“When the King is bound to Crystal Lake,” Matt was explaining softly, “he is forever bound. There is no breaking it. He may leave but he is not free. The lake is in him like another heartbeat and it never stops calling. I lie down at night fighting this and rise up in the morning fighting it, and it is with me through the day and the evening and will be until I die. This is my burden, and it is mine alone, and I would have you know, else I would not have spoken before you, that it was freely chosen and is not regretted.”
The Great Hall was silent as Matt Sören fixed each of them in challenge with his one dark eye. All but Kim, who couldn’t even look up now. She was seriously wondering if she was going to pass out.
“Brock,” said Matt at length, “you have tidings for us. Are you able to tell them now?”
The other Dwarf looked at him, and, noting the regained composure in his eyes, Kevin realized that there had been a second reason why Matt had spoken first and at length. Within himself, he still felt the deep hurting of Sören’s tale, and it was as an echo of his own thought that he heard Brock murmur, “My King, will you not come back to us? It has been forty years.”
But Matt was ready for it this time; once only would he expose his soul. “I am,” he said, “source to Loren Silvercloak, First Mage to the High King of Brennin. Kaen is King of the Dwarves. Tell us your news, Brock.”
Brock looked at him. Then said, “I would not add to your burdens, but I must tell you that what you say is untrue. Kaen reigns in Banir Lok, but he is not King.”
Matt raised a hand. “Do you tell me he has not slept by Calor Diman?”
“I do. We have a ruler, but not a King, unless it be you, my lord.”
“Oh, by Seithr’s memory!” Matt Sören cried. “How far have we fallen from what we were?”
“Very far,” Brock said in a harsh whisper. “They found the Cauldron at the last. They found it and restored it.”
There was something in his voice; something terrible.
“Yes?” Matt said.
“There was a price,” Brock whispered. “Kaen needed help in the end.”
“Yes?” Matt said again.
“A man came. Metran was his name, a mage from Brennin, and together he and Kaen unlocked the power of the Cauldron. Kaen’s soul, I think, had been twisted utterly by then. There was a price and he paid it.”
“What price?” asked Matt Sören.
Kim knew. Pain was splintering her mind.
“He broke the wardstone of Eridu,” said Brock, “and delivered the Cauldron to Rakoth Maugrim. We did it, my King. The Dwarves have freed the Unraveller!” And casting his cloak over his face, Brock wept as if his heart would break.
In the uproar that followed, the terror and the fury, Matt Sören turned slowly, very slowly, as if the world were a calm, still place, and looked at Loren Silvercloak, who was looking back at him.
We will have our battle, Loren had said the night before. Never fear. And now, most terribly, it was clear what that battle would be.
Her head was being torn apart. There were white detonations within her brain. She was going to scream.
“What is it?” a voice whispered urgently at her side.
A woman, but not Sharra. It was Jaelle who knelt beside her. She was too agonized to feel surprise. Leaning on the other woman, she whispered on a thin-stretched note, “Don’t know. My head. As if— something’s crashing in—I don’t—”
“Open your eyes,” Jaelle commanded. “Look at the Baelrath!”
She did. The pain was almost blinding. But she could see the stone on her hand throbbing with red fire, pulsing to the rhythm of the explosions behind her eyes, and looking into it, her hand held close to her face, Kim saw something else then, a face, a name written in fire, a room, a crescendo of dark, of Dark, and—
“Jennifer!” she screamed. “Oh, Jen, no!”
She was on her feet. The ring was a wild, burning, uncontrollable thing. She staggered, but Jaelle supported her. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she screamed again, “Loren! I need you!” Kevin was there. “Kim? What?” She shook her head, tore away from his touch. She was blind with agony; she could scarcely speak. “Dave,” she scraped. “Paul. Come on… the circle. Now!” There was so much urgency. They seemed to move so slowly, and Jen, Jen, oh, Jen. “Come on!” she screamed again.
Then they were around her, the three of them, and Loren and Matt, unquestioning, were beside them. And she held up the ring again, instinctively, and opening herself, her mind, cutting through the claws of pain she found Loren and linked to him and then—oh, a gift—Jaelle was there as well, tapping into the avarlith for her, and with the two of them as ballast, as bedrock, she cast her mind, her soul, to its farthest, most impossible compassing. Oh, far, and there was so much Dark between, so much hate, and oh, so very great a power in Starkadh to stay her.
But there was also a spar of light. A dying spar, so nearly gone, but it was there, and Kim reached with everything she had, with all she was, to the lost island of that light and she found Jennifer.
“Oh, love,” she said, inside and aloud. “Oh, love, I’m here. Come!”
The Baelrath was unleashed, it was so bright they had to close their eyes against the blazing of that wildest magic as Kimberly pulled them out, and out, all the way out, with Jennifer held to the circle only by her mind, the spar, pride, last dying light, and love.
Then as the shimmering grew in the Great Hall, and the humming before the crossing time, as they started to go, and the cold of the space between worlds entered the five of them, Kim drew one breath again and cried the last desperate warning, not knowing, oh not, if she was heard:
“Aileron, don’t attack! He’s waiting in Starkadh!”
And then it was cold, cold, and completely dark, as she took them through alone.