The Wandering Fire Part 19

His heart seemed to have slowed and his palms were dry, though there was a dampness to the rough walls. The blackness was the hard thing, but he knew, as much as he had ever known anything, that he had not come so far only to trip and break his neck on a dark path.

He went on for a long time, how long he didn't know. Twice the walls came very close together, forcing him to turn sideways to pa.s.s through. Once something flying in the dark pa.s.sed very near him, and he ducked belatedly with a primitive fear. This pa.s.sed, though, it all pa.s.sed. Eventually the corridor bent sharply right, and down, and in the distance Kevin saw a glow of light.

It was warm. He undid another b.u.t.ton of his s.h.i.+rt and then, on impulse, took it off. He looked up. Even with the new light, the roof of the cave was so high it was lost in the shadows. The path widened now, and there were steps. He counted, for no good reason. The twenty-seventh was the last; it took him out of the path to the edge of a huge round chamber that glowed with an orange light from no source he could see.

He stopped on the threshold, instinctively, and as he did so the hair rose up on the back of his neck and he felt the first pulse-not a surge yet, though he knew it would come-of power in that most holy place, and in him the form the power took was, at last, desire.

"Bright your hair and bright your blood," he heard. He spun to his right.

He hadn't seen her, and wouldn't have had she not spoken. Barely three feet away from him there was a crude stone seat carved roughly into the rock face. On it, bent almost double with age, sat a withered, decrepit old crone. Her long stringy hair hung in unkempt yellow-grey whorls down her back and on either side of her narrow face. With k.n.o.bbed hands, as deformed as her spine, she worked ceaselessly away at a shapeless knitting. When she saw him startle she laughed, opening wide her toothless mouth with a high, wheezing sound. Her eyes, he guessed, had once been blue, but they were milky and rheumy now, dimmed by cataracts.

Her gown would long ago have been white, but now it was stained and soiled an indeterminate shade and torn in many places. Through one tear he saw the slack fall of a shrunken breast.

Slowly, with uttermost deference, Kevin bowed to her, guardian of the threshold in this place. She was laughing still when he rose. Spittle rolled down her chin.

"It is Maidaladan tonight," he said.

Gradually she quieted, looking up at him from the low stone seat, her back so bent she had to twist her neck sideways to do so. "It is," she said. "The Night of the Beloved Son. It is seven hundred years now since last a man came calling on Midsummer's Eve." She pointed with one of her needles, and Kevin looked on the ground beside her to see crumbled bones and a skull.

"I did not let him pa.s.s," the crone whispered, and laughed.

He swallowed and fought back fear. "How long," he stammered, "how long have you been here?"

"Fool!" she cried, so loudly he jumped. Foolfoolfoolfool reverberated in the chamber, and high above he heard the bats. "Do you think I am alive?"

Alive alive alive alive, he heard, and then heard only his own breathing. He watched the crone lay her knitting down beside the bones at her feet. When she looked up at him again she held only one needle only, long and sharp and dark, and it was trained on his heart. She chanted, clearly but soft, so there was no echo: "Bright your hair and bright your blood, Yellow and red for the Mother.

Give me your name, Beloved, Your true name, and no other."

In the moment before he answered, Kevin Laine had time to remember a great many things, some with sorrow and some with love. He drew himself up before her; there was a power in him, an upsurge of desire; he too could make the echoes ring in Dun Maura.

"Liadon!" he cried, and in the resounding of it, the burgeoning strength within himself, he felt a breath, a touch, as of wind across his face.

Slowly the crone lowered the needle.

"It is so," she whispered. "Pa.s.s."

He did not move. His heart was beating rapidly now, though not with fear any more. "There is a wis.h.i.+ng in me," he said.

"There always is," the crone replied.

Kevin said, "Bright my hair and bright my blood. I offered blood once, in Paras Derval, but that was far from here, and not tonight."

He waited and for the first time saw a change in her eyes. They seemed to clear, to move back toward their lost blue; it may have been a trick of the orange light on the stone seat, but he thought he saw her straighten where she sat.

With the same needle she pointed, inward, to the chamber. Not far away, almost on the threshold still, Kevin saw the elements of offering. No brightly polished dagger here, no exquisitely crafted bowl to catch the falling gift. This was the oldest place, the hearth. There was a rock rising up, a little past the height of his chest, from the cave floor, and it came to no level, rounded peak, but to a long jagged crest. Beside the rock was a stone bowl, little more than a cup. It had had two handles once, but one had broken off. There was no design on it, no potter's glaze; it was rough, barely functional, and Kevin could not even hazard a guess how old it was.

"Pa.s.s," the crone repeated.

He went to the rock and picked up the bowl, carefully. It was very heavy to his hand. Again he paused, and again a great many things came back to him from far away, like lights on a distance sh.o.r.e, or lights of a town seen at night from a winter hill.

He was very sure. With a smooth, unhurried motion, he bent over the rock and laid his cheek open on the jagged crest. Even as he felt the pain and caught the welling blood, he heard an ululating wail from behind him, a wild sound of joy and grief in one rising and falling cry as he came into his power.

He turned. The crone had risen. Her eyes were very blue, her gown was white, her hair was white as snow, her fingers long and slender. Her teeth were white, her lips were red, and a red flush was in her cheeks, as well, and he knew it for desire.

He said, "There is a wish in my heart."

She laughed. A gentle laugh, indulgent, tender, a mother's laugh over the cradle of her child.

"Beloved," she said. "Oh, be welcome again, Liadon. Beloved Son... Maidaladan. She will love you, she will." And the Guardian of the Threshold, old still but no longer a crone, laid a finger on his still flowing wound, and he felt the skin close to her touch and the bleeding stop.

She rose up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips. Desire broke over him like a wave in a high wind. She said, "Twelve hundred years have pa.s.sed since I claimed my due from a sacrifice come freely."

There were tears in her eyes.

"Go now," she said. "Midnight is upon us, Liadon. You know where to go; you remember. Pour the bowl and the wish of your heart, Beloved. She will be there. For you she will come as swiftly as she did when the first boar marked the first of all her lovers." With her long fingers she was disrobing him even as she spoke.

Desire, power, crest of the wave. He was the force behind the wave and the foam where it broke. Wordlessly, he turned, remembering the way, and crossing the wide chamber, bearing his blood in a stone bowl, he came to its farthest point. To the very brink of the chasm.

Naked as he had been in the womb, he stood over it. And now he did not let his mind go back to the lost things from before; instead, he turned his whole being to the one wish of his heart, the one gift he sought of her in return, and he poured out the br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of his blood into the dark chasm, to summon Dana from the earth on Midsummer's Eve.

In the chamber behind him the glow died utterly. In the absolute black he waited and there was so much power in him, so much longing. The longing of all his days brought to a point, to this point, this creva.s.se. Dun Maura. Maidaladan. His heart's desire. The boar. The blood. The dog in the snow outside. Full moon. All the nights, all the traveling through all the nights of love. And now.

And now she had come, and it was more than anything could be, more than all. She was, and she was there for him in the dark, suspended in the air above the chasm.

"Liadon," she whispered, and the throaty desire in the sound set him on fire. Then to crown it, and shape it, for she loved him and would love him, she whispered again, and she said, "Kevin," and then, "Oh, come!"

And he leaped.

She was there and her arms were around him in the dark as she claimed him for her own. It seemed to him as if they floated for a moment, and then the long falling began. Her legs twined about his, he reached and found her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He caressed her hips, her thighs, felt her open like a flower to his touch, felt himself wild, rampant, entered her. They fell. There was no light, there were no walls. Her mouth made sounds as she kissed him. He thrust and heard her moan, he heard his own harsh breathing, felt the storm gathering, the power, knew this was the destination of his days, heard Dana say his name, all his names in all the worlds, felt himself explode deep into her, with the fire of his seed. With her own transfiguring ecstasy she flared alight; she was incandescent with what he had done to her, and by the light of her desire he saw the earth coming up to gather him, and he knew he had come home, to the end of journeying. End of longing, with the ground rus.h.i.+ng now to meet, the walls streaming by; no regret, much love, power, a certain hope, spent desire, and only the one sorrow for which to grieve in the last half second, as the final earth came up to meet him. Abba, he thought, incongruously. And met.

In the Temple, Jaelle woke. She sat bolt upright in bed and waited. A moment later the sound came again, and this time she was awake and there could be no mistake. Not for this, and not tonight. She was High Priestess, she wore white and was untouched, because there had to be one so tuned to the Mother that if the cry went up it would be heard. Again it came to her, the sound she had never thought to hear, a cry not uttered for longer than anyone living knew. Oh, the ritual had been done, had been enacted every morning after Maidaladan since the first Temple was raised in Gwen Ystrat. But the lamenting of the priestesses at sunrise was one thing, it was a symbol, a remembering.

The voice in her mind was infinitely otherwise. Its mourning was for no symbolic loss, but for the Beloved Son. Jaelle rose, aware that she was trembling, still not quite believing what she heard. But the sound was high and compelling, laden with timeless grief, and she was High Priestess and understood what had come to pa.s.s.

There were three men sleeping in the front room of her chambers. None of them stirred as she pa.s.sed through. She did not go into the corridor. Instead she came to another, smaller doorway and, barefoot in the cold, walked quickly down a dark narrow hallway and opened another door at the end of it.

She came out under the dome, behind the altar and the axe. There she paused. The voice was loud within her, though, urgent and exultant, even in its grief, and it carried her with it.

She was High Priestess. It was the night of Maidaladan, and, impossibly, the sacrifice had come to pa.s.s. She laid both hands on the axe that only the High Priestess could lift. She took it from its rest, and swinging around, she brought it cras.h.i.+ng down on the altar. Hugely, the sound reverberated. Only when it ended did she lift her own voice in the words that echoed within her being.

"Rahod hedai Liadon!" Jaelle cried. "Liadon has died again!" She wept. She grieved with all her heart. And she knew every priestess in Fionavar had heard her. She was High Priestess.

They were awakening now, all those in the Temple. They were coming from their sleep. They saw her there, her robe torn, blood on her face, the axe lifted from its rest.

"Rahod hedai Liadon!" Jaelle cried again, feeling it rise within her, demanding utterance. The Mormae were all there now; she saw them begin to tear their own robes, to rend their faces in a wildness of grief and she heard them lift their voices to lament as she had done.

There was an acolyte beside her, weeping. She carried Jaelle's cloak and boots. In haste, the High Priestess put them on. She moved to lead them away, all of them, east, to where it had come to pa.s.s. There were men in the room now, the two mages, the Kings; there was fear in their eyes. They stepped aside to let her pa.s.s. There was a woman who did not.

"Jaelle," said Kim. "Who is it?"

She hardly broke her stride. "I do not know. Come!" She went outside. There were lights being lit all over Morvran and down the long street leading from the town she saw the priestesses running toward her. Her horse had been brought. She mounted up and, without waiting for anyone, she set off for Dun Maura.

They all followed. Two on a horse, in many cases, as the soldiers bore with them the priestesses who had leaped, crying, from their beds. It was midsummer and the dawn would come early. There was already a grey light when they came up to the cave and saw the dog.

Arthur dismounted and walked over to Cavall. For a moment he gazed into the eyes of his dog, then he straightened and looked at the cave. At the entrance Jaelle knelt among the red flowers now blooming amid the snow, and there were tears streaming down her face.

The sun came up.

"Who?" asked Loren Silvercloak. "Who was it?"

There were a great many people there by then. They looked around at each other in the first of the morning light.

Kim Ford closed her eyes.

All around them the priestesses of Dana began, raggedly at first, but then in harmony, to sing their lament for the dead Liadon.

"Look!" said Shalha.s.san of Cathal. "The snow is melting!"

Everyone looked but Kim. Everyone saw.

Oh, my darling man, thought Kimberly. There was a murmur surging toward a roar. Awe and disbelief. The beginnings of a desperate joy. The priestesses were wailing in their grief and ecstasy. The sun was s.h.i.+ning on the melting snow.

"Where's Kevin?" said Diarmuid sharply.

Where, oh, where? Oh, my darling.

PART IV

CADER SEDAT.

CHAPTER 12.

Oldest of three brothers, Paul Schafer had a general sense of how to deal with children. But a general sense wasn't going to be much good here, not with this child. Dari was his problem for the morning, because Vae had her own griefs to deal with: a child's loss to mourn and an almost impossible letter to write to North Keep.

He'd promised to see that the letter got there, and then he had taken Dari outside to play. Or, actually, just to walk in the snow because the boy-he looked to be seven or eight now, Paul judged-wasn't in a mood to play and didn't really trust Paul anyhow.

Reaching back fifteen years to a memory of his brothers, Paul talked. He didn't push Dari to say or do anything, didn't offer to toss him or carry him; he just talked, and not as one talks to a child.

He told Dari about his own world and about Loren Silvercloak, the mage who could go back and forth between the worlds. He talked about the war, about why Shahar, Dari's father, had to be away, and about how many mothers and children had had their men go away to war because of the Dark.

"Finn wasn't a man, though," said Dari. His first words that morning.

They were in the woods, following a winding trail. Off to the left Paul could see glimpses of the lake, the only unfrozen lake, he guessed, in Fionavar. He looked down at the child, weighing his words.

"Some boys," he said, "become like men sooner than others. Finn was like that."

Dari, in a blue coat and scarf, and mittens and boots, looked gravely up at him. His eyes were very blue. After a long moment he seemed to come to a decision. He said, "I can make a flower in the snow."

"I know," said Paul, smiling. "With a stick. Your mother told me you made one yesterday."

"I don't need a stick," Darien said. Turning away, he gestured toward the untrodden snow on the path ahead of them. The gesture of his hand in the air was duplicated in the snow. Paul saw the outline of a flower take shape.

He also saw something else.

"That's... very good," he said, as evenly as he could, while bells of alarm were going off in his head. Darien didn't turn. With another movement, not a tracing this time, simply a spreading of his fingers, he colored the flower he'd made. It was blue-green where the petals were, and red at the center.

Red, like Darien's eyes, when he made it.

"That's very good," Paul managed to say again. He cleared his throat: "Shall we go home for lunch?"

They had walked a long way and, going back, Dari got tired and asked to be carried. Paul swung him up on his shoulders and jogged and bounced him part of the way. Dari laughed for the first time. It was a nice laugh, a child's.

After Vae had given him lunch, Dari napped for most of the afternoon. He was quiet in the evening too. At dinner-time, Vae, without asking, set three places. She, too, said very little; her eyes were red-rimmed, but Paul didn't see her weep. After, when the sun set, she lit the candles and built up the fire. Paul put the child to bed and made him laugh again with shadow figures on the wall before he pulled the curtains around the bed.

Then he told Vae what he had decided to do, and after a while she began to talk, softly, about Finn. He listened, saying nothing. Eventually he understood something-it took too long, he was still slow with this one thing-and he moved closer and took her in his arms. She stopped talking, then, and lowered her head simply to weep.

He spent a second night in Finn's bed. Dari didn't come to him this time. Paul lay awake, listening to the north wind whistle down the valley.

In the morning, after breakfast, he took Dari down to the lake. They stood on the sh.o.r.e, and he taught the child how to skip flat stones across the water. It was a delaying action, but he was still apprehensive and uncertain about his decision of the night before. When he'd finally fallen asleep, he'd dreamt about Darien's flower, and the red at its center had become an eye in the dream, and Paul had been afraid and unable to look at it.

The child's eyes were blue now, by the water, and he seemed quietly intent on learning how to skip a stone. It was almost possible to convince oneself that he was just a boy and would remain so. Almost possible. Paul bent low. "Like this," he said, and made a stone skip five times across the lake. Straightening, he watched the child run to look for more stones to throw. Then, lifting his glance, he saw a silver-haired figure ride around the bend in the road from Paras Derval.

"h.e.l.lo," said Brendel as he came up. And, then, dismounting, "h.e.l.lo, little one. There's a stone just beside you and a good one, I think."

The lios alfar stood, facing Paul, and his eyes were sober and knowing.

"Kevin told you?" Paul asked.

Brendel nodded. "He said you would be angry, but not very."

Paul's mouth twitched. "He knows me too well."

Brendel smiled, but his tell-tale eyes were violet. "He said something else. He said there seemed to be a choice of Light or Dark involved and that, perhaps, the lios alfar should be here."

For a moment, Paul was silent. Then he said, "He's the cleverest of all of us, you know. I never thought of that."