The Wandering Fire Part 7

After the numbing wind and icy, treacherous streets, the heat of the Black Boar struck Kevin like an inferno. The tavern was packed with shouting, perspiring people. There were at least four huge fires blazing and a myriad of torches set high in the walls.

It was almost exactly as he remembered it: the dense, enveloping smoke, the smell of meat broiling over the cooking fires, and the steady, punis.h.i.+ng level of noise. As the three of them pushed their way through the door, Kevin realized that the Boar seemed even more crowded than it was because most of the patrons were squeezed together in a wide circle around a cleared area in the middle of the tavern. The tables had been lifted from their trestles and overturned and benches had been stacked away to open a s.p.a.ce.

With Dave serving as a ma.s.sive battering ram, Kevin and Paul pushed through behind him toward the front of the crowd near the door. When they got there, amid jostling elbows and spilling beer, Kevin saw that there was a burly redheaded man in a ring formed by the crowd. The man was carrying a smaller figure seated on his shoulders.

Facing them, roaring belligerent defiance that somehow could be heard over the din, was that vast human mountain Tegid of Rhoden, and on his shoulders, laughing, was Diarmuid, Prince of Brennin.

Beginning to laugh himself, Kevin could see wagers flying all through the crowd as the two pairs warily circled each other. Even in wartime! he thought, looking at the Prince. People were standing on tables for a better view; others had gone upstairs to look down on the battle. Kevin spotted Garde and Erron, each with a fistful of wagers, standing on the bar. Beside them, after a second, he recognized Brock, the Dwarf who had brought them word of treachery in Eridu. He was older than Matt, with a lighter-colored beard, and he was laughing aloud, which Matt Soren very seldom did. All eyes were on the combatants; not a soul had yet recognized the three of them.

"Yield, North Keep intruders!" Tegid roared. Abruptly, Kevin realized something.

"They're Aileron's men!" he shouted to Dave and Paul as Tegid launched himself in a stumbling, lurching run toward the other two.

The big man opposing him sidestepped neatly and Diarmuid, whooping with laughter, barely managed to dodge the grasp of the other rider, who was trying to pull him to the ground. Tegid terminated his run by cras.h.i.+ng into a table on the far side of the ring, wreaking ruin among the spectators and almost unseating his rider.

Slowly he turned, breathing stertorously. Diarmuid lowered his head and spoke a series of instructions into the ear of his unstable mount. This time they advanced more cautiously, Tegid waddling wide-footed for balance on the rush-strewn floor.

"You drunken whale!" the opposing rider taunted him.

Tegid stopped his careful advance and eyed him with red-faced ire. Then, sucking air into the bellows of his lungs, he screamed, "Beer!" at a deafening volume. Immediately a girl dashed forward with two foaming pints and Diarmuid and Tegid each drained one in a long pull.

"Twelve!" Garde and Erron shouted together from the bar top. The match had obviously been going on for some time. Diarmuid tossed his tankard back to the serving girl while Tegid hurled his over his shoulder; a patron ducked quickly and tipped over the table on which he and four other men were standing. Had been standing.

It was too much for Kevin Laine.

A moment later the North Keep duo were quite inexcusably thrown to the ground by an attack from behind. It hadn't been subtle; they'd been simply run over. As the howls and screams rose to unprecedented levels, Kevin, mounted firmly on Dave's broad shoulders, turned to the pair from the Boar.

"Have at you!" he cried.

But Tegid had other ideas. With a howl of joy, he rushed, open-armed, toward Dave, grabbed him in a t.i.tanic bear hug, and, quite unable to do anything so complex as stop, toppled the four of them to the floor in a tangled, sodden heap.

Once down, he commenced buffeting both of them with fierce blows intended to signify affection and pleasure, Kevin doubted not, but formidable enough to make the room spin for him. He was laughing breathlessly and trying to ward off Tegid's exuberance when he heard Diarmuid whisper in his ear.

"Neatly done, friend Kevin." The Prince was not even slightly impaired. "I would have hated to lose. But down here on the floor we have a problem."

"What?" The tone had affected Kevin.

"I was keeping an eye on someone by the door for the last hour, perched up on Tegid. A stranger, I'm afraid. It wasn't concerning me much because I rather hoped he'd report we were ill prepared for war."

"What kind of stranger?"

"I was hoping to find out later. But if you're here, it changes things. I don't want him reporting that Kim and Paul are back."

"Kim isn't. Paul's here."

"Where?" said the Prince sharply.

"By the door."

There were a lot of people surrounding them by then: Garde and Erron, Coll, quite a few women. By the time they fought through to the doorway it was too late to do anything.

Paul watched the fight with a certain bemus.e.m.e.nt. It seemed that nothing, really, could induce in Diarmuid a sense of responsibility. And yet the Prince was more than a wastrel; he had proved it too many times in the short while they'd been here in the spring for the issue to still be in doubt.

In the spring. Spring a year ago, actually, if midsummer was approaching; it was on that, and on the meaning of this savage, inflicted winter, that Paul was reflecting. In particular, on something he had noticed on the icy walk from palace to tavern.

So he was preoccupied with implications and abstractions even amid the pandemonium. With only half an eye he saw Kevin mount up on Dave's shoulders and the two of them charge forward to down the North Keep pair from behind.

The roar that followed got his attention and he grinned, taking in the scene. Funny, manic Kevin Laine, in his own way quite as irrepressible as Diarmuid was, and as full of life.

His grin became a laugh as he saw Tegid rumble forward to gather Dave in a vast embrace, and then he winced as all four of them came cras.h.i.+ng down.

Thus occupied, thus preoccupied, he didn't even see the figure, cloaked and hooded-even in the broiling heat of the Boar-that was picking its way to his side.

Someone else did, though. Someone who had seen Kevin and Dave and had guessed Paul might be there. And just as the cloaked figure came abreast of him, someone interposed herself.

"Hold it, sister! This one is mine first," said brown-haired Tiene. "You can have the others for your bed, wherever it is, but he is mine, upstairs, tonight."

Paul turned to see the slight, pretty girl whose tears had driven him from lovemaking into the night a year ago and, from that starry night, after he'd heard a song he hadn't been meant to hear, to the Summer Tree.

And it was because he'd been on the Tree and had survived, because the G.o.d had sent him back, that the one in the cloak-who was indeed a woman, though not sister to any mortal-had been coming to kill him where he stood.

Until the foolish, interfering girl had stepped between. A hand came out from within the cloak and touched Tiene with one long finger. No more than that, but the girl gasped as an icy, numbing pain shot into her arm where she'd been touched. She felt herself falling, and as she fell, she reached out with her other arm, where the cold had not yet penetrated, and pulled the hood from the other's face.

It was a human face, but only just. Skin so white it was almost blue; one sensed it would be freezing to the touch. She had no hair at all and her eyes were the color of moon on ice, glacial ice, and cold enough to bring winter into the heart of those who looked at them.

But not Paul. He met her glance and saw her retreat momentarily before a thing she read in his own depths. Around them, unbelievably, no one seemed to have noticed anything, not even Tiene's fall. People were falling all over the tavern that night.

But only one man heard a raven speak, and it was Paul. Thought, Memory. Those were the names, he knew, and they had been there, both of them, in the Tree at the end when the G.o.ddess came and then the G.o.d.

And in the moment when the apparition before him recovered herself and moved to strike at him as she had Tiene, Paul heard the ravens and he chanted the words given to him, and they were these: "White the mist that rose through me, Whiter than land of your dwelling.

It is your name that will bind thee, Your name is mine for the telling."

He stopped. Around the two of them, powers of the first world and so of all worlds, the careening pandemonium continued. No one paid them the slightest mind. Paul's voice had been pitched low, but he saw each word cut into her. Then, as low as before, but driving every syllable, for this was as old and as deep a magic as any there was, he said, "I am Lord of the Summer Tree, there is no secret to my name, no binding there." She had time, she could have moved to touch him and her touch could freeze the heart, but his words held her. Her ice eyes locked on his, and she heard him say, "You are far from the Barrens and from your power. Curse him who sent you here and be gone, Ice Queen, for I name thee now by thy name, and call thee Fordaetha of Ruk!"

There came a scream that was not a scream, from a throat human and yet not. It rose like a wounded thing, took monstrous flight of its own, and stopped all other sounds in the Black Boar quite utterly.

By the time the last wailing vibration had died away into the terrified stillness, there was only an empty cloak on the floor in front of Paul. His face was pale with strain and weariness, and his eyes gave testimony to having seen a great evil.

Kevin and Diarmuid, with Dave and the others close behind, came rus.h.i.+ng up as the tavern exploded into frightened, questioning life. None of them spoke; they looked at Paul.

Who was crouched beside a girl on the floor. She was blue already from her head to her feet, in the grip of an icy death that had been meant for him.

At length he rose. The Prince's men had cleared a s.p.a.ce for them. Now, at a nod from Diarmuid, two of them lifted the dead girl and bore her out into the night, which was cold but not so cold as she.

Paul said, "Fruits of winter, my lord Prince. Have you heard tell of the Queen of Ruk?"

Diarmuid's face showed no trace of anything but concentration. "Fordaetha, yes. The legends have her the oldest force in Fionavar."

"One of them." They all turned to look at the grim face of the Dwarf, Brock. "One of the oldest powers," the Dwarf continued. "Pwyll, how came Fordaetha down from the Barrens?"

"With the ice that came down," Paul replied and said again, bitterly, "Fruits of winter."

"You killed her, Paul?" It was Kevin and there was a difficult emotion vivid in his face.

Power, Paul was thinking, remembering the old King whose place he'd taken on the Tree. He said only, "Not killed. I named her with an invocation, and it drove her back. She will not take any shape for a long time now, nor leave the Barrens for longer yet, but she is not dead and she serves Maugrim. Had we been farther north, I couldn't have dealt with her. I wouldn't have had a chance." He was very weary.

"Why do they serve him?" he heard Dave Martyniuk say, a longing to comprehend incarnate in his voice.

He knew the answer to this question, too; he had seen it in her eyes. "He promised her Ice. Ice this far south-so much of a winter world for her to rule."

"Under him," Brock said softly. "To rule under him."

"Oh, yes," Paul agreed. He thought of Kaen and Blod, the brothers who had led the Dwarves to serve Maugrim as well. He could see the same thought in Brock's face. "It will all be under him, and for always. We cannot lose this war."

Only Kevin, who knew him best, heard the desperation in Paul's voice. He watched, they all did, as Schafer turned and walked to the doorway. He paused there, long enough to remove his coat and drop it on the floor. He had only an open-necked s.h.i.+rt on underneath.

"There's another thing," Paul said. "I don't need a jacket. The winter doesn't touch me. For what that's worth."

"Why?" It was Kevin who asked, for all of them.

Schafer stepped into the snow before turning to reply through the open door, "Because I tasted it on the Tree, along with all the other shapes of death."

The door swung shut behind him, cutting off the wind and the blowing snow. They stood there in the bright, noisy tavern, and there was warmth all around them, and good companions.h.i.+p. Nor were there many things more dear in any world.

At about the time Paul was leaving the tavern, Loren Silvercloak and his source were making their way home to the mages' quarters in the town. Neither of them was immune to the cold, and though the snow had stopped the wind had not and in places there were drifts piled as high as the Dwarf's chest. Overhead the summer stars shone brightly down on a winter world, but neither of them looked up, nor did they speak.

They had heard the same story, so they shared the same emotions: rage at what had been done to the woman they had just left in the palace; pity for the hurt they could not heal; and love, in both of them, for beauty that had proven itself defiant in the darkest place. There was something beyond all these in Matt Soren as well, for it had been a Dwarf, Blod, who had marred her when Maugrim was done.

They did not know of Darien.

At length they reached their quarters. Teyrnon and Barak were elsewhere and Brock was out, with Diarmuid, probably, so they had the large s.p.a.ce to themselves. As a matter of deliberate policy they were sleeping in town each night, to rea.s.sure the people of Paras Derval that the high ones of the realm were not hiding behind palace walls. Zervan had built the fires up before he went to bed, so it was blessedly warm, and the mage walked over to stand before the largest hearth in the front room, as the Dwarf poured two gla.s.ses of an amber-colored liquor.

"'Usheen to warm the heart,'" Matt quoted as he gave Loren his drink.

"Mine is cold tonight," the tall mage said. He took a sip and made a wry face. "Bitter warmth."

"It will do you good." The Dwarf dropped into a low chair and began pulling off his boots.

"Should we reach for Teyrnon?"

"To say what?" Matt raised his head.

"The one thing we learned."

They looked at each other in silence.

"The Black Swan told Metran that the cauldron was theirs and he was to go to the place of spiraling," Jennifer had said, white and rigidly controlled as she went back in words to the woodcutter's clearing where Avaia had come for her. This was the one thing.

"What will he do there with the dead?" Matt Soren asked now. Hatred deep as a cavern lay in the query.

The mage's face was bleak. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know anything, it seems. Except that we cannot go after him until we break the winter, and we cannot break the winter."

"We will," said the Dwarf. "We will break it because we must. You will do this, there is no doubt in me."

The mage smiled then, softening the harsh lines of his face. "Aren't you tired," he asked, "after forty years of supporting me like this?"

"No," said Matt Soren simply. And after a moment, he smiled as well, the crooked twist of his mouth.

Loren drained the usheen, making a face again. "Very well," he said. "I want to reach for Teyrnon before we sleep. He should know that Metran has the Cauldron of Khath Meigol and has gone with it... to Cader Sedat."

He said it as prosaically as he could, but even in the speaking of the island's name they both felt a chill, nor could any of their order not do so. Amairgen Whitebranch, first of the mages, had died in that place a thousand years ago.

Matt braced and Loren closed. They found Teyrnon through Barak, a day's ride off with the soldiers in North Keep. They conveyed what had happened and shared among the four of them doubts that would not go outside the Council of the Mages.

Then they broke the link. "All right?" Silvercloak asked his source after a moment.

"Easy," Matt replied. "It will help me sleep."

At which point there came a heavy knocking at the door. It wouldn't be Brock; he had the key. One glance, only, they exchanged, premonitory, for they were what they were, and had been so for a long time. Then they went, together, to open the front door.

In the night outside, with stars bright behind him and a half-moon, stood a bearded man, broad-shouldered, not tall, time spun far into his eyes, and a woman unconscious in his arms.

It was very still. Loren had a sense that the stars, too, were motionless, and the late-risen moon. Then the man said, in a voice rich and low, "She is only weary, I think. She named this house to me before she fainted away. Are you Loren Silvercloak? Matt Soren?"

They were proud men, the mage and his source, and numbered among the great of Fionavar. But it was with a humbled, grateful awe that they knelt then in their open doorway, both of them, before Arthur Pendragon and the one who had summoned him, and they were kneeling to the woman no less than to the man.

Another knock on another door. In her room in the palace, Jennifer was alone and not asleep. She turned from contemplating the fire; the long robe they had given her brushed the deep carpets of the floor. She had bathed and washed her hair, then combed it out before the mirror, staring at her own strange face, at the green eyes that had seen what they had seen. She had been standing before the fire a long time, how long she knew not, when the tapping came.

And with it, a voice: "Never fear me," she heard through the door. "You have no greater friend."

A voice like a chiming of bells, sound at the edge of song. She opened the door to see Brendel of the lios alfar. From a long way off she was moved to see his bright, slender grace.

"Come in," she said. "But it is past time for tears."

She closed the door behind him, marveling at how the flames of the fire, the candle by her bed, seemed to flicker and dance the more vividly with his presence in the room. The Children of Light, the lios were; their very name meant light, and it spoke to them and was answered in their being.

And the Darkest One hated them with a hate so absolute it made all else seem small beside. It was a measure of evil, she thought, who of all mortals needed no such measure, that it could so profoundly hate the creature that stood before her, eyes dry, now, and shading to amber even as she watched.

"There are graces in this King," Brendel said. "Though one would not have thought so. He sent word to my chambers that you were here."

She had been told, by Kevin, of what Brendel had done: how he had followed Galadan and his wolves, and sworn an oath in the Great Hall. She said, "You have no cause to reproach yourself for me. You did, I have heard, more than anyone could have done."

"It was not enough. What can I say to you?"

She shook her head. "You gave me joy as well. My last memory of true delight is of falling asleep hearing the lios sing."

"Can we not give you that once more, now that you are with us again?"