The Darkest Road (49 page)

Deep in the woods alone, reaching painfully towards an inner peace, Kim stopped and stood in silence for a time, listening to the birds overhead and the sighing of the breeze through the
leaves. It was so quiet here, so beautiful, she wanted to hold this to herself forever.

Thinking so, she saw a flash of colour on the ground off to her right and realized, even before she moved, that she was being given a final gift.

She walked over, following, as it happened, the steps that Finn and Darien had taken on their last walk together in the depths of winter. Then she knelt, as they had knelt, beside the bannion growing there.

Blue-green flower with red at its centre like a drop of blood at the heart. They had left it, that day, gathering other flowers to take back to Vae but not this one. And so it had remained for Kim to take it for herself, tears welling at the richness of the memory it stirred: her first walk in this wood with Ysanne, looking for this flower; then a night by the lake under stars when Eilathen, summoned by flowerfire, had spun the Tapestry for her.

The bannion was beautiful, sea-coloured around the brilliant red. She plucked it carefully and placed it in her white hair. She thought of Eilathen, of the blue-green glitter of his naked power. He, too, was lost to her, even if she had wanted to summon him, if only to bid farewell.
Be free of flowerfire, now and evermore
, Ysanne had said, at the end, releasing him from guardianship of the red Warstone.

The bannion was beautiful but powerless. It seemed to be a symbol of what had passed from her, what she could no longer do. Magic had been given to her that starry night by this lake, and it had rested in her for a time and had gone. It would be better
for her, in every way, to be in her own world, she thought, to be removed from the sharpness of these images.

She rose and started back, thinking of Loren, who had to be dealing with the same withdrawal. Just as, she realized suddenly, Matt had dealt with it for all the years he’d spent in Paras Derval, fighting the pull of Calor Diman. The two of them had come full circle together, she thought. There was a pattern in that, more beautiful and more terrible than any mortal weaving could ever be.

She came out from the trees and walked down to the lake. It was slightly choppy in the summer breeze. There was the hint of a chill; overture to the coming of fall. Kim stepped out onto the flat surface of the rock that jutted out over the water, just as she had done before, with Ysanne, when the Seer had summoned the water spirit under the stars.

Eilathen was down there, she knew, far down among his twining corridors of seastone and seaweed, amid the deep silence of his home. Inaccessible. Lost to her. She sat on the stone and wrapped her arms about her drawn-up knees, trying to number blessings, to shape sadness into joy.

For a long time she sat there, looking out over the waters of the lake. It had to be late afternoon, she knew. She should be starting back. It was so hard to leave, though. Rising up and walking from this place would be an act as lonely and as final as any she’d ever done.

So she lingered, and in time there was a footfall on the rock behind her and then someone crouched down by her side.

“I saw your horse by the cottage,” Dave said. “Am I intruding?”

She smiled up at him and shook her head. “I’m just saying my goodbyes before this evening.”

“So was I,” he said, gathering and dispersing pebbles.

“You’re coming home, too?”

“I just decided,” he said quietly. There was a calmness, an assurance in his voice she’d not heard before. Of all of them, Kim realized, Dave had changed the most here. She and Paul and Jennifer seemed to have really just gone further into what they’d already been before they came, and Kevin had remained exactly what he always was, with his laughter and his sadness and the sweetness of his soul. But this man crouching beside her, burned dark by the summer sun of the Plain, was a very far cry from the one she’d met that first evening in Convocation Hall, when she’d invited him to come sit with them and hear Lorenzo Marcus speak.

She managed another smile. “I’m glad you’re coming back,” she said.

He nodded, quietly self-possessed, looking at her in a calm silence for a moment. Then his eyes flickered with a certain amusement that was also new.

“Tell me,” he said, “what are you doing on Friday night?”

A little breathless laugh escaped her. “Oh, Dave,” Kim said, “I don’t even know when Friday night is!”

He laughed, too. Then the laughter passed, leaving an easy smile. He stood up smoothly and held out a hand to help her up.

“Saturday, then?” he asked, his eyes holding hers. And bursting within her then like another kind of flowerfire Kim had a sudden feeling, a flashing certainty, that everything was going to be all right after all. It was going to be much more than all right.

She gave him both her hands and let him help her rise.

Here ends
THE DARKEST ROAD,
and with it
THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY

GUY GAVRIEL
kay is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost fantasy authors. His most recent novels include
Ysabel
, winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and
Under Heaven
, named by the American Library Association as the best fantasy novel of 2010 and winner of Canada’s Sunburst Award. He is a two-time Aurora Award winner and the recipient of the International Goliardos Prize. His works have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, with millions of copies sold around the world. Kay lives in Toronto with his family.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Acclaim for Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry

“I can’t praise it enough. The Fionavar Tapestry is a work that will be read for many years to come. It is a book that makes one proud to be working in the same genre as its author.”

—Charles de Lint

“As fine a piece of fantasy as has been published for some time.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

“The only fantasy work … which does not suffer by comparison to The Lord of the Rings.” —
Interzone
(UK)

“A highly literate, lovingly detailed work of fantasy.”

—Fantasy Review

“Kay’s intricate Celtic background will please fantasy buffs … in the manner of
The Silmarillion
, the posthumous Tolkien work that Kay helped edit.” —
Publishers Weekly

“A grand galloping narrative…. Reverberates with centuries of mythic and incantatory implications.”

—The Christian Science Monitor

“Excellent fantasy reading…. The Fionavar Tapestry will deserve a place among the best of fantasy.” —
Regina Leader-Post

“A richly imagined tale.” —
The Hamilton Spectator

“A story so intricately satisfying that I half believe it was written before history began.” —Alberto Manguel

“A remarkable achievement…. The essence of high fantasy.”

—Locus

“Kay is a genius. I’ve read him all of my life and am always inspired by his work.” —Brandon Sanderson

“One of those rare books that change your perception of the world forever afterward.” —Marion Zimmer Bradley

“Kay’s bestselling—and stunning—fantasy trilogy finds its power not in its feats of imagination or world-building (though there are dazzling heapings of both) but from its rootedness in the reality of human emotions and relationships.”

—The Globe and Mail

“As captivating as any classic of the fantasy field.” —
Maclean’s

“Can be compared only with Tolkien’s masterpiece. This is a series to cherish and reread…. It delights the spirit.”

—The Star-Phoenix

The Darkest Road
Copyright © 1986 by Guy Gavriel Kay.

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EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 978-1-443-41606-1

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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

First published in hardcover by Collins Publishers: 1986. First paperback edition: 1987.
First HarperCollins Publishers Ltd paperback edition: 1989. Omnibus paperback edition: 1995.
20th anniversary paperback edition: 2004. This Harper Weekend paperback edition: 2012.

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