The Darkest Road (28 page)

He turned, and Kim’s eyes went, with those of everyone else in the Hall to Matt, to discover that, having made his initial point, he had already placed it again on the stone table between himself and Kaen.
Oh, clever
, Kim thought, fighting to suppress a grin.
Oh, clever, my dear friend
. Matt nodded gravely to Miach, who bowed in response.

Turning to Kaen, Miach said simply, “You may begin.”

He shuffled over, leaning upon his staff, to take his seat among the others of the Dwarfmoot. Kaen’s hand, Kim saw, had closed into a fist again, at Matt’s smooth anticipation of Miach’s request.

He’s rattled, she thought. Matt has him way off balance. She felt a quick rush of hope and confidence.

Then Kaen, who had not said a single word until that moment, began the word-striving, and as he did, all Kim’s hopes were blown away, as if they were wispy clouds torn by mountain winds.

She had thought that Gorlaes, the Chancellor of Brennin, was a deep-voiced, mellifluous speaker; she had even feared his persuasiveness in the early days. She had heard Diarmuid dan Ailell in the Great Hall of Paras Derval and remembered the power of his light, sardonic, riveting words. She had heard Na-Brendel of the lios alfar take speech to the edge of music and beyond. And within herself, engraved on her heart and mind, she held the close sound of Arthur Pendragon speaking to command or to reassure—with him, somehow, the two became as one.

But in Seithr’s Hall within Banir Lök that day she learned how words could be claimed and mastered, brought to a scintillant, glorious apex—turned into diamonds, truly—and all in the service of evil, of the Dark.

Kaen spoke, and she heard his voice rise majestically with the passion of a denunciation; she heard it swoop downwards like a bird of prey to whisper an innuendo or offer a half-truth that sounded—even for a moment, to her—like a revelation from the warp and weft of the Loom itself; she heard it soar with confident assertions of the future and then shape itself into a cutting blade to slash to ribbons the honour of the Dwarf who stood beside him. Who had
dared
to return and strive a second time with Kaen.

Her mouth dry with apprehension, Kim saw Kaen’s hands—his large, beautiful, artisan’s hands—rise and fall gracefully as he spoke. She saw his arms spread suddenly wide in a gesture of entreaty, of transparent honesty. She saw a hand stab savagely upwards to punctuate a question and then fall away, open, as he
spoke what he deemed to be—what he made them believe to be—the only possible response. She saw him point a long shaking finger of undisguised, overwhelming rage at the one who had returned, and it seemed to her, as to all the others in Seithr’s Hall, that the denouncing hand was that of a god, and it became a source of wonder that Matt Sören had the temerity still to be standing upright before it, instead of crawling on his knees to beg for the merciful death he did not deserve.

From the weight of the silence, Miach had said, from the shape and texture of it, the Dwarfmoot would seek guidance. As Kaen spoke, the stillness in Seithr’s Hall was a palpable thing. It
did
have a shape, and weight, and a discernible texture. Even Kim, utterly unversed in reading such a subtle message, could feel the silent Dwarves responding to Kaen, giving him back his words: thousands of voiceless auditors for chorus.

There was awe in that response, and guilt, that Kaen, who had laboured so long in the service of his people, should be forced yet again to defend himself and his actions. Beyond these two things—beyond awe and guilt—there was also a humbled, grateful acquiesence in the rightness and clarity of everything Kaen said.

He came one step forward from where he had been standing, seeming with that small motion to have come among them, to be one with all of them, to be speaking directly, intimately, to every single listener in the Hall. He said: “It may be thought that the Dwarf beside me now will see farther with his one eye than anyone else in this Hall. Let me remind you of something,
something I
must
say before I end, for it cries out within me for utterance. Forty years ago Matt, the sister-son of March, King of the Dwarves, shaped a crystal for Calor Diman on a new moon night: an act of courage, for which I honoured him. On the next night of the full moon, he slept by the shore of the Lake, as all who would be King must do: an act of courage, for which I honoured him.”

Kaen paused. “I honour him no more,” he said into the silence. “I have not honoured him since another thing he did forty years ago—an act of cowardice that wiped away all memory of courage. Let me remind you, people of the twin mountains. Let me remind you of the day when he took the Sceptre lying here beside us and threw it down upon these stones. The Diamond Sceptre, treated like a stick of wood! Let me remind you of when he discarded the Crown he so arrogantly claimed just now—after forty years!—discarded it like a trinket that no longer gave him pleasure. And let me remind you”—the voice dipped down, laden with marrow-deep sorrow—”that after doing these things, Matt, King under Banir Lök, abandoned us.”

Kaen let the grim stillness linger, let it gather the full weight of condemnation. Said gently, “The word-striving forty years ago was his own choice. The submission of the matter of the Cauldron of Khath Meigol to the Dwarfmoot was his own decision. No one forced his hand, no one could. He was King under the mountains. He ruled not as I have striven to do, by consensus and counsel, but absolutely, wearing the Crown, wedded to the Crystal Lake. And in pique, in spite, in petulance, when the
Dwarfmoot honoured me by agreeing that the Cauldron I sought was a worthy quest for the Dwarves, King Matt abandoned us.”

There was grief in his voice, the pain of one bereft, in those long-ago days, of sorely needed guidance and support. “He left us to manage as best we could without him. Without the King’s bond to the Lake that has always been the heartbeat of the Dwarves. For forty years I have been here, with Blöd, my brother, beside me, managing, with the Dwarfmoot’s counsel, as best I could. For forty years Matt has been far away, seeking fame and his own desires in the wide world across the mountains. And now, now he would come back after so long. Now, because it suits him—his vanity, his pride—he would come back and reclaim the Sceptre and Crown he so contemptuously threw away.”

One more step forward. From his mouth to the ear of their hearts. “Do not let him, Children of Calor Diman! Forty years ago you decided that the search for the Cauldron—the Cauldron of Life was worthy of us in our time. In your service, following the decision the Dwarfmoot made that day, I have laboured all these years here among you. Do not turn away from me now!”

Slowly, the extended arms came down and Kaen was done.

Overhead, high above the rigid, absolute silence, the birds fashioned from diamonds circled and shone.

Her chest tight with strain and apprehension, Kim’s glance went, with that of everyone else in Seithr’s Hall, to Matt Sören, to the friend whose words, ever since she’d met him, had been parcelled out in careful, plain measures. Whose strengths were fortitude and watchfulness and an unvoiced depth of caring.
Words had never been Matt’s tools: not now, not forty years ago when he had lost, bitterly, his last striving with Kaen, and, losing, had surrendered his Crown.

She had an image of how it must have been that day: the young proud King, newly wedded to the Crystal Lake, afire with its visions of Light, hating the Dark then as he did now. With her inner Seer’s eye she could picture it: the rage, the anguished sense of rejection that Kaen’s victory had created in him. She could see him hurling away the Crown. And she knew he had been wrong to do so.

In that moment she thought of Arthur Pendragon, another young king, new to his crown and his dreams, learning of the child—incestuous seed of his loins—who was destined to destroy everything Arthur shaped. And so, in a vain attempt to forstall that, he’d ordered so many infants slain.

For the sins of good men she grieved.

For the sins, and the way the shuttling of the Loom brought them back. Back, as Matt had come back again after so long to his mountains. To Seithr’s Hall, to stand beside Kaen before the Dwarfmoot.

Praying for him, for all the living in search of Light, knowing how much lay in the balance here, Kim felt the cast spell of Kaen’s last plea still lingering in the Hall, and she wondered where Matt would ever find anything to match what Kaen had done.

Then she learned. All of them did.

“We have heard nothing,” said Matt Sören, “nothing at all of Rakoth Maugrim. Nothing of war. Of evil. Of friends betrayed
into the Dark. We have heard nothing from Kaen of the broken wardstone of Eridu. Of the Cauldron surrendered to Maugrim.
Seithr would weep, and curse us through his tears!
”

Blunt words, sharp, prosaic, unadorned. Cold and stern, they slashed into the Hall like a wind, blowing away the mists of Kaen’s eloquent imagery. Hands on his hips, his legs spread wide, seemingly anchored in the stone, Matt did not even try to lure or seduce his listeners. He challenged them. And they listened.

“Forty years ago I made a mistake I will not cease to regret for the rest of my days. Newly crowned, unproven, unknown, I sought approval for what I knew to be right in a striving before the Dwarfmoot in this Hall. I was wrong to do so. A King, when he sees his way clear, must act, that his people may follow. My way should have been clear, and it would have been, had I been strong enough. Kaen and Blöd who had defied my orders, should have been taken to Traitor’s Crag upon Banir Tal and hurled to their deaths. I was wrong. I was not strong enough. I accept, as a King must accept, my share of the burden for the evils since done.

“The very great evils,” he said, his voice uncompromising in its message. “Who among you, if not bewitched or terrified, can accept what we have done? How far the Dwarves have fallen! Who among you can accept the wardstone broken? Rakoth freed? The Cauldron of the Paraiko given over unto him? And now I must speak of the Cauldron.”

The transition was clumsy, awkward; Matt seemed not to care. He said, “Before this striving began, the Seer of Brennin spoke of the Cauldron as a thing of death, and one of you—and I
remember you, Edrig; you were wise already when I was King in these halls, and I never knew any evil to rest in your heart—Edrig named the Seer a liar and said that the Cauldron was a thing of life.”

He crossed his arms on his broad chest. “It is not so. Once, maybe, when first forged in Khath Meigol, but not now, not in the hands of the Unraveller. He used the Cauldron the Dwarves gave him to shape the winter just now past, and then—grief to my tongue to tell—to cause the death rain to fall on Eridu.”

“That is a lie,” said Kaen flatly. There was a shocked whisper of sound. Kaen ignored it. “You are not to tell a pure untruth in word-striving. This you know. I claim this contest by virtue of a breaching of the rules. The Cauldron revives the dead. It does not kill. Every one of us here knows this to be true.”

“
Do we so?
” Matt Sören snarled, wheeling on Kaen with such ferocity that the other recoiled. “Dare you speak to say I lie? Then hear me! Every one of you hear me! Did not a mage of Brennin come, with perverted wisdom and forbidden lore? Did Metran of the Garantae not enter these halls to give aid and counsel to Kaen and Blöd?”

Silence was his answer. The silence of the word-striving. Intense, rapt, shaping itself to surround his questions. “Know you that when the Cauldron was found and given over to Maugrim, it was placed in the care of that mage. And he bore it away to Cader Sedat, that island not found on any map, which Maugrim had made a place of unlife even in the days of the Bael Rangat. In that unholy place Metran used the Cauldron to shape the winter
and then the rain. He drew his unnatural mage-strength to do these terrible things from a host of svart alfar. He killed them, draining their life force with the power he took, and then used the Cauldron to bring them back to life, over and over again. This is what he did. And this, Children of Calor Diman, descendants of Seithr, this, my beloved people, is what we did!”

“A lie!” said Kaen again, a little desperately. “How would you know this if he truly took it to that place? How would the rain have stopped if this were so?”

This time there was no murmuring, and this time Matt did not wheel in rage upon the other Dwarf. Very slowly he turned and looked at Kaen.

“You would like to know, wouldn’t you?” he asked softly. The acoustics carried the question; all of them heard. “You would like to know what went wrong. We were there, Kaen. With Arthur Pendragon, and Diarmuid of Brennin, and Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree, we went to Cader Sedat and we killed Metran and we broke the Cauldron. Loren and I did it, Kaen. For the evil done by a mage and the evil done by the Dwarves we made what recompense we could in that place.”

Kaen’s mouth opened and then closed again.

“You do not believe me,” Matt went on, inexorably, mercilessly. “You want not to believe, so your hopes and plans will not have gone so terribly awry. Do not believe me, then! Believe, instead, the witness of your eyes!”

And thrusting a hand into the pocket of the vest he wore, he drew from it a black shard that he threw down on the stone
table between the Sceptre and the Crown. Kaen leaned forward to look, and an involuntary sound escaped him.

“Well may you wail!” Matt intoned, his voice like that of a final judgement. “Though even now you are grieving for yourself and not for your people to see a fragment of the broken Cauldron return to these mountains.”

He turned back to face the high-vaulted Hall, under the ceaseless circling of the diamond birds.

Again the shift in his speech was awkward, rough. Again he seemed oblivous to that. “Dwarves,” Matt cried, “I claim no blamelessness before you now. I have done wrong, but have made redress as best I might. And I will continue to do so, now and forward from this day until I die. I will bear the burdens of my own transgressions and take upon myself as many of your own burdens as I can. For so must a King do, and I am your King. I have returned to lead you back among the armies of the Light where the Dwarves belong. Where we have always belonged. Will you have me?”