The Darkest Road (25 page)

“Why?” Darien asked, in a small voice.

“Once shall I tell you, and for your ears only, and once is enough for those who are wise,” Flidais intoned, reverting, if briefly, to his cryptic elusiveness. He felt a familiar rush of pleasure, even here, even with what was happening, that he
knew
this. And that reminded him—past pleasure, reaching joy—of what else, now, he knew. And remembering that, he remembered also that he had sworn an oath earlier that night, to try to shape a light from the darkness all around. He looked at Darien, hesitating, then said, quite directly “What you are holding is named Lökdal. It is the enchanted dagger of the Dwarves, given to Colan dan Conary a long time ago.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, to summon up the exact phrasing, given him by a wine-drowsy mage one spring night seven hundred years ago beside an evening fire on the edge of the Llychlyn Marsh. “
Who strikes with this blade without love in his heart
,” said Flidais, as the words came back, “
shall surely die
.” And then he told the rest of it “
Who kills with love may make of his soul a
gift to the one marked with the pattern on the dagger’s haft
.” Potent words, and a deep-delved, intricate magic.

Darien was looking down, gazing at the traced pattern on the hilt of the blade. He glanced up again and said, so quietly Flidais had to strain to hear him, “I wouldn’t wish my soul on anything alive.” And then, after a pause, the andain heard him say, “My gift was to be the dagger itself, before I was brought to this place.”

“A gift to whom?” Flidais asked, though within himself he knew.

“To my father, of course,” said Darien. “That I might find a welcome somewhere in the worlds.”

There had to be something to say to that, Flidais was thinking. There
had
to be an adequate response, so much depended on it. But he couldn’t think, for once. He couldn’t find words, and then, suddenly, he didn’t have time for them, either.

There came a rumbling crash from the glade, louder than any before, and this time there was a resonance of triumph within it. Flidais turned back just in time to see Lancelot hurtle through the air, clipped by the very end of a hammer swing he’d not quite dodged. It would have smashed the life from him had it hit more squarely. As it was, the merest glancing blow had knocked him flying halfway across the glade, to a bruising, crumpled landing beside Darien.

Curdardh, tireless, sensing an ending at last, was advancing towards him again. Dripping blood, desperately weary, his left arm now hanging uselessly at his side, Lancelot somehow, by an effort of will Flidais could not even comprehend, dragged himself to his feet.

In the instant before the demon was upon him he turned to Darien. Flidais saw their eyes lock and hold. Then he heard Lancelot say quickly, in a voice drained of all inflection, “One final cast, in memory of Gawain. I have nothing left.
Count ten for me, then scream. And then pray to whatever you like
.”

He had time for no more. Sidestepping with a half-spin, he launched himself in another rolling dive away from the murderous hammer. It smote the ground where he had stood, and Flidais flinched back from the thunder of that stroke and the heat that roared up from the riven ground.

Curdardh wheeled. Lancelot was on his feet again, swaying a little. The demon made a loose, spilling sound and slowly advanced.

Flidais felt as if his heart was going to tear apart in his chest even as he stood there. The ticking seconds were the longest he had ever known in a long life. He was a guardian of the Wood, of this grove, as much as was Curdardh. These two had defiled the glade!
Three
. He couldn’t look at Darien. The demon slashed with his sword. Lancelot parried, stumbling.
Five
. Again Curdardh thrust with the stone blade, the gigantic hammer held high, in readiness. Again the man defended himself. He almost fell. Flidais suddenly heard a rustling of anticipation in the leaves of the watching trees.
Seven
. Chained to silence, forced to bear witness, the andain tasted blood in his mouth: he had bitten his tongue. Curdardh, fluid, sinuous, utterly unwearied, moved forward, feinting with the sword. Flidais saw the hammer rise higher. He lifted his hands in a useless, pitiful gesture of denial.

And in that instant a sound such as Flidais had never heard in all his years exploded from Darien.

It was a scream of anguish and rage, of terror and blinding agony, torn whole and bleeding from a tortured soul. It was monstrous, insupportable, overwhelming. Flidais, battered to his knees by the pain of it, saw Curdardh quickly glance backwards.

And Lancelot made his move. With two quick strides and a straining upward leap he slashed his bright blade downward with stupefying strength and completely severed the arm that he’d never been able to reach until now.

The arm that held the monstrous hammer.

The demon roared with shock and pain, but even as it did, it was already causing itself to flow back over the amputated limb, growing it again. Flidais saw that out of the corner of one eye.

But he was watching Lancelot who had landed neatly from his unbelievable blow, who had hurled his sword away from him, towards Darien and Flidais, and who was bending now, breathing harshly, over the hammer of Curdardh.

His left arm was useless. He wrapped his right hand about the shaft and, groaning with the effort, fought to lift it. And failed. The hammer was vast, unimaginably heavy. It was the weapon of a demon, of the Oldest One. It had been forged in fires deeper than the chasms of Dana. And Lancelot du Lac was only a man.

Flidais saw the demon shape two new swords from its body. He saw it advance again, with a wet, gurgling sound of rage and pain. Lancelot glanced up. And Flidais, on his knees, unable to move, unable to so much as breathe, was given a new measure, in
that moment, of the magnitude of mortal man. He saw Lancelot
will
himself—there was no other word—to raise the black hammer with one hand.

And it moved.

The handle came off the ground, and then, beyond comprehension, so did the monstrous head. The demon stopped, with a grinding sound, as Lancelot, his mouth wide open in a soundless scream of uttermost endeavouring, used the initial momentum of that lifting to wheel himself through a full circle, his arm extended flat out, the muscles ridged, corded, glistening, the hammer inexorably rising with the speed of his motion.

Then he let it fly. And that mighty hammer, forged in downward-burning fires, thrown with all the passion of an unmatched soul, smashed into the chest of Curdardh, the Oldest One, with a sound like the earth’s crust cracking, and it shattered the demon of the grove into fragments and pieces and shards, killing it utterly.

Flidais felt the silence as a weight upon his life. He had never known Pendaran to be so still. Not a leaf rustled, not a spirit whispered; the powers of the Wood lay as if enchanted in an awed stupefaction. Flidais had a sense, absurdly, that even the stars above the glade had ceased to move, the Loom itself lying silent and still, the Weaver’s hands at rest.

He looked down on his own trembling hands, and then, slowly, he stood up, feeling the motion like a returning into time from another world entirely. He walked over, amid the silence, to stand by the man in the centre of the grove.

Lancelot had pulled himself to a sitting position, his knees bent, his head lowered between them. His left arm hung uselessly at his side. There was dark blood on the grass, and it was welling still from half a dozen wounds. There was an ugly burn on his shoulder, raw and blistered, where he had rolled in the scorching pit of hammer blow. Then Flidais, coming nearer, saw the other burn, and his breath lodged painfully in his chest.

Where the man’s hand—once so beautiful—had gripped the hammer of Curdardh, the skin of his palm was blackened and peeled away in thick strips of violated flesh.

“Oh, Lancelot,” the andain murmured. It came out as a croak, almost inaudible.

Slowly the man lifted his head. His eyes, clouded with pain, met those of Flidais, and then, unbelievably, the thinnest trace of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Taliesin,” he whispered. “I thought I saw you. I am sorry—” He gasped and looked down at the seared flesh of his palm. Then he looked away and continued. “I am sorry I could not greet you properly, before.”

Flidais shook his head mutely. He opened his mouth, but no words came. He cleared his throat and tried again, formally. “It has been told for centuries that you were never matched in your day of earthly knight’s hand. What you battled tonight was not mortal and should never have been defeated. I have never seen a thing to match it and I never will. What may I offer you, my lord Lancelot?”

The mortal eyes, holding his own, seemed to grow clearer.
“Your silence, Taliesin. I need your silence about what happened here, lest all the worlds learn of my shame.”

“
Shame?
” Flidais felt his voice crack.

Lancelot lifted his head to gaze at the high stars overhead. “This was single combat,” he said quietly. “And I sought aid from the boy. It will be a mark against my name for so long as time shall run.”

“In the name of the Loom!” Flidais snapped. “What idiocy is this? What about the trees, and the powers of the Wood that aided Curdardh and hemmed you in? What about this battleground where the demon’s power was greater than anywhere else? What about the darkness, where it could see and you could not? What about—”

“Even so,” murmured Lancelot, and the little andain’s sharp voice was stilled. “Even so, I besought aid in single combat.”

“Is that so terrible?” said a new voice.

Flidais turned. Darien had come forward from the edge of the glade. His expression was calm now, but Flidais could still see the shadow of its contorted anguish when the boy had screamed.

“We both would have died,” Darien went on. “Why is it so terrible to have asked that one small thing?”

Lancelot swung to look at him. There was a moment’s stillness; then he said, “Save in one thing only, a love for which I will make eternal redress, I have served the Light in everything I have ever done. In that service, a victory won with a tool of the Dark is no victory at all.”

Darien took a step backwards. “Do you mean me?” he asked. “A tool of the—”

“No,” Lancelot murmured quietly. Flidais felt his cold fear coming back, as he looked at the boy. “No. I mean the thing I did.”

“You saved my life,” Darien said. It sounded like an accusation. He did not step forward again.

“And you, mine.” Quietly, still.

“Why?” Darien shouted suddenly. “Why did you do it?”

The man closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “Because your mother asked me to,” he said simply.

With the words Flidais heard a rustling in the leaves again. There was an ache in his heart.

Darien stood as if poised for flight, but he had not yet moved. “She knew I was going to my father,” he said, less loudly. “Did she tell you? Do you know that you have saved me to do that?”

Lancelot shook his head. He lifted his voice, though clearly it took an effort. “I have saved you to follow your road.”

Darien laughed. The sound knifed into Flidais. “And if it leads north?” the boy asked coldly, in a voice that sounded older suddenly. “Due north to the Dark? To Rakoth Maugrim?”

Lancelot’s eyes were undisturbed, his voice utterly calm. “Then it leads there by your choice, Darien. Only thus are we not slaves: if we can choose where we would walk. Failing that, all is mockery.”

There was a silence, broken, to Flidais’s horror, by the sound of Darien laughing again, bitter, lonely, lost. “It is, though,” said the boy. “It is all mockery. The light went out when I put it on. Don’t you know that? And why, why should I choose to
walk
in any case?”

There was an instant of silence.

“No!” Flidais cried, reaching out to the child.

Too late. Perhaps it had always been too late: from birth, from conception amid the unlight of Starkadh, from the time the worlds first were spun, Flidais thought, heartsick.

The eyes blazed savagely red. There came a roaring sound from the powers of the Wood, a blurring of shapes in the grove, and suddenly Darien was not there anymore.

Instead, an owl, gleaming white in the darkness, darted swiftly down into the grass, seized a fallen dagger in its mouth, and was aloft and away, wheeling out of sight to the north.

To the north. Flidais gazed at the circle of night sky framed by the towering trees, and with all his soul he tried to will a shape to be there. The shape of a white owl returning, flying back to land beside them and turn into a child again, a fair child, with mild blue eyes, who had chosen the Light and been chosen by it to be a bright blade in the looming dark.

He swallowed. He looked away from the empty sky. He turned back to Lancelot—who was on his feet, bleeding, burnt, swaying with fatigue.

“What are you doing?” Flidais cried.

Lancelot looked down on him. “I am following,” he said calmly, as if it were the most obvious thing imaginable. “Will you help me with my sword?” He held up his mangled palm; his left arm hung at his side.

“Are you mad?” the andain spluttered.

Lancelot made a sound that managed to be a laugh. “I have
been mad,” he admitted. “A long time ago. But not now, little one. What would you have me do? Lie here and lick my wounds in a time of war?”

Flidais did a little dance of sheer exasperation. “What role can you play if you kill yourself?”

“I am aware that I’m not good for much, right now,” Lancelot said gravely, “but I don’t think these wounds are going to—”

“You’re going to
follow
?” the andain interrupted, as the full import of Lancelot’s words struck him. “Lancelot, he’s an owl now, he’s
flying
! By the time you even get out of Pendaran he will be—”

He stopped abruptly, in mid-sentence.

“What is it? What have you thought of, wise child?”

He hadn’t been a child for a very long time. But he had, indeed, thought of something. He looked up at the man, saw the blood on his bare chest. “He was going to fly due north. That will take him over the western edge of Daniloth.”