At last, after some three weeks of generally easy sailing, they came to the last of these anchorages and the greatest, a wide river estuary that was of old named Ancarvadoen, the Deep Roads. Beyond it the coasts became rougher, stonier, dangerous in the approach; no voyage had passed without the loss of one vessel at least along this stretch, and many lives. Nor were the lands they guarded any safer; somewhere at their heart stretched the long arm of the Great Forest, turning to tangled jungle with its manyfold traps and terrors.
Ancarvadoen was remembered in this uninhabited country chiefly because it was known that the last great band of fugitives from doomed Morvan, led by Vayde and the princess Ase, had encamped here through one long winter. On the last voyage men of the fleet had stumbled upon the traces of that brief settlement, a few overgrown hummocks of drystone wails and upon the hill overlooking the estuary, three or four graves, well marked but nameless. It was a melancholy place, but Kermorvan wished to land there once more; he had brought with him memorial stones fairly carven for the graves and the ruins. "And may they lay the unquiet spirits of this land!" he remarked quietly to Elof, as the two of them clambered back down the steep grassy slopes to their shore camp. "For I feel they walk here still, or some memory of their sorrows. Let them learn from this that their suffering was not wholly without result, that the line and heritage of their land lives still, and does not forget them."
Elof nodded. "I sense something of what you say, strongly. It is wholesome enough, this land, but overhung with feeling; anguish, sadness, loss. And beneath it anger, rage at the injustice of fate. I have felt it somewhere before; in the hollow bones of Morvan the City, perhaps. And not only there… I do not think those stones will assuage it, worthy notion though they were. It does not bode well."
"I agree. And in any event, we are on the edge of difficult and dangerous country, and a treacherous coast." He looked at Kara, tripping lightly through the tangled grass where others slipped and stumbled. "I think it is time we called upon your unique gifts, my lady. If you are willing, you could scout out our way on the morrow for many leagues ahead…"
She looked demurely at her feet. "If Elof is willing, my lord, then of course."
"He does not normally raise any objection," said Kermorvan quizzically, glancing at Elof. "No? Then whenever it pleases you, my lady…"
"I'll fetch your cloak from the ship, then, Kara," said Elof, a little self-consciously. "You can be getting something to eat, meanwhile…" He hurried off, feeling the king's gaze like a cool gust at his back.
When his boat came back to the beach he could see her waiting there for him, a slender silhouette against the glow of the campfires, half hidden against the shadows of the bushes around them. "I have it," he said quietly, stepping up to her, holding out the precious garment. She received it in her outstretched hands, held it, did not put it on.
"Kara…" he began. "Heart… why the reluctance? Why do you hesitate, why have you twice refused this already? Is it because… were you only delaying the moment? Do you yourself think you'll fly away, never come back?"
"
No
!" she hissed, and then, more softly, "No, heart, I will come back. Never fear but I will come back…"
He nodded, took the cloak from her hands and himself draped it around her shoulders. Then he reached into his pocket. "I believe that is what you truly want. But I have brought you a small token, keepsakes; wear them for me, and you will not forget."
Swiftly he stooped to her ankle, one open band of silver in each powerful hand; he felt the first slide over her cool skin - Then his wrists were seized. Elof was stronger than most men, but he could not move a finger's breadth against the strong slim fingers that gripped him thus, that drew his hands up and into the light. He saw the glint of the silver mirrored in the chill green pools that were Kara's eyes, and, to his horror, the shimmering that ran within the silver also, as bright as ever he saw it himself. "Fool!" said a voice of steel he hardly recognised. "Oh, you unutterable fool! Did you think a Power had sunk so low in loving a man, that it should be blind to the forces within his works? Did you dream I donned your arm-ring that day in ignorance of what it would do? That I would not see through this silver of yours as into clear water, and read there what you have set in play? Did you think so little of my life, my existence, to trifle with it thus?" He saw the streaks of silver that coursed her cheeks, and his heart withered within him.
"I sought… I sought only to reinforce our own truest wish… steady you by your own will…"
The steel broke, and burst into flame. "Aye, by ensnaring that will! By goading it along the paths you choose!"
"I sought only to embody what I knew you wanted! I set no compulsion of mine in the work!"
"No more than you would compel the winds! And yet you did! And shackled them with fearful force! Can you not see that you cannot harness any desire of mine? Only as your own eyes see it can
you
give it form!"
"But…" Elof swallowed. "If it is so close to yours… If it is what you want… then how can it harm you? If you truly love me, how should it mar that?"
"How?" She laughed, but not as humans laugh. "By taking away what is most truly mine! How would it harm you to be whipped to breathe, beaten to eat, goaded to love? How would it harm you if Kermorvan drew smithcraft from you by prison and torment, not friendship and honour? Then my cunning child, my deceitful heart, then you would understand!" She lifted his wrists, shook then fiercely before her face, and the rage of the Morghannen shone there behind the tears. "And how would it mar love? By forcing it to tread one single path… one circling, spiralling, endless path! Never free to change, to grow, to find new ways and new reasons to love. Love of all things, that must change from moment to moment to live! That you would keep for yourself, aye, but never trust me with it! Must I be the same to you in age, when you will not be the same? Be to you then just what I am now, no more, no less? How fine a lover will you find me then, fool, how fitting company for your cooling blood? Yet to that you would bind me, shackle me in my own imprisoned spirit, encircle me about in the mazes of my own mind! You would deceive me, drive me by my very feelings, just as your damned mindsword drove men by their deepest fears - "
A sudden shock drove deep into Elof s breast, as cold and breath-devouring as that blade's bite. He clutched at the scar, remembering. That older song, that tune that had arisen unbidden from his memory, as it seemed - he knew it now, knew the first words he had ridden upon its rising fervor…
As sundered I found you,
In flickering flame,
As once then I bound you
I bind you again…
Over the mindsword, embodiment of command, compulsion, driving by terror - over the last completion of that unhallowed weapon, upon the fixing of its cutting edge, he had sung that song. And he had sung it again over the instrument of his love.
A new flood of fury filled her, overflowed in tears. "And the risk! How could you? What if those anklets had closed, other than on me? What then? And if they were ever opened again… You who broke Louhi's fetters on me, how I loved you for that! And then you,
you
sought to fetter me within myself!"
Now Elof wept also, as he had not even in childhood, tears of shame and rage and scalding self-disgust. His own vast folly billowed up before him like a banner of blackness, and blindly he reached out to her through its enveloping folds. "Kara… I see now… I…" If he could reach her, hold her, tell her how much he had been at fault, then she might still forgive him.
His hand clutched at her arm, closed around metal over warm skin. "
Don't touch me
!" she screamed, and with that astonishing strength she jerked away her arm. The metal caught in his desperate fingers, he felt it bend and break. Then the darkness seemed blasted from his eyes, and he was staring at her and she at him, wide-eyed with shock, unsteady on her feet. She was holding her arm as if injured. On the dark grass between them a shard of gold gleamed, a curved, distorted shape; and from between her fingers a broken end gleamed. The serpentine arm-ring of gold, Elof s first great work, his first gift to her and sign of hope between them, had broken in two.
She stumbled back a pace, and even as he reached out to her once again she threw back her head and screamed aloud, a terrible shriek of grief and despair that echoed out around hill and water like the feelings that haunted them given fearful voice. All in that camp or aboard the ships, awake or sleeping, it brought instantly to their feet, hearts pounding, ridden by fear beyond thought and reason. Before those who had seen them the empty wastes of Taoune'la opened out once more, the Withered Lands; so the winds might cry there, with the voice of the imprisoned dead. So they might have stirred the cloak about her, so billowed it forth to reveal its inner blackness. Shadow enveloped her, she sprang and vanished. Wings of shadow beat upward into the night.
With a cry of horror Elof snatched the Tarnhelm from his belt and clapped it on his head. The cry changed in mid-breath to the scream of an eagle, and into the heights he soared in her pursuit. There was starlight enough over the ocean for his keen eyes to pick out the black swan flying seaward, high and straight, never wheeling, never turning. After her he sped, feeling his wings bite into the wind, his keen head crest it like a speeding swimmer. Yet she flew fast, that strange creature, and even in seconds she had a lead of him he would find hard to break. And time was on her side…
Far into the night they flew, till the land was no more than a streak of shadow far behind. Elof had looked back once, and dare do so no more, for the distance it had cost him; he was no nearer now than at the first. And already he could feel himself tiring, his masked form yearning for the lineaments of a man once more. Never once did he see her neck turn; did she even know she was being followed? So fast, so straight she flew, it made little difference. He had no voice to call her, and the call of his heart was emptiness. He had betrayed her, and brought about what he had most dreaded. What more could he do for her now but fly in her path till he reached its limits, or those of his failing strength? One way or another, he would find an end.
How far he flew he never remembered, or for how long; but at some point some shred of sanity must have asserted itself. For his friends of the fleet found him at last, in the small hours of the morning, sprawled face down and soaking upon the tidal sands of Ancarvadoen. They feared him dead at first, but he breathed; and in one hand the Tarnhelm was clutched, with a grip they could not break.
ChapterThree
- Into the Night
Kermorvan heard Elof's tale out in silence. As king he had the right, if he cared to use it, to judge any aspect of his follower's lives; as commander of the fleet he had an equal right. Elof expected harsh words of condemnation when he had done. But Kermorvan only looked at him with troubled grey eyes and asked "What will you do now?"
"What I sought to do first; follow her, find her. Make what amends I can. Aid her, if she is in need."
Kermorvan rose with a sigh, went to the railing and looked out across the sea. Ils shifted uneasily in her chair, her wide face lined with unhappiness; then she rose, put a beaker of wine in Elof s hand and her arm about his shoulder. Her cheek rested on his head a moment. "Yes, you were a fool!" she muttered. "But who is not, when torn apart by love and worry?" She turned abruptly away. Roc, the only other hearer, was looking out to sea also, avoiding his gaze.
Elof gulped the wine, grateful on a throat made raw by salt water and long speaking. He had slept the day out in his exhaustion, and now the sun was setting behind the hills in furious flares of red and gold. Kermorvan turned, and watched its glorious decline. "The world is wide," he said darkly. "Which way think you to start your search?"
"The way she told me to, when first we parted," said Elof. "It was the way she flew last night." He gazed out across the open oceans into the darkening East. "Thither. The path of the dawn."
Roc turned his head; Ils drew breath sharply, Kermorvan nodded, as if he had expected that reply. "Across the trackless ocean, that none has crossed these last thousand years. Once the ancient realm of Kerys lay on its farther shore, home of our fathers; who knows what lies there now?"
Elof waited to be told he was mad. But Kermorvan only remarked "You will need ships. You may choose them from the fleet, and pick their crews."
Elof stared, and spluttered with surprise. "My lord… I, I… it would be… I have no right…"
"You have bought them many times over with your labour for me, even were there no stronger claims of friendship; without yours I would have no throne. Now it is my turn to help you. I shall come with you."
Elof stared up at the tall man, scarcely able to believe what he heard, and much humbled. To have this
man's aid in his search
...
The years and experience of
rule had deepened Kermorvan's wisdom, without making him any the less fearsome a warrior. It was his firm hand, in peace and war, that had built up this whole kingdom from the ruins of two lands, raised it to peace and prosperity in less than a decade. It was his iron hand that held back the incoming raiders in the Westlands, that struck even up into the ruins of Nordeney to free those imprisoned and enslaved. Against his command, year after year, the Ekwesh battered as at an immovable wall, till it seemed that many grew weary of war for war's sake, and preferred to settle in what land they already had in peace. In that, as in many other ways, he thwarted the will of the Ice, that fed and prospered upon the strife of men, and had made the Ekwesh its chiefest instrument. With a man at his side who could thus uphold a land there were few roads he would not willingly tread. And that man was willing to leave all that he had built up, for no profit of his own…