Fionavar 1 (34 page)

Not anymore. However he might look with eltor juice dripping from his chin, when Gereint rose in the night to address the tribe, his voice was the voice of power.

He spoke for Ceinwen and Cernan, for the night wind and the dawn wind, all the unseen world.

The hollowed sockets of his eyes gave testimony. He had paid the price.

"Cernan came to me with the greyness of dawn," Gereint said quietly. Cernan, thought Ivor, god of the wild things, of wood and plain, Lord of the eltor, brother and twin to Ceinwen of the Bow.

"I saw him clear," Gereint went on. "The horns upon his head, seven-tined for a King, the dark flash of his eyes, the majesty of him." A sound like wind in tall grass swept through the tribe.

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"He spoke a name to me," Gereint said. "A thing that has never happened in all my days. Cernan named to me this morning Tabor dan Ivor, and called him to his fast."

Tabor. And not just named by the shaman after a dream. Summoned by the god himself. A thrill of awe touched Ivor like a ghostly finger in the dark. For a moment he felt as if he were alone on the

Plain. There was a shadow with him, only a shadow, but it was the god. Cernan knew his name; Tabor dan Ivor, he had called.

The Chieftain was brought unceremoniously back to the reality of the camp by the high scream of a woman. Liane, of course. He knew without looking. Flying across the ring, almost knocking over the shaman in her haste, she sped to Tabor's side, no longer a red spirit of dance and flame, only a quicksilver, coltish girl fiercely hugging her brother. Levon was there, too, Ivor saw; more quietly, but as fast, his open face flashing a broad smile of delight. The three of them together.

Fair and brown and brown. His.

So Tabor was in Faelinn tomorrow. At that thought, he looked over and saw Tore gazing at him. He received a smile and a reassuring nod from the dark man, and then, with surprise and pleasure, another from giant Davor, who had been so lucky for them. Tabor would be guarded in the wood.

He looked for Leith again across the ring of fire. And with a twist in his heart, Ivor saw how beautiful she was, how very beautiful still, and then he saw the tears in her eyes. Youngest child, he thought, a mother and her youngest. He had a sudden overwhelming sense of the wonder, the strangeness, the deep, deep richness of things. It filled him, it expanded within his breast. He couldn't hold it in, it was so much, so very much.

Moving within the ring to a music of his own, Ivor, the Chieftain, not so old after all, not so very, danced his joy for his children, all of them.

Tabor, at least, was no baby. Ivor's son, Levon's brother, he knew where to lie in the wood at night.

He was sheltered and hidden and could move easily at need. Tore approved.

He and Davor were in Faelinn Grove again. Their guest had, surprisingly, elected to delay his journey south in order to watch over the boy with him. Tabor, Tore thought, had made a strong impression. It wasn't unusual: he liked the boy himself. Characteristically, Tore gave no thought to the possibility that he himself might be another reason for Dave's reluctance to leave.

Tore had other things to think about. In fact, he had been of two minds about being accompanied that night. He had been looking forward to solitude and dark since the festival.

Too much had happened there, and too quickly. Too many people had come over to embrace him after Liane's dance. And in the night, long after the fires had burned down, Kerrin dal Ragin had slipped into the room Levon had insisted he take in the camp. Levon had been smiling when they talked, and when

Kerrin appeared in the doorway, Tore had belatedly understood why. Kerrin was very pretty, and much talked about among the hunters; her giggling, scented arrival was not the sort of thing an outcast grew accustomed to.

It had been very nice, more than that, in fact. But what had followed her arrival in his bed did not admit of leisure or tranquillity to let him reflect on all that had occurred.

He'd needed to be alone, but Davor's company was the next best thing. The big man was inclined to silence himself, and Tore could sense that the stranger had things of his own to think about. In any case, they were there to guard Tabor, and he'd not have wanted to meet another urgach alone. The

Chieftain had given Davor an axe-the best weapon for one of his size, without training in the sword.

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So, weapons to hand this time, the two of them had settled down against a pair of trees close to where Tabor lay. It was a mild easy night. Tore, outcast no longer, it seemed, let his mind go back, past Kerrin's fair, silken hair, past the naming of Tabor by the god, the tumult of the tribe's response to what he and Davor had done, to the still point, the heart of everything, the moment for which he needed the dark and solitude.

Liane had kissed him when her dance was done.

Fingering the haft of his axe, enjoying the balanced, solid feel of it, Dave realized that he even liked the name they had given him.

Davor. It sounded far more formidable than Dave. Davor of the Axe. Axewielder. Davor dan Ivor-Which stopped him. From that thought he could feel himself backing away; it was too exposed to even let it surface inside.

Beside him, Tore sat quietly, his dark eyes hidden; he seemed lost in reverie. Well, Dave thought, I

guess he won't be an outcast anymore, not after last night.

Which took him back. His, too, had been a tiring night. Three girls, no less, had made their way through Ivor's doorway to the room where Dave slept. Or didn't, after all, sleep.

God, he remembered thinking at one point, I'll bet there's a lot of kids born nine months after one of these feasts. A good life, he decided, being a Rider of the Dalrei, of the third tribe, of the children of Ivor-He sat up abruptly. Tore glanced at him, but made no comment. You have a father, Dave told himself sternly. And a mother and brother. You're a law student in Toronto, and a basketball player, for God's sake.

"In that order?" he remembered Kim Ford teasing, the first time they'd met; or had Kevin Laine put it the other way around? He couldn't remember. Already the time before the crossing seemed

astonishingly remote. The Dalrei were real, Martyniuk thought. This axe, the wood, Tore-his kind of person. And there was more.

His mind looped back again to the night before, and this time it zeroed in on the thing that mattered much more than it should, more, he knew, than he could allow it to. Still, it did. He leaned back against the tree again, going with the memory.

Liane had kissed him when her dance was done.

They heard it at the same time: something crashing loudly through the trees. Tore, child of night and woods, knew immediately-only someone who wanted to be heard would make so much noise.

He didn't bother moving.

Dave, however, felt his heart lurch with apprehension. "What the hell is that?" he whispered fiercely, grabbing for his axe.

"Her brother, I think," Tore said, inadvisedly, and felt himself go crimson in the dark.

Even Dave, far from a perceptive man, could hardly miss that one. When Levon finally emerged through the trees, he found the two of them sitting in an awkward silence.

"I couldn't sleep," he offered apologetically. "I thought I might watch with you. Not that you need me, but . . ."

There was truly no guile, no hauteur in Levon. The man who had just done Revor's Kill, who would one day lead the tribe, was sheepishly requesting their indulgence.

"Sure," Dave said. "He's your brother. Come sit down."

Tore managed a short nod. His heartbeat was slowing, though, and after a time he decided he didn't really mind if Davor knew. I've never had a friend, he thought suddenly. This is the sort of thing you talk to friends about.

It was all right that Levon had come; Levon was unlike anyone else. And he had done something
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the morning before that Tore was not sure he would have dared to try. The realization was a hard one for a proud man, and a different person might have hated Levon for it. Tore, however, measured out his respect in terms of such things. Two friends, he thought, I have two friends here.

Though he could only speak of her to one of them.

That one was having problems. Tore's slip had registered, and Dave felt a need to walk the implications out. He rose. "I'm going to check on him," he said. "Right back."

He didn't do much thinking, though. This wasn't the sort of situation Dave Martyniuk could handle, so he ducked it. He carried the axe, careful not to make a noise with it; he tried to move as quietly as Tore did in the wood. It's not even a situation, he told himself abruptly. I'm leaving tomorrow.

He had spoken aloud. A night bird whirred suddenly from a branch overhead, startling him.

He came to the place where Tabor was hidden-and well hidden, too. It had taken Tore almost an hour to find him. Even looking straight at the spot, Dave could barely make out the shape of the boy in the hollow he'd chosen. Tabor would be asleep, Tore had explained earlier. The shaman had made a drink that would ensure this, and open the mind to receive what might come to wake him.

Good kid, Dave thought. He'd never had a younger brother, wondered how he would have behaved toward one. A lot better than Vince did, the bitter thought came. A hell of a lot better than Vincent.

A moment longer he watched Tabor's hollow, then, assured there was no danger to be seen, he turned away. Not quite ready to rejoin the other two, Dave took an angled route back through the grove.

He hadn't seen the glade before. He almost stumbled into it, checked himself barely in time.

Then he crouched down, as silently as he could.

There was a small pool, glittering silver in the moonlight. The grass, too, was tinted silver, it seemed dewy and fragrant, new somehow. And there was a stag, a full-grown buck, drinking from the pool.

Dave found he was holding his breath, keeping his body utterly still. The moonlit scene was so beautiful, so serene, it seemed to be a gift, a bestowing. He was leaving tomorrow, riding south to

Paras Derval, the first stage of the road home. He would never be here again, see anything like this.

Should I not weep ? he thought, aware that even such a question was a world away from the normal workings of his mind. But he was, he was a world away.

And then, as the hairs rose up on the back of his neck, Dave became aware that there was someone else beside the glade.

He knew before he even looked, which is what caused the awe: her presence had been made manifest in ways he scarcely comprehended. The very air, the moonlight, now reflected it.

Turning, in silence and dread, Dave saw a woman with a bow standing partway around the glade from where he crouched in darkness. She was clad in green, all in green, and her hair was the same silver as the moonlight. Very tall she was, queenly, and he could not have said if she was young or old, or the color of her eyes, because there was a light in her face that made him avert his face, abashed and afraid.

It happened very quickly. A second bird flew suddenly, flapping its wings loudly, from a tree.

The stag raised its head in momentary alarm, a magnificent creature, a king of the wood. Out of the corner of his eye-for he dared not look directly-Dave saw the woman string an arrow to her bow. A

moment, a bare pulsation of time, slipped past as the frieze held: the stag with its head high,
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poised to flee, the moonlight on the glade, on the water, the huntress with her bow.

Then the arrow was loosed and it found the long, exposed throat of the stag.

Dave hurt for the beast, for blood on that silvered grass, for the crumpled fall of a thing so noble.

What happened next tore a gasp of wonder from the core of his being. Where the dead stag lay, a shimmer appeared in the glade, a sheen of moonlight it seemed at first; then it darkened, took shape and then substance, and finally Dave saw another stag, identical, stand unafraid, unwounded, majestic, beside the body of the slain one. A moment it stood thus, then the great horns were lowered in homage to the huntress, and it was gone from the glade.

It was a thing of too much moonlit power, too much transcendency; there was an ache within him, an appalled awareness of his own-

"Stand! For I would see you before you die."

Of his own mortality.

With trembling limbs, Dave Martyniuk rose to stand before the goddess with her bow. He saw, without surprise, the arrow leveled on his heart, knew with certainty that he would not rise to bow to her once that shaft was in his breast.

"Come forward."

A curious, other-worldly calm descended upon Dave as he moved into the moonlight. He dropped the axe before his feet; it glittered on the grass.

"Look at me."

Drawing a deep breath, Dave raised his eyes and looked, as best he could, upon the shining of her face. She was beautiful, he saw, more beautiful than hope.

"No man of Fionavar," the goddess said, "may see Ceinwen hunt."

It gave him an out, but it was cheap, shallow, demeaning. He didn't want it.

"Goddess," he heard himself say, wondering at his own calm, "it was not intentional, but if there is a price to be paid, I will pay it."

A wind stirred the grass. "There is another answer you could have made, Dave Martyniuk,"

Ceinwen said.

Dave was silent.

An owl suddenly burst from the tree behind him, cutting like a shadow across the crescent of the moon and away. The third one, a corner of his mind said.

Then he heard the bowstring sing. I am dead, he had time, amazingly, to think, before the arrow thudded into the tree inches above his head.

His heart was sore. There was so much. He could feel the quivering of the long shaft; the feathers touched his hair.

"Not all need die," Green Ceinwen said. "Courage will be needed. You have sworn to pay a price to me, though, and one day I will claim it. Remember."

Dave sank to his knees; his legs would not bear him up before her any longer. There was such a glory in her face, in the shining of her hair.