The Darkest Road Page 3

  The other straightened. “I am pied for protection, dappled for deception,” he said reflexively. Then, “Flidais will do. It has, for this long while.”

  Jennifer turned at that and fixed him with a curious scrutiny. “You’re the one Dave met in the woods,” she said.

  He nodded. “The tall one, with the axe? Yes, I did meet him. Green Ceinwen gave him a horn, after.”

  “I know,” she said. “Owein’s Horn.”

  To the east just then, under a darkening sky, a battle was raging along the bloodied banks of the Adein, a battle that would end with the blowing of that horn.

  On the dock, Flidais looked up at the tall woman with the green eyes that he alone in Fionavar had cause to remember from long ago. “Is that the only knowledge you have of me?” he asked softly. “As having saved your friend?”

  In the boat Brendel kept silent. He watched the woman reach for a memory. She shook her head. “Should I know you?” she asked.

  Flidais smiled. “Perhaps not in this form.” His voice went even deeper, and suddenly he chanted, “I have been in many shapes. I have been the blade of a sword, a star, a lantern light, a harp and a harper, both.” He paused, saw something spark in her eyes, ended diffidently, “I have fought, though small, in battle before the Ruler of Britain.”

  “I remember!” she said, laughing now. “Wise child, spoiled child. You liked riddles, didn’t you? I remember you, Taliesin.” She stood up, Brendel leaped to the dock and helped her alight.

  “I have been in many shapes,” Flidais said again, “but I was his harper once.”

  She nodded, very tall on the stone dock, looking down at him, memory playing in her eyes and about her mouth. Then there came a change. Both men saw it and were suddenly still.

  “You sailed with him, didn’t you?” said Guinevere. “You sailed in the first Prydwen.”

  Flidais’ smile faded. “I did, Lady,” he said. “I went with the Warrior to Caer Sidi, which is Cader Sedat here. I wrote of it, of that voyage. You will remember.” He drew breath and recited:

  “Thrice the fullness of Prydwen we went with Arthur,

  Except seven, none returned from—”

  He stopped abruptly, at her gesture. They stood so a moment. The sun sank into the sea. With the dark, a finger of wind arose. Brendel, watching, only half understanding, felt a nameless sorrow come over him as the light faded.

  In the shadows, Jennifer’s face seemed to grow colder, more austere. She said, “You were there. So you knew the way. Did you sail with Amairgen?”

  Flidais flinched, as from an actual blow. He drew a shaken breath, and he, who was half a god and could induce the powers of Pendaran to accede to his will, said in a voice of humble supplication, “I have never been a coward, Lady, in any guise. I sailed to that accursed place once, in another form. But this is my truest shape, and this Wood my true home in this first world of all. How should a forest warden go to sea, Lady? What good would I have done? I told him, I told Amairgen what I knew—that he would have to sail north into a north wind—and he said he would know where to do so, and when. I did that, Lady, and the Weaver knows that the andain seldom do so much for men.”

  He fell silent. Her regard was unresponsive, remote. The suddenly she said:

  “I will not allow praise to the men with trailing shields,

  They know not on what day the chief arose,

  When we went with Arthur of mournful memory—”

  “I wrote that!” Flidais protested. “My lady Guinevere, I wrote that.”

  It was quite dark now on the path, but with the keen sight of the lios alfar Brendel saw the coldness leave her face. Voice gentle now, she said, “I know, Taliesin. Flidais. I know you did, and I know you were there with him. Forgive me. None of this makes for easy memory.”

  On the words she brushed past both of them and went up the pathway toward the Tower. Over the darkened sea the evening star now shone, the one named for Lauriel the White.

  He had done it completely wrong, Flidais realized, watching her walk away. He had meant to turn the conversation to the name, the summoning name of the Warrior, the one riddle left in all the worlds for which he had no answer. He was clever enough, and to spare, to have led the talk anywhere he wanted, and the Weaver knew how deep his desire for that answer was.

  The thing he had forgotten, though, was what happened in the presence of Guinevere. Even though the andain cared little for the troubles of mortal men, how could one be sly in the face of so ancient a sorrow?

  The lios alfar and the andain, each with his own thoughts, gathered the gear from the boat and followed her into the Anor and up the winding stair.

  * * *

  It was strange, thought Jaelle, to feel so uneasy in the place of her own power.

  She was in her rooms in the Temple in Paras Derval, surrounded by the priestesses of the sanctuary and by the brown-robed acolytes. She could mind-link at a moment’s need or desire with the Mormae in Gwen Ystrat. She even had a guest-friend in the Temple: Sharra of Cathal, escorted to the doors, but not beyond, by the amusing Tegid of Rhoden—who , it seemed, was taking his duties as Intercedent for Diarmuid with unwonted seriousness.

  It was a time for seriousness, though, and for disquiet. None of the familiar things, not even the bells ringing to summon the grey ones to sunset invocation, were enough to ease the thoughts of the High Priestess.

  Nothing was as clear as it once had been. She was here and she belonged here, would probably have scorned any request, let alone command, to be anywhere else. Hers was the duty and the power, both, to shape the spun webs of Dana’s will, and to do so in this place.

  Even so, nothing felt the same.

  For one thing, hers also, as of yesterday, was half the governing of Brennin, since the High King had gone north.

  The summonglass of Daniloth had blazed yestereve—two nights ago, in truth, but they had only learned of it on their return from Taerlindel. She had seen, with Aileron, the imperative coiling of light in the scepter the lios alfar had given to Ailell.

  The King had paused only long enough to snatch a meal as he gave terse commands. In the garrisons, the captains of the guard were mobilizing every man. It took very little time; Aileron had been preparing for this moment since the day she had crowned him.

  He had done everything properly. Had appointed her with Gorlaes the Chancellor to govern the realm while he was away at war. He had even paused beside her in front of the palace gates and quickly, but not without dignity, besought her to guard their people as best her powers allowed.

  Then he had been up on his black charger and galloping away with an army, first to North Keep to collect the garrison there, and then north, at night, over the Plain toward Daniloth and Dana alone knew what.

  Leaving her in this most familiar of places, where nothing seemed familiar at all.

  She had hated him once, she remembered. Hated them all: Aileron, and his father, and Diarmuid, his brother, the one she called the “princeling” in response to his mocking, corrosive tongue.

  Faintly to her ears came the chanting from the domed chamber. It was not the usual twilight invocation. For eight more nights, until Midsummer’s moon was gone, the evening chants would begin and end with the lament for Liadon.

  And so much power lay in this, so magnificent a triumph for the Goddess, and thereby for herself, as first High Priestess in uncounted, unknowable years to have heard the voice from Dun Maura cry out on Maidaladan, in mourning for the sacrifice come freely.

  And with that, her thoughts circled back to the one who had become Liadon: Kevin Laine, brought from another world by Silvercloak to a destiny both dark and dazzlingly bright, one that not even the Seer could have foreknown.

  For all Jaelle’s knowledge, all her immersion in the nature of the Goddess, Kevin’s had been an act so overwhelming, so consummately gallant, it had irrevocably blurred the clarity with which once she’d viewed the world. He was a man, and yet he had done this thing. It was, s
ince Maidaladan, so much harder to summon the old anger and bitterness, the hate. Or, more truly, so much harder to summon them for anything and anyone but Rakoth.

  The winter was over. The summonglass had blazed. There was war, somewhere north, in the dark.

  And there was a ship sailing west.

  That thought carried her back to a strand of beach north of Taerlindel, where she had watched the other stranger, Pwyll, summon and speak to the sea god by the water’s edge in an inhuman light. Nothing was easy for any of them, Dana and the Weaver knew, but Pywll’s seemed such a harsh, demanding power, taking so much out of him and not giving, so far as she could see, a great deal back.

  Him too she remembered hating, with a cold, unforgiving fury, when she had taken him from the Summer Tree to this very room, this bed, knowing that the Goddess had spoken to him, not knowing what she had said. She had struck him, she remembered, drawing the blood all men should give, but hardly in the manner prescribed.

  “Rahod hedai Liadon,” the priestesses sang under the dome, ending the lament on the last long, keening note. And after a moment she heard Shiel’s clear voice begin the antiphonal verses of the evening invocation. There was some peace there, Jaelle thought, some comfort to be found in the rituals, even now, even in time of darkness.

  Her chamber door burst open. Leila stood in the doorway.

  “What are you doing?” Jaelle exclaimed. “Leila, you should be in the dome with—”

  She stopped. The girl’s eyes were wide, staring, focused on nothingness. Leila spoke, in a voice tranced and uninflected. “They have blown the horn,” she said. “In the battle. He is in the sky now, above the river. Finn. And the kings. I see Owein in the sky. He is drawing a sword. Finn is drawing a sword. They are—they are—” Her face was chalk white, her fingers splayed at her sides. She made a thin sound.

  “They are killing,” she said. “They are killing the svarts and the urgach. Finn is covered in blood. So much blood. And now Owein is—he is—”

  Jaelle saw the girl’s eyes flare even wider then, and go wild with terror, and her heart lurched;

  Leila screamed. “Finn, no! Stop him! They are killing us!”

  She screamed again, wordlessly, and stumbling forward, falling, buried her head in Jaelle’s lap, her arms clutching the Priestess, her body racked convulsively.

  The chanting stopped under the dome. There were footsteps running along the corridors. Jaelle held the girl as tightly as she could; Leila was thrashing so hard, the High Priestess was genuinely afraid she would hurt herself.

  “What is it? What has happened?”

  She looked up and saw Sharra of Cathal in the doorway.

  “The battle,” she gasped, fighting to hold Leila, her own body rocking with the force of the girl’s weeping. “The Hunt. Owein. She is tuned to—”

  And then they heard the voice.

  “Sky King, sheath your sword! I put my will upon you!”

  It seemed to come from nowhere and from everywhere in the room, clear, cold, utterly imperative.

  Leila’s violent movements stopped. She lay still in Jaelle’s arms. They were all still: the three in the room and those gathered in the corridor. They waited. Jaelle found it difficult to breathe. Her hands were blindly, reflexively stroking Leila’s hair. The girl’s robe was soaked through with perspiration.

  “What is it?” whispered Sharra of Cathal. It sounded loud in the silence. “Who said that?”

  Jaelle felt Leila draw a shuddering breath. The girl—fifteen, Jaelle thought, only that—lifted her head again. Her face was splotchy, her hair tangled hopelessly. She said, “It was Ceinwen. It was Ceinwen, High Priestess.” There was wonder in her voice. A child’s wonder.

  “Herself? Directly?” Sharra again. Jaelle looked at the Princess, who despite her own youth had been trained in power and so evidently knew the constraints laid by the Weaver on the gods.

  Leila turned to Sharra. Her eyes were normal again, and very young. She nodded. “It was her own voice.”

  Jaelle shook her head. There would be a price demanded for that, she knew, among the jealous pantheon of goddesses and gods. That, of course, was far beyond her. Something else, though, was not.

  She said, “Leila, you are in danger from this. The Hunt is too wild, it is the wildest power of all. You must try to break this link with Finn, child. There is death in it.”

  She had powers of her own, knew when her voice was more than merely hers. She was High Priestess and in the Temple of Dana.

  Leila looked up at her, kneeling still on the floor. Automatically, Jaelle reached out to push a snarl of hair back from the girl’s white face.

  “I can’t,” Leila said quietly. Only Sharra, nearest to them, heard. “I can’t break it. But it doesn’t matter anymore. They will never call them again, they dare not—there will be no way to bind them if they do. Ceinwen will not intercede twice. He is gone, High Priestess, out among the stars, on the Longest Road.”

  Jaelle looked at her for a long time. Sharra came up and laid a hand on Leila’s shoulder. The tangle of hair fell down again, and once more the Priestess pushed it back.

  Someone had returned to the dome. The bells were ringing.

  Jaelle stood up. “Let us go,” she said. “The invocations are not finished. We will all do them. Come.”

  She led them along the curving corridors to the place of the axe. All through the evening chants, though, she was hearing a different voice in her mind.

  “There is death in it.” It was her own voice, and more than her own. Hers and the Goddess’s.

  Which meant, always, that what she said was true.

  Chapter 2

  The next morning at the greyest hour, just before dawn, Prydwen met the Soulmonger far out at sea. At the same time, on the Plain, Dave Martyniuk woke alone on the mound of the dead near Celidon.

  He was not, never had been, a subtle man, but one did not need deep reserves of subtlety to apprehend the significance of Ceinwen’s presence beneath him and above him on the green grass tinted silver in the night just past. There had been awe at first, and a stunned humility, but only at first, and not for very long. In the blind, instinctive assertion of his own lovemaking Dave had sought and found an affirmation of life, of the living, after the terrible carnage by the river.

  He remembered, vividly, a moonlit pool in Faelinn Grove a year ago. How the stag slain by Green Ceinwen’s arrow had split itself in two, and had risen, and bowed its head to the Huntress, and walked away from its own death.

  Now he had another memory. He sensed that the goddess had shared—had engendered, even—his own compelling desire last night to reaffirm the absolute presence of the living in a world so beleaguered by the Dark. And this, he suspected, was the reason for the gift she had given him. The third gift, in fact: his life, in Faelinn that first time, then Owein’s Horn, and now this offering of herself to take away the pain.

  He was not wrong in any of this, but there was a great deal more to what Ceinwen had done, though not even the most subtle of mortal minds could have apprehended it. Which was as it should be, as, indeed, it had always been. Macha knew, however, and Red Nemain, and Dana, the Mother, most surely of all. The gods might guess, and some of the andain, but the goddesses would know.

  The sun rose. Dave stood up and looked around him under a brightening sky. No clouds. It was a beautiful morning. About a mile north of him the Adein sparkled, and there were men and horses stirring along its bank. East, somewhat farther off, he could make out the standing stones that surrounded and defined Celidon, the mid-Plain, home of the first tribe of the Dalrei and gathering place of all the tribes. There were signs of motion, of life, there as well.

  Who, though, and how many?

  Not all need die, Ceinwen had said to him a year ago, and again last night. Not all, perhaps, but the battle had been brutal, and very bad, and a great many had died.

  He had been changed by the events of the evening and night before, but in most ways Dav
e was exactly what he had always been, and so there was a sick knot of fear in his stomach as he strode off the mound and began walking swiftly toward the activity by the riverbank.

  Who? And how many? There had been such chaos, such muddy, blood-bespattered confusion: the wolves, the lios arriving, Avaia’s brood in the darkening sky, and then, after he’d blown the horn, something else in the sky, something wild. Owein and the kings. And the child. Carrying death, manifesting it. He quickened his pace almost to a run. Who?

  Then he had part of an answer, and he stopped abruptly, a little weak with relief. From the cluster of men by the Adein two horses, one dark grey, the other brown, almost golden, had suddenly wheeled free, racing toward him, and he recognized them both.

  Their riders, too. The horses thundered up to him, the two riders leaping off, almost before stopping, with the unconscious, inbred ease of the Dalrei. And Dave stood facing the men who’d become his brothers on a night in Pendaran Wood.

  There was joy, and relief, and all three showed it in their own ways, but they did not embrace.

  “Ivor?” Dave asked. Only the name.

  “He is all right,” Levon said quietly. “Some wounds, none serious.” Levon himself, Dave saw, had a short deep scar on his temple, running up into the line of his yellow hair.

  “We found your axe,” Levon explained. “By the riverbank. But no one had seen you after… after you blew the horn, Davor.”

  “And this morning,” Torc continued, “all the dead were gone, and we could not find you…” He left the thought unfinished.

  Dave drew a breath and let it out slowly. “Ceinwen?” he said. “Did you hear her voice?”

  The two Dalrei nodded, without speaking.

  “She stopped the Hunt,” Dave said, “and then she… took me away. When I awoke she was with me, and she said that she had… gathered the dead.” He said nothing more. The rest was his own, not for the telling.

  He saw Levon, quick as ever, glance past him at the mound, and then Torc did the same. There was a long silence. Dave could feel the freshness of the morning breeze, could see it moving the tall grass of the Plain. Then, with a twist of his heart he saw that Torc, always so self-contained, was weeping soundlessly as he gazed at the mound of the dead.