“Are you telling me what to do?” Metran said on a rising note, and Jennifer saw Denbarra stiffen.
“Actually, yes, if you put it that way.” There was mockery in his voice. “Are you going to fight me over it, mageling?”
“I could kill you, Galadan,” Metran hissed.
The one named Galadan smiled again, but not with his eyes. “Then try. But I tell you now, you will fail. I am outside your taught magic, mageling. You have some power, I know, and have been given more, and may indeed have greater yet to come, but I will still be outside you, Metran. I always will be. And if you test it, I shall have your heart out for my friends.”
In the silence that followed this, Jennifer became conscious of the ring of wolves surrounding them. There were svart alfar as well, but the giant red-eyed wolf was gone.
Metran was breathing hard. “You are not above me, Galadan. I was promised this.”
At that, Galadan threw back his fierce, scarred head, and a burst of genuine laughter rang through the clearing.
“Promised, were you? Ah well, then, I must apologize!” His laughter stopped. “She is still to go north. If it were not so, I might take her for myself. But look!”
Jennifer, turning skyward to where Galadan was pointing, saw a creature so beautiful it lifted her heart in reflexive hope.
A black swan came swooping down from the high reaches of the sky, glorious against the sun, the great wings widespread, feathered with jet plumage, the long neck gracefully extended.
Then it landed, and Jennifer realized that the true horror had only begun, for the swan had unnatural razored teeth, and claws, and about it, for all the stunning beauty, there clung an odor of putrescent corruption.
Then the swan spoke, in a voice like slithering darkness in a pit. “I have come,” she said. “Give her to me.”
Far away yet, terribly far away, Loren Silvercloak was driving his horse back south, cursing his own folly in all the tongues he knew.
“She is yours, Avaia,” said Galadan, unsmiling. “Is she not, Metran?”
“Of course,” said the mage. He had moved upwind of the swan. “I will naturally be anxious to know what she has to say. It is vital for me in my place of watch.”
“No longer,” the black swan said, ruffling her feathers. “I have tidings for you. The Cauldron is ours, I am to say. You go now to the place of spiraling, for the time is upon us.”
Across the face of Metran there spread then a smile of such cruel triumph that Jennifer turned away from it. “It has come then,” the mage exulted. “The day of my revenge. Oh, Garmisch, my dead King, I shall break the usurper into pieces on his throne, and make drinking cups of the bones of the House of Ailell!”
The swan showed her unnatural teeth. “I will take pleasure in the sight,” she hissed.
“No doubt,” said Galadan wryly. “Is there word for me?”
“North,” the swan replied. “You are asked to go north with your friends. Make haste. There is little time.”
“It is well,” said Galadan. “I have one task left here, then I follow.”
“Make haste,” Avaia said again. “And now I go.”
“No!” Jennifer screamed, as cold svart hands grabbed for her. Her cries cut the air of the clearing and fell into nothingness. She was bound across the back of the giant swan and the dense, putrefying smell of it overwhelmed her. She could not breathe; when she opened her mouth, the thick black feathers choked her, and as they left the earth for the blazing sky, Jennifer fainted for the first time in her life, and so could not have known the glorious curving arc she and the swan made, cutting across the sky.
The figures in the clearing watched Avaia bear the girl away until they were lost in the shimmering of the white sky.
Metran turned to the others, exultation still in his eyes. “You heard? The Cauldron is mine!”
“So it seems,” Galadan agreed. “You are away across the water, then?”
“Immediately. It will not be long before you see what I do with it.”
Galadan nodded, then a thought seemed to strike him. “I wonder, does Denbarra understand what all this means?” He turned to the source. “Tell me, my friend, do you know what this Cauldron is all about?”
Denbarra shifted uneasily under the weight of that gaze. “I understand what is needful for me to know,” he said sturdily. “I understand that with its aid, the House of Garantae will rule again in Brennin.”
Galadan regarded him a moment longer, then his glance flicked away dismissively. “He is worthy of his destiny,” he said to Metran. “A thick-witted source is an advantage for you, I suppose. I should get dreadfully bored, myself.”
Denbarra flushed, but Metran was unmoved by the gibe this time. “My sister-son is loyal. It is a virtue,” he said, unconscious of the irony. “What about you? You mentioned a task to be done. Should I know?”
“You should, but evidently you don’t. Give thanks that I am less careless. There is a death to be consummated.”
Metran’s mouth twitched at the insult, but he did not respond. “Then go your way,” he said. “We may not meet for some time.”
“Alas!” said Galadan.
The mage raised a hand. “You mock me,” he said with intensity. “You mock us all, andain. But I tell you this: with the Cauldron of Khath Meigol in my hands, I will wield a power even you dare not scorn. And with it I shall wreak such a vengeance here in Brennin that the memory of it will never die.”
Galadan lifted his scarred head and regarded the mage. “Perhaps,” he said finally, and very, very softly. “Unless the memory of it dies because everything has died. Which, as you know, is the wish of my heart.”
On the last words, he made a subtle gesture over his breast, and a moment later a coal-black wolf with a splash of silver on its head ran swiftly westward from the clearing.
Had he entered the forest farther south, a great deal of what ensued might have been very different.
At the southern edge of the woodcutter’s clearing a figure lay, hidden among the trees, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Behind him on the trail through the forest the last two lios alfar lay dead. And ten wolves.
And in the heart of Na-Brendel of the Kestrel Mark lay a grief and a rage that, more than anything else, had kept him alive so far. In the sunlight his eyes were black as night.
He watched Metran and his source mount horses and swing away northwest, and he saw the svarts and wolves leave together for the north. Only when the clearing stood utterly silent did he rise, with difficulty, and begin his own journey back to Paras Derval. He limped badly, from a wound in the thigh, and he was weak unto death from loss of blood; but he was not going to let himself fall or fail, for he was of the lios alfar, and the last of his company, and with his own eyes he had seen a gathering of the Dark that day.
It was a long way, though, and he was badly, badly hurt, so he was still a league from Paras Derval when twilight fell.
During the day there were rumblings of thunder in the west. A number of the merchants in the city came to their doorways to look at the heavens, more out of habit than out of hope. The killing sun burned in a bare sky.
On the green at the end of Anvil Lane, Leila had gathered the children again for the ta’kiena. One or two had refused out of boredom, but she was insistent, and the others acceded to her wishes, which, with Leila, was always the best thing to do.
So she was blindfolded again, and she made them do it double so she truly could not see. Then she began the calling, and went through the first three almost indifferently because they didn’t matter, they were only a game. When she came to the last one, though, to the Road, she felt the now familiar stillness come over her again, and she closed her eyes behind the two blindfolds. Then her mouth went dry and the difficult twisting flowered inside her. Only when the rushing sound began, like waves, did she start the chant, and as she sang the last word everything stopped.