The Wandering Fire

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  She left Arthur’s side and walked, clad in a gown green as her eyes, green as the grass, to where he stood. Something of irresolution must have shown in his face, because as she came near he heard her laugh and say, “If you so much as start to bow or anything like that, Dave, I’ll beat you up. I swear I will.”

  It was good to hear her laugh. He checked the bow he had, in fact, been about to offer and, instead, surprised them both by bending to kiss her cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said and took his hand in hers.

  He smiled down on her and, for once, didn’t feel awkward or uncouth.

  Paul Schafer came up to join them, and with her other hand Jennifer claimed one of his. The three of them stood, linked so, for a moment.

  “Well,” said Dave.

  Paul looked soberly at him. “You’re going right into it, you know.”

  “I know,” Dave replied. “But if I have a place in this, I think it’s with the Dalrei. It … won’t be any easier where you’re heading.” They were silent amid the bustle and clatter of the square. Then Dave turned to Jennifer. “I’ve been thinking about something,” he said. “Way back, when Kim took you out of … that place, Kevin did something. You won’t remember, you were unconscious then, but he swore vengeance for what had been done to you.”

  “I remember,” said Paul.

  “Well,” Dave went on, “he must have wondered how he would ever do it, but … I’m thinking that he found a way.”

  There was sunshine pouring down from a sky laced with scattered billows of clouds. Men in shirt sleeves walked all around them.

  “He did more,” said Jennifer, her eyes bright. “He got me all the way out. He finished what Kim started.”

  “Damn,” said Paul gently. “I thought it was my charm.” Remembered words, not his own.

  Tears, laughter, and they parted.

  Sharra watched the Aven’s handsome son lead five hundred men away to the north. Standing with her father near the chariots, she saw Jennifer and Paul walk back to join the company that would soon be riding west. Shalhassan was going with them as far as Seresh. With the snow melted, there was urgent need now for his additional troops and he wanted to give his own orders in Cynan.

  Aileron was already up on his black horse, and she saw Loren the mage mount up as well. Her heart was beating very fast.

  Diarmuid had come to her again last night by way of her window. He had brought her a flower. She had not thrown water at him, this time, and had been at pains to point that out. He professed gratitude and later, in a different voice, a great deal more.

  Then he had said, “I am going to a difficult place, my dear. To do a difficult thing. It may be wiser if I speak to your father if we … after we return. I would not have you bound to me while I am—”

  She had covered his mouth with her hand and then, turning in bed as if to kiss him, moved the hand away and bit his lower lip instead.

  “Coward!” she said. “I knew you were afraid. You promised me a formal wooing and I am holding you to it.”

  “Formal it is, then,” he said. “You want an Intercedent, as well?”

  “Of course!” she said. And then, because she was crying, and couldn’t pretend any more, she said, “I was bound to you from Larai Rigal, Diar.”

  He kissed her, gently and then with passion, and then his mouth began to travel her and eventually she lost track of time and place.

  “Formally,” he’d said again, afterwards. In a certain tone.

  And now, in the morning light, amid the busy square, a figure suddenly pushed through the gathered crowd and began a purposeful walk towards her father. Sharra felt herself going red. She closed her eyes for a moment, wishing desperately that she had bit him harder, much, much harder. And in a different place. Then, in spite of herself, she began to giggle.

  Formally, he had promised. Even to the Intercedent who was to speak for him, after the old fashion. He had also warned her in Gwen Ystrat that he would never move to the measured gait, he would always have to play.

  And so Tegid of Rhoden was his Intercedent.

  The fat man—he was truly enormous—was blessedly sober. He had even trimmed his eccentric beard and donned a decent outfit in russet tones for his august mission. His round red face very serious, Tegid stopped directly in front of her father. His progress had been noted and marked by shouts and laughter. Now Tegid waited patiently for a modicum of silence. He absentmindedly scratched his behind, then remembered where he was and crossed his arms quickly on his chest.

  Shalhassan regarded him with a mild, expressionless curiosity. Which became a wince a moment later as Tegid boomed out his title.

  “Supreme Lord of Cathal,” Tegid repeated, a little more softly, for his mighty lungs had shaped a silence all around with that first shout, “have I your attendant ear?”

  “You have,” her father said with grave courtesy.

  “Then I am bid to tell you that I am sent here by a lord of infinite nobility, whose virtues I could number until the moon rose and set and rose again. I am sent to say to you, in this place and among the people here gathered in concourse, that the sun rises in your daughter’s eyes.”

  There was a roar of astonishment.

  “And who,” asked Shalhassan, still courteously, “is the lord of infinite nobility?”

  “A figure of speech, that,” said Diarmuid, emerging from the crowd to their left. “And the moon business was his own idea. But he is my Intercedent and the heart of his message is true, and from my own heart. I would wed your daughter, Shalhassan.”

  The noise in the square was quite uncontrollable now. It was hard to hear anything. Sharra saw her father turn slowly to her, a question in his eyes, and something else that it took her a moment to recognize as tenderness.

  She nodded once. And with her lips shaped a “Yes,” for him to see.

  The noise peaked and then slowly faded as Shalhassan waited beside his chariot, grave and unmoving. He looked at Diarmuid, whose own expression was sober now. He looked back at her.

  He smiled. He smiled.

  “Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!” said Shalhassan of Cathal. “Finally she’s done something adult!” And striding forward, he embraced Diarmuid as a son, in the manner of the ritual.

  So it was amid laughter and joy that that company set forth to ride to Taerlindel, where a ship lay waiting to bear fifty men to a place of death.

  Diarmuid’s men, of course. It hadn’t even been a subject of discussion. It had been assumed, automatic. If Coll was sailing the ship, then Diarmuid was commanding it and the men of South Keep were going to Cader Sedat.

  Riding alone near the back of the party, Paul saw them, laughing and lighthearted, singing, even, at the promise of action. He looked at Coll and red Averren, the lieutenants; at Carde and greying Rothe and lean, agile Erron; at the other forty the Prince had named. He wondered if they knew what they were going to; he wondered if he knew, himself.

  Up at the front, Diarmuid glanced back to check on the company, and Paul met his blue gaze for a moment. He didn’t move forward, though, and Diarmuid didn’t drop back. Kevin’s absence was a hollow place within his chest. He felt quite alone. Thinking of Kim, far away and riding east, made it even worse.

  Shalhassan left them in the afternoon at Seresh. He would be ferried across to Cynan almost immediately. The mild, beneficent sunshine was a constant reminder of the need for haste.

  They turned north on the highway to Rhoden. A number of people were coming to see them off: Aileron, of course, and Na-Brendel of Daniloth. Sharra was coming, as well; she would return to Paras Derval with Aileron and wait for her father there. Teyrnon and Barak, he saw, were deep in conversation with Loren and Matt. Only the latter two were sailing; the younger mage would stay with the King. They were spreading themselves very thin, Paul thought.

  They didn’t really have much choice.

  Not far ahead he saw Tegid bouncing along in one of the Cathalian war chariots, and for a
moment he smiled at the sight. Shalhassan had proved human, after all, and he had a sense of humour. Beyond the fat man rode Jaelle, also alone. He thought briefly of catching up to her. He didn’t, though—he had too much to think about without trying to apologize to the Priestess. He could guess how she’d respond. A bit of a surprise, her coming, though: the provinces of Dana came to an end at the sea.

  Which led him to thoughts of whose provinces began there and of his statement to the Council the morning before. “I think I can deal with that,” he’d said, in the quiet tones of the Twiceborn. Quiet, yes, but very, very rash. And they would be counting on him now.

  Reflecting this, his features carefully unrevealing, Paul saw that they were turning west again, off the highway onto a smaller road. They had had the rich grainlands of the Seresh hinterland on their right until now, but, as they turned, the land began to drop slowly down in unfolding ridges. He saw sheep and goats and another grazing animal he couldn’t recognize and then, before he saw it, he heard the sea.

  They came to Taerlindel late in the day and the sun had led them there. It was out over the sea. The breeze was salt and fresh and the tide was in, the white-capped waves rolling up to the line of sandy beaches stretching away to the south towards Seresh and the Saeren mouth.

  In front of them lay the harbour of Taerlindel, northward facing, sheltered by a promontory from the wind and surf. There were small fishing boats bobbing at anchor, a few larger ones, and one ship, painted gold and red, that would be Prydwen.

  Once, Loren had told him, a fleet had anchored here. But the last war with Cathal had decimated the navies of both countries, and after the truce no ships had been built to replace them. And with Andarien a wasteland for a thousand years there was no longer any need, the mage had explained, to sail to Linden Bay.

  A number of houses ringed the harbour and a few more ran back away from the sea into the sloping hills. The town was very beautiful in the late afternoon light. He only gave it a brief glance, though, before he stopped his horse to let the last of the party pass him by. On the road above Taerlindel his gaze went out, as far as it might, over the grey-green sea.

  They had let the light flare again from Atronel the past three nights, to celebrate and honour the spring returned. Now, towards evening of this fourth day, Leyse of the Swan Mark walked, in white for the white swan, Lauriel, beside the luminous figure of Ra-Tenniel, and they were alone by Celyn Lake gathering sylvain, red and silver.

  Within the woven shadows of Daniloth, shadows that twisted time into channels unknown for all save the lios, it had never been winter. Lathen Mistweaver’s mighty spell had been proof against the cold. For too long, though, had the lios gazed out from the shifting, blurred borders of the Shadowland to see snow sweeping across the Plain and the barren desolation of Andarien. A lonely, vulnerable island of muted colour had they been, in a world of white malevolence.

  No longer. Ever bold, Ra-Tenniel took the long, slim hand of Leyse—and, for once, she let him do so—and led her past the muting of Lathen’s shadows, out into the open spaces where the river ran into Celyn Lake.

  In the sunset it was a place of enchantment and serenity. There were willows growing by the riverbank and aum trees in early leaf. In the young grass he spread his cloak, green as a vellin stone, and she sat down with him upon it, her arms full of sylvain. Her eyes were a soft gold like the setting sun, her hair burnished bronze by its rays.

  He looked from her to the sun, to the aum tree overhead, and the gentle flow of the river below them. Never far from sadness, in the way of the lios, he lifted his voice in a lament, amid the evening drone of bees and the liquescent splash of water over stone, for the ravaging of Andarien a thousand years ago.

  Gravely she listened, laden with flowers, as he sang the long ballad of long-ago grief. The sun went down. In the twilight a light breeze stirred the leaves over their heads when, at length, he ended. In the west, above the place where the sun had set, gleamed a single star, the one named long ago for Lauriel, slain by black Avaia at the Bael Rangat. For a long time they watched it; then they turned to go, back into the Shadowland from where the stars were dim.

  One glance Ra-Tenniel threw back over his shoulder at Andarien. And then he stopped and turned, and he looked again with the long sight of the lios alfar.

  Ever, from the beginning, had the impatience of his hate marked Rakoth’s designs. The winter now past had been a departure, terrifying in its implication of purposed, unhurried destruction.

  But the winter was over now and, looking north with eyes whose colour shifted swiftly through to violet, Ra-Tenniel, Lord of the lios alfar, saw a dark horde moving through the ruin of Andarien. Not towards them, though. Even as Leyse turned to watch with him, the army of Rakoth swung eastward. Eastward, around Celyn, to come down through Gwynir.

  And to the Plain.

  Had he waited until dark, Rakoth might have sent them forth quite unseen for a full night’s riding. He had not waited, and Ra-Tenniel offered a quick prayer. Swiftly he and Leyse returned to Atronel. They did not send their light on high that night, not with an army of the Dark abroad in the land. Instead they gathered together all the high ones of the Marks on the mound at Atronel. As the King had expected, it was fierce Galen who said at once that she would ride to Celidon. Again, as expected, Lydan, however cautious he might be, would not let his twin ride alone. They rose to go when Ra-Tenniel gave leave. He raised a hand to stop them, though.

  “You will have to make speed,” he said. “Very great speed. Take the raithen. It is time the golden and silver horses of Daniloth were seen again in Fionavar.” Galen’s eyes went blue, and a moment later so did those of her brother. Then they left to ride.

  With the aid of those who remained, Ra-Tenniel made the summonglass come to urgent warning so that the glass in the High King’s chambers in Paras Derval might leap to life as well.

  It was not their fault that the High King was in Taerlindel that night and would not return to word of the summonglass afire until the afternoon of the following day.

  He couldn’t sleep. Very late at night Paul rose up and walked from Coll’s mother’s house down to the harbour. The moon, falling from full, was high. It laid a silver track along the sea. The tide was going out and the sand ran a long way towards the promontory. The wind had shifted around to the north. It was cool, he knew, but he still seemed to be immune to the cold, natural or unnatural. It was one of the few things that marked what he was. That, and the ravens, and the tacit, waiting presence in his pulse.

  Prydwen rode easily at anchor. They had loaded her up in the last light of evening and Coll’s grandfather had pronounced her ready to sail. In the moonlight the gold paint on her hull looked silver and the furled white sails gleamed.

  It was very quiet. He walked back along the wooden dock and, other than the soft slap of the sea against the boats, his boots made the only sound. There were no lights shining in Taerlindel. Overhead the stars seemed very bright, even in the moonlight.

  Leaving the harbour, he walked along the stone jetty until it ended. He passed the last house of the town. There was a track that curved up and east for a way, following the indentation of the bay. It was bright enough to follow and he did. After two hundred paces or so the track crested and then started down and north, and in a little while he came to sand again and a long beach open to the sea.

  The surge and sigh of the waves was louder here. Almost, he heard something in them, but almost wouldn’t be enough. He took off his boots and stockings and, leaving them on the sand, went forward. The sand was wet where the tide had washed back. The waves glowed a phosphorescent silver. He felt the ocean wash over his feet. It would be cold, he knew, but he didn’t feel it. He went a little farther out and then stopped, ankle deep only, to be present but not to presume. He stood very still, trying, though not knowing how, even now, to marshal whatever he was. He listened. Heard nothing but the low sound of the sea.

  And then, within himself, he felt a su
rging in his blood. He wet his lips. He waited; it came again. The third time he thought he had the rhythm, which was not that of the sea because it did not come from the sea. He looked up at the stars but not back at the land. Mörnir, he prayed.

  “Liranan!” he cried as the fourth surge came and he heard the crash of thunder in his own voice.

  With the fifth surge, he cried the name again, and a last time when the sixth pulse roared within him. At the seventh surging of his blood, though, Paul was silent and he waited.

  Far out at sea he saw a white wave cresting higher than any of the others that were running in to meet the tide. When it met the long retreating surf, when it crashed, high and glittering, he heard a voice cry, “Catch me if you can!” and in his mind he dove after the god of the sea.

  It was not dark or cold. Lights seemed everywhere, palely hued—it was as if he moved amid constellations of sunken stars.

  Something flashed: a silver fish. He followed and it doubled back to lose him. He cut back as well, between the water stars. There was coral below, green and blue, pink, orange, shades of gold. The silver fish slipped under an arch of it, and when Paul came through, it was gone.

  He waited. Felt another pulse.

  “Liranan!” he called and felt thunder rock the deep. When the echoes rolled away he saw the fish again, larger now, with rainbow colours of the coral stippling its sides. It fled and he followed.

  Down it went and he with it. They plunged past massive, lurking menaces in the lower depths where the sea stars were dim and colours lost.

  Up it shot as if hurtling back to light. Past the sunken stars it went and broke water in a moonlit leap; from the beach, ankle deep in the tide, Paul saw it flash and fall.

  And then it ran. No twisting now. On a straight course out to sea, the sea god fled the thunder voice. And was followed. They went so far beyond the memory of land that Paul thought he heard a thread of singing in the waves. He was afraid, for he guessed what he was hearing. He did not call again. He saw the silver fish ahead of him. He thought of all the dead and the living in their need, and he caught Liranan far out at sea and touched him with a finger of his mind.