The Summer Tree Read online

  “We’ve hardly seen him.”

  “He is with Ailell, almost all the time. Which is why he is to be feared. It was a dark day for Brennin,” Matt Sören said, “when the elder Prince was sent away.”

  “The King turned to Gorlaes?” Jennifer guessed.

  The Dwarf’s glance at her was keen. “You are clever,” he said. “That is exactly what happened.”

  “What about Diarmuid?”

  “What about Diarmuid?” Matt repeated, in a tone so unexpectedly exasperated, she laughed aloud. After a moment, the Dwarf chuckled, too, low in his chest.

  Jennifer smiled. There was a solid strength to Matt Sören, a feeling of deeply rooted common sense. Jennifer Lowell had come into adulthood trusting few people entirely, especially men, but, she realized in that moment, the Dwarf was now one of them. In a curious way, it made her feel better about herself.

  “Matt,” she said, as a thought struck her, “Loren left without you. Did you stay here for us?”

  “Just to keep an eye on things.” With a gesture at the patch over his right eye, he turned it into a kind of joke.

  She smiled, but then looked at him a long moment, her green eyes sober. “How did you get that?”

  “The last war with Cathal,” he said simply. “Thirty years ago.”

  “You’ve been here that long?”

  “Longer. Loren has been a mage for over forty years now.”

  “So?” She didn’t get the connection.

  He told her. There was an easiness to the mood they shared that morning, and Jennifer’s beauty had been known to make taciturn men talkative before.

  She listened, taking in, as Paul had three nights before, the story of Amairgen’s discovery of the skylore, and the secret forging that would bind mage and source for life in a union more complete than any in all the worlds.

  When Matt finished, Jennifer rose and walked a few steps, trying to absorb the impact of what she had been told. This was more than marriage, this went to the very essence of being. The mage, from what Matt had just said, was nothing without his source, only a repository of knowledge, utterly powerless. And the source …

  “You’ve surrendered all of your independence!” she said, turning back to the Dwarf, hurling it almost as a challenge.

  “Not all,” he said mildly. “You give some up any time you share your life with someone. The bonding just goes deeper, and there are compensations.”

  “You were a king, though. You gave up—”

  “That was before,” Matt interrupted. “Before I met Loren. I … prefer not to talk about it.”

  She was abashed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was prying.”

  The Dwarf grimaced, but by now she knew it for his smile. “Not really,” he said. “And no matter. It is a very old wound.”

  “It’s just so strange,” she explained. “I can’t even grasp what it must mean.”

  “I know. Even here they do not understand the six of us. Or the Law that governs the Council of the Mages. We are feared, respected, very seldom loved.”

  “What Law?” she asked.

  At that he hesitated, then rose. “Let us walk,” Matt said. “I will tell you a story, though I warn you, you would do better with one of the cyngael, for I am a poor tale-spinner.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Jennifer said with a smile.

  As they started to walk the outer edges of the hall, he began “Four hundred years ago, the High King went mad. Vailerth was his name, the only son of Lernath, who was the last King of Brennin to die on the Summer Tree.”

  She had questions about that, too, but held her peace. “Vailerth was brilliant as a child,” Matt continued, “or so the records from that time say, but it seems something bent in him after his father died and he came to the throne. A dark flower blossomed in his brain, the Dwarves say when such a thing occurs.

  “First Mage to Vailerth was a man called Nilsom, whose source was a woman. Aideen was her name, and she had loved Nilsom all her life, or so the records tell.”

  Matt walked a few strides in silence. Jennifer had the feeling he was sorry to have begun the story, but after a moment he resumed. “It was rare for a mage to have a woman for source, in part because in Gwen Ystrat, where the Priestesses of Dana are, they would curse any woman who did so. It was always rare; it is rarer still since Aideen.”

  She looked over at him, but the Dwarf’s features were quite impassive.

  “Many dark things fell out because of Vailerth’s madness. At length there came talk of civil war in the land, because he began taking children, boys and girls both, from their homes and bringing them into the palace by night. They would never be seen again, and the rumours of what the High King did to them were very bad. And in these deeds, in all of these deeds of darkness, Nilsom was with the King, and some say it was he who goaded Vailerth into them. Theirs was a dark weaving, and Nilsom, with Aideen by his side, had power so great none dared openly gainsay them. It is my own thought,” the Dwarf added, turning his head for the first time, “that he, too, was mad, but in a cooler, more dangerous fashion. It was a long time ago, however, and the records are incomplete, because many of our most precious books were destroyed in the war. There was war at the last, for one day Vailerth and Nilsom went too far: they proposed to go into the Godwood and cut down the Summer Tree.

  “The whole of Brennin rose up then, save for the army Vailerth had raised. But that army was loyal and strong, and Nilsom was very strong, more so than the five other mages in Brennin all together. And then on the eve of war there was only one other mage, for four of them were found dead, and their sources, too.

  “There was civil war in the High Kingdom then. Only Gwen Ystrat stayed aloof. But the Dukes of Rhoden and Seresh, the Wardens of the North March and the South, the farmers and the townsmen and the mariners from Taerlindel, all came to war against Vailerth and Nilsom.

  “They were not enough. Nilsom’s power then, sourced in Aideen’s strength and her love, was greater, they say, than that of any mage since Amairgen. He wrought death and ruination among all who opposed them, and blood soaked the fields as brother slew brother, while Vailerth laughed in Paras Derval.”

  Once more Matt paused, and when he resumed, there was a flatness in his voice. “The last battle was fought in the hilly land just west of us, between here and the Godwood. Vailerth, they say, climbed to the topmost towers of this palace to watch Nilsom lead his army to the final victory, after which nothing but the dead would stand between them and the Tree.

  “But when the sun rose that morning, Aideen went before her mage, whom she loved, and she told him she would no longer drain herself for him in this cause. And saying so, she drew forth a knife and drained the life’s blood from her veins instead and so died.”

  “Oh, no,” Jennifer said. “Oh, Matt!”

  He seemed not to have heard. “There is little after that,” he said, still very flat. “With Nilsom powerless, the army of Vailerth was overrun. They threw down their swords and spears and sued for peace. Nilsom would not do so, and in the end he was killed by the last mage in Brennin. Vailerth leaped from his tower and died. Aideen was buried with honour in a grave close by the Mörnirwood, and Duke Lagos of Seresh was crowned in this hall.”

  They had come full circle, back to the benches under the last window, close to the throne. Overhead, Colan’s yellow hair was brilliant in the sunlight that poured through the windows.

  “It remains only to tell you,” Matt Sören said, gazing directly at her now, “that when the Council of Mages gathers at midwinter, Nilsom’s is a name whose memory we curse by ritual.”

  “I should think,” said Jennifer, with some spirit.

  “So, too,” said the Dwarf softly, “is the name of Aideen.”

  “What?”

  Matt’s gaze was unwavering. “She betrayed her mage,” he said. “In the laws of our Order, there is no crime so deep. None. No matter what the cause. Every year Loren and I curse her memory at midwinter
and we do so truly. And every year,” he added, very low, very gently, “when the snows melt in the spring, we lay the first of the wildflowers on her grave.”

  From that composed glance, Jennifer turned her head away. She felt close to tears. She was too far from home, and it was all so difficult and so strange. Why should such a woman be cursed? It was too hard. What she needed, she realized, was exercise, fifty hard laps in a pool to clear her head, or else, and better still …

  “Oh, Matt,” she said. “I need to move, to do something. Are there horses for us to ride?”

  And of all things, that cracked the solid composure of the Dwarf. Astonishingly, he flushed. “There are horses, of course,” he said awkwardly, “but I fear I will not join you—Dwarves do not ride for pleasure. Why don’t you go with Laesha and Drance, though?”

  “Okay,” she said, but then lingered, unwilling, suddenly, to leave him.

  “I’m sorry if I have troubled you,” Matt said. “It is a difficult story.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “More for you, surely, than for me. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks for a lot.” And, bending swiftly, she kissed him on the cheek and ran from the hall to find Laesha, leaving a normally phlegmatic Dwarf in a remarkably unsettled state.

  And so did it come to pass, three hours later, that the two women had galloped with Diarmuid’s man to the crest of a ridge east of the town, where they stilled their tired horses in disbelief, as a small party of ethereal figures ascended the slope towards them, their tread so light the grass seemed not to bend beneath their feet.

  “Welcome!” said their leader as he stopped before them. He bowed, his long silver hair glinting in the light. “This hour is brightly woven.” His voice was like music in a high place. He spoke directly to Jennifer. She was aware that Drance beside her, the prosaic soldier, had tears shining on his transfigured face.

  “Will you come down among the trees and feast with us this evening?” the silver-haired figure asked. “You are most welcome. My name is Brendel of the Kestrel Mark, from Daniloth. We are the lios alfar.”

  The return to Brennin was almost effortless, as if they were being propelled homeward by a following wind. Erron, fluid and agile, went first again on the climb back up the cliff, and he hammered iron spikes into the rock face for the rest of them.

  They came again to the horses, mounted, and began galloping north once more on the dusty roads of the High Kingdom. The mood was exhilarated and chaotic. Joining in the bawdy chorus of a song Coll was leading, Kevin couldn’t remember feeling happier; after the incident on the river, he and Paul seemed to have been completely accepted by the band, and because he respected these men, that acceptance mattered. Erron was becoming a friend, and so, too, was Carde, singing away on Kevin’s left side. Paul, on the other side, wasn’t singing, but he didn’t seem unhappy, and he had a lousy voice anyway.

  Just past midday they came to the same inn where they had stopped before. Diarmuid called a halt for lunch and a quick beer, which became, given the prevailing mood, several slow beers. Coll, Kevin noticed, had disappeared.

  The extended break meant that they were going to miss the banquet in the Great Hall that night. Diarmuid didn’t seem to care.

  “It’s the Black Boar tonight, my friends,” he announced, glittering and exhilarated at the head of the table. “I’m in no mood for court manners. Tonight I celebrate with you and let the manners look after themselves. Tonight we take our pleasure. Will you drink with me to the Dark Rose of Cathal?”

  Kevin cheered with the others, drank with the others.

  Kimberly had dreamt again. The same one at first: the stones, the ring, the wind—and the same grief in her heart. And again she woke just as the words of power reached her lips.

  This time, though, she had fallen asleep again, to find another dream waiting, as if at the bottom of a pool.

  She was in the room of Ailell the King. She saw him tossing restlessly on his bed, saw the young page asleep on his pallet. Even as she watched, Ailell woke in the dark of his chamber. A long time he lay still, breathing raggedly, then she saw him rise painfully, as if against his own desire. He lit a candle and carried it to an inner doorway in the room, through which he passed. Invisible, insubstantial, she followed the King down a corridor lit only by the weaving candle he bore, and she paused with him before another door, into which was set a sliding view-hole.

  When Ailell put his eyes to the aperture, somehow she was looking with him, seeing what he saw, and Kimberly saw with the High King the white naal fire and the deep blue shining of Ginserat’s stone, set into the top of its pillar.

  Only after a long time did Ailell withdraw, and in the dream Kim saw herself move to look again, standing on tiptoe to gaze with her own eyes into the room of the stone.

  And looking in, she saw no stone at all, and the room was dark.

  Wheeling in terror, she saw the High King walking back towards his chamber, and waiting there for him in the doorway was a shadowed figure that she knew.

  His face rigid as if it were stone, Paul Schafer stood before Ailell, and he was holding a chess piece in his outstretched hand, and coming nearer to them. Kim saw that it was the white king, and it was broken. There was a music all about them that she couldn’t recognize, although she knew she should. Ailell spoke words she could not hear because the music was too loud, and then Paul spoke, and she needed desperately to hear, but the music … And then the King held high his candle and began to speak again, and she could not, could not, could not.

  Then everything was blasted to nothingness by the howling of a dog, so loud it filled the universe.

  And she awoke to the morning sunlight and the smell of food frying over the cooking fire.

  “Good morning,” said Ysanne. “Come and eat, before Malka steals it all. Then I have something to show you.”

  Coll rejoined them on the road north of the town. Paul Schafer eased his horse over to the roan stallion the big man rode.

  “Being discreet?” he asked.

  Above his broken nose Coll’s eyes were guarded. “Not exactly. But he wanted to do something.”

  “Which means?”

  “The man had to die, but his wife and children can be helped.”

  “So you’ve paid them. Is that why he delayed just now in the tavern? To give you time? It wasn’t just because he felt like drinking, was it?”

  Coll nodded. “He often feels like drinking,” he said wryly, “but he very rarely acts without reason. Tell me,” he went on, as Schafer remained silent, “do you think he did wrong?”

  Paul’s expression was unreadable.

  “Gorlaes would have hanged him,” Coll pressed, “and had the body torn apart. His family would have been dispossessed of their land. Now his eldest son is going to South Keep to be trained as one of us. Do you really think he did wrong?”

  “No,” said Schafer slowly, “I’m just thinking that with everyone else starving, that farmer’s treason was probably the best way he could find to take care of his family. Do you have a family, Coll?”

  To which Diarmuid’s lieutenant, who didn’t, and who was still trying to like this strange visitor, had no reply at all. They rode north through the heat of the afternoon, the dry fields baking on either side, the far hills shimmering like mirages, or the hope of rain.

  The trap door under the table had been invisible until Ysanne, kneeling, had laid her hand on the floor and spoken a word of power. There were ten stairs leading down; on either side the rough stone walls were damp to the touch. There were brackets set into the walls, but no torches, because from the bottom of the stairs came a pale glow of light. Wondering, Kim followed the Seer and Malka, the cat, as they went down.

  The chamber was small, more a cave than a room. Another bed, a desk, a chair, a woven carpet on the stone floor. Some parchments and books, very old by the look of them, on the desk. Only one thing more: against the far wall was set a cabinet with glass doors, and within the cabinet, like a captured star, lay t
he source of light.

  There was awe in the Seer’s voice when she broke the silence. “Every time I see this …” Ysanne murmured. “It is the Circlet of Lisen,” she said, walking forward. “It was made for her by the lios alfar in the days when Pendaran Wood was not yet a place of dread. She bound it on her brow after they built the Anor for her, and she stood in that tower by the sea, a light like a star on her brow, to show Amairgen the way home from Cader Sedat.”

  “And he never came.” Kim’s voice, though she whispered, felt harsh to her own ears. “Eilathen showed me. I saw her die.” The Circlet, she saw, was purest gold, but the light set within it was gentler than moonfall.

  “She died, and Pendaran does not forgive. It is one of the deep sorrows of the world. So much changed … even the light. It was brighter once, the colour of hope, they said when it was made. Then Lisen died, and the Wood changed, and the world changed, and now it seems to shine with loss. It is the most fair thing I know in all the world. It is the Light against the Dark.”

  Kim looked at the white-haired figure beside her. “Why is it here?” she asked. “Why hidden underground?”

  “Raederth brought it to me the year before he died. Where he went to find it, I know not—for it was lost when Lisen fell. Lost long years, and he never told me the tale of where he went to bring it back. It aged him, though. Something happened on the journey of which he could never speak. He asked me to guard it here, with the two other things of power, until their place should be dreamt. ‘Who shall wear this next,’ he said, ‘after Lisen, shall have the darkest road to walk of any child of earth or stars.’ And he said nothing more. It waits here, for the dreaming.”

  Kimberly shivered, for something new within her, a singing in the blood, told her that the words of the dead mage were true prophecy. She felt weighted, burdened. This was getting to be too much. She tore her eyes away from the Circlet. “What are the other two things?” she asked.