The Summer Tree Read online

  The answer, though, was easy enough after a while: she hadn’t. Kim could go, leave, deny. She could cross home as planned and dye her hair, or leave it as it was and go New Wave if she preferred. Nothing had changed. Except, of course, that everything had. How can you tell the dancer from the dance? she had read somewhere. Or the dreamer from the dream, she amended, feeling a little lost. Because the answer to that was easiest of all.

  You can’t.

  Some time later she laid her hand, in the way she now knew, upon the slab below the table, and saw the door appear.

  Down the worn stone stairs she went, in her turn. Lisen’s Light showed her the way. The dagger would be there, she knew, with red blood on the silver-blue thieren of the blade. There would be no body, though, for Ysanne the Seer, having died with love and by that blade, had taken herself beyond the walls of time, where she could not be followed. Lost and forever. It was final, absolute. It was ended.

  And she was left here in the first world of them all, bearing the burden of that.

  She cleaned Lökdal and sheathed it to a sound like a harpstring. She put it back in the cabinet. Then she went up the stairs again towards the world that needed her, all the worlds that needed what it seemed she was.

  “Oh, God,” Kevin said. “It’s Paul!”

  A stunned silence descended, overwhelming in its import. This was something for which none of them could have prepared. I should have known, Kevin was thinking, though. I should have figured it out when he first told me about the Tree. A bitterness scaling towards rage pulled his head up….

  “That must have been some chess game,” he said savagely to the King.

  “It was,” Ailell said simply. Then, “He came to me and offered. I would never have asked, or even thought to ask. Will you believe this?”

  And of course he did. It fit too well. The attack was unfair, because Paul would have done what he wanted to, exactly what he wanted to, and this was a better way to die than falling from a rope down a cliff. As such things were measured, and he supposed they could be measured. It hurt, though, it really hurt, and—

  “No!” said Loren decisively. “It must be stopped. This we cannot do. He is not even one of us, my lord. We cannot lay our griefs upon him in this way. He must be taken down. This is a guest of your House, Ailell. Of our world. What were you thinking of?”

  “Of our world. Of my House. Of my people. He came to me, Silvercloak.”

  “And should have been refused!”

  “Loren, it was a true offering.” The speaker was Gorlaes, his voice unwontedly diffident.

  “You were there?” the mage bristled.

  “I bound him. He walked past us to the Tree. It was as if he were alone. I know not how, and I am afraid here speaking of it, as I was in the Godwood, but I swear it is a proper offering.”

  “No,” Loren said again, his face sharp with emotion. “He cannot possibly understand what he is doing. My lord, he must be taken down before he dies.”

  “It is his own death, Loren. His chosen gift. Would you presume to strip it from him?” Ailell’s eyes were so old, so weary.

  “I would,” the mage replied. “He was not brought here to die for us.”

  It was time to speak.

  “Maybe not,” Kevin said, forcing the words out, stumbling and in pain. “But I think that is why he came.” He was losing them both. Jennifer. Now Paul, too. His heart was sore. “If he went, he went knowing, and because he wanted to. Let him die for you, if he can’t live for himself. Leave him, Loren. Let him go.”

  He didn’t bother trying to hide the tears, not even from Jaelle, whose eyes on his face were so cold.

  “Kevin,” said the mage gently, “it is a very bad death. No one lasts the three—it will be waste and to no point. Let me take him down.”

  “It is not for you to choose, Silvercloak,” Jaelle spoke then. “Nor for this one, either.”

  Loren turned, his eyes hard as flint. “If I decide to bring him down,” he said driving the words into her, “then it will be necessary for you to kill me to prevent it.”

  “Careful, mage,” Gorlaes cautioned, though mildly. “That is close to treason. The High King has acted here. Would you undo what he has done?”

  None of them seemed to be getting the point. “No one has acted but Paul,” Kevin said. He felt drained now, but completely unsurprised. He really should have known this was coming. “Loren, if anyone understood this, it was him. If he lasts three nights, will there be rain?”

  “There might be.” It was the King. “This is wild magic, we cannot know.”

  “Blood magic,” Loren amended bitterly.

  Teyrnon shook his head. “The God is wild, though there may be blood.”

  “He can’t last, though,” Diarmuid said, his voice sober. He looked at Kevin. “You said yourself, he’s been ill.”

  A cracked, high laugh escaped Kevin at that.

  “Never stopped him,” he said fiercely, feeling it so hard. “The stubborn, brave, son of a bitch!”

  The love in the harsh words reached through to all of them; it could not help but do so, and it had to be acknowledged. Even by Jaelle and, in a very different way, by Loren Silvercloak.

  “Very well,” said the mage at last. He sank into a chair. “Oh, Kevin. They will sing of him here as long as Brennin lasts, regardless of the end.”

  “Songs,” said Kevin. “Songs only mess you up.” It was too much effort not to ache; he let it sweep over him. Sometimes, his father had said, you can’t do anything. Oh, Abba, he thought, far away and alone inside the hurt.

  “Tomorrow,” Ailell the High King said, rising again, gaunt and tall. “I will meet you here at sunrise tomorrow. We will see what the night brings.”

  It was a dismissal. They withdrew, leaving the King sitting at the last alone in his council chamber with his years, his self-contempt, and the image of the stranger on the Tree in his name, in the name of the God, in his name.

  They went outside into the central courtyard, Diarmuid, Loren, Matt, and Kevin Laine. In silence they walked together, the same face in their minds, and Kevin was grateful for the presence of friends.

  The heat was brutal, and the sour wind abraded them under the sickly, filtered sun. A prickly tension seemed woven into the texture of the day. And then, suddenly, there was more.

  “Hold!” cried Matt the Dwarf, whose people were of the caverns of the earth, the roots of mountains, the ancient rocks. “Hold! Something comes!”

  And in the same instant, north and west of them, Kim Ford rose, a blinding pulse in her head, an apprehension of enormity, and moved, as if compelled, out back of the cottage where Tyrth was labouring. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God!” Seeing with distorted vision the vellin bracelet writhing on her wrist, knowing it could not ward what was coming, what had been coming for so long, so terribly, what none of them had seen, none, what was here, now, right now! She screamed, in overwhelming agony.

  And the roof of the world blew up.

  Far, far in the north among the ice, Rangat Cloud-Shouldered rose up ten miles into the heavens, towering above the whole of Fionavar, master of the world, prison of a god for a thousand years.

  But no more. A vast geyser of blood-red fire catapulted skyward with a detonation heard even in Cathal. Rangat exploded with a column of fire so high the curving world could not hide it. And at the apex of its ascent the flame was seen to form itself into the five fingers of a hand, taloned, oh, taloned, and curving southward on the wind to bring them all within its grasp, to tear them all to shreds.

  A gauntlet hurled, it was a wild proclamation of release to all the cowering ones who would be his slaves forever after now. For if they had feared the svart alfar, trembled before a renegade mage and the power of Galadan, what would they do now to see the fingers of this fire raking heaven?

  To know Rakoth Maugrim was unchained and free, and could bend the very Mountain to his vengeance?

  And on the north wind there came th
en the triumphant laughter of the first and fallen god, who was coming down on them like a hammer bringing fire, bringing war.

  The explosion hit the King like a fist in the heart. He tottered from the window of the council chamber and fell into a chair, his face grey, his hands opening and closing spasmodically as he gasped for breath.

  “My lord?” Tarn the page rushed into the room and knelt, terror in his eyes. “My lord?”

  But Ailell was beyond speech. He heard only the laughter on the wind, saw only the fingers curving to clutch them, enormous and blood-coloured, a death cloud in the sky, bringing not rain but ruin.

  He seemed to be alone. Tarn must have run for aid. With a great effort Ailell rose, breathing in high short gasps, and made his way down the short hallway to his rooms. There he stumbled to the inner door and opened it.

  Down the familiar corridor he went. At the end of the passageway, the King stopped before the viewing slot. His vision was troubled: there seemed to be a girl beside him. She had white hair, which was unnatural. Her eyes were kind, though, as Marrien’s had been at the end. He had managed to win love there after all. It was patience that power taught. He had told that to the stranger, he remembered. After ta’bael. Where was the stranger? He had something else to say to him, something important.

  Then he remembered. Opening the slot, Ailell the King looked into the Room of the Stone and saw that it was dark. The fire was dead, the sacred naal fire; the pillar carved with images of Conary bore nothing upon its crown, and on the floor, shattered forever into fragments like his heart, lay the stone of Ginserat.

  He felt himself falling. It seemed to take a very long time. The girl was there; her eyes were so sorrowful. He almost wanted to comfort her. Aileron, he thought. Diarmuid. Oh, Aileron. Very far off, he heard thunder. A god was coming. Yes, of course, but what fools they all were—it was the wrong god. It was so funny, so funny, it was.

  And on that thought he died.

  So passed, on the eve of war, Ailell dan Art, High King of Brennin, and the rule passed to his son in a time of darkness, when fear moved across the face of all the lands. A good King and wise, Ysanne the Seer had called him once.

  What he had fallen from.

  Jennifer was flying straight at the Mountain when it went up.

  A harsh cry of triumph burst from the throat of the black swan as the blast of fire rose far above to separate high in the air and form the taloned hand, bending south like smoke on the wind, but not dissolving, hanging there, reaching.

  There was laughter in the sky all around her. Is the person under the mountain dead? Paul Schafer had asked before they crossed. He wasn’t dead, nor was he under the Mountain anymore. And though she didn’t understand, Jennifer knew that he wasn’t a person, either. You had to be something more to shape a hand of fire and send mad laughter down the wind.

  The swan increased her speed. For a day and a night Avaia had borne her north, the giant wings beating with exquisite grace, the odour of corruption surrounding her, even in the high, thin reaches of the sky. All through this second day they flew, but late that night they set down on the shores of a lake north of the wide grasslands that had unrolled beneath their flight.

  There were svart alfar waiting for them, a large band this time, and with them were other creatures, huge and savage, with fangs and carrying swords. She was pulled roughly from the swan and thrown on the ground. They didn’t bother tying her—she couldn’t move in any case, her limbs were brutally stiff with cramp after so long bound and motionless.

  After a time they brought her food: the half-cooked carcass of some prairie rodent. When she shook her head in mute refusal, they laughed.

  Later they did tie her, tearing her blouse in the process. A few of them began pinching and playing with her body, but some leader made them stop. She hardly registered it. A far corner of her mind, it seemed to be as remote as her life, said that she was in shock, and that it was probably a blessing.

  When morning came, they would bind her to the swan again and Avaia would fly all that third day, angling northwest now so the still-smouldering mountain gradually slid around towards the east. Then, towards sunset, in a region of great cold, Jennifer would see Starkadh, like a giant ziggurat of hell among the ice, and she would begin to understand.

  For the second time, Kimberly came to in her bed in the cottage. This time, though, there was no Ysanne to watch over her. Instead, the eyes gazing at her were the dark ones, deep-set, of the servant, Tyrth.

  As awareness returned she became conscious of a pain on her wrist. Looking, she saw a scoring of black where the vellin bracelet had twisted into her skin. That she remembered. She shook her head.

  “I think I would have died without this.” She made a small movement of her hand to show him.

  He didn’t reply, but a great tension seemed to dissolve from his compact, muscled frame as he heard her speak. She looked around; by the shadows it was late afternoon.

  “That’s twice now you’ve had to carry me here,” she said

  “You must not let that bother you, my lady,” he said in his rough, shy voice.

  “Well, I’m not in the habit of fainting.”

  “I would never think that.” He cast his eyes down.

  “What happened with the Mountain?” she asked, almost unwilling to know.

  “It is over,” he replied. “Just before you woke.” She nodded. That made sense.

  “Have you been watching me all day?”

  He looked apologetic. “Not always, my lady. I am sorry, but the animals were frightened and …”

  At that she smiled inwardly. He was pushing it a bit.

  “There is boiling water,” Tyrth said after a short silence. “Could I make you a drink?”

  “Please.”

  She watched as he limped to the fire. With neat, economical motions he prepared a pot of some herbal infusion and carried it back to the table by the bed.

  It was, she decided, time.

  “You don’t have to fake the limp anymore,” she said.

  He was very cool, you had to give him credit. Only the briefest flicker of uncertainty had touched the dark eyes, and his hands pouring her drink were absolutely steady. Only when he finished did he sit down for the first time and regard her for a long time in silence.

  “Did she tell you?” he asked finally, and she heard his true voice for the first time.

  “No. She lied, actually. Said it wasn’t her secret to tell.” She hesitated. “I learned from Eilathen by the lake.”

  “I watched that. I wondered.”

  Kim could feel her forehead creasing with its incongruous vertical line.

  “Ysanne is gone, you know.” She said it as calmly as she could.

  He nodded. “That much I know, but I don’t understand what has happened. Your hair …”

  “She had Lökdal down below,” Kim said bluntly. Almost, she wanted to hurt him with it. “She used it on herself.”

  He did react, and she was sorry for the thought behind her words. A hand came up to cover his mouth, a curious gesture in such a man. “No,” he breathed. “Oh, Ysanne, no!” She could hear the loss.

  “You understand what she has done?” she asked. There was a catch in her voice; she controlled it. There was so much pain.

  “I know what the dagger does, yes. I didn’t know she had it here. She must have come to love you very much.”

  “Not just me. All of us.” She hesitated. “She dreamt me twenty-five years ago. Before I was born.” Did that make it easier? Did anything?

  His eyes widened. “That I never knew.”

  “How could you?” He seemed to regard gaps in his awareness as deeply felt affronts. But there was something else that had to be said. “There is more,” Kim said. His name is not to be spoken, she thought, then: “Your father died this afternoon, Aileron.”

  There was a silence. “Old news,” the elder Prince of Brennin said. “Listen.”

  And after a moment she heard them: al
l the bells in Paras Derval tolling. The death bells for the passing of a King.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  His mouth twitched, then he looked out the window. You cold bastard, she thought. Old news. He deserved more than that, surely; surely he did. She was about to say as much when Aileron turned back to her, and she saw the river of tears pouring and pouring down his face.

  Dear God, she thought shakily, enduring a paroxysm of self-condemnation. He may be hard to read, but how can you be that far off? It would have been funny, a Kim Ford classic, except that people were going to be relying on her now for so much. It was no good, no good at all. She was an impulsive, undisciplined, halfway-decent intern from Toronto. What the hell was she going to do?

  Nothing, at any rate, for the moment. She held herself very still on the bed, and after a minute Aileron lifted his tanned, bearded face and spoke.

  “After my mother died, he was never the same. He … dwindled. Will you believe that he was once a very great man?”

  This she could help him with. “I saw by the lake. I know he was, Aileron.”

  “I watched him until I could hardly bear it,” he said, under control now. “Then factions formed in the palace that wanted him to step aside for me. I killed two men who spoke of it in my presence, but my father grew suspicious and frightened. I could not talk to him anymore.”

  “And Diarmuid?”

  The question seemed to genuinely surprise him. “My brother? He was drunk most of the time, and taking ladies to South Keep the rest. Playing March Warden down there.”

  “There seems to be more to him than that,” Kim said mildly.

  “To a woman, perhaps.”

  She blinked. “That,” she said, “is insulting.”

  He considered it. “I suppose it is,” he said. “I’m sorry.” Then he surprised her again. “I’m not good,” Aileron said, his eyes averted, “at making myself liked. Men will usually end up respecting me, if against their will, because at some things they value I have … a little skill. But I have no skill with women.” The eyes, almost black, swung back to hers. “I am also hard to shake from desires I have, and I am not patient with interference.”