He didn’t bother trying to hide the tears, not even from Jaelle, whose eyes on his face were so cold.
“Kevin,” said the mage gently, “it is a very bad death. No one lasts the three—it will be waste and to no point. Let me take him down.”
“It is not for you to choose, Silvercloak,” Jaelle spoke then. “Nor for this one, either.”
Loren turned, his eyes hard as flint. “If I decide to bring him down,” he said driving the words into her, “then it will be necessary for you to kill me to prevent it.”
“Careful, mage,” Gorlaes cautioned, though mildly. “That is close to treason. The High King has acted here. Would you undo what he has done?”
None of them seemed to be getting the point. “No one has acted but Paul,” Kevin said. He felt drained now, but completely unsurprised. He really should have known this was coming. “Loren, if anyone understood this, it was him. If he lasts three nights, will there be rain?”
“There might be.” It was the King. “This is wild magic, we cannot know.”
“Blood magic,” Loren amended bitterly.
Teyrnon shook his head. “The God is wild, though there may be blood.”
“He can’t last, though,” Diarmuid said, his voice sober. He looked at Kevin. “You said yourself, he’s been ill.”
A cracked, high laugh escaped Kevin at that.
“Never stopped him,” he said fiercely, feeling it so hard. “The stubborn, brave, son of a bitch!”
The love in the harsh words reached through to all of them, it could not help but do so; and it had to be acknowledged. Even by Jaelle and, in a very different way, by Loren Silvercloak.
“Very well,” said the mage at last. He sank into a chair. “Oh, Kevin. They will sing of him here as long as Brennin lasts, regardless of the end.”
“Songs,” said Kevin. “Songs only mess you up.” It was too much effort not to ache; he let it sweep over him. Sometimes, his father had said, you can’t do anything. Oh, Abba, he thought, far away and alone inside the hurt.
“Tomorrow,” Ailell the High King said, rising again, gaunt and tall. “I will meet you here at sunrise tomorrow. We will see what the night brings.”
It was a dismissal. They withdrew, leaving the King sitting at the last alone in his council chamber with his years, his self-contempt, and the image of the stranger on the Tree in his name, in the name of the God, in his name.
They went outside into the central courtyard, Diarmuid, Loren, Matt, and Kevin Laine. In silence they walked together, the same face in their minds, and Kevin was grateful for the presence of friends.
The heat was brutal, and the sour wind abraded them under the sickly, filtered sun. A prickly tension seemed woven into the texture of the day. And then, suddenly, there was more.
“Hold!” cried Matt the Dwarf, whose people were of the caverns of the earth, the roots of mountains, the ancient rocks. “Hold! Something comes!”
And in the same instant, north and west of them, Kim Ford rose, a blinding pulse in her head, an apprehension of enormity, and moved, as if compelled, out back of the cottage where Tyrth was laboring. “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh my God!” Seeing with distorted vision the vellin bracelet writhing on her wrist, knowing it could not ward what was coming, what had been coming for so long, so terribly, what none of them had seen, none, what was here, now, right now! She screamed, in overwhelming agony.
And the roof of the world blew up.
Far, far in the north among the ice, Rangat Cloud-Shouldered rose up ten miles into the heavens, towering above the whole of Fionavar, master of the world, prison of a god for a thousand years.
But no more. A vast geyser of blood-red fire catapulted skyward with a detonation heard even in Cathal. Rangat exploded with a column of fire so high the curving world could not hide it. And at the apex of its ascent the flame was seen to form itself into the five fingers of a hand, taloned, oh, taloned, and curving southward on the wind to bring them all within its grasp, to tear them all to shreds.
A gauntlet hurled, it was, a wild proclamation of release to all the cowering ones who would be his slaves forever after now. For if they had feared the svart alfar, trembled before a renegade mage and the power of Galadan, what would they do now to see the fingers of this fire raking heaven?
To know Rakoth Maugrim was unchained and free, and could bend the very Mountain to his vengeance?
And on the north wind there came then the triumphant laughter of the first and fallen god, who was coming down on them like a hammer bringing fire, bringing war.
The explosion hit the King like a fist in the heart. He tottered from the window of the council chamber and fell into a chair, his face grey, his hands opening and closing spasmodically as he gasped for breath.
“My lord?” Tarn the page rushed into the room and knelt, terror in his eyes. “My lord?”
But Ailell was beyond speech. He heard only the laughter on the wind, saw only the fingers curving to clutch them, enormous and blood-colored, a death cloud in the sky, bringing not rain but ruin.
He seemed to be alone. Tarn must have run for aid. With a great effort Ailell rose, breathing in high short gasps, and made his way down the short hallway to his rooms. There he stumbled to the inner door and opened it.
Down the familiar corridor he went. At the end of the passageway, the King stopped before the viewing slot. His vision was troubled: there seemed to be a girl beside him. She had white hair, which was unnatural. Her eyes were kind, though, as Marrien’s had been at the end. He had managed to win love there after all. It was patience that power taught. He had told that to the stranger, he remembered. After ta’bael. Where was the stranger? He had something else to say to him, something important.
Then he remembered. Opening the slot, Ailell the King looked into the Room of the Stone and saw that it was dark. The fire was dead, the sacred naal fire; the pillar carved with images of Conary bore nothing upon its crown, and on the floor, shattered forever into fragments like his heart, lay the stone of Ginserat.
He felt himself falling. It seemed to take a very long time. The girl was there; her eyes were so sorrowful. He almost wanted to comfort her. Aileron, he thought. Diarmuid. Oh, Aileron. Very far off, he heard thunder. A god was coming. Yes, of course, but what fools they all were—it was the wrong god. It was so funny, so funny, it was.
And on that thought he died.
So passed, on the eve of war, Ailell dan Art, High King of Brennin, and the rule passed to his son in a time of darkness, when fear moved across the face of all the lands. A good King and wise, Ysanne the Seer had called him once.
What he had fallen from.
Jennifer was flying straight at the Mountain when it went up.
A harsh cry of triumph burst from the throat of the black swan as the blast of fire rose far above to separate high in the air and form the taloned hand, bending south like smoke on the wind, but not dissolving, hanging there, reaching.
There was laughter in the sky all around her. Is the person under the mountain dead? Paul Schafer had asked before they crossed. He wasn’t dead, nor was he under the Mountain anymore. And though she didn’t understand, Jennifer knew that he wasn’t a person, either. You had to be something more to shape a hand of fire and send mad laughter down the wind.
The swan increased her speed. For a day and a night Avaia had borne her north, the giant wings beating with exquisite grace, the odor of corruption surrounding her, even in the high, thin reaches of the sky. All through this second day they flew, but late that night they set down on the shores of a lake north of the wide grasslands that had unrolled beneath their flight.
There were svart alfar waiting for them, a large band this time, and with them were other creatures, huge and savage, with fangs and carrying swords. She was pulled roughly from the swan and thrown on the ground. They didn’t bother tying her—she couldn’t move in any case, her limbs were brutally stiff with cramp after so long bound and motionless.