Paul was crying, whose dry eyes had sent him to the Summer Tree. “Farewell,” he said, but softly. “And go lightly. There is some brightness allowed. Even for you. The morning will offer light.”
He watched the dog go up the slope down which he had come and then disappear past the curve around which Kevin, too, had gone.
At length he rose and, taking the reins of the horse, unlatched the gate and walked over to the barn. He put his horse in an empty stall.
Closing the barn and then the gate, he walked through the yard to the back door of the cottage and stepped up on the porch. Before knocking he looked up: stars and moon overhead, a few fast-moving wisps of cloud scudding southward with the wind. Nothing else to be seen. They were up there, he knew, nine horsemen in the sky. Eight of them were kings, but the one on the white horse was a child.
He knocked and, so as not to frighten her, called softly, “It is a friend. You will know me.”
She opened it quickly this time, surprising him. Her eyes were hollowed. She clutched a robe about herself. She said, “I thought someone might come. I left a light.”
“Thank you,” said Paul.
“Come in. He is asleep, finally. Please be quiet.”
Paul stepped inside. She moved to take his coat and saw he wasn’t wearing one. Her eyes widened.
“I have some power,” he said. “If you will let me, I thought I’d stay the night.”
She said, “He is gone, then?” A voice far past tears. It was worse, somehow.
Paul nodded. “What can I say? Do you want to know?”
She had courage; she did want to know. He told her softly, so as not to wake the child. After he had done, she said only, “It is a cold fate for one with so warm a heart.”
Paul tried. “He will ride now through all the worlds of the Tapestry. He may never die.”
She was a young woman still, but not her eyes that night. “A cold fate,” she repeated, rocking in the chair before the fire.
In the silence he heard the child turn in its bed behind the drawn curtain. He looked over.
“He was up very late,” Vae murmured. “Waiting. He did a thing this afternoon—he traced a flower in the snow. They used to do it together, as children will, but this one Dari did alone, after Finn left. And … he coloured it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I don’t know how, but he tinted the snow to colour his flower. You’ll see in the morning.”
“I probably marred it just now, crossing the yard.”
“Probably,” she said. “There is little left of the night, but I think I will try to sleep. You look very tired, too.”
He shrugged.
“There is only Finn’s bed,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He rose. “That will suit me very well.”
A short while later, in the dark, he heard two things. The first was the sound of a mother crying for her child, and the second was the wind outside growing in strength in the hours before dawn.
The calling came. It woke Dari, as it always did. At first it felt like a dream again but he rubbed his eyes and knew he was awake, though very tired. He listened, and it seemed to him that there was something new this time. They were crying for him to come out with them, as they always did, but the voices in the wind were naming him by another name.
He was cold, though, and if he was cold in his bed, he would die outside in the wind. Little boys couldn’t go out into that wind. He was very cold. Rubbing his eyes drowsily, he slid into his slippers and voyaged across the floor to crawl into bed with Finn.
But it wasn’t Finn who was there. A dark figure rose up in Finn’s own bed and said to him, “Yes, Darien, what can I do?”
Dari was frightened but he didn’t want to wake his mother so he didn’t cry. He padded back to his own bed, which was even colder now, and lay wide awake, wanting Finn, not understanding how Finn, who was supposed to love him, could have left him all alone. After a while he felt his eyes change colour; he could always feel it inside. They had changed when he did the flower, and now they did so again, and he lay there hearing the wind voices more clearly than he ever had before.
PART III
DUN MAURA
Chapter 10
In the morning a shining company left Paras Derval by the eastern gate, led by two Kings. And with them were the children of Kings, Diarmuid dan Ailell, Levon dan Ivor, and Sharra dal Shalhassan; and there were also Matt Sören, who had been a King, and Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior, cursed to be a King forever without rest; and there were many great and high ones beside, and five hundred men of Brennin and Cathal.
Grey was the morning under grey clouds from the north, but bright was the mood of Aileron the High King, freed at last from powerless planning within his walls. And his exhilaration at being released to act ran through the mingled armies like a thread of gold.
He wanted to set a swift pace, for there were things to be done in Morvran that night, but scarcely had the company cleared the outskirts of the town when he was forced to raise his hand and bring them to a stop.
On the snow-clad slope north of the cleared road a dog barked, sharp and carrying in the cold air. And then as the High King, moved by some instinct, signalled the halt, they heard the dog bark three times more, and every man in that company who knew dogs heard frantic joy in the sound.
Even as they stopped, they saw the grey shape of a hunting dog begin to tumble and dash down through the snow towards them, barking all the while, somersaulting head over tail in its haste.
It was Aileron who saw the light blaze in Arthur’s face. The Warrior leaped from his horse down into the road and, at the top of his great voice, cried, “Cavall!”
Bracing his legs, he opened wide his arms and was knocked flying, nonetheless, by the wild leap of the dog. Over and over they rolled, the dog yelping in intoxicated delight, the Warrior mock growling in his chest.
All through the company, smiles and then laughter began to blossom like flowers in a stony place.
Heedless of his clothing or his dignity, Arthur played in the road with the dog he had named Cavall, and it was a long time before he stood to face the company. Arthur was breathing hard, but there was a brightness to his eyes in which Kim Ford found some belated dispensation for what she had done on Glastonbury Tor.
“This is,” asked Aileron with gentle irony, “your dog?”
With a smile, Arthur acknowledged the tone. But his answer moved them to another place. “He is,” he said, “insofar as he is anyone’s. He was mine once, a very long time ago, but Cavall fights his own wars now.” He looked down at the animal beside him. “And it seems that he has been hurt in those wars.”
When the dog stood still, they could see the network of scars and unevenly regenerated fur that covered its body. They were terrible to look at.
“I can tell you whence those came.” Loren Silvercloak moved his mount to stand beside those of the Kings. “He battled Galadan, the Wolflord, in Mörnirwood to save the life of the one who became the Twiceborn.”
Arthur lifted his head. “The battle foretold? Macha and Nemain’s?”
“Yes,” Kim said, moving forward in her turn.
Arthur’s eyes swung to her. “The Wolflord is the one who seeks the annihilation of this world?”
“He is,” she replied. “Because of Lisen of the Wood, who rejected him for Amairgen.”
“I care not for the reason,” Arthur said, a coldness in his voice. “These are his wolves we go to hunt?”
“They are,” she said.
He turned to Aileron. “My lord King, I had a reason to hunt before this: to forget a grief. There is a second reason now. Is there room in your hunting pack for another dog?”
“There is pride of place,” Aileron replied. “Will you lead us now?”
“Cavall will,” said Arthur, mounting as he spoke. Without a backward glance, the grey dog broke into a run.
Ruana chanted the kanior for Ciroa, but not properly.
It had not been proper for Taieri, either, but to the chant he again added the coda asking forgiveness for this. He was very weak and knew he had not the strength to rise and perform the bloodless rites that were at the heart of the true kanior. Iraima was chanting with him, for which he gave thanks, but Ikatere had fallen silent in the night and lay breathing heavily in his alcove. Ruana knew he was near his end, and grieved, for Ikatere had been golden in friendship.
They were burning Ciroa at the mouth of the cave, and the smoke came in, and the smell of charred flesh. Ruana coughed and broke the rhythm of the kanior. Iraima kept it, though, or else he would have had to start again: there was a coda for failing the bloodless rites, but not for breaking the chant.
After, he rested a little time and then, alone, began the thin chants again: the warnsong and the savesong, one after another. His voice was far from what it had been in the days when those of other caves would ask him to come and lead kanior for their dead. He continued, though, regardless: silence would be the last surrendering. Only when he chanted could he hold his mind from wandering. He wasn’t even sure how many of them were left in the cave, and he had no idea of what was happening in the other caves. No one had kept a count for many years, and they had been set upon in the dark.
Iraima’s sweet voice came back in with him on the third cycle of the warnsong, and then his heart went redgold with grief and love to hear Ikatere chanting deep again with them for a little time. They spoke not, for words were strength, but Ruana shaded his voice to twine about Ikatere’s; he knew his friend would understand.
And then, on the sixth cycle through, as the twilight was descending outside where their captors were camped on the slope, Ruana touched another mind with the savesong. He was singing alone again. Gathering what little was left in him, he focused the chant to a clear point, though it cost him dearly, and sent it out as a beam towards the mind he had found.
Then the mind seized hold of the beam he threw and sent back, effortlessly, the sound of laughter, and Ruana plummeted past black, for he knew whom he had found.
Fool! he heard, and lancets cut within him. Did you think I would not blanket you? Where do you think your feeble sounds have gone?
He was glad he had been chanting alone, that the others need not endure this. He reached inside, wishing again that he had access to hate or rage, though he would have to atone for such a wish. He sent, along the beam the chant had made, You are Rakoth Maugrim. I name you.
And was battered in his mind by laughter. I named myself a long time ago. What power would you find in naming me, fool of a race of fools? Unworthy to be slaves.
Cannot be slaves, Ruana sent. And then: Sathain. The mocking name.
Fire bloomed in his mind. Red-black. He wondered if he could have the other kill him. Then he could—
There was laughter again. You shall have no bloodcurse to send. You shall be lost. Every one of you. And no one will chant kanior for the last. Had you done what I asked, you would have been mighty in Fionavar again. Now I will rip your thread from the Tapestry and wear it about my throat.
Not slaves, Ruana sent, but faintly.
There was laughter. Then the chantbeam snapped.
For a long time Ruana lay in the dark, choking on the smoke of Ciroa’s burning, assailed by the smell of flesh and the sounds the unclean ones made as they feasted.
Then, because he had nothing else to offer, no access to more, and because he would not end in silence, Ruana began the chants again, and Iraima was with him, and much-loved Ikatere. Then his heart came from past black towards gold again to hear Tamure’s voice. With four they essayed the wide chant. Not in hope it would go as far as it had to go, for they were blanketed by the Unraveller and were very weak. Not to get through to anyone, but so as not to die in silence, not servants, never slaves, though their thread be torn from the Loom and lost forever in the Dark.
Hers, Jennifer understood, was a different fate from Arthur’s, though interwoven endlessly. She remembered now. From first sight of his face she had remembered all of it, nor were the stars in his eyes new for her—she had seen them before.
No curse so dark as his had been given her, for no destiny so high, no thread of the Tapestry, had ever been consigned to her name. She was, instead, the agent of his fate, the working out of his bitter grief. She had died; in the abbey at Amesbury she had died—she wondered, now, how she had failed to recognize it by Stonehenge. She had had her rest, her gift of death, and she knew not how many times she had come back to tear him apart, for the children and for love.
She had no idea, remembering only that first life of all, when she had been Guinevere, daughter of Leodegrance, and had ridden to wed in Camelot, now lost and thought to be a dream.
A dream it had been, but more than that, as well. She had come to Camelot from her father’s halls, and there she had done what she had done, and loved as she had loved, and broken a dream and died.
She had only fallen in love twice in her life, with the two shining men of her world. Nor was the second less golden than the first. He was not, whatever might have been said afterwards. And the two men had loved each other, too, making all the angles equal, shaped most perfectly for grief.
Saddest story of all the long tales told.
But, she told herself, it would not unfold again this time, not in Fionavar. He is not here, she had said, and known, for in this if nowhere else she had knowledge. There was no third one walking here, with the easy, envied stride, the hands she had loved. I have been maimed but will not, at least, betray, she had said, while a shower of starlight fell.
And she would not. It was all changed here, profoundly changed. Rakoth Maugrim had set his shadow between the two of them, across the Weaver’s casting on the Loom, and everything was marred. No less a grief, more, even, for her, who had seen the unlight of Starkadh, but if she could not cross to love, she would not shatter him as she had before.
She would stay where she was. Surrounded by the grey-robed priestesses in the grey tone-on-tone of where her soul had come, she would walk among the women in the sanctuary while Arthur went to war against the Dark for love of her, for loss of her, and for the children, too.
Which led her back, as she paced the quiet curving halls of the Temple, to thoughts of Darien. And to these, too, she seemed to have become reconciled. Paul’s doing. Paul, whom she had never understood, but trusted now. She had done what she had done, and they would see where the path led.
Last night, Jaelle had told her about Finn, and they had sat together. She had grieved a little for that boy among the strewn cold stars. Then Kevin had come knocking, very late, had offered blood as all men were bound to do, and then had come to them to say that Paul was with Darien and so it was all right, insofar as it could ever be all right.
Jaelle had left them, after that. Jennifer had said goodbye to Kevin, who was riding east in the morning. There was nothing she could offer in response to the troubled intensity of his gaze, but her new gentleness could speak to the sadness she had always seen in him.
Then, in the morning, Jaelle, too, had gone, leaving her to walk in the quiet Temple, more serene than she could have ever dreamed herself becoming, until from a recessed alcove near the dome she heard the sound of someone crying desperately.
There was no door to the alcove and so, passing by, she looked and then stopped, seeing that it was Leila. She was going to move on, for the grief was naked and she knew the girl was proud, but Leila looked up from the bench where she sat.
“I’m sorry,” said Jennifer. “Can I do anything, or shall I go?”
The girl she remembered from the ta’kiena looked at her with tears brimming in her eyes. “No one can do anything,” she said. “I’ve lost the only man I’ll ever love!”
For all her sympathy and mild serenity, Jennifer had to work hard not to smile. Leila’s voice was so laden with the weighty despair of adolescence it took her back to the traumas of her own teenage years.
On the other hand, s
he’d never lost anyone the way this girl had just lost Finn, or been tuned to anyone the way Leila and Finn had been. The impulse to smile passed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You have a reason to weep. Will it help to hear that time does make it easier?”
As if she had scarcely heard, the girl murmured, “At midwinter full of moon, half a year from now, they will ask me if I wish to be consecrated to these robes. I will accept. I will never love another man.”
She was only a child, but in the voice Jennifer heard a profound resolution.
It moved her. “You are very young,” she said. “Do not let grief turn you so quickly away from love.”
The girl looked up at that. “And who are you to talk?” Leila said.
“That is unfair,” said Jennifer after a shocked silence.
The tears were glistening on Leila’s cheeks. “Maybe,” she said. “But how often have you loved, yourself? Have you not waited all your days for him? And now that Arthur is here you are afraid.”
She had been Guinevere and was capable of dealing with this. There was too much colour in anger, so she said gently, “Is this how it seems to you?”
Leila hadn’t expected that tone. “Yes,” she said, but not defiantly.
“You are a wise child,” said Jennifer, “and perhaps not only a child. You are not wholly wrong, but you must not presume to judge me, Leila. There are greater griefs and lesser, and I am trying to find the lesser.”
“Lesser grief,” Leila repeated. “Where is joy?”
“Not here,” said Jennifer.
“But why?” It was a hurt child asking.
She surprised herself by answering, “Because I broke him once, long ago. And because I was broken here last spring. He is condemned to joylessness and war, and I cannot cross, Leila. Even if I did, I would smash him in the end. I always do.”
“Must it be repeated?”
“Over and over,” she said. The long tale. “Until he is granted release.”
“Then grant it,” said Leila simply. “How shall he be redeemed if not in pain? What else will ever do it? Grant him release.”
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