew that if Brock returned before the other two, he'd build it up again for them.

It was never a hard life being servant to the mages. He had been with them now for twenty years, ever since they had told him he was not cut from mage cloth himself. It hadn't been a surprise; he'd sensed it very early. But he had liked all three of them-even, though it was a bitter memory, Metran, who had been clever before he had been old, before he turned out to be a traitor. He had liked Paras Derval too, the energy of the town, the nearness of the palace. It was nice being at the center of things.

When Teyrnon had asked him, Zervan had been pleased to stay on and serve the mages.

Over twenty years the original liking had grown to something akin to love. The four of them who were left, Loren and Teyrnon, Matt and Barak, were the nearest to family that Zervan had, and he worried over them all with a fussy, compulsive eye for detail.

He had been briefly ruffled when Brock of Banir Tal had come to live with them a year before. But although the new Dwarf was obviously of high rank among his people, he was un.o.btrusive and undemanding, and Zervan quite approved of his manifest devotion to Matt Soren. Zervan had always thought Matt drove himself too hard, and it was good to have Brock around in support, sharing the same view.

It was from Brock that Zervan had come to understand the source of Matt's occasional descents into deep moodiness and a silence that was marked even in one of taciturn nature. It was clear now to Zervan: Matt Soren, who had been King under Banir Lok, was silent and grim when he was fighting off the ceaseless pull of Calor Diman, the Crystal Lake. All Dwarf Kings, Brock had explained, spent a full moon night beside that lake between the twin mountains. If they survived what they saw, and were still sane, they could claim the Diamond Crown. And never, Brock said, never would they be free of the tidal pull of Calor Diman. It was this tide, Zervan understood, that so often pulled Loren's source awake at night, around the time of the full moon, to pace his room with a measured tread, back and forth, unsleeping until dawn.

But tonight it was Zervan himself who could not sleep. Matt was in the palace with Loren. Brock, tactfully, had excused himself to go off to the Black Boar. He often did something like that, to leave mage and source alone. Zervan, alone in the house, was awake because, twice now, he had heard a sound from outside his window.

The third time Zervan swung out of bed, dressed himself, and went to take a look. Pa.s.sing through the front room, he threw a few more pieces of wood on each of the fires and then took a stout stick to carry with him. Opening the door, he went out into the street.

It was bitterly cold. His breath frosted, and even through gloves he could feel his fingertips chilling. Only the wind greeted him, and the unnatural snow. He walked around the side of the house toward the back where the bedrooms were and from where he thought he'd heard a sound.

A cat, he thought, crunching through the snow between the house and the one next door. I probably heard a cat. There were no footprints in the snow ahead of him. Somewhat rea.s.sured, he rounded the corner at the back of the house.

He had time to see what it was, to feel his mind grapple with the impossibility, and to know why there were no footsteps in the snow.

He had no time to shout or scream or give any kind of warning at all.

A long finger reached out. It touched him and he died.