Guy Kay - The Summer Tree

It didn’t faze her. With a shrug of acceptance, Leila turned and continued up the slope to the sanctuary.

He wrestled with it for several strides, then admitted a rare defeat. “Hold,” Loren said, and heard Matt’s snort of laughter beside him. “What is your news?”

The Dwarf, he was aware, was finding this whole exchange richly amusing. It was, he supposed.

“He is alive,” Leila said, and suddenly there was nothing amusing about anything at all.

There had been darkness. A sense of movement, of being moved. The stars very close, then impossibly far away, and receding. Everything receding.

The next time there was an impression, blurred as through rain on glass, of candles wavering, with gray shapes moving ambiguously beyond their arc. He was still now, but soon he felt himself slipping back again, as a tide withdraws to the dark sea wherein there lie no discontinuities.

Except the fact of his presence.

Of his being alive.

Paul opened his eyes, having come a long way. And it seemed, after all the journeying, that he was lying on a bed in a room where there were, indeed, candles burning. He was very weak. There was astonishingly little physical pain, though, and the other kind of pain was so newly allowed it was almost a luxury. He took one slow breath that meant life, and then another to welcome back sorrow.

“Oh, Rachel,” he breathed, scarcely a sound. Forbidden once, the most forbidden name. But then intercession had come, before he died, and absolution allowing grief.

Except that he hadn’t died. A thought like a blade pierced him at that: was he alive because he’d failed? Was that it? With an effort he turned his head. The movement revealed a tall figure standing by the bed gazing down at him from between the candles.

“You are in the Temple of the Mother,” Jaelle said. “It is raining outside.”

Rain. There was a bitter challenge in her eyes, but it couldn’t touch him in that moment. He was beyond her. He turned his head away. It was raining; he was alive. Sent back. Arrow of the God.

He felt the presence of Mörnir then, within himself, latent, tacit. There was a burden in that, and soon it would have to be addressed, but not yet, not yet. Now was for lying still, tasting the sense of being himself again for the first time in so very long. Ten months. And three nights that had been forever. Oh, he could go with joy a little ways, it was allowed. Eyes closed, he sank deep into the pillow. He was desperately weak, but weakness was all right now. There was rain.

“Dana spoke to you.”

He could hear the vivid rage in her voice. Too much of it; he ignored her. Kevin , he thought. I want to see Kev. Soon ,he told himself, after I sleep .

She slapped him hard across the face. He felt a raking nail draw blood.

“You are in the sanctuary. Answer!”

Paul Schafer opened his eyes. With cold scorn of his own, he confronted her fury. This time, Jaelle looked away.

After a moment she spoke, gazing at one of the long candles. “All my life I have dreamt of hearing the Goddess speak, of seeing her face.” Bitterness had drained her voice. “Not me, though. Not anything at all. Yet you, a man, and one who turned from her entirely for the God in his wood, have been allowed grant of her grace. Do you wonder why I hate you?”

The utter flatness of her tone made the words more chilling than any explosion of anger would have been. Paul was silent a moment, then he said, “I am her child, too. Do not begrudge the gift she offered me.”

“Your life, you mean?” She was looking at him again, tall and slender between the candles.

He shook his head; it was still an effort. “Not that. In the beginning, perhaps, but not now. It was the God who gave me this.”

“Not so. You are a greater fool than I thought if you know not Dana when she comes.”

“Actually,” he said, but gently, for it was a matter too high for wrangling, “I do know. In this case, better than you, Priestess. The Goddess was there, yes, and she did intercede, though not for my life. For something else before the end. But it was Mörnir who saved me. It was his to choose. The Summer Tree is the God’s, Jaelle.”

For the first time he read a flicker of doubt in the wide-set eyes. “She was there, though? She did speak? Tell me what she said.”

“No,” said Paul, with finality.

“You must.” But it was not a command now. He had a vague sense that there was something he should, something he wanted to say to her, but he was so weary, so utterly drained. Which triggered a completely different realization.

“You know,” he said, with feeling, “that I haven’t had food or drink for three days. Is there…?”

She stood still a moment, but when she moved, it was to a tray on a low table by the far wall. She brought a bowl of cool soup to the bed. Unfortunately it seemed that his hands didn’t work very well yet. He thought she would send for one of the gray-clad priestesses, but in the end she sat stiffly on the bed beside him and fed him herself.

He ate in silence, leaning back against the pillows when he was done. She made as if to get up, but then, with an expression of distaste, used the sleeve of her white gown to wipe the blood from his cheek.

She did rise then, to stand tall and queenly by his bed, her hair the color of the candlelight. Looking up at her, he felt at a disadvantage suddenly.

“Why,” he asked, “am I here?”

“I read the signs.”

“You didn’t expect to find me alive?”

She shook her head. “No, but it was the third night, and then the moon rose…”

He nodded. “But why?” he asked. “Why bother?”

Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be such a child. There is a war now. You will be needed.”

He felt his heart skip. “What do you mean? What war?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve been somewhat out of touch,” he said sharply. “What has happened?”

It may have taken an effort, but her voice was controlled. “Rangat exploded yesterday. A hand of fire in the sky. The wardstone is shattered. Rakoth is free.”

He was very still.

“The King is dead,” she said.

“That I know,” he said. “I heard the bells.”

But for the first time now, her expression was strained; something difficult moved in her eyes. “There is more,” said Jaelle. “A party of lios alfar were ambushed here by svarts and wolves. Your friend was with them. Jennifer. I am sorry, but she was captured and taken north. A black swan bore her away.”

So. He closed his eyes again, feeling the burdens coming down. It seemed they could not be deferred after all. Arrow of the God. Spear of the God. Three nights and forever, the King had said. The King was dead. And Jen.

He looked up again. “Now I know why he sent me back.”

As if against her will, Jaelle nodded. “Twiceborn,” she murmured.

Wordlessly, he asked with his eyes.

“There is a saying,” she whispered, “a very old one: No man shall be Lord of the Summer Tree who has not twice been born.”

And so by candlelight in the sanctuary, he heard the words for the first time.

“I didn’t ask for this,” Paul Schafer said.

She was very beautiful, very stern, a flame, as the candles were. “Are you asking me for pity?”

His mouth crooked wryly at that. “Hardly, at this point.” He smiled a little. “Why is it so much easier for you to strike a defenseless man than to wipe the blood from his face?”

Her reply was formal, reflexive, but he had seen her eyes flinch away. “There is mercy in the Goddess sometimes,” she said, “but not gentleness.”

“Is that how you know her?” he asked. “What if I tell you that I had from her last night a compassion so tender there are no words to compass it?”