The Darkest Road (46 page)

She looked at the three of them standing together in the twilight, and half a hundred thoughts went through her mind. She turned back to Paul and saw that there was now a kind of shining to him in the dark. All thoughts went from her. Nothing had prepared her for this. She waited.

And heard him say, as quietly as before, “Arthur, the end of war has come, and you have not passed from us. This place was named Camlann, and you stand living in our presence still.”

The Warrior said nothing. The heel of his spear rested on the ground, and both of his broad hands were wrapped about its shaft. The sun went down. In the west, the evening star named for Lauriel seemed to shine more brightly than it ever had before. There was a faint glow, yet, to the western sky, but soon it would be full dark. Some men had brought torches, but they had not lit them yet.

Paul said, “You told us the pattern, Warrior. How it has always been, each and every time you have been summoned. Arthur, it has changed. You thought you were to die at Cader Sedat and you did not. Then you thought to find your ending in battle with Uathach, and you did not.”

“I think I was supposed to find it there,” Arthur said. His first words.

“I think so, too,” Paul replied. “But Diarmuid chose otherwise. He made it
become
otherwise. We are not slaves to the Loom, not
bound forever to our fate. Not even you, my lord Arthur. Not even you, after so long.”

He paused. It was utterly silent on the plain. It seemed to Kim that a wind arose then that appeared to come from all directions, or from none. She felt, in that moment, that they stood at the absolute centre of things, at the axletree of worlds. She had a sense of anticipation, of a culmination coming that went far beyond words. It was deeper than thought: a fever in the blood, another kind of pulse. She was aware of the tacit presence of Ysanne within herself. Then she was aware of something else.

A new light shining in the darkness.

“
Oh, Dana!
” Jaelle breathed, a prayer. No one else spoke.

In the east a full moon rose over Fionavar for the second time on a night that was not a full moon night.

This time she was not red, not a challenge or a summons to war. She was silver and glorious, as the full moon of the Goddess was meant to be, bright as a dream of hope, and she bathed Andarien in a mild and beneficent light.

Paul didn’t even look up. Nor did the Warrior. Their eyes never left the other’s face. And Arthur said, in that silver light, in that silence, his voice an instrument of bone-deep self-condemnation: “Twiceborn, how could it ever change? I had the children slain.”

“And have paid full, fullest price,” Paul replied without hesitation.

In his voice, now, they suddenly heard thunder. “Look up, Warrior!” he cried. “Look up and see the moon of the Goddess shining down upon you. Hear Mörnir speak through me. Feel
the ground of Camlann beneath your feet. Arthur, look about you! Listen! Don’t you see? It has come, after so long. You are summoned now to glory, not to pain. This is the hour of your release!”

Thunder was in his voice, a glow as of sheet lightning in his face. Kim felt herself trembling; she wrapped her arms about herself. The wind was all around them, growing and growing even as Paul spoke, even as the thunder rolled, and it seemed to Kim, looking up, that the wind was carrying stars and the dust of stars past her eyes.

And then Pwyll Twiceborn, who was Lord of the Summer Tree, turned away from all of them, and he strode a little way to the west, facing the distant sea, with the bright moon at his back, and they heard him cry in a mighty voice:

“Liranan, sea brother! I have called you three times now, once from the shore, and once from the sea, and once in the bay of the Anor Lisen. Now, in this hour, I summon you again, far from your waves. In the name of Mörnir and in the presence of Dana, whose moon is above us now, I bid you send your tides to me. Send them, Liranan! Send the sea, that joy may come at last at the end of a tale of sorrow so long told. I am sourced in the power of the land, brother, and mine is the voice of the God. I bid you come!”

As he spoke, Paul stretched forth his hands in a gesture of widest gathering, as if he would encompass all of time, all the Weaver’s worlds within himself. Then he fell silent. They waited. A moment passed, and another. Paul did not move. He kept his hands outstretched as the wind swirled all around him, strong
and wild. Behind him the full moon shone, before him the evening star.

Kim heard the sound of waves.

And over the barren plain of Andarien, silver in the light of the moon, the waters of the sea began moving in. Higher and higher they rose, though gently, guided and controlled. Paul’s head was high, his hands were stretched wide and welcoming as he drew the sea so far into the land from Linden Bay. Kim blinked; there were tears in her eyes, and her own hands were trembling again. She smelled salt on the evening air, saw waves sparkle under the moon.

Far, far off, she saw a figure shining upon the waves, with his hands outstretched wide, as Paul’s were. She knew who this had to be. Wiping away her tears, she strained to see him clearly. He shimmered in the white moonlight, and it seemed to her that all the colours of the rainbow were dancing in the robe the sea god wore.

On the high ridge northwest of them, she saw that Shahar still cradled his son, but the two of them seemed to Kim to be alone on some promontory now, on an island rising from the waters of the sea.

An island such as Glastonbury Tor had once been, rising from the waters that had covered the Somerset Plain. Waters over which a barge once had floated, bearing three grieving queens and the body of Arthur Pendragon to Avalon.

And even as she shaped this thought, Kim saw a boat coming towards them over the waves. Long and beautiful was that craft, with a single white sail filling with the strange wind. And in the
stern, steering it, was a figure she knew, a figure to whom she had granted, under duress, his heart’s desire.

The waters had reached them now. The world had changed, all the laws of the world. Under a full moon that should never have been riding in the sky, the stony plain of Andarien lay undersea as far inland as the place where they stood, east of the battlefield. And the silvered waters of Liranan had covered over the dead.

Paul lowered his arms. He said nothing at all, standing quite motionless. The winds grew quiet. And borne by those quiet winds, Flidais of the andain, who had been Taliesin once in Camelot long ago, brought his craft up to them and lowered the sail.

It was very, very still. Then Flidais stood up in the stern of his boat and he looked directly at Kimberly and into that stillness he said, “
From the darkness of what I have done to you there shall be light
. Do you remember, Seer? Do you remember the promise I made you when you offered me the name?”

“I remember,” Kim whispered.

It was very hard to speak. She was smiling, though, through her tears. It was coming, it had come.

Flidais turned to Arthur and, bowing low, he said humbly, with deference, “My lord, I have been sent to bring you home. Will you come aboard, that we may sail by the light of the Loom to the Weaver’s Halls?”

All around her, Kim heard men and women weeping quietly for joy. Arthur stirred. There was a glory in his face, as understanding finally came to him.

And then, even in the very moment it appeared, the moment
he was offered release from the cycle of his grief, Kim saw that shining fade. Her hands closed at her sides so hard the nails drew blood from her palms.

Arthur turned to Guinevere.

There might have been a thousand words spoken in the silence of their eyes under that moon. A tale told over so many times in the chambers of the heart that there were no words left for the telling. And especially not now. Not here, with what had come.

She moved forward with grace, with infinite care. She lifted up her mouth to his and kissed him full upon the lips in farewell; then she stepped back again.

She did not speak or weep, or ask for anything at all. In her green eyes was love, and only love. She had loved two men only in all her days, and each of them had loved her, and each the other. But divided as her love was, it had also been something else and was so, still: a passion sustaining and enduring, without end to the worlds’ end.

Arthur turned away from her, so slowly it seemed the weight of time itself lay upon him. He looked to Flidais with an anguished question in his face. The andain wrung his hands together and then drew them helplessly apart.

“I am only allowed you, Warrior,” he whispered. “We have so far to go, the waters are so wide.”

Arthur closed his eyes.
Must there always be pain?
Kim thought. Could joy never, ever be pure? She saw that Lancelot was weeping.

And it was then, precisely then, that the dimensions of the miracle were made manifest. It was then that grace descended.
For Paul Schafer spoke again, and he said, “
Not so. It is allowed. I am deep enough to let this come to pass
.”

Arthur opened his eyes and looked, incredulous, at Paul. Who nodded, quietly sure. “It is allowed,” he said again.

So there was joy, after all. The Warrior turned again to look upon his Queen, the light and sorrow of his days, and for the first time in so very long they saw him smile. And she, too, smiled, for the first time in so very long, and said, asking only now, now that it was vouchsafed them, “Will you take me with you where you go? Is there a place for me among the summer stars?”

Through her tears Kim saw Arthur Pendragon walk forward, then, and she saw him take the hand of Guinevere in his own, and she watched the two of them go aboard that craft, floating on the waters that had risen over Andarien. It was almost too much for her, too rich. She could scarcely breathe. She felt as if her soul were an arrow loosed to fly, silver in the moonlight, never falling back.

Then there was even more: the very last gift, the one that sealed and shaped the whole. Beneath the shining of Dana’s moon she saw Arthur and Guinevere turn back to look at Lancelot.

And she heard Paul say again, with so deep a power woven into his voice, “
It is allowed if you will it so. All of the price has been paid
.”

With a cry of joy wrung from his great heart, Arthur instantly stretched forth his hand. “Oh, Lance, come!” he cried. “
Oh, come!
”

For a moment Lancelot did not move. Then something long held back, so long denied, blazed in his eyes brighter than any
star. He stepped forward. He took Arthur’s hand, and then Guinevere’s, and they drew him aboard. And so the three of them stood there together, the grief of the long tale healed and made whole at last.

Flidais laughed aloud for gladness and swiftly drew upon the line that lifted the white sail. There came a wind from the east. Then, just before the boat began to draw away, Kim saw Paul finally move. He knelt down beside a grey shape that had materialized at his side.

For one moment he buried his face deep in the torn fur of the dog that had saved him on the Tree—saved him, that the wheel of time might turn and find this moment waiting in Andarien.

“Farewell, great heart,” Kim heard him say. “I will never forget.”

It was his own voice this time, no thunder in it, only a rich sadness and a very great depth of joy. Which were within her, too, exactly those two things, as Cavall leaped in one great bound to land at Arthur’s feet even as the boat turned to the west.

And thus did it come to pass, what Arthur had said in Cader Sedat to the dog that had been his companion in so many wars: that there might come a day when they need not part.

It had come. Under the silver shining of the moon, that long slender craft caught the rising of the wind and it carried them away, Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere. Past the promontory it sailed, and from that solitary height Shahar raised one hand in farewell, and all three of them saluted him. Then it seemed to those that watched from the plain that that ship began to rise into
the night, not following the curving of the earth but tracking a different path.

Farther and farther it went, rising all the while upon waters of a sea that belonged to no world and to all of them. For as long as she possibly could, Kim strained her eyes to make out Guinevere’s fair hair—Jennifer’s hair—shining in the bright moonlight. Then that was lost in the far darkness, and the last thing they saw was the gleaming of Arthur’s spear, like a new star in the sky.

No man living could remember a harvest like the one that came to the High Kingdom at the end of that summer. In Cathal, as well, the graneries were full, and the gardens of Larai Rigal grew more extravagantly beautiful—drenched in perfume, riotous with colour—each passing day. On the Plain the eltor swifts ran over the rich green grass, and the hunting was easy and joyous under the wide sky. But nowhere did the grass grow so deep as on Ceinwen’s Mound by Celidon.

Even in Andarien the soil had grown rich again—literally overnight, with the receding of the waves that had come to bear the Warrior away. There was talk of settling there again and in Sennett Strand. In Taerlindel of the mariners and in Cynan and Seresh, they spoke of building ships to sail up and down the long coast, past the Anor Lisen and the Cliffs of Rhudh, to Sennett and Linden Bay. There was talk of many things as that summer came to an end, words woven of peace and a quiet joy.

Through the first weeks after the battle there had been little time to celebrate. The army of Cathal had ridden north under their Supreme Lord, and Shalhassan had taken charge, with Matt Sören—for the King of the Dwarves would not let his people rest until the last of the servants of Maugrim were slain—of
cleaning out the remnants of the urgach and the svart alfar that had fled the Bael Andarien.

The Dalrei, badly ravaged by the wars, withdrew to Celidon to take council, and the lios alfar made their way back to Daniloth.

Daniloth, but no longer the Shadowland. Two months after the battle that ended the war, after the Dwarves and the men of Cathal had finished their task, men as far south as Paras Derval had seen, on a night glittering with stars, a glow rise up in the north, and they had cried aloud for wonder and joy to see the Land of Light regain its truest name.

And it came to pass that in that time, with the harvest gathered and stored, Aileron the High King sent his messengers riding forth all through his land, and to Daniloth and Larai Rigal and Celidon, and over the mountains to Banir Lök, to summon the free peoples of Fionavar to a week of celebration in Paras Derval: a celebration to be woven in the name of the peace won at last, and to honour the three who remained of Loren Silvercloak’s five strangers, and to bid them a last farewell.

Riding south with the Dalrei to what was to be his own party, Dave still had no clear idea of what he was going to do. He knew—beyond even his own capacity to feel insecure—that he was welcome and wanted here, even loved. He also knew how much he loved these people. But it wasn’t as simple as that; nothing ever seemed to be, not even now.

With all that had happened to him, the ways he had changed
and the things that had made him change, the images of his parents and his brother had been drifting through his dreams every night of late. He remembered, too, how thoughts of Josef Martyniuk had been with him all through the last battle in Andarien. There were things to be worked out there, Dave knew, and part of what he’d learned among the Dalrei was how important it was to resolve those things.

But the other thing he’d learned here was joy, a richness of belonging such as he’d never known. All of which meant that there was a decision to be made, and very soon—for it had been decided that after the celebration week was over, Jaelle and Teyrnon, sharing out the powers of Dana and Mörnir, would jointly act to send them home through the crossing. If they wanted to go.

It was beautiful here on the Plain, riding southwest over the wide grasslands, seeing the great swifts flash past in the distance under the high white clouds and the mild end-of-summer sun. It was too beautiful to be thinking, wrestling with the shadows and implications of his dilemma, and so he let it slip from him for a time.

He looked around. It seemed that the whole of the third tribe and a great many others of the Dalrei were coming south with him at the High King’s invitation. Even Gereint was here, riding in one of the chariots that Shalhassan had left behind on his way south to Cathal. On either side of Dave, Torc and Levon rode easily, almost lazily, through the afternoon.

They smiled at him when he caught their eye, but neither had
said much of anything on this journey: unwilling, he knew, to pressure him in any way. But such a realization took him right back to the decision he had to make, and he didn’t want to deal with that. Instead, he let his mind return to images of the weeks gone by.

He remembered the feasting and the dancing under the stars and between the fires burning on the Plain. A dance of the ride of Ivor to the Adein, another of the courage of the Dalrei at Andarien. Other dances, still, intricately woven, of individual deeds of glory in the war. And more than once the women of the Dalrei shaped the deeds of Davor of the Axe in battle against the Dark. And more than once, afterwards, all through the mild nights of that summer, with Rangat an unmarred glory in the north, there had been women who came to Dave after the fires had died, for another sort of dance.

Not Liane, though. Ivor’s daughter had danced for them all between the fires, but never with Dave in his room at night. Once he might have regretted that, found in it a source of longing or pain. But not now, not anymore, for a great many reasons. Even in this there had been a joy to be savoured, amid the healing time of that summer on the Plain.

He had been honoured and apprehensive, both, when Torc had come to him, a few weeks after the return to Celidon, to make his request. It had taken a long night of rehearsal, with Levon drilling him over and over and laughingly plying him with sachen in between sessions, before Dave had felt ready to go stand the next morning, with something of a hangover to complicate things,
before the Aven of the Dalrei and say what was to be said.

He’d done it, though. He’d found Ivor walking amid a number of the Chieftains in the camp at Celidon. Levon had told him that the thing was to be done as publicly as possible. And so Dave had swallowed hard, and stepped in front of the Aven, and had said, “Ivor dan Banor, I am sent by a Rider of honour and worth with a message for you. Aven, Torc dan Sorcha has named me as his Intercedent and bids me tell you, in the presence of all those here, that the sun rises in your daughter’s eyes.”

There had been a number of marriages all over Fionavar that summer after the war, and a great many proposals were done after the old fashion, with an Intercedent—an act of homage, in a real sense, to Diarmuid dan Ailell, who had revived the tradition by proposing in this way to Sharra of Cathal.

A number of marriages. And one of them the third tribe celebrated not long after the morning Dave had spoken those words. For the Aven had given his consent with joy, and then Liane had smiled the secret smile they all knew so well and said, quite simply, “Yes, of course. Of course I will marry him. I always meant to.”

Which was as maddeningly unfair, Levon commented afterwards, as anything his sister had ever said. Torc didn’t seem to mind at all. He’d seemed dazed and incredulous all through the ceremony in which Cordeliane dal Ivor had become his wife. Ivor had cried, and Sorcha, too. Not Leith. But then, no one expected her to.

It had been a wonderful night and a wonderful summer, in almost every way. Dave had even ridden with the Riders on an
eltor hunt. Again, Levon had tutored him, this time in the use of a blade from horseback. And one morning at sunrise Dave had ridden out with the hunters, and had picked an eltor buck from a racing swift, and had galloped alongside of it and leaped—not trusting himself to throw the blade from his horse to the back of the eltor, and had plunged the blade into its throat. He had rolled, and risen up from the grass, and saluted Levon. And hunt leader and all the others had returned his salute with shouted praise and blades uplifted high.

A glorious summer, among people he loved, on the rolling Plain that was theirs. And now he had a decision to make and he couldn’t seem to make it.

A week later, he still hadn’t made up his mind. In fairness to himself, there hadn’t been much time for introspection. There had been banquets of staggering sumptuousness in the Great Hall of Paras Derval. There had been music again, and of a different sort this time, for the lios alfar were among them now, and one night Ra-Tenniel, their Lord, had lifted his own voice to sing the long tale of the war just past.

Woven into that song had been a great many things shaped equally of beauty and of pain. From the very beginning, when Loren Silvercloak had brought five strangers to Fionavar from another world.

Ra-Tenniel sang of Paul on the Summer Tree, of the battle of wolf and dog, the sacrifice of Ysanne. He sang the red moon of Dana, and the birth of Imraith-Nimphais. (Dave had looked
along the table then, to see Tabor dan Ivor slowly lower his head.) Jennifer in Starkadh. Darien’s birth. The coming of Arthur. Guinevere. The waking of the Wild Hunt, as Finn dan Shahar took the Longest Road.

He sang Maidaladan: Kevin in Dun Maura, red flowers at dawn in the melting snow. Ivor’s ride to the Adein, battle there, the lios coming, and Owein in the sky. The Soulmonger at sea, and the shattering of the Cauldron at Cader Sedat. Lancelot in the Chamber of the Dead. The Paraiko in Khath Meigol, and the last kanior. (Across the room, Ruana sat by Kimberly and listened in an expressionless silence.)

Ra-Tenniel went on. He encompassed all of it, brought it to life again under the stained glass windows of the Great Hall. He sang Jennifer and Brendel at the Anor Lisen, Kimberly with the Baelrath at Calor Diman, Lancelot battling in the sacred grove, and Amairgen’s ghost ship passing Sennett Strand a thousand years ago.

And then, at the end, in shadings of sorrow and joy, Ra-Tenniel sang to them of the Bael Andarien itself: Diarmuid dan Ailell battling with Uathach, killing him at sunset, and dying. Tabor and his shining mount rising to meet the Dragon of Maugrim. Battle and death on a wasted plain. And then, far off in an evil place, alone and afraid (and it was all there, all in the golden voice), Darien choosing the Light and killing Rakoth Maugrim.

Dave wept. His heart ached for so much glory and so much pain, as Ra-Tenniel came to the end of his song: Galadan and Owein’s Horn. Finn dan Shahar falling from the sky to let Ruana
bind the Hunt. And at the very last, Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere sailing away in gladness on a sea that seemed to rise until it reached the stars.

The tears of the living flowed freely in Paras Derval that night, as they remembered the dead and the deeds of the dead.

But it had been a week woven mostly of laughter and joy, of sachen and wine—white from South Keep, red from Gwen Ystrat—of clear, blue-sky days crammed with activity, and nights of feasting in the Great Hall, followed, for Dave, by quiet walks beyond the tents of the Dalrei outside the walls of the town, looking up at the brilliant stars, with his two brothers by his side.

But to settle the matter that was in his mind, Dave knew he needed to be alone, and so finally, on the very last day of the festival, he slipped away by himself on his favourite black horse. He looped Owein’s Horn, on its new leather cord, about his neck and set out to ride, north and west, to do one thing and try to resolve another.

It was a route he had taken before, in the cold of the winter snows at evening, when Kim had woken the Hunt with the fire she carried, and he had summoned them with the horn. It was summer now, end of summer, shading towards fall. The morning was cool and clear. Birds sang overhead. Soon the colours of the leaves would begin to change to red and gold and brown.

He came to a curve in the path and saw the tiny jewel-like lake set in the valley below. He rode past on the high ridge of land, noting the empty cottage far below. He remembered the last time they had ridden by this place. Two boys had come out behind
that cottage to look up at them. Two boys, and both of them were dead, and together they had acted to let all the peace of this morning come to be.

He shook his head, wondering, and continued riding northwest, angling across the recently harvested fields between Rhoden and North Keep. There were farmhouses scattered on either side. Some people saw him passing and waved to him. He waved back.

Then, around noon, he crossed the High Road and knew he was very near. A few minutes later he came to the edge of Pendaran Wood, and he saw the fork of the tree, and then the cave. There was an enormous stone in front of it again, exactly as there had been before, and Dave knew who lay asleep in the darkness there.

He dismounted, and he took the horn into his hand and walked a little way into the Wood. The light was dappled here, the leaves rustled above his head. He wasn’t afraid, though, not this time. Not as he had been the night he’d met Flidais. The Great Wood had slaked its anger now, the lios alfar had told them. It had to do with Lancelot and Darien and with the final passing of Lisen, the blazing of her Circlet in Starkadh. Dave didn’t really understand such things, but one thing he did understand, and it had brought him with the horn back to this place.

He waited, with a patience that was another new thing in him. He watched the shadows flicker and shift on the forest floor and in the leaves overhead. He listened to the sounds of the forest. He tried to think, to understand himself and his own desires. It was hard to concentrate, though, because he was waiting for someone.

And then he heard a different sound behind him. His heart racing, despite all his inward preparation, he turned kneeling as he did so, with his head lowered.

“You may rise,” said Ceinwen. “Of all men, you should know that you may rise.”

He looked up and saw her again: in green as she always was, with the bow in her hand. The bow with which she’d almost killed him by a pool in Faelinn Grove.

Not all need die
, she had said that night. And so he’d lived, to be given a horn, to carry an axe in war, to summon the Wild Hunt. To return again to this place.

The goddess stood before him, radiant and glorious, though muting the shining of her face that he might look upon her without being stricken blind.

He rose, as she had bade him. He took a deep breath, to slow the beating of his heart. He said, “Goddess, I have come to return a gift.” He held out the horn in a hand that, he was pleased to see, did not tremble. “It is a thing too powerful for me to hold. Too deeply powerful, I think, for any mortal man.”