The Darkest Road

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  “Hi,” she said brightly to her closest friend. “Are you still speaking to me?”

  Jennifer smiled wearily and leaned across in her saddle to kiss Kim on the cheek. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s not that silly. You were pretty angry.” Jennifer lowered her gaze. “I know. I’m sorry.” She paused. “I wish I could explain better why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

  “You wanted him to be left alone. It isn’t that complicated.”

  Jennifer looked up again. “We have to leave him alone,” she said quietly. “If I’d tried to bind him we’d never have known what he really was. He might have changed at any time. We’d never have been sure what he might do.”

  “We aren’t very sure now,” Kim said, rather more sharply than she’d intended.

  “I know that,” Jennifer replied. “But at least he’ll do it freely, whatever he does. By his own choice. I think that’s the whole point, Kim. I think it has to be.”

  “Would it have been so terrible,” Kim asked, not wisely, but she couldn’t hold the question back. “if you had just told him you loved him?” Jennifer didn’t flinch, nor did she flare into anger again.

  “I did,” she said mildly, a hint of surprise in her voice. “I did let him know. Surely you can see that. I left him free to make his choice. I… trusted him.”

  “Fair enough,” said Paul Schafer. They hadn’t heard him ride up. “You were the only one of us who did,” he added. “Everyone else has been busy trying to cajole him or make him into something. Including me, I suppose, when I took him to the Godwood.”

  “Do you know,” Jennifer asked Paul suddenly, “why the Weaver made the Wild Hunt? Do you know what Owein means?”

  Paul shook his head.

  “Remind me to tell you, if we ever have the time,” she said. “You, too,” she added, turning to Kim. “I think it might help you understand.”

  Kim was silent. She really didn’t know how to respond. It was too hard, this whole question of Darien, and since what she’d done, or refused to do, last night by Calor Diman, she no longer trusted her own instincts about anything. Besides, this confrontation wasn’t why she’d come over.

  She sighed. “You may hate me after all,” she said. “I interfered again, I’m afraid.”

  Jen’s green eyes were calm, though. She said, “I can guess. You told Aileron and the others about Darien.”

  Kim blinked. She must have looked comical, because Dave grinned suddenly, and Jennifer leaned across again to pat her hand.

  “I thought you might have,” Jen explained. “And I can’t say you were wrong. By now he has to know. Arthur told me that on the ship last night. I would have talked to him myself if you hadn’t. It may affect his planning, though I can’t see how.” She paused and then, in a different voice, added, “Don’t you see? The secret doesn’t matter now, Kim. None of them can stop him from whatever he’s going to do—Lancelot freed him from Daniloth yesterday morning. He’s a long way north of us now.”

  Involuntarily, Kim’s gaze went out over the land that stretched in front of them. She saw Dave Martyniuk do the same. Wild and empty in the late-afternoon light, Andarien rolled away, all stony hills and barren hollows, and she knew it was like this all the way to the Ungarch River. To the Valgrind Bridge across that river, to Starkadh on the other side.

  As it happened, they did not have nearly so far to go, themselves.

  They were very close to the front of the army, only a few paces behind Aileron and Ra-Tenniel, ascending a wide, lightly sloping ridge with yet another bleak depression beyond. The reddened sun was well over to the west and a breeze had come up, overture to twilight.

  Then they saw the front-riding auberei suddenly reappear on the crest of the ridge. The High King reached the summit. He reined in his own black charger and froze, utterly still. They topped the rise themselves, the four of them riding together for the first and only time, and looked down onto a vast, stony plain and saw the army of the Dark.

  The plain was huge, easily the largest expanse of level ground they’d yet reached in Andarien, and Paul knew this was no accident of chance. He also guessed, as he tried to control his accelerating heartbeat, that this would be the broadest such expanse in all the land between here and the Ice. It had to be. With subtleties of contour and land formation stripped away, less of Aileron’s training in war, little of his life’s studies, could be drawn into play. The ridge upon which they now were, looking down the gentle slope, was the only distinguishing feature in all the level land to east or west. This would be a battle of force on force, with nowhere to hide or seek advantage, where sheer numbers would tell the tale.

  Between them and whatever lands lay beyond was an army so huge it numbed the mind. It could scarcely be registered. That was another reason why this plain had been chosen: nowhere else could such obliterating numbers have been assembled to move freely without hindering each other. Paul looked up and saw hundreds of swans, all black, circling ominously in the sky over Rakoth’s army.

  “Well done, Teyrnon,” the High King said calmly. Paul realized with a shock that Aileron, as always, seemed to have been prepared, even for this. The mage had been using his powers to sense forward. Aileron had guessed the army was here; it was why he’d been so adamant about not camping overnight against the mist of the Shadowland.

  Even as he looked down, heartsick, upon what lay waiting for them, Paul felt a quick pride in the young war king who was leading them. Completely unruffled, Aileron took the measure of the army he would have to somehow try to defeat. Without turning around, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the plain below, he began to issue a string of quiet instructions.

  “They will not attack tonight,” he said confidently. “They will not want to come at us up this ridge, and at night they’ll lose the advantage of the swans’ eyes. We will have battle with the sunrise, my friends. I wish we had some way of fighting them for control of the air, but it can’t be helped. Teyrnon, you’ll have to be my eyes, for as long as you and Barak can do so.”

  “We can do so for as long as you need us to,” the last mage in Brennin replied.

  Paul noticed that Kim had gone pale at Aileron’s last words. He tried to catch her eye but she avoided his glance. He didn’t have time to find out why.

  “The lios can help with that,” Ra-Tenniel murmured. There was music in his voice still, but there was nothing delicate about it anymore, nothing soothing. “I can post the most longsighted among us up on this ridge to overlook the battle.”

  “Good,” said Aileron crisply. “Do that. Place them tonight to keep watch. They will stay there tomorrow as well. Ivor, assign pairs of auberei to stay with each of the posted lios, to carry their messages back and forth.”

  “I will,” said Ivor simply. “And my archers know what to do if the swans come too low.”

  “I know they do,” said Aileron grimly. “For tonight, all of you bid your men divide into three watches and keep their weapons to hand when they rest. As for the morning—”

  “Wait,” said Diarmuid, from beside Paul. “Look. We seem to have a guest.” His tone was as effortlessly light as it always was.

  He was right, Paul saw. The red light of the sunset picked out a single huge white-clad figure that had detached itself from the heaving mass of the army on the plain. Riding one of the monstrous six-legged slaug, it picked its way over the stony ground to a position carefully out of bowshot from those watching on the ridge.

  An unnatural stillness descended. Paul was acutely aware of the breeze, the angle of the sun, the clouds scudding overhead. He reached, a little desperately, for the place within himself that would mark the presence of Mórnir. It was there, but faint and hopelessly far. He shook his head.

  “Uathach!” Dave Martyniuk said suddenly. It was a snarl.

  “Who is he?” Aileron asked, very calm.

  “He led them in the battle by the Adein,” Ivor replied, his voice thick with loathing. “He is an urgach, but much more than that. Rako
th has done something to him.”

  Aileron nodded but said nothing more.

  Instead, it was Uathach who spoke.

  “Hear me!” he cried, his voice a viscous howl, so loud it seemed to bruise the air. “I bid you welcome, High King of Brennin, to Andarien. My friends behind me are hungry tonight, and I have promised them warrior meat tomorrow and more delicate fare after that, in Daniloth.” He laughed, huge and fell on the plain, the red sun tinting the mocking white of his robe.

  Aileron made no reply, nor did anyone else on the ridge. In grim, repressive silence, stony as the land over which they rode, they looked down upon the leader of Rakoth’s army.

  The slaug moved restlessly sideways. Uathach reined it viciously. Then he laughed a second time, and something in the sound chilled Paul.

  Uathach said, “I have promised the svart alfar meat for tomorrow and offered them sport tonight. Tell me, warriors of Brennin, of Daniloth, of the Dalrei, treacherous Dwarves, tell me if there is one among you who will come down alone to me now. Or will you all hide as the frail lios do, in their shadows? I offer challenge in the presence of these armies! Is there one who will accept, or are you all craven before my sword?”

  There was a stir along the ridge. Paul saw Dave, jaw clamped tight, turn quickly to look at the Aven’s son. Levon, his hand trembling, had half drawn his sword.

  “No!” said Ivor dan Banor, and not only to his son. “I have seen this one in battle. We cannot fight him, and we cannot afford to lose any man here!”

  Before anyone else could speak, Uathach’s coarse laughter spilled forth again, a slimy flood of sound. He had heard.

  He said, “I thought as much! Then let me say one thing more to all the brave ones on that hill. I have a message from my lord.” The voice changed; it became colder, less rough, more frightening. “A year ago and a little more, Rakoth took pleasure in a woman of your company. He would do so again. She offered rare, willing sport. Black Avaia is with me now, to bear her back to Starkadh at his bidding. Is there one among you who will contest against my blade Rakoth’s claim to her naked flesh?”

  A sickness rose within Paul, of revulsion and of premonition.

  “My lord High King,” said Arthur Pendragon, as Uathach’s laughter, and the howls of the svart alfar behind him, rose and fell, “would you tell me the name of this place.”

  Paul saw Aileron turn to the Warrior.

  But it was Loren Silvercloak who answered, a knowing sorrow in his voice. “This plain was green and fertile a thousand years ago,” he said. “And in those days it was called Camlann.”

  “I thought it might be,” Arthur replied very quietly. Without speaking again he began checking the fit of his sword belt and the tilt of the King Spear in his saddle rest.

  Paul turned to Jennifer—to Guinevere. What he saw in her face then, as she looked at the Warrior’s quiet preparations, went straight to his heart.

  “My lord Arthur,” said Aileron, “I must ask you to defer to me. The leader of their army should fight the leader of our own. This is my battle, and I lay claim to it.”

  Arthur didn’t even look up from his preparations. “Not so,” he said, “and you know it is not. You are needed on the morrow more than any other man here. I told you all a long time ago, on the eve of the voyage to Cader Sedat, that I am never allowed to see the end of things when I am summoned. And the name Loren spoke has made things clear: there has been a Camlann waiting for me in every world. This is what I was brought here for, High King.”

  Beside him, Cavall made a sound, more whimper than growl. The red sun was low, casting a strange light upon all their faces. Below them, the laughter had ended.

  “Arthur, no!” said Kimberly, with passion. “You are here for more than this. You must not go down there. We need all of you too much. Can’t you see what he is? None of you can fight him! Jennifer, tell them it is foolishness. You must tell them!”

  But Jennifer, looking at the Warrior, said nothing at all.

  Arthur had finished his preparations. He looked up then, straight at Kimberly, who had summoned him. Who had brought him to this place by the binding of his name. And to her he made reply, in words Paul knew he would never forget.

  “How can we not fight him, Seer? How can we claim to carry our swords in the name of Light, if we are cowards when we stand before the Dark? This challenge goes further back than any of us. Further back, even, than I. What are we if we deny the dance?”

  Aileron was nodding slowly, and Levon, and Ra-Tenniel’s eyes were bright with his agreement. Within his own heart Paul felt some deep eons-old force behind the Warrior’s words, and as he accepted them, grieving, he felt another thing: the pulsebeat of the God. It was true. It was a dance that was not to be denied. And it seemed that it was Arthur’s, after all.

  “No,” said Guinevere.

  Every eye went to her. In the windswept silence of that desolate place her beauty seemed to burn like some evening star brought among men, almost too fierce to look upon.

  Motionless astride her horse, her hands twisted in its mane, she said, “Arthur, I will not lose you again like this. I could not bear it. Single combat is not why you were summoned, my love, it cannot be why. Camlann or no, this must not be your battle.”

  His face, under the greying hair, had gone still. He said, “We are caught in a woven doom of no escape. You know I must go down to him.”

  There were tears welling in her eyes. She did not speak, but slowly she shook her head back and forth in denial.

  “Whose place is it, then, if not mine?” he asked, scarcely more than a whisper.

  She lowered her head. Her hands moved in a little helpless, trapped gesture of despair.

  And then, without looking up, she said, with sudden, terrible formality, “In this place and before these many people my name has been besmirched. I have need of one who will take this challenge upon himself and unmake it with his sword.”

  And now she lifted her head, and now she turned. To the one who had been sitting quietly upon his horse, not speaking, not moving, waiting patiently for what he seemed to have known was coming. And Guinevere said: “Wilt thou, who hast been my champion so many times before, be so yet again? Wilt thou take this challenge in my name, my lord Lancelot?”

  “Lady, I will,” he said.

  “You can’t!” Paul exclaimed, his voice crashing into the stillness, unable to stop himself. “Jennifer, he’s wounded! Look at his palm—he can’t even hold a sword!” Beside him someone made a curious, breathless sound.

  The three figures in the center of the circle ignored him. Completely. It was as if he hadn’t even spoken. There was another silence, laden with unsaid things, with so many layers of time. A stir of wind blew Jennifer’s hair back from her face.

  Arthur said, “My lady, I have known too many things for too long to ever deny Lancelot’s claim to be your champion. Or that, healthy, he is far more worthy than I to face this foe. Even so, I will not allow it now. Not this time, my love. You have asked him, sorely wounded, to take this upon himself, not for your sake, or his, but for mine. You have not asked him in love.”

  Guinevere’s head snapped back. Her green eyes went wide and then they blazed with a naked, dazzling anger. She shook her head, so fiercely that the tears flew off her face, and in the voice of a Queen, a voice that froze and bound them into the power of the grief it carried, she cried aloud, “Have I not, my lord? And shall you tell me so? Would you tear open my flesh that all men here might probe into my heart as Maugrim did?”

  Arthur flinched, as if stunned by a blow, but she was not done. With icy, relentless fury she said, “What man, even you, my lord, dares in my presence to say whether I have spoken in love or no?”

  “Guinevere—” Lancelot began, but quailed in his turn as her burning glance swung to him.

  “Not a word!” she snapped. “Not from you or anyone else!”

  Arthur had slipped down from his horse. He knelt before her, pain raw as a wound in his f
ace. He opened his mouth to speak.

  And in that moment, precisely then, Paul became aware of an absence and he remembered the slight, breathless sound at his elbow a moment before, a sound he’d ignored.

  But there was no one beside him anymore. He turned, his heart lurching, and looked north, along the downward-sloping path to where Uathach waited on the stony plain.

  He saw. And then he heard, they all heard, as a ringing cry rose up, echoing in the twilight air between the armies of Light and Dark:

  “For the Black Boar!” he heard. They all heard. “For the honor of the Black Boar!”

  And thus did Diarmuid dan Ailell take Uathach’s challenge upon himself, riding forth alone on the horse his brother had brought for him, his sword uplifted high, his fair hair lit by the sunset, as he raced toward the dance his bright soul would not deny.

  He was a master, Dave knew. Having fought beside Diarmuid at the winter skirmish by the Latham and then at the wolf hunt in Leinanwood, he had reason to know what Aileron’s brother could do. And Dave’s heart—halfway to his own battle fury—leaped to see Diarmuid’s first swiftly angled engagement of the urgach.

  And then, an instant later, battle frenzy gave way to chilled grief. Because he remembered Uathach too, from the bloody banks of the Adein in the first battle of Kevin’s spring. And in his mind, replayed more vividly than such a memory should ever have been, he saw Maugrim’s white-clad urgach swing his colossal sword in one scything blow from the slaug’s saddle that had cleaved through Barth and Navon, both: the babies in the wood.

  He remembered Uathach, and now he saw him again, and the memory, however grim, was less than the reality, far less. By the light of the setting sun, in that wasteland between armies, Diarmuid and his quick, clever horse met, with a thunder of hooves and a grinding shock of blades, a foe that was too much more than mortal for a mortal man to face.

  The urgach was too large, too uncannily swift despite his massive bulk. And he was shrewder than any such creature could ever have been had it not been altered in some way within the confines of Starkadh. Beyond all this, the slaug was a deadly terror in and of itself. Constantly ripping with its curved horn, seeking the flesh of Diarmuid’s horse, running on four legs and lashing out with the other two, it was too dangerous for Diarmuid to do much more than evade, for fear that his own mount would be gorged or trampled, leaving him helpless on the barren ground. And because he couldn’t work in close, his slim blade could scarcely reach Uathach—though Diarmuid was a perilously easy target for the urgach’s huge black sword.