The Wandering Fire Read online

  “You trust me with this?”

  His turn to gesture impatiently. “Oh, Jaelle, don’t exaggerate your own malevolence. You aren’t happy with the power balance here, any fool can see that. But only a very great fool would confuse that with where you stand in this war. You serve the Goddess who sent up that moon, Jaelle. I am least likely of all men to forget it.”

  She seemed very young in that moment. There was a woman beneath the white robe, a person, not merely an icon; he’d made the mistake of trying to tell her that once, in this very room, with the rain falling outside.

  “What do you need?” she said.

  His tone was crisp. “A watch on the child. Complete secrecy, of course, which is another reason I came to you.”

  “I will have to tell the Mormae in Gwen Ystrat.”

  “I thought as much.” He rose, began pacing as he spoke. “It is all the same, I gather, within the Mormae?”

  She nodded. “It is all the same, within any level of the Priestesshood, but it will be kept to the inner circle.”

  “All right,” he said, and stopped his pacing very close to her. “But you have a problem then.”

  “What?”

  “This!” And reaching past her, he pulled open an inner door and grabbed the listener beyond, pulling her into the room so that she sprawled on the carpeted floor.

  “Leila!” Jaelle exclaimed.

  The girl adjusted her grey robe and rose to her feet. There was a hint of apprehension in her eyes, but only a hint, Paul saw, and she held her head very high, facing the two of them.

  “You may owe a death for this.” Jaelle’s tone was glacial.

  Leila said hardily, “Are we to discuss it with a man here?”

  Jaelle hesitated, but only for a second. “We are,” she replied, and Paul was startled by a sudden change in her tone. “Leila,” the High Priestess said gently, “you must not lecture me, I am not Shiel or Marline. You have worn grey for ten days only, and you must understand your place.”

  It was too soft for Paul’s liking. “The hell with that! What was she doing there? What did she hear?”

  “I heard it all,” Leila said.

  Jaelle was astonishingly calm. “I believe it,” she said. “Now tell me why.”

  “Because of Finn,” said Leila. “Because I could tell he came from Finn.”

  “Ah,” said Jaelle slowly. She walked towards the child then and, after a moment, stroked a long finger down her cheek in an unsettling caress. “Of course.”

  “I’m lost,” said Paul.

  They both turned to him.

  “You shouldn’t be,” Jaelle said, in complete control again. “Did Jennifer not tell you about the ta’kiena?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And why she wanted to bear her child in Vae’s house? Finn’s mother’s house?”

  “Oh.” It clicked. He looked at slim, fair-haired Leila. “This one?” he asked.

  The girl answered him herself. “I called Finn to the Road. Three times, and then another. I am tuned to him until he goes.”

  There was a silence. “All right, Leila,” Jaelle said. “Leave us now. You have done what you had to do. Never breathe a word.”

  “I don’t think I could,” said Leila, in a small voice. “For Finn. There is an ocean inside me sometimes. I think it would overrun me if I tried.” She turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

  Looking at the Priestess in the light of the tall candles, Paul realized that he had never seen pity in her eyes before.

  “You will do nothing?” he murmured.

  Jaelle nodded her head, still looking at the door through which the girl had gone. “Anyone else I would have killed, believe me.”

  “But not this one?”

  “Not this one.”

  “Why?”

  She turned to him. “Leave me this secret,” she said softly. “There are some mysteries best not known, Pwyll. Even for you.” It was the first time she had spoken his name. Their eyes met, and this time it was Paul who looked away. Her scorn he could master, but this look in her eyes evoked access to a power older and deeper, even, than the one he had touched on the Tree.

  He cleared his throat. “We should be gone by morning.”

  “I know,” said Jaelle. “I will send in a moment to have her brought here.”

  “If I could do it myself,” he said, “I would not ask this of you. I know it will drain the earthroot, the avarlith.”

  She shook her head; the candlelight made highlights in her hair. “You did a deep thing to bring her here by yourself. The Weaver alone knows how.”

  “Well, I certainly don’t,” he said. An admission.

  They were silent. It was very still in the sanctuary, in her room.

  “Darien,” she said.

  He drew a breath. “I know. Are you afraid?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you?”

  “Very much.”

  They looked at each other across the carpeted space that lay between, a distance impossibly far.

  “We had better get moving,” he said finally.

  She raised her arm and pulled a cord nearby. Somewhere a bell rang. When they came in response she gave swift, careful orders, and it seemed very soon when the priestesses returned, bearing Jennifer.

  After that it took little time. They went into the dome and the man was blindfolded. She took the blood from herself, which surprised some of them; then she reached east to Gwen Ystrat, found Audiart first, then the others. They were made aware, manifested acceptance, then travelled down together, touched Dun Maura, and felt the earthroot flow through them all.

  “Goodbye,” she heard him say, as it changed for her, in the way it always had—the way that had marked her even as a child—into a streaming as of moonlight through her body. She channelled it, gave thanks, and then spun the avarlith forth to send them home.

  After, she was too weary to do anything but sleep.

  In the house by the green where the ta’kiena had been chanted, Vae held her new child in her arms by the fire. The grey-robed priestesses had brought milk and swaddling clothes and promised other things. Finn had already put together a makeshift crib for Darien.

  She had let him hold his brother for a moment, her heart swelling to see the brightness in his eyes. It might even keep him here, she thought; perhaps this awesome thing was so powerful it might overmaster the call that Finn had heard. It might.

  And another thought she had: whatever the father might be, and she laid a curse upon his name, a child learned love from being loved, and they would give him all the love he needed, she and Finn—and Shahar when he came home. How could one not love a child so calm and fair, with eyes so blue—blue as Ginserat’s wardstones, she thought, then remembered they were broken.

  Chapter 3

  Paul, on lookout up the road, whistled the all-clear. Dave grabbed the post for support and hurdled the fence, cursing softly as he sank ankle deep in spring mud.

  “Okay,” he said. “The girls.”

  Kevin helped Jen first and then Kim to balance themselves on the stiff wire for Dave to swing them up and over. They had been worried that the fence might be electrically charged, but Kevin’s checking earlier had established that it wasn’t.

  “Car coming!” Paul cried sharply.

  They flattened themselves on the cold, mucky ground till the headlights went by. Then Kevin rose and he too vaulted over the fence. This part was easy, but the ground was pressure-sensitive farther in, they knew, and an alarm would sound in the guard’s underground room when they walked that far.

  Paul jogged up and neatly cleared the fence. He and Kevin exchanged a glance. Despite the immensity of what they were about to do, Kevin felt a surge of exhilaration. It was a joy to be doing something again.

  “All right,” he said, low and in control. “Jen, you’re with me. Prepare to be as sexy as hell. Dave and Paul—you know what to do?” They nodded. He turned to Kim. “All set, sweetheart. Do yo
ur thing. And—”

  He stopped. Kim had removed her gloves. The Baelrath on her right hand was very bright; it seemed like a thing alive. Kim raised it overhead.

  “May all the powers of the dead forgive me for this,” she said and let the light carry her forward past the crumbling Heelstone to Stonehenge.

  On a night at the beginning of spring she had taken the second step at last. It had been so long in coming she had begun to despair, but how did one command a dream to show itself? Ysanne had never taught her. Nor had the Seer’s gift of so much else offered this one thing to her. Dreamer of the dream, she now was, but there was much waiting involved and never, ever, had Kimberly been called a patient person.

  Over and over through the summer of their return and the long winter that followed—and was not over yet, though April had come—she had seen the same image tumble through her nights, but she knew it now. She had known this first step on the road to the Warrior since a night in Paras Derval. The jumbled stones and the wind over the grass were as familiar as anything had ever been to her, and she knew where they were.

  It was the time that had confused her, or it would have been easy despite the blurring of the vision in those first dreams when she was young in power: she had seen it not as it now was, but as it had been three thousand years ago.

  Stonehenge. Where a King lay buried, a giant in his day, but small, small, beside the one whose secret name he held sacrosanct beyond the walls of death.

  Sacrosanct except now, at last, from her. As ever, the nature of this power overwhelmed her with sorrow: not even the dead might have rest from her, it seemed, from Kimberly Ford with the Baelrath on her hand.

  Stonehenge, she knew. The starting point. The hidden Book of Gortyn she had found under the cottage by the lake, and in it she had found—easily, because Ysanne was within her—the wards that would raise the guardian dead from his long resting place.

  But she had needed one thing more, for the dead man had been mighty and would not give up this secret easily: she had needed to know the other place, the next one, the last. The place of summoning.

  And then, on a night in April, she did.

  It would have misled her again, this long-sought image, had not she been prepared for the trick that time might play. The Seers walked in their dreams along loops spun invisibly in the Weaver’s threading through the Loom, and they had to be prepared to see the inexplicable.

  But this she was ready for, this image of an island, small and green, in a lake calm as glass under a just-risen crescent moon. A scene of such surpassing peacefulness that she would have wept a year ago to know the havoc she would wreak when she came.

  Not even a year ago, not so much even. But she had changed, and though there was sorrow within her—deep as a stone and as permanent—there was too much need, and the delay had been too long to allow her the luxury of tears.

  She rose from her bed. The Warstone flickered with a muted, presaging light. It was going to blaze soon, she knew. She would carry fire on her hand. She saw by the kitchen clock that it was four in the morning. She also saw Jennifer sitting at the table, and the kettle was coming to a boil.

  “You cried out,” her roommate said. “I thought something was happening.”

  Kim took one of the other chairs. She tightened her robe about her. It was chilly in the house, and this travelling always left her cold. “It did,” she said, wearily.

  “You know what you have to do?”

  She nodded.

  “Is it all right?”

  She shrugged. Too hard to explain. She had an understanding, of late, as to why Ysanne had withdrawn in solitude to her lake. There were two lights in the room: one on the ceiling and the other on her hand. “We’d better call the guys,” she said.

  “I already have. They’ll be here soon.”

  Kim glanced sharply at her. “What did I say in my sleep?”

  Jennifer’s eyes were kind again; they had been since Darien was born. “You cried out for forgiveness,” she said. She would drag the dead from their rest and the undead to their doom.

  “Fat chance,” said Kimberly.

  The doorbell rang. In a moment they were standing all around her, anxious, dishevelled, half asleep. She looked up. They were waiting, but the waiting was over; she had seen an island and a lake like glass. “Who’s coming with me to England?” she asked, with brittle, false brightness in her voice.

  All of them went. Even Dave, who’d had to virtually quit his articling job to get away on twenty-four hours’ notice. A year ago he’d carried a packet of Evidence notes into Fionavar with him, so determined was he to succeed in the law. He’d changed so much; they all had. After seeing Rangat throw up that unholy hand, how could anything else seem other than insubstantial?

  Yet what could be more insubstantial than a dream? And it was a dream that had the five of them hurtling overseas on a 747 to London and, in a Renault rented at Heathrow and driven erratically and at speed by Kevin Laine, to Amesbury beside Stonehenge.

  Kevin was in a fired-up mood. Released at last from the waiting, from months of pretending to take an interest in the tax, real estate, and civil-procedure courses that preceded his call to the Bar, he gunned the car through a roundabout, ignored Dave’s spluttering, and skidded to a stop in front of an ancient hotel and tavern called, of course, the New Inn.

  He and Dave handled the baggage—none of them had more than carry-ons—while Paul registered. On the way in they passed the entrance to the bar—crowded at lunchtime—and he caught a glimpse of a cute, freckled barmaid.

  “Do you know,” he told Dave, as they waited for Paul to arrange for the rooms, “I can’t remember the last time I was laid?”

  Dave, who couldn’t either, with greater justification, grunted. “Get your mind out of your pants for once.”

  It was frivolous, Kevin supposed. But he wasn’t a monk and couldn’t ever pretend to be. Diarmuid would understand, he thought, though he wondered if even that dissolute Prince would comprehend just how far the act of love carried Kevin, or what he truly sought in its pursuit. Unlikely in the extreme, Kevin reflected, since he himself didn’t really know.

  Paul had the keys to two adjacent rooms. Leaving Kimberly, at her own insistence, alone in one of the rooms, the four others drove the mile west to join the tour buses and pocket cameras by the monument. Once there, even with the daytime tackiness, Kevin sobered. There was work to be done, to prepare for what would happen that night.

  Dave had asked on the plane. It had been very late, the movie over, lights dimmed. Jennifer and Paul had been asleep when the big man had come over to where Kevin and Kim were sitting, awake but not speaking. Kim hadn’t spoken the whole time, lost in some troubled country born of dream.

  “What are we going to do there?” Dave had asked her diffidently, as if fearing to intrude.

  And the white-haired girl beside him had roused herself to say, “You four will have to do whatever it takes, to give me enough time.”

  “For what?” Dave had said.

  Kevin, too, had turned his head to look at Kim as she replied, far too matter-of-factly, “To raise a King from the dead and make him surrender a name. After that I’ll be on my own.”

  Kevin had looked past her then, out the window, and seen stars beyond the wing; they were flying very high over deep waters.

  “What time is it?” Dave asked for the fifth time, fighting a case of nerves.

  “After eleven,” said Paul, continuing to fidget with a spoon. They were in the saloon bar of the hotel: he, Dave, and Jen at the table, Kevin, unbelievably, chatting up the waitress over by the bar. Or not, actually, unbelievably; he’d known Kevin Laine a long time.

  “When the hell is she coming down?” Dave had an edge in his voice, a real one, and Paul could feel anxiety building in himself as well. It was going to be a very different place at night, he knew, with the crowds of the afternoon gone. Under stars, Stonehenge would move back in time a long way. There was a power here
still, he could feel it, and he knew it would be made manifest at night.

  “Does everyone know what they have to do?” he repeated.

  “Yes, Paul,” said Jennifer, surprisingly calm. They’d worked out their plans over dinner after returning from the monument. Kim hadn’t left her room, not since they’d arrived.

  Kevin strolled back to the table, with a full pint of beer.

  “Are you drinking?” Dave said sharply.

  “Don’t be an idiot. While you two have been sitting here doing nothing, I’ve gotten the names of two of the guards out there. Len is the big bearded one, and there’s another named Dougal, Kate says.”

  Dave and Paul were silent.

  “Nicely done,” said Jennifer. She smiled slightly.

  “Okay,” said Kim, “let’s go.” She was standing by the table in a bomber jacket and scarf. Her eyes were a little wild below the locks of white hair and her face was deathly pale. A single vertical line creased her forehead. She held up her hands; she was wearing gloves.

  “It started to glow five minutes ago,” she said.

  And so she had come to the place and it was time indeed, here, now, to manifest herself, to show forth the Baelrath in a crimson blaze of power. It was the Warstone, found, not made, and very wild, but there was a war now, and the ring was coming into its force, carrying her with it past the high shrouded stones, the fallen one, and the tilting one, to the highest lintel stone. Beside which she stopped.

  There was shouting behind her. Very far behind her. It was time. Raising her hand before her face Kimberly cried out in a cold voice, far from what she sounded like when allowed to be only herself, only Kim, and said into stillness, the waiting calm of that place, words of power upon power to summon its dead from beyond the walls of Night.

  “Damae Pendragon! Sed Baelrath riden log verenth. Pendragon rabenna, nisei damae!”

  There was no moon yet. Between the ancient stones, the Baelrath glowed brighter than any star. It lit the giant teeth of rock luridly. There was nothing subtle or mild, nothing beautiful about this force. She had come to coerce, by the power she bore and the secret she knew. She had come to summon.