Fionavar 1 (39 page)

Remembering Tore's comments on the "babies" in Faelinn Grove, he sat down against a tree on the upwind side of a clearing, where he could see anything coming across, with a chance of hearing or smelling something approaching from behind. He then proceeded to negate this bit of concealment by shouting Levon's name several times at the top of his voice.

He looked around afterwards, but there was nothing stirring. Indeed, as the echoes of his cry faded, Dave became deeply aware of the silence of the forest. That wild rush, as of wind, seemed to have carried everything with it. He appeared to be very much alone.

But not quite. "You make it," a deep voice sounded, from almost directly beneath him, "very hard for honest folk to sleep."

Leaping violently to his feet, Dave raised his axe and watched apprehensively as a large fallen tree trunk was rolled aside to reveal a series of steps leading down, and a figure emerging to look up at him.

A long way up. The creature he'd awakened resembled a portly gnome more than anything else.

A

very long white beard offset a bald crown and rested comfortably on a formidable paunch. The figure wore some sort of loose, hooded robe, and the whole ensemble stood not much more than four feet high.

"Could you trouble yourself," the bass voice continued, "to summon this Levon person from some other locality?"

Checking a bizarre impulse to apologize, and another to swing first and query later, Dave raised the axe to shoulder height and growled, "Who are you?"

Disconcertingly, the little man laughed. "Names already? Six days with the Dalrei should have taught you to go slower with a question like that. Call me Flidais, if you like, and put that down."

The axe, a live thing suddenly, leaped from Dave's hands and fell on the grass. Flidais hadn't even moved. His mouth open, Dave stared at the little man. "I am testy when awakened," Flidais said mildly. "And you should know better than to bring an axe in here. I'd leave it there if I were you."

Dave found his voice. "Not unless you take it from me," he rasped. "It was a gift from Ivor dan Banor of the Dalrei and I want it."

"Ah," said Flidais. "Ivor." As if that explained a good deal. Dave had a sense, one that always irritated him, that he was being mocked. On the other hand, he didn't seem in a position to do much about it.

Controlling his temper, he said, "If you know Ivor, you know Levon. He's in here somewhere, too.

We were ambushed by svart alfar and escaped into the forest. Can you help me?"

"I am pied for protection, dappled for deception," Flidais replied with sublime inconsequentiality.

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"How do you know I'm not in league with those svarts?"

Once more Dave forced himself to be calm. "I don't," he said, "but I need help, and you're the only thing around, whoever you are."

"Now that, at least, is true," Flidais nodded sagely. "All the others have gone north to the grove, or," he amended judiciously, "south to the grove if they were north of it to start with."

Cuckoo, Dave thought. I have found a certifiable loon. Wonderful, just wonderful.

"I have been the blade of a sword," Flidais confided, confirming the hypothesis. "I have been a star at night, an eagle, a stag in another wood than this. I have been in your world and died, twice; I

have been a harp and a harper both."

In spite of himself Dave was drawn into it. In the red-tinted shadows of the forest, there was an eerie power to the chant.

"I know," Flidais intoned, "how many worlds there are, and I know the skylore that Amairgen learned. I have seen the moon from undersea, and I heard the great dog howl last night. I know the answer to all the riddles there are, save one, and a dead man guards that gateway in your world, Davor of the Axe, Dave Martyniuk."

Against his will, Dave asked, "What riddle is that?" He hated this sort of thing. God, did he hate it.

"Ah," said Flidais, tilting his head. "Would you come to salmon knowledge so easily? Be careful or you will burn your tongue. I have told you a thing already, forget it not, though the white-haired one will know. Beware the boar, beware the swan, the salt sea bore her body on."

Adrift in a sea of his own, Dave grabbed for a floating spar. "Lisen's body?" he asked.

Flidais stopped and regarded him. There was a slight sound in the trees. "Good," Flidais said at last.

"Very good. For that you may keep the axe. Come down and I will give you food and drink."

At the mention of food, Dave became overwhelmingly aware that he was ravenous. With a sense of having accomplished something, though by luck as much as anything else, he followed Flidais down the crumbling earthen stairs.

At the bottom there opened out a catacomb of chambers, shaped of earth and threaded through twisting tree roots. Twice he banged his head before following his small host into a comfortable room with a rough table and stools around it. There was a cheery light, though from no discernible source.

"I have been a tree," Flidais said, almost as if answering a question. "I know the earthroot's deepest name."

"Avarlith?" Dave hazarded, greatly daring.

"Not that," Flidais replied, "but good, good." He seemed to be in a genial mood now as he puttered about domestically.

Feeling curiously heartened, Dave pushed a little. "I came here with Loren Silvercloak and four others. I got separated from them. Levon and lore were taking me to Paras Derval, then there was that explosion and we got ambushed."

Flidais looked aggrieved. "I know all that," he said, a little petulantly. "There shall be a shaking of the Mountain."

"Well, there was," Dave said, taking a pull at the drink Flidais offered. Having done which, he pitched forward on the table, quite unconscious.

Flidais regarded him a long time, a speculative look in his eye. He no longer seemed quite so genial, and certainly not mad. After a while, the air registered the presence he'd been awaiting.

"Gently," he said. "This is one of my homes, and tonight you owe me."

"Very well." She muted a little the shining from within her. "Is it born?"

"Even now," he replied. "They will return soon."

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"It is well," she said, satisfied. "I am here now and was here at Lisen's birth. Where were you?"

Her smile was capricious, unsettling.

"Elsewhere," he admitted, as if she had scored a point. "I was Taliesen. I have been a salmon."

"I know," she said. Her presence filled the room as if a star were underground. Despite his request, it was still hard to look upon her face. "The one riddle," she said. "Would you know the answer?"

He was very old and extremely wise, and he was half a god himself, but this was the deepest longing of his soul. "Goddess," he said, a helpless streaming of hope within him, "I would."

"So would I," she said cruelly. "If you find the summoning name, do not fail to tell me. And,"

said

Ceinwen, letting a blinding light well up from within her so that he closed his eyes in pain and dread, "speak not ever to me again of what I owe. I owe nothing, ever, but what has been promised, and if I promise, it is not a debt, but a gift. Never forget."

He was on his knees. The brightness was overpowering. "I have known," Flidais said, a trembling in his deep voice, "the shining of the Huntress in the Wood."

It was an apology; she took it for such. "It is well," she said for the second time, muting her presence once more, so that he might look upon her countenance. "I go now," she said. "This one I

will take. You did well to summon me, for I have laid claim to him."

"Why, goddess?" Flidais asked softly, looking at the sprawled form of Dave Martyniuk.

Her smile was secret and immortal. "It pleases me," she said. But just before she vanished with the man, Ceinwen spoke again, so low it was almost not a sound. "Hear me, forest one: if I learn what name calls the Warrior, I will tell it thee. A promise."

Stricken silent, he knelt again on his earthen floor. It was, had always been, his heart's desire.

When he looked up he was alone.

They woke, all three of them, on soft grass in the morning light. The horses grazed nearby. They were on the very fringes of the forest; southward a road ran from east to west, and beyond it lay low hills. One farmhouse could be seen past the road, and overhead birds sang as if it were the newest morning of the world. Which it was.

In more ways than the obvious, after the cataclysms that the night had known. Such powers had moved across the face of Fionavar as had not been gathered since the worlds were spun and the Weaver named the gods. Iorweth Founder had not endured that blast of Rangat, seen that hand in the sky, nor had Conary known such thunder in Mörnirwood, or the white power of the mist that exploded up from the Summer Tree, through the body of the sacrifice. Neither Revor nor Amairgen had ever seen a moon like the one that had sailed that night, nor had the Baelrath blazed so in answer on any other hand in the long telling of its tale. And no man but Ivor dan Banor had ever seen Imraith-Nimphais bear her Rider across the glitter of the stars.

Given such a gathering, a concatenation of powers such that the worlds might never be the same, how small a miracle might it be said to be that Dave awoke with his friends in the freshness of that morning on the southern edge of Pendaran, with the high road from North Keep to Rhoden running past, and a horn lying by his side.

A small miracle, in the light of all that had shaken the day and night before, but that which grants life where death was seen as certain can never be inconsequential, or even less than wondrous, to those who are the objects of its intercession.

So the three of them rose up, in awe and great joy, and told their stories to each other while morning's bird-song spun and warbled overhead.

For Tore, there had been a blinding flash, with a shape behind it, apprehended but not seen, then darkness until this place. Levon had heard music all around him, strong and summoning, a wild cry of invocation as of a hunt passing overhead, then it had changed, so gradually he could
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not tell how or when, but there came a moment when it was so very sad and restful he had to sleep-to wake with his new brothers on the grass, Brennin spread before them in a mild sunlight.

"Hey, you two!" cried Dave exuberantly. "Will you look at this?" He held up the carved horn, ivory-colored, with workmanship in gold and silver, and runes engraved along the curve of it. In a spirit of euphoria and delight, he set the horn to his lips and blew.

It was a rash, precipitate act, but one that could cause no harm, for Ceinwen had intended him to have this and to learn the thing they all learned as that shining note burst into the morning.

She had presumed, for this treasure was not truly hers to bestow. They were to blow the horn and learn the first property of it, then ride forth from the place where it had lain so long. That was how she had intended it to be, but it is a part of the design of the Tapestry that not even a goddess may shape exactly what she wills, and Ceinwen had reckoned without Levon dan Ivor.

The sound was Light. They knew it, all three of them, as soon as Dave blew the horn. It was bright and clean and carrying, and Dave understood, even as he took it from his lips to gaze in wonder at what he held, that no agent of the Dark could ever hear that sound. In his heart this came to him, and it was a true knowing, for such was the first property of that horn.

"Come on," said Tore, as the golden echoes died away. "We're still in the Wood. Let's move."

Obediently Dave turned to mount his horse, still dazzled by the sound he had made.

"Hold!" said Levon.

There were perhaps five men in Fionavar who might have known the second power of that gift, and none in any other world. But one of the five was Gereint, the shaman of the third tribe of the Dalrei, who had knowledge of many lost things, and who had been the teacher of Levon dan Ivor.

She had not known or intended this, but not even a goddess can know all things. She had intended a small gift. What happened was otherwise, and not small. For a moment the Weaver's hands were still at his Loom, then Levon said:

"There should be a forked tree here."

And a thread came back with his words into the Tapestry of all the worlds, one that had been lost a very long time.

It was Tore who found it. An enormous ash had been split by lightning-they could have no glimmering how long ago-and its trunk lay forked now, at about the height of a man.

In silence, Levon walked over, Dave beside him, to where Tore was standing. Dave could see a muscle jumping in his face. Then Levon spoke again:

"And now the rock."

Standing together the three of them looked through the wishbone fork of the ash. Dave had the angle. "There," he said, pointing.

Levon looked, and a great wonder was in his eyes. There was indeed a rock set flush into a low mound at the edge of the Wood. "Do you know," he said in a hushed whisper, "that we have found the Cave of the Sleepers."

"I don't understand," said Tore.

"The Wild Hunt," Levon replied. Dave felt a prickling at the back of his neck. "The wildest magic that ever was lies in that place asleep." The strain in Levon's usually unruffled voice was so great it cracked. "Owein's Horn is what you just blew, Davor. If we could ever find the flame, they would ride again. Oh, by all the gods!"

"Tell me," Dave pleaded; he, too, was whispering.

For a moment Levon was silent; then, as they stared at the rock through the gap in the ash, he began to chant:

The flame will wake from sleep

The Kings the horn will call, But though they answer from the deep
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You may never hold in thrall

Those who ride from Owein's Keep

With a child before them all.

"The Wild Hunt," Levon repeated as the sound of his chanting died away. "I have not words to tell how far beyond the three of us this is." And he would say no more.

They rode then from that place, from the great stone and the torn tree with the horn slung at Dave's side. They crossed the road, and by tacit agreement rode in such a way as to be seen by no men until they should come to Silvercloak and the High King.