The Darkest Road

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Matt looked up, accepting the weight of the Dragon’s crystal gaze. Still he said nothing. Beside her, Kim became aware that Loren was weeping quietly.

  “Nevertheless,” said the Dragon of the Lake, and there was a new timbre in its voice, “nevertheless, you have changed since you went from here, Matt Sören. You have lost an eye in wars not properly those of your people, but you have shown tonight, with this second gift, that with one eye only you still see more deeply into my waters than any of the Kings of the Dwarves have ever done before.”

  Kimberly bit her lip. She slipped her hand into Loren’s. There was a brightness in her heart.

  “You should not have gone away,” she heard the Dragon say to Matt, “but from what you have done tonight, I will accept that a part of you never did. Be welcome back, Matt Sören, and hear me as I name you now truest of all Kings ever to reign under Banir Lok and Banir Tal.”

  There was light, there seemed to be so much light: a tinted, rosy hue of fiercest illumination.

  “Oh, Kim, no!” Loren suddenly cried in a choked, desperate voice. “Not this. Oh, surely not this!”

  Light burned to ash in the wake of knowledge, of bitter, bitterest, recurring understanding. Of course there was light in the meadow, of course there was. She was here.

  With the Baelrath blazing in wildest summons on her hand.

  Matt had wheeled at Loren’s cry. Kim saw him look at the ring he had only just returned to her, and she read the brutal anguish in his face as this moment of heart-deep triumph, the moment of his return, was transformed into something terrible beyond words.

  She wanted desperately not to be here, not to understand what this imperative blazing meant. She was here, though, and she did know. And she had not knelt to the Dragon because, somehow, a part of her must have been aware of what was to come.

  What had come now. She carried the Warstone again, the summons to war. And it was on fire to summon. To compel the Crystal Dragon from its mountain bowl. Kim had no illusions, none at all—and the sight of Matt’s stricken face would have stripped them away from her, if she’d had any.

  The Dragon could not leave the Lake, not if it was to be what it had always been: ancient guardian, key to the soul, heart-deep symbol of what the Dwarves were. What she was about to do would shatter the people of the twin mountains as much and more as she had smashed the Paraiko in Khath Meigol.

  This crystal power of Calor Diman, which had endured the death rain of Maugrim, would not be able to resist the fire she carried. Nothing could.

  Matt turned away. Loren released her hand.

  I don’t have a choice! she cried. Within her heart, not aloud. She knew why the stone was burning. There was tremendous power here in this creature of the Lake, and its very shining made it a part of the army of Light. They were at war with the Dark, with the unnumbered legions of Rakoth. She had carried the ring here for a reason, and this was it.

  She stepped forward, toward the now-still waters of Calor Diman. She looked up and saw the clear eyes of the Dragon resting upon her, accepting and unafraid, though infinitely sorrowful. As deeply rooted in power as anything in Fionavar and knowing that Kim’s was a force that would bind it and change it forever.

  On her hand the Baelrath was pulsing now so wildly that the whole of the meadow and all the mountain crags were lit by its glow. Kim lifted her hand. She thought of Macha and Nemain, the goddesses of war. She thought of Ruana and the Paraiko, remembered the kanior: the last kanior. Because of her. She thought of Arthur, and of Matt Sören, who stood, not far away, not looking at her, lest his expression plead.

  She thought upon the evil that good men had done in the name of Light, remembered Jennifer in Starkadh. War was upon them it was all around them, threatening those living now, and all who might come after, with the terrible dominion of the Dark.

  “No,” said Kimberly Ford quietly, with absolute finality. “I have come this far and have done this much. I will go no farther on this path. There is a point beyond which the quest for Light becomes a serving of the Dark.”

  “Kim—” Matt began. His face was working strangely.

  “Be silent!” she said, stern because she would break if she heard him speak. She knew him, and knew what he would say. “Come here beside me! Loren! And Miach too, I’ll need you!” Her mind was racing as fast as it ever had.

  They moved toward her, drawn by the power in her voice—her Seer’s voice—as much as by the burning on her hand. She knew exactly what she was doing and what it might mean, knew the implications as deeply as she had ever known anything at all. And she would shoulder them. If it made her name a curse from now to the end of time, then so be it. She would not destroy what she had seen tonight.

  There was understanding in the Dragon’s crystal eyes. Slowly it spread its wings, like a curtain of benison, many-colored, glittering with light. Kim had no illusions about that, none at all.

  The two Dwarves and the man were beside her now. The flame on her hand was still driving her to summon. It was demanding that she do so. There was war. There was need! She met the eyes of the Dragon for the very last time.

  “No,” she said again with all the conviction of her soul—both her souls.

  And then she used the incandescent, overwhelming blazing of the ring, not to bind the Dragon of the Dwarves but to take herself away across the mountains, herself and three others with her, far from that hidden place of starlight and enchantment, though not so far as she had gone in coming there.

  The Baelrath’s power was rampant within her, flaming with the fire of war. She entered into it, saw where it was she had to go, gathered and channeled what she carried, and took them there.

  They came down, in what seemed to all of them to be a corona of crimson light. They were in a clearing. A clearing in the forest of Gwynir, not far from Daniloth.

  “Someone’s here!” a voice screamed in strident warning. Another echoed it: voices of Dwarves from the army Blod commanded. They had come in time!

  Kim was driven to her knees by the impact of landing. She looked quickly around. And saw Dave Martyniuk standing not ten feet away from her with an axe in his hand. Behind him she recognized, with an incredulity that bordered on stupefaction, Faebur and Brock, swords drawn. There was no time to think.

  “Miach!” she screamed. “Stop them!”

  And the aged leader of the Dwarfmoot did not fail her. Moving more swiftly than she had ever thought he could, he stepped between Dave and the trio of Dwarves menacing him, and he cried, “Hold arrows and blades, people of the mountains! Miach of the Moot commands you, in the name of the King of the Dwarves!”

  There was thunder in him for that one moment, a ringing peal of command. The Dwarves froze. Slowly Dave lowered his axe, Faebur his bow.

  In the brittle silence of the forest clearing, Miach said, very clearly, “Hear me. There has been judgment tonight by the shores of Calor Diman. Matt Sören returned to our mountains yesterday, and it was the decision of the Moot, after a word-striving in Seithr’s Hall between him and Kaen, that their dispute be left to the Lake. So did it come to pass tonight. I must tell you that Kaen is dead, destroyed by the fire of the Lake. The spirit of Calor Diman came forth tonight, and I saw it with my eyes and heard it name Matt Sören to be our King again, and more: I heard it name him as truest of all Kings ever to reign under the mountains.”

  “You are lying!” A harsh voice intruded. “None of this is true. Rinn, Nemed—seize him!” Blod pointed a shaking finger at Miach. No one moved.

  “I am First of the Moot,” Miach said calmly. “I cannot lie. You know this is true.”

  “I know you are an old fool,” Blod snarled in response. “Why should we let ourselves be deceived by that children’s fable? You can lie as well as any of us, Miach! Better than any of—”

  “Blod,” said the King of the Dwarves, “have done. It is over.”

  Matt stepped forward from the darkness of the trees. He said nothing more, and his voice had not been
loud, but the tone of command was complete and not to be mistaken.

  Blod’s face worked spasmodically, but he did not speak. Behind him a swelling murmur of sound rushed backward through the army to the ends of the clearing and beyond, where Dwarves had been sleeping among the evergreens. They were sleeping no longer.

  “Oh my King!” a voice cried. Brock of Banir Tal stumbled forward, throwing down his axe, to kneel at Matt’s feet.

  “Bright the hour of our meeting,” Matt said to him formally. He laid a hand on Brock’s shoulder. “But stand back now, old friend, there is a thing yet to be done.” There was something in his voice that evoked an abrupt image, for Kim, of the iron lock on the door to the meadow of Calor Diman.

  Brock withdrew. Gradually the murmur and the cries of the army subsided. A watchful silence descended. Occasionally someone coughed or a twig crackled underfoot.

  In that stillness, Matt Sören confronted the Dwarf who had served in Starkadh, who had done what he had done to Jennifer, who had been leading the Dwarves even now in the army of the Dark. Blod’s eyes darted back and forth, but he did not try to run or plead. Kim had thought he would be a coward, but she was wrong. None of the Dwarves lacked courage, it seemed, even those who had surrendered themselves to evil.

  “Blod of Banir Lok,” Matt said, “your brother has died tonight, and your Dragon waits for you now as well in judgment, astride the wall of Night. In the presence of our people I will grant you what you do not deserve: a right to combat, and life in exile if you survive. As atonement for my own wrongs, which are many, I will fight you in this wood until one of us is dead.”

  “Matt, no!” Loren exclaimed.

  Matt held up one hand. He did not turn around. “First, though” he said, “I would ask leave of those assembled here, to take this battle upon myself. There are a very great many here who have a claim upon your death.”

  He did turn, then, and of all of them it was to Faebur that he looked first. “I see one here whose face marks him as an Eridun. Have I leave to take this death for you and in the name of your people, stranger of Eridu?”

  Kim saw the young man step forward a single pace. “I am Faebur, once of Larak,” he said. “King of the Dwarves, you have leave to do this for me and for all the raindead of Eridu. And in the name of a girl called Arrian, whom I loved, and who is gone. The Weaver guide your hand.” He withdrew, with a dignity that belied his years.

  Again Matt turned. “Dave Martyniuk, you too have a claim to this, for the sufferings of a woman of your own world, and the death of a man. Will you surrender that claim to me?”

  “I will surrender it,” Dave said solemnly.

  “Mabon of Rhoden?” Matt asked.

  And Mabon said gravely, “In the name of the High King of Brennin, I ask you to act for the army of Brennin and Cathal.”

  “Levon dan Ivor?”

  “This hour knows his name,” Levon said. “Strike for the Dalrei, Matt Sören, for the living and the dead.”

  “Miach?”

  “Strike for the Dwarves, King of the Dwarves.”

  Only then did Matt draw forth his axe from where it hung by his side and turn again, his face grim as mountain stone, to Blod, who was waiting contemptuously.

  “Have I your word,” Blod asked now, in the sharp, edgy voice so unlike his brother’s, “that I will walk safely from this place if I leave you dead?”

  “You have,” said Matt clearly, “and I declare this in the presence of the First of the Dwarfmoot and—”

  Blod had not waited. Even as Matt was speaking, the other Dwarf had thrown himself sideways into the shadows and hurled a cunning dagger straight at Matt’s heart.

  Matt did not even bother to dodge. With an unhurried movement, as if he had all the time in the world, he blocked the flung blade with the head of his axe. It fell harmlessly to the grass. Blod swore and scrambled to his feet, reaching for his own weapon.

  He never touched it.

  Matt Sören’s axe, thrown then with all the strength of his arm and all the passion of his heart, flew through the firelit clearing like an instrument of the watching gods, a power of ultimate justice never to be denied, and it smote Blod between the eyes and buried itself in his brain, killing him where he stood.

  There were no shouts, no cheering. A collective sigh seemed to rise and fall, within the clearing and beyond it, to where Dwarves stood watching among the trees. Kim had a sudden image in that moment of a spirit, bat-winged, malevolent, rising to fly away. There was a Dragon waiting for him, Matt had said. Let it be so, she thought. She looked at the body of the Dwarf who had savaged Jennifer and it seemed to her that vengeance should mean more, somehow. It should be more of a reply, something beyond this bloodied, torchlit body in Gwynir.

  Oh, Jen, she thought. He’s dead now. I’ll be able to tell you that he’s dead. It didn’t mean as much as she’d once thought it would. It was only a step, a stage in this terrible journey. There was too far yet to go.

  She had no more time for thoughts, which was a blessing and not a small one. Brock came rushing up to her, and Faebur, and she was embracing them both with joy. Amid the steadily growing noise all around, there was time for a quick question and answer about Dalreidan, and for delighted wonder as she learned who he really was.

  Then, finally, she was standing in front of Dave, who had, of course, been hanging back, letting the others approach her first. Pushing her hair from her eyes, she looked up at him. “Well—” she began.

  And got no further.

  She was gathered in an embrace that lifted her completely off the ground and threatened to squeeze every trace of air out of her lungs. “I have never,” he said, holding her close, his mouth to her ear, “been so happy to see anyone in all my life!”

  He let her go. She dropped to the ground and stumbled, gasping frantically for breath. She heard Mabon of Rhoden chuckle. She was grinning like an idiot, she knew.

  “Me neither,” she said, aware, abruptly, of how true that was. “Me neither!”

  “Ahem!” said Levon dan Ivor, with the broadest stage cough she’d ever heard. They turned, to find him grinning as much as they were. “I hate to intrude with petty matters of concern,” the Aven’s son said, striving to sound sardonic, “but we do have a report to make to the High King on tonight’s events, and if we’re to get back before Tore and Sorcha raise a false alarm, we’d best get moving.”

  Aileron. She’d be seeing Aileron again too. So much was happening so fast. She drew a breath and turned, to see that Matt had come over to her.

  Her smile faded. In her mind, even as she stood among the evergreens of Gwynir, she was seeing a Crystal Lake and a Dragon rising from it, glittering wings spread wide. A place where she would never walk again, under stars or sun or moon. She was a Seer; she knew that this was so. She and Matt looked at each other for a long time.

  At length, he said, “The ring is dark.”

  “It is,” she said. She didn’t even have to look. She knew. She knew something else, too, but that was her own burden, not his. She said nothing about it.

  “Seer,” Matt began. He stopped. “Kim. You were supposed to bind it, weren’t you? To bring it to war?” Only Loren and Miach, standing behind Matt, would know what he was talking about.

  Picking her words carefully, she said, “We have a choice, Matt. We are not slaves, even to our gifts. I chose to use the ring another way.” She said nothing more. She was thinking about Darien, even as she spoke about choices, remembering him running into Pendaran, past a burning tree.

  Matt drew a breath, and then he nodded slowly. “May I thank you?” he asked.

  This was hard. Everything was hard, now. “Not yet,” she said. “Wait and see. You may not want to. I don’t think we’ll have long to wait.”

  And that last thing was said in her Seer’s voice, and so she knew it was true.

  “Very well,” Matt said. He turned to Levon. “You say you must carry word to the High King. We will join you tomorrow. The
Dwarves have gone through a time worse than any in all our days. We shall remain by ourselves in these woods tonight and try to deal with what has happened to us. Tell Aileron we will meet him here when he comes, and that Matt Sören, King of the Dwarves, will bring his people into the army of the Light at that time.”

  “I will tell him,” said Levon simply. “Come, Davor. Mabon. Faebur.” He glanced at Kim, and she nodded. With Loren and Dave on either side, she began to follow Levon south, out of the clearing.

  “Wait!” Matt cried suddenly. To her astonishment, Kim heard real fear in his voice. “Loren, where are you going?”

  Loren turned, an awkward expression investing his lined face. “You asked us to leave,” he protested. “To leave the Dwarves alone for tonight.”

  Matt’s grim face seemed to change in the firelight. “Not you,” he whispered softly. “Never you, my friend. Surely you will not leave me now?”

  The two of them looked at each other in that way they had of seeming to be alone in the midst of a great many people. And then, very slowly, Loren smiled.

  As they followed Levon out of the clearing into the darkness of the evergreens, Kim and Dave paused for a moment to look back. They saw Matt Sören standing with Brock on one side and Loren Silvercloak on the other. Matt had placed his fingertips together in front of his chest, with his palms held a little way apart—as if to form a mountain peak with his hands. And one by one the Dwarves of the twin mountains were filing up to him, and kneeling, and placing their own hands between his, inside the sheltering mountain the Dwarf King formed.

  PART IV:

  Andarien

  Chapter 14

  In one way, Leila thought, listening to the last notes of the morning’s Lament for Liadon, it had been easier than she’d had any right to expect. She stood alone behind the altar, looking out upon all the others, closest to the axe but careful not to touch it, for that the High Priestess alone could do.

  She stood closest, though. She was fifteen years old, only newly clad in the grey of the priestesses, yet Jaelle had named her to act in her stead while the High Priestess was away from Paras Derval. Dun to grey to red. She was of the Mormae now. Jaelle had warned her that there might be difficulties here in the Temple.