The Darkest Road

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  Yet another perspective: a ridge of land this time, south of the battlefield. And on the ridge stood his mother. Darien felt, suddenly, as if he could not breathe. He looked upon her, from so impossibly far away, and he read the sorrow in her eyes, the awareness of doom descending.

  And he realized, a white fire igniting in his heart, that he did not want her to die.

  He did not want any of them to die: not Lancelot, or Shahar, or the grey man with the spear, not the white-haired Seer standing behind his mother. He was sharing their grief, he realized; it was his own pain, it was the fire running through him. It was his. He was one of them.

  He saw the innumerable loathsome hordes descending upon the dwindling army of Light: the urgach, the svart alfar, the slaugs, all the instruments of the Unraveller. They were foul. And he hated them.

  He stood there, looking down upon a world of war, and he thought of Finn. In the end, here at the very end, it came back to Finn. Who had said that Darien was to try to love everything except the Dark.

  He did. He was one of that besieged army, the army of Light. Freely, uncoerced, he finally numbered himself among them. His eyes were shining, and he knew that they were blue.

  And so there, in that moment, in the deepest stronghold of the Dark, Darien made his choice.

  And Rakoth Maugrim laughed.

  It was the laughter of a god, the laughter that had resounded when Rangat had sent up the hand of fire. Darien didn’t know about that. He hadn’t been born then. What he knew, terrified, was that he’d given himself away.

  The window of the chamber still showed the high ridge of land above the battle. It showed his mother standing there. And Rakoth had been watching as Darien looked upon her.

  The laughter stopped. Maugrim stepped very close. Darien couldn’t move. Slowly his father raised the stump of his severed hand and held it over Darien’s head. The black drops of blood fell and burned on Darien’s face. He couldn’t even scream.

  Maugrim lowered his arm. He said, “You need not tell me anything now. I know everything there is to know. You thought to bring me a gift, a toy. You have done more. You have brought me back my immortality. You are my gift!”

  It was to have been so, once. But not like this. And not now, not anymore! But Darien stood .there, frozen in his place by the will of Rakoth Maugrim, and heard his father say, “You do not understand, do you? They were all fools, fools beyond belief! I needed her dead, that she might never bear a child. I must not have a child! Did none of them see? A child of my seed binds me into time! It puts my name in the Tapestry, and I can die!”

  And then came the laughter again, brutal crescendos of triumph rolling over him in waves. When it ended, Maugrim stood only inches away from Darien, looking down upon him from his awesome height, from within the blackness of his hood.

  He said, in a voice colder than death, older than the spinning worlds, “You are that son. I know you now. And I will do more than kill you. I will thrust your living soul out beyond the walls of time. I will make it so that you have never been! You are in Starkadh, and in this place I have the power to do that. Had you died outside these walls I might have been lost. Not now. You are lost. You have never lived. I will live forever, and all the worlds are mine today. All things in all the worlds.”

  There was nothing, nothing at all, that Darien could do. He couldn’t even move, or speak. He could only listen and hear the Unraveller say again, “All things in all the worlds, starting with that toy of the lios that you wear. I know what it is. I would have it before I blast your soul out of the Tapestry.”

  He reached forth with his mind—Darien felt it touch him again—to claim the Circlet as he had claimed the dagger and take it unto himself.

  And it came to pass in that moment that the spirit of Lisen of the Wood, for whom that shining thing of Light had been made so long ago, reached out from the far side of Night, from beyond death, and performed her own last act of absolute renunciation of the Dark.

  In that stronghold of evil, the Circlet blazed. It flared with a light of sun and moon and stars, of hope and world-spanning love, a light so pure, so dazzlingly incandescent, a light so absolute that Rakoth Maugrim was blinded by the pain of it. He screamed in agony. His hold on Darien broke, only for an instant.

  Which was enough.

  For in that instant, Darien did the one thing, the only thing, that he could do to manifest the choice he’d made. He took one step forward, the Circlet a glorious radiance on his brow, rejecting him no longer. He took the last step on the Darkest Road, and he impaled himself upon the dagger his father held.

  Upon Lokdal, Seithr’s gift to Colan a thousand years ago. And Rakoth Maugrim, blinded by Lisen’s Light, mortal because he’d fathered a son, killed that son with the Dagger of the dwarves, and he killed without love in his heart.

  Dying, Darien heard his father’s last scream and knew it could be heard in every corner of Fionavar, in every world spun into time by the Weaver’s hand: the sound that marked the passing of Rakoth Maugrim.

  Darien was lying on the floor. There was a bright blade in his heart. With fading sight he looked out the high window and saw that the fighting had stopped on the plain so far away. It became harder to see. The window was trembling, and there was a blurring in front of his eyes. The Circlet was still shining, though. He reached up and touched it for the last time. The window began to shake even more violently, and the floor of the room. A stone crashed from above. Another. All around him Starkadh was beginning to crumble. It was falling away to nothingness in the ruin of Maugrim’s fall.

  He wondered if anyone would ever understand what had happened. He hoped so. So that someone might come, in time, to his mother and tell her of the choice he’d made. The choice of Light, and of love.

  It was true, he realized. He was dying with love, killed by Lokdal. Flidais had told him what that part meant, as well, the gift he might have been allowed to give.

  But he’d marked no one’s forehead with the pattern on the haft, and in any case, he thought, he would not have wanted to burden any living creature with his soul.

  It was almost his last thought. His very last was of his brother, tossing him among the soft banks of snow when he’d still been Dari, and Finn had still been there to love him and to teach him just enough of love to carry him home to the Light.

  Chapter 17

  Dave heard the last scream of Rakoth Maugrim, and then he heard the screaming stop. There was a moment of silence, of waiting, and then a great rumbling avalanche of sound rolled down upon them from far in the north. He knew what that was. They all did. There were tears of joy in his eyes, they were pouring down his face, he couldn’t stop them. He didn’t want to stop them.

  And suddenly it was easy. He felt as if a weight had been stripped away from him, a weight he hadn’t even known he was bearing—a burden he seemed to have carried from the moment he’d been born into time. He, and everyone else, cast forth into worlds that lay under the shadow of the Dark.

  But Rakoth Maugrim was dead. Dave didn’t know how, but he knew it was true. He looked at Tore and saw a wide, helpless smile spreading across the other man’s face. He had never seen Tore look like that. And suddenly Dave laughed aloud on the battlefield, for the sheer joy of being alive in that moment.

  In front of them the svart alfar broke and ran. The urgach milled about in disorganized confusion. Slaug crashed into each other, grunting with fear. Then they, too, turned from the army of Light and began to flee to the north. Which was no haven anymore. They would be hunted and found, Dave knew. They would be destroyed. Already, the Dalrei and the lios alfar were racing after them. For the first time in that long terrible day, Dave heard the lios begin to sing, and his heart swelled as if it would burst to hear the glory of their song.

  Only the wolves held firm for a time, on the western flank. But they were alone now, and outnumbered, and the warriors of Brennin led by Arthur Pendragon on his raithen, wielding the shining King Spear as if it were th
e Light itself, were cutting through them like sickles through a field of harvest grain.

  Dave and Tore, laughing, crying, thundered after the urgach and the svart alfar. Sorcha was with them, riding beside his son. The slaug should have been faster than their horses, but they weren’t. The six-legged monsters seemed to have become feeble and purposeless. They stumbled, careened in all directions, threw their riders, fell. It was easy now, it was glorious. The lios alfar were singing all around, and the setting sun shone down upon them from a cloudless summer sky.

  “Where’s Ivor?” Tore shouted suddenly. “And Levon?”

  Dave felt a quick spasm of fear, but then it passed. He knew where they would be. He pulled up his horse, and the other two did the same. They rode back across the bloodied plain strewn with the bodies of the dying and the dead, back to the ridge of land south of the battlefield. From a long distance away they could see the Aven kneeling beside a body that would be his youngest son. They dismounted and walked up the ridge in the late afternoon light. A serenity seemed to have gathered about that place.

  Levon saw them. “He’ll be all right,” he said, walking over. Dave nodded, then he reached out and pulled Levon to him in a fierce embrace.

  Ivor looked up. He released Tabor’s hand and came over to where they stood. There was a brightness in his eyes, shining through his weariness. “He will be all right,” he echoed. “Thanks to the mage and to Arthur he will be all right.”

  “And to Pwyll,” said Teyrnon quietly. “He was the one who guessed. I would never have caught him, without that warning.”

  Dave looked for Paul and saw him standing a little way apart from everyone else, farther along the ridge. Even now, he thought. He considered walking over but was reluctant to intrude. There was something very self-contained, very private about Paul in that moment.

  “What happened?” someone said. Dave looked down. It was Mabon of Rhoden, lying on a makeshift pallet not far away. The Duke smiled at him and winked. Then he repeated, “Does anyone know exactly what happened?”

  Dave saw Jennifer coming toward them. There was a gentle radiance in her face, but it did not hide the deeper well of sorrow in her eyes. Before anyone spoke, Dave had an unexpected glimmer of understanding.

  “It was Darien,” said Kim, approaching as well. “But I don’t know how. I wish I did.”

  “So do I,” said Teyrnon. “But I could not see far enough to know what happened there.”

  “I did,” said a third voice, very gently, very clearly.

  They all turned to Gereint. And it was the old blind shaman of the Plain who gave voice to Darien’s dying wish.

  In the soft light and the deeply woven peace that had come, he said, “I thought there might be a reason for me to fly with Tabor. This was it. I could not fight in battle, but I was far enough north, standing here, to send my awareness into Starkadh.”

  He paused, and asked gently, “Where is the Queen?”

  Dave was confused for a second, but Jennifer said, “Here I am, shaman.”

  Gereint turned to the sound of her voice. He said, “He is dead, my lady. I am sorry to say that the child is dead. But through the gift of my blindness I saw what he did. He chose for the Light at the last. The Circlet of Lisen blazed on his brow, and he threw himself upon a blade and died in such a way that Maugrim died with him.”

  “Lokdal!” Kim exclaimed. “Of course. Rakoth killed without love, and so he died! Oh, Jen. You were right after all. You were so terribly right.” She was crying, and Dave saw that Jennifer Lowell, who was Guinevere, was weeping now as well, though silently.

  In mourning for her child, who had taken the Darkest Road and had come at last to the end of it, alone, and so far away.

  Dave saw Jaelle, the High Priestess, no longer so coldly arrogant—it showed even in the way she moved—walk over to comfort Jennifer, to gather her in her arms.

  There were so many tilings warring for a place in his heart: joy and weariness, deep sorrow, pain, an infinite relief. He turned and walked down the slope of the ridge.

  He picked his way along the southern edge of what had been, so little time ago, the battlefield whereon the Light was to have been lost, and would have been, were it not for Jennifer’s child. Guinevere’s child.

  He was wounded in many places, and exhaustion was slowly catching up to him. He thought of his father, for the second time that day, standing there on the edge of the battle plain, looking out upon the dead.

  But one of them was not dead.

  Would the old estrangement never leave him? Paul was wondering. Even here? Even now, in the moment when the towers of Darkness fell? Would he always feel this way?

  And the answer that came back to him within his mind was in the form of another question: What right had he even to ask?

  He was alive by sufferance of Mórnir. He had gone to the Summer Tree to die, named surrogate by the old King, Ailell. Who had told him about the price of power during a chess game that seemed centuries ago.

  He had gone to die but had been sent back. He was still alive: Twiceborn. He was Lord of the Summer Tree, and there was a price to power. He was marked, named to be apart. And in this moment, while all around him quiet joy and quiet sorrow melded with each other, Paul was vibrating with the presence of his power in a way he never had before.

  There was another thing left to happen. Something was coming. Not the war; Kim had been right about that, as she had been right about so many things. His was not a power of war, it never had been. He had been trying hard to make it so, to find a way to use it, channel it into battle. But from the very beginning what he’d had was a strength of resistance, of opposition, denial of the Dark. He was a defense, not a weapon of attack. He was the symbol of the God, an affirmation of life in his very existence, his being alive.

  He had not felt the cold of Maugrim’s winter, walking coatless in a wild night. Later, his had been the warning of the Soulmonger at sea, the cry that had brought Liranan to their defense. And then again, a second time, to save their lives upon the rocks of the Anor’s bay. He was the presence of life, the sap of the Summer Tree rising from the green earth to drink the rain of the sky and greet the sun.

  And within him now, with the war over, Maugrim dead, the sap was beginning to run. There was a trembling in his hands, an awareness of growth, of something building, deep and very strong. The pulsebeat of the God, which was his own.

  He looked down on the quiet plain. To the north and west, Aileron the High King was riding back, with Arthur on one side and Lancelot on the other. The setting sun was behind the three of them, and there were coronas of light in their hair.

  These were the figures of battle, Paul thought: the warriors in the service of Macha and Nemain, the goddesses of war. Just as Kimberly had been, with the summoning Baelrath on her hand, as Tabor and his shining mount had been, his gift of Dana born of the red full moon. As even Dave Martyniuk was, with his towering passion in battle, with Ceinwen’s gift at his side.

  Ceinwen’s gift.

  Paul was quick. All his life he had had an intuitive ability to make connections that others would never even see. He was turning, even as the thought flared in his mind like a brand. He was turning, looking for Dave, a cry forming on his lips. He was almost, almost in time.

  So, too, was Dave. When the half-buried feral figure leaped from the pile of bodies, Dave’s reflexes overrode his weariness. He spun, his hands going up to defend himself. Had the figure been thrusting for his heart or throat, Dave would have turned him back.

  But his assailant was not looking to take his life, not yet. A hand flashed out, precise, unerring, at this last supreme moment, a hand that reached for Dave’s side, not for his heart or throat. That reached for and found the key to what it had so long sought.

  There was a tearing sound as a cord ripped. Dave heard Paul Schafer cry out up on the ridge. He clawed for his axe, but it was too late. It was much too late.

  Rising gracefully from a rolling fall ten fee
t away, Galadan stood under the westering sun on the bloodied ground of Andarien, and he held Owein’s Horn in his hand.

  And then the Wolflord of the andain, who had dreamt a dream for so many years, who had followed a never-ending quest—not for power, not for lordship over anyone or anything, but for pure annihilation, for the ending of all things—blew that mighty horn with all the power of his bitter soul and summoned Owein and the Wild Hunt to the ending of the world.

  Kim heard Paul shout his warning, and then, in that same moment, all other sounds seemed to cease, and she heard the horn for the second time.

  Its sound was Light, she remembered that. It could not be heard by the agents of the Dark. It had been moonlight on snow and frosty, distant stars the night Dave had sounded it before the cave to free the Hunt.

  It was different now. Galadan was sounding it: Galadan, who had lived a thousand years in lonely, arrogant bitterness, after Lisen had rejected him and died. Tool of Maugrim, but seeking ever to further his own design, his one unvarying design.

  The sound of the horn as he sent his soul into it was the light of grieving candles in a shadowed, hollow place; it was a half-moon riding through cold, windblown clouds; it was torches seen passing far off in a dark wood, passing but never coming near to warm with their glow; it was a bleak sunrise on a wintry beach; the pale, haunted light of glowworms in the mists of Llychlyn Marsh; it was all lights that did not warm or comfort, that only told a tale of shelter somewhere else, for someone else.

  Then the sound ended, and the images faded.

  Galadan lowered the horn. There was a dazed expression on his face. He said, incredulously, “I heard it. How did I hear Owein’s Horn?”

  No one answered him. No one spoke. They looked to the sky overhead. And in the moment Owein was there, and the shadowy kings of the Wild Hunt, and before them all, unsheathing a deadly sword with the rest of them, rode the child on pale Iselen. The child that had been Finn dan Shahar.