Fionavar 1 (19 page)

The cat pricked up her ears, but preferred to continue licking a paw rather than address herself to so thorny a question.

At length the Seer rose, lowering the affronted Malka to the floor, and she walked slowly to the cabinet wherein the Circlet shone. Opening the glass door, she reached in and took out an object half hidden on a lower shelf, then she stood there a long time, gazing at what lay in her hand.

The third thing of power: the one that Kimberly, throwing pebbles by the lake, had not seen.

"Ah, Malka," the Seer said again, and drew the dagger from its sheath. A sound like a plucked harpstring ran through the room.

A thousand years before, in the days after the Bael Rangat, when all the free peoples of Fionavar had gathered before the Mountain to see Ginserat's stones, the Dwarves of Banir Lok had shaped a crafting of their own as a gift for the new High King of Brennin.

With thieren had they wrought, rarest of metals, found only at the roots of their twin mountains, most precious gift of earth to them, blue-veined silver of Eridu.

And for Colan the Beloved they had taken thought and fashioned a blade, with runes upon the sheath to bind it, and an old, dark magic spun in their caverns to make a knife unlike any other in all the worlds, and they named it Lokdal.

Very low bowed Conary's son when they handed it to him, and silently he listened, wiser than his years, as Seithr the Dwarf-King told him what had been laid upon the blade. Then he bowed again, lower yet, when Seithr, too, fell silent.

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"I thank you," Colan said, and his eyes flashed as he spoke. "Double-edged the knife, and double-edged the gift. Mörnir grant us the sight to use it truly." And he placed Lokdal in his belt and bore it south away.

To the mages he had entrusted it, the blade and the magic locked within it like a blessing or a curse, and twice only in a thousand years had Colan's dagger killed. From First Mage to First Mage it had passed, until the night Raederth died. In the middle of that night, the woman who loved him had had a dream that shook her to the hidden places of her soul. Rising in the darkness, she came to the place where Raederth guarded the blade, and she took it away and hid it from those who succeeded him. Not even Loren Silvercloak, whom she trusted with everything else, knew that Ysanne had

Lokdal.

"Who strikes with this blade without love in his heart shall surely die," had said Seithr of the Dwarves. "That is one thing."

And then softly, so that only Colan heard, he had said the other thing.

In her hidden chamber, Ysanne the Seer, dreamer of the dream, turned the bright rippling blade over and over in her hands, so the light glinted from it like blue fire.

On the shore of the lake a young woman stood, power within her, power beneath her, throwing pebbles one by one.

It was cooler in the wood where the lios alfar led them. The food they were offered was delicate and wonderful: strange fruits, rich bread, and a wine that lifted the spirit and sharpened the colors of the sunset.

Throughout, there was music: one of the lios played at a high-toned wind instrument while others sang, their voices twining in the deepening shadows of the trees, as the torches of evening were lit at the edge of the glade.

Laesha and Drance, for whom this was childhood fantasy made true, seemed even more enchanted than Jennifer was, and so when Brendel invited them to stay the night in the wood and watch the lios dance under the stars, it was with wonder and joy that they accepted.

Brendel dispatched someone to ride swiftly to Paras Derval and give private word to the King of their whereabouts. Wrapped in a delicate languor, they watched the messenger, his hair glowing in

the light of the setting sun, ride over the hill, and they turned back to the wine and the singing in the glade.

As the shadows lengthened, a grace note of long sorrow seemed to weave its way into the songs of the lios alfar. A myriad of fireflies moved like shining eyes just beyond the torches: lienae they were named, Brendel said. Jennifer sipped the wine he poured for her, and let herself be carried into a rich sweet sadness by the music.

Cresting the hill west of them, the messenger, Tandem of the Kestrel, set his horse into an easy canter towards the walled town and the palace a league away.

He was not quite halfway there when he died.

Soundlessly he fell from his horse, four darts in his throat and back. After a moment the svarts rose from the hollow beside the path and watched in unblinking silence as the wolves padded up from beside them to the body of the lios. When it was clear that he was dead, they, too, went forward and surrounded the fallen rider. Even in death, there was a nimbus of glory clinging to him, but when they were done, when the wet, tearing sounds had ceased and only the quiet stars looked down, there was nothing left that anyone would care to see of Tandem of the lios alfar.

Most hated by the Dark, for their name was Light.

And it was in that moment, away to the north and east, that another solitary rider checked his own mount suddenly. A moment he was motionless, then with a terrible oath, and fear like a fist
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in his heart, Loren Silvercloak turned his horse and began desperately to thunder home.

In Paras Derval, the King did not attend the banquet, nor did any of the four visitors, which caused more than a little talk. Ailell kept to his chambers and played ta'bael with Gorlaes, the Chancellor.

He won easily, as was customary, and with little pleasure, which was also customary. They played very late, and Tarn, the page, was asleep when the interruption came.

As they went through the open doorway of the Black Boar, the noise and smoke were like a wall into which they smashed.

One voice, however, made itself heard in a prodigious bellow that resounded over the pandemonium.

"Diarmuid!" roared Tegid, surging to his feet. Kevin winced at the decibel level engendered. "By the oak and the moon, it's himself!" Tegid howled, as the tavern sounds briefly resolved themselves into shouted greetings.

Diarmuid, in fawn-colored breeches and a blue doublet, stood grinning sardonically in the doorway as the others fanned out into the dense haze of the room. Tegid wove his way unsteadily forward to stand swaying before his Prince.

And hurled the contents of a mug of ale full in Diarmuid's face.

"Wretched Prince!" he screamed. "I shall tear your heart out! I shall send your liver to Gwen Ystrat! How dare you slip off and leave great Tegid behind with the women and the mewling babes?"

Kevin, beside the Prince, had a brief, hysterical vision of Tegid trying to go hand over hand across

Saeren, before Diarmuid, dripping wet, reached to the nearest table, grabbed a silver tankard, and threw it violently at Tegid.

Someone screamed as the Prince followed up the throw, which bounced off the big man's shoulder, with a short rush, at the end of which his lowered head intersected effectively with Tegid's massive target of a girth.

Tegid staggered back, his face momentarily achieving a shade of green. He recovered quickly, though, seized the nearest table top, and with one mighty exertion lifted it whole from the trestles, spilling mugs and cutlery, and sending their erstwhile users scattering as raucous curses exploded around him. Wheeling for leverage, he swung the board in a wide, lethal sweep that bade fair to render Ailell heirless had it landed.

Diarmuid ducked, very neatly. So, too, less smoothly, did Kevin. Sprawling on the floor, he saw the board whistle over their heads and, at the spent end of its sweep, clip a red-doubleted man on the shoulder, catapulting him into the patron beside him. A remarkable human demonstration of the domino effect ensued. The noise level was horrific.

Someone elected to deposit his bowl of soup on the red-doubleted gentleman's balding pate.

Someone else regarded this as more than sufficient excuse to deck the soup-pourer from behind with a hoisted bench. The innkeeper prudently began removing bottles from the bar top. A barmaid, her skirts aswirl, slipped under a table. Kevin saw Carde dive to join her there.

In the meantime, Diarmuid, springing from his crouch, butted Tegid again before the mountainous one could ready a return scything of the table top. The first reaping had comprehensively cleared a wide space about the two of them.

This time Tegid held his ground; with a joyous bellow he dropped the board on someone's head and enveloped Diarmuid in a bear-hug.

"Now I have you!" Tegid boomed, his face flushed with rapture. Diarmuid's features were also shading towards scarlet as his captor tightened a bone-crushing grip. Watching, Kevin saw the Prince free his arms for a counter-blow.

He had no doubt Diarmuid could manage to free himself, but Tegid was squeezing in earnest,
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and

Kevin saw that the Prince was going to have to use a crippling retort to break the other man's hold.

He saw Diarmuid shift his knee for leverage, and knew what would have to follow. With a futile shout, he rushed forward to intercede.

And stopped dead as a terrifying cry of outrage exploded from Tegid's throat. Still screaming, he dropped the Prince like a discarded toy on the sandy floor.

There came a smell of burning flesh. Leaping spectacularly, Tegid upended another table, rescued a brimming pitcher of ale, and proceeded to pour its contents over his posterior.

The movement revealed, somewhat like the drawing of a curtain, Paul Schafer behind him, holding rather apologetically, a poker from the cooking fire.

There was a brief silence, an awe-stricken homage to the operatic force of Tegid's scream, then Diarmuid, still on the floor, began to laugh in high, short, hysterical gasps, signaling a resumption of universal pandemonium. Crying with laughter, barely able to stand, Kevin made his way, with

Erron staggering beside him, to embrace the crookedly grinning Schafer.

It was some time before order was restored, largely because no one was particularly intent on restoring it. The red-doubleted man appeared to have a number of friends, and so, too, it seemed, did the soup-pourer. Kevin, who knew neither, threw a token bench into the fray, then withdrew towards the bar with Erron.

Two serving women joined them there, and the press of events greatly facilitated a rapid acquaintance.

Going upstairs, hand in hand with Marna, the taller of the two, Kevin's last glimpse of the tavern floor was of a surging mass of men disappearing in and out of the smoky haze. Diarmuid was standing atop the bar, lobbing whatever came to hand upon the heads of the combatants. He didn't seem to be choosing sides. Kevin looked for Paul, didn't see him; and then a door was opened and

closed behind him, and in the rush of dark a woman was in his arms, her mouth turned up to his, and his soul began its familiar spiral downward into longing.

Much later, when he had not yet completed the journey back, he heard Marna ask in a timid whisper, "Is it always so?"

And a good few minutes yet from being capable of speech, he stroked her hair once with an effort and closed his eyes again. Because it was always so. The act of love a blind, convulsive reaching back into a falling dark. Every time. It took away his very name, the shape and movement of his bones; and between times he wondered if there would be a night when he would go so far that there was no returning.

Not this night, though. Soon he was able to smile at her, and then to give thanks and gentle words, and not without sincerity, for her sweetness ran deep, and he had needed badly to drink of such a thing. Slipping inside his arm, Marna laid her head on his shoulder beside his own bright hair, and, breathing deeply of her scent, Kevin let the exhaustion of two waking nights carry him to sleep.

He only had an hour, though, and so was vulnerable and unfocused when the presence of a third person in the room woke him. It was another girl, not Erron's, and she was crying, her hair disordered about her shoulders.

"What is it, Tiene?" Marna asked sleepily.

"He sent me to you," brown-haired Tiene sniffled, looking at Kevin.

"Who?" Kevin grunted, groping towards consciousness. "Diarmuid?"

"Oh, no. It was the other stranger, Pwyll."

It took a moment.

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"Paul! What did-what's happened?"

His tone was evidently too sharp for already tender nerves. Tiene, casting a wide-eyed glance of reproach at him, sat down on the bed and started crying again. He shook her arm. "Tell me!

What happened?"

"He left," Tiene whispered, barely audible. "He came upstairs with me, but he left."

Shaking his head, Kevin tried desperately to focus. "What? Did he . . . was he able to. . . ?"

Tiene sniffed, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. "You mean to be with me? Yes, of course he was, but he took no pleasure at all, I could tell. It was all for me . . . and I am not, I gave him nothing, and . . . and . . ."

"And what, for God's sake?"

"And so I cried," Tiene said, as if it should have been obvious. "And when I cried, he walked out.

And he sent me to find you. My lord."

She had moved farther onto the bed, in part because Mania had made room. Tiene's dark eyes were wide like a fawn's; her robe had fallen open, and Kevin could see the start of her breast's deep curve. Then he felt the light stirring of Mania's hand along his thigh under the sheet. There was suddenly a pulsing in his head. He drew a deep breath.

And swung quickly out of bed. Cursing a hard-on, he kicked into his breeches and slipped on the loose-sleeved doublet Diarmuid had given him. Without bothering to button it, he left the room.

It was dark on the landing. Moving to the railing, he looked down on the ruin of the ground level of the Black Boar. The guttering torches cast flickering shadows over bodies sprawled in sleep on overturned tables and benches, or against the walls. A few men were talking in muted tones in one corner, and he heard a woman giggle suddenly from the near wall and then subside.

Then he heard something else. The plucked strings of a guitar.