The Wandering Fire Read online

  And there was still the God. At night, sometimes, he could feel the tacit presence, immense, in the rush and slide of his blood, the muffled thunder of his human heart.

  Was he a symbol only? A manifestation of what he had been telling Jennifer: the presence of opposition to the workings of the Unraveller? There were worse roles, he supposed. It gave him a part to play in what was to come, but something within—and there was a god within him—said that there was more. No man shall be Lord of the Summer Tree who has not twice been born, Jaelle had said to him in the sanctuary.

  He was more than symbol. The waiting to learn what, and how, seemed to be part of the price.

  Almost at the end now. They stopped in front of a large print of a river scene: boats being poled along, others unloading at a crowded dock; there were woods on the far side of the stream, snow-capped mountains beyond. It was badly hung, though; he could see people behind them reflected in the glass, two students, the sleepy guard. And then Paul saw the blurred reflection in the doorway of a wolf.

  Turning quickly on a taken breath he met the eyes of Galadan.

  The Wolflord was in his true shape, and hearing Jennifer gasp Paul knew that she, too, remembered that scarred, elegant force of power with the silver in his dark hair.

  Grabbing Jennifer’s hand, Paul wheeled and began to move quickly back through the exhibition. He looked over his shoulder: Galadan was following, a sardonic smile on his face. He wasn’t hurrying.

  They rounded a corner. Mumbling a swift prayer, Paul pushed on the bar of a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. He heard a guard shout behind him, but no alarm sounded. They found themselves in a service corridor. Without saying a word, they clattered down the hallway. Behind them Paul heard the guard shout again as the door opened a second time.

  The corridor forked. Paul pushed open another door and hurried Jennifer through. She stumbled and he had to hold her up.

  “I can’t run, Paul!”

  He cursed inwardly. They were as far from the exit as they could be. The door had taken them out into the largest room in the gallery, Henry Moore’s permanent sculpture exhibit. It was the pride of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the room that placed it on the artistic map of the world.

  And it was the room in which, it seemed, they were going to die.

  He helped Jennifer move farther away from the door. They passed several huge pieces, a madonna and child, a nude, an abstract shape.

  “Wait here,” he said, and sat her down on the broad base of one of the sculptures. There was no one else in the room—not on a weekday morning in November.

  It figures, he thought. And turned. The Wolflord walked through the same door they had used. For the second time he and Galadan faced each other in a place where time seemed to hang suspended.

  Jennifer whispered his name. Without taking his eyes from Galadan he heard her say, in a voice shockingly cold, “It is too soon, Paul. Whatever you are, you must find it now. If not, I will curse you as I die.”

  And still reeling from that, he saw Galadan raise a long slender finger to a red weal on his temple. “This one,” said the Lord of the andain, “I lay at the root of your Tree.”

  “You are lucky,” Paul said, “to be alive to lay it anywhere.

  “Perhaps,” the other said, and smiled again, “but no more fortunate than you have been until now. Both of you.” There was, though Paul had not seen it come, a knife in his hand. He remembered that knife. Galadan moved a few steps closer. No one, Paul knew, was going to enter the room.

  And then he knew something more. There was a deep stirring, as of the sea, within him, and he moved forward himself, away from Jennifer, and said, “Would you battle the Twiceborn of Mörnir?”

  And the Wolflord replied, “For nothing else am I here, though I will kill the girl when you are dead. Remember who I am: the children of gods have knelt to wash my feet. You are nothing yet, Pwyll Twiceborn, and will be twice dead before I let you come into your force.”

  Paul shook his head. There was a tide running in his blood. He heard himself say, as if from far off, “Your father bowed to me, Galadan. Will you not do so, son of Cernan?” And he felt a rush of power to see the other hesitate.

  But only for a moment. Then the Wolflord, who had been a force of might and a Lord of the mighty for past a thousand years, laughed loud and, raising his hand again, plunged the room into utter darkness.

  “What son have you ever known to follow his father’s path?” he said. “There is no dog to guard you now, and I can see in the dark!”

  The surging of power stopped within Paul.

  In its place came something else, a quiet, a space as of a pool within a wood, and he knew this, instinctively, to be the true access to what he now was and would be. From within this calm he moved back to Jennifer and said to her, “Be easy, but hold fast to me.” As he felt her grip his hand and rise to stand beside him, he spoke once more to the Wolflord, and his voice had changed.

  “Slave of Maugrim,” he said, “I cannot defeat you yet, nor can I see you in the dark. We will meet again, and the third time pays for all, as well you know. But I will not tarry for you in this place.”

  And on the words he felt himself dropping into the still, deep place, the pool within, which uttermost need had found. Down and down he went, and, holding tight to Jennifer, he took them both away through the remembered cold, the interstices of time, the space between the Weaver’s worlds, back to Fionavar.

  Chapter 2

  Vae heard the knocking at the door. Since Shahar had been sent north she often heard sounds in the house at night, and she had taught herself to ignore them, mostly.

  But the hammering on the shop entrance below was not to be ignored as being born of winter solitude or wartime fears. It was real, and urgent, and she didn’t want to know who it was.

  Her son was in the hallway outside her room, though; he had already pulled on trousers and the warm vest she had made him when the snows began. He looked sleepy and young, but he always looked young to her.

  “Shall I go see?” he said bravely.

  “Wait,” Vae said. She rose, herself, and pulled on a woollen robe over her night attire. It was cold in the house, and long past the middle of the night. Her man was away, and she was alone in the chill of winter with a fourteen-year-old child and a rapping, more and more insistent, at her door.

  Vae lit a candle and followed Finn down the stairs.

  “Wait,” she said again in the shop, and lit two more candles, despite the waste. One did not open the door on a winter night without some light by which to see who came. When the candles had caught, she saw that Finn had taken the iron rod from the upstairs fire. She nodded, and he opened the door.

  In the drifted snow outside stood two strangers, a man and a tall woman he supported with an arm about her shoulders. Finn lowered his weapon; they were unarmed. Coming nearer, and holding her candle high, Vae saw two things: that the woman wasn’t a stranger after all, and that she was far gone with child.

  “From the ta’kiena?” said Vae. “The third time.”

  The woman nodded. Her eyes turned to Finn and then back to his mother. “He is still here,” she said. “I am glad.”

  Finn said nothing; he was so young it could break Vae’s heart. The man in the doorway stirred. “We need help,” he said. “We are fleeing the Wolflord from our world. I am Pwyll, this is Jennifer. We crossed here last spring with Loren.”

  Vae nodded, wishing Shahar were there instead of in the windy cold of North Keep with his grandfather’s spear. He was a craftsman, not a soldier; what did her husband know of war?

  “Come in,” she said, and stepped back. Finn closed and bolted the door behind them. “I am Vae. My man is away. What help can I offer you?”

  “The crossing brought me early to my time,” the woman called Jennifer said, and Vae saw from her face that it was true.

  “Make a fire,” she said to Finn. “In my room upstairs.” She turned to the man. “You help him. Boi
l water on the fire. Finn will show you where the clean linen is. Quickly, both of you.”

  They left, taking the stairs two at a time.

  Alone in the candlelit shop, among the unspun wool and the finished craftings, she and the other woman gazed at each other.

  “Why me?” said Vae.

  The other’s eyes were clouded with pain. “Because,” she said, “I need a mother who knows how to love her child.”

  Vae had been fast asleep only moments before; the woman in the room with her was so fair she might have been a creature from the dreamworld, save for her eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” said Vae.

  “I will have to leave him,” the woman said. “Could you give your heart to another son when Finn takes the Longest Road?”

  In daylight she might have struck or cursed anyone who said so flatly the thing that twisted through her like a blade. But this was night and half a dream, and the other woman was crying.

  Vae was a simple woman, a worker in wool and cloth with her man. She had a son who for no reason she could understand had been called three times to the Road when the children played the prophecy game, the ta’kiena, and then a fourth time before the Mountain went up to signal war. And now there was this.

  “Yes,” said Vae, simply. “I could love another child. It is a son?”

  Jennifer wiped away her tears. “It is,” she said. “But there is more. He will be of andain, and I don’t know what that will mean.”

  Vae felt her hands trembling. Child of a god and a mortal. It meant many things, most of them forgotten. She took a deep breath. “Very well,” she said.

  “One thing more,” the golden woman said.

  Vae closed her eyes. “Tell me, then.”

  She kept them closed for a long time after the father’s name was spoken. Then, with more courage than she would have ever guessed she had, Vae opened her eyes and said, “He will need to be loved a great deal. I will try.” Watching the other woman weep after that, she felt pity break over her in waves.

  At length Jennifer collected herself, only to be racked by a visible spasm of pain.

  “We had best go up,” said Vae. “This will not be an easy thing. Can you manage the stairs?”

  Jennifer nodded her head. Vae put an arm around her, and they moved together to the stairway. Jennifer stopped.

  “If you had had a second son,” she whispered, “what name would he have had?”

  The dreamworld, it was. “Darien,” she said. “For my father.”

  It was not an easy thing, but neither was it a long one. He was small, of course, more than two months early, but not as small as she had expected. He was placed on her breast for a moment, afterward. Looking down for the first time upon her son, Jennifer wept, in love and in sorrow for all the worlds, all the battlegrounds, for he was beautiful.

  Blinded, she closed her eyes. Then, once only, and formally, that it should be done and known to be done, she said, “His name is Darien. He has been named by his mother.” Saying so, she laid her head back upon the pillows and gave her son to Vae.

  Taking him, Vae was astonished how easily love came to her again. There were tears in her own eyes as she cradled him. She blamed their blurring and the shifting candlelight for the moment—no more than that—when his very blue eyes seemed red.

  It was still dark when Paul went out into the streets, and snow was falling. Drifts were piling up in the lanes of Paras Derval and against the shops and houses. He passed the remembered signboard on the Black Boar. The inn was dark and shuttered, the sign creaked in the pre-dawn wind. No one else was abroad in the white streets.

  He continued, east to the edge of the town and then—though the going became harder—north up the slope of the palace hill. There were lights on in the castle, beacons of warmth amid the wind and blowing snow.

  Paul Schafer felt a deep desire to go to those beacons, to sit down with friends—Loren, Matt, Diarmuid, Coll, even Aileron, the stern, bearded High King—and learn their tidings even as he shared the burden of what he had just witnessed.

  He resisted the lure. The child was Jennifer’s thread in this weaving, and she was owed this much: he would not take that thread away by spreading word throughout the land of a son born that day to Rakoth Maugrim.

  Darien, she had named him. Paul thought of Kim saying, I know his name. He shook his head. This child was something so unpredictable, so truly random, it numbed the mind: what would be the powers of this newest of the andain, and where, oh, where, would his allegiance fall? Had Jennifer brought forth this day not merely a lieutenant but an heir to the Dark?

  Both women had cried, the one who had given birth and the one who would raise him. Both women, but not the child, not this fair blue-eyed child of two worlds.

  Did the andain cry? Paul reached down toward the still place, the source of the power that had brought them here, for an answer but was not surprised to find nothing there.

  Pushing through the last swirling mound of snow he reached his destination, drew a breath to steady himself, and pulled on the chain outside the arched doorway.

  He heard a bell ring deep within the domed Temple of the Mother; then there was silence again. He stood in the darkness a long time before the great doors swung open and the glow of candlelight spun out a little way into the snowbound night. He moved sideways and forward to see and be seen.

  “No farther!” a woman said. “I have a blade.”

  He kept his composure. “I’m sure you do,” he said. “But you also have eyes, I hope, and should know who I am, for I have been here before.”

  There were two of them, a young girl with the candle and an older woman beside her. Others, with more light, were coming forward as well.

  The girl moved nearer, raising her light so that his face was fully lit by the flame.

  “By Dana of the Moon!” the older woman breathed.

  “Yes,” said Paul. “Now quickly, please, summon your Priestess. I have little time and must speak with her.” He made to enter the vestibule.

  “Hold!” the woman said again. “There is a price of blood all men must pay to enter here.”

  But for this he had no tolerance.

  Stepping quickly forward, he grabbed her wrist and twisted. A knife clattered on the marble floor. Still holding the grey-robed woman in front of him Paul snapped, “Bring the Priestess, now!” None of them moved; behind him the wind whistled through the open door.

  “Let her go,” the young girl said calmly. He turned to her; she looked to be no more than thirteen. “She means no harm,” the girl went on. “She doesn’t know that you bled the last time you were here, Twiceborn.”

  He had forgotten: Jaelle’s fingers along his cheek as he lay helpless. His glance narrowed on this preternaturally self-possessed child. He released the other priestess.

  “Shiel,” the girl said to her, still tranquilly, “we should summon the High Priestess.”

  “No need,” a colder voice said, and walking between the torches, clad as ever in white, Jaelle came to stand facing him. She was barefoot on the cold floor, he saw, and her long red hair was twisted down her back in untended spirals.

  “Sorry to wake you,” he said.

  “Speak,” she replied. “And carefully. You have assaulted one of my priestesses.”

  He could not afford to lose his temper. This was going to be difficult enough as it was.

  “I am sorry,” he lied. “And I am here to speak. We should be alone, Jaelle.”

  A moment longer she regarded him, then turned. “Bring him to my chambers,” she said.

  “Priestess! The blood, he must—”

  “Shiel, be silent for once!” Jaelle snapped in a wholly unusual revealing of strain.

  “I told her,” the young one said mildly. “He bled the last time he was here.”

  Jaelle hadn’t wanted to be reminded. She went the long way around, so he would have to pass the dome and see the axe.

  The bed he remembered. He had awa
kened here on a morning of rain. It was neatly made. Proprieties, he thought wryly—and some well-trained servants.

  “Very well,” she said.

  “News first, please. Is there war?” he asked.

  She walked over to the table, turned, and faced him, resting her hands behind her on the polished surface. “No. The winter came early and hard. Not even svart alfar march well in snow. The wolves have been a problem, and we are short of food, but there have been no battles yet.”

  “So you heard Kim’s warning?” Don’t attack, he’s waiting in Starkadh! Kimberly had screamed, as they passed into the crossing.

  Jaelle hesitated. “I heard it. Yes.”

  “No one else?”

  “I was tapping the avarlith for her.”

  “I remember. It was unexpected.” She made an impatient movement. “They listened to you then?”

  “Eventually.” This time she gave nothing away. He could guess, though, what had happened, knowing the deep mistrust the men in the Great Hall that morning would have had for the High Priestess.

  “What now?” was all he said.

  “We wait for spring. Aileron takes council with everyone who will talk to him, but everyone waits for spring. Where is the Seer?” Some urgency there.

  “Waiting also. For a dream.”

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  Smile fading, then, with no levity at all, he told her: Arrow of Mörnir to Priestess of the Mother. Everything. Softly he gave her the name of the child and, more softly yet, who the father was.

  She didn’t move during the telling of it or after; no indication anywhere in her of the impact. He had to admire her self-control. Then she asked again, but in a different voice, “Why are you here?”

  And he said, “Because you made Jennifer a guest-friend last spring.” She hadn’t been ready for that—this time it showed in her face. A triumph for him of sorts, but the moment was too high by far for petty score-keeping in the power game. He went on, to take away the sting, “Loren would mistrust the wildness of this too much, but I thought you could deal with it. We need you.”