The Wandering Fire Part 2

"No one else?"

"I was tapping the avarlith for her."

"I remember. It was unexpected." She made an impatient movement. "They listened to you then?"

"Eventually." This time she gave nothing away. He could guess, though, what had happened, knowing the deep mistrust the men in the Great Hall that morning would have had for the High Priestess.

"What now?" was all he said.

"We wait for spring. Aileron takes council with everyone who will talk to him, but everyone waits for spring. Where is the Seer?" Some urgency there.

"Waiting also. For a dream."

"Why are you here?" she asked.

Smile fading, then, with no levity at all, he told her: Arrow of Mornir to Priestess of the Mother. Everything. Softly he gave her the name of the child and, more softly yet, who the father was.

She didn't move during the telling of it or after; no indication anywhere in her of the impact. He had to admire her self-control. Then she asked again, but in a different voice, "Why are you here?"

And he said, "Because you made Jennifer a guest-friend last spring." She hadn't been ready for that-this time it showed in her face. A triumph for him of sorts, but the moment was too high by far for petty score-keeping in the power game. He went on, to take away the sting, "Loren would mistrust the wildness of this too much, but I thought you could deal with it. We need you."

"You trust me with this?"

His turn to gesture impatiently. "Oh, Jaelle, don't exaggerate your own malevolence. You aren't happy with the power balance here, any fool can see that. But only a very great fool would confuse that with where you stand in this war. You serve the G.o.ddess who sent up that moon, Jaelle. I am least likely of all men to forget it."

She seemed very young in that moment. There was a woman beneath the white robe, a person, not merely an icon; he'd made the mistake of trying to tell her that once, in this very room, with the rain falling outside.

"What do you need?" she said.

His tone was crisp. "A watch on the child. Complete secrecy, of course, which is another reason I came to you."

"I will have to tell the Mormae in Gwen Ystrat."

"I thought as much." He rose, began pacing as he spoke. "It is all the same, I gather, within the Mormae?"

She nodded. "It is all the same, within any level of the Priestesshood, but it will be kept to the inner circle."

"All right," he said, and stopped his pacing very close to her. "But you have a problem then."

"What?"

"This!" And reaching past her, he pulled open an inner door and grabbed the listener beyond, pulling her into the room so that she sprawled on the carpeted floor.

"Leila!" Jaelle exclaimed.

The girl adjusted her grey robe and rose to her feet. There was a hint of apprehension in her eyes, but only a hint, Paul saw, and she held her head very high, facing the two of them.

"You may owe a death for this." Jaelle's tone was glacial.

Leila said hardily, "Are we to discuss it with a man here?"

Jaelle hesitated, but only for a second. "We are," she replied, and Paul was startled by a sudden change in her tone. "Leila," the High Priestess said gently, "you must not lecture me, I am not s.h.i.+el or Marline. You have worn grey for ten days only, and you must understand your place."

It was too soft for Paul's liking. "The h.e.l.l with that! What was she doing there? What did she hear?"

"I heard it all," Leila said.

Jaelle was astonis.h.i.+ngly calm. "I believe it," she said. "Now tell me why."

"Because of Finn," said Leila. "Because I could tell he came from Finn."

"Ah," said Jaelle slowly. She walked toward the child then and, after a moment, stroked a long finger down her cheek in an unsettling caress. "Of course."

"I'm lost," said Paul.

They both turned to him. "You shouldn't be," Jaelle said, in complete control again. "Did Jennifer not tell you about the ta'kiena?"

"Yes, but-"

"And why she wanted to bear her child in Vae's house? Finn's mother's house?"

"Oh." It clicked. He looked at slim, fair-haired Leila. "This one?" he asked.

The girl answered him herself. "I called Finn to the Road. Three times, and then another. I am tuned to him until he goes."

There was a silence. "All right, Leila," Jaelle said. "Leave us now. You have done what you had to do. Never breathe a word."

"I don't think I could," said Leila, in a small voice. "For Finn. There is an ocean inside me sometimes. I think it would overrun me if I tried." She turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

Looking at the Priestess in the light of the tall candles, Paul realized that he had never seen pity in her eyes before.

"You will do nothing?" he murmured.

Jaelle nodded her head, still looking at the door through which the girl had gone. "Anyone else I would have killed, believe me."

"But not this one?"

"Not this one."

"Why?"

She turned to him. "Leave me this secret," she said softly. "There are some mysteries best not known, Pwyll. Even for you." It was the first time she had spoken his name. Their eyes met, and this time it was Paul who looked away. Her scorn he could master, but this look in her eyes evoked access to a power older and deeper, even, than the one he had touched on the Tree.

He cleared his throat. "We should be gone by morning."

"I know," said Jaelle. "I will send in a moment to have her brought here."

"If I could do it myself," he said, "I would not ask this of you. I know it will drain the earthroot, the avarlith."

She shook her head; the candlelight made highlights in her hair. "You did a deep thing to bring her here by yourself. The Weaver alone knows how."

"Well, I certainly don't," he said. An admission.

They were silent. It was very still in the sanctuary, in her room.

"Darien," she said.

He drew a breath. "I know. Are you afraid?"

"Yes," she said. "And you?"

"Very much."

They looked at each other across the carpeted s.p.a.ce that lay between, a distance impossibly far.

"We had better get moving," he said finally.

She raised her arm and pulled a cord nearby. Somewhere a bell rang. When they came in response she gave swift, careful orders, and it seemed very soon when the priestesses returned, bearing Jennifer.

After that it took little time. They went into the dome and the man was blindfolded. She took the blood from herself, which surprised some of them; then she reached east to Gwen Ystrat, found Audiart first, then the others. They were made aware, manifested acceptance, then traveled down together, touched Dun Maura, and felt the earthroot flow through them all.

"Good-bye," she heard him say, as it changed for her, in the way it always had-the way that had marked her even as a child-into a streaming as of moonlight through her body. She channeled it, gave thanks, and then spun the avarlith forth to send them home.

After, she was too weary to do anything but sleep.

In the house by the green where the ta'kiena had been chanted, Vae held her new child in her arms by the fire. The grey-robed priestesses had brought milk and swaddling clothes and promised other things. Finn had already put together a makes.h.i.+ft crib for Darien.

She had let him hold his brother for a moment, her heart swelling to see the brightness in his eyes. It might even keep him here, she thought; perhaps this awesome thing was so powerful it might overmaster the call that Finn had heard. It might.

And another thought she had: whatever the father might be, and she laid a curse upon his name, a child learned love from being loved, and they would give him all the love he needed, she and Finn-and Shahar when he came home. How could one not love a child so calm and fair, with eyes so blue-blue as Ginserat's wardstones, she thought, then remembered they were broken.

CHAPTER 3.

Paul, on lookout up the road, whistled the all-clear. Dave grabbed the post for support and hurdled the fence, cursing softly as he sank ankle deep in spring mud.

"Okay," he said. "The girls."

Kevin helped Jen first and then Kim to balance themselves on the stiff wire for Dave to swing them up and over. They had been worried that the fence might be electrically charged, but Kevin's checking earlier had established that it wasn't.

"Car coming!" Paul cried sharply.

They flattened themselves on the cold, mucky ground till the headlights went by. Then Kevin rose and he too vaulted over the fence. This part was easy, but the ground was pressure-sensitive farther in, they knew, and an alarm would sound in the guards' underground room when they walked that far.

Paul jogged up and neatly cleared the fence. He and Kevin exchanged a glance. Despite the immensity of what they were about to do, Kevin felt a surge of exhilaration. It was a joy to be doing something again.

"All right," he said, low and in control. "Jen, you're with me. Prepare to be s.e.xy as h.e.l.l. Dave and Paul-you know what to do?" They nodded. He turned to Kim. "All set, sweetheart. Do your thing. And-"

He stopped. Kim had removed her gloves. The Baelrath on her right hand was very bright; it seemed like a thing alive. Kim raised it overhead.

"May all the powers of the dead forgive me for this," she said and let the light carry her foward past the crumbling Heelstone to Stonehenge.

On a night at the beginning of spring she had taken the second step at last. It had been so long in coming she had begun to despair, but how did one command a dream to show itself? Ysanne had never taught her. Nor had the Seer's gift of so much else offered this one thing to her. Dreamer of the dream, she now was, but there was much waiting involved and never, ever, had Kimberly been called a patient person.

Over and over though the summer of their return and the long winter that followed-and was not over yet, though April had come-she had seen the same image tumble through her nights, but she knew it now. She had known this first step on the road to the Warrior since a night in Paras Derval. The jumbled stones and the wind over the gra.s.s were as famliar as anything had ever been to her, and she knew where they were.

It was the time that had confused her, or it would have been easy despite the blurring of the vision in those first dreams when she was young in power: she had seen it not as it now was, but as it had been three thousand years ago.

Stonehenge. Where a King lay buried, a giant in his day, but small, small, beside the one whose secret name he held sacrosanct beyond the walls of death.

Sacrosanct except now, at last, from her. As ever, the nature of this power overwhelmed her with sorrow: not even the dead might have rest from her, it seemed, from Kimberly Ford with the Baelrath on her hand.

Stonehenge, she knew. The starting point. The hidden Book of Gortyn she had found under the cottage by the lake, and in it she had found-easily, because Ysanne was within her-the words that would raise the guardian dead from his long resting place.

But she had needed one thing more, for the dead man had been mighty and would not give up this secret easily: she had needed to know the other place, the next one, the last. The place of summoning.

And then, on a night in April, she did.

It would have misled her again, this long-sought image, had not she been prepared for the tricks that time might play. The Seers walked in their dreams along loops spun invisibly in the Weaver's threading through the Loom, and they had to be prepared to see the inexplicable.

But this she was ready for, this image of an island, small and green, in a lake calm as gla.s.s under a just-risen crescent moon. A scene of such surpa.s.sing peacefulness that she would have wept a year ago to know the havoc she would wreak when she came.

Not even a year ago, not so much even. But she had changed, and though there was sorrow within her-deep as a stone and as permanent-there was too much need, and the delay had been too long to allow her the luxury of tears.

She rose from her bed. The Warstone flickered with a muted, presaging light. It was going to blaze soon, she knew. She would carry fire on her hand. She saw by the kitchen clock that it was four in the morning. She also saw Jennifer sitting at the table, and the kettle was coming to a boil.

"You cried out," her roommate said. "I thought something was happening."

Kim took one of the other chairs. She tightened her robe about her. It was chilly in the house, and this traveling always left her cold. "It did," she said, wearily.

"You know what you have to do?"

She nodded.

"Is it all right?"

She shrugged. Too hard to explain. She had an understanding, of late, as to why Ysanne had withdrawn in solitude to her lake. There were two lights in the room: one on the ceiling and the other on her hand. "We'd better call the guys," she said.

"I already have. They'll be here soon."

Kim glanced sharply at her. "What did I say in my sleep?"

Jennifer's eyes were kind again; they had been since Darien was born. "You cried out for forgiveness," she said. She would drag the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom.