The Darkest Road (40 page)

When he was done, though, Barak almost fell, fatigue etched into his features. Teyrnon stood up quickly and steadied his source.

“I can’t do much more of this,” the mage said grimly, looking closely at Barak.

“Yes, you can!” Barak snapped, glaring. “Who else, Seer? Who else needs us?”

“Go to Jaelle,” Kim said tonelessly. “She’ll show you the ones who are worst off. Do what you can, but try not to exhaust yourself. You two are all we have in the way of magic.”

Teyrnon nodded tersely and strode off to where Paul could see the High Priestess, the sleeves of her white gown pushed back, kneeling beside the figure of a crumpled lios alfar.

Paul turned back to Kim. “Your own magic?” he said, pointing to the dulled Warstone. “What’s happened?”

For a moment she hesitated; then she quickly told him the story of what had happened by Calor Diman. “I rejected it,” she concluded flatly. “And now the swans have the sky to themselves, and the Baelrath is totally dead. I feel sick, Paul.”

So did he. But he masked it and pulled her to him in a hard embrace. He felt her trembling against his body.

Paul said, “No one here or anywhere else has done as much as you. And we don’t know if what you did was wrong—would you have gotten to the Dwarves in time if you’d used the ring to
bind the creature in the Lake? It isn’t over, Kim, it’s a long way from over.”

From not far off they heard a grunt of pain. Four of the auberei set down a stretcher they’d been carrying. On it, bleeding from half a dozen new wounds, lay Mabon of Rhoden. Loren Silvercloak and a white-faced Sharra of Cathal hurried to the side of the fallen Duke.

Paul didn’t know where to look. All around them lay the dying and the dead. Below, on the plain of battle, the forces of the Dark seemed scarcely to have diminished. Within himself the pulsebeat of Mörnir seemed faint as ever, agonizingly far. A hint of something but not a promise; an awareness, but not power.

He cursed, as Barak had done, helplessly.

Kim looked at him, and after a moment she said, in a strange voice, “I just realized something. You’re hating yourself for not being able to use your power in battle. You don’t
have
a power of war, though, Paul. We should have realized that before.
I’m
that kind of power, or I was, until last night. You’re something else.”

He heard a truth, but the bitterness wouldn’t leave him “Wonderful,” he snapped. “Makes me awfully useful, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” was all she said. But there was a quiet speculation in her eyes that calmed him.

“Where’s Jen?” he asked.

She pointed. He looked over and saw that Jennifer, too, was dealing with the wounded as best she could. At the moment she had just risen from someone’s side to walk a step or two north, looking down over the battlefield. He could only see her in profile,
but as he gazed at her Paul realized that he had never seen a woman look as she did then, as if taking the pain of all the worlds onto herself in the manner of a Queen.

He never, ever, knew what made him look up.

To see a black swan diving. Soundlessly, a terror against the sky, razored claws extended straight for Jennifer. Black Avaia, putrescent death in the air, returning to claim her victim for a second time.

Paul screamed a warning at the top of his voice and launched himself in a frantic sprint over the distance between. The swan was a black projectile hurtling down with annihilating speed. Jennifer turned at his cry and looked up. She saw, and did not flinch. She grappled bravely for the slim blade they’d given her. Paul ran as he’d never run before in all his life. A sob escaped him. Too far! He was too far away. He tried, reached for speed, for more, for
something
. A meaty stench filled the air. A shrieking sound of triumph. Jennifer lifted her blade. Twenty feet away, Paul stumbled, fell, heard himself screaming her name, glimpsed the raking teeth of the swan—

And saw Avaia, ten feet above Jennifer’s head, smashed into a crumple of feathers by a red comet in the sky. A living comet that had somehow materialized, blindingly swift, to intersect her path. A horn like a blade exploded into Avaia’s breast. A bright sword smote at her head. The black swan screamed, in pain and terror so strident they heard it on the plain below.

She fell, screaming still, at the feet of the woman. And Guinevere walked over then, not faltering, and looked down
upon the creature that had delivered her unto Maugrim.

One moment she stood so; then her own slim blade thrust forward into Avaia’s throat, and the screaming of the swan came to an end, as Lauriel the White was avenged after a thousand years.

The silence on the ridge was overwhelming. Even the tumult of war below seemed to have receded. Paul watched, they all watched in awe, as Gereint, the old blind shaman, climbed carefully down to the ground, to leave Tabor dan Ivor alone astride his winged creature. The two of them seemed eerily remote even in the midst of so many people, blood on his sword, blood on her deadly, shining horn.

The shaman stood very still, his head lifted a little, as if listening for something. He sniffed the air, which was foul with the corrupt odour of the swan.

“Pah!” exclaimed Gereint, and spat on the ground at his feet.

“It is dead, shaman,” said Paul quietly. He waited.

Gereint’s sightless eyes swung unerringly to where Paul stood. “Twiceborn?” the old man asked.

“Yes,” said Paul. And stepping forward, he embraced, for the first time, the old blind gallant figure who had sent his soul so far to find Paul’s on the dark wide sea.

Paul stepped back. Gereint turned, with that uncanny precision, to where Kim was standing, silent, inexplicable tears streaming down her face. Shaman and Seer faced each other, and no words at all were said. Kim closed her eyes, still weeping.

“I’m sorry,” she said brokenly. “Oh, Tabor, I’m sorry.” Paul didn’t understand. He saw Loren Silvercloak lift his head sharply.

“Was this it, Gereint?” Tabor asked, in a strangely calm voice. “Was it the black swan that you saw?”

“Oh, child,” the shaman whispered. “For the love I bear you and all your family, I only wish that it were so.”

Loren had now turned completely away, staring north.

“
Weaver at the Loom!
” he cried.

Then the others, too, saw the onrushing of the shadow, they heard the huge, roaring sound, and felt the mighty buffet of the wind that had come.

Jaelle clutched at Paul’s arm. He was aware of her touch, but it was at Kim that he looked as the shadow came over them. He finally understood her grief. It became his own. There was nothing he could do, though, nothing at all. He saw Tabor look up. The boy’s eyes seemed to open very wide. He touched the glorious creature that he rode, she spread her wings, and they rose into the sky.

He had been ordered to stay by the women and children in the curve of land east of the Latham, to guard them if necessary. It was as much for his sake, Tabor knew, as it was for their own: his father’s attempt to keep him from leaving the world of men, which was what seemed to happen whenever he rode Imraith-Nimphais.

Gereint had called for him, though. Only half awake in that grey predawn hour in front of the shaman’s house, Tabor heard Gereint’s words, and everything changed.

“Child,” the shaman said, “I have been sent a vision from Cernan, as sharp as when he came to me and named you to your fast. I am afraid that you must fly. Son of Ivor, you have to be in Andarien before the sun is high!”

It seemed to Tabor as if there was an elusive music playing somewhere amid the ground mist and the greyness that lay all about before the rising of the sun. His mother and sister were beside him, awakened by the same boy Gereint had sent with his message. He turned to his mother, to try to explain, to ask forgiveness….

And saw that it wasn’t necessary. Not with Leith.

She had brought his sword from their house. How she had known to do so, he couldn’t even guess. She held it out towards him, and he took it from her hands. Her eyes were dry. His father was always the one who cried.

His mother said, in her quiet, strong voice, “You will do what you must do, and your father will understand since the message comes from the god. Weave brightly for the Dalrei, my son, and bring them home.”

Bring them home
. Tabor found it hard to frame words of his own. All about him, and more clearly now, he could hear the strange music calling him away.

He turned to his sister. Liane
was
weeping, and he grieved for her. She had been hurt in Gwen Ystrat, he knew, on the night Liadon died. There was a new vulnerability to her these days. Or perhaps it had always been there and only now was he noticing it. It didn’t really matter which, not anymore. In silence, for words
were truly very difficult, he handed her his sword and raised his arms out from his side.

Kneeling, his sister buckled the sword belt upon him, after the fashion of the old days. She did not speak, either. When she was done, he kissed her, and then his mother Leith held him very tightly for a moment, and then she let him go. He stepped a little way apart from all of them.

The music had gone now. The sky was brighter in the east above the Carnevon Range, in whose looming shadows they lay. Tabor looked around at the silent, sleeping camp.

Then he closed his eyes and inside himself, not aloud, he said: B
eloved!

And almost before the thought was fully formed, he heard the voice of his dreaming that was the voice of his soul respond,
I am here! Shall we fly?

He opened his eyes. She was in the sky overhead, more glorious to see than even innermost knowledge remembered her to be. She seemed brighter, her horn more luminous, every time she came. His heart lifted to see her and to watch her land so lightly at his side.

I think we must
, he answered her, walking over to stroke the glistening red mane. She lowered her head, so the shining horn rested on his shoulder for a moment.
I think this is the time for which we were brought together
.

We shall have each other
,
she said to him. Come, I will take you up to the sunrise!

He smiled a little at her eagerness, but then, an instant later, his
indulgent smile faded, as he felt the same fierce exhilaration surge through him as well. He mounted up upon Imraith-Nimphais and even as he did, she spread her wings.

Wait
, he said, with the last of his self-control.

He turned back. His mother and sister were watching them. Leith had never seen his winged creature before, and a far-off part of Tabor hurt a little to see awe in her face. A mother should not be awed by her son, he thought. But already such thoughts seemed to come from a long way away.

The sky was appreciably lighter now. The mist was lifting. He turned to Gereint, who had been waiting patiently saying nothing. Tabor said, “You know her name, shaman. You know the names of all our totem animals, even this one. She will bear you if you like. Would you fly with us?”

And Gereint, as unruffled as he always seemed to be, said quietly, “I would not have presumed to ask, but there may yet be a reason for me to be there. Yes, I will come. Help me mount.”

Without being asked, Imraith-Nimphais moved nearer to the frail, wizened shaman. She stood very still as Tabor reached down a hand, and Liane moved forward and helped Gereint up behind Tabor.

Then it seemed that there was nothing else to be said, and no time to say it, even if he could have managed to. Within his mind, Tabor told the creature of his dream,
Let us fly, my love
. And with the thought they were in the sky, winging north just as the morning sun burst up on their right hand.

Behind him, Tabor knew without looking, his mother would
be standing, straight-backed, dry-eyed, holding his sister in her arms, watching her youngest fly away from her.

This had been his very last thought, his last clear image from the world of men, as they had sped through the morning high over the rolling Plain, racing the rising sun to a field of war.

To which they had finally come, and in time, with the sun high, starting over into the west. They had come, and Tabor had seen a black thing of horror, a monstrous swan diving from the sky, and he had drawn his sword, and Imraith-Nimphais, glorious and deadly, had reached for even greater speed, and they had met the diving swan and struck her two mortal wounds with shining blade and horn.

When it was over Tabor had felt, just as he had before, each time they’d flown and killed, that the balance of his soul had shifted again, farther away than ever from the world through which the people all around them moved.

Gereint descended, unaided, and so Tabor and Imraith-Nimphais stood by themselves among men and women, some of whom they knew. He saw the blood dark on his creature’s horn, and heard her say to him, in the moment before he formed the thought himself,
Only each other at the last
.

And then, an instant later, he heard Silvercloak cry aloud, and he wheeled about and looked to the north, above the tumult of the battlefield where his father and his brother were fighting.

He looked, saw the shadow, felt the wind, and realized what had come, here, now, at the last, and knew in that moment why
he had dreamt his creature, and that the ending was upon them.

He did not hesitate or turn to bid farewell to anyone. He was already too far away for such things. He moved his hands a little, and Imraith-Nimphais leaped into the sky to meet the Dragon.

The Dragon of Rakoth Maugrim in the sky over Andarien.

A thousand years before it had been too young to fly, its wings too weak to bear the colossal weight of its body. Most secret, most terrible of all Maugrim’s malevolent designs, it had been another casualty of the Unraveller’s untimely haste at the Bael Rangat—his Dragon had been able to play no part in that war.

Instead, it had lurked in a vast underground chamber hollowed out beneath Starkadh, and when the end had come, when the army of Light had beaten its way northward, Rakoth had sent his Dragon away, flying with awkward, half-crippled motions, to seek refuge in the northern Ice where no man would ever go.