Guy Kay - The Summer Tree

They had come full circle, back to the benches under the last window, close to the throne. Overhead, Colan’s yellow hair was brilliant in the sunlight that poured through the windows.

“It remains only to tell you,” Matt Sören said, gazing directly at her now, “that when the Council of Mages gathers at midwinter, Nilsom’s is a name whose memory we curse by ritual.”

“I should think,” said Jennifer, with some spirit.

“So, too,” said the Dwarf softly, “is the name of Aideen.”

“ What? ”

Matt’s gaze was unwavering. “She betrayed her mage,” he said. “In the laws of our Order, there is no crime so deep. None. No matter what the cause. Every year Loren and I curse her memory at midwinter and we do so truly. And every year,” he added, very low, very gently, “when the snows melt in the spring, we lay the first of the wildflowers on her grave.”

From that composed glance, Jennifer turned her head away. She felt close to tears. She was too far from home, and it was all so difficult and so strange. Why should such a woman be cursed? It was too hard. What she needed, she realized, was exercise, fifty hard laps in a pool to clear her head, or else, and better still…

“Oh, Matt,” she said. “I need to move, to do something. Are there horses for us to ride?”

And of all things, that cracked the solid composure of the Dwarf. Astonishingly, he flushed. “There are horses, of course,” he said awkwardly, “but I fear I will not join you—Dwarves do not ride for pleasure. Why don’t you go with Laesha and Drance, though?”

“Okay,” she said, but then lingered, unwilling, suddenly, to leave him.

“I’m sorry if I have troubled you,” Matt said. “It is a difficult story.”

Jennifer shook her head. “More for you, surely, than for me. Thank you for sharing it. Thanks for a lot.” And, bending swiftly, she kissed him on the cheek and ran from the hall to find Laesha, leaving a normally phlegmatic Dwarf in a remarkably unsettled state.

And so did it come to pass, three hours later, that the two women had galloped with Diarmuid’s man to the crest of a ridge east of the town, where they stilled their tired horses in disbelief, as a small party of ethereal figures ascended the slope towards them, their tread so light the grass seemed not to bend beneath their feet.

“Welcome!” said their leader as he stopped before them. He bowed, his long silver hair glinting in the light. “This hour is brightly woven.” His voice was like music in a high place. He spoke directly to Jennifer. She was aware that Drance beside her, the prosaic soldier, had tears shining on his transfigured face.

“Will you come down among the trees and feast with us this evening?” the silver-haired figure asked. “You are most welcome. My name is Brendel of the Kestrel Mark, from Daniloth. We are the lios alfar.”

The return to Brennin was almost effortless, as if they were being propelled homeward by a following wind. Erron, fluid and agile, went first again on the climb back up the cliff, and he hammered iron spikes into the rock face for the rest of them.

They came again to the horses, mounted, and began galloping north once more on the dusty roads of the High Kingdom. The mood was exhilarated and chaotic. Joining in the bawdy chorus of a song Coll was leading, Kevin couldn’t remember feeling happier; after the incident on the river, he and Paul seemed to have been completely accepted by the band, and because he respected these men, that acceptance mattered. Erron was becoming a friend, and so, too, was Carde, singing away on Kevin’s left side. Paul, on the other side, wasn’t singing, but he didn’t seem unhappy, and he had a lousy voice anyway.

Just past midday they came to the same inn where they had stopped before. Diarmuid called a halt for lunch and a quick beer, which became, given the prevailing mood, several slow beers. Coll, Kevin noticed, had disappeared.

The extended break meant that they were going to miss the banquet in the Great Hall that night. Diarmuid didn’t seem to care.

“It’s the Black Boar tonight, my friends,” he announced, glittering and exhilarated at the head of the table. “I’m in no mood for court manners. Tonight I celebrate with you and let the manners look after themselves. Tonight we take our pleasure. Will you drink with me to the Dark Rose of Cathal?”

Kevin cheered with the others, drank with the others.

Kimberly had dreamt again. The same one at first: the stones, the ring, the wind—and the same grief in her heart. And again she woke just as the words of power reached her lips.

This time, though, she had fallen asleep again, to find another dream waiting, as if at the bottom of a pool.

She was in the room of Ailell the King. She saw him tossing restlessly on his bed, saw the young page asleep on his pallet. Even as she watched, Ailell woke in the dark of his chamber. A long time he lay still, breathing raggedly, then she saw him rise painfully, as if against his own desire. He lit a candle and carried it to an inner doorway in the room, through which he passed. Invisible, insubstantial, she followed the King down a corridor lit only by the weaving candle he bore, and she paused with him before another door, into which was set a sliding view-hole.

When Ailell put his eyes to the aperture, somehow she was looking with him, seeing what he saw, and Kimberly saw with the High King the white naal fire and the deep blue shining of Ginserat’s stone, set into the top of its pillar.

Only after a long time did Ailell withdraw, and in the dream Kim saw herself move to look again, standing on tiptoe to gaze with her own eyes into the room of the stone.

And looking in, she saw no stone at all, and the room was dark.

Wheeling in terror, she saw the High King walking back towards his chamber, and waiting there for him in the doorway was a shadowed figure that she knew.

His face rigid as if it were stone, Paul Schafer stood before Ailell, and he was holding a chess piece in his outstretched hand, and coming nearer to them, Kim saw that it was the white king, and it was broken. There was a music all about them that she couldn’t recognize, although she knew she should. Ailell spoke words she could not hear because the music was too loud, and then Paul spoke, and she needed desperately to hear, but the music… And then the King held high his candle and began to speak again, and she could not, could not, could not.

Then everything was blasted to nothingness by the howling of a dog, so loud it filled the universe.

And she awoke to the morning sunlight and the smell of food frying over the cooking fire.

“Good morning,” said Ysanne. “Come and eat, before Malka steals it all. Then I have something to show you.”

Coll rejoined them on the road north of the town. Paul Schafer eased his horse over to the roan stallion the big man rode.

“Being discreet?” he asked.

Above his broken nose Coil’s eyes were guarded. “Not exactly. But he wanted to do something.”

“Which means?”

“The man had to die, but his wife and children can be helped.”

“So you’ve paid them. Is that why he delayed just now in the tavern? To give you time? It wasn’t just because he felt like drinking, was it?”

Coll nodded. “He often feels like drinking,” he said wryly, “but he very rarely acts without reason. Tell me,” he went on, as Schafer remained silent, “Do you think he did wrong?”

Paul’s expression was unreadable.

“Gorlaes would have hanged him,” Coll pressed, “and had the body torn apart. His family would have been dispossessed of their land. Now his eldest son is going to South Keep to be trained as one of us. Do you really think he did wrong?”