The Wandering Fire

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  And then, by the rising of a wind where none had been before, she knew she had.

  Leaning forward into it, holding the Baelrath before her, she saw, in the very centre of the monument, a figure standing on the altar stone. He was tall and shadowed, wrapped in mist as in a shroud, only half incarnated in the half-light of star and stone. She fought the weight of him, the drag; he had been so long dead and she had made him rise.

  No space for sorrow here, and weakness shown might break the summoning. She said:

  “Uther Pendragon, attend me, for I command your will!”

  “Command me not, I am a King!” His voice was high, stretched taut on a wire of centuries, but imperious still.

  No space for mercy. None at all. She hardened her heart. “You are dead,” she said coldly, in the cold wind. “And given over to the stone I bear.”

  “Why should this be so?”

  The wind was rising. “For Ygraine deceived, and a son falsely engendered.” The old, old telling.

  Uther drew himself to his fullest height, and he was very tall above his tomb. “Has he not proven great beyond all measure?”

  And thus: “Even so,” said Kimberly, and there was a soreness in her now that no hardening could stay. “And I would call him by the name you guard.”

  The dead King spread his hands to the watching stars. “Has he not suffered enough?” the father cried in a voice that overrode the wind.

  To this there was no decent reply, and so she said, “I have no time, Uther, and he is needed. By the burning of my stone I compel you—what is the name?”

  She could see the sternness of his face, and steeled her own that he might read no irresolution there. He was fighting her; she could feel the earth pulling him away, and down.

  “Do you know the place?” Uther Pendragon asked.

  “I know.”

  And in his eyes, as if through mist or smoke, she saw that he knew this was so, and this with the Baelrath would master him. Her very soul was turning over with the pain of it. So much steel she could not be, it seemed.

  He said, “He was young when it happened, the incest, and the rest of it. He was afraid, because of the prophecy. Can they not have pity? Is there none?”

  What was she that the proud Kings of the dead should beseech her so? “The name!” said Kimberly into the keening of the wind, and she raised the ring above her head to master him.

  And, mastered, he told her, and it seemed as if stars were falling everywhere, and she had brought them tumbling down from heaven with what she was.

  She was sheer red, she was wild, the night could not hold her. She could rise, even now, to come down as red moonlight might fall, but not here. In another place.

  It was high. High enough to have once been an island in a lake like glass. Then the waters had receded all over Somerset, leaving a plain where waters had been, and a seven-ridged hill high above that plain. But when a place has been an island the memory of water lingers, and of water magic, no matter how far away the sea may be, or how long ago it fell away.

  And so it was with Glastonbury Tor, which had been called Avalon in its day and had seen three queens row a dying king to its shore.

  So much of the filtered legends had been close to true, but the rest was so far off it carried its own grief with it. Kim looked around the summit of the Tor and saw the thin moon rise in the east above the long plain. The Baelrath was beginning to fade even as she watched, and with it the power that had carried her here.

  There was a thing to do while it yet burned, and raising the ring she turned, a beacon in the night, back to face Stonehenge, so many miles away. She reached out as she had done once before, though it was easier now, she was very strong tonight, and she found the four of them, gathered them together, Kevin and Paul, Jennifer and Dave, and before the Warstone faded, she sent them to Fionavar with the last red wildness Stonehenge had engendered.

  Then the light she bore became only a ring on her finger, and it was dark on the windy summit of the Tor.

  There was enough moonlight for her to make out the chapel that had been erected there some seven hundred years ago. She was shivering, now, and not only with cold. The burning ring had lifted her, given her resolution beyond her ordinary reach. Now she was Kimberly Ford only, or it seemed that way, and she felt daunted here on this ancient mound that yet gave scent of sea wind here in the midst of Somerset.

  She was about to do something terrible, to set once more in motion the workings of a curse so old it made the wind seem young.

  There had been a mountain, though, in the northland of Fionavar, and once it had held a god prisoner. Then there had been a detonation so vast it could only mean one thing, and Rakoth the Unraveller had been no longer bound. There was so much power coming down on them, and if Fionavar was lost then all the worlds would fall to Maugrim, and the Tapestry be torn and twisted on the Worldloom past redress.

  She thought of Jennifer in Starkadh.

  She thought of Ysanne.

  With the ring quiescent on her hand, no power in her but the name she knew, terrible and merciless, she drew upon her need for strength in that high dark place and spoke in her own voice the one word that the Warrior needs must answer to:

  “Childslayer!”

  Then she closed her eyes, for the Tor, the whole Somerset Plain, seemed to be shaking with an agonized convulsion. There was a sound: wind, sorrow, lost music. He had been young and afraid, the dead father had said—and the dead spoke truth or lay silent—Merlin’s prophecy had tolled a knell for the shining of the dream, and so he had ordered the children slain. Oh, how could one not weep? All the children, so that his incestuous, marring, foretold seed might not live to break the bright dream. Little more than a child himself he had been, but a thread had been entrusted to his name, and thus a world, and when the babies died …

  When the babies died the Weaver had marked him down for a long unwinding doom. A cycle of war and expiation under many names, and in many worlds, that redress be made for the children and for love.

  Kim opened her eyes and saw the low, thin moon. She saw the stars of spring hang brightly overhead, and she was not wrong in thinking they were brighter than they had been before.

  Then she turned and, in the celestial light, saw that she was not alone in that high enchanted place.

  He was no longer young. How could he have been young after so many wars? His beard was dark, though flecked with grey, and his eyes not yet fixed in time. She thought she saw stars in them. He leaned upon a sword, his hands wrapped around the hilt as if it were the only certain thing in the wide night, and then he said in a voice so gentle and so weary it found her heart, “I was Arthur here, my lady, was I not?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “I have carried other names elsewhere.”

  “I know.” She swallowed. “This is your true name, though, your first.”

  “Not the other?”

  Oh, what was she? “Not that. I will never tell it, or speak it again. I give you an oath.”

  Slowly he straightened. “Others will, though, as others have before.”

  “I cannot do anything to alter that. I only summoned because of our need.”

  He nodded. “There is war here?”

  “In Fionavar.”

  At that he drew himself up: not so tall as his father had been, yet majesty lay about him like a cloak, and he lifted his head into the rising wind as if hearing a distant horn.

  “Is this the last battle, then?”

  “If we lose, it will be.”

  On the words, he seemed to coalesce, as if acceptance ended his passage from wherever he had been. There were no longer stars in the depths of his eyes; they were brown, and kind, and of the broad, tilled earth.

  “Very well,” said Arthur.

  And that mild affirmation was what, finally, broke Kimberly. She dropped to her knees and lowered her face to weep.

  A moment later she felt herself lifted, effortlessly, and wrapped in an
embrace so encompassing she felt, on that lonely elevation, as if she had come home after long voyaging. She laid her head on his broad chest, felt the strong beating of his heart, and took comfort even as she grieved.

  After a time he stepped back. She wiped away her tears and saw, without surprise, that the Baelrath was aglow again. She was aware, for the first time, of how weary she felt, with so much power channelling itself through her. She shook her head: no time, none at all, to be weak. She looked at him.

  “Have I your forgiveness?”

  “You never needed it,” Arthur said. “Not half as much as I need all of yours.”

  “You were young.”

  “They were babies,” he said quietly. And then, after a pause, “Are they there yet, the two of them?”

  And the hurting in his voice laid bare for her, for the first time, the true nature of how he had been cursed. She should have known, it had been there to see. For the children and for love.

  “I don’t know,” she said, with difficulty.

  “They always are,” he said, “because I had the babies killed.”

  There was no answer to make, and she didn’t trust her voice in any case. Instead she took him by the hand, and holding high the Baelrath once again with the last strength she had, she crossed with Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior Condemned, to Fionavar and war.

  PART II

  OWEIN

  Chapter 4

  Ruana essayed the thin chant, having only Iraima to aid him. He had scant hope it would carry as far as it had to go, but there was nothing else he could think of to do. So he lay in the dark, listening to the others dying around him, and he chanted the warnsong and the savesong over and over again. Iraima helped when she could, but she was very weak.

  In the morning their captors found that Taieri had died, and he was taken out and devoured. After, the ones outside burned his bones for warmth against the bitter cold. Ruana choked on the smoke that drifted from the pyre. It had been placed in front of the cave, to make breathing harder for them. He heard Iraima coughing. They would not be killed directly, he knew, for fear of the bloodcurse, but they had been without food in the caves a long time now, and breathing the smoke of their brothers and sisters. Ruana wondered, abstractly, what it would be like to feel hate or rage. Closing his eyes, he chanted the kanior once for Taieri, knowing it was not being done in proper accordance with the rites, and asking forgiveness for this. Then he began the other two again in cycle, the warnsong and the savesong, over and over. Iraima joined in with him awhile, and Ikatere as well, but mostly Ruana sang alone.

  They climbed up to Atronel over the green grass, and the high ones of all three Marks were there before Ra-Tenniel. Only Brendel was away south, in Paras Derval, so Heilyn represented the Kestrel. Galen and Lydan, the twins, stood forth for the Brein Mark, and fairest Leyse for the Swan, and she was clad in white as the Swan Mark always were, for memory of Lauriel. Enroth, who was eldest since Laien Spearchild had gone to his song, was there as well—Markless and of all Marks, as were the Eldest and the King alone.

  Ra-Tenniel made the throne glow brightly blue, and fierce Galen smiled, though it could be seen that her brother frowned.

  Leyse offered a flower to the King. “From by Celyn,” she murmured. “There is a fair grove there, of silver and red sylvain.”

  “I would go with you to see them,” Ra-Tenniel replied.

  Leyse smiled, elusive. “Are we to open the sky tonight, Brightest Lord?”

  He accepted the deflection. This time Lydan smiled.

  “We are,” said Ra-Tenniel. “Na-Enroth?”

  “It is woven,” the Eldest affirmed. “We will try to draw him forth from Starkadh.”

  “And if we do?” Lydan asked.

  “Then we go to war,” Ra-Tenniel replied. “But if we wait, or if the Dark One waits as he seems purposed to do, then our allies may be dead of this winter before Maugrim comes after us.”

  Heilyn spoke for the first time. “He has made the winter then? This is known?”

  “It is known,” Enroth replied. “And another thing is known. The Baelrath blazed two nights ago. Not in Fionavar, but it was on fire.”

  They stirred at that. “The Seer?” Lyse ventured. “In her world?”

  “So it would seem,” Enroth said. “Something new is threading across the Loom.”

  “Or something very old,” Ra-Tenniel amended, and the Eldest bowed his head.

  “Then why do we wait?” Galen cried. Her rich singer’s voice carried to the others on the slopes of Atronel. A murmur like a note of music came to the six of them by the throne.

  “We do not, once we are agreed,” Ra-Tenniel replied. “Is it not bitterest irony that we who are named for Light should have been forced to cloak our land in shadow for this thousand years? Why should Daniloth be named the Shadowland? Would you not see the stars bright over Atronel, and send forth our own light in answer back to them?”

  The music of agreement and desire was all about them on the mound. It carried even careful Lydan, and he, too, let his eyes reach crystal as Ra-Tenniel made the throne shine full bright, and, speaking the words necessary, he undid the spell Lathen Mistweaver had woven after the Bael Rangat. And the lios alfar, the Children of Light, sang then with one voice of praise to see the stars undimmed overhead, and to know that all over the northland of Fionavar the shining of Daniloth would illuminate the night for the first time in a thousand years.

  It exposed them, of course, which was the gallant purpose of what they did. They made themselves a lure, the most tantalizing lure there could ever be, to draw Rakoth Maugrim down from Starkadh.

  All night they stayed awake. No one would sleep, not with the stars to see, and then the waxing moon. And not with their borders open to the north, where they knew the Unraveller would be upon his towers among the Ice, seeing their taunting, iridescent glow. They sang in praise of the light, that their clear voices might reach him, too, and clearest of them all sang Ra-Tenniel, Lord of the lios alfar.

  In the morning they put back the Mistweaver’s shadowing. Those sent to keep watch by the borders returned to Atronel to report that a mighty storm was howling southward over the bleak, empty Plain.

  Light is swifter than wind. In the country south of Rienna the Dalrei saw the glow above Daniloth as soon as it went up. The newest storm would take some time to reach them.

  Which is not to say it wasn’t cold enough on watch by the gates where Navon of the third tribe took his turn on guard. Being a Rider among the Dalrei was still a glorious thing for one who had seen his animal so recently, but there were less pleasant aspects to it for a fourteen-year-old, staring out into the white night for wolves while the wind tore at his eltor cloak, seeking the thin bones underneath.

  While word of the light far in the northwest ran wild through the clustered camps, Navon concentrated on his watch. He had slipped up on his first hunt as a Rider; his attempt at a flashy kill had been one of the failures that led Levon dan Ivor to risk his life trying Revor’s Kill. Trying and succeeding. And though the hunt leader of the third tribe had never said a word to him, Navon had striven ever since to erase the memory of his folly.

  The more so, because every member of the third tribe felt an added pride and responsibility after what had happened at Celidon when the snows began and the wolves had begun to kill the eltor. Navon remembered his first sickening sight of slaughtered grace in the land between the Adein and Celidon itself, mockingly near to the mid-Plain stones. For whereas the Dalrei might kill fifteen or twenty of the flying beasts on one hunt and only by adherance to their stern Law, that day the joined Riders of the third and eighth tribes had ridden over a swell of rising land to see two hundred eltor lying in the snow, their blood shockingly red on the white drifts of the Plain.

  It was the snow that had undone them. For the eltor, so fast over the grass that men spoke of a swift of eltor, not a herd, had hooves ill-adapted to the deep piled snow. They foundered in it, their fluid grace turning to ung
ainly, awkward motion—and they had become easy prey for the wolves.

  Always in autumn the eltor went south to leave the snow behind, always the Dalrei followed them to this milder country on the fringes of the grazing lands of Brennin. But this year the snow had come early, and savagely, trapping the animals in the north. And then the wolves had come.

  The Dalrei cursed, turning faces of grief and rage to the north. But curses had done no good, nor had they stayed the next bad thing, for the winds had carried the killing snow all the way south to Brennin. Which meant there was no safe place for the eltor anywhere on the Plain.

  And so Dhira of the first tribe had issued a Grand Summoning to Celidon of all nine chieftains and their shamans and advisers. And venerable Dhira had risen up—everyone knew the story by now—and asked, “Why does Cernan of the Beasts allow this slaughter?”

  And only one man of that company had stood to make reply.

  “Because,” Ivor of the third tribe had said, “he cannot stop it. Maugrim is stronger than he, and I will name him now by his name, and say Rakoth.”

  His voice had grown stronger to quell the murmuring that came at the never-spoken name.

  “We must name him and know him for what he is, for no longer is he a presence of nightmare or memory. He is real, he is here now, and we must go to war against him for our people and our land, ourselves and with our allies, or there will be no generations after us to ride with the eltor on the wide Plain. We will be slaves to Starkadh, toys for svart alfar. Each man in this Gathering must swear by the stones of Celidon, by this heart of our Plain, that he will not live to see that sunless day. There is no Revor here with us, but we are the sons of Revor, and the heirs to his pride and to the High King’s gift of the Plain. Men of the Dalrei, shall we prove worthy of that gift and that pride?”

  Navon shivered in the dark as the remembered words ran through his mind. Everyone knew of the roar that had followed Ivor’s speech, exploding outward from Celidon as if it might run all the white leagues north, through Gwynir and Andarien, to shake the very walls of Starkadh.