The Darkest Road (19 page)

“And?” It was Loren Silvercloak.

Kimberly listened as Jaelle, stripped of her usual arrogance, told the tale of how Leila had heard the blowing of Owein’s Horn, and seen the battlefield through Finn’s presence there, and then how all of them in the Temple had heard Ceinwen intercede. “The High King rode north in response to the summonglass the night
Prydwen
set sail,” she concluded. “They will all be on the Plain by now, though what they will do I know not. Perhaps Loren can reach for Teyrnon and answer that for us.”

It was the first time Kim could remember that High Priestess speaking so to the mage.

Then, a moment later, she learned that Loren wasn’t a mage any longer. And even as the tale was being told the ring on her finger began to glow with returning life. She looked down upon
it, fighting hard against the now-instinctive aversion she felt, and within her mind, as Loren and then Diarmuid spoke of Cader Sedat, an image began to coalesce.

It was an image she remembered, the first vision she’d ever had in Fionavar, on the path to Ysanne’s Lake: a vision of another lake, high among mountains, with eagles flying over it.

Loren said quietly, “The circles, it seems, have been made complete. It is now my task to go with Matt to Banir Lök, to help him regain the Crown that he never truly lost, so that the Dwarves may be brought back from the edge of the Dark.”

“We have a long way to go,” Matt Sören said, “and not a great deal of time. We will have to set out tonight.” He sounded exactly as he always had. Kim had a sense that nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever make him other than he was: the rock upon which all of them, it seemed, had rested at one time or another.

She looked at Jen and saw the same thought in her face. Then she looked down at the Baelrath again and said, “
You will not get there in time
.”

Even now, even after so much had happened, it was with a deep humility that she registered the instant silence that descended over those gathered there when the Seer within her spoke. When she looked up, it was to meet the single eye of Matt Sören.

“I must try,” he said simply.

“I know,” she replied. “And Loren is right as well, I think. It does matter, somehow, that you try. But I can tell you you will not get there in time from this place.”

“What are you saying?” It was Diarmuid who asked, his voice
stripped of nuance as Jaelle’s had been, pared clean to the simple question.

Kim held up her hand, so they could all see the flame. “I’m saying I’ll have to go there, too. That the Baelrath will have to take us there. And I think all of us know by now that the Warstone is a mixed blessing, at the very best.” She tried hard to keep the bitterness from her voice.

She almost succeeded, too. But in the stillness that followed, someone asked, “Kim, what happened in the mountains?”

She turned to Paul Schafer, who had asked the question, who always seemed to ask the questions that went below the surface. She looked at him, and then at Loren, beside Paul, gazing at her with the mix of gentleness and strength that she remembered from the beginning, and then, most vividly, from the night they’d shared in the Temple, before Kevin had died. Before she went to Khath Meigol.

So it was to the two of them, so different yet so much alike in some inexplicable way, that she told the story of the rescue of the Paraiko and what had followed. Everyone heard, everyone had to know, but it was to Loren and Paul that she spoke. And it was to Matt that she turned, at the end, to repeat, “And so you see what I mean: whatever blessing I carry will not be unmixed.”

For a moment he looked at her, as if considering the point. Then his expression changed; she saw his mouth move in the grimace that she knew to be his smile and heard him say wryly, “No blade I have ever known to be worth anything at all has had only a single edge.”

That was all, but she knew those quiet words were all the reassurance she had any right to seek.

Inclination matched training in the High Priestess of Dana. And so Jaelle, cold in the falling rain, chilled by what had happened with Darien and what was happening now, since the shipwreck, showed nothing at all of her apprehension to anyone on the strand.

She knew, being what she was, that it had been the voice of Mörnir that had thundered to still the waves, and so her gaze was on Pwyll first, of all of them, when he came ashore. She remembered him standing on another beach, far to the south, speaking with Liranan in a perilous light that came not from the moon. He was alive, though, and had come back. She supposed she was pleased about that.

They had all come back, it seemed, and there was someone new with them, and it was not hard to tell, from Jennifer’s face, who this was.

She had made herself cold and hard, but she was not stone, however she might try to be. Pity and wonder had moved her equally to see Guinevere and Lancelot stand together in the rain, as the setting sun slanted through disappearing clouds low in the west.

She had not heard what they said to each other, but the language of gesture was plain, and, at the end, when the man walked away alone into the Wood, Jaelle found herself unexpectedly grieved. She watched him go, knowing the history, not finding it hard at all to guess what distancing quest Guinevere had now
imposed upon her second love. What was hard was to preserve her own necessary image of detachment—in the presence of so many men, and in the turbulent wake of what had happened in the Temple before she had taken Kim and Sharra away, with blood and the earthroot tapped.

She had needed the Mormae in Gwen Ystrat to wield such a potent magic, and that meant dealing with Audiart, which was never pleasant. Most of the time she could manage it without real trouble, but that afternoon’s exchange was different.

She had been on dubious ground, and she’d known it, and so had Audiart. It was beyond the irregular, bordering on a real transgression for the High Priestess to be leaving the Temple—and the Kingdom—even at a time like this. It was her sacred duty, Audiart reminded her, along the mindlink the Mormae shared, to remain in the sanctuary, ready and able to deal with the needs of the Mother. Furthermore, her second-in-command did not scruple to point out, had not the High King charged her to remain in Paras Derval and govern the country with the Chancellor? Was it not her further duty to exploit this unexpected opportunity as best she could in the service of their unwavering quest for Dana’s return to primacy in the High Kingdom?

All of this, unfortunately, was true.

In response, all she could really do was pull rank, and not for the first time. Not actually dissembling, she had drawn upon the unease and restlessness she’d been feeling in the Temple and told the Mormae, without amplification, that it was her judgement, as High Priestess, that for her to leave at this time was according to
the will of Dana—superseding any traditions or opportunities for gain.

There was also, she had sent along the mindlink, a very real urgency—which was true, as she had seen from Kim’s white face and clenched hands as she waited tensely with Sharra under the dome, oblivious to the closed exchange of the priestesses.

She had made that sending white-hot with her anger, and she was, still, stronger than any of the others.
Very well
, Audiart had replied.
If you must do this, you must. I will leave for Paras Derval immediately to act as best I can in your absence
.

This was when the real clash had come, making what had gone before seem like a minor skirmish in a children’s game.

No
, she’d sent back, absolute firmness masking her inner anxiety.
It is my command, and so Dana’s, that you stay where you are. It is only a week since the sacrifice of Liadon, and the rites of response are not complete
.

Are you mad?
Audiart had replied, more nakedly rebellious than ever before.
Which of those chattering idiots, those insipid nonentities, do you propose to have act in your stead in a time of war?

A mistake. Audiart always let her contempt and ambition show through too clearly. Sensing the response of the Mormae, Jaelle drew a breath of relief. She was going to get away with it. Every established pattern of precedent would have demanded that the Second of the Mother come to Paras Derval to take charge in her absence. Had Audiart said so quietly, with even the most cursorily assumed humility, Jaelle might have lost this battle. As it was, she sprang to the attack.

Would you like to be cursed and cast out, Second of Dana?
she sent, with the silken clarity she alone could command over the mind-link. She felt the Mormae’s collectively indrawn breath at the unveiled threat. Dare you speak so to your High Priestess?
Dare you so denigrate your sisters? Have a care, Audiart, lest you lose everything your scheming has won you thus far!

Strong words, almost too strong, but she’d needed to throw them all off balance for what she had to say next.

I have chosen my surrogate, and the Chancellor has been informed on behalf of the High King. I have this afternoon named the newest member of the Mormae, and she stands beside me, robed in red and opened new to the mindlink
.

Greetings, sisters of the Mother
, Leila sent, on cue.

And even Jaelle, half prepared for it, had been stunned by the vividness of her words.

On the strand beneath the Anor Lisen, as the rain slowly came to an end and the sunset tinted the western sky, Jaelle was remembering that vividness. It offered a confirmation of sorts for her own instinctive actions and had served to still, quite effectively, whatever opposition to her peremptory behaviour might have been mounted in Gwen Ystrat. Even so, there was something profoundly unsettling about the mixture of child and woman in Leila, and her link to the Wild Hunt. Dana had not yet chosen to reveal to her High Priestess any indication of what all this might mean.

The voice of Loren Silvercloak, the mage she had hated and feared all her life, brought her fully back to the strand. She heard
him reveal what had happened to him, and the triumph she might once have felt at such a revelation of weakness was quite lost in a wave of fear. They had need of Silvercloak’s power, and they were not going to have it.

She’d hoped he might be able to send her home. So far from the Temple she had no magic of her own, no way to get back by herself—and, it now appeared, no one to help her. She saw the Baelrath come to life on the Seer’s hand; then she heard where Kim was going with that power.

She listened to Pwyll’s question—his first words spoken since
Prydwen
had run aground and they’d come ashore. She wondered about him, how one who could speak with the thundered voice of the God could be so quiet and self-contained and then surface, when his presence had almost been forgotten, with words that cut through to the heart of what was happening. She was, she realized, a little afraid of him, and her attempts to channel that fear into hatred or contempt were not really working.

Once more she forced her mind back to the beach. It was growing darker by the minute. In the shadows Diarmuid’s fair hair was still bright, catching the last colour of the western sky. It was the Prince who spoke now.

“Very well,” he said. “It seems that what we have been told is all we are going to learn. Let us be grateful to our charming Priestess for such information as we do have. Now, Loren can’t reach Teyrnon anymore. Kim, I gather, has had a vision of Calor Diman but nothing of the armies. And Jaelle has exhausted her store of useful tidings.” The gibe seemed reflexive, half-hearted;
she didn’t bother to respond. Diarmuid didn’t wait. “Which leaves us dependent,” he murmured, with what seemed to be a genuinely rueful shake of his head, “upon my own less than exhaustive store of knowledge about what my beloved brother is likely to do.”

In some inexplicable way, the glib flow of words had a calming effect. Once more, Jaelle realized, the one she used to dismiss as the “princeling” knew exactly what he was doing. He had already decided, and now he was making the decision sound effortless and of little consequence. Jaelle looked at Sharra, standing beside the Prince. She wasn’t sure whether or not to pity her, which was another change: once she would have had no trouble doing so.

“At a time like this,” Diarmuid continued, “I can do no better than go back to my precocious childhood memories. Some of you may have known patient, supportive older brothers. I have been blighted sadly by the lack of such a one. Loren will remember. From the time I was able to take my first stumbling steps in my brother’s wake, one thing was manifestly clear:
Aileron never, ever, waited for me
.”

He paused and glanced at Loren, as if seeking his confirmation, but then continued in a voice from which the flippancy was suddenly gone. “He will not wait now, nor could he, given where we went. If he is on the Plain with the army and the lios with him, Aileron will push for battle; I would stake my life on that. In fact, with your leave, I
will
stake my life on it, and all of yours. Aileron will take the fight to Starkadh as swiftly as he can, which to my mind means one thing only.”

“Andarien,” said Loren Silvercloak, who, Jaelle suddenly recalled, had taught both Diarmuid and his brother.

“Andarien,” the Prince echoed quietly. “He will go through Gwynir to Andarien.”

There was a silence. Jaelle was aware of the sea, and of the forest to the east, and, acutely now, of the dark shape of Lisen’s Tower looming above them in the darkness.

“I suggest,” Diarmuid went on, “that we skirt the western edge of Pendaran, going north from here, angle up through Sennett across the River Celyn to meet, if childhood memories have any merit at all, with the army of Brennin and Daniloth and the Dalrei on the borders of Andarien. If I am wrong,” he concluded, with a generous smile at her, “then at least we will have Jaelle with us, to terrify whatever the fifty of us find there.”

She favoured him with nothing more than a wintry glance. His smile grew broader, as if her expression had only confirmed his statement, but then, in one of his mercurial changes of mood, he turned and looked at Arthur, who had risen to stand.