Guy Kay - The Wandering Fire

He said, “I slowed us up there, too. I’m sorry.”

“I’d been meaning to ask. What was that about?”

“A favor for Paul. Aileron ordered it. Do you remember the boy who came when we summoned Owein?”

Levon nodded. “I am not likely to forget.”

“Paul wanted his father posted back to Paras Derval, and there was a letter. I said I’d find him. It took a while.” Dave remembered standing awkwardly by as Shahar wept for what had happened to his son. He’d tried to think of something to say and failed, naturally. There were, he supposed, some things he’d never be able to handle properly.

“Did he remind you of Tabor?” Levon asked suddenly. “That boy?”

“A little,” Dave said, after thinking about it.

Levon shook his head. “More than a little, for me. I think I’d like to get moving.”

They turned back. Tore, Dave saw, was on his feet. Levon gestured, and the dark Dalrei put fingers to his mouth and whistled piercingly. The company began preparing to ride. Dave reached his horse, mounted up, and jogged to the front where Levon and Mabon waited.

The men of Brennin were in place and mounted very fast. Aileron had sent them men who knew what they were doing. Tore came up and nodded. Levon gave him a smile and raised his hand to wave them forward.

“Mórnir!” the Duke of Rhoden exclaimed.

Dave saw a shadow. He smelled something rotting.

He heard an arrow sing. But by that time he was flying through the air, knocked cleanly from his horse by Mabon’s leap. The Duke fell with him on the grass. This, thought Dave absurdly, is what Kevin did to Coll.

Then he saw what the black swan had done to his horse. Amid the stench of putrescence and the sickly sweet smell of blood, he fought to hold down his midday meal.

Avaia was already far above them, wheeling north. Dave’s brown stallion had had its back broken with the shattering force of the swan’s descent. Her claws had shredded it into strips of meat. The horse’s head had been ripped almost completely off. Blood fountained from the neck.

Levon had been knocked from his mount as well by the buffeting of the giant wings. Amid the screams of terrified horses and the shouts of men, he hurried over. Tore was gazing after the swan, his bow held in white fingers. Dave saw that they were shaking: he’d never seen Tore like that before.

He found that his legs would work and he stood up. Mabon of Rhoden rose slowly, red-faced; he’d had the wind knocked out of his lungs.

No one said a word for a moment. Avaia was out of sight already. Flidais, Dave was thinking, as he tried to control his pulse. Beware the boar, beware the swan…

“You saved my life,” he said.

“I know,” said Mabon quietly. No affectation. “I was looking to check the sun and I saw her diving.”

“Did you hit her?” Levon asked Tore.

Tore shook his head. “Her wing, maybe. Maybe.”

It had been so sudden, so terrifyingly brutal an attack. The sky was empty again, the wind blew gentle as before over the waving grasses. There was a dead horse beside them, though, its intestines oozing out, and a lingering odor of corruption that did not come from the horse.

“Why?” Dave asked. “Why me?”

Levon’s brown eyes were moving from shock to a grave knowledge. “One thing, only, I can think of,” he said. “She risked a great deal diving like that. She would have had to sense something and to have decided that there was a great deal to gain.” He gestured.

Dave put his hand to his side and touched the curving shape of Owein’s Horn.

Often, in his own world, it had come to pass that opposing players in a basketball game would single out Dave Martyniuk as the most dangerous player on his team. He would be treated to special attention: double coverage, verbal needling, frequently some less than legal intimidation. As he got older, and better at the game, it happened with increasing regularity.

It never ever worked.

“Let’s bury this horse,” Dave said now, in a voice so grim it startled even the two Dalrei. “Give me a saddle for one of the others and let’s get moving, Levon!” He stepped forward and retrieved his axe from the ruins of his saddle. There was blood all over it. Painstakingly, he wiped it clean until the head shone when he held it to the light.

They buried the horse; they gave him a saddle and another mount.

They rode.

Ivor was in the shaman’s house at sunset when they brought him word.

He had come at the end of the day to look in on his friend and had remained, helpless and appalled by what he read in Gereint’s face. The shaman’s body was placid and unmoving on his mat, but his mouth was twisted with a soundless terror and even the dark sockets of his eyes offered testimony of a terrible voyaging. Aching and afraid for the aged shaman, Ivor stayed, as if by bearing witness he could ease Gereint’s journey in some inchoate way. The old one was lost, Ivor realized, and with all his heart he longed to call him home.

Instead, he watched.

Then Cechtar came. “Levon is coming in,” he said from the doorway. “He has brought the Duke of Rhoden and five hundred men. And there is something else, Aven.”

Ivor turned.

The big Rider’s face was working strangely. “Two others have come from the north. Aven… they are the lios alfar and—oh, come see what they ride!”

He had never seen the lios. Of all the Dalrei living, only Levon and Tore had done so. And Levon was back, too, with five hundred of the High King’s men. With a quickening heart, Ivor rose. He cast one lingering glance at Gereint, then went out.

Levon was bringing his men in from the southwest; squinting, he could see them against the setting sun. In the open space before him, though, waiting quietly, were two of the lios alfar mounted up on raithen, and Ivor had never in his days thought to see either.

The lios were silver-haired, both, slim, with the elongated fingers and wide-set, changeable eyes of which he’d heard. Nothing he’d ever heard could prepare him, though, for their elusive, humbling beauty and, even motionless, their grace.

For all that, it was the raithen that claimed Ivor’s speechless gaze. The Dalrei were horsemen and lived to ride. The raithen of Daniloth were to horses as the gods were to men, and there were two of them before him now.

They were golden as the setting sun all through their bodies, but the head and tail and the four feet of each of them were silver, like the not-yet-risen moon. Their eyes were fiercely blue and shining with intelligence, and Ivor loved them on the instant with all his soul. And knew that every Dalrei there did the same.

A wave of pure happiness went through him for a moment. And then was dashed to pieces when the lios spoke to tell of an army of the Dark sweeping even now across the northern Plain.

“We warned them at Celidon,” the woman said. “Lydan and I will ride now toward Brennin. We alerted the High King with the summonglass last night. He should be on the Plain by now, heading for Daniloth. We will cut him off. Where do you want him to ride?”

Ivor found his voice amid the sudden babble of sound. “To Adein,” he said crsiply. “We will try to beat the Dark Ones to the river and hold them there for the High King. Can we make it?”

“If you go now and very fast you might,” said the one called Lydan. “Galen and I will ride to Aileron.”

“Wait!” Ivor cried. “You must rest. Surely the raithen must. If you have come all the way from Daniloth…”

The lios had to be brother and sister, so alike were they. They shook their heads. “They have had a thousand years to rest,” said Galen. “Both of these were at the Bael Rangat. They have not run free since.”