The Darkest Road Read online

  She was trembling. He stepped forward and put his arms about her, laying his head against hers. Easy, my love, he sent, projecting all the reassurance he could. I am here. What has happened?

  I was called by name, she sent, still trembling.

  A shocked surge of anger ran through him, and a deeper fear of his own that he fought to master and conceal. He could conceal nothing from her, though, they were bonded too deeply. He drew a ragged breath. Who?

  I do not know her. A woman with white hair, but not old. A red ring on her hand. How does she know my name?

  His own hands moved ceaselessly, gentling her. Anger was still there, but he was Ivor’s son and Levon’s brother, both of whom had seen her, and so he knew who this was. She is a friend, he sent. We must go to her. Where?

  The wrong question, though it had to be asked. She told him, and with the naming of that place fear was in both of them again. He fought it and helped her do the same. Then he mounted her, feeling the joy of doing so in the midst of everything else. She spread her wings, and he prepared to fly—

  “Tabor!”

  He turned. Liane was there, in a white shift brought back from Gwen Ystrat. She seemed eerily far away. Already. And he had not even taken flight. “I must go,” he said, forming the words carefully. “The Seer has called us.”

  “Where is she?”

  He hesitated. “In the mountains.” His sister’s hair, snarled in tangles of sleep, lay loose on her back. Her feet were bare on the grass; her eyes, wide with apprehension, never left his own.

  “Be careful,” she said. “Please.” He nodded, jerkily. Beneath him, Imraith-Nimphais, restless to be gone, flexed her wings. “Oh, Tabor,” whispered Liane, who was older than he but didn’t sound it, “please come back.”

  He tried to answer that. It was important that he try; she was crying. But words would not come. He raised one hand, in a gesture that had to encompass far too much, and then they were in the sky and the stars blurred before their speed.

  Kim saw a streak of light in the west. She raised her hand, with the ring glowing on her finger, and a moment later the power she had summoned descended. It was dark, and the clearing where they waited was rough and narrow, but nothing could mar the grace of the creature that landed beside her. She listened for alarms raised east of them but heard nothing: why should a falling star in the mountains be cause for concern?

  But this was not a falling star.

  It was a deep red through the body, the color of Dana’s moon, the color of the ring she carried. The great wings folded now, it stood restlessly on the stones, seeming almost to dance above them. Kim looked at the single horn. It was shining and silver, and the Seer in her knew how deadly it was, how far beyond mere grace this gift of the Goddess was.

  This double-edged gift. She turned her gaze to the rider. He looked very much like his father, only a little like Levon. She had known he was only fifteen, but seeing it came as a shock. He reminded her, she realized abruptly, of Finn.

  Very little time had passed since the summoning. The waning moon had barely risen above the eastern reaches of the range. Its silver touched the silver of the horn. Beside Kim, Brock stood watchfully, and Faebur, his tattoos glowing faintly, was on her other side. Dalreidan had withdrawn a little way, though, back into the shadows. She was not surprised, though she sorrowed for that, too. This meeting would have to be a hard thing for the exiled Rider. She’d had no choice though. Just as she had none now, and there was deeper cause for sorrow written in the eyes of the boy.

  He sat quietly, waiting for her to speak.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and meant it with all her heart. “I have some idea of what this does to you.”

  He tossed his head impatiently, in a gesture like his brother’s. “How did you know her name?” he asked, low, because of the laughter nearby, but challenging. She heard both the anger and the anxiety.

  She shouldered her own power. “You ride a child of Pendaran’s grove and the wandering moon,” she said. “I am a Seer and I carry the Wandering Fire. I read her name in the Baelrath, Tabor.” She had dreamt it too, but she didn’t tell him that.

  “No one else is to know her name,” he said. “No one at all.”

  “Not so,” she replied. “Gereint does. The shamans always know the totem names.”

  “He’s different,” Tabor said, a little uncertainly.

  “So am I,” said Kim, as gently as she could. He was very young, and the creature was afraid. She understood how they felt. She had come crashing, she and her wild ring, into the midst of an utterly private communion the two of them shared. She understood, but the night of which she had dreamt was passing, and she didn’t know if she had time to assuage them properly, or even what to say.

  Tabor surprised her. He might be young, but he was the Aven’s son, and he rode a gift of Dana. With calm simplicity he said, “Very well. What are we to do in Khath Meigol?”

  Slay, of course. And take the consequences upon themselves. Was there an easy way to say it? She knew of none. She told them who was here, and what was taking place, and even as she spoke she saw the head of the winged creature lift and her horn begin to shine more brightly yet.

  Then she was done. There was nothing more to tell. Tabor nodded to her, once; then he and the creature he rode seemed to change, to coalesce. She was near to them, and a Seer. She caught a fragment of their inner speech. Only a fragment, then she took her mind away. Bright one, she heard and, We must kill, and just before she pulled away, …only each other at the last.

  Then they were in the air again and Dana’s creature’s wings were spread and she turned, killingly bright, to flash down on the plateau and suddenly the servants of the Dark were not laughing any more. Kim’s three companions were already running for their vantage point again and she followed them as quickly as she could, stumbling over the rocks and loose stones.

  Then she was there and watching how stunningly graceful death could be. Again and again Imraith-Nimphais descended and rose, the horn—with a cutting edge now—stabbing and slashing until the silver was so coated with blood it looked like the rest of her. One of the urgach rose before her, enormous, a two-handed sword upraised. With the preternatural skill of the Dalrei, Tabor veered his mount at full speed, up and to one side in the air, and the sharp edge of the horn sliced through the top of the urgach’s head. It was all like that. They were elegant, blindingly swift, utterly lethal.

  And it was destroying them both, Kim knew.

  A myriad of griefs, and no time to deal with them: even as she watched, Imraith-Nimphais was soaring again, east to the next bonfire.

  One of the svart alfar had been shamming death. Quickly it rose and began running west across the plateau.

  “Mine,” said Faebur quietly. Kim turned. She saw him draw an arrow and whisper something over its long shaft. She saw him notch it to his bow and draw, and she saw the moonlit arrow, loosed, flash into the throat of the running svart and drop it in its tracks.

  “For Eridu,” said Brock of Banir Tal. “For the people of the Lion. A beginning, Faebur.”

  “A beginning,” Faebur echoed softly.

  Nothing else moved on the plateau. The fire still roared; their crackling was the only sound. Over the ridge a distant screaming could be heard, but even as she picked her way down the loose slope toward the caves those sounds, too, abruptly ceased. Kim glanced over, instinctively, in time to see Imraith-Nimphais rise and flash north toward the last of the bonfires.

  Making her way carefully amid the carnage and around the searing heat of the two fires she stopped before the larger of the caves.

  She was here, and had done what she’d come to do, but she was weary and hurting, and it was not a time for joy. Not in the face of what had happened, in the presence of those two blackened bodies on the pyres. She looked down at the ring finger of her right hand: the Baelrath lay quiescent, mute. It was not finished, though. In her dream she had seen it burning on this plateau. There was mor
e to come in the weaving of this night. What, she knew not, but the workings of power were not yet ended.

  “Ruana,” she cried, “this is the Seer of Brennin. I have come to the savesong chanted and you are free.”

  She waited, and the three men with her. The fires were the only sound. A flaw of wind blew a strand of hair into her eyes; she pushed it back. Then she realized that the wind was Imraith-Nimphais descending, as Tabor brought her down to stand behind the four of them. Kim glanced over and saw the dark blood on the horn. Then there was a sound from the cave and she turned back.

  Out of the blackness of the archway and through the rising smoke the Paraiko came. Only two of them at first, one carrying the body of the other in his arms. The figure that moved out from the smoke to stand before them was twice the height of long-legged Faebur of Eridu. His hair was as white as Kimberly’s, and so was his long beard. His robe, too, had been white once, but it was begrimed now with a smoke and dust and the stains of illness. Even so, there was a gravity and a majesty to him that surmounted time and the unholy scene amid which they stood. In his eyes as he surveyed the plateau Kim read an ancient, ineffable pain. It made her own griefs seem shallow, transitory.

  He turned to her. “We give thanks,” he said. The voice was soft, incongruously so for one so enormous. “I am Ruana. When those of us who yet live are gathered we must do kanior for the dead. If you wish you may name one of your number to join us and seek absolution for all of you for this night’s deeds of blood.”

  “Absolution?” growled Brock of Banir Tal. “We saved your lives.”

  “Even so,” said Ruana. He stumbled a little as he spoke. Dalreidan and Faebur sprang forward to help him with his burden. “Hold!” Ruana cried. “Drop your weapons, you are in peril.”

  Nodding his understanding, Dalreidan let fall his arrows and his sword, and Faebur did the same. Then they went forward again and, straining with the effort, helped Ruana lower the other Giant gently to the ground.

  There were more coming now. From Ruana’s cave two women emerged supporting a man between them. Six, in all, came out from the other cave, sinking to the earth as soon as they were clear of the smoke. Looking east, Kim saw the first of the contingent from over the ridge coming to join them on the plateau. They moved very slowly, and many were supported and some were carried by others. None of them spoke.

  “You need food,” she said to Ruana. “How can we aid you?” ;

  He shook his head. “After. The kanior must be first, it has been so long delayed. We will do the rites as soon as we are gathered.” Others appeared now, from the northeast, from the fourth fire, moving with the same slow, strength-conserving care and in absolute silence. They were all clad in white, as Ruana was. He was neither the oldest nor the largest of them, but he was the only one who had spoken, and the others were gathering around the place where he stood.

  “I am not leader,” he said, as if reading Kim’s thoughts. “There has been no leader among us since Connla transgressed in the making of the Cauldron. I will chant the kanior, though, and do the bloodless rites.” His voice was infinitely mild. But this, Kim knew, was someone who had been strong enough to find her in the very heart of Rakoth’s designs, and strong enough to shield her there.

  He scanned the ranks of those who had come. “This is full numbering?” he asked. Kim looked around. It was hard to see amid the shadows and the smoke, but there were perhaps twenty-five of the Paraiko gathered on the plateau. No more than that.

  “Full numbering,” a woman said.

  “Full.”

  “Full numbering, Ruana,” a third voice echoed, plangent with sorrow. “There are no more of us. Do the kanior, top long delayed, lest our essence be altered and Khath Meigol shed its sanctity.”

  And it was in that moment that Kim had her first premonition, as the dark webs of her Seer’s dream began to spin clear. She felt her heart clench like a fist and her mouth go dry.

  “Very well,” Ruana said. And then, to her again, with utmost courtesy, “Do you want to choose someone to join with us? For what you have done it will be allowed.”

  Kim said shakily, “If expiation is needed, it is mine to seek. I will do the bloodless rites with you.”

  Ruana looked down on her from his great height, then he glanced at each of the others in turn. She heard Imraith-Nimphais move nervously behind her under the weight of the Giant’s gaze.

  “Oh, Dana,” Ruana said. Not an invocation. The words were addressed as to a coequal. Words of reproach, of sorrow. He turned back to Kimberly. “You speak truly, Seer. I think it is your place. The winged one needs no dispensation for doing what Dana created her to do, though I must grieve for her birthing.”

  Again, Brock challenged him, looking up a long way. “You summoned us,” the Dwarf said. “You chanted your song to the Seer, and we came in answer. Rakoth is free in Fionavar, Ruana of the Paraiko. Would you have us all lie down in caves and grant him dominion?” The passionate words rang in the mountain air.

  There came a low sound from the assembled Paraiko. “Did you summon them, Ruana?” It was the voice of the first woman who had spoken, the one from the cave over the ridge.

  Still looking at Brock, Ruana said, “We cannot hate. Were Rakoth, whose voice I heard in my chanting, obliterated utterly from the tale of time, my heart would sing until I died. But we cannot make war. There is only passive resistance in us. It is part of our nature, the way killing and grace are woven into the creature that flew to save us. To change would be to end what we are and to lose the bloodcurse, which is the Weaver’s gift to us in compensation and defense. Since Connla bound Owein and made the Cauldron we have not left Khath Meigol.”

  His voice was still low, but it was deeper now than when he had first walked from the cave; it was halfway to the chanting that Kim knew was coming. Something else was coming too, and she was beginning to know what it would be.

  Ruana said, “We have our own relationship with death, have had it since first we were spun on the Loom. You know it means death, and a curse, to shed our blood. There is more than you do not know. We lay down in the caves, because there was nothing else we could do, being what we are.”

  “Ruana,” came the woman’s voice again, “did you summon them?”

  And now he turned to her, slowly, as if bearing a great burden.

  “I did, Iera. I am sorry. I will chant it in the kanior and seek absolution with the rites. Failing which, I will leave Khath Meigol as Connla did, that the transgression might lie on my shoulders alone.”

  He raised his hands then, high over his head in the moonlight, and no more words were spoken, for the kanior began.

  It was a chant of mourning and a woven spell. It was unimaginably old, for the Paraiko had walked in Fionavar long before the Weaver had spun even the lios alfar or the Dwarves into the Tapestry, and the bloodcurse had been a part of them from the beginning, and the kanior which preserved it.

  It began with a low humming, almost below the threshold of hearing, from the Giants gathered around Ruana. Slowly, he lowered his hands and motioned Kim to come forward beside him. As she did so she saw that room had been made for Dalreidan, Faebur, and Brock in the circle surrounding them. Tabor and his winged creature remained outside the ring.

  Ruana sank to his knees and motioned for Kim to do the same. He folded his hands in his lap and then, suddenly, he was in her mind.

  I will carry the dead, she heard him say within. Whom would you give to me?

  Her pulse was slowing, dragged by the low sounds coming from those around them. Her hands shook a little in her lap. She clasped them together, very tightly, and gave him Kevin and then Ysanne: who they were and what they had done.

  Ruana’s expression did not change, nor did he move, but his eyes widened a little as he absorbed what she sent to him, and then, within her mind, not speaking aloud, he said, I have them, and they are worthy. Grieve with me.

  Then he lifted his voice in lament.

  Kim never fo
rget that moment. Even with what followed after, the memory of the kanior stayed clear within her, the sorrow and the cleansing of sorrow.

  I will carry the dead, Ruana had said, and now he proceeded to do so. With the textured richness of his voice he gathered them both, Kevin and then Ysanne, and drew them into the circle to be mourned. As the humming grew stronger, his own chanting twined through it and about it, a thread on a loom of sound, names offered to the mountain night, and into the ring began to come the images of the Paraiko who had died in the caves: Taieri, Ciroa, Hinewai, Caillea, and more, so many more. All of them approached to be gathered there, to stand in the place where Kim knelt, to be reclaimed for this moment by the woven power of the song. Kim was weeping, but the tears of her heart fell soundlessly, that nothing might mar what Ruana shaped.

  And in that moment he went even deeper; he claimed more. His voice growing stronger yet, he reached back through the tumbling ribbon of years and began to gather the Paraiko from the very beginning of days, all of them who had lived in their deep peacefulness, shedding no blood, and had, in the fullness of their time, died to be mourned.

  And to be mourned now, again, as Ruana of Khath Meigol reached back for them, spreading the ambit of his mighty soul to encompass the loss of all the dead amid the carnage and the fires of that night. Kneeling so near, Kim watched him do it through her falling tears. Watched him try to shape a solace for sorrow, to rise above what had been done to them, with this majestic affirmation of what the Paraiko were. It was a kanior of kaniors, a lament for every single one of the dead.

  And he was doing it. One after another they came, the ghosts of all the Paraiko in all the years, crowding into the wide circle of mourning for one last time on this night of deepest grief for deepest wrong done to their people. Kim understood, then, the source of the tales of ghosts in Khath Meigol, for there were ghosts in this place when the kanior rites were done. And on this night the pass in the mountains became a realm, truly, of the dead. Still they came, and still Ruana grew, forcing his spirit to grow great enough to reach for them, to carry them all with his song.