Fionavar 1 (18 page)

"It remains only to tell you," Matt Sören said, gazing directly at her now, "that when the Council of

Mages gathers at midwinter, Nilsom's is a name whose memory we curse by ritual."

"I should think," said Jennifer, with some spirit.

"So, too," said the Dwarf softly, "is the name of Aideen."

"What?"

Matt's gaze was unwavering. "She betrayed her mage," he said. "In the laws of our Order, there is no crime so deep. None. No matter what the cause. Every year Loren and I curse her memory at midwinter and we do so truly. And every year," he added, very low, very gently, "when the snows melt in the spring, we lay the first of the wildflowers on her grave."

From that composed glance, Jennifer turned her head away. She felt close to tears. She was too far from home, and it was all so difficult and so strange. Why should such a woman be cursed? It
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was too hard. What she needed, she realized, was exercise, fifty hard laps in a pool to clear her head, or else, and better still. . . .

"Oh, Matt," she said. "I need to move, to do something. Are there horses for us to ride?"

And of all things, that cracked the solid composure of the Dwarf. Astonishingly, he flushed.

"There are horses, of course," he said awkwardly, "but I fear I will not join you-Dwarves do not ride for pleasure. Why don't you go with Laesha and Drance, though?"

"Okay," she said, but then lingered, unwilling, suddenly, to leave him.

"I'm sorry if I have troubled you," Matt said. "It is a difficult story."

Jennifer shook her head. "More for you, surely, than for me. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks for a lot." And, bending swiftly, she kissed him on the cheek and ran from the hall to find Laesha, leaving a normally phlegmatic Dwarf in a remarkably unsettled state.

And so did it come to pass, three hours later, that the two women had galloped with Diarmuid's man to the crest of a ridge east of the town, where they stilled their tired horses in disbelief, as a small party of ethereal figures ascended the slope towards them, their tread so light the grass seemed not to bend beneath their feet.

"Welcome!" said their leader as he stopped before them. He bowed, his long silver hair glinting in the light. "This hour is brightly woven." His voice was like music in a high place. He spoke directly to Jennifer. She was aware that Drance beside her, the prosaic soldier, had tears shining on his transfigured face.

"Will you come down among the trees and feast with us this evening?" the silver-haired figure asked. "You are most welcome. My name is Brendel of the Kestrel Mark, from Daniloth. We are the lios alfar."

The return to Brennin was almost effortless, as if they were being propelled homeward by a following wind. Erron, fluid and agile, went first again on the climb back up the cliff, and he hammered iron spikes into the rock face for the rest of them.

They came again to the horses, mounted, and began galloping north once more on the dusty roads of the High Kingdom. The mood was exhilarated and chaotic. Joining in the bawdy chorus of a song Coll was leading, Kevin couldn't remember feeling happier; after the incident on the river, he and Paul seemed to have been completely accepted by the band, and because he respected these men, that acceptance mattered. Erron was becoming a friend, and so, too, was Carde, singing away on Kevin's left side. Paul, on the other side, wasn't singing, but he didn't seem unhappy, and he had a lousy voice anyway.

Just past midday they came to the same inn where they had stopped before. Diarmuid called a halt for lunch and a quick beer, which became, given the prevailing mood, several slow beers.

Coll, Kevin noticed, had disappeared.

The extended break meant that they were going to miss the banquet in the Great Hall that night.

Diarmuid didn't seem to care.

"It's the Black Boar tonight, my friends," he announced, glittering and exhilarated at the head of the table. "I'm in no mood for court manners. Tonight I celebrate with you and let the manners look after themselves. Tonight we take our pleasure. Will you drink with me to the Dark Rose of Cathal?"

Kevin cheered with the others, drank with the others.

Kimberly had dreamt again. The same one at first: the stones, the ring, the wind-and the same grief in her heart. And again she woke just as the words of power reached her lips.

This time, though, she had fallen asleep again, to find another dream waiting, as if at the bottom of a pool.

She was in the room of Ailell the King. She saw him tossing restlessly on his bed, saw the young page asleep on his pallet. Even as she watched, Ailell woke in the dark of his chamber. A long time he lay still, breathing raggedly, then she saw him rise painfully, as if against his own desire.

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He lit a candle and carried it to an inner doorway in the room, through which he passed.

Invisible, insubstantial, she followed the King down a corridor lit only by the weaving candle he bore, and she paused with him before another door, into which was set a sliding view-hole.

When Ailell put his eyes to the aperture, somehow she was looking with him, seeing what he saw, and Kimberly saw with the High King the white naal fire and the deep blue shining of Ginserat's stone, set into the top of its pillar.

Only after a long time did Ailell withdraw, and in the dream Kim saw herself move to look again, standing on tiptoe to gaze with her own eyes into the room of the stone.

And looking in, she saw no stone at all, and the room was dark.

Wheeling in terror, she saw the High King walking back towards his chamber, and waiting there for him in the doorway was a shadowed figure that she knew.

His face rigid as if it were stone, Paul Schafer stood before Ailell, and he was holding a chess piece in his outstretched hand, and coming nearer to them, Kim saw that it was the white king, and it was broken. There was a music all about them that she couldn't recognize, although she knew she should. Ailell spoke words she could not hear because the music was too loud, and then Paul spoke, and she needed desperately to hear, but the music . . . And then the King held high his candle and began to speak again, and she could not, could not, could not.

Then everything was blasted to nothingness by the howling of a dog, so loud it filled the universe.

And she awoke to the morning sunlight and the smell of food frying over the cooking fire.

"Good morning," said Ysanne. "Come and eat, before Malka steals it all. Then I have something to show you."

Coll rejoined them on the road north of the town. Paul Schafer eased his horse over to the roan stallion the big man rode.

"Being discreet?" he asked.

Above his broken nose Coil's eyes were guarded. "Not exactly. But he wanted to do something."

"Which means?"

"The man had to die, but his wife and children can be helped."

"So you've paid them. Is that why he delayed just now in the tavern? To give you time? It wasn't just because he felt like drinking, was it?"

Coll nodded. "He often feels like drinking," he said wryly, "but he very rarely acts without reason.

Tell me," he went on, as Schafer remained silent, "Do you think he did wrong?"

Paul's expression was unreadable.

"Gorlaes would have hanged him," Coll pressed, "and had the body torn apart. His family would have been dispossessed of their land. Now his eldest son is going to South Keep to be trained as one of us. Do you really think he did wrong?"

"No," said Schafer slowly, "I'm just thinking that with everyone else starving, that farmer's treason was probably the best way he could find to take care of his family. Do you have a family, Coll?"

To which Diarmuid's lieutenant, who didn't, and who was still trying to like this strange visitor, had no reply at all. They rode north through the heat of the afternoon, the dry fields baking on either side, the far hills shimmering like mirages, or the hope of rain.

The trap door under the table had been invisible until Ysanne, kneeling, had laid her hand on the floor and spoken a word of power. There were ten stairs leading down; on either side the rough stone walls were damp to the touch. There were brackets set into the walls, but no torches, because from the bottom of the stairs came a pale glow of light. Wondering, Kim followed the Seer and

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Malka, the cat, as they went down.

The chamber was small, more a cave than a room. Another bed, a desk, a chair, a woven carpet on the stone floor. Some parchments and books, very old by the look of them, on the desk.

Only one thing more: against the far wall was set a cabinet with glass doors, and within the cabinet, like a captured star, lay the source of light.

There was awe in the Seer's voice when she broke the silence. "Every time I see this . . ." Ysanne murmured. "It is the Circlet of Lisen," she said, walking forward. "It was made for her by the lios alfar in the days when Pendaran Wood was not yet a place of dread. She bound it on her brow after they built the Anor for her, and she stood in that tower by the sea, a light like a star on her brow, to show Amairgen the way home from Cader Sedat."

"And he never came." Kim's voice, though she whispered, felt harsh to her own ears. "Eilathen showed me. I saw her die." The Circlet, she saw, was purest gold, but the light set within it was gentler than moonfall.

"She died, and Pendaran does not forgive. It is one of the deep sorrows of the world. So much changed . . . even the light. It was brighter once, the color of hope, they said when it was made.

Then Lisen died, and the Wood changed, and the world changed, and now it seems to shine with loss. It is the most fair thing I know in all the world. It is the Light against the Dark."

Kim looked at the white-haired figure beside her. "Why is it here?" she asked. "Why hidden underground?"

"Raederth brought it to me the year before he died. Where he went to find it, I know not-for it was lost when Lisen fell. Lost long years, and he never told me the tale of where he went to bring it back. It aged him, though. Something happened on the journey of which he could never speak.

He asked me to guard it here, with the two other things of power, until their place should be dreamt.

'Who shall wear this next,' he said, 'after Lisen, shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars.' And he said nothing more. It waits here, for the dreaming."

Kimberly shivered, for something new within her, a singing in the blood, told her that the words of the dead mage were true prophecy. She felt weighted, burdened. This was getting to be too much.

She tore her eyes away from the Circlet. "What are the other two things?" she asked.

"The Baelrath, of course. The stone on your finger."

Kim looked down. The Warstone had grown brighter as they spoke, the dull, blood-dark lustre giving way to a pulsating sheen.

"I think the Circlet speaks to it," Ysanne went on. "It always shone so in this room. I kept it here beside the other, until the night I dreamt you wearing it. From that time I knew its hour was coming, and I feared the wakening power would call forces I could not ward. So I summoned Eilathen again, and bound him to guard the stone by the red at the heart of the bannion."

"When was this?"

"Twenty-five years ago, now. A little more."

"But-I wasn't even born!"

"I know, child. I dreamt your parents first, the day they met. Then you with the Baelrath on your hand. Our gift as Seers is to walk the twists that lie in the weave of time and bring their secrets back. It is no easy power, and you know already that it cannot always be controlled."

Kim pushed her brown hair back with both hands. Her forehead was creased with anxiety, the grey eyes were those of someone being pursued. "I do know that," she said. "I'm trying to handle it.

What I can't. . . I don't understand why you are showing me Lisen's Light."

"Not true," the Seer replied. "If you stop to think, you will understand. You are being shown the Circlet because it may fall to you to dream who is to wear it next."

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There was a silence. Then, "Ysanne, I don't live here."

"There is a bridge between our worlds. Child, I am telling you that which you know already."

"But that's just it! I'm beginning to understand what I am. I saw what Eilathen spun. But I'm not of this world, it isn't in my blood, I don't know its roots the way you do, the way all the Seers must have known. How should . . . how could I ever presume to say who is to bear the Circlet of Lisen?

I'm a stranger, Ysanne!"

She was breathing hard. The old woman looked at her a long time, then she smiled. "Now you are.

You have just come. You are right about being incomplete, but be easy. It is only time." Her voice, like her eyes, was gentle as she told her second lie, and shielded it.

"Time!" Kimberly burst out. "Don't you understand? I'm only here two weeks. As soon as they find

Dave, we're going home."

"Perhaps. There is still a bridge, and I did dream the Baelrath on your hand. It is in my heart as well-an old woman's heart, not a Seer's vision-that there may be need of a Dreamer in your world, too, before what is to come is full-woven on the Loom."

Kimberly opened her mouth, and closed it again, speechless. Because now it was too much: too many things, too quickly and too hard.

"I'm sorry," she managed to gasp, and then, whirling, ran up the stone stairs and out the doorway of the cottage to where there was sunlight and a blue sky. Trees, too, and a path down which she could run to the edge of a lake. Alone, because no one was pursuing her, she could stand there throwing pebbles into the water, knowing that they were pebbles, only pebbles, and that no green spirit, water dripping from his hair, would rise in answer from the lake to change her life again.

In the chamber from which she had fled, the light continued to shine. Power and hope and loss were in the radiance that bathed Ysanne as she sat at the desk, stroking the cat in her lap, her eyes unfocused and blind.

"Ah, Malka," she murmured at last, "I wish I were wiser. What is the use of living so long if one hasn't grown wise?"