Guy Kay - The Summer Tree

This, Kim thought, is what Ysanne had done. With an act of love so great—and not just for her—it could scarcely be assimilated, she had stripped her soul of any place it held in time. She was gone, utterly. Not just from life, but more, much more, as Kim now knew—from death as well; from what lay after in the patterns of the Weaver for his children.

Instead, the Seer had given all she could to Kim, had given all. No longer could Kim say she was not of Fionavar, for within her now pulsed an intuitive understanding of this world more deep even than the knowledge of her own. Looking now at a bannion, she would know what it was; she understood the vellin on her wrist, something of the wild Baelrath on her finger; and one day she would know who was to bear the Circlet of Lisen and tread the darkest path of all. Raederth’s words; Raederth whom Ysanne had lost again, that Kim might have this.

Which was so unfair. What right, what possible right had the Seer had to make such a sacrifice? To impose with this impossible gift, such a burden? How had she presumed to decide for Kim?

The answer, though, was easy enough after a while: she hadn’t. Kim could go, leave, deny. She could cross home as planed and dye her hair, or leave it as it was and go New Wave if she preferred. Nothing had changed.

Except, of course, that everything had. How can you tell the dancer from the dance? she had read somewhere. Or the dreamer from the dream, she amended, feeling a little lost. Because the answer to that was easiest of all.

You can’t.

Some time later she laid her hand, in the way she now knew, upon the slab below the table, and saw the door appear.

Down the worn stone stairs she went, in her turn. Lisen’s Light showed her the way. The dagger would be there, she knew, with red blood on the silver-blue thieren of the blade. There would be no body, though, for Ysanne the Seer, having died with love and by that blade, had taken herself beyond the walls of time, where she could not be followed. Lost and forever. It was final, absolute. It was ended.

And she was left here in the first world of them all, bearing the burden of that.

She cleaned Lokdal and sheathed it to a sound like a harpstring. She put it back in the cabinet. Then she went up the stairs again towards the world that needed her, all the worlds that needed what it seemed she was.

“Oh, God,” Kevin said. “It’s Paul!”

A stunned silence descended, overwhelming in its import. This was something for which none of them could have prepared. I should have known, Kevin was thinking, though. I should have figured it out when he first told me about the Tree. A bitterness scaling towards rage pulled his head up…

“That must have been some chess game,” he said savagely to the King.

“It was,” Ailell said simply. Then, “He came to me and offered. I would never have asked, or even thought to ask. Will you believe this?”

And of course he did. It fit too well. The attack was unfair, because Paul would have done what he wanted to, exactly what he wanted to, and this was a better way to die than falling from a rope down a cliff. As such things were measured, and he supposed they could be measured. It hurt, though, it really hurt, and—

“No!” said Loren decisively. “It must be stopped. This we cannot do. He is not even one of us, my lord. We cannot lay our griefs upon him in this way. He must be taken down. This is a guest of your House, Ailell. Of our world. What were you thinking of?”

“Of our world. Of my House. Of my people. He came to me, Silvercloak.”

“And should have been refused!”

“Loren, it was a true offering.” The speaker was Gorlaes, his voice unwontedly diffident.

“You were there?” the mage bristled.

“I bound him. He walked past us to the Tree. It was as if he were alone. I know not how, and I am afraid here speaking of it, as I was in the Godwood, but I swear it is a proper offering.”

“No,” Loren said again, his face sharp with emotion. “He cannot possibly understand what he is doing. My lord, he must be taken down before he dies.”

“It is his own death, Loren. His chosen gift. Would you presume to strip it from him?” Ailell’s eyes were so old, so weary.

“I would,” the mage replied. “He was not brought here to die for us.”

It was time to speak.

“Maybe not,” Kevin said, forcing the words out, stumbling and in pain. “But I think that is why he came.” He was losing them both. Jennifer. Now Paul, too. His heart was sore. “If he went, he went knowing, and because he wanted to. Let him die for you, if he can’t live for himself. Leave him, Loren. Let him go.”

He didn’t bother trying to hide the tears, not even from Jaelle, whose eyes on his face were so cold.

“Kevin,” said the mage gently, “it is a very bad death. No one lasts the three—it will be waste and to no point. Let me take him down.”

“It is not for you to choose, Silvercloak,” Jaelle spoke then. “Nor for this one, either.”

Loren turned, his eyes hard as flint. “If I decide to bring him down,” he said driving the words into her, “then it will be necessary for you to kill me to prevent it.”

“Careful, mage,” Gorlaes cautioned, though mildly. “That is close to treason. The High King has acted here. Would you undo what he has done?”

None of them seemed to be getting the point. “No one has acted but Paul,” Kevin said. He felt drained now, but completely unsurprised. He really should have known this was coming. “Loren, if anyone understood this, it was him. If he lasts three nights, will there be rain?”

“There might be.” It was the King. “This is wild magic, we cannot know.”

“Blood magic,” Loren amended bitterly.

Teyrnon shook his head. “The God is wild, though there may be blood.”

“He can’t last, though,” Diarmuid said, his voice sober. He looked at Kevin. “You said yourself, he’s been ill.”

A cracked, high laugh escaped Kevin at that.

“Never stopped him,” he said fiercely, feeling it so hard. “The stubborn, brave, son of a bitch!”

The love in the harsh words reached through to all of them, it could not help but do so; and it had to be acknowledged. Even by Jaelle and, in a very different way, by Loren Silvercloak.

“Very well,” said the mage at last. He sank into a chair. “Oh, Kevin. They will sing of him here as long as Brennin lasts, regardless of the end.”

“Songs,” said Kevin. “Songs only mess you up.” It was too much effort not to ache; he let it sweep over him. Sometimes, his father had said, you can’t do anything. Oh, Abba , he thought, far away and alone inside the hurt.

“Tomorrow,” Ailell the High King said, rising again, gaunt and tall. “I will meet you here at sunrise tomorrow. We will see what the night brings.”

It was a dismissal. They withdrew, leaving the King sitting at the last alone in his council chamber with his years, his self-contempt, and the image of the stranger on the Tree in his name, in the name of the God, in his name.

They went outside into the central courtyard, Diarmuid, Loren, Matt, and Kevin Laine. In silence they walked together, the same face in their minds, and Kevin was grateful for the presence of friends.

The heat was brutal, and the sour wind abraded them under the sickly, filtered sun. A prickly tension seemed woven into the texture of the day. And then, suddenly, there was more.

“ Hold! ” cried Matt the Dwarf, whose people were of the caverns of the earth, the roots of mountains, the ancient rocks. “Hold! Something comes!”

And in the same instant, north and west of them, Kim Ford rose, a blinding pulse in her head, an apprehension of enormity, and moved, as if compelled, out back of the cottage where Tyrth was laboring. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh my God!” Seeing with distorted vision the vellin bracelet writhing on her wrist, knowing it could not ward what was coming, what had been coming for so long, so terribly, what none of them had seen, none, what was here, now, right now! She screamed, in overwhelming agony.