Guy Kay - The Wandering Fire

“The Paraiko,” Loren repeated. “The Giants. They were here, and the Wild Hunt rode the night sky. It was a very different world, or so the legends of the lios tell. Shadowy kings on shadowy horses that could ride between the stars and between the Weaver’s worlds.”

“And the child?” Kim asked this time. It was the question that was gnawing at her. A child before them all.

“I wish I knew,” Loren said. “No one does, I’m afraid.”

“What else do we know?” Diarmuid asked mildly.

“It is told,” came a deep voice from the door, “that they moved the moon.”

“What?” Levon exclaimed.

“So it is said,” Matt repeated, “Under Banir Lok and Banir Tal. It is our only legend of the Hunt. They wanted greater light by which to ride, and so they moved the moon.”

There was a silence.

“It is closer here,” Kevin said wonderingly. “We noticed it was larger.”

“It is,” Loren agreed soberly. “The tales may be true. Most of the Dwarf tales are.”

“How were they ever put under the stone?” Paul asked.

“That is the deepest question of all,” Loren murmured. “The lios say it was Connla, Lord of the Paraiko, and it is not impossible for one who made the Cauldron of Khath Meigol and so half mastered death to have done so.”

“It would have been a mighty clash,” Levon said softly.

“It would have been,” Loren agreed, “but the lios alfar say another thing in their legends.” He paused. His face was quite lost in the glare of the sun. “They say there was no clash. That Owein and the Hunt asked Connla to bind them, but they do not know why.”

Kim heard a sound, or thought she did, as of quick wings flying. She looked to the door.

And heard Paul Schafer say, in a voice that sounded scraped up from his heart, “I know.” His expression had gone distant and estranged but when he continued, his voice was clear. “They lost the child. The ninth one. They were eight kings and a child. Then they made a mistake and lost the child, and in grief and as penance they asked the Paraiko to bind them under the stone with whatsoever bonds they chose and whatsoever method of release.”

He stopped abruptly and passed a hand before his eyes. Then he leaned back for support against the wall.

“How do you know this?” Levon asked in amazement.

Paul fixed the Dalrei with those fathomless, almost inhuman eyes, “I know a fair bit about half-death,” he said.

No one dared break the silence. They waited for Paul. At length he said, in a tone more nearly his own, “I’m sorry. It… catches me unawares, and I’m thrown by it. Levon, I—”

The Dalrei shook his head. “No matter. Truly not. It is a wonder, and not a gift, I know, but earned. I am grateful beyond words that you are here, but I do not envy you.”

Which, Kim thought, was about it. She said, “Is there more, Paul? Do we wake them?”

He looked at her, more himself with each passing second. It was as if an earthquake had shaken the room and passed. Or a roll of very great thunder.

“There is no more,” he said, “if you mean do I know anything more. But, for what it’s worth, I did see something just before we left the other room.”

Too clever by half, she thought. But he had paused and was leaving it for her. “You don’t miss much, do you?” she murmured. He made no reply. She drew a breath and said, “It’s true. The Baelrath glowed for a moment when Levon came up to me. In the moment when I understood what he had come for. I can tell you that, for what, as Paul says, it’s worth.”

“Something, surely,” Levon said earnestly. “It is as I have been saying: why else have we been given the horn, shown the cave? Why, if not to wake them? And now the stone is telling us!”

“Wild to wild,” Loren murmured. “They may be calling each other, Levon, but not for any purpose of ours. This is the wildest magic. And it is in the verse: we will never hold them. Owein and the Hunt were powerful enough to move the moon and capricious enough to do it for their pleasure. Let us not think they will tamely serve our needs and as tamely go away.”

Another silence. Something was nagging at the back of Kim’s mind, something she knew she should be remembering, but this had become a chronic condition of late, and the thought could not be forced.

It was, surprisingly, Dave Martyniuk who broke the stillness. Awkward as ever in such a situation, the big man said, “This may be very dumb, I don’t know… but it occurred to me that if Kim’s ring is being called, then maybe Owein is ready to be released and we’ve been given the means to do it. Do we have the right to deny them, regardless of whether we know what they’ll do? I mean, doesn’t that make us jailers, or something?”

Loren Silvercloak rose as if pulled upward. Away from the angled light, they could see his eyes fixed on Dave. “That,” said the mage, “is not even remotely a foolish thing to say. It is the deepest truth yet spoken here.” Dave flushed bright red as the mage went on. “It is in the truest nature of things, at the very heart of the Tapestry: the wild magic is meant to be free, whether or not it serves any purpose of ours.”

“So we do it?” Kevin asked. And turned to Kim again.

In the end, as in the beginning, it came back to her because she wore the ring. Something nagging still, but they were waiting and what Dave had said was true. She knew that much.

“All right,” she said, and on the words the Baelrath blazed like a beacon with red desire.

“When?” Paul asked. In the tinted light they were all on their feet.

“Now, of course,” said Diarmuid. “Tonight. We’d best get moving, it’s a white ride.”

They had lost Matt and Loren and picked up the other Dalrei, Tore, and Diarmuid’s lieutenant, Coll.

The mage had volunteered to stay behind and inform the two Kings of what was happening. Tore, Kevin was given to understand, had been there when the horn and the cave were found; he had a place in this weaving. Kevin wasn’t about to question it, seeing as he himself had no real place at all. Coll was with Diarmuid because he always was.

Kevin rode beside Paul for the early going, as Diarmuid led them northeast through a gentle valley. It was curious, but the cold seemed milder here, the wind less chill. And when they came around a ridge of hills he saw a lake, small, like a jewel in a setting of white-clad slopes—and the water of the lake wasn’t frozen.

“A wind shelter, you think?” he said to Paul.

“More than that. That’s Ysanne’s lake. Where the water spirit is. The one Kim saw.”

“Think that’s doing it?”

“Maybe.” But by then Paul wasn’t really with him any more. He had slowed his mount and was looking down at a small cottage by the lake. They were skirting it, passing by on a high ridge, but Kevin could see two boys come out to gaze at the party of riders passing by. Impulsively, Kevin waved and the older one waved back. He seemed to bend, speaking to his brother, and after a moment the little fellow raised a hand to them.

Kevin grinned and turned to say something to Paul, but what he saw in Schafer’s rigid features erased the easy smile from his own. They resumed riding a moment later, moving quickly to catch the others. Paul was silent, his face clenched and rigid. He didn’t offer anything, and this time Kevin didn’t ask. He wasn’t sure if he could deal with another rejection.

He caught up to Coll and rode the rest of the way beside him. It was colder when they came to the north end of the valley, and dark by the time they crossed the High Road from Rhoden to North Keep. He was carrying a torch by then, something which seemed, of late, to be his lot. The main illumination, though, more even than the low moon shining through clouds on their right, was the increasing brilliance of the red light cast by the ring Kim wore. Wild to wild, Kevin remembered.