Guy Kay - The Wandering Fire

“There are voices,” he said to Finn.

His brother didn’t say anything. Just put an arm around Dari and held him close. The voices weren’t as loud here, when he was beside Finn. As he drifted to sleep, Dari heard Finn murmur into his ear, “I love you, little one.”

Dari loved him back. When he fell asleep he dreamed again, and in his dream he was trying to tell that to the ghostly figures calling from the wind.

In the afternoon after the storm—a day so clear and bright it was almost a mockery—came Diarmuid, Prince of Brennin, back to Paras Derval. With certain others he was brought to the High King’s antechamber, where a number of people waited for him, and in that place he was presented by Aileron, his brother, to Arthur Pendragon.

And nothing happened.

Paul Schafer, standing next to Kim, had seen her pale when Diarmuid came into the room. Now, as the Prince bowed formally to Arthur and the Warrior accepted it with an unruffled mien, he heard her draw a shaky breath and murmur, from the heart, “Oh, thank God.”

A look passed between her and Loren, who was on the far side of the room, and in the mage’s countenance Paul read the same relief. It took him a moment, but he put it together.

“You thought he was the third one?” he said. “Third angle of the triangle?”

She nodded, still pale. “I was afraid. Don’t know why now. Don’t know why I was so sure.”

“Is that why you wanted us to wait?”

She looked at him, grey eyes under white hair. “I thought it was. I knew we had to wait before going to the hunt. Now I don’t know why.”

“Because,” came a voice, “you are a true and loyal friend and didn’t want me to miss the fun.”

”Oh, Kev!” She wheeled and gave him a very un-Seerlike hug. “I missed you!”

“Good,” said Kevin brightly.

“Me too,” Paul added.

“Also good,” Kevin murmured, less flippantly.

Kim stepped back. “You feeling unappreciated, sailor?”

He gave her a half smile. “A bit superfluous. And now Dave’s fighting an urge to bisect me with his axe.”

“Nothing new there,” Paul said dryly.

“What now?” Kim asked.

“I slept with the wrong girl.”

Paul laughed. “Not the first time.”

“It isn’t funny,” Kevin said. “I had no idea he liked her, and anyhow, she came to me. The Dalrei women are like that. They call the shots with anyone they like until they decide to marry.”

“Have you explained to Dave?” Kim asked. She would have made a joke but Kevin did look unhappy. There was more to this, she decided.

“He’s a hard man to explain things to. Hard for me, anyway. I’ve asked Levon. It was his sister.” Kevin indicated someone with a sideways nod of his head.

And that, of course, was it.

Kim turned to the handsome, fair-haired Rider standing just behind them. There had been a reason for waiting for this party, and it wasn’t Diarmuid or Kevin. It was this man.

“I have explained,” Levon said. “And will do so again, as often as necessary.” He smiled; then his expression grew sober and he said to Kim, “Seer, I asked if we might talk, a long time ago.”

She remembered. The last morning, before the Baelrath had blazed and her head had exploded with Jennifer’s screams and she had taken them away.

She looked at her hand. The ring was pulsing; only a very little, but it was alive again.

“All right,” she said, almost curtly. “You too, Paul. Kev, will you bring Loren and Matt?”

“And Davor,” Levon said. “Diarmuid too. He knows.”

“My room. Let’s go.” She walked out, leaving them to follow her. Her and the Baelrath.

“The flame will wake from sleep,

The Kings the horn will call,

But though they answer from the deep,

You may never hold in thrall

Those who ride from Owein’s Keep

With a child before them all.”

Levon’s voice faded away. In the silence Kim became aware, annoyingly, of the same faint static she’d heard two nights ago; again it was from the east. Gwen Ystrat, she decided. She was getting herself tuned in to whatever sendings the priestesses were throwing back and forth out there. It was a nuisance and she pushed it from her mind. She had enough to worry about, starting with all these men in her bedroom. A frustrated woman’s dream, she thought, unable to find it amusing.

They were waiting for her. She kept silent and let them wait. After a moment it was Levon who resumed—it was his idea, after all. He said, “I learned that verse from Gereint as a boy. I remembered it last spring when Davor found the horn. Then we located the tree and the rock. And so we know where Owein and the Sleepers are.” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. “We have the horn that calls them and… and it is my guess that the Baelrath roused is the flame that wakes them.”

“It would fit,” said Diarmuid. He had kicked off his boots and was lying on her bed. “The Warstone is wild, too. Loren?”

The mage, by exercise of seniority, had claimed the armchair by the window. He lit his pipe methodically and drew deeply upon it before answering.

“It fits,” he said at length. “I will be honest and say I do not know what it forms.”

The quiet admission sobered them. “Kim?” Diarmuid asked, taking charge from where he lay sprawled across her bed.

She was minded to give them a hard time, still, but was too proud to be petty. “I haven’t seen it,” she murmured. “Nothing of this at all.”

“Are you sure?” Paul Schafer asked from by the door, where he stood with Matt Sören. “You were waiting for Levon, weren’t you?”

He was awfully clever, that one. He was her friend, though, and he hadn’t given away her first apprehension about Diarmuid. Kim nodded, and half smiled. “I sensed he was coming. And I guessed, from before, what he wanted to ask. I don’t think we can conclude much from that.”

“Not much,” Diarmuid concurred. “We still have a decision to make.”

“We?” It was Kevin Laine. “Kim’s ring, Dave’s horn. Their choice, wouldn’t you say?”

Levon said, “They aren’t really theirs. Only—”

“Anyone planning to take them away and use them?” Kevin asked laconically. “Anyone going to force them?” he continued, driving the point home. There was a silence. Another friend, Kim thought.

There was an awkward cough. “Well,” said Dave, “I’m not about to go against what gets decided here, but I’d like to know a little more about what we’re dealing with. If I’ve got the horn that calls these… ah, Sleepers, I’d prefer to know who they are.”

He was looking self-consciously at Loren. They all turned to the mage. The sun was behind him, making it hard to see his face. When he spoke, it was almost as a disembodied voice.

“It would be altogether better,” he said, from between the setting sun and the smoke, “if I could give a fair answer to Dave’s question. I cannot. Owein and the Wild Hunt were laid to rest an infinitely long time ago. Hundreds and hundreds of years before Iorweth came from oversea, or the Dalrei crossed the mountains from the east, or even men pushed into green Cathal from the far lands in the southeast.

“Even the lios alfar were scarcely known in the land when the Hunt became the Sleepers. Brendel has told me, and Laien Spearchild before him, that the lios have only shadowy legends of what the Wild Hunt was before it slept.”

“Was there anyone here?” Kevin murmured.

“Indeed,” Loren replied. “For someone put them under that stone. Tell me, Levon, was it a very great rock?”

Levon nodded without a word.

Loren waited.

“The Paraiko!” Diarmuid said, who had been student to the mage when he was young. His voice was soft; there was wonder in it.