The Darkest Road

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Caught in that illusion, still gazing upward, she saw that there seemed to be birds of infinite variety wheeling and circling in the huge bright spaces high above the hall. Light flashed, many-colored, from their shapes, and she realized that these too were creations of the Dwarves, held aloft and in apparent freedom of flight by a craft or art beyond her comprehension.

  A dazzle of light from the stage below drew her eye, and she looked down. After a moment she recognized what she was looking at, and as soon as she did, her gaze whipped back, incredulous, to the circling birds overhead, from which the reflection of color and light was exactly the same as it was from the two objects below.

  Which meant that the birds, even the spectacular eagles, were made not of crystal, as were the sculptures she had seen in the corridors as they approached, but of diamond.

  For resting on deep red cushions on a stone table in the middle of the stage were the Diamond Crown and Scepter of the Dwarves.

  Kim felt a childish desire to rub her eyes in disbelief, to discover if, when she took her hands away, she would still see what she was seeing now. There were diamond eagles overhead!

  How could the people who were able to place them there, who wanted them there, be allies of the Dark? And yet…

  And yet from the real sky outside these mountain halls a death rain had fallen on Eridu for three full nights and days. And it had fallen because of what the Dwarves had done.

  For the first time she became aware that her guide was watching her with a cool curiosity, to gauge her response to the splendor of the Hall, perhaps to glory in it. She was awed and humbled. She had never seen anything like it, not even in her Seer’s dreams. And yet… She put her hands in the pockets of her gown. “Very pretty,” she said casually. “I like the eagles. How many of the real ones died in the rain?”

  And was rewarded—if it really was a reward—to see the Dwarf woman go as pale as the stone walls of Kim’s room had been when she awoke at dawn. She felt a quick surge of pity but fiercely suppressed it, looking away. They had freed Rakoth. They had taken her ring. And this woman had been sufficiently trusted by Kaen to be sent to bring Kim to this place.

  “Not all the birds died,” her guide said, very low, so as not to be overheard, it seemed. “I went up by the Lake yesterday morning. There were some eagles there.”

  Kim clenched her fists. “Isn’t that just wonderful,” she said, as coldly as she could. “For how much longer, do you think, if Rakoth Maugrim defeats us?”

  The Dwarf woman’s glance fell away before the stony rage in Kim’s eyes. “Kaen says there have been promises,” she whispered. “He says—” She stopped. After a long moment she looked Kim squarely in the face again, with the hardihood of her race. “Do we really have any choice? Now?” she asked bitterly.

  Looking at her, her anger sluicing away, Kim felt as if she finally understood what had happened, what was still happening within these halls. She opened her mouth to speak, but in the moment there came a loud murmur from within Seithr’s Hall, and she quickly glanced over at the stage.

  Loren Silvercloak, limping slightly, leaning on Amairgen’s white staff, was making his way behind another Dwarf woman to a seat near the stage.

  Kim felt an overwhelming relief: only momentarily, though—for as Loren came to his seat she saw armed guards move to take up positions on either side of him.

  “Come,” her own guide said, her cool detachment completely restored by the pause. “I am to lead you to that place as well.”

  And so, pushing back that one aggravating strand of hair yet again, walking as regally and as tall as she could, Kim followed her into the Moot Hall. Ignoring the renewed rustle of sound that greeted her appearance, she descended the long, wide aisle between the seats on either side, never turning her head, and, pausing before Loren, chanced and succeeded in the first curtsy of her life.

  In the same grave spirit he bowed to her and, bringing one of her hands to his lips, kissed it. She thought of Diarmuid and Jen, the first night they had come to Fionavar. Most of a long lifetime ago, it seemed. She gave Loren’s hand a squeeze and then, ignoring the guards, let her glance—imperious, she devoutly hoped—sweep over the assembled Dwarves.

  Doing so, she noticed something. She turned back to Loren and said, softly, “Almost all women. Why?”

  “Women and older men. And the members of the Moot who will be coming out soon. Oh, Kim, my dear, why do you think?” His eyes—so kind, she remembered them being—seemed to hold a crushing weight of trouble within their depths.

  “Silence!” one of the guards snapped. Not harshly, but his tone meant business.

  It didn’t matter. Loren’s expression had told her what she had to know. She felt the weight of knowledge that he carried come into her as well.

  Women, and the old, and the councillors of the Moot. The men in their prime, the warriors, away. Away, of course, at war.

  She didn’t need to be told which side they would be fighting on, if Kaen had sent them forth.

  And in that moment Kaen himself came forth from the far wing of the stage, and so for the first time she saw the one who had unchained blackest evil in their time. Quietly, without any evident pride or arrogance, he strode to stand at one side of the stone table. His thick hair was raven black, his beard closely trimmed. He was slighter than Matt or Brock, not as powerful, except for one thing: his hands were those of a sculptor, large, capable, very strong. He rested one of them on the table, although, carefully, he did not touch the Crown. He was clad unpretentiously in simple brown, and his eyes betrayed no hint of madness or delusions. They were meditative, tranquil, almost sorrowful.

  There was another footfall on the stage. Kim tore her eyes away from Kaen to watch Matt Sören step forward from the near wing. She expected a babble of noise, a murmur, some level of response. But the Dwarf she knew and loved—unchanged, she saw, always unchanged, no matter what might come to pass—moved to stand at the other side of the table from Kaen, and as he came there was not a single thread of sound in all the vastness of Seithr’s Hall.

  In the well of that silence Matt waited, scanning the Dwarves assembled there with his one dark eye. She heard the guards shift restively behind her. Then, without any fuss at all, Matt took the Diamond Crown and placed it upon his head.

  It was as if a tree in a dry forest had been struck by lightning, so explosive was the response. Her heart leaping, Kim heard a shocked roar of sound ignite the hall. In the thunder of it she felt anger and confusion, strove to detect a hint of joy, and thought that she did. But her gaze had gone instinctively to Kaen, as soon as Matt claimed the Crown.

  Kaen’s mouth was crooked in a wry, caustic smile, unruffled, even amused. But his eyes had given him away, for in them Kim had seen, if only for an instant, a bleak, vicious malevolence. She read murder there, and it knifed into her heart.

  Powerless, a prisoner, fear within her like a living, sharp-clawed creature, Kim turned back to Matt and felt her racing heartbeat slow. Even with a Crown of a thousand diamonds dazzling upon his head, the aura of him, the essence, was still a quiet, reassuring certitude, an everlasting calm.

  He raised one hand and waited patiently for silence. When he had it, nearly, he said, “Calor Diman never surrenders her Kings.”

  Nothing more, and he did not say it loudly, but the acoustics of that chamber carried his words to the farthest corners of Seithr’s Hall. When their resonance had died away, the silence once more was complete.

  Into it, emerging from either wing of the stage, there came some fifteen or twenty Dwarves. They were all clad in black, and Kim saw that each of them wore, upon the third finger of his right hand, a diamond ring gleaming like white fire. None of them were young, but the one who came first was the eldest by far. White-bearded and leaning for support upon a staff, he paused to let the others file past him to stone seats placed on one side of the stage.

  “The Dwarfmoot,” Loren whispered softly. “They will judge between Kaen and Matt. The o
ne with the staff is Miach, First of the Moot.”

  “Judge what?” Kim whispered back apprehensively.

  “The word-striving,” Loren murmured, not very helpfully. “Of the same kind as the one Matt lost forty years ago, when the Moot judged in favor of Kaen and voted to continue the search for the Cauldron—”

  “Silence!” hissed the same guard as before. He emphasized the command by striking Loren on the arm with his hand, not gently.

  Silvercloak turned swiftly and fixed the guard with a gaze that made the Dwarf stumble quickly backward, blanching.

  “I am… I am ordered to keep you quiet,” he stammered.

  “I do not intend to say overmuch,” Loren said. “But if you touch me again I will turn you into a geiala and roast you for lunch. Once warned is all you will be!”

  He turned back to the stage, his face impressive. It was a bluff, nothing more, Kim knew, but she also realized that none of the Dwarves, not even Kaen, could know what had happened to the mage’s powers in Cader Sedat.

  Miach had moved forward, the click of his staff on the stone sounding loud in the silence. He took a position in front of Kaen and Matt, a little to one side. After bowing with equal gravity to each of them, he turned and addressed the assembled Dwarves.

  “Daughters and sons of Calor Diman, you will have heard why we are summoned to Seithr’s Hall. Matt, who was King once here under Banir Lok, has returned and has satisfied the Moot that he is who he claims to be. This is so, despite the passage of forty years. He carries a second name now—Sören—to mark the loss of an eye in a war far from our mountains. A war,” Miach added quietly, “in which the Dwarves had no proper role to play.”

  Kim winced. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Loren bite his lower lip in consternation.

  Miach continued in the same judicious tones. “Be that as it may, Matt Sören it is who is here again, and last night before the convened Moot he issued challenge to Kaen, who has ruled us these forty years—ruled, but only by the support and sufferance of the Dwarfmoot, not as a true King, for he has never shaped a crystal for the Lake nor spent a night beside her shores under the full moon.”

  There was a tiny ripple of sound at that. It was Kaen’s turn to react. His expression of attentive deference did not change, but Kim, watching closely, saw his hand on the table close into a fist. A moment later, he seemed to become aware of this, and the fist opened again.

  “Be that as it may,” Miach said a second time, “you are summoned to hear and the Moot to judge a word-striving after the old kind, such as we have not seen in forty years—since last these two stood before us. I have lived long enough, by a grace of the Weaver’s hand upon my thread, to say that a pattern is unfolding here, with a symmetry that bears witness to interwoven destinies.”

  He paused. Then, looking directly at Kim, to her great surprise, he said, “There are two here not of our people. Tidings are slow to come across the mountains, and slower still to come within them, but the Dwarves know well of Loren Silvercloak the mage, whose source was once our King. And Matt Sören has named the woman here as Seer to the High King of Brennin. He has also undertaken to stand surety with his life that both of them will not wield the magics we know they carry, and will accept whatever judgment the Dwarfmoot makes of this striving. Matt Sören has said this. I now ask that they acknowledge, by whatever oath they deem most binding, that this is true. In return, I offer the assurance of the Dwarfmoot, to which Kaen has acceded—indeed, it was his suggestion—that they will be conducted safely from our realm if such need be after the striving is judged.”

  Lying snake, Kim thought furiously, looking at Kaen’s bland, earnest expression. She schooled her features, though, placed her ringless hand in the pocket of her gown, and listened as Loren rose from his seat to say, “In the name of Seithr, greatest of the Dwarf Kings, who died in the cause of Light, battling Rakoth Maugrim and the legions of the Dark, I swear that I will abide by the words you have spoken.” He sat down.

  Another rustle, quiet but unmistakable, went through the Hall. Take that! Kim thought as, in her turn, she rose. She felt Ysanne within her then, twin soul under the twin mountains, and when she spoke, it was with a Seer’s voice that rang out sternly in the huge spaces.

  “In the name of the Paraiko of Khath Meigol, gentlest of the Weaver’s children, the Giants who are not ghosts, who live and even now are cleansing Eridu, gathering the innocent dead of the Cauldron’s killing rain, I swear that I will abide by the words you have spoken.” More than a murmur now, an urgent cascade of sound. “That is a lie!” an old Dwarf shouted from high up in the Hall. His voice cracked. “The Cauldron we found brought life, not death!”

  Kim saw Matt looking at her. He shook his head, very slightly, and she kept quiet.

  Miach gestured for silence again. “Truth or lies will be for the Dwarfmoot to decree,” he said. “It is time for the challenge to begin. Those of you gathered here will know the laws of the word-striving. Kaen, who governs now, will speak first, as Matt did forty years ago, when governance was his. They will speak to you, not to the Moot. You who are gathered here are to be as a wall of stone off which their words will come to us. Silence is law for you, and from the weight of it, the shape, the woven texture, will the Dwarfmoot seek guidance for the judgment we are to make between these two.”

  He paused. “I have one thing, only, left to ask. Though no one else has known a full moon night by Calor Diman, at issue today is Matt Sören’s continued right to wear the Diamond Crown. In fairness, then, I would ask him to remove it for the striving.”

  He turned, and Kim’s eyes went, with those of everyone else in the Hall to Matt, to discover that, having made his initial point, he had already placed it again on the stone table between himself and Kaen. Oh, clever, Kim thought, fighting to suppress a grin. Oh, clever, my dear friend. Matt nodded gravely to Miach, who bowed in response.

  Turning to Kaen, Miach said simply, “You may begin.”

  He shuffled over, leaning upon his staff, to take his seat among the others of the Dwarfmoot. Kaen’s hand, Kim saw, had closed into a fist again, at Matt’s smooth anticipation of Miach’s request.

  He’s rattled, she thought. Matt has him way off balance. She felt a quick rush of hope and confidence.

  Then Kaen, who had not said a single word until that moment, began the word-striving, and as he did, all Kim’s hopes were blown away, as if they were wispy clouds torn by mountain winds.

  She had thought that Gorlaes, the Chancellor of Brennin, was a deep-voiced, mellifluous speaker; she had even feared his persuasiveness in the early days. She had heard Diarmuid dan Ailell in the Great Hall of Paras Derval and remembered the power of his light, sardonic, riveting words. She had heard Na-Brendel of the lios alfar take speech to the edge of music and beyond. And within herself, engraved on her heart and mind, she held close the sound of Arthur Pendragon speaking to command or to reassure—with him, somehow, the two became as one.

  But in Seithr’s Hall within Banir Lok that day she learned how words could be claimed and mastered, brought to a scintillant, glorious apex—turned into diamonds, truly—and all in the service of evil, of the Dark.

  Kaen spoke, and she heard his voice rise majestically with the passion of a denunciation; she heard it swoop downward like a bird of prey to whisper an innuendo or offer a half-truth that sounded—even, for a moment, to her—like a revelation from the warp and weft of the Loom itself; she heard it soar with confident assertions of the future and then shape itself into a cutting blade to slash to ribbons the honor of the Dwarf who stood beside him. Who had dared to return and strive a second time with Kaen.

  Her mouth dry with apprehension, Kim saw Kaen’s hands—his large, beautiful, artisan’s hands—rise and fall gracefully as he spoke. She saw his arms spread suddenly wide in a gesture of entreaty, of transparent honesty. She saw a hand stab savagely upward to punctuate a question and then fall away, open, as he spoke what he deemed to be—what he made them believ
e to be—the only possible response. She saw him point a long shaking finger of undisguised, overwhelming rage at the one who had returned, and it seemed to her, as to all the others in Seithr’s Hall, that the denouncing hand was that of a god, and it became a source of wonder that Matt Sören had the temerity still to be standing upright before it, instead of crawling on his knees to beg for the merciful death he did not deserve.

  From the weight of the silence, Miach had said, from the shape and texture of it, the Dwarfmoot would seek guidance. As Kaen spoke, the stillness in Seithr’s Hall was a palpable thing. It did have shape, and weight, and a discernible texture. Even Kim, utterly unversed in reading such a subtle message, could feel the silent Dwarves responding to Kaen, giving him back his words: thousands of voiceless auditors for chorus.

  There was awe in that response, and guilt, that Kaen, who had labored so long in the service of his people, should be forced yet again to defend himself and his actions. Beyond these two things—beyond awe and guilt—there was also a humbled, grateful acquiesence in the rightness and clarity of everything Kaen said.

  He came one step forward from where he had been standing, seeming with that small motion to have come among them, to be one with all of them, to be speaking directly, intimately, to every single listener in the Hall. He said: “It may be thought that the Dwarf beside me now will see farther with his one eye than anyone else in this Hall. Let me remind you of something, something I must say before I end, for it cries out within me for utterance. Forty years ago Matt, the sister-son of March, King of the Dwarves, shaped a crystal for Calor Diman on a new moon night: an act of courage, for which I honored him. On the next night of the full moon, he slept by the shore of the Lake, as all who would be King must do: an act of courage, for which I honored him.”