Guy Kay - The Last Light of the Sun

He'd chased Ivarr Ragnarson here, and his Erling horse had entered the pool and been frozen there, and he'd seen faeries, heard their music, seen Dai with the queen.

Never found Ivarr. That one was dead, it seemed. Not by Alun's hand. Not his revenge. Something else, a larger thing, to be done now. He was afraid.

The images in his mind had stopped. They were gone, as if the girl had been worn out sending them—or wasn't needed any more, now that he was here. He was supposed to know, by now, why he was in this wood. He was almost certain he did. That sense of something pushing into awareness was replaced by something else, more difficult to name.

He dismounted when Brynn did, and he followed him through the darkness; a twisting path through high summer trees (a small wood, this, but an old one, surely so, with faeries here). They were cautious with the torches. A forest could burn.

He saw the pool. His heart was beating fast. He glanced at Brynn, who had stopped, saw that the other man's face was rigid with strain. Brynn looked around, aligning himself. The sky was clear above the pool, they could see stars. The water was still, a mirror. No wind here. No sound in the leaves.

Brynn turned to him. "Hold this," he said, handing Alun his torch.

He set off around the edge of the pool, towards the south. Long-striding, almost hurrying, now that they were here. He would be tangled in memories, Alun thought. He followed, carrying light. Again Brynn stopped, again took his bearings. Then he turned his back on the water and walked over to a tree, a large ash. He touched it and went past. Three more trees, then he turned to his left.

There was a boulder, moss-covered (green), massive. Here, too, Brynn rested his hand a moment. He looked back at Alun. It was too hard to read his thoughts by torchlight. Alun could guess, though.

"Why didn't you destroy it?" he asked softly, his first words in the wood.

"I don't know," the other man said. "I felt as if it should stay with us. Lie here. It was… very beautiful."

He stayed that way a moment, then he turned his back on Alun, drew a breath, put a shoulder to that huge rock, and pushed, an enormously strong man. Nothing happened. Brynn straightened, wiped at his face with one hand.

"I can—" Alun began.

"No," said the other. "I did it myself, then."

Twenty-five years ago. A young man in his glory, a life ahead of him, the greatest deed of his days already done. What he'd be remembered for. He'd taken that fight for his own, over those whose rank should have made it theirs. Today, he had let a man take another combat, for him.

This was a proud man. Alun stood with the torches, Cafall beside him, and watched as Brynn turned back to the rock, spat on both his hands, and put them and his shoulder to it again, driving with body and legs, churning, grunting with exertion, then crying aloud Jad's name, the god, even here.

And the boulder rolled with that cry, just enough to reveal, by the light of Alun's torches, a hollow beneath where it had been, and something wrapped in cloth, lying there.

Brynn straightened, wiped at his dripping face again with one sleeve then the other. He swore, though softly, without force. Alun remained where he was, waiting. His heart was still pounding. The other man knelt, claimed the cloth, and what lay inside it. He stood up and carried it back before him the few steps out of those trees, past the ash to the grassy space by the starlit pool.

He cried aloud, raised a quick, warding hand. Alun, following, looked past him. They were here. Waiting. Not the faeries. The green, hovering figures he'd seen with the others in the spirit wood.

They were here, and they were the reason he was here. He knew what these were now, finally, and what they needed from him.

Besought. He was being pleaded with. To intervene. A mortal who could see the half-world, who had been in the Ride's pool here, had lain with a faerie in the northern reaches of the spirit wood. They would know this. When he'd entered the wood again with Thorkell and then Athelbert, they had come for him.

His heart was twisted, entangled, holding a weight that felt like centuries. He didn't know how the girl in Esferth was part of this (didn't know she'd been in the wood that same night) but she had given him the images they needed him to see. She had… a different kind of access to this.

And had brought him here, a second time.

"They will not harm us," he said quietly to Brynn.

"You know what these are?"

"Yes," said Alun. "I do now."

Brynn didn't ask the next question. Either he didn't want to know or, more probably, he was leaving this, in courtesy, to Alun.

Alun said, "If you will give me the sword, I think you should take Cafall and go. You do not need to stay with me."

"Yes I do," said the other man.

Hugely proud, all his days. A man had died, taking his fight this afternoon. Brynn unwrapped the cloth from around what it had held for so many years and Alun, coming nearer with both torches, saw the Volgan's small, jewel-hiked sword, taken from the raid on Champieres, and carried as a talisman until the day he died in Llywerth, by the sea.

The man who'd killed him held it out towards Alun. Alun handed him a torch, took the sword, gave Brynn the other flame. He unsheathed the blade, to look upon it. It was silver, Siggur Volganson's sword. Not iron. He'd known it would be, from the girl.

There came a sound from the green shapes gathered there—twenty of them, or nearly so, he judged. A keening noise, wind in leaves but higher. Sorrow was in him. The way of the Cyngael.

"You are… certain you wish to stay?"

Brynn nodded. "You don't want to be alone here."

He didn't. It was true. But still. "I don't think I have… permission to do this. I don't expect to live. Your wife asked you—"

"I know what she said. I will not leave you alone. Do what you must. We will bear witness, Cafall and I."

Alun looked beyond him. One of the green shapes had come nearer. They were almost human, as if twisted by time and circumstance a little away. He knew what they were, now. What they had been.

Brynn stepped away, back towards the encircling trees, carrying the torches. The dog was silent when it might have growled. It had done so in the spirit wood, Alun remembered. Something had changed. He set the scabbard down.

"You wish this, truly?" he said. Not to the other man this time. Brynn was behind him now. He was holding a silver sword and speaking to the green creatures that had come. They were in a clearing by the faerie queen's pool under stars on a night when neither moon would rise. Souls walked on such nights, so the old tales told.

No reply, or none spoken aloud. He had no idea if they could speak any tongue he might know. But the figure before him came nearer yet (slowly, so as not to startle him or cause fear, was the thought that came) and it knelt upon the dark grass before him.

He heard Brynn make a sound (the beginning of a prayer) and then stop himself. The other man had just realized, Alun thought, what was about to happen, though he wouldn't know why. Alun knew why.

He had not asked for this. He'd only ridden north from home one bright morning at the end of spring with his brother and favourite cousin and their friends on a cattle raid, as young men of the Cyngael had done since all songs began. He had ridden into a different, older story, it seemed.

Much older. These green things, and he still didn't know what they were called, had been human once. Like Brynn, like Alun himself, like Dai.

Entirely like Dai. These, he understood, heart aching, were the souls of the faerie queen's mortal lovers after she tired of them and sent them from her side. This is what became of them, after who could know how many years. And he was here (in a tale he had never known he was in) to set them free with silver, under stars.