The Wandering Fire

Chapter 10

In the morning a shining company left Paras Derval by the eastern gate, led by two Kings. And with them were the children of Kings, Diarmuid dan Ailell, Levon dan Ivor, and Sharra dal Shalhassan; and there were also Matt Sören, who had been a King, and Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior, cursed to be a King forever without rest; and there were many great and high ones beside, and five hundred men of Brennin and Cathal.

Grey was the morning under grey clouds from the north, but bright was the mood of Aileron the High King, freed at last from powerless planning within his walls. And his exhilaration at being released to act ran through the mingled armies like a thread of gold.

He wanted to set a swift pace, for there were things to be done in Morvran that night, but scarcely had the company cleared the outskirts of the town when he was forced to raise his hand and bring them to a stop.

On the snow-clad slope north of the cleared road a dog barked, sharp and carrying in the cold air. And then as the High King, moved by some instinct, signaled the halt, they heard the dog bark three times more, and every man in that company who knew dogs heard frantic joy in the sound.

Even as they stopped, they saw the grey shape of a hunting dog begin to tumble and dash down through the snow toward them, barking all the while, somersaulting head over tail in its haste.

It was Aileron who saw the light blaze in Arthur’s face. The Warrior leaped from his horse down into the road and, at the top of his great voice, cried, “Cavall!”

Bracing his legs, he opened wide his arms and was knocked flying, nonetheless, by the wild leap of the dog. Over and over they rolled, the dog yelping in intoxicated delight, the Warrior mock growling in his chest.

All through the company, smiles and then laughter began to blossom like flowers in a stony place.

Heedless of his clothing or his dignity, Arthur played in the road with the dog he had named Cavall, and it was a long time before he stood to face the company. Arthur was breathing hard, but there was a brightness to his eyes in which Kim Ford found some belated dispensation for what she had done on Glastonbury Tor.

“This is,” asked Aileron with gentle irony, “your dog?”

With a smile, Arthur acknowledged the tone. But his answer moved them to another place. “He is,” he said, “insofar as he is anyone’s. He was mine once, a very long time ago, but Cavall fights his own wars now.” He looked down at the animal beside him. “And it seems that he has been hurt in those wars.”

When the dog stood still, they could see the network of scars and unevenly regenerated fur that covered its body. They were terrible to look at.

“I can tell you whence those came.” Loren Silvercloak moved his mount to stand beside those of the Kings. “He battled Galadan, the Wolflord, in Mórnirwood to save the life of the one who became the Twiceborn.”

Arthur lifted his head. “The battle foretold? Macha and Nemain’s?”

“Yes,” Kim said, moving forward in her turn.

Arthur’s eyes swung to her. “The Wolflord is the one who seeks the annihilation of this world?”

“He is,” she replied. “Because of Lisen of the Wood, who rejected him for Amairgen.”

“I care not for the reason,” Arthur said, a coldness in his voice. “These are his wolves we go to hunt?”

“They are,” she said.

He turned to Aileron. “My lord King, I had a reason to hunt before this: to forget a grief. There is a second reason now. Is there room in your hunting pack for another dog?”

“There is pride of place,” Aileron replied. “Will you lead us now?”

“Cavall will,” said Arthur, mounting as he spoke. Without a backward glance, the grey dog broke into a run.

Ruana chanted the kanior for Ciroa, but not properly. It had not been proper for Taieri either, but to the chant he again added the coda asking forgiveness for this. He was very weak and knew he had not the strength to rise and perform the bloodless rites that were at the heart of the true kanior. Iraima was chanting with him, for which he gave thanks, but Ikatere had fallen silent in the night and lay breathing heavily in his alcove. Ruana knew he was near his end, and grieved, for Ikatere had been golden in friendship.

They were burning Ciroa at the mouth of the cave, and the smoke came in, and the smell of charred flesh. Ruana coughed and broke the rhythm of the kanior. Iraima kept it, though, or else he would have had to start again: there was a coda for failing the bloodless rites, but not for breaking the chant.

After, he rested a little time and then, alone, began the thin chants again: the warnsong and the savesong, one after another. His voice was far from what it had been in the days when those of other caves would ask him to come and lead kanior for their dead. He continued, though, regardless: silence would be the last surrendering. Only when he chanted could he hold his mind from wandering. He wasn’t even sure how many of them were left in the cave, and he had no idea of what was happening in the other caves. No one had kept a count for many years, and they had been set upon in the dark.

Iraima’s sweet voice came back in with him on the third cycle of the warnsong, and then his heart went red-gold with grief and love to hear Ikatere chanting deep again with them for a little time. They spoke not, for words were strength, but Ruana shaded his voice to twine about Ikatere’s; he knew his friend would understand.

And then, on the sixth cycle through, as the twilight was descending outside where their captors were camped on the slope, Ruana touched another mind with the savesong. He was singing alone again. Gathering what little was left in him, he focused the chant to a clear point, though it cost him dearly, and sent it out as a beam toward the mind he had found.

Then the mind seized hold of the beam he threw and sent back, effortlessly, the sound of laughter, and Ruana plummeted past black, for he knew whom he had found.

Fool! he heard, and lancets cut within him. Did you think I would not blanket you? Where do you think your feeble sounds have gone?

He was glad he had been chanting alone, that the others need not endure this. He reached inside, wishing again that he had access to hate or rage, though he would have to atone for such a wish. He sent, along the beam the chant had made, You are Rakoth Maugrim. I name you.

And was battered in his mind by laughter. I named myself a long time ago. What power would you find in naming me, fool of a race of fools? Unworthy to be slaves.

Cannot be slaves, Ruana sent. And then: Sathain. The mocking name.

Fire bloomed in his mind. Redblack. He wondered if he could have the other kill him. Then he could—

There was laughter again. You shall have no bloodcurse to send. You shall be lost. Every one of you. And no one will chant kanior for the last. Had you done what I asked, you would have been mighty in Fionavar again. Now I will rip your thread from the Tapestry and wear it about my throat.

Not slaves, Ruana sent, but faintly.

There was laughter. Then the chantbeam snapped.

For a long time Ruana lay in the dark, choking on the smoke of Ciroa’s burning, assailed by the smell of flesh and the sounds the unclean ones made as they feasted.

Then, because he had nothing else to offer, no access to more, and because he would not end in silence, Ruana began the chants again, and Iraima was with him, and much-loved Ikatere. Then his heart came from past black toward gold again to hear Tamure’s voice. With four they essayed the wide chant. Not in hope it would go as far as it had to go, for they were blanketed by the Unraveller and were very weak. Not to get through to anyone, but so as not to die in silence, not servants, never slaves, though their thread be torn from the Loom and lost forever in the Dark.

Hers, Jennifer understood, was a different fate from Arthur’s, though interwoven endlessly. She remembered now. From first sight of his face she had remembered all of it, nor were the stars in his eyes new for her—she had seen them before.

No curse so dark as his had been given her, for no destiny so high, no thread of the Tapestry, had ever been consigned to her name. She was, instead, the agent of his fate, the working out of his bitter grief. She had died; in the abbey at Amesbury she had died—she wondered, now, how she had failed to recognize it by Stonehenge. She had had her rest, her gift of death, and she knew not how many times she had come back to tear him apart, for the children and for love.

She had no idea, remembering only that first life of all, when she had been Guinevere, daughter of Leodegrance, and had ridden to wed in Camelot, now lost and thought to be a dream.

A dream it had been, but more than that, as well. She had come to Camelot from her father’s halls, and there she had done what she had done, and loved as she had loved, and broken a dream and died.

She had only fallen in love twice in her life, with the two shining men of her world. Nor was the second less golden than the first. He was not, whatever might have been said afterward. And the two men had loved each other, too, making all the angles equal, shaped most perfectly for grief.

Saddest story of all the long tales told.

But, she told herself, it would not unfold again this time, not in Fionavar. He is not here, she had said, and known, for in this if nowhere else she had knowledge. There was no third one walking here, with the easy, envied stride, the hands she had loved. I have been maimed but will not, at least, betray, she had said, while a shower of starlight fell.

And she would not. It was all changed here, profoundly changed. Rakoth Maugrim had set his shadow between the two of them, across the Weaver’s casting on the Loom, and everything was marred. No less a grief, more, even, for her, who had seen the unlight of Starkadh, but if she could not cross to love, she would not shatter him as she had before.

She would stay where she was. Surrounded by the grey-robed priestesses in the grey tone-on-tone of where her soul had come, she would walk among the women in the sanctuary while Arthur went to war against the Dark for love of her, for loss of her, and for the children too.

Which led her back, as she paced the quiet curving halls of the Temple, to thoughts of Darien. And to these, too, she seemed to have become reconciled. Paul’s doing. Paul, whom she had never understood, but trusted now. She had done what she had done, and they would see where the path led.

Last night, Jaelle had told her about Finn, and they had sat together. She had grieved a little for that boy among the strewn cold stars. Then Kevin had come knocking, very late, had offered blood as all men were bound to do, and then had come to them to say that Paul was with Darien and so it was all right, insofar as it could ever be all right.

Jaelle had left them, after that. Jennifer had said good-bye to Kevin, who was riding east in the morning. There was nothing she could offer in response to the troubled intensity of his gaze, but her new gentleness could speak to the sadness she had always seen in him.

Then, in the morning, Jaelle too had gone, leaving her to walk in the quiet Temple, more serene than she could have ever dreamed herself becoming, until from a recessed alcove near the dome she heard the sound of someone crying desperately.

There was no door to the alcove and so, passing by, she looked and then stopped, seeing that it was Leila. She was going to move on, for the grief was naked and she knew the girl was proud, but Leila looked up from the bench where she sat.

”I’m sorry,” said Jennifer. “Can I do anything, or shall I go?”

The girl she remembered from the ta’kiena looked at her with tears brimming in her eyes. “No one can do anything,” she said. “I’ve lost the only man I’ll ever love!”

For all her sympathy and mild serenity, Jennifer had to work hard not to smile. Leila’s voice was so laden with the weighty despair of adolescence it took her back to the traumas of her own teenage years.

On the other hand, she’d never lost anyone the way this girl had just lost Finn, or been tuned to anyone the way Leila and Finn had been. The impulse to smile passed. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “You have a reason to weep. Will it help to hear that time does make it easier?”

As if she had scarcely heard, the girl murmured, “At midwinter full of moon, half a year from now, they will ask me if I wish to be consecrated to these robes. I will accept. I will never love another man.”

She was only a child, but in the voice Jennifer heard a profound resolution.

It moved her. “You are very young,” she said. “Do not let grief turn you so quickly away from love.”

The girl looked up at that. “And who are you to talk?” Leila said.

“That is unfair,” said Jennifer after a shocked silence.

The tears were glistening on Leila’s cheeks. “Maybe,” she said. “But how often have you loved, yourself? Have you not waited all your days for him? And now that Arthur is here you are afraid.”

She had been Guinevere and was capable of dealing with this. There was too much color in anger, so she said gently, “Is this how it seems to you?”

Leila hadn’t expected that tone. “Yes,” she said, but not defiantly.

“You are a wise child,” said Jennifer, “and perhaps not only a child. You are not wholly wrong, but you must not presume to judge me, Leila. There are greater griefs and lesser, and I am trying to find the lesser.”

“Lesser grief,” Leila repeated. “Where is joy?”

”Not here,” said Jennifer.

“But why?” It was a hurt child asking.

She surprised herself by answering, “Because I broke him once, long ago. And because I was broken here last spring. He is condemned to joylessness and war, and I cannot cross, Leila. Even if I did, I would smash him in the end. I always do.”

“Must it be repeated?”

“Over and over,” she said. The long tale. “Until he is granted release.”

“Then grant it,” said Leila simply. “How shall he be redeemed if not in pain? What else will ever do it? Grant him release.”

And with that, all the old sorrow seemed to have come back after all. She could not stay it. There was brightly colored pain in all the hues of guilt and grief, and colored, also, was the memory of love, love and desire, and—

“It is not mine to grant!” she cried. “I loved them both!”

It echoed. They were near to the dome and the sound reverberated. Leila’s eyes opened very wide. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry!” And she ran forward to bury her head against Jennifer’s breast, having voyaged into deeper seas than she knew.

Reflexively stroking the fair hair, Jennifer saw that her hands were trembling. It was the girl who cried, though, and she who gave comfort. Once, in the other time, she had been in the convent garden at Amesbury when a messenger had come, toward sunset. After, as the first stars came out, she had comforted the other women as they came to her in the garden, weeping at the word of Arthur dead.

It was very cold. The lake was frozen. As they passed north of it under the shadow of the wood, Loren wondered if he would have to remind the King of the tradition. Once more, though, Aileron surprised him. As they came up to the bridge over the Latham, the mage saw him signal a halt. Without a backward glance, the King held in his mount until Jaelle moved past him on a pale grey horse. Arthur called his dog to heel. Then the High Priestess went forward to lead them over the bridge and into Gwen Ystrat.

The river was frozen too. The wood sheltered them somewhat from the wind, but under the piled grey clouds of late afternoon the land lay grim and mournful. There was a corresponding bleakness in the heart of Loren Silvercloak as, for the first time in his days, he passed over into the province of the Mother.

They crossed the second bridge, over the Kharn, where it, too, flowed into Lake Leinan. The road curved south, away from the wood where the wolves were. The hunters were gazing backward over their shoulders at the winter trees. Loren’s own thoughts were elsewhere, though. Against his will he turned and looked to the east. In the distance lay the mountains of the Carnevon Range, icy and impassible save through Khath Meigol, where the ghosts of the Paraiko were. They were beautiful, the mountains, but he tore his gaze from them and focused closer in, to a place not two hours ride away, just over the nearest ridge of hills.

It was hard to tell against the dark grey of the sky, but he thought he saw a drift of smoke rising from Dun Maura.

“Loren,” Matt said suddenly, “I think we forgot something. Because of the snow.” Loren turned to his source. The Dwarf was never happy on a horse, but there was a grimness in his face that went beyond that. It was in Brock’s eyes too, on the far side of Matt.

“What is it?”

“Maidaladan,” said the Dwarf. “Midsummer’s Eve falls tomorrow night.”

An oath escaped from the mage. And a moment after, inwardly, he sent forth a heartfelt prayer to the Weaver at the Loom, a prayer that Gereint of the Dalrei, who had wanted to meet them here, knew what he was doing.

Matt’s one eye was focused beyond him now, and Loren swung back as well to look east again. Smoke, or shadings in the clouds? He couldn’t tell.

Then, in that moment, he felt the first stirrings of desire.

He was braced by his training to resist, but after a few seconds he knew that not even the skylore followers of Amairgen would be able to deny the power of Dana in Gwen Ystrat, not on the night before Maidaladan.

The company followed the High Priestess through Morvran amid the blowing snow. There were people in the streets. They bowed but did not cheer. It was not a day for cheering. Beyond the town they came to the precincts of the Temple, and Loren saw the Mormae waiting there, in red, all nine of them. Behind and to one side stood Ivor of the Dalrei, and the old blind shaman, Gereint; farther yet to the side, with relief in their faces, were Teyrnon and Barak. Seeing the two of them, he felt some easing of his own disquiet.

In front of everyone stood a woman well over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and grey-haired, with her back straight and her head imperiously high. She, too, was clad in red, and Loren knew that this had to be Audiart.

“Bright the hour of your return, First of the Mother,” she said with cool formality. Her voice was deep for a woman. Jaelle was in front of them and Loren couldn’t see her eyes. Even in the overcast afternoon her red hair gleamed. She wore a silver circlet about her head. Audiart did not.

He had time to see these things, for Jaelle made no reply to the other woman. A bird flew suddenly from the Temple wall behind the nine Mormae, its wings loud in the stillness.

Then Jaelle delicately withdrew a booted foot from the stirrups of her saddle and extended it toward Audiart.

Even at a distance, Loren could see the other pale, and there came a low murmuring from the Mormae. For an instant Audiart was motionless, her eyes on Jaelle’s face; then she stepped forward with two long strides and, cupping her hands beside the horse of the High Priestess, helped her dismount.

“Continue,” Jaelle murmured and, turning her back, walked through the gates of the Temple to the red-clad Mormae. One by one, Loren saw, they knelt for her blessing. Not one of them, he judged, was less than twice her age. Power on power, he thought, knowing there was more to come.

Audiart was speaking again. “Be welcome, Warrior,” she said. There was some diffidence in her tone, but she did not kneel. “There is a welcome in Gwen Ystrat for one who was rowed by three Queens to Avalon.”

Gravely, and in silence, Arthur nodded.

Audiart hesitated a moment, as if hoping for more. Then she turned, without hurrying, to Aileron, whose bearded features had remained impassive as he waited. “You are here and it is well,” she said. “Long years have passed since last a King of Brennin came to Gwen Ystrat for Midsummer’s Eve.”

She had pitched her voice to carry, and Loren heard sudden whisperings among the horsemen. He also saw that Aileron hadn’t realized what day it was either. It was time to act.

The mage moved up beside the High King. He said, and loudly, “I have no doubt the rites of the Goddess will proceed as they always do. We are not concerned with them. You requested aid of the High King, and he has come to give that aid. There will be a wolf hunt in Leinanwood tomorrow.” He paused, staring her down, feeling the old anger rise in him. “We are here for a second reason as well, with the countenance and support of the High Priestess. I want it understood that the rituals of Maidaladan are not to interfere with either of the two things we have come to do.”

“Is a mage to give commands in Gwen Ystrat?” she asked, in a voice meant to chill.

“The High King does.” With time to recover, Aileron was bluntly compelling. “And as Warden of my province of Gwen Ystrat, you are charged by me now to ensure that things come to pass as my First Mage has commanded you.”

She would, Loren knew, want revenge for that.

Before Audiart could speak, though, the sound of high thin laughter came drifting to them. Loren looked over to see Gereint swaying back and forth in the snow as he cackled with merriment.

“Oh, young one,” the shaman cried, “are you still so fierce in your passions? Come! It has been a long time since I felt your face.”

It was a moment before Loren realized that Gereint was speaking to him. With a ruefulness that took him back more than forty years, he dismounted from his horse.

The instant he touched the ground he felt another, deeper, surge of physical desire. He couldn’t entirely mask it, and he saw Audiart’s mouth go thin with satisfaction. He mastered an impulse to say something very crude to her. Instead, he strode over to where the Dalrei stood and embraced Ivor as an old friend.

“Brightly met, Aven,” he said. “Revor would be proud.”

Stocky Ivor smiled. “Not so proud as Amairgen of you, First Mage.”

Loren shook his head. “Not yet,” he said soberly. “Not until the last First Mage is dead and I have cursed his bones.”

“So fierce!” Gereint said again, as he’d half expected.

“Have done, old man,” Loren replied, but low, so no one but Ivor could hear. “Unless you can say you would not join my curse.”

This time Gereint did not laugh. The sightless sockets of his eyes turned to Loren, and he ran gnarled fingers over the mage’s face. He had to step close to do so, so what he said was whispered.

“If my heart’s hate could kill, Metran would be dead past the Cauldron’s reviving. I taught him too, do not forget.”

“I remember,” the mage murmured, feeling the other’s hands gliding over his face. “Why are we here, Gereint? Before Maidaladan?”

The shaman lowered his hands. To the rear, Loren heard orders being shouted as the hunters were dispersed to the lodgings assigned them in the village. Teyrnon had come up, with his round, soft face and sharp intelligence.

“I felt lazy,” Gereint said tormentingly. “It was cold and Paras Derval was far away.” Neither mage spoke nor laughed, nor did Ivor. After a moment the shaman said, in a deeper voice, “You named two things, young one: the wolves and our own quest. But you know as well as I, and should not have had to ask, that the Goddess works by threes.”

Neither Loren nor Teyrnon said a word. Neither of them looked to the east.

The ring was quiet, which was a blessing. She was still deeply drained by the work of the night before. She wasn’t sure if she could have dealt with fire again so soon, and she had been expecting it from the moment they crossed the first bridge. There was power all around her here, she could feel it, even through the green shield of the vellin on her wrist which guarded her from magic.

Then, when prepossessing Audiart spoke of Midsummer, the part of Kim that was Ysanne, and shared her knowledge, understood where the power was coming from.

Nothing to be done though. Not by her, in this place. Dun Maura had nothing to do with a Seer’s power, nor with the Baelrath either. When the company began to break up— she saw Kevin ride back into Morvran with Brock and two of Diarmuid’s men—Kim followed Jaelle and the mages to the Temple.

Just inside the arched entranceway, a priestess stood with a curved, glinting dagger, and an acolyte in brown, trembling a little, held a bowl for her.

Kim saw Loren hesitate, even as Gereint extended his arm for the blade to cut. She knew how hard this would be for the mage. For any follower of the skylore, this blood offering would be tainted with darkest overtones. But Ysanne had told her a thing once, in the cottage by the lake, and Kim laid a hand on the mage’s shoulder. “Raederth spent a night here, I think you know,” she said.

There was, even now, a sorrow in saying this. Raederth, as First Mage, had been the one who’d seen the young Ysanne among the Mormae in this place. He had known her for a Seer and taken her away, and they had loved each other until he died—slain by a treacherous King.

The lines of Loren’s features softened. “It is true,” he said. “And so I should be able to, I suppose. Do you think I could stroll about and find an acolyte to share my bed tonight?”

She looked at him more closely and saw the strain she had missed. “Maidaladan,” she murmured. “Is it taking you hard?”

“Hard enough,” he said shortly, before stepping forward after Gereint to offer his mageblood to Dana, like any other man.

Deep in thought, Kim walked past the priestess with the blade and came to one of the entrances to the sunken dome. There was an axe, double-edged, mounted in a block of wood behind the altar. She stayed in the entrance looking at it until one of the women came to show her to her chamber.

Old friends, thought Ivor. If there was a single bright thread in the weaving of war it was this: that sometimes paths crossed again, as of warp and weft, that had not done so for years and would not have done, save in darkness. It was good, even in times like these, to sit with Loren Silvercloak, to hear Teyrnon’s reflective voice, Barak’s laughter, Matt Sören’s carefully weighed thoughts. Good, too, to see men and women of whom he’d long heard but never met: Shalhassan of Cathal and his daughter, fair as the rumors had her; Jaelle the High Priestess, as beautiful as Sharra, and as proud; Aileron, the new High King, who had been a boy when Loren had brought him to spend a fortnight among the tribe of Dalrei. A silent child, Ivor remembered him as being, and very good at everything. He was a taciturn King now, it seemed, and said to still be very good at everything.

There was a new element too, another fruit of war: among these high ones, he, Ivor of the Dalrei, now moved as an equal. Not merely one of the nine chieftains on the Plain, but a Lord, first Aven since Revor himself. It was a very hard thing to compass. Leith had taken to calling him Aven around the home, and only half in teasing, Ivor knew. He could see her pride, though the Plain would wash to sea before his wife would speak of such a thing.

Thinking of Leith led his mind to another thought. Riding south into Gwen Ystrat, feeling the sudden hammer of desire in his loins, he had begun to understand what Maidaladan meant and to be grateful to Gereint, yet again, for telling him to bring his wife. It would be wild in Morvran tomorrow night, and he was not entirely pleased that Liane had come south with them. Still, in these matters the unwed women of the Dalrei took directions from no man. And Liane, Ivor thought ruefully, took direction in precious few other matters as well. Leith said it was his fault. It probably was.

His wife would be waiting in the chambers given them here in the Temple. That was for afterward. For now there was a task to be done under the dome, amid the smell of incense burning.

In that place were gathered the last two mages in Brennin, with their sources; the oldest shaman of the Plain, and by far the most powerful; the white-haired Seer of the High Kingdom; and the High Priestess of Dana in Fionavar—these seven were now to move through the shadows of space and time to try to unlock a door: the door behind which lay the source of winter winds and ice on Midsummer’s Eve.

Seven to voyage and four to bear witness: the Kings of Brennin and Cathal, the Aven of the Dalrei, and the last one in the room was Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior, who alone of all men in that place had not been made to offer blood.

“Hold!” Jaelle had said to the priestess by the doorway, and Ivor shivered a little, remembering her voice. “Not that one. He has walked with Dana in Avalon.” And the grey-robed woman had lowered her knife to let Arthur pass.

Eventually to come, as had Ivor and the others, to this sunken chamber under the dome. It was Gereint’s doing, the Aven thought, torn between pride and apprehension. Because of the shaman they were in this place, and it was the shaman who spoke first among that company. Though not as Ivor had expected.

“Seer of Brennin,” Gereint said, “we are gathered to do your bidding.”

So it came back to her. Even in this place it came back, as had so much else of late. Once, and not a long time ago, she would have doubted it, wondered why. Asked within, if not aloud, who she was that these gathered powers should defer to her. What was she, the inner voice would have cried, that this should be so?

Not any more. With only a faint, far corner of her mind to mourn the loss of innocence, Kim accepted Gereint’s deference as being properly due to the only true Seer in the room. She would have taken control if he had not offered it. They were in Gwen Ystrat, which was the Goddess’s, and so Jaelle’s, but the journey they were now to take fell within Kimberly’s province, not any of the others’, and if there was danger it was hers to face for them.

Deeply conscious of Ysanne and of her own white hair, she said, “Once before, I had Loren and Jaelle with me—when I pulled Jennifer out from Starkadh.” It seemed to her the candles on the altar shifted at the naming of that place. “We will do the same thing again, with Teyrnon and Gereint besides. I am going to lock on an image of the winter and try to go behind it, into the mind of the Unraveller, with the vellin stone to shield me, I hope. I will need your support when I do.”

“What about the Baelrath?”

It was Jaelle, intense and focused, no bitterness to her now. Not for this. Kim said, “This is a Seer’s art and purely so. I do not think the stone will flame.”

Jaelle nodded. Teyrnon said, “If you do get behind the image, what then?”

“Can you stay with me?” she asked the two mages.

Loren nodded. “I think so. To shape an artifice, you mean?”

“Yes. Like the castle you showed us before we first came.” She turned to the Kings. There were three of them, and a fourth who had been and would always be, but it was to Aileron she spoke. “My lord High King, it will be hard for you to see, but we may all be sightless under the power. If there is anything shaped by the mages, you must mark what it is.”

“I will,” he said in his steady, uninflected voice. She looked to the shaman.

“Is there more, Gereint?”

“There is always more,” he replied. “But I do not know what it is. We may need the ring, though, after all.”

”We may,” she said curtly. “I cannot compel it.” The very memory of its burning gave her pain.

“Of course not,” the blind shaman replied. “Lead us. I will not be far behind.”

She composed herself. Looked at the others ringed about her. Matt and Barak had their legs braced wide apart, Jaelle had closed her eyes, and now she saw Teyrnon do the same. Her glance met that of Loren Silvercloak.

“We are lost if this fails,” he said. “Take us through, Seer.”

“Come, then!” she cried and, closing her eyes, began to drop down, and down, through the layers of consciousness. One by one she felt them come into her: Jaelle, tapping the avarlith; the two mages, Loren fierce and passionate, Teyrnon clear and bright; then Gereint, and with him he brought his totem animal, the night-flying keia of the Plain, and this was a gift to her, to all of them—a gift of his secret name.

Thank you, she sent; then, encompassing them all, she went forward, as if in a long flat dive, into the waking dream.

It was very dark and cold. Kim fought back fear. She might be lost down here; it could happen. But they were all lost if she failed. Loren had spoken true. In her heart a brilliant anger burned then, a hatred of the Dark so bright she used it to shape an image in the deep, still place to which they had come, the bottom of the pool.

She had not prepared it beforehand, choosing to let the dream render its own truest shape. And so it did. She felt the others registering it, in all their shadings of grief, anger, and hurting love for the thing marred, seeing that clear image of Daniloth defiantly alight, open and undefended amid an alien landscape of ice and snow.

She went into it. Not to the light, though she yearned for it, with all her heart, but straight into the bleak winter that surrounded it. Driving with all her power she reached back for the strength of the others and made of herself an arrow flung from a bow of light hurtling into the shape of winter.

And broke through.

Very black. The image gone. She was spinning. No controlled flight now. She was going into it and very fast and there was nothing to hand, nothing to grab onto, no—

I’m here. And Loren was.

And I. Jaelle.

Always. Brave Teyrnon.

Still dark, though, and going into it so far. No sense of space, of walls, nowhere to reach, not even with the others there. They were not enough. Not for where she had come, so far into the workings of Maugrim. There was so much Dark. She had seen it once before, in and out for Jennifer—but now there was only in and so far yet to go.

Then the fifth one was there and spoke.

The ring. She heard Gereint as if he were the voice of the keia itself, creature of the night, guardian of the way to the world of the dead.

I can’t! she flung back, but even as she formed the thought, Kim felt the terrible fire and there was a red illumination in her mind.

And pain. She did not know that she cried aloud in the Temple. Nor did she know how wildly the light was blazing under the dome.

She was burning. Too near, she was. Too far into the web of Dark, too near the heart of power. The flame was all around, and fire does more than illuminate. It burns, and she was inside. She was—

A balm. A cooling breath as of the night breeze through autumn grasses on the Plain. Gereint. Another now: moonlight falling on Calor Diman, the Crystal Lake. And that was Loren, through Matt.

And then a goad: Come! Jaelle cried. We are near to it.

And Teyrnon’s strength, cool in its very essence: Farther yet, I think, but I am here.

So on again she went. Forward and down, now, very nearly lost with how far she had to go. There was fire, but they were guarding her; she could endure it, she would; it was wild but not the Dark, which was an end to everything.

No longer an arrow, she made herself a stone and went down. Driven by need, by a passionate longing for Light, she went into the Dark, a red stone falling into the secret heart, the worm-infested caverns of Maugrim’s designs. Into this unplace she fell, having cast loose from all moorings save the one along which she could send back, before she died and was lost, a single clear icon for the mages to shape in the domed room so infinitely far.

Too far. It was too deep and she was going so fast. Her being was a blur, a shadow; they could not hold her. One by one she left the others behind. With a despairing cry, Loren, who was the last, felt her slip away.

So there was fire and Rakoth, with no one to stay either one of them. She was alone and lost.

Or she should have been. But even as she plummeted, burning, a new mind came to hers so far down into the Dark she could scarcely believe it was there.

The burning ebbed again. She could exist, she could move through the pain, and she heard then, as if in a memory of a clean mild place, a deep voice singing.

There was darkness between, like a black-winged creature, screening the other from her. She was almost gone. Almost, but not yet. She had been a red arrow, then a stone. Now she made herelf into a sword, red as it had to be. She turned. In this directionless world she somehow turned and, with the last blazing of her heart, she slashed through the curtain, found the other where he lay, and grasped an image to send back. She had to do it alone, for the mages were gone. With her very last power, using fire like love, she threw the vision back, unimaginably far, toward the sanctuary in Gwen Ystrat. Then it was dark.

She was a broken vessel, a reed on which a wind could play if there could be a wind. She was a twinned soul without form. The ring had faded utterly. She had done what she could.

There was someone with her, though, chanting still.

Who? she sent, as everything began to leave her.

Ruana, he replied. Save us, he sent. Save us.

And then she understood. And, understanding, knew she could not let go. There was no release for her yet. No directions existed in this place, but from where her body lay his chanting would be north and east.

In Khath Meigol, where the Paraiko had once been.

We are, he sent. We still are. Save us.

There was no fire left in the ring. With only the slow chanting to guide her in the black, she began the long ascent to what there was of light.

When the Baelrath blazed Ivor closed his eyes, as much against the pain in the Seer’s cry as against the surging of red. They had been asked to bear witness, though, and a moment later he forced himself to look again.

It was hard to see in the punishing glow of the Warstone. He could just make them out, the young Seer and the others around her, and he marked the clenched strain on the faces of Matt and Barak. He had a sense of massive striving, of almost shattering effort. Jaelle was trembling now. Gereint looked like some Eridun death mask. Ivor’s heart ached for them, journeying so far in such a silent battling.

Even as he thought this, the chamber exploded with echoing voices as, almost simultaneously, Jaelle and Gereint and tall Barak cried aloud in despair and pain. For a moment longer Matt Sören was silent, perspiration pouring down his craggy face; then Loren’s source, too, cried out, a deep tearing sound, and fell to the floor.

As he rushed forward with Arthur and Shalhassan to succor them, Ivor heard Loren Silvercloak murmur with numbed tonelessness, “Too far. She went too far. It is over.”

Ivor took the weeping Barak in his arms and led him to a bench set into the curving wall. He went back and did the same for Gereint. The shaman was shaking like the last leaf on a tree in an autumn wind. Ivor feared for him.

Aileron the High King had not moved. Nor had he taken his gaze from Kim. The light was still blazing and she was still on her feet. Ivor glanced at her face and then quickly away: her mouth was wide open in a soundless, endless screaming. She looked as if she were being burned alive.

He went back to Gereint, who was breathing in desperate gasps, his wizened face grey, even in the red light. And then, as Ivor knelt beside his shaman, that light exploded anew, so wildly it made the glow from before seem dim. Power pulsed like an unleashed presence all around them. It seemed to Ivor that the Temple shook.

He heard Aileron cry, “There is an image! Look!”

Ivor tried. He turned in time to see the Seer fall, in time to see a blurred shaping in the air beside her, but the light was too red, too bright. He was blinded by it, burned. He could not see.

And then it was dark.

Or it seemed that way. There were still torches on the walls, candles burning on the altar stone, but after the crazed illumination of the Baelrath, still raging in his mind’s eye, Ivor felt surrounded by darkness. A sense of failure overwhelmed him. Something had happened; somehow, even without the mages, Kim had sent an image back and now she was lying on the floor with the High King standing over her, and Ivor had no idea what she had sent to them with what looked to have been the last effort of her soul. He couldn’t see if she was breathing. There was very little he could see.

A shadow moved. Matt Sören rising to his feet.

Someone spoke. “It was too bright,” said Shalhassan. “I could not see.” There was pain in his voice.

“Nor I,” Ivor murmured. Far too late his sight was returning.

“I saw,” Aileron said. “But I do not understand.”

“It was a Cauldron.” Arthur Pendragon’s deep voice was quietly sure. “I marked it as well.”

“A Cauldron, yes,” Loren said. “At Cader Sedat. We know that already.”

“But there is no connection,” Jaelle protested weakly. She looked close to collapse. “It quickens the newly dead. What does the Cauldron of Khath Meigol have to do with winter?”

What indeed? Ivor thought, and then he heard Gereint. “Young one,” the shaman rasped, almost inaudibly, “this is the mages’ hour. You have lived to come to this. First Mage of Brennin, what is he doing with the Cauldron?”

The mages’ hour, Ivor thought. In the Temple of Dana in Gwen Ystrat. The Weaving of the Tapestry was truly past all comprehending.

Oblivious to their beseeching looks, Loren turned slowly to his source. Mage and Dwarf looked at each other as if no one else was in the room, in the world. Even Teyrnon and Barak were watching the other two and waiting. He was holding his breath, Ivor realized, and his palms were damp.

“Do you remember,” Loren said suddenly, and in his voice Ivor heard the timbre of power that lay in Gereint’s when he spoke for the god, “do you remember the book of Nilsom?”

“Accursed be his name,” Matt Sören replied. “I never read it, Loren.”

“Nor I,” said Teyrnon softly. “Accursed be his name.”

“I did,” said Loren. “And so did Metran.” He paused. “I know what he is doing and how he is doing it.”

With a gasp, Ivor expelled air from his lungs and drew breath again. All around him he heard others doing the same. In Matt Sören’s one eye he saw a gleam of the same pride with which Leith sometimes looked at him. Quietly, the Dwarf said, “I knew you would. We have a battle then?”

“I promised you one a long time ago,” the mage replied. He seemed to Ivor to have grown, even as they watched.

“Weaver be praised!” Aileron suddenly exclaimed.

Quickly they all looked over. The High King had crouched and was cradling Kim’s head in his arms, and Ivor could see that she was breathing normally again, and there was color in her face.

In a rapt silence they waited. Ivor, close to tears, saw how young her face was under the white hair. He was too easily moved to tears, he knew. Leith had derided it often enough. But surely it was all right now? He saw tears on the face of the High King and even a suspicious brightness in the eyes of dour Shalhassan of Cathal. In such company, he thought, may not a Dalrei weep?

In a little while she opened her eyes. There was pain in their greyness, and a great weariness, but her voice was clear when she spoke.

“I found something,” she said. “I tried to send it back. Did I? Was it enough?”

“You did, and it was enough,” Aileron replied gruffly.

She smiled with the simplicity of a child. “Good,” she said. “Then I will sleep now. I could sleep for days.” And she closed her eyes.

Chapter 11

“Now you know,” said Garde with a wink, “why the men of Gwen Ystrat always look so tired!”

Kevin smiled and drained his glass. The tavern was surprisingly uncrowded, given the prevailing energies of the night. It appeared that both Aileron and Shalhassan had given orders. Diarmuid’s band, though, as always, seemed to enjoy an immunity from such disciplinary commands.

“That,” said Erron to Garde, “is half a truth at best.” He raised a hand to summon another flask of Gwen Ystrat wine, then turned to Kevin. “He’s teasing you a bit. There’s some of this feeling all year long, I’m told, but only some. Tonight’s different—or tomorrow is, actually, and it’s spilling over into tonight. What we’re feeling now comes only at Maidaladan.”

The innkeper brought over their wine. Upstairs they heard a door open, and a moment later Coll leaned over the railing. “Who’s next?” he said with a grin.

“Go ahead,” Garde said. “I’ll keep the wine cool for you.”

Kevin shook his head. “I’ll pass,” he said as Coll came clumping down the stairs.

Garde raised an eyebrow. “No second offers,” he said. “I’m not being that generous tonight, not with so few women about.”

Kevin laughed. “Enjoy,” he said, raising the glass Erron had filled for him.

Coll slipped into Garde’s seat. He poured himself a glass, drained it in a gulp, then fixed Kevin with a surprisingly acute glance. “Are you nervous about tomorrow?” he asked softly, so it wouldn’t go beyond their table.

“A little,” Kevin said. It was the easiest thing to say, and after a moment he realized that it gave him an out. “Actually,” he murmured, “more than a little. I don’t think I’m in a party mood tonight.” He stood up. “I think I’ll turn in, as a matter of fact.”

Erron’s voice was sympathetic. “It’s not a bad idea, Kevin. Tomorrow night’s the real thing, anyhow. What we’re feeling now is going to be ten times stronger. With a wolf hunt under your belt, you’ll be ready to bed a priestess or three.”

“They come out?” Kevin asked, arrested for a moment.

“Only night of the year,” Erron said. “Part of the rites of Liadon.” He smiled wryly. “The only good part.”

Kevin returned the smile. “I’ll wait for tomorrow, then. See you in the morning.” He clapped Coll on the shoulder, pulled on his coat and gloves, and walked out the door into the bitter chill of the night.

It is bad, he was thinking, when you have to lie to friends. But the reality was too difficult, too alienating, and it was private, too. Let them think he was apprehensive about the hunt; that was better than the truth.

The truth was that nothing of the desire that every other man in the company was feeling had even touched him. None of it. Only from the talk all around had he even grasped that something unusual was happening. Whatever supercharged eroticism was associated with Midsummer’s Eve in this place—so much of it that even the priestesses of the Goddess came out from the Temple to make love—whatever was happening wasn’t bothering to include him.

The wind was unholy. Worse even than a December holiday he’d spent once on the prairies. It scythed like a blade under his coat. He wasn’t going to be able to stay out long. Nothing could. How, Kevin thought, did you fight an enemy who could do this? He had sworn revenge for Jennifer, he remembered, and his mouth twisted with bitter irony. Such bravado that had been. First of all, there wasn’t even a war in which to fight—Rakoth Maugrim was breaking them with a hammer of wind and ice. Second, and this truth had been coiling within him since they had arrived from Stonehenge, he wouldn’t be much good for anything even if, somehow, they ended the winter and there was a war. The memory of his useless flailing about during the battle on the Plain three nights ago was still raw.

He had moved past jealousy—hadn’t lingered long there anyhow—it wasn’t really a part of his nature. He was used to being able to do something, though. He no longer envied Paul or Kim their dark, burdensome powers—Kim’s grief by Pendaran Wood the night before and Paul’s loneliness had wiped that away, leaving a kind of pity.

He didn’t want their roles or Dave’s axe-wielding strength, and no sane person would want any part of what fate Jennifer had found. All he wanted was to matter, to have some way, however slight, of affectuating the heartfelt vow he had sworn.

Two, actually. He had done it twice. Once in the Great Hall when Brendel had brought word of the lios alfar dead and Jennifer taken away. Then a second time, when Kim had brought them home and he looked down at what had been done to a woman he loved and then forced himself not to look away, that the scalding image might always be there if courage ever flagged in him.

It was still there, that image, and—he searched himself for this—he was not lacking in courage. He had no fear of tomorrow’s hunt, whatever the others might think, only a bitterly honest awareness that he was just along for the ride.

And this, for Kevin Laine, was the hardest thing in any world to handle. What he seemed to be, here in Fionavar, was utterly impotent. Again his mouth crooked bitterly in the cold, for this description was especially accurate now. Every man in Gwen Ystrat was feeling the pull of the Goddess. Every man but him, for whom, all his adult days, the workings of desire had been a deep, enduring constant, known only to the women who had shared a night with him.

If love and desire belonged to the Goddess, it seemed that even she was leaving him. What did that leave?

He shook his head—too much self-pity there. What was left was still Kevin Laine, who was known to be bright and accomplished, a star in law school and one in the making, everyone said, when he got to the courts. He had respect and friendship and he had been loved, more than once. His, a woman had told him years ago, was a face made for good fortune. A curious phrase; he had remembered it.

There was, he told himself, no room for maudlin self-pity in a curriculum vitae like that.

On the other hand, all the glitter of his accomplishments lay squarely within his own world. How could he glory in mock trial triumphs any more? How set his sights on legal excellence after what he had seen here? What could possibly have meaning at home once he had watched Rangat hurl a burning hand into the sky and heard the Unraveller’s laughter on the north wind?

Very little, next to nothing. In fact, one thing only, but he did have that one thing, and with the pang of his heart that always came when he hadn’t done so for a while, Kevin thought of his father.

“Fur gezunter heit, und cum gezunter heit,” Sol Laine had said in Yiddish, when Kevin had told him he had to fly to London on ten hours’ notice. Go safely, and come safely. Nothing more. In this lay a boundless trust. If Kevin had wanted to tell, Kevin would have explained the trip. If Kevin did not explain, he had a reason and a right.

“Oh, Abba,” he murmured aloud in the cruel night. And in the country of the Mother his word for father became a talisman of sorts that carried him in from the slash of wind to the house Diarmuid had been given in Morvran.

There were prerogatives of royalty. Only Coll and Kevin and Brock were sharing the place with the Prince. Coll was in the tavern, and the Dwarf was asleep, and Diarmuid was God knows where.

With a mild amusement registering at the thoughts of Diarmuid tomorrow night, and the deeper easing that thoughts of his father always gave to him, Kevin went to bed. He had a dream but it was elusive and he had forgotten it by morning.

The hunt started with the sunrise. The sky was a bright blue overhead, and the early rays of sunlight glittered on the snow. It was milder too, Dave thought, as if somehow the fact of midsummer was registering. Among the hunters there was an electric energy one could almost see. The erotic surges that had begun when they had first entered Gwen Ystrat were even deeper now. Dave had never felt anything like it in his life, and they said the priestesses would come out to them tonight. It made him weak just to think of it.

He forced his mind back to the morning’s work. He had wanted to hunt with the small contingent of the Dalrei, but horses weren’t going to be much use in the wood and Aileron had asked the Riders to join the bowmen, who were to ring the forest and cut down any wolves that tried to flee. Dave saw Diarmuid’s big lieutenant, Coll, unsling an enormous bow and ride over the bridge to the northwest with Tore and Levon.

It left an opening for him, he supposed, and somewhat reluctantly he walked over with his axe to where Kevin Laine stood joking with two other members of the Prince’s band. There was a rumor going about that they had gotten an early start on the midsummer festival last night, defying the orders of the two Kings. Dave couldn’t say he was impressed. It was one thing to carouse in town, another to be partying on the eve of battle.

On the other hand, none of them seemed the worse for it this morning, and he didn’t really know anyone else to join up with so he awkwardly planted himself by the Prince and waited to be noticed. Diarmuid was rapidly scanning his brother’s written instructions. When he finished, he looked up, noting Dave’s presence with his disconcertingly blue gaze.

“Room for one more?” Dave asked.

He was prepared for a jibe but the Prince said only, “Of course. I’ve seen you fight, remember?” He raised his voice very slightly, and the fifty or so men around him quieted. “Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you a story. My brother has outdone himself in preparing this. Here is what we are to do.”

Despite the frivolous tone, his words were crisp. Behind the Prince, Dave could see the eidolath, the honor guard of Cathal, riding quickly off to the northeast behind Shalhassan. Nearby, Aileron himself was addressing another cluster of men, and, past him, Arthur was doing the same. It was going to be a pincer movement, he gathered, with the two hosts moving together from southwest and northeast.

The archers, about two hundred of them, were to ring the wood. The Cathalians were already along the line of the Kharn River, on the eastern edge, and across the northern boundary as far as the Latham. The bowmen of Brennin were posted from the Latham as well, in the north and then, at intervals, around to the south and west. The thinner copses east of the Kharn had already been checked and found empty, Diarmuid explained. The wolves were within the circle of Leinanwood itself and, if all went according to design, would soon be within the circle of the armies. The dogs were to be set loose to drive the wolves toward the forest center.

“Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King’s plans, we should meet Shalhassan’s forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren’t,” Diarmuid concluded, “we blame anyone and everything except the plan. Any questions?”

“Where are the mages?” asked Kevin Laine. He always had questions, Dave thought. One of those. Couldn’t just get on with it.

But Diarmuid answered seriously. “We were going to have them. But something happened last night in the Temple. The sources are completely drained. Swords and arrows are all we can use this morning.”

And axes, Dave thought grimly. Didn’t need anything more. It was cleaner this way with the magic kept out of it. There were no more questions, and no time for more; Aileron had begun moving his company forward. Diarmuid, neat-footed and quick, led them across the Latham bridge to the left flank, and Dave saw Arthur’s company take the right.

They were on the southwestern edge of the wood, on the strip of land between forest and frozen lake. Around to the west and north Dave could see the archers, bows drawn, sitting on their horses where the wood thinned out.

Then Aileron signaled Arthur, and Dave saw the Warrior speak to his dog. With a howl, the grey dog exploded forward into Leinanwood and the hunting pack sprang after him. Dave heard faint answering sounds from the northern side as the other half of the pack was released. A moment the men waited; then the High King stepped forward, and they entered the wood.

It grew darker very suddenly, for even without leaves the trees were thick enough to screen the sun. They were moving northwest, before beginning their wide sweep back to the east, so Diarmuid’s flank, their own, was in the lead. Abruptly Dave became aware of the smell of wolf, sharp and unmistakable. All around them the dogs were barking, but not urgently. His axe carried at the ready, with its thong looped around his wrist, Dave strode with Kevin Laine on his left and the Dwarf named Brock, bearing an axe of his own, on his right, behind the figure of Diarmuid.

Then, off to their right, Cavall gave tongue again, so loudly that even someone who had never hunted before knew what the sound meant.

“Turn!” Aileron cried from behind them. “Spread out and turn, toward the river!”

Dave’s sense of direction was hopelessly gone by then, but he pointed his nose where Diarmuid went and, with quickening heart, set off to find the wolves.

They were found first.

Before they reached the river or the men of Cathal, the black and grey and brindle shapes were upon them. Scorning to be hunted, the giant wolves surged to the attack, and even as he swung the axe in a killing stroke, Dave heard the sounds of battle to the east as well. The men of Cathal had their own fight.

He had no more time to think. Swerving down and to his right, he dodged the fanged leap of a black beast. He felt claws shred his coat. No time to look back; there was another coming. He killed it with a chopping backhand slash, then had to duck, almost to his knees, as another leaped for his face. It was the last clear moment he remembered.

The battle became a chaotic melee as they twisted through the trees, pursuing and pursued. Within his breast Dave felt a surge of the obliterating fury that seemed to be his in battle, and he waded forward through snow red with blood, his axe rising and falling. In front of him all the time he saw the Prince, elegantly lethal with a sword, and heard Diarmuid singing as he killed.

He had no conception of time, could not have said how long it was before they broke through, he and the Prince, with Brock just behind. In front of him he could see the figures of the Cathalians across the frozen river. There were wolves to the right, though, engaging the center of the Brennin ranks and Arthur’s flank as well. Dave turned to go to their aid.

“Wait!” Diarmuid laid a hand on his arm. “Watch.”

Kevin Laine came up beside them, bleeding from a gash on his arm. Dave turned to watch the last of the battle on their side of the Latham.

Not far off, Aithur Pendragon, with grey Cavall by his side, was wreaking controlled destruction among the wolves. Dave had a sudden unexpected sense of how many times the Warrior had swung that blade he carried, and in how many wars.

But it wasn’t Arthur whom Diarmuid was watching. Following the Prince’s gaze, Dave saw, and Kevin beside him, the same thing Kimberly had seen a year before on a twilit path west of Paras Derval.

Aileron dan Ailell with a sword.

Dave had seen Levon fight, and Tore; he had watched Diarmuid’s insouciant deadliness and, just now, Arthur’s flawless swordplay with never a motion wasted; he even knew how he battled in his own right, fueled by a rising tide of rage. But Aileron fought the way an eagle flew, or an eltor ran on the summer Plain.

It had ended on the other side. Shalhassan, bloody but triumphant, led his men down to the frozen waters of the Latham, and so they saw as well.

Seven wolves remained. Without a word spoken, they were left for the High King. Six were black, Dave saw, and one was grey, and they attacked in a rush from three sides.

He saw how the grey one died and two of the black, but he never knew what motion of the sword killed the other four.

It was very nearly silent in the wood after that. Dave heard scattered coughing on both sides of the river; a dog barked once, nervously; a man not far away swore softly at the pain of a wound he’d taken. Dave never took his eyes from the High King. Kneeling in the trampled snow, Aileron carefully wiped his blade clean before rising to sheath it. He glanced fleetingly at his brother, then turned, with an expression almost shy, to Arthur Pendragon.

Who said, in a voice of wonder, “Only one man I ever saw could do what you just did.”

Aileron’s voice was low but steady. “I am not him,” he said. “I am not part of it.”

“No,” said Arthur. “You are not part of it.”

After another moment, Aileron turned to the river. “Brightly woven, men of Cathal. A small blow only have we given the Dark this morning, but better that we have given it than otherwise. There are people who will sleep easier tonight for our work in this wood.”

Shalhassan of Cathal was splotched in blood from shoulder to boot and there were bloody smears in the forked plaits of his beard, but, kingly still, he nodded grave agreement. “Shall we sound the maron to end the hunt?” Aileron asked formally.

“Do so,” Shalhassan said. “All five notes, for there are six of us dead on this side of the river.”

“As many here,” said Arthur. “If it please you, High King, Cavall can give tongue for both triumph and loss.”

Aileron nodded. Arthur spoke to the dog.

Grey Cavall walked to an open space by the riverbank where the snow was neither trampled down nor red with wolf or dog or human blood. In a white place among the bare trees he lifted his head.

But the growl he gave was no sound of triumph nor yet of loss.

Dave would never be sure which caused him to turn, the dog’s snarled warning or the trembling of the earth, raster than thought he spun.

There was an instant—less than that, a scintilla of time in the space between seconds—and in it he had a flash of memory. Another wood: Pendaran. Flidais, the gnomelike creature with his eerie chants. And one of them: Beware the boar, beware the swan, the salt sea bore her body on.

Beware the boar.

He had never seen a creature like the one that rumbled now from the trees. It had to be eight hundred pounds, at least, with savage curving tusks and enraged eyes, and it was an albino, white as the snow all around them.

Kevin Laine, directly in its path, with only a sword and a wounded shoulder, wasn’t going to be able to dodge it, and he hadn’t a hope in hell of stopping the rush of that thing.

He had turned to face it. Bravely, but too late, and armed with too little. Even as the bizarre memory of Flidais exploded and he heard Diarmuid’s cry of warning, Dave took two quick steps, let go of his axe, and launched himself in a lunatic, weaponless dive.

He had the angle, sort of. He hit the boar with a flying tackle on the near side shoulder, and he put every ounce of his weight and strength into it.

He was bounced like a Ping-Pong ball from a wall. He felt himself flying, had time to realize it, before he crashed, pinwheeling, into the trees.

“Kevin!” he screamed and tried, unwisely, to stand. The world rocked. He put a hand to his forehead and it came away covered with blood. There was blood in his eyes; he couldn’t see. There was screaming, though, and a snarling dog, and something had happened to his head. There was someone on the ground and people running everywhere, then a person was with him, then another. He tried to rise again. They pushed him back. They were talking to him. He didn’t understand.

“Kevin?” he tried to ask. He couldn’t form the name. Blood got in his mouth. He turned to cough and fainted dead away from the pain.

It hadn’t actually been bravery, or foolish bravado either— there had been no time for such complex things. He’d been at the back and heard a grunt and a trampling sound, so he’d been turning, even before the dog barked and the earth began to shake under the charge of the white boar.

In the half second he’d had, Kevin had thought it was going for Diarmuid and so he yelped to get its attention. Unnecessary, that, for the boar was coming for him all the way.

Strange how much time there seemed to be when there was no time at all. At least somebody wants me, was the first hilarious thought that cut in and out of his mind. But he was quick, he’d always been quick, even if he didn’t know how to use a sword. He had no place to run and no way on earth of killing this monster. So, as the boar thundered up, grunting insanely and already beginning to raise its tusks to disembowel him, Kevin, timing it with coolest precision, jumped up in a forward somersault, to put his hands on the stinking white fur of the boar’s huge back and flip over it like a Minoan bull dancer, to land in the soft snow.

In theory, anyway.

Theory and reality began their radical bifurcation around the axis formed by the flying figure of Dave Martyniuk at precisely the point where his shoulder crashed into that of the boar.

He moved it maybe two inches, all told. Which was just enough to cause Kevin’s injured right arm to slip as he reached for the hold that would let him flip. He never got it. He was lying sprawled on top of the boar, with every molecule of usable air cannonballed out of his lungs, when some last primitive mechanism of his mind screamed roll, and his body obeyed.

Enough so that the tusk of the animal in its vicious, ripping thrust tore through the outer flesh of his groin and not up and through it to kill. He did his somersault in the end and came down, unlike Dave, in snow.

There was a lot of pain, though, in a very bad place and there were droplets of his blood all over the snow like red flowers.

It was Brock who turned the boar away from him and Diarmuid who planted the first sword. Eventually there were a number of swords; he saw it all, but it was impossible to tell who struck the killing blow.

They were very gentle when it came time to move him and it would have been rude, almost, to scream, so he gripped the branches of his makeshift stretcher until he thought his hands had torn through the wood, and he didn’t scream.

Tried one joke as Diarmuid’s face, unnaturally white, loomed up. “If it’s a choice between me and the baby,” he mumbled, “save the baby.” Diar didn’t laugh. Kevin wondered if he’d gotten the joke, wondered where Paul was, who would have. Didn’t scream.

Didn’t pass out until one of the stretcher bearers stumbled over a branch as they left the forest.

When Kevin came to, he saw that Martyniuk was in the next bed, watching him. Had a huge blood-stained bandage around his head. Didn’t look too well, himself.

“You’re okay,” Dave said. “Everything intact.”

He wanted to be funny but the relief was too deep for that. He closed his eyes and took a breath. There was surprisingly little pain. When he opened his eyes he saw that there were a number of others in the room: Diar and Coll and Levon. Tore, too, and Erron. Friends. He and Dave were in the front room of the Prince’s quarters, in beds moved close to the fire.

“I am okay,” he confirmed. Turned to Dave. “You?”

“Fine. Don’t know why, though.”

“The mages were here,” Diarmuid said. “Both of them. They each healed one of you. It took awhile.”

Kevin remembered something. “Wait a minute. How? I thought—”

“—that the sources were drained,” Diarmuid finished. His eyes were sober. “They were, but we had little choice. They’re resting now in the Temple, both Matt and Barak. They’ll be all right, Loren says.” The Prince smiled slowly. “They won’t be around for Maidaladan, though. You’ll have to make it up to them. Somehow.”

Everyone laughed. Kevin saw Dave looking at him. “Tell me,” the big man said slowly, “did I save your life or almost get you killed?”

”We’ll go with the first,” Kevin said. "But it's a good thing you don’t like me much, because if you did, you would have hit that pig with a real tackle instead of faking it. In which case—"

"Hey!" Dave exclaimed. "Hey! That's not… That isn't…" He stopped because everyone was laughing. He would remember the line, though, for later. Kevin had a way of doing that to him.

“Speaking of pigs,” Levon said, helping Dave out, "We're roasting that boar for dinner tonight. You should be able to smell it."

After a moment and some trial sniffs, Kevin could. “That,” he said from the heart, "is one big pig."

Diarmuid was grinning. "If you can make it to dinner," he said, "we've already arranged to save the best part for you.

"No!” Kevin moaned, knowing what was coming.

“Yes indeed I thought you might like from the boar what it almost had from you."

There was a great deal of encouragement and loud laughter, fueled as much, Kevin realized belatedly, by inner excitement as much as by anything else. It was Maidaladan, Midummer's Eve, and it showed in every other man in the room. He got up, aware that there was a certain kind of miracle in his doing so. He was bandaged, but he could move and so, it seemed, could Dave. In the big man Kevin read the same scarcely controlled excitement that flared in all the others. Everyone but him. But now there was something nagging at him from somewhere very deep, and it seemed to be important. Not a memory something else…

There was a lot of laughter and a rough, boisterous humor all around. He went with it, enjoying the camaraderie. When they entered the Movran meeting house—a dining hall for the night—spontaneous applause burst forth from the companies of Brennan and Cathal, and he realized they were cheering for him and Dave.

They sat with Diarmuid’s men and the two young Dalrei. Before dinner formally began, Dairmuid, true to his word, rose from his seat at the high table, bearing a platter ceremoniously before him, and came to Kevin's side.

Amid the gathering hilarity and to the rhythm of five hundred hungry men banging their fists on the long wooden tables, Kevin reminded himself that such things were said to be a delicacy. With a full glass of wine to hand, he stood up, bowed to Diarmuid, and ate the testicles of the boar that had almost killed him.

Not bad, actually, all things considered.

“Any more?” he asked loudly and got his laugh for the night. Even from Dave Martyniuk, which took some doing.

Aileron made a short speech and so did Shalhassan, both of them too wise to try to say much, given the mood in the hall. Besides, Kevin thought, the Kings must be feeling it too. The serving girls—daughters of the villagers, he gathered—were giggling and dodging already. They didn’t seem to mind, though. He wondered what Maidaladan did to the women: to Jaelle and Sharra, even to that battleship Audiart, up at the high table. It was going to be wild later, when the priestesses came out.

There were windows high on all four sides. Amid the pandemonium, Kevin watched it growing dark outside. There was too much noise, too much febrile excitement, for anyone to mark his unwonted quiet.

He was the only one in the hall to see the moon when it first shone through the eastern windows. It was full and this was Midsummer’s Eve, and the thing at the edge of his mind was pushing harder now, straining toward a shape. Quietly he rose and went out, not the first to leave. Even in the cold, there were couples clinched heedlessly close outside the banquet hall.

He moved past them, his wound aching a little now, and stood in the middle of the icy street looking up and east at the moon. And in that moment awareness stirred within him, at last, and took a shape. Not desire, but whatever the thing was that lay behind desire.

“It isn’t a night to be alone,” a voice from just behind him said. He turned to look at Liane. There was a shyness in her eyes.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t see you at the banquet.”

“I didn’t come. I was sitting with Gereint.”

“How is he?” He began to walk, and she fell in stride beside him on the wide street. Other couples, laughing, running to warmth, passed them on all sides. It was very bright, with the moonlight on the snow.

“Well enough. He isn’t happy, though, not the way the others are.”

He glanced over at her and then, because it seemed right, took her hand. She wasn’t wearing gloves either, and her fingers were cold.

“Why isn’t he happy?” A random burst of laughter came from a window nearby, and a candle went out.

“He doesn’t think we can do it.”

“Do what?”

“Stop the winter. It seems they found out that Metran is making it—I didn’t understand how—from the spiraling place, Cader Sedat, out at sea.”

A quiet stretch of road. Inside himself Kevin felt a deeper quiet gathering, and suddenly he was afraid. “They can’t go there,” he said softly.

Her dark eyes were somber. “Not in winter. They can’t sail. They can’t end the winter while the winter lasts.”

It seemed to Kevin, then, that he had a vision of his past, of chasing an elusive dream, waking or asleep, down all the nights of his life. The pieces were falling into place. There was a stillness in his soul. He said, “You told me, the time we were together, that I carried Dun Maura within me.”

She stopped abruptly in the road and turned to him.

“I remember,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “there’s something strange happening. I’m not feeling anything of what’s hitting everyone else tonight. I’m feeling something else.”

Her eyes were very wide in the moonlight. “The boar,” she whispered. “You were marked by the boar.”

That too. Slowly he nodded. It was coming together. The boar. The moon. Midsummer. The winter they could not end. It had, in fact, come together. From within the quiet, Kevin finally understood.

“You had better leave me,” he said, as gently as he could.

It took a moment before he realized that she was crying. He hadn’t expected that.

”Liadon?” she asked. Which was the name.

“Yes,” he said. “It looks as if. You had better leave me.”

She was very young, and he thought she might refuse. He underestimated her, though. With the back of her hand she wiped away her tears. Then, rising on tiptoe, she kissed him on the lips and walked away in the direction from which they had come, toward the lights.

He watched her go. Then he turned and went to the place where the stables were. He found his horse. As he was saddling it, he heard bells ring from the Temple and his movements slowed for a moment. The priestesses of Dana would be coming out.

He finished with the saddle and mounted up. He walked the horse quietly up the lane and stopped in the shadows where it joined the road from Morvran to the Temple. Looking north, he could see them coming, and a moment later he watched the priestesses go by. Some were running and some walked. They all wore long grey cloaks against the cold and they all had their hair unbound and loose down their backs, and all the women seemed to shine a little in the full moonlight. They went past and, turning his head to the left, he saw the men coming out to meet them from the town, and the moon was very bright and it shone on the snow and ice, and on all the men and women in the road as they came together.

In a very little while the street was empty again and then the bells were silent. There were cries and laughter not very far away, but he carried his own deep quiet now, and he set his horse toward the east and began to ride.

Kim woke late in the afternoon. She was in the room they had given her, and Jaelle was sitting quietly beside the bed.

Kim sat up a little and stretched her arms. “Did I sleep all day?” she asked.

Jaelle smiled, which was unexpected. “You were entitled.”

“How long have you been watching me?”

“Not long. We’ve been checking on all of you periodically.”

”All of us? Who else?”

“Gereint. The two sources.”

Kim pushed herself into a sitting position. “Are you all right?”

Jaelle nodded. “None of us went so far as you. The sources were recovering, until they were drained again.”

Kim asked with her eyes, and the red-haired Priestess told her about the hunt and then the boar. “No lasting damage to any of them,” she finished, “though Kevin came very close.”

Kim shook her head. “I’m glad I didn’t see it.” She drew a long breath. “Aileron told me that I did send something back. What was it, Jaelle?”

“The Cauldron,” the other woman replied, and then, as Kim waited: “The mage says Metran is making the winter with it from Cader Sedat, out at sea.”

There was a silence as Kim absorbed this. When it sunk in, all she felt was despair. “Then I did no good at all! We can’t do anything about it. We can’t get there in winter!”

“Nicely planned, wasn’t it?” Jaelle murmured with a dryness that did not mask her own fear.

“What do we do?”

Jaelle stirred. “Not much, tonight. Don’t you feel it?”

And with the question, Kim realized she did. “I thought it was just an aftermath,” she murmured.

The Priestess shook her head. “Maidaladan. It reaches us later than the men, and more as restlessness than desire, I think, but it is almost sundown, and Midsummer’s Eve.”

Kim looked at her. “Will you go out?”

Jaelle rose abruptly and took a few paces toward the far wall. Kim thought she’d given offense, but after a moment the tall Priestess turned back to her. “Sorry,” she said, surprising Kim for the second time. “An old response. I will go to the banquet but come back afterward. The grey-robed ones must go into the streets tonight, to any man who wants them. The red Mormae never go, though that is custom and not law.” She hesitated. “The High Priestess wears white and is not allowed to be part of Maidaladan or to have a man at any other time.”

“Is there a reason?” Kim asked.

“You should know it,” Jaelle said flatly.

And reaching within, to the place of her second soul, Kim did. “I see,” she said quietly. “Is it difficult?”

For a moment Jaelle did not answer. Then she said, “I went from the brown of acolyte straight to the red and then the white.”

“Never grey.” Kim remembered something. “Neither was Ysanne.” And then, as the other stiffened, she asked, “Do you hate her so much? Because she went with Raederth?:

She didn’t expect an answer, but it was a strange afternoon, and Jaelle said, “I did once. It is harder now. Perhaps all the hate in me has gone north.”

There was a long silence. Jaelle broke it awkwardly.

“I wanted to say… you did a very great thing last night, whatever comes of it.”

For only the briefest moment Kim hesitated; then she said, “I had help. I’m only going to tell you and Loren, and Aileron, I think, because I’m not sure what will come of it and I want to go carefully.”

“What help?” Jaelle said.

“The Paraiko,” Kim replied. “The Giants are still alive and under siege in Khath Meigol.”

Jaelle sat down quite suddenly. “Dana, Mother of us all!” she breathed. “What do we do?”

Kim shook her head. “I’m not sure. We talk. But not tonight, I guess. As you said, I don’t think anything important will happen tonight.”

Jaelle’s mouth twitched. “Tell that to the ones in grey who have been waiting a year for this.”

Kim smiled. “I suppose. You know what I mean. We’ll have to talk about Darien, too.”

Jaelle said, “Pwyll is with him now.”

“I know. I guess he had to go, but I wish he were here.”

Jaelle rose again. “I’m going to have to leave. It will be starting soon. I am glad to see you better.”

“Thank you,” Kim said. “For everything. I may look in on Gereint and the sources. Just to say hello. Where are they?”

Again Jaelle colored. “We put them in beds in the chambers I use. We thought it would be quiet there—not all the priestesses go out if there are men in the Temple.”

In spite of everything, Kim had to giggle. “Jaelle,” she said, “you’ve got the only three harmless men in Gwen Ystrat sleeping in your rooms tonight!”

After a second she heard the High Priestess laugh, for the first time she could remember.

When she was alone, for all her good intentions, she fell asleep again. No dreams, no workings of power, just the deep sleep of one who had overtaxed her soul and knew there was more to come.

The bells woke her. She heard the rustle of long robes in the hallway, the quick steps of a great many women, whispers and breathless laughter. After a while it was quiet again.

She lay in bed, wide awake now, thinking of many things. Eventually, because it was Maidaladan, her thoughts went back to an incident from the day before, and, after weighing it and lying still a while longer, she rose, washed her face, and put on her own long robe with nothing underneath.

She went along the curving hallway and listened at a door where a dim light yet showed. It was Midsummer’s Eve, in Gwen Ystrat. She knocked, and when he opened it, she stepped inside.

“It is not a night to be alone,” she said, looking up at him.

“Are you sure?” he asked, showing the strain.

“I am,” she said. Her mouth crooked. “Unless you’d prefer to go in search of that acolyte?”

He made no reply. Only came forward. She lifted her head for his kiss. Then she felt him unclasp her gown and as it fell she was lifted in Loren Silvercloak’s strong arms and carried to his bed on Midsummer’s Eve.

She was finally beginning to get a sense of what he might do, Sharra thought, of the forms his quest for diversion took. She had been a diversion herself a year ago, but that one had cost him a knife wound and very nearly his life. From her seat at the high table of the banquet hall she watched, a half smile on her lips, as Diarmuid rose and carried the steaming testicles of the boar to the one who had been gored. Miming a servant’s gestures, he presented the platter to Kevin.

She remembered that one: he had taken the same leap as she the year before, from the musicians’ gallery in Paras Derval, though for a very different reason. He too was handsome, fair as Diarmuid was, though his eyes were brown. There was a sadness in them too, Sharra thought. Nor was she the first woman to see this.

Sadness or no, Kevin made some remark that convulsed those around him. Diarmuid was laughing as he returned to his seat between her father and the High Priestess, on the far side of Aileron. Briefly, he glanced at her as he sat down, and expressionlessly she looked away. They had not spoken since the sunlit afternoon he had so effortlessly mastered all of them. Tonight, though, was Maidaladan, and she was sure enough of him to expect an overture.

As the banquet proceeded—boar meat from the morning and eltor brought down from the Plain by the Dalrei contingent—the tone of the evening grew wilder. She was curious, certainly not afraid, and there was an unsettling disquiet within her as well. When the bells rang, she understood, the priestesses would be coming out. She herself, her father had made clear, would be in the Temple well before that. Already, Arthur Pendragon and Ivor, the Aven of the Dalrei, who had talked entertainingly on either side of her all evening, had gone back to the Temple. Or she assumed that was where they had gone.

There were, therefore, empty seats beside her in the increasingly unruly hall. She could see Shalhassan begin to stir restively. This was not a mood for the Supreme Lord of Cathal. She wondered, fleetingly, if her father was feeling the same upwelling of desire that was becoming more and more obvious in all the other men in the room. He must be, she supposed, and suppressed a smile—it was a difficult thing to envisage Shalhassan at the mercy of his passions.

And in that instant, surprising her despite everything, Diarmuid was next to her. He did not sit. There would be a great many glances turned to them. Leaning on the back of the chair Arthur had been sitting in, he said, in a tone of mildest pleasantry, something that completely disconcerted her. A moment later, with a polite nod of his head, he moved away and, passing down the long room with a laugh or a jibe every few strides, out into the night.

She was her father’s daughter, and not even Shalhassan, looking over with an appraising glance, was able to read even a hint of her inner turmoil.

She had expected him to come to her tonight, expected the proposition he would make. For him to murmur as he had just done, “Later,” and no more was very much what she had thought he’d do. It fit his style, the indolent insouciance.

What didn’t fit, what had unnerved her so much, was that he had made it a question, a quiet request, and had looked for a reply from her. She had no idea what her eyes had told him, or what—and this was worse—she had wanted them to tell.

A few moments later her father rose and, halfway down the room, so did Bashrai. An honor guard, creditably disciplined, escorted the Supreme Lord and Princess of Cathal back to the Temple. At the doorway, Shalhassan, with a gracious gesture if not an actual smile, dismissed them for the night.

She had no servants of her own here; Jaelle had assigned one of the priestesses to look after her. As she entered her room, Sharra saw the woman turning down her bed by the light of the moon that slanted through the curtained window. The priestess was robed and hooded already for the winter outside. Sharra could guess why.

“Will they ring the bells soon?” she asked.

“Very soon, my lady,” the woman whispered, and Sharra heard a straining note in her low voice. This, too, unsettled her.

She sat down in the one chair, playing with the single gem she wore about her neck. With quick, almost impatient movements, the priestess finished with the bed.

“Is there more, my lady? Because, if not… I’m sorry, but—but it is only tonight…” Her voice trembled.

“No,” Sharra said kindly. “I will be fine. Just… open the window for me before you go.”

“The window?” The priestess registered dismay. “Oh, my lady, no! Not for you, surely. You must understand, it will be very wild tonight, and the men of the village have been known to…”

She fixed the woman with her most repressive stare. It was hard, though, to quell a hooded priestess of Dana in Gwen Ystrat. “I do not think any men of the village will venture here,” she said, “and I am used to sleeping with a window open, even in winter.” Very deliberately, she turned her back and began removing her jewelry. Her hands were steady, but she could feel her heart racing at the implication of what she had done.

If he laughed when he entered, or mocked her, she would scream, she decided. And let him deal with the consequences. She heard the catch of the window spring open and a cold breeze blew into the room.

Then she heard the bells, and the priestess behind her drew a ragged breath.

“Thank you,” said Sharra, laying her necklace on the table. “I suppose that is your sign.”

“The window was, actually,” said Diarmuid.

Her dagger was drawn before she finished turning.

He had tossed back the hood and stood regarding her tranquilly. “Remind me to tell you some day about the other time I did this sort of thing. It’s a good story. Have you noticed,” he added, making conversation, “How tall some of these priestesses are? It was a lucky—”

“Are you trying to earn my hate?” She hurled it at him as if the words were her blade.

He stopped. “Never that,” he said, though easily still. “There is no approach to this room from outside for one man by himself, and I chose not to confide in anyone. I had no other way of coming here alone.”

“What made you assume you could? How much presumption—”

“Sharra. Have done with that tone. I didn’t assume. If you hadn’t had the window opened I would have walked out when the bells rang.”

“I—” She stopped. There was nothing to say.

”Will you do something for me?” He stepped forward. Instinctively she raised her blade, and at that, for the first time, he smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you can cut me. For obvious reasons I offered no blood when I came in. I don’t like being in here on Maidaladan without observing the rites. If Dana can affect me the way she is tonight, she deserves propitiation. There’s a bowl beside you.”

And rolling up the sleeves of his robe and the blue shirt he wore beneath, he extended his wrist to her.

“I am no priestess,” she said.

“Tonight, I think, all women are. Do this for me, Sharra.”

So, for the second time, her dagger cut into him as she took hold of his wrist and drew a line across the underside. The bright blood welled, and she caught it in the bowl. He had a square of Seresh lace in his pocket, and wordlessly he passed it to her. She laid down the bowl and knife and bound the cut she had made.

“Twice now,” he murmured, echoing her own thought. “Will there be a third?”

“You invite it.”

He stepped away at that, toward the window. They were on the east side and there was moonlight. There was also, she realized, a long drop below as the ground fell sharply away from the smooth Temple walls. He had clasped his hands loosely on the window ledge and stood looking out. She sat down on the one chair by her bed. When he spoke it was quietly, still, but no longer lightly. “I must be taken for what I am, Sharra. I will never move to the measured gait.” He looked at her. “Otherwise I would be High King of Brennin now, and Aileron would be dead. You were there.”

She had been. It had been his choice; no one in the Hall that day was likely to forget. She remained silent, her hands in her lap. He said, “When you leaped from the gallery I thought I saw a bird of prey descending for a kill. Later, when you doused me with water as I climbed the walls, I thought I saw a woman with a sense of how to play. I saw both things again in Paras Derval five days ago. Sharra, I did not come here to bed you.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped her.

He had turned to look at her. There was moonlight on his face. “It is true. I realized yesterday that I don’t like the passion of Maidaladan. I prefer my own. And yours. I did not come to bed you, but to say what I have said.”

Her hands were gripping each other very tightly. She mocked him, though, and her voice was cool. “Indeed,” she said. “And I gather you came to Larai Rigal last spring just to see the gardens?”

He hadn’t moved, but his voice seemed to have come very near, somehow, and it was rougher. “One flower only,” said Diarmuid. “I found more than I went to find.”

She should be saying something, dealing back to him one of his own deflating, sardonic jibes, but her mouth had gone dry and she could not speak.

And now he did move forward, a half step only, but it took him out of the light. Straining to see in the shadows, Sharra heard him say, carefully and masking now—at last—a tension of his own, “Princess, these are evil times, for war imposes its own constraints and this war may mean an ending to all that we have known. Notwithstanding this, if you will allow, I would court you as formally as ever a Princess of Cathal has been courted, and I will say to your father tomorrow what I say to you tonight.”

He paused. There seemed to be moonlight all through the room suddenly, and she was trembling in every limb.

“Sharra,” he said, “the sun rises in your eyes.”

So many men had proposed to her with these, the formal words of love. So many men, but none had ever made her weep. She wanted to rise but did not trust her legs. He was still a distance away. Formally, he had said. Would speak to her father in the morning. And she had heard the rawness in his voice.

It was still there. He said, “If I have startled you, I am sorry for it. This is one thing I am not versed in doing. I will leave you now. I will not speak to Shalhassan unless and until you give me leave.”

He moved to the doorway. And then it came to her—he could not see her face where she sat in the shadows, and because she had not spoken…

She did rise then and, uttering the words through and over a cresting wave in her heart, said shyly, but not without a thread of laughter, “Could we not pretend it was not Maidaladan? To see where our own inadequate desire carried us?”

A sound escaped him as he spun.

She moved sideways into the light so he could see her face. She said, “Whom else should I ever love?”

Then he was beside her, and above, and his mouth was on her tears, her eyes, her own mouth, and the full moon of midsummer was upon them as a shower of white light, for all the dark around and all the dark to come.

It was cold in the open but not so very bad tonight, and there was a shining light on the snow and the hills. Overhead the brighter stars gleamed frostily down, but the dimmer ones were lost in the moonlight, for the full moon was high.

Kevin rode at a steady pace toward the east, and gradually the horse began to climb. There was no real path, not among the snow, but the ascent was easy enough and the drifts weren’t deep.

The hills ran north and south, and it wasn’t long before he crested a high ridge and paused to look down. In the distance the mountains glittered in the silvery light, remote and enchanting. He wasn’t going so far.

A shadow moved among the snow and ice to his right and Kevin swung over quickly to look, aware that he was weaponless and alone in a wide night.

It wasn’t a wolf.

The grey dog moved slowly, gravely, to stand in front of the horse. It was a beautiful animal for all the brutal scars, and Kevin’s heart went out to it. A moment they were thus, a tableau on the hilltop among the snow and the low sweeping sigh of the wind.

Kevin said, “Will you lead me there?”

A moment longer Cavall looked up, as if questioning or needing reassurance from the lone rider on the lone horse.

Kevin understood. “I am afraid,” he said. “I will not lie to you. There is a strong feeling in me, though, the more so now, since you are here. I would go to Dun Maura. Will you show me the way?”

A swirl of wind moved the snow on the hilltop. When it passed Cavall had turned and was trotting down the slope to the east. For a moment Kevin looked back. There were lights behind him in Morvran and in the Temple, and dimly, if he listened, he could hear shouts and laughter. He twitched the reins and the horse moved forward after the dog, and on the downhill side the lights and noise were lost.

It wouldn’t be very far, he knew. For perhaps an hour Cavall led him down out of the hills, winding east and a little north. Horse and man and dog were the only moving things among a winter landscape of evergreens piled with snow, and the molded, silvered forms of the tummocks and gullies. His breath frosted in the night air, and the only sounds were the movements of his horse and the sighing of the wind, softer now since they had come down from the high places.

Then the dog stopped and turned to look back at him again. He had to search for several moments before he saw the cave. They were directly in front of it. There were bushes and overhanging vines over the entrance, and the opening was smaller than he’d thought it would be—more a fissure, really. A slantwise path led from it down into what seemed to be the last of the low hills. If the moonlight had not been so bright he wouldn’t have seen it at all.

His hands weren’t entirely steady. He look a number of slow, deep breaths and felt his heart’s hard beating ease. He swung down off the horse and stood beside Cavall in the snow. He looked at the cave. He was very much afraid.

Drawing another breath, he turned back to the horse. He stroked its nose, his head close, feeling the warmth. Then he took the reins and turned the horse around to face the hills and the town beyond. “Go now,” he said, and slapped it on the rump.

A little surprised at how easy it was, he watched the stallion canter off, following its own clear track. He could see it a long way in the clear light before the path they had taken curved south around a slope. For a few seconds more he stood gazing west at the place where it had disappeared.

“Well,” he said, turning away, “here goes.” The dog was sitting in the snow, watching him with its liquid eyes. So much sadness there. He had an impulse to embrace it, but the dog wasn’t his, they had shared nothing, and he would not presume. He made a gesture with his hand, a silly one really, and, saying nothing more, walked into Dun Maura.

This time he didn’t look back. There would be only Cavall to see, and the dog would be watching him, motionless in the moonlit snow. Kevin parted the ferns and stepped through the bushes into the cave.

Immediately it was dark. He hadn’t brought any sort of light, so he had to wait for his eyes to adjust. As he waited, he became aware of how warm it suddenly was. He removed his coat and dropped it by the entrance, though a little out of the way. After a moment’s hesitation he did the same with the beautifully woven vest Diarmuid had given him. His heart jumped at a quick flapping sound outside, but it was only a bird. Once it called, then twice, a long, thin, quavering note. Then, a moment later, it called a third time, a half-tone deeper, and not so long. With a hand on the right side wall, Kevin began moving forward.

It was a smooth path, and the downward slope was gentle. With his hands outstretched, he could feel the walls on either side. He had a sense that the roof of the cave was high, but it was truly dark and he couldn’t see.

His heart seemed to have slowed and his palms were dry, though there was a dampness to the rough walls. The blackness was the hard thing, but he knew, as much as he had ever known anything, that he had not come so far only to trip and break his neck on a dark path.

He went on for a long time, how long he didn’t know. Twice the walls came very close together, forcing him to turn sideways to pass through. Once something flying in the dark passed very near him, and he ducked belatedly with a primitive fear. This passed, though, it all passed. Eventually the corridor bent sharply right, and down, and in the distance Kevin saw a glow of light.

It was warm. He undid another button of his shirt and then, on impulse, took it off. He looked up. Even with the new light, the roof of the cave was so high it was lost in the shadows. The path widened now, and there were steps. He counted, for no good reason. The twenty-seventh was the last; it took him out of the path to the edge of a huge round chamber that glowed with an orange light from no source he could see.

He stopped on the threshold, instinctively, and as he did so the hair rose up on the back of his neck and he felt the first pulse—not a surge yet, though he knew it would come—of power in that most holy place, and in him the form the power took was, at last, desire.

“Bright your hair and bright your blood,” he heard. He spun to his right.

He hadn’t seen her, and wouldn’t have had she not spoken. Barely three feet away from him there was a crude stone seat carved roughly into the rock face. On it, bent almost double with age, sat a withered, decrepit old crone. Her long stringy hair hung in unkempt yellow-grey whorls down her back and on either side of her narrow face. With knobbed hands, as deformed as her spine, she worked ceaselessly away at a shapeless knitting. When she saw him startle she laughed, opening wide her toothless mouth with a high, wheezing sound. Her eyes, he guessed, had once been blue, but they were milky and rheumy now, dimmed by cataracts.

Her gown would long ago have been white, but now it was stained and soiled an indeterminate shade and torn in many places. Through one tear he saw the slack fall of a shrunken breast.

Slowly, with uttermost deference, Kevin bowed to her, guardian of the threshold in this place. She was laughing still when he rose. Spittle rolled down her chin.

“It is Maidaladan tonight,” he said.

Gradually she quieted, looking up at him from the low stone seat, her back so bent she had to twist her neck sideways to do so. “It is,” she said. “The Night of the Beloved Son. It is seven hundred years now since last a man came calling on Midsummer’s Eve.” She pointed with one of her needles, and Kevin looked on the ground beside her to see crumbled bones and a skull.

”I did not let him pass,” the crone whispered, and laughed.

He swallowed and fought back fear. “How long,” he stammered, “how long have you been here?”

“Fool!” she cried, so loudly he jumped. Foolfoolfoolfool reverberated in the chamber, and high above he heard the bats. “Do you think I am alive?”

Alive alive alive alive, he heard, and then heard only his own breathing. He watched the crone lay her knitting down beside the bones at her feet. When she looked up at him again she held only one needle only, long and sharp and dark, and it was trained on his heart. She chanted, clearly but soft, so there was no echo:

“Bright your hair and bright your blood,

Yellow and red for the Mother.

Give me your name, Beloved,

Your true name, and no other.”

In the moment before he answered, Kevin Laine had time to remember a great many things, some with sorrow and some with love. He drew himself up before her; there was a power in him, an upsurge of desire; he too could make the echoes ring in Dun Maura.

“Liadon!” he cried, and in the resounding of it, the burgeoning strength within himself, he felt a breath, a touch, as of wind across his face.

Slowly the crone lowered the needle.

“It is so,” she whispered. “Pass.”

He did not move. His heart was beating rapidly now, though not with fear any more. “There is a wishing in me,” he said.

“There always is,” the crone replied.

Kevin said, “Bright my hair and bright my blood. I offered blood once, in Paras Derval, but that was far from here, and not tonight.”

He waited and for the first time saw a change in her eyes. They seemed to clear, to move back toward their lost blue; it may have been a trick of the orange light on the stone seat, but he thought he saw her straighten where she sat.

With the same needle she pointed, inward, to the chamber. Not far away, almost on the threshold still, Kevin saw the elements of offering. No brightly polished dagger here, no exquisitely crafted bowl to catch the falling gift. This was the oldest place, the hearth. There was a rock rising up, a little past the height of his chest, from the cave floor, and it came to no level, rounded peak, but to a long jagged crest. Beside the rock was a stone bowl, little more than a cup. It had had two handles once, but one had broken off. There was no design on it, no potter’s glaze; it was rough, barely functional, and Kevin could not even hazard a guess how old it was.

“Pass,” the crone repeated.

He went to the rock and picked up the bowl, carefully. It was very heavy to his hand. Again he paused, and again a great many things came back to him from far away, like lights on a distance shore, or lights of a town seen at night from a winter hill.

He was very sure. With a smooth, unhurried motion, he bent over the rock and laid his cheek open on the jagged crest. Even as he felt the pain and caught the welling blood, he heard an ululating wail from behind him, a wild sound of joy and grief in one rising and falling cry as he came into his power.

He turned. The crone had risen. Her eyes were very blue, her gown was white, her hair was white as snow, her fingers long and slender. Her teeth were white, her lips were red, and a red flush was in her cheeks, as well, and he knew it for desire.

He said, “There is a wish in my heart.”

She laughed. A gentle laugh, indulgent, tender, a mother’s laugh over the cradle of her child.

“Beloved,” she said. “Oh, be welcome again, Liadon. Beloved Son… Maidaladan. She will love you, she will.” And the Guardian of the Threshold, old still but no longer a crone, laid a finger on his still flowing wound, and he felt the skin close to her touch and the bleeding stop.

She rose up on her toes and kissed him full on the lips. Desire broke over him like a wave in a high wind. She said, ”Twelve hundred years have passed since I claimed my due from a sacrifice come freely.”

There were tears in her eyes.

“Go now,” she said. “Midnight is upon us, Liadon. You know where to go; you remember. Pour the bowl and the wish of your heart, Beloved. She will be there. For you she will come as swiftly as she did when the first boar marked the first of all her lovers.” With her long fingers she was disrobing him even as she spoke.

Desire, power, crest of the wave. He was the force behind the wave and the foam where it broke. Wordlessly, he turned, remembering the way, and crossing the wide chamber, bearing his blood in a stone bowl, he came to its farthest point. To the very brink of the chasm.

Naked as he had been in the womb, he stood over it. And now he did not let his mind go back to the lost things from before; instead, he turned his whole being to the one wish of his heart, the one gift he sought of her in return, and he poured out the brimming cup of his blood into the dark chasm, to summon Dana from the earth on Midsummer’s Eve.

In the chamber behind him the glow died utterly. In the absolute black he waited and there was so much power in him, so much longing. The longing of all his days brought to a point, to this point, this crevasse. Dun Maura. Maidaladan. His heart’s desire. The boar. The blood. The dog in the snow outside. Full moon. All the nights, all the traveling through all the nights of love. And now.

And now she had come, and it was more than anything could be, more than all. She was, and she was there for him in the dark, suspended in the air above the chasm.

“Liadon,” she whispered, and the throaty desire in the sound set him on fire. Then to crown it, and shape it, for she loved him and would love him, she whispered again, and she said, “Kevin,” and then, “Oh, come!”

And he leaped.

She was there and her arms were around him in the dark as she claimed him for her own. It seemed to him as if they floated for a moment, and then the long falling began. Her legs twined about his, he reached and found her breasts. He caressed her hips, her thighs, felt her open like a flower to his touch, felt himself wild, rampant, entered her. They fell. There was no light, there were no walls. Her mouth made sounds as she kissed him. He thrust and heard her moan, he heard his own harsh breathing, felt the storm gathering, the power, knew this was the destination of his days, heard Dana say his name, all his names in all the worlds, felt himself explode deep into her, with the fire of his seed. With her own transfiguring ecstasy she flared alight; she was incandescent with what he had done to her, and by the light of her desire he saw the earth coming up to gather him, and he knew he had come home, to the end of journeying. End of longing, with the ground rushing now to meet, the walls streaming by; no regret, much love, power, a certain hope, spent desire, and only the one sorrow for which to grieve in the last half second, as the final earth came up to meet him. Abba, he thought, incongruously. And met.

In the Temple, Jaelle woke. She sat bolt upright in bed and waited. A moment later the sound came again, and this time she was awake and there could be no mistake. Not for this, and not tonight. She was High Priestess, she wore white and was untouched, because there had to be one so tuned to the Mother that if the cry went up it would be heard. Again it came to her, the sound she had never thought to hear, a cry not uttered for longer than anyone living knew. Oh, the ritual had been done, had been enacted every morning after Maidaladan since the first Temple was raised in Gwen Ystrat. But the lamenting of the priestesses at sunrise was one thing, it was a symbol, a remembering.

The voice in her mind was infinitely otherwise. Its mourning was for no symbolic loss, but for the Beloved Son. Jaelle rose, aware that she was trembling, still not quite believing what she heard. But the sound was high and compelling, laden with timeless grief, and she was High Priestess and understood what had come to pass.

There were three men sleeping in the front room of her chambers. None of them stirred as she passed through. She did not go into the corridor. Instead she came to another, smaller doorway and, barefoot in the cold, walked quickly down a dark narrow hallway and opened another door at the end of it.

She came out under the dome, behind the altar and the axe. There she paused. The voice was loud within her, though, urgent and exultant, even in its grief, and it carried her with it.

She was High Priestess. It was the night of Maidaladan, and, impossibly, the sacrifice had come to pass. She laid both hands on the axe that only the High Priestess could lift. She took it from its rest, and swinging around, she brought it crashing down on the altar. Hugely, the sound reverberated. Only when it ended did she lift her own voice in the words that echoed within her being.

“Rahod hedai Liadon!” Jaelle cried. “Liadon has died again!” She wept. She grieved with all her heart. And she knew every priestess in Fionavar had heard her. She was High Priestess.

They were awakening now, all those in the Temple. They were coming from their sleep. They saw her there, her robe torn, blood on her face, the axe lifted from its rest.

“Rahod hedai Liadon!” Jaelle cried again, feeling it rise within her, demanding utterance. The Mormae were all there now; she saw them begin to tear their own robes, to rend their faces in a wildness of grief and she heard them lift their voices to lament as she had done.

There was an acolyte beside her, weeping. She carried Jaelle’s cloak and boots. In haste, the High Priestess put them on. She moved to lead them away, all of them, east, to where it had come to pass. There were men in the room now, the two mages, the Kings; there was fear in their eyes. They stepped aside to let her pass. There was a woman who did not.

“Jaelle,” said Kim. “Who is it?”

She hardly broke her stride. “I do not know. Come!” She went outside. There were lights being lit all over Morvran and down the long street leading from the town she saw the priestesses running toward her. Her horse had been brought. She mounted up and, without waiting for anyone, she set off for Dun Maura.

They all followed. Two on a horse, in many cases, as the soldiers bore with them the priestesses who had leaped, crying, from their beds. It was midsummer and the dawn would come early. There was already a grey light when they came up to the cave and saw the dog.

Arthur dismounted and walked over to Cavall. For a moment he gazed into the eyes of his dog, then he straightened and looked at the cave. At the entrance Jaelle knelt among the red flowers now blooming amid the snow, and there were tears streaming down her face.

The sun came up.

“Who?” asked Loren Silvercloak. “Who was it?”

There were a great many people there by then. They looked around at each other in the first of the morning light.

Kim Ford closed her eyes.

All around them the priestesses of Dana began, raggedly at first, but then in harmony, to sing their lament for the dead Liadon.

“Look!” said Shalhassan of Cathal. “The snow is melting!”

Everyone looked but Kim. Everyone saw.

Oh, my darling man, thought Kimberly. There was a murmur surging toward a roar. Awe and disbelief. The beginnings of a desperate joy. The priestesses were wailing in their grief and ecstasy. The sun was shining on the melting snow.

“Where’s Kevin?” said Diarmuid sharply.

Where, oh, where? Oh, my darling.