“Matt,” he heard the mage say. “Oh, Matt.” The name, nothing more.
Then the Dwarf spoke to Paul and he said, “Thank you, my friend. You had better move back now.” And grieving, grieving, Paul did so. Looking up, he saw Loren’s face distort with wildest hate. He heard the mage cry out then, tapping into his uttermost power, sourced in Matt Sören the Dwarf, channeled through the Whitebranch of Amairgen, and the very heart and soul of Loren Silvercloak were in that cry and in the blast that followed it.
There came a flash of obliterating light. The very island rocked this time, and with that shaking of Cader Sedat a tremor rolled through every one of the Weaver’s worlds.
Metran screamed, high and short, as if cut off. Stones shook loose from the walls over their heads. Paul saw Matt fall to the ground, saw Loren drop beside him. Then, looking up toward the dais, he saw the Cauldron of Khath Meigol crack asunder with a sound like a mountain shattering.
The shield was down. He knew Metran was dead. Knew someone else was, too. He saw the svart alfar, bred to kill, beginning to run with swords and knives toward them, and, crying aloud, he rose up and drew his own sword to guard those who had done what they had done.
The svarts never reached him. They were met by forty men of Brennin, led by Diarmuid dan Ailell, and the soldiers of South Keep cut a swath of sheer fury through the ranks of the Dark. Paul charged into the battle, wielding a sword with love running high in his heart like a tide—love, and the need to hammer through grief.
There were many svarts and they were a long time in the killing, but they killed them all. Eventually Paul found himself, bleeding from a number of minor wounds, standing with Diarmuid and Coll in one of the passageways leading back to the Great Hall. There was nowhere else to go, so they went back there.
In the entrance they paused and looked out over the carnage wrought in that place. They were near to the dais and walked up to it. Metran lay flung on his back, his face shattered, his body disfigured by hideous burns. Near him lay Denbarra. The source had been babbling through the fight, with the staring eyes of the hopelessly mad, until Diarmuid had put a sword through his heart and left him near his mage.
Not far from them, still smoldering, lay the thousand, thousand fragments of the Cauldron of Khath Meigol, shattered. Like a heart, thought Paul, and turned to walk the other way. He had to step over and around the dead svart alfar and the stones of the walls and ceiling dislodged in the final cataclysm. It was very quiet now. The green lights were gone. Diarmuid’s men were lighting torches around the Hall. By their glow Paul saw, as he came near, a figure on his knees rocking slowly back and forth amid the devastation with a dark head cradled in his lap.
I have lived for this, Matt Sören had said; and had made his mage go into him for killing, uttermost power. And had died.
Looking down in silence, Paul saw then in the Dwarf’s face, dead, a thing he had never seen in it, living: Matt Sören smiled amid the ruin of Cader Sedat, not the grimace they had learned to know but the true smile of one who has had what he most desired.
A thousand, thousand fragments, like a heart. Paul looked at Loren.
He touched the kneeling man, once, as the mage had touched him before; then he walked away. Looking back, he saw that Loren had cast his cloak over his face.
He saw Arthur with Diarmuid and went over to them. The torches were lit now, all around the Hall. Arthur said, “We have time, all the time we need to take. Let us leave him for a while.”
Together the three of them walked with Cavall down the dark, moldering corridors of Cader Sedat. It was damp and cold. A chill, sourceless wind seemed to be blowing among the crumbling stones.
“You spoke of the dead?” Paul murmured.
“I did,” said Arthur. “Spiral Castle holds, below the level of the sea, the mightiest of the dead in all the worlds.” They turned. Another darker corridor.
“You spoke of waking them,” Paul said.
Arthur shook his head. “I cannot. I was trying to frighten him. They can only be wakened by name and, when last here, I was very young and I did not know—” He stopped, then, and stood utterly still.
No! Paul thought. It is enough. It has been enough, surely.
He opened his mouth to speak but found he could not. The Warrior took a slow breath, as if drawing it from his long past, from the core of his being. Then he nodded, once only, and with effort, as if moving his head against a weight of worlds.
“Come,” was all he said. Paul looked at Diarmuid, and in the darkness he saw the same stiff apprehension in the Prince’s face. They followed Arthur and the dog.
This time they went down. The corridor Arthur took sloped sharply, and they had to use the walls to keep their balance. The stones were clammy to the touch. There was light now, though, a faint phosphorescence of the corridor itself. Diarmuid’s white tunic gleamed in it.
They became aware of a steady pounding noise beyond the walls.
“The sea,” Arthur said quietly, and then stopped before a door Paul had not seen. The Warrior turned to the two of them. “You may prefer to wait out here,” he said.
There was a silence.
Paul shook his head. “I have tasted death,” he said.
Diarmuid smiled, a brief flash of his old smile. “One of us in there,” he said, “had best be normal, don’t you think?”
So they left the dog by the door and passed within, amid the incessant pounding of the sea on the walls.
There were fewer than Paul had thought there would be. It was not an overly large chamber. The floor was stone and without adornment. In the center stood a single pillar, and upon it one candle burned with a white flame that did not waver. The walls gleamed palely. Set around the room in alcoves dimly lit by the candle and the phosphorescence of the walls were perhaps twenty bodies lying on beds of stone. Only that many, Paul thought, from all the dead in all the worlds. Almost he walked over to look upon them, to see the faces of the chosen great, but a diffidence overtook him, a sense of intruding upon their rest. Then he felt Diarmuid’s hand on his arm, and he saw that Arthur was standing in front of one of the alcoves and that his hands were covering his face.
“It is enough!” Paul cried aloud and moved to Arthur’s side.
In front of them, as if asleep, save that he did not breathe, lay a man of more than middle height. His hair was black, his cheeks shaven. His eyes were closed, but wide-set under a high forehead. His mouth and chin were firm, and his hands, Paul saw, clasped the hilt of a sword and were very beautiful. He looked to have been a lord among men, and if he was lying in this place, Paul knew, he had been.
He also knew who this was.
“My lord Arthur,” said Diarmuid painfully, “you do not have to do this. It is neither written nor compelled.”
Arthur lowered his hands. His gaze never left the face of the man who lay on the stone.
“He will be needed,” he said. “He cannot but be needed. I should have known it was too soon for me to die.”
“You are willing your own grief,” Paul whispered.
Arthur turned to him at that, and his eyes were compassionate. “It was willed long ago.”
Looking on Arthur Pendragon’s face in that moment, Paul saw a purer nobility than he had ever seen in his days. More, even, than in Liranan, or Cernan of the Beasts. Here was the quintessence, and everything in him cried out against the doom that lay behind this monstrous choice.
Diarmuid, he saw, had turned away.
“Lancelot!” said Arthur to the figure on the bed of stone.
His eyes were brown. He was taller than Paul had first thought. His voice was mild and low and unexpectedly gentle. The other surprising thing was the dog. Paul had thought Cavall’s loyalty would make him hostile, but instead he’d come up to the dark-haired man with a quiet sound of joy. Lancelot had knelt to stroke the torn grey fur, and Paul could see him register the presence of the scars. Then he had walked in silence between Paul and Diarmuid back up to the living world.