He had never seen the sea.
How could a Dalrei, however wise, ever dream that this one thing might undermine the deepest challenge of his days? It was Cernan of the Beasts whom the Dalrei knew, and Green Ceinwen. The god who left his place in Pendaran to run with the eltor on the Plain, and the hunting goddess who was sister to him. What did the Riders know of seaborn Liranan?
There would be a ship sailing west, the girl had shown him that. And seeing the image in her mind, Gereint had understood another thing, something beyond what even the Seer of Brennin knew. He had never seen the sea, but he had to find that ship wherever it might be among the waves.
And so he closed himself. He left the Aven bereft of any guidance he might have to offer. A bad time, the worst, but he truly had no choice. He told Ivor what he was going to do, but not where or why. He let the living force that kept his aged body still alive dwindle to a single inner spark. Then, sitting down cross-legged on the mat in the shaman’s house of the camp beside the Latham, he sent that spark voyaging far, far from its home.
When the turmoil and frenzy overtook the camps later that night, he never knew of them. They moved his body the next day in the midst of chaos—he’d told Ivor he could be moved—but he was oblivious to that. By then, he had passed beyond Pendaran.
He had seen the Wood. He could place and focus himself by his memory of the forest and the contours of its emanations in his mind. He’d sensed the dark, unforgiving hostility of the Wood and then something else. He had been passing over the Anor Lisen, of which he knew. There was a light on in the Tower, but that, of course, he didn’t realize. He did apprehend a presence there, and he had an instant to wonder.
Only an instant, because then he was past the end of land and out over the waves and he knew a helpless, spinning panic. He had no shape to give to this, no memory, scarcely a name to compass it. Impossibly, there seemed to be stars both above and below. Old and frail, blind in the night, Gereint bade his spirit leave the land he’d always known, for the incalculable vastness of the unseen, unimaginable, the dark and roiling sea.
“You cannot,” said Mabon of Rhoden, catching up to them, “drive five hundred men all day without rest.”
His tone was mild. Aileron had made clear that Levon was leading this company, and Mabon hadn’t demurred at all. Dave saw Levon grin sheepishly, though. “I know,” he said to the Duke. “I’ve been meaning to stop. It’s just that as we get closer …”
The Duke of Rhoden smiled. “I understand. I feel like that whenever I’m riding home.” Mabon, Dave had decided, was all right. The Duke was past his best years and carried more weight than he needed to, but he hadn’t had any trouble keeping up and had gone to sleep in his blanket on the grass the night before like an old campaigner.
Levon was shaking his head, upset with himself. When they reached an elevation in the rolling prairie he raised a hand for a halt. Dave heard heartfelt murmurs of relief running through the company behind him.
He was grateful for the rest himself. He hadn’t been born to the saddle like Levon and Torc, or even these horsemen from the northern reaches of Brennin, and he’d been doing an awful lot of riding the past few days.
He swung down and stretched his legs. Did a few deep knee bends, touched his toes, swung his arms in circles. He caught a look from Torc and grinned. He didn’t mind teasing from the dark Dalrei; Torc was a brother. He did a few pushups right beside the cloth that Torc was covering with food. He heard the other man snort with suppressed laughter.
Dave flopped over on his back, thought about sit-ups, and decided to eat instead. He took a dried strip of eltor meat and a roll of Brennin bread. He smeared them both with the mustardy sauce the Dalrei loved and lay back, chewing happily.
It was spring. Birds wheeled overhead and the breeze from the southeast was mild and cool. The grass tickled his nose and he sat up to grab a wedge of cheese. Torc was lying back as well, his eyes closed. He could fall asleep in twenty seconds. In fact, Dave realized, he just had.
It was almost impossible to believe that all of this had been covered with snow and exposed to an icy wind only five days ago. Thinking about that, Dave thought about Kevin and felt his restful mood slipping away like wind through his fingers. His mind began to turn from the open sky and the wide grasslands to darker places. Especially that one dark place where Kevin Laine had gone: the cave in Gwen Ystrat with the snow beginning to melt outside. He remembered the red flowers, the grey dog, and he would die remembering the wailing of the priestesses.
He sat up again. Torc stirred but did not wake. Overhead the sun was bright and warming. It was a good day to be alive, and Dave forced his mind away from its recollections. He knew, from bitter experience with his family, how unstable he became when he went too far with emotions like those that were stirring now.
He couldn’t afford it. Maybe, just maybe, if there could come a space of time with leisure to work things through, he might sit down for a day or two and figure out why he had cried for Kevin Laine as he had not for anyone since he was a child.
Not now, though. That was perilous territory for him, Dave knew. He put Kevin, with some sorrow, in the same place he put his father—not forgotten, quite, but not to be addressed—and walked over to where Levon was sitting with the Duke of Rhoden.
“Restless?” Levon asked, looking up with a smile.
Dave hunkered down on his calves. “Torc isn’t,” he said with a backward jerk of his head.
Mabon chuckled. “I’m glad at least one of you is showing normal responses. I thought you were minded to ride straight through to the Latham.”
Levon shook his head. “I would have needed a rest. Torc might have done it, though. He isn’t tired, just smarter than we are.”
“Do you know,” said Mabon, “I think you are right.” And he turned over on his back, spread a square of lace across his eyes, and was snoring within a minute.
Levon grinned and gestured with his head. He and Dave rose and walked a little away from the others.
“How much farther?” Dave asked. He turned through a full circle: in all directions he could see nothing but the Plain.
“We’ll be there tonight,” Levon replied. “We may see the outposts before dark. We lost a bit of time yesterday with Mabon’s business in North Keep. I suppose that’s why I was pushing.”
The Duke had been forced to delay them in order to convey a series of instructions to the North Keep garrison from Aileron. He’d also had orders of his own to be carried down the road to Rhoden. Dave had been impressed with Mabon’s unflappable efficiency—it was a quality, he’d been told, upon which men of Rhoden prided themselves. Those from Seresh, he gathered, were rather more excitable.
He said, “I slowed us up there, too. I’m sorry.”
“I’d been meaning to ask. What was that about?”
“A favour for Paul. Aileron ordered it. Do you remember the boy who came when we summoned Owein?”
Levon nodded. “I am not likely to forget.”
“Paul wanted his father posted back to Paras Derval, and there was a letter. I said I’d find him. It took a while.” Dave remembered standing awkwardly by as Shahar wept for what had happened to his son. He’d tried to think of something to say and failed, naturally. There were, he supposed, some things he’d never be able to handle properly.
“Did he remind you of Tabor?” Levon asked suddenly. “That boy?”
“A little,” Dave said, after thinking about it.
Levon shook his head. “More than a little, for me. I think I’d like to get moving.”
They turned back. Torc, Dave saw, was on his feet. Levon gestured, and the dark Dalrei put fingers to his mouth and whistled piercingly. The company began preparing to ride. Dave reached his horse, mounted up, and jogged to the front where Levon and Mabon waited.
The men of Brennin were in place and mounted very fast. Aileron had sent them men who knew what they were doing. Torc came up and nodded. Levon gave him a smile and r
aised his hand to wave them forward.
“Mörnir!” the Duke of Rhoden exclaimed.
Dave saw a shadow. He smelled something rotting.
He heard an arrow sing. But by that time he was flying through the air, knocked cleanly from his horse by Mabon’s leap. The Duke fell with him on the grass. This, thought Dave absurdly, is what Kevin did to Coll.
Then he saw what the black swan had done to his horse. Amid the stench of putrescence and the sickly sweet smell of blood, he fought to hold down his midday meal.
Avaia was already far above them, wheeling north. Dave’s brown stallion had had its back broken with the shattering force of the swan’s descent. Her claws had shredded it into strips of meat. The horse’s head had been ripped almost completely off. Blood fountained from the neck.
Levon had been knocked from his mount as well by the buffeting of the giant wings. Amid the screams of terrified horses and the shouts of men, he hurried over. Torc was gazing after the swan, his bow held in white fingers. Dave saw that they were shaking: he’d never seen Torc like that before.
He found that his legs would work and he stood up. Mabon of Rhoden rose slowly, red-faced; he’d had the wind knocked out of his lungs.
No one said a word for a moment. Avaia was out of sight already. Flidais, Dave was thinking, as he tried to control his pulse. Beware the boar, beware the swan….
“You saved my life,” he said.
“I know,” said Mabon quietly. No affectation. “I was looking to check the sun and I saw her diving.”
“Did you hit her?” Levon asked
Torc. Torc shook his head. “Her wing, maybe. Maybe.”
It had been so sudden, so terrifyingly brutal an attack. The sky was empty again, the wind blew gentle as before over the waving grasses. There was a dead horse beside them, though, its intestines oozing out, and a lingering odour of corruption that did not come from the horse.
“Why?” Dave asked. “Why me?”
Levon’s brown eyes were moving from shock to a grave knowledge. “One thing, only, I can think of,” he said. “She risked a great deal diving like that. She would have had to sense something and to have decided that there was a great deal to gain.” He gestured.
Dave put his hand to his side and touched the curving shape of Owein’s Horn.
Often, in his own world, it had come to pass that opposing players in a basketball game would single out Dave Martyniuk as the most dangerous player on his team. He would be treated to special attention: double coverage, verbal needling, frequently some less than legal intimidation. As he got older, and better at the game, it happened with increasing regularity.
It never ever worked.
“Let’s bury this horse,” Dave said now, in a voice so grim it startled even the two Dalrei. “Give me a saddle for one of the others and let’s get moving, Levon!” He stepped forward and retrieved his axe from the ruins of his saddle. There was blood all over it. Painstakingly, he wiped it clean until the head shone when he held it to the light.
They buried the horse; they gave him a saddle and another mount.
They rode.
Ivor was in the shaman’s house at sunset when they brought him word.
He had come at the end of the day to look in on his friend and had remained, helpless and appalled by what he read in Gereint’s face. The shaman’s body was placid and unmoving on his mat, but his mouth was twisted with a soundless terror and even the dark sockets of his eyes offered testimony of a terrible voyaging. Aching and afraid for the aged shaman, Ivor stayed, as if by bearing witness he could ease Gereint’s journey in some inchoate way. The old one was lost, Ivor realized, and with all his heart he longed to call him home.
Instead, he watched.
Then Cechtar came. “Levon is coming in,” he said from the doorway. “He has brought the Duke of Rhoden and five hundred men. And there is something else, Aven.”
Ivor turned.
The big Rider’s face was working strangely. “Two others have come from the north. Aven … they are the lios alfar and—oh, come see what they ride!”
He had never seen the lios. Of all the Dalrei living, only Levon and Torc had done so. And Levon was back, too, with five hundred of the High King’s men. With a quickening heart, Ivor rose. He cast one lingering glance at Gereint, then went out.
Levon was bringing his men in from the southwest; squinting, he could see them against the setting sun. In the open space before him, though, waiting quietly, were two of the lios alfar mounted up on raithen, and Ivor had never in his days thought to see either.
The lios were silver-haired, both, slim, with the elongated fingers and wide-set, changeable eyes of which he’d heard. Nothing he’d ever heard could prepare him, though, for their elusive, humbling beauty and, even motionless, their grace.
For all that, it was the raithen that claimed Ivor’s speechless gaze. The Dalrei were horsemen and lived to ride. The raithen of Daniloth were to horses as the gods were to men, and there were two of them before him now.
They were golden as the setting sun all through their bodies, but the head and tail and the four feet of each of them were silver, like the not-yet-risen moon. Their eyes were fiercely blue and shining with intelligence, and Ivor loved them on the instant with all his soul. And knew that every Dalrei there did the same.
A wave of pure happiness went through him for a moment. And then was dashed to pieces when the lios spoke to tell of an army of the Dark sweeping even now across the northern Plain.
“We warned them at Celidon,” the woman said. “Lydan and I will ride now towards Brennin. We alerted the High King with the summonglass last night. He should be on the Plain by now, heading for Daniloth. We will cut him off. Where do you want him to ride?”
Ivor found his voice amid the sudden babble of sound. “To Adein,” he said crisply. “We will try to beat the Dark Ones to the river and hold them there for the High King. Can we make it?”
“If you go now and very fast you might,” said the one called Lydan. “Galen and I will ride to Aileron.”
“Wait!” Ivor cried. “You must rest. Surely the raithen must. If you have come all the way from Daniloth …”
The lios had to be brother and sister, so alike were they. They shook their heads. “They have had a thousand years to rest,” said Galen. “Both of these were at the Bael Rangat. They have not run free since.”
Ivor’s mouth fell open. He closed it.
“How many do you have?” he heard Cechtar breathe.
“These two and three others. They do not breed since the war against Maugrim. Too many of them died. Something changed in them. When these five are gone, no raithen will ever outpace the wind again.” Lydan’s voice was a chord of loss.
Ivor gazed at the raithen with a bitter sorrow. “Go then,” he said. “Unleash them. Bright be the moon for you, and know we will not forget.”
As one, the lios raised open hands in salute. Then they turned the raithen, spoke to them, and the Dalrai saw two comets, golden and silver, take flight across the darkening Plain.
In Paras Derval, Aileron the High King had just returned from Taerlindel. On the road back, he had been met with word of the summonglass alight. He was just then giving orders for an army to ride. They had too far to go, though. Much too far.
On the Plain, Levon came up to his father. Mabon of Rhoden stood behind him.
Ivor said to the Duke, “You have been riding two days. I cannot ask your men to come. Will you guard our women and children?”
“You can ask anything you must ask,” said Mabon quietly. “Can you do without five hundred men?”
Ivor hesitated.
“No,” said a woman’s voice. “No, we cannot. Take them all, Aven. We must not lose Celidon!”
Ivor looked at his wife and saw the resolution in her face. “We cannot lose our women, either,” he said. “Our children.”
“Five hundred will not save us.” It was Liane, standing beside her mother. “If they de
feat you, five hundred will mean nothing at all. Take everyone, Father.”
She was not wrong, he knew. But how could he leave them so utterly exposed? A thought came to him. He quailed before it for a moment, but then the Aven said, “Tabor.”
“Yes, Father,” his youngest child replied, stepping forward.
“If I take everyone, can you guard the camps? The two of you?”
He heard Leith draw a breath. He grieved for her, for every one of them.
“Yes, Father,” said Tabor, pale as moonlight. Ivor stepped close and looked into his son’s eyes. So much distance already.
“Weaver hold you dear,” he murmured. “Hold all of you.” He turned back to the Duke of Rhoden. “We ride in an hour,” he said. “We will not stop before the Adein, unless we meet an army. Go with Cechtar—your men will need fresh horses.” He gave orders to Levon and others to the gathered auberei, who were already mounted up to carry word to the other tribes. The camp exploded all around him.
He found a moment to look at Leith and took infinite solace from the calm in her eyes. They did not speak. It had all been said, at one time or another, between the two of them.
It was, in fact, less than an hour before he laced his fingers in her hair and bent in the saddle to kiss her goodbye. Her eyes were dry, her face quiet and strong, and so, too, was his. He might weep too easily for joy or domestic sorrow, or love, but it was the Aven of the Dalrei, first since Revor was given the Plain, who now sat his horse in the darkness. There was death in his heart, and bitter hate, and fiercest, coldest resolution.
They would need torches until the moon rose. He sent the auberei forward with fire to lead the way. His older son was at his side and the Duke of Rhoden and the seven Chieftains, all but the Oldest one at Celidon, where they had to go. Behind them, mounted and waiting, were five hundred men of Brennin and every single Rider of the Plain save one. He forbade himself to think of the one. He saw Davor and Torc and recognized the glitter in the dark man’s eyes.
The Wandering Fire Page 26