The Darkest Road Page 11

  Who wears this next, after Lisen, Raederth had said, shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars.

  The words she had heard in her dream. Kim reached out a hand and with infinite care lifted the Circlet from where it lay.

  She heard a sound from the room above.

  Terror burst inside her, sharper even than in the dream. For what had been only foreknowing then, and so removed a little, was present, now, and above her. And the time had come.

  She turned to face the stairway. Keeping her voice as level as she could, knowing how dangerous it would be to show fear, she said, “You can come down if you like. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Silence. Her heart was thunder, a drum. For a moment she saw the chasm again, the bridge, the road. Then there were footsteps on the stairs.

  Then Darien.

  She had never seen him. She endured a moment of terrible dislocation, over and above everything else. She knew nothing of what happened in the glade of the Summer Tree. He was supposed to be a child, even though a part of her had known he wasn’t, and couldn’t be. In the dream he had been only a shadowed presence, ill defined, and a name she’d learned in Toronto even before he was born. By the aura of the name she had known him, and by another thing, which had been the deepest source of her terror: his eyes had been red.

  They were blue now and he seemed very young, though he should have been even younger. So much younger. But Jennifer’s child, born less than a year ago, stood before her, his eyes uneasy, darting about the chamber, and he looked like any fifteen-year-old boy might look—if any boy could be as beautiful as this one was, and carry as much power within himself.

  “How did you know I was here?” he said abruptly. His voice was awkward, underused.

  She tried to will her heartbeat to slow; she needed to be calm, needed all her wits about her for this. “I heard you,” she said.

  “I thought I was being quiet.”

  She managed to smile. “You were, Darien. I have very good ears. Your mother used to wake me when she came in late at night, however quiet she was.”

  His eyes came to rest on hers for a moment. “You know my mother?”

  “I know her very well. I love her dearly.”

  He moved a couple of paces into the room but stayed between her and the stairway. She wasn’t sure if it was to keep an exit for himself or block it from her. He was looking around again.

  “I never knew this room was here.”

  The muscles of her back were corded with tension. “It belonged to the woman who lived here before you,” she said.

  “Why?” he challenged. “Who was she? Why is it underground?” He was wearing a sweater and trousers and fawn-colored boots. The sweater was brown, too warm for summer, and too large for him. It would have been Finn’s, she realized. All the clothing was. Her mouth was dry. She wet her lips with her tongue.

  “She was a very wise woman, and she had many things she loved in this room, so she kept it hidden to guard them.” The Circlet lay in her hand; it was slender and delicate, almost no weight at all, yet she felt as if she carried the weight of worlds.

  “What things?” said Darien.

  And so the time, truly, was upon them.

  “This,” said Kim, holding it out to him. “And it is for you, Darien. It was meant for you. It is the Circlet of Lisen.” Her voice trembled a little. She paused. He was silent, watching her, waiting. She said, “It is the Light against the Dark.”

  Her voice failed her. The high, heroic words went forth into the little chamber and fell away into silence.

  “Do you know who I am?” asked Darien. His hands had closed at his side. He took another step toward her. “Do you know who my father is?”

  So much terror. But she had dreamt this. It was his. She nodded. “I do,” she whispered. And because she thought she had heard a diffidence in his voice, not a challenge, she said, “And I know your mother was stronger than him.” She didn’t, really, but that was the prayer, the hope, the gleam of light she held. “He wanted her to die, so you wouldn’t be born.”

  He withdrew the one step he had advanced. Then he laughed a little, a lonely, terrible laugh. “I didn’t know that,” he said. “Cernan asked why I was allowed to live. I heard him. Everyone seems to agree.” His hands were opening and closing spasmodically.

  “Not everyone,” she said. “Not everyone, Darien. Your mother wanted you to be born. Desperately.” She had to be so careful. It mattered so much. “Paul—Pwyll, the one who stayed with you here—he risked his life guarding her and bringing her to Vae’s house the night you were born.”

  Darien’s expression changed, as if his face had slammed shut against her. “He slept in Finn’s bed,” he said flatly. Accusingly.

  She said nothing. What could she say?

  “Give it to me,” he said.

  What could she do? It all seemed so inevitable, now that the time had come. Who but this child should walk the Darkest Road? He was already on it. No other’s loneliness would ever run so deep, no other’s dangerousness be so absolute.

  Wordlessly, for no words could be adequate to the moment, she stepped forward, the Circlet in her hands. Instinctively he retreated, a hand raised to strike her. But then he lowered his arm, and stood very still, and suffered her to place it about his brow.

  He was not even as tall as she. She didn’t have to reach up. It was easy to fit the golden band over his golden hair and close the delicate clasp. It was easy; it had been dreamt; it was done.

  And the moment the clasp was fitted the light of the Circlet went out.

  A sound escaped him; a torn, wordless cry. The room was suddenly dark, lit only by the red glow of the Baelrath, which yet burned, and the thin light that streamed down the stairs from the room above.

  Then Darien made another sound, and this time it was laughter. Not the lost laugh of before, this was harsh, strident, uncontrolled. “Mine?” he cried. “The Light against the Dark? Oh, you fool! How should the son of Rakoth Maugrim carry such a light? How should it ever shine for me?”

  Kim’s hands were against her mouth. There was so much unbridled torment in his voice. Then he moved, and her fear exploded. It doubled, redoubled itself, outstripped any measure she’d ever had, for by the light of the Warstone she saw his eyes flash red. He gestured, nothing more than that, but she felt it as a blow that drove her to the ground. Thrusting past her, he strode to the cabinet against the wall.

  In which lay the last object of power. The last thing Ysanne had seen in her life. And lying on the ground, helpless at his feet, Kim saw Rakoth’s son take Lokdal, the dagger of the Dwarves, and claim it for his own.

  “No!” she gasped. “Darien, the Circlet is yours, but not the dagger. It is not for you to take. You know not what it is.”

  He laughed again and drew the blade from its jeweled sheath. A sound like a plucked harpstring filled the room. He looked at the gleaming blue thieren running along the blade and said, “I do not need to know. My father will. How should I go to him without a gift, and what sort of gift would this dead stone of Lisen’s make? If the very light turns away from me, at least I now know where I belong.”

  He was past her then, and by the stairs; he was climbing them and leaving, with the Circlet lifeless upon his brow and Colan’s dagger in his hand.

  “Darien!” Kim cried with the voice of her heart’s pain. “He wanted you dead. It was your mother who fought to let you be born!”

  No response. Footsteps across the floor above. A door opening, and closing. With the Circlet gone the Baelrath slowly grew dim, so it was quite dark in the chamber below the cottage, and in the darkness Kim wept for the loss of light.

  When they came an hour later, she was by the lake again, very deep in thought. The sound of the horses startled her, and she rose quickly to her feet, but then she saw long red hair and midnight black, and she knew who had come and was glad.

  She walked forward along the curve of the shore to meet them.
Sharra, who was a friend and had been from the first day they’d met, dismounted the instant her horse came to a stop, and enfolded Kim in a fierce embrace.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Did you do it?”

  The events of the morning were so vivid that for a moment Kim didn’t realize it was Khath Meigol that Sharra was talking about. The last time the Princess of Cathal had seen her, Kim had been preparing to leave for the mountains.

  She managed a nod and a small smile, though it was difficult. “I did,” she said. “I did what I went to do.”

  She left it at that for the moment. Jaelle had dismounted as well and stood a little way apart, waiting. She looked as she always did, cool and withdrawn, formidable. But Kim had shared a moment with her in the Temple in Gwen Ystrat on the eve of Maidaladan so, walking over, she gave the Priestess a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek. Jaelle stood rigid for an instant; then, awkwardly, her arms went around Kim in a brief, transient gesture that nonetheless conveyed a great deal.

  Kim stepped back. She knew her eyes were red from weeping, but there was no point in dissembling, not with Jaelle. She was going to need help, not least of all in deciding what to do.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said quietly. “How did you know?”

  “Leila,” Jaelle said. “She’s still tuned to this cottage, where Finn was. She told us you were here.”

  Kim nodded. “Anything else? Did she say anything else?”

  “Not this morning. Did something happen?”

  “Yes,” Kim whispered. “Something happened. We’ve a lot to catch each other up on. Where’s Jennifer?”

  The other two women exchanged glances. It was Sharra who answered. “She went with Brendel to the Anor Lisen when the ship sailed.”

  Kim closed her eyes. So many dimensions to sorrow. Would there ever be an ending?

  “Do you want to go into the cottage?” Jaelle asked.

  She shook her head quickly. “No. Not inside. Let’s stay out here.” Jaelle gave her a searching look and then, without fuss, gathered her white robe and sat down on the stony beach. Kim and Sharra followed suit. A little distance away the men of Cathal and Brennin were watchfully arrayed. Tegid of Rhoden, prodigious in brown and gold, walked toward the three of them.

  “My lady,” he said, with a deep bow to Sharra, “how may I serve you on behalf of my Prince?”

  “Food,” she answered crisply. “A clean cloth, and a lunch to spread upon it.”

  “Instantly!” he exclaimed and bowed again, not entirely steady on the loose stones of the shoreline. He wheeled, and scrunched his way over the beach to find them provisions. Sharra looked sideways at Kim, who had an eyebrow raised in frank curiosity.

  “A new conquest?” Kim asked with some of her old teasing, the tone she sometimes thought she’d lost forever.

  Sharra, surprisingly, blushed. “Well, yes, I suppose. But not him. Um… Diarmuid proposed marriage to me before Prydwen sailed. Tegid is his Intercedent. He’s looking after me, and so—”

  She got no further, having been comprehensively enveloped in a second embrace. “Oh, Sharra!” Kim exclaimed. “That’s the nicest news I’ve heard in I don’t know how long!”

  “I suppose,” Jaelle murmured dryly. “But I thought we had more pressing matters to discuss than matrimonial tidings. And we still don’t have any news of the ship.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Kim quickly. “We know they got there, and we know they won a battle.”

  “Oh, Dana be praised!” Jaelle said, suddenly sounding very young, all cynicism stripped away. Sharra was speechless. “Tell us,” the High Priestess said. “How do you know?”

  Kim began the story with her capture in the mountains: with Ceriog and Faebur and Dalreidan and the death rain over Eridu. Then she told them of seeing that dread rain come to an end the morning before, of seeing sunshine to the east and so knowing that Metran on Cader Sedat had been stopped.

  She paused a moment, for Tegid had returned with two soldiers in his wake, carrying armloads of food and drink. It took a few minutes for things to be arranged in a fashion that, to his critical eye, was worthy of the Princess of Cathal. When the three men had withdrawn, Kina took a deep breath and spoke of Khath Meigol, of Tabor and Imraith-Nimphais, of the rescue of the Paraiko and the last kanior, and then, at the end, very softly, of what she and her ring had done to the Giants.

  When she finished it was quiet on the shore again. Neither of the other women spoke. They were both familiar with power, Kim knew, in a great many of its shadings, but what she had just told them, what she had done, had to be alien and almost impossible to grasp.

  She felt very alone. Paul, she thought, might have understood, for his too was a lonely path. Then, almost as if reading her thoughts, Sharra reached out and squeezed her hand. Kim squeezed back and said, “Tabor told me that the Aven and all the Dalrei rode to Celidon three nights ago to meet an army of the Dark. I have no idea what happened. Neither did Tabor.”

  “We do,” Jaelle said.

  And in her turn she told of what had happened two evenings before, when Leila had screamed in anguish at the summoning of the Wild Hunt, and through her link every priestess in the sanctuary had heard Green Ceinwen’s voice as she mastered Owein and drew him from his kill.

  It was Kim’s turn to be silent, absorbing this. There was still one thing left to be told, though, and so at length she said, “I’m afraid something else has happened.”

  “Who was here this morning?” Jaelle asked with unnerving anticipation.

  It was beautiful where they were sitting. The summer air was mild and clean, the sky and lake were a brilliant blue. There were birds and flowers, and a soft breeze off the water. There was a glass of cool wine in her hand.

  “Darien,” she said. “I gave him the Circlet of Lisen. Ysanne had it hidden here. The light went out when he put it on, and he stole Colan’s dagger, Lokdal, which le’d also had in the cottage. Then he left. He said he was going to his father.”

  It was unfair of her, she knew, to put it so baldly.

  Jaelle’s face had gone bone white with the impact of what she’d just said, but Kim knew that it wouldn’t have mattered how she’d told it. How could she cushion the impact of the morning’s terror? What shelter could there be?

  The breeze was still blowing. There were flowers, green grass, the lake, the summer sun. And fear, densely woven, at the very root of everything, threatening to take it all away: across a chasm, along a shadowed road, north to the heart of evil.

  “Who,” asked Sharra of Cathal, “is Darien? And who is his father?”

  Amazingly, Kim had forgotten. Paul and Dave knew about Jennifer’s child, and Jaelle and the Mormae of Owen Ystrat. Vae, of course, and Finn, though he too was gone now. Leila, probably, who seemed to know everything connected in any way to Finn. No one else knew: not Loren or Aileron, Arthur or Ivor, or even Gereint.

  She looked at Jaelle and received a look back, equally doubtful, equally anxious. Then she nodded, and after a moment the High Priestess did as well. And so they told Sharra the whole story, sitting on the shore of Eilathen’s lake.

  And when it was done, when Kim had spoken of the rape and the premature birth, of Vae and Finn, when Jaelle had told them both Paul’s story of what had happened in the glade of the Summer Tree, and Kim had ended the telling with the red flash of Darien’s eyes that morning and the effortless power that had knocked her sprawling, Sharra of Cathal rose to her feet. She walked a few quick steps away and stood a moment, gazing out over the water. Then she wheeled to face Kim and Jaelle again. Looking down on the two of them, at the bleak apprehension in their faces, Sharra, whose dreams since she was a girl had been of herself as a falcon flying alone, cried aloud, “But this is terrible! That poor child! No one else in any world can be so lonely.”

  It carried. Kim saw the soldiers glance over at them from farther along the shore. Jaelle made a queer sound, between a gasp and a breathless laugh. “Really,” she began. �
��Poor child? I don’t think you’ve quite understood—”

  “No,” Kim interrupted, laying an urgent hand on Jaelle’s arm. “No, wait. She isn’t wrong.” Even as she spoke, she was reliving the scene under the cottage, scanning it again, trying to see past her terrified awareness of who this child’s father was. And as she looked back, straining to remember, she heard again the sound that had escaped him when Lisen’s Light had gone out.

  And this time, removed from it, with Sharra’s words to guide her, Kim heard clearly what she’d missed before: the loneliness, the terrible sense of rejection in that bewildered cry wrung from the soul of this boy—only a boy, they had to remember that—who had no one and nothing, and nowhere to turn. And from whom the very light had turned away, as if in denial and abhorrence.

  He’d actually said that, she remembered now. He’d said as much to her, but in her fear she’d registered only the terrible threat that followed: he was going to his father bearing gifts. Gifts of entreaty, she now realized, of supplication, of longing for a place, from the most solitary soul there was.

  From Darien, on the Darkest Road.

  Kim stood up. Sharra’s words had crystallized things for her, finally, and she had thought of the one tiny thing she could do. A desperate hope it was, but it was all they had. For although it might still be proven true that it was the armies and a battlefield that would end things one way or the other, Kim knew that there were too many other powers arrayed for that to be a certainty.

  And she was one of the powers, and another was the boy she’d seen that morning. She glanced over at the soldiers, concerned for a moment, but only for a moment; it was too late for absolute secrecy, the game was too far along, and too much was riding on what would follow. So she stepped forward a little, off the stony shoreline onto the grass running up to the front door of the cottage.

  Then she lifted her voice and cried, “Darien, I know you can hear me! Before you go where you said you would go, let me tell you this: your mother is standing now in a tower west of Pendaran Wood.” That was all. It was all she had left: a scrap of information given to the wind. After the shouting, a very great silence, made deeper, not broken, by the waves on the shore. She felt a little ridiculous, knowing how it must appear to the soldiers. But dignity meant less than nothing now; only the reaching out mattered, the casting of her voice with her heart behind it, with the one thing that might get through to him.