Guy Kay - The Wandering Fire

Not far from them, still smoldering, lay the thousand, thousand fragments of the Cauldron of Khath Meigol, shattered. Like a heart, thought Paul, and turned to walk the other way. He had to step over and around the dead svart alfar and the stones of the walls and ceiling dislodged in the final cataclysm. It was very quiet now. The green lights were gone. Diarmuid’s men were lighting torches around the Hall. By their glow Paul saw, as he came near, a figure on his knees rocking slowly back and forth amid the devastation with a dark head cradled in his lap.

I have lived for this, Matt Sören had said; and had made his mage go into him for killing, uttermost power. And had died.

Looking down in silence, Paul saw then in the Dwarf’s face, dead, a thing he had never seen in it, living: Matt Sören smiled amid the ruin of Cader Sedat, not the grimace they had learned to know but the true smile of one who has had what he most desired.

A thousand, thousand fragments, like a heart. Paul looked at Loren.

He touched the kneeling man, once, as the mage had touched him before; then he walked away. Looking back, he saw that Loren had cast his cloak over his face.

He saw Arthur with Diarmuid and went over to them. The torches were lit now, all around the Hall. Arthur said, “We have time, all the time we need to take. Let us leave him for a while.”

Together the three of them walked with Cavall down the dark, moldering corridors of Cader Sedat. It was damp and cold. A chill, sourceless wind seemed to be blowing among the crumbling stones.

“You spoke of the dead?” Paul murmured.

“I did,” said Arthur. “Spiral Castle holds, below the level of the sea, the mightiest of the dead in all the worlds.” They turned. Another darker corridor.

“You spoke of waking them,” Paul said.

Arthur shook his head. “I cannot. I was trying to frighten him. They can only be wakened by name and, when last here, I was very young and I did not know—” He stopped, then, and stood utterly still.

No! Paul thought. It is enough. It has been enough, surely.

He opened his mouth to speak but found he could not. The Warrior took a slow breath, as if drawing it from his long past, from the core of his being. Then he nodded, once only, and with effort, as if moving his head against a weight of worlds.

“Come,” was all he said. Paul looked at Diarmuid, and in the darkness he saw the same stiff apprehension in the Prince’s face. They followed Arthur and the dog.

This time they went down. The corridor Arthur took sloped sharply, and they had to use the walls to keep their balance. The stones were clammy to the touch. There was light now, though, a faint phosphorescence of the corridor itself. Diarmuid’s white tunic gleamed in it.

They became aware of a steady pounding noise beyond the walls.

“The sea,” Arthur said quietly, and then stopped before a door Paul had not seen. The Warrior turned to the two of them. “You may prefer to wait out here,” he said.

There was a silence.

Paul shook his head. “I have tasted death,” he said.

Diarmuid smiled, a brief flash of his old smile. “One of us in there,” he said, “had best be normal, don’t you think?”

So they left the dog by the door and passed within, amid the incessant pounding of the sea on the walls.

There were fewer than Paul had thought there would be. It was not an overly large chamber. The floor was stone and without adornment. In the center stood a single pillar, and upon it one candle burned with a white flame that did not waver. The walls gleamed palely. Set around the room in alcoves dimly lit by the candle and the phosphorescence of the walls were perhaps twenty bodies lying on beds of stone. Only that many, Paul thought, from all the dead in all the worlds. Almost he walked over to look upon them, to see the faces of the chosen great, but a diffidence overtook him, a sense of intruding upon their rest. Then he felt Diarmuid’s hand on his arm, and he saw that Arthur was standing in front of one of the alcoves and that his hands were covering his face.

“It is enough!” Paul cried aloud and moved to Arthur’s side.

In front of them, as if asleep, save that he did not breathe, lay a man of more than middle height. His hair was black, his cheeks shaven. His eyes were closed, but wide-set under a high forehead. His mouth and chin were firm, and his hands, Paul saw, clasped the hilt of a sword and were very beautiful. He looked to have been a lord among men, and if he was lying in this place, Paul knew, he had been.

He also knew who this was.

“My lord Arthur,” said Diarmuid painfully, “you do not have to do this. It is neither written nor compelled.”

Arthur lowered his hands. His gaze never left the face of the man who lay on the stone.

“He will be needed,” he said. “He cannot but be needed. I should have known it was too soon for me to die.”

“You are willing your own grief,” Paul whispered.

Arthur turned to him at that, and his eyes were compassionate. “It was willed long ago.”

Looking on Arthur Pendragon’s face in that moment, Paul saw a purer nobility than he had ever seen in his days. More, even, than in Liranan, or Cernan of the Beasts. Here was the quintessence, and everything in him cried out against the doom that lay behind this monstrous choice.

Diarmuid, he saw, had turned away.

“Lancelot!” said Arthur to the figure on the bed of stone.

His eyes were brown. He was taller than Paul had first thought. His voice was mild and low and unexpectedly gentle. The other surprising thing was the dog. Paul had thought Cavall’s loyalty would make him hostile, but instead he’d come up to the dark-haired man with a quiet sound of joy. Lancelot had knelt to stroke the torn grey fur, and Paul could see him register the presence of the scars. Then he had walked in silence between Paul and Diarmuid back up to the living world.

He had only spoken at the very beginning. After he had first risen to the Warrior’s command. Risen, as if, truly, he had only been asleep and not dead so very, very long.

Arthur had said, “Be welcome. We are at war against the Dark in Fionavar, which is the first world of all. I have been summoned, and so now are you.”

And Lancelot had replied with courtesy and sorrow, “Why have you done this, my lord, to the three of us?”

Arthur had closed his eyes at that. Then opened them and said, “Because there are more at risk than the three of us. I will see if I can have us fight in different companies.”

And Lancelot had answered mildly, “Arthur, you know I will not fight save under you and by your side.”

At which point Arthur had turned on his heel to walk away, and Diarmuid and Paul had named themselves and, with Lancelot, had followed the Warrior back from the place of the dead amid the pounding of the sea.

Loren had risen. His cloak lay covering the body of Matt Sören. The mage, his face numb with weariness and shock, listened as Diarmuid and Arthur made plans for their departure. He hardly acknowledged Lancelot’s presence, though the men of South Keep were whispering among each other with awe.

It was, Paul gathered, still daylight outside. Not long after noon, in fact. It seemed to him as if they had been on the island forever. In a way, he supposed, a part of him would always be on this island. Too much had happened here. They were going to be leaving almost immediately, it appeared. No one was minded to spend a night in this place.

Loren turned. Paul saw him walk over to one of the torches. He stood there with the pages of a book in his hand, feeding them one by one to the flame. Paul went over to him. Loren’s face was streaked with the tracks of tears and sweat, running down through the soot and grime stirred up when the last bolt fell. Matt’s last, Paul thought. And Loren’s too. His source was dead. He wasn’t a mage any more.