Guy Kay - The Wandering Fire

Against that brutal reality, what good were abstract plans to use chariots as barricades if Paras Derval were attacked?

She didn’t say it, though. She was quiet and listened and, about midafternoon, had been silent so long they forgot about her, and she made her escape and went in search of Kim.

It was Gorlaes, the omniscient Chancellor, who directed her. She went to get a cloak from her chambers and noticed that the white one had already been trimmed to her size. Expressionlessly she put it on and, climbing all the stairs, came out on a turret, high above everything else. Kim was standing there, in furred cloak and gloves but unhooded, her startling white hair whipping into her eyes. To the north, a long line of clouds lay along the horizon and a north wind was blowing.

“Storm coming,” Sharra said, leaning on the parapet beside the other woman.

“Among other things.” Kim managed a smile but her eyes were red.

“Tell me,” Sharra said. And listened as it came out like a pent-up flood. The dream. The dead King and the undead son. The children slain and Jennifer shattered in Starkadh. The one thing unforeseen: Guinevere. Love betrayed. Grief at the heart of it, the heart of everything.

Cold in the high wind they stood when the story ended. Cold and silent, facing the bitter north. Neither wept; it was wind that laid freezing tears on their cheeks. The sun slid low in the west. Ahead of them the clouds were thick on the horizon.

“Is he here?” Sharra asked. “The other one? The third?”

“I don’t know. She said he wasn’t.”

“Where is she now?”

“In the Temple, with Jaelle.”

Silence again, save for the wind. As it happened, though for very different reasons, the thoughts of both of them were away to the east and north where a fair-haired Prince was riding at the head of thirty men.

A short while later the sun was lost in trees behind Mórnirwood and the cold became too great. They went inside.

Three hours later they were back on that tower with the King and half the court, it seemed. It was full dark and savagely cold, but no one noticed, now.

Away to the north, very, very far, a luminous pearly light was being cast into the sky.

“What is it?” someone asked.

“Daniloth,” Loren Silvercloak replied softly. Brendel was standing beside him, his eyes the color of the light.

“They are trying it,” the lios breathed. “Not for a thousand years has Daniloth been unsheathed. There are no shadows on the Land of Light tonight. They will be looking at the stars later when they fade the shining. There will be starlight above Atronel.”

It was almost a song, so beautiful was his voice, so laden with yearning. Every one of them looked at that cast glow and, wondering, understood that it had been like that every night before Maugrim had come, and the Bael Rangat, before Lathen had woven the mist to change Daniloth into the Shadowland.

“Why?” Sharra asked. “Why are they doing it?”

Again it was Loren who replied. “For us. They are trying to draw him down from Starkadh to divert his power from the winter’s shaping. The lios alfar are offering themselves so that we might have an end to the cold.”

“An ending to it for them as well, surely?” Gorlaes protested.

Never taking his eyes from the light in the north, Na-Brendel answered him. “There is no snow in Daniloth. The sylvain are blooming now as they do each midsummer, and there is green grass on Atronel.”

They watched, picturing it, heartened despite the knife of wind by that lifted glow that meant courage and gallantry, a play of light in heaven at the very door of the Dark.

Watching it, Kim was distracted by a sound, very thin, almost a drift of static in her mind. More that than music, and coming, so far as she could tell, from the east. She lifted her hand; the Baelrath was quiescent, which was a blessing. She was coming to fear its fire. She pushed the whisper of sound away from her—it was not hard—and turned her whole being to the light of Daniloth, trying to draw strength and some easing of guilt and sorrow. It was less than forty-eight hours since she had stood at Stonehenge and she was weary, through and through, with so much yet to be done.

Beginning, it seemed, immediately.

When they returned to the Great Hall, a woman in grey was there waiting for them. Grey, as in the grey robes of the priestesses, and it was Jaelle, striding past the Kings, who spoke to her.

“Aline, what is it?”

The woman in grey sank to the floor in a deep curtsy before Jaelle; then she offered a perfunctory version to Aileron. Turning back to the High Priestess, she spoke carefully, as from memory.

“I am to convey to you the obeisance on the Mormae and Audiart’s apologies. She sent this in person because it was thought the men here would greater appreciate urgency if we did not use the link.”

Jaelle remained very still. There was a forbidding chill in her face. “What urgency?” she asked, velvet danger sheathed in her voice.

Aline flushed. I wouldn’t be in her shoes for anything, Kim thought suddenly.

“Again, Audiart’s apologies, High One,” Aline murmured. “It is as Warden of Gwen Ystrat, not as Second of the Mormae, that she sent me. I was told to say this to you.”

Imperceptibly, almost, Jaelle relaxed. “Very well—” she began but was interrupted before she could finish.

“If you are sent by my Warden, you should be speaking to me,” Aileron said, and his own voice was fully as cold as Jaelle’s had been. The High Priestess stood immobile and impassive. No help there, Kim thought. She felt briefly sorry for Aline, a pawn in a complex game. Only briefly, though; in some ways pawns had it easy.

Aline decided; she sank down into a proper curtsy before the King. Rising, she said, “We have need of you, High King. Audiart requests you to remember how seldom we ask aid and that you therefore consider our plight with compassion.”

“To the point!” the High King growled. Shalhassan, just behind him, was taking it all in avidly. It was no time for anything but control.

Again Aline glanced at Jaelle and again found no assistance. She licked her lips. Then, “Wolves,” she said. “Larger than any of us have ever seen. There are thousands of them, High King, in the wood north of Lake Leinan, and they are raiding at night among the farms. The farms of your people, my lord King.”

“Morvran?” said Jaelle sharply. “What about us?”

Aline shook her head. “They have been seen near the town but not yet in the Temple grounds, High One. If they had been, I am to say, then—”

“Then the Mormae would have linked to tell me. Audiart,” Jaelle murmured, “is cleverness itself.” She tossed her head, and the red hair rippled down her back like a river.

Aileron’s eyes were bright in the torchlight. “She wants me to come and clean them out for her? What says the High Priestess?”

Jaelle didn’t even look at him. “This,” she said, “is your Warden, not my Second, Aileron.”

There was a silence, and then a polite cough and Paul Schafer walked forward toward Audiart’s messenger.

“One moment,” he said. “Aileron, you spoke of cleaning out the wolves. It may be more than that.” He paused. “Aline, is Galadan in Leinanwood?”

The priestess had fear in her eyes. “We never thought of that. I do not know.”

And so it was time. That was a cue for her, if anything was. Kim schooled her face and, as she did, Aileron’s glance swung over to find her.

Would she ever be used to this? Had Ysanne ever grown accustomed to this shuttling back and forth on the timeloom? Only last night, restless and heartsick for Jennifer, she had fallen into half sleep and a blurred, insubstantial dream of a hunt in a wood, in some wood, somewhere, and a rushing thunder over the ground.