Fionavar 1 (12 page)

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The Prince walked over, his expression utterly sober. "You saved a man I value," he said. "I owe you both. I was being frivolous when I invited you to come, and unfair. I am grateful now that I did."

"Good," said Kevin succinctly. "I don't much enjoy feeling like excess baggage. And now," he went on, raising his voice so they could all hear, while he buried again that which he had no answer for and no right to answer, "let's cross this stream. I want to see those gardens." And walking past the

Prince, his shoulders straight, head high as he could carry it, he led them back to the rope across the river, grief in his heart like a stone.

One by one then, hand over hand, they did cross. And on the other shore, where sand met cliff in

Cathal, Diarmuid found them what he had promised: the worn handholds carved into the rock five hundred years ago by Alorre, Prince of Brennin, who had been the first and the last to cross the

Saeren into the Garden Country.

Screened by darkness and the sound of the river, they climbed up to where the grass was green and the scent of moss and cyclamen greeted them. The guards were few and careless, easily avoided.

They came to a wood a mile from the river and took shelter there as a light rain began to fall.

Beneath her feet Kimberly could feel the rich texture of the soil, and the sweetness of wildflowers surrounded her. They were in the strand of wood lining the north shore of the lake.

The leaves of

the tall trees, somehow untouched by the drought, filtered the sunlight, leaving a verdant coolness through which they walked, looking for a flower.

Matt had gone back to the palace.

"She will stay with me tonight," the Seer had said. "No harm will touch her by the lake. You have given her the vellin, which was wiser perhaps than even you knew, Matt Sören. I have my powers, too, and Tyrth is here with us."

"Tyrth?" the Dwarf asked.

"My servant," Ysanne replied. "He will take her back when the time conies. Trust me, and go easily. You have done well to bring her here. We have much to talk of, she and I."

So the Dwarf had gone. But there had been little of the promised talk since his departure. To Kim's first stumbled questions the white-haired Seer had offered only a gentle smile and an admonition.

"Patience, child. There are things that come before the telling time. First there is a flower we need.

Come with me, and see if we can find a bannion for tonight."

And so Kim found herself walking through shade and light under the trees, questions tumbling over each other in her mind. Blue-green, Ysanne had said it was, with red like a drop of blood at the heart.

Ahead of her the Seer moved, light and sure-footed over root and fallen branch. She seemed younger in the wood than in Ailell's hall, and here she carried no staff to lean upon. Which triggered another question, and this one broke through.

"Do you feel the drought the way I do?"

Ysanne stopped at that and regarded Kim a moment, her eyes bright in the seamed, wizened face.

She turned again, though, and continued walking, scanning the ground on either side of the twisting path. When her answer came Kim was unprepared.

"Not the same way. It tires me, and there is a sense of oppression. But not actual pain, as with
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you.

I can-there!" And darting quickly to one side she knelt on the earth.

The red at the center did look like blood against the sea-colored petals of the bannion.

"I knew we would find one today," said Ysanne, and her voice had roughened. "It has been years, so many, many years." With care she uprooted the flower and rose to her feet. "Come, child, we will take this home. And I will try to tell you what you need to know."

"Why did you say you'd been waiting for me?" They were in the front room of Ysanne's cottage, in chairs beside the fireplace. Late afternoon. Through the window Kim could see the figure of the servant, Tyrth, mending the fence in back of the cottage. A few chickens scrabbled and pecked in the yard, and there was a goat tied to a post in a corner. Around the walls of the room were shelves upon which, in labelled jars, stood plants and herbs of astonishing variety, many with names Kim could not recognize. There was little furniture: the two chairs, a large table, a small, neat bed in an alcove off the back of the room.

Ysanne sipped at her drink before replying. They were drinking something that tasted like camomile.

"I dreamt you," the Seer said. "Many times. That is how I see such.things as I do see. Which have grown fewer and more clouded of late. You were clear, though, hair and eyes. I saw your face."

"Why, though? What am I, that you should dream of me?"

"You already know the answer to that. From the crossing. From the land's pain, which is yours, child. You are a Seer as I am, and more, I think, than I have ever been." Cold suddenly in the hot, dry summer, Kim turned her head away.

"But," she said in a small voice, "I don't know anything."

"Which is why I am to teach you what I know. That is why you are here."

There was a complex silence in the room. The two women, one old, the other younger than her years, looked at each other through identical grey eyes under white hair and brown, and a breeze like a finger blew in upon them from the lake.

"My lady."

The voice abraded the stillness. Kim turned to see Tyrth in the window. Thick black hair and a full beard framed eyes so dark they were almost black. He was not a big man, but his arms on the window sill were corded with muscle and tanned a deep brown by labor in the sun.

Ysanne, unstartled, turned to him. "Tyrth, yes, I meant to call you. Can you make up another bed for me? We have a guest tonight. This is Kimberly, who crossed with Loren two nights past."

Tyrth met her eyes for an instant only, then an awkward hand brushed at the thick hair tumbling over his forehead. "I'll do a proper bed then. But in the meanwhile, I've seen something you should know of. . . ."

"The wolves?" Ysanne asked tranquilly. Tyrth, after a bemused moment, nodded. "I saw them the other night," the Seer went on. "While I slept. There isn't much we can do. I left word in the palace with Loren yesterday."

"I don't like it," Tyrth muttered. "There haven't been wolves this far south in my lifetime. Big ones, too. They shouldn't be so big." And turning his head, he spat in the dust of the yard before touching his forehead again and walking from the window. As he moved away Kim saw that he limped, favoring his left foot.

Ysanne followed her glance. "A broken bone," she said, "badly set years ago. He'll walk like that all his life. I'm lucky to have him, though-no one else would serve a witch." She smiled. "Your lessons begin tonight, I think."

"How?"

Ysanne nodded towards the bannion resting on the table top. "It begins with the flower," she said.

"It did for me, a long time ago."

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The waning moon rose late, and it was full dark when the two women made their way beneath it to stand by the edge of the lake. The breeze was delicate and cool, and the water lapped the shore gently, like a lover. Over their heads the summer stars were strung like filigree.

Ysanne's face had gone austere and remote. Looking at her, Kim felt a premonitory tension. The axis of her life was swinging and she knew not how or where, only that somehow, she had lived in order to come to this shore.

Ysanne drew her small figure erect and stepped onto a flat surface of rock jutting out over the lake.

With a motion almost abrupt, she gestured for Kim to sit beside her on the stone. The only sounds were the stir of the wind in the trees behind them, and the quiet slap of water against the rocks.

Then Ysanne raised both arms in a gesture of power and invocation and spoke in a voice that rang over the night lake like a bell.

"Hear me, Eilathen!" she cried. "Hear and be summoned, for I have need of you, and this is the last time and the deepest. Eilathen damae! Sien rabanna, den viroth bannion damae!" And as she spoke the words, the flower in her hand burst into flame, blue-green and red like its colors, and she threw it, spiralling, into the lake.

Kim felt the wind die. Beside her, Ysanne seemed carved out of marble, so still was she. The very night seemed gathered into that stillness. There was no sound, no motion, and Kim could feel the furious pounding of her heart. Under the moon the surface of the lake was glassy calm, but not with the calm of tranquillity. It was coiled, waiting. Kim sensed, as if within the pulse of her blood, a vibration as of a tuning fork pitched just too high for human ears.

And then something exploded into motion in the middle of the lake. A spinning form, whirling too fast for the eye to follow, rose over the surface of the water, and Kim saw that it shone blue-green under the moon.

Unbelieving, she watched it come towards them, and as it did so, the spinning began to slow, so that when it finally halted, suspended in air above the water before Ysanne, Kim saw that it had the tall form of a man.

Long sea-green hair lay coiled about his shoulders, and his eyes were cold and clear as chips of winter ice. His naked body was lithe and lean, and it shimmered as if with scales, the moonlight glinting where it fell upon him. And on his hand, burning in the dark like a wound, was a ring, red as the heart of the flower that had summoned him.

"Who calls me from the deep against my desire?"

The voice was cold, cold as night waters in early spring, and there was danger in it.

"Eilathen, it is the Dreamer. I have need. Forgo your wrath and hear me. It is long since we stood here, you and I."

"Long for you, Ysanne. You have grown old. Soon the worms will gather you." The reedy pleasure in the voice could be heard. "But I do not age in my green halls, and time turns not for me, save when the bannion fire troubles the deep." And Eilathen held out the hand upon which the red ring burned.

"I would not send down the fire without a cause, and tonight marks your release from guardianship.

Do this last thing for me and you are free of my call."

A slight stir of wind; the trees were sighing again.

"On your oath?" Eilathen moved closer to the shore. He seemed to grow, towering above the Seer, water rippling down his shoulders and thighs, the long wet hair pulled back from his face.

"On my oath," Ysanne replied. "I bound you against my own desire. The wild magic is meant to be free. Only because my need was great were you given to the flowerfire. On my oath, you are free tonight."

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"And the task?" Eilathen's voice was colder than ever, more alien. He shimmered before them with a green dark power.

"This," said Ysanne, and pointed to Kimberly. The stab of Eilathen's eyes was like ice cutting into her. Kim saw, sensed, somehow knew the fathomless halls whence Ysanne had summoned him-the shaped corridors of seastone and twined seaweed, the perfect silence of his deep home.

She held the gaze as best she could, held it until it was Eilathen who turned away.

"Now I know," he said to the Seer. "Now I understand." And a thread that might have been respect had woven its way into his voice.

"But she does not," said Ysanne. "So spin for her, Eilathen. Spin the Tapestry, that she may learn what she is, and what has been, and release you of the burden that you bear."

Eilathen glittered high above them both. His voice was a splintering of ice. "And this is the last?"

"This is the last," Ysanne replied.

He did not hear the note of loss in her voice. Sadness was alien to him, not of his world or his being. He smiled at her words and tossed his hair back, the taste, the glide, the long green dive of freedom already running through him.

"Look then!" he cried. "Look you to know-and know your last of Eilathen!" And crossing his arms upon his breast, so that the ring on his finger burned like a heart afire, he began to spin again. But somehow, as Kim watched, his eyes were locked on hers all the time, even as he whirled, so fast that the lake water began to foam beneath him, and his cold, cold eyes and the bright pain of the red ring he wore were all she knew in the world.

And then he was inside her, deeper than any lover had ever gone, more completely, and Kimberly was given the Tapestry.

She saw the shaping of the worlds, Fionavar at first, then all the others-her own in a fleeting glimpse-following it into time. The gods she saw, and knew their names, and she touched but could not hold, for no mortal can, the purpose and the pattern of the Weaver at the Loom.

And as she was whirled away from that bright vision, she came abruptly face to face with the oldest

Dark in his stronghold of Starkadh. In his eyes she felt herself shrivel, felt the thread fray on the Loom; she knew evil for what it was. The live coals of his eyes scorched into her, and the talons of his hands seemed to score her flesh, and within her heart she was forced to sound the uttermost depths of his hate, and she knew him for Rakoth the Unraveller, Rakoth Maugrim, whom the gods themselves feared, he who would rend the Tapestry and lay his own malignant shadow on all of time to come. And flinching away from the vastness of his power, she endured an endless passage of despair.

Ysanne, ashen and helpless, heard her cry out then, a cry torn from the ruin of innocence, and the Seer wept by the shore of her lake. But through it all Eilathen spun, faster than hope or despair, colder than night, the stone over his heart blazing as he whirled like an unleashed wind towards the freedom he had lost.

Kimberly, though, was oblivious to time and place, to lake, rock, Seer, spirit, stone, locked like a spell into the images Eilathen's eyes imposed. She saw Iorweth Founder come from oversea, saw him greet the lios alfar by Sennett Strand, and her heart caught at the beauty of the lios in that vision, and of the tall men the God had called to found the High Kingdom. And then she learned why the Kings of Brennin, all the High Kings from Iorweth to Ailell, were named the Children of

Mörnir, for Eilathen showed her the Summer Tree in the Godwood under stars.