The Darkest Road

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He released his grip on her arm. He apologized. She shook her head, with a sadness that went into him like a blade.

  She said, “This land was always dangerous to anyone other than our kind, even before Lathen Mistweaver’s time, when these shadows came down. Those men were horsemen from before the Bael Rangat, and they are lost. There is nothing we can do for them. They are in no time we know, to be spoken to or saved. Had we space for the telling, I might spin you the tale of Revor, who risked that fate in the service of Light a thousand years ago.”

  “Had we space for the telling,” he said, “I would take pleasure in that.”

  She seemed about to say something more, but then her eyes—they were a pale, quiet blue now, much like the last of the flowers they had passed—looked beyond his face, and he turned.

  West of them lay a thicket of trees. The leaves of the trees were of many colors even in midsummer, and the woods were very beautiful, offering a promise of peace, of quiet shade, of a place where the sunlight might slant down through the leaves, with a brook murmuring not far away.

  Above the southernmost of the trees of that small wood, at the very edge of Daniloth, an owl hung suspended, wings spread wide and motionless in the clear morning air.

  Lancelot looked, and he saw the sheath of a dagger held in the owl’s mouth glint with a streak of blue in the mild light. He turned back to the woman beside him. Her eyes had changed color. They were dark, looking upon the owl that hung in the air before them.

  “Not this one,” she said, before he could speak. He heard the fear, the denial in her voice. “Oh, my lord, surely not this one?”

  He said, “This is the child I have been sent to follow and to guard.”

  “Can you not see the evil within him?” Leyse cried. Her voice was loud in the quiet of that place. There was music in it still, but strained now, and overlaid by many things.

  “I know it is there,” he said. “I know also that there is a yearning after light. Both are part of his road.”

  “Then let the road end here,” she said. It was a plea. She turned to him. “My lord, there is too much darkness in this one. I can feel it even from where we stand.”

  She was a Child of Light, and she stood in Daniloth. Her certainty planted a momentary doubt in his own heart. It never took root; he had his own certainties.

  He said, “There is darkness everywhere now. We cannot avoid it; only break through, and not easily. In the danger of this might lie our hope of passage.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Who is he?” she asked finally.

  He had been hoping she would not ask, for many reasons. But when the question came, he did not turn away. “Guinevere’s child,” he said levelly, though it cost him something. “And Rakoth Maugrim’s. He took her by force in Starkadh. And therein lies the evil you see, and the hope of light beyond.”

  There was pain now, overlying the fear in her eyes.

  And under both of those things, at bedrock, was love. He had seen it before, too many times.

  She said, “And you think she will prove stronger?” Music in her voice again, distant but very clear.

  “It is a hope,” he replied, gravely honest. “No more than that.”

  “And you would act and have me act upon that hope?” Music still.

  “She has asked me to guard him,” he said quietly. “To see him through to the choice he has to make. I can do no more than ask you. I have only the request.”

  She shook her head. “You have more than that,” she said.

  And with the words she turned away from him, leaving her heart. She looked at the motionless bird, child of Dark and Light. Then she gestured with her long graceful hands and sang a word of power to shape a space through which he could fly over the Shadowland. She made a corridor for Darien, a rift in the mists of time that coiled through Daniloth, and she watched with an inner, brilliant sight, as he flew north along that corridor, over the mound of Atronel and beyond, coming out at length above the River Celyn, where she lost him.

  It took a long time. Lancelot waited beside her, silent all the while. He had seen Darien’s flight begin, but when the owl had gone some distance north over the many-colored leaves of the forest, it was lost to his mortal sight. He continued to wait, knowing, among many other things, that this was as far as he would be able to follow Guinevere’s child, the last service he could offer. It was a sorrow.

  He was conscious, as he stood beside Leyse and the pale sun climbed higher in the sky, of a great weariness and not a little pain. There was a fragrance in the meadow, and birdsong in the woods nearby. He could hear the sound of water. Without actually being aware of having done so, he found himself sitting upon the grass at the woman’s feet. And then, in a trance half shaped by Daniloth and half by marrow-deep exhaustion, he lay down and fell asleep.

  When the owl had passed beyond the northernmost borders of her land and she had lost him beyond the mist, Leyse let her mind come back to where she stood. It was early in the afternoon, and the light was as bright as it ever became. Even so, she too was very tired. What she had done was not an easy thing, made harder for one of the Swan Mark by the inescapable resonance of evil she had sensed.

  She looked down upon the man, fast asleep beside her. There was a quiet now in her heart, an acceptance of what had come to her beside the waters of Fiathal. She knew he would not stay unless she bound him by magic to this place, and she would not do that.

  One thing, only, she would allow herself. She looked at his sleeping face for a very long tune, committing it to the memory of her soul. Then she lay down beside him on the soft, scented grass and slipped her hand into his wounded one. No more than that, for in her pride she would go no further. And linked in that fashion for a too-brief summer’s afternoon, joined only by their interwoven fingers, she fell asleep for one time and the only time beside Lancelot, whom she loved.

  Through the afternoon they slept, and in the quiet peace of Daniloth nothing came, not so much as a dream, to cause either of them to stir. Far to the east, across the looming barrier of the mountains, the Dwarves of Banir Lok and Banir Tal waited for sunset and the judgment of their Crystal Lake. Nearer, on the wide Plain, a Dwarf and an Eridun and an exile of the Dalrei reached the camp of the High King and were made welcome there before the army set out for the last hours of the ride to Gwynir and the eastern borders of this Shadowland.

  And north of them, as they slept, Darien was flying to his father.

  They woke at the same time, as the sun went down. In the twilight Lancelot gazed at her, and he saw her hair and eyes gleam in the dusk beside him, beautiful and strange. He looked down at her long fingers, laced through his own. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the last of that deep peace wash over him like a tide. A withdrawing tide.

  Very gently, then, he disengaged his hand. Neither of them spoke. He rose. There was a faint phosphorescence to the grass and to the leaves of the wood nearby, as if the growing things of Daniloth were reluctant to yield the light. It was the same gleaming he saw in her eyes and in the halo of her hair. There were echoes of many things in his mind, memories. He was careful not to let her see.

  He helped her rise. Slowly the glow of light faded—from the leaves and the grass and then, last of all, from Leyse. She turned to the west and pointed. He followed the line of her arm and saw a star.

  “Lauriel’s,” she said. “We have named the evening star for her.” And then she sang. He listened, and partway through he wept, for many reasons.

  When her song was done she turned and saw his tears. She said nothing more, nor did he speak. She led him north through Daniloth, sheltered from the mist and the loops of time by her presence. All the night they walked. She led him up the mound of Atronel, past the Crystal Throne, and then down the other side, and Lancelot du Lac was the first mortal man ever to ascend that place.

  In time they came to the southern bay of Celyn Lake, the arm that dipped down into Daniloth, and they went along its b
anks to the north, not because it was quickest or easiest but because she loved this place and wanted him to see. There were night flowers in bloom along the shore, giving off their scent, and out over the water he saw strange, elusive figures dancing on the waves and he heard music all the while.

  At length they came to the edge of a river, where it left the waters of the lake, and they turned to the west as the first hint of dawn touched the sky behind them. And a very little while later Leyse stopped, and turned to Lancelot.

  “The river is quiet here,” she said, “and there are stepping stones along which you may cross. I can go no farther. On the other side of Celyn you will be in Andarien.”

  He looked upon the beauty of her for a long time in silence. When he opened his mouth to speak he was stopped, for she placed her fingers over his lips.

  “Say nothing,” she whispered. “There is nothing you can say.”

  It was true. A moment longer he stood there; then very slowly she drew her hand away from his mouth, and he turned and crossed the river over the smooth round stones and so left Daniloth.

  He didn’t go far. Whether it was an instinct of war, or of love, or of the two bound into each other, he went only as far as a small copse of trees on the banks of the river near the lake. There were willows growing in the Celyn, and beautiful flowers, silver and red. He didn’t know their name. He sat down in that place of beauty as the dawn broke—dazzling after the muted light of the Shadowland—and he gazed out upon the ruined desolation of Andarien. He looped his hands over his knees, placed his sword where he could reach it, and composed himself to wait, facing west toward the sea.

  She waited as well, though she had told herself all through the long night’s silent walking that she would not linger. She had not expected him to stay so near, though, and her resolution faltered as soon as he was not there.

  She saw him walk toward the aum trees and then sit down amid the sylvain she loved in her most cherished place of any in this one world she knew. She knew he could not see her standing here, and it was not easy for her to see clearly either, beyond the encircling billows of the mist.

  She waited, nonetheless, and toward the middle of the afternoon a company of some fifty people approached from the west, along the riverbank.

  She saw him rise. She saw the company stop not far away from him. Leading them was Brendel of the Kestrel Mark, and she knew that if he looked to the south he would see her. He did not.

  He remained with the others and watched with the others as a woman, fair-haired, very tall, walked toward Lancelot. It seemed to Leyse that the mists parted a little for her then—a blessing or a curse, she could not say—and she saw Lancelot’s face clearly as Guinevere came up to him.

  She saw him kneel, and take her hand in his good one, and bring it to his lips, the same as he had done with hers when he had first approached her over the grass by Fiathal.

  Yet not the same. Not the same.

  And it came to pass that in that moment Leyse of the Swan Mark heard her song.

  She went away from that place, walking alone, hidden by the screening of the shadows, and within her a song was building all the time, a last song.

  Along the riverbank farther west she found, amid the willows and corandiel, a small craft of aum wood with a single sail white as her own white robe. She had walked past this place a thousand times before and never seen that boat. It had not been there, she realized. The music of her song had called it forth. She’d always thought that she would have to build her boat, when the time came, and had wondered how she would.

  Now she knew. The song was within her, rising all the while, shaping a sweeter and sweeter sadness and a promise of peace to come beyond the waves.

  She stepped down into the boat and pushed off from the restraining shallows and the willows. As she drifted close to the northern bank of the Celyn she plucked one red flower of sylvain and one of silver to carry with her, as the music carried her and the river carried her to the sea.

  She did not know, and it was a granting of grace that she was spared the knowing, how very much an echo this too was of the story she had been brought into, how deeply woven it was into that saddest story of all the long tales told. She drifted with the current with her flowers in her hand, and at length she reached the sea.

  And that craft, shaped by magic, brought into being by a longing that was of the very essence of the lios alfar, did not founder among the waves of the wide sea. Westward it went, and farther westward still, and farther yet, until at length it had gone far enough and had reached the place where everything changed, including the world. And in this fashion did Leyse of the Swan Mark sail past the waters where the Soulmonger had lain in wait, and so became the first of her people for past a thousand years to reach the world the Weaver had shaped for the Children of Light alone.

  Chapter 13

  The sun had set and so the glow of the walls had faded. Torches flickered in the brackets now. They burned without smoke; Kim didn’t know how. She stood with the others at the foot of the ninety-nine stairs that led to the Crystal Lake, and a feeling of dread was in her heart.

  There were eight of them there. Kaen had brought two Dwarves she didn’t know; she and Loren had come with Matt; and Miach and Ingen were present for the Dwarfmoot, to bear witness to the judgment of Calor Diman. Loren carried an object wrapped in a heavy cloth, and so did one of Kaen’s companions. The crystals—fruits of an afternoon’s crafting. Gifts for the Lake.

  Kaen had donned a heavy black cloak clasped at the throat with a single brooch worked in gold, with a vein of blue thieren that flashed in the torchlight. Matt was dressed as he always was, in brown with a wide leather belt, and boots, and no adornment at all. Kim looked at his face. It was expressionless, but he seemed strangely vivid, flushed, almost as if he were glowing. No one spoke. At a gesture from Miach, they began to climb.

  The stairs were very old, the stone crumbling in places, worn smooth and slippery in others, an inescapable contrast to the polished, highly worked architecture everywhere else. The walls were rough, unfinished, with sharp edges that might cut if not avoided. It was hard to see clearly. The torches cast shadows as much as light.

  The primitive stairway seemed to Kim to be carrying her back in time more than anything else. She was profoundly aware of being within a mountain. There was a growing consciousness of raw power massed all about her, a power of rock and stone, of earth upthrust to challenge sky. An image came into her mind: titanic forces battling, with mountains for boulders to hurl at each other. She felt the absence of the Baelrath with an intensity that bordered on despair.

  They came to the door at the top of the stairs.

  It was not like the ones she had seen—entranceways of consummate artistry that could slide into and out of the surrounding walls, or high carved arches with their perfectly measured proportions. She had known, halfway up, that this door wouldn’t be like any of the others.

  It was of stone, not particularly large, with a heavy, blackened iron lock. They waited on the threshold as Miach walked up to it, leaning upon his staff. He drew an iron key from within his robe and turned it slowly, with some effort, in the lock. Then he grasped the handle and pulled. The door swung open, revealing the dark night sky beyond, with a handful of stars framed in the opening.

  They walked out in silence to the meadow of Calor Diman.

  She had seen it before, in a vision on the road to Ysanne’s lake. She’d thought that might have prepared her. It had not. There was no preparing for this place. The blue-green meadow lay in the bowl of the mountains like a hidden, fragile thing of infinite worth. And cradled within the meadow, as the meadow lay within the circle of the peaks, were the motionless waters of the Crystal Lake.

  The water was dark, almost black. Kim had a swift apprehension of how deep and cold it would be. Here and there, though, along the silent surface of the water she could see a gleam of light, as the Lake gave back the light of the early stars. The thinning moon had n
ot yet risen; she knew Calor Diman would shine when the moon came up over Banir Lok.

  And she suddenly had a sense—only a sense, but that was a good deal more than enough—of how utterly alien, how terrifying this place would be when a full moon shone down on it, and Calor Diman shone back upon the sky, casting an inhuman light over the meadow and the mountainsides. This would be no place for mortals on such a night. Madness would lie in the sky and in the deep waters, in every gleaming blade of grass, in the ancient, watchful, shining crags.

  Even now, by starlight, it was not easy to bear. She had never realized how sharp a danger lay in beauty. And there was something more as well, something deeper and colder, as the Lake itself was deep and cold. Each passing second, while the night gathered and the stars grew blighter, made her more and more conscious of magic here, waiting to be unleashed. She was grateful beyond words for the green shielding of the vellin stone: Matt’s gift, she remembered.

  She looked at him, who had been here on a night of the full moon, and had survived and been made King by that. She looked, with a newer, deeper understanding, and saw that he was gazing back at her, his face still vivid with that strange, glowing intensity. He had come home, she realized. The tide of the Lake in his heart had drawn him back. There was no longer any need to fight its pull.

  No need to fight. Only judgment to be endured. With so very much at risk here in this mountain bowl, most of the way, it seemed, to the stars. She thought of the army of the Dwarves across the dividing range of the mountains. She had no idea of what to do, none at all.

  Matt came over to her. With a gesture of his head, not speaking, he motioned her to walk a little way apart. She went with him from the others. She put up the hood of her robe and plunged her hands in the pockets. It was very cold. She looked down at Matt and said nothing, waiting.