The Darkest Road (48 page)

He walked the remembered path through the trees, seeing the morning sunlight begin to grow dim and increasingly aware, with every step he took, of something else.

Since the last battle in Andarien—when he had released Galadan from the vengeance he’d sworn and channelled his power for healing instead, to bring the rising waters that ended the cycle of Arthur’s grief—since that evening Paul had not sought the presence of the God within himself. In a way, he’d been avoiding it.

But now it was there again. And as he came to the place where the trees of the Godwood formed their double corridor, leading him inexorably back into the glade of the Tree, Paul understood that Mörnir would always be within him. He would always be Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree, wherever he went. He had been sent back; the reality of that was a part of him, and would be until he died again.

And thinking so, he came into the glade and saw the Tree. There was light here, for the sky showed above the clearing, mild and blue with scattered billowy clouds. He remembered the white burning of the sun in a blank heaven.

He looked at the trunk and the branches. They were as old as
this first world, he knew. And looking up within the thick green leaves, he saw, without surprise, that the ravens were there, staring back at him with bright yellow eyes. It was very still. No thunder. Only, deep within his pulse, that constant awareness of the God.

It was not a thing, Paul realized then, from which he could ever truly hide, even if he wanted to, which was what he’d been trying to do through the sweet days of this summer.

He could not unsay what he had become. It was not a thing that came and then went. He would have to accept that he was marked and set apart. In a way, he always had been. Self-contained and solitary, too much so: it was why Rachel had been leaving him, the night she died on the highway in the rain.

He was a power, brother to gods. It was so and would always be so. He thought of Cernan and Galadan, wondering where they were. Both of them had bowed to him.

No one did so now. Nor did Mörnir manifest himself any more strongly than through the beating of his pulse. The Tree seemed to be brooding, sunk deep into the earth, into the web of its years. The ravens watched him silently. He could make them speak; he knew how to do that now. He could even cause the leaves of the Summer Tree to rustle as in a storm wind, and in time, if he tried hard enough, he could draw the thunder of the God. He was Lord of this Tree; this was the place of his power.

He did none of these things. He had come for no such reason. Only to see the place for a last time, and to acknowledge, within himself, what had indeed been confirmed. In silence he stepped forward and laid one hand upon the trunk of the Summer Tree.
He felt it as an extension of himself. He drew his hand away and turned and left the glade. Overhead, he heard the ravens flying. He knew they would be back.

And after that, there was only the last farewell. He’d been delaying it, in part because even now he did not expect it to be an easy exchange. On the other hand, the two of them, for all the brittleness, had shared a great deal since first she’d taken him down from the Tree and drawn blood from his face in the Temple with the nails of her hand.

So he returned to his horse and rode back to Paras Derval, and then east through the crowded town to the sanctuary, to say goodbye to Jaelle.

He tugged on the bell pull by the arched entranceway. Chimes rang within the Temple. A moment later the doors were opened and a grey-robed priestess looked out, blinking in the brightness. Then she recognized him, and smiled.

This was one of the new things in Brennin, as potent a symbol of regained harmony, in its own way, as would be the joint action of Jaelle and Teyrnon this evening, sending them home.

“Hello, Shiel,” he said, remembering her from the night he’d come after Darien’s birth to seek aid. They had barred his way then, demanding blood.

Not now. Shiel flushed at being recognized. She gestured for him to enter. “I know you have given blood,” she said, almost apologetically.

“I’ll do so again, if you like,” he said mildly.

She shook her head vigorously and sent an acolyte scurrying down the curved corridors in search of the High Priestess. Waiting patiently, Paul looked beyond Shiel to his left. He could see the domed chamber and—strategically placed to be visible—the altar stone and the axe.

The acolyte came back, and with her was Jaelle. He had thought he might be kept waiting, or sent for, but she so seldom did what he expected.

“Pwyll,” she said. “I wondered if you would come.” Her voice was cool. “Will you take a glass of wine?”

He nodded and followed her back along the hallway to a room that he remembered. She dismissed the acolyte and closed the door. She went to a sideboard and poured wine for both of them, her motions brisk and impersonal.

She gave him a glass and sank down into a pile of cushions on the floor. He took the chair beside the door. He looked at her: an image of crimson and white. The fires of Dana and the whiteness of the full moon. There was a silver circlet holding back her hair; he remembered picking it up on the plain of Andarien. He remembered her running to where Finn lay.

“This evening, then?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“If you will,” he said. “Is there a difficulty? Because if there—”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I was only asking. We will do it at moonrise.”

There was a little silence. Broken by Paul’s quiet laughter. “We really are terrible, aren’t we?” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “We never could manage a civil exchange.”

She considered that, not smiling, though his tone had invited it. “That night by the Anor,” she said. “Until I said the wrong thing.”

“You didn’t,” he murmured. “I was just sensitive about power and control. You found a nerve.”

“We’re trained to do that.” She smiled. It wasn’t a cold smile, though, and he realized she was mocking herself a little.

“I did my share of goading,” Paul admitted. “One of the reasons I came was to tell you that a lot of it was reflex. My own defences. I wanted to say goodbye, and to tell you that I have … a great deal of respect for you.” It was difficult choosing words.

She said nothing, looking back at him, her green eyes clear and bright. Well, he thought, he’d said it. What he’d come to say. He finished his wine and rose to his feet. She did the same.

“I should go,” he said, wanting to be elsewhere before one of them said something that was wounding, and so spoiled even this goodbye. “I’ll see you this evening, I guess.” He turned to the door.

“Paul,” she said. “Wait.”

Not Pwyll.
Paul
. Something stirred like a wind within him.

He turned again. She had not moved. Her hands were crossed in front of her chest, as if she were suddenly cold in the midst of summer.

“
Are you really going to leave me?
” Jaelle asked, in a voice so strained he needed a second to be sure of what he’d heard.

And then he
was
sure, and in that instant the world rocked and shifted within him and around him and everything changed.
Something burst in his chest like a dam breaking, a dam that had held back need for so long, that had denied the truth of his heart, even to this moment.

“Oh, my love,” he said.

There seemed to be so much light in the room. He took one step, another; then she was within the circle of his arms and the impossible flame of her hair was about them both. He lowered his mouth and found her own turned up to his kiss.

And in that moment he was clear at last. It was all clear. He was in the clear and running like his running pulsebeat, the clear hammer of his heart. He was translucent. Not Lord of the Summer Tree then, but only a mortal man, long denied, long denying himself, touching and touched by love.

She was fire and water to his hands, she was everything he had ever desired. Her fingers were behind his head, laced through his hair, drawing him down to her lips, and she whispered his name over and over and over while she wept.

And so they came together then, at the last, the children of the Goddess and the God.

They subsided among the scattered cushions and she laid her head against his chest, and for a long time they were silent as he ran his fingers ceaselessly through the red fall of her hair and brushed her tears away.

At length she moved so that she lay with her head in his lap, looking up at him. She smiled, a different kind of smile from any he had seen before.

“You would really have gone,” she said. Not a question.

He nodded, still half in a daze, still trembling and incredulous at what had happened to him. “I would have,” he confessed. “I was too afraid.”

She reached up and touched his cheek. “Afraid of this, after all you have done?”

He nodded again. “Of this, perhaps more than anything. When?” he asked. “When did you …?”

Her eyes turned grave. “I fell in love with you on the beach by Taerlindel. When you stood in the waves, speaking to Liranan. But I fought it, of course, for many reasons. You will know them. It didn’t come home to me until you were walking back from Finn to face Galadan.”

He closed his eyes. Opened them. Felt sorrow come over to shadow joy. “Can you do this?” he said. “How may it be allowed? You are what you are.”

She smiled again, and this smile he knew. It was the one he imagined on the face of Dana herself: inward and inscrutable.

She said, “I will die to have you, but I do not think it need happen that way.”

Neatly she rose to her feet. He, too, stood up and saw her go to the door and open it. She murmured something to the acolyte in the corridor and then turned back to him, a light dancing in her eyes.

They waited, not for long. The door opened again, and Leila came in.

Clad in white.

She looked from one of them to the other and then laughed
aloud. “Oh, good!” she said. “I thought this might happen.”

Paul felt himself flushing; then he caught Jaelle’s glance and both of them burst out laughing.

“Can you see why she’ll be High Priestess now?” Jaelle asked, smiling. Then, more soberly, added, “From the moment she lifted the axe and survived, Leila was marked by the Goddess to the white of the High Priestess. Dana moves in ways no mortal can understand, nor even the others among the gods. I am High Priestess in name only now. After I sent you through the crossing I was to relinquish my place to Leila.”

Paul nodded. He could see a pattern shaping here, only a glimmering of it, but it seemed to him that the warp and weft of this, followed back to their source, would reach Dun Maura and a sacrifice made on the eve of Maidaladan.

And thinking of that, he found that there were tears in his own eyes. He had to wipe them away, he who had never been able to weep.

He said, “Kim is going home or I would never say this, but I think I know a cottage by a lake, halfway between the Temple and the Tree, where I would like to live. If it pleases you.”

“It pleases me,” Jaelle said quietly. “More than I can tell you. Ysanne’s cottage will bring my life full circle and lay a grief to rest.”

“I guess I’m staying, then,” he said, reaching for her hand. “I guess I’m staying after all.”

She was learning something, Kim realized. Learning it the hardest way. Discovering that the only thing harder for her to deal with than power was its passing away.

The Baelrath was gone. She had surrendered it, but before that it had abandoned her. Not since Calor Diman and her refusal there had the Warstone so much as flickered on her hand. So, late last night, quietly, with no one else in the room, no one else to know, she had given it to Aileron.

And he, as quietly, had sent for Jaelle and entrusted the stone to the custody of the Priestesses of Dana. Which was right, Kim knew. She’d thought at first that he would give it to the mages. But the wild power of the Baelrath was closer, far, to Dana than it was to the skylore Amairgen had learned.

It was a measure of Aileron’s deepening wisdom, one of the marks of the changing nature of things, that the High King would surrender a thing of so much power to the High Priestess and that she would agree to guard it in his name.

And thus had the Warstone passed from her, which left Kimberly, on this last afternoon, walking with her memories amid the strand of trees west of Ysanne’s cottage, dealing with loss and sorrow.

It should not be so, she told herself sternly. She was going home, and she
wanted
to go home. She wanted her family very badly. More than that, even, she knew it was right for her to be crossing back. She had dreamt it, and so had Ysanne, in those first days.

It is in my heart as well that there may be need of a Dreamer in your
world, too
, the old Seer had said. And Kim knew it was still true. She had seen it herself.

So need and rightness had come together with her own desire to draw her back. This should have made things easy and clear, but it was not so. How, in truth, could it ever be, when she was leaving so much behind? And all her thoughts and feelings seemed to be complicated, made even more blurred and difficult by the hollow of absence within her when she looked at the finger where the Warstone had been for so long.

She shook her head, trying to pull herself out of this mood. She had so many blessings to count, so many riches. The first, running deeper than anything else, was the fact of peace and the Unraveller’s passing from the worlds, at the hands of the child whose name she had dreamt before he’d even been born.

She walked through the green woods in sunlight thinking of Darien, and then of his mother and Arthur and Lancelot, whose grief had come to an end. Another blessing, another place where joy might flower in the heart.

And for herself, she was still a Seer, and she still carried, and always would, a second soul within her as a gift beyond words or measurement. She still wore the vellin bracelet on her wrist—Matt had refused, absolutely, to take it back. It would serve no real purpose in her world, she knew, save for memory—which, in its own way, was as good a purpose as any.