She struggled to frame a reply and found none. It was Dalreidan who answered. “We cannot unsay the falling of that rain, or lengthen the cut threads of those who have died,” he said gently. “It is in my heart, though, that in the face of what Maugrim has done no man is an exile any more. Every living creature on this side of the mountains has received a gift of life this morning. We must use that gift, until the hour comes that knows our name, to deal such blows as we can against the Dark. There are arrows in your quiver, Faebur. Let them sing with the names of your loved ones as they fly. It may not seem like a true recompense, but it is all we can do.”
“It is what we must do,” said Brock softly.
“Easy for a Dwarf to say!” snarled Faebur, rounding on him.
Brock shook his head. “Harder by far than you could know. Every breath I draw is laden with the knowledge of what my people have done. The rain will not have fallen under the twin mountains, but it fell in my heart and it is raining there still. Faebur, will you let my axe sing with your arrows in mourning for the people of the Lion in Eridu?”
The tears had dried on Faebur’s face. His chin was set in a hard, straight line. He had aged, Kim thought. In a day, in less than a day he seemed to have aged so much. For what seemed to her a very long time he stood motionless, and then slowly and deliberately he extended a hand to the Dwarf. Brock reached up and clasped it between both of his own.
She became aware that Dalreidan was looking at her.
“We go on?” he asked gravely.
“We go on,” she said, and even as she spoke the dream came back, with the chanting and the smoke, and the name written in Dana’s moon.
To the south and far below, the Kharn River flashed through its gorge in the evening light. They were so high than an eagle hovering over the river was below them, its wings shining in the sunlight that slanted down the gorge from the west. All around them lay the mountains of the Carnevon Range, the peaks white with snow even in midsummer. It was cold, this high up and with the day waning; Kim was grateful for the sweater they had given her in Gwen Ystrat. Lightweight and wonderfully warm, it was a testimonial to the value accorded all the cloth arts in this, the first of all the Weaver’s worlds.
Even so, she shivered.
“Now?” Dalreidan asked, his voice carefully neutral. “Or would you like to camp here until morning?”
The three of them looked at her, wailing. It was her decision to make. They had guided her to this place, had helped her through the hardest parts of the climb, had rested when she had needed to rest, but now they had arrived, and all the decisions were hers.
She looked past her companions to the east. Fifty paces away the rocks looked exactly as they did where she was standing now. The light fell upon them the same way, with the same softening as evening came to the mountains. She had expected something different, some sort of change: a shimmering, shadows, a sharpening of intensity. She saw none of these, yet she knew, and the three men with her knew, that the rocks fifty paces to the east lay within Khath Meigol.
Now that she was here she longed with all her heart to be anywhere else. To be graced with the wings of the eagle below, that she might sweep away on the evening breeze. Not from Fionavar, not from the war, but far from the loneliness of this place and the dream that had led her here. Within herself she reached for, and found, the tacit presence that was Ysanne. She took comfort in that. She was never truly alone; there were two souls within her, now and always. Her companions had no such solace, though, had no dreams or visions to guide them. They were here because of her, and only because of her, and they were looking now for her to lead them. Even as she stood, hesitating, the shadows were slowly climbing the slopes of the ravine.
She drew a breath and slowly let it out. She was here to repay a debt, and one that was not hers alone. She was also here because she bore the Baelrath in a time of war, and there was no one else in any world who could make manifest the Seer’s dream she’d had, however dark it was.
However dark. It had been night in the dream, with fires in front of the caves. She looked down and saw the stone flickering like a tongue of flame on her hand.
“Now,” she said to the others. “It will be bad in the dark, I know, but it won’t be that much better in the morning, and I don’t think we should wait.”
They were very brave, all three of them. Without a word spoken they made room for her to fall into line after Faebur, with Brock behind; and Dalreidan led them into Khath Meigol.
Even with the vellin shielding her she felt the impact of magic as they passed into the country of the Giants, and the form the magic took was fear. They are not ghosts, she told herself, over and over. They are alive. They saved my life. Even so, even with the vellin, she felt terror brushing her mind with the quick wings of night moths. The two men and the Dwarf with her had no green vellin bracelets to guard them, no inner voices to reassure, yet none of them made a sound and none broke stride. Humbled by their courage, she felt her own heart flame with resolution, and as it did the Baelrath burned brighter on her hand.
She quickened her pace and moved past Dalreidan. She had brought them to this place, a place where no man should ever have had to come. It was her turn to lead them now, for the Warstone knew where to go.
For almost two hours they walked in the gathering darkness. It was full night under the summer stars when Kim saw smoke and the distant blaze of bonfires and heard the raucous laughter of svart alfar. And with the brutal mockery of that sound she found, suddenly, that her fears, which had walked with her until now, were gone. She had arrived, and the enemy ahead of her was known and hated, and in the caves beyond those ridges of stone the Giants were imprisoned and were dying.
She turned and saw by starlight and the glow of her ring that her companions’ faces were grim now, not with strain but with anticipation. Silently Brock unslung his axe, and Faebur notched an arrow to his bow. She turned to Dalreidan. He had not yet drawn a sword or unslung his own bow. “There will be time,” he whispered, answering her unspoken question, scarcely a breath in the night air. “Shall I find us a place where we can look?”
She nodded. Calmly, silently, he moved past her again and began picking his way among the strewn boulders and loose rocks toward the fires and the laughter. Moments later the four of them lay prone above a plateau. Sheltered by upthrust teeth of rock, they looked down, sickened, on what the glow of the bonfires revealed.
There were two caves set into the mountainside, with high vaulted entrances and runic lettering carved over the arches. It was dark in the caves and they could not see within. From one of them, though, if they strained to hear past the laughter of the svart alfar, they could make out the sound of a single deep voice chanting slowly.
The light came from two huge fires on the plateau, set directly before each of the caves in such a fashion that the smoke of their burning was drawn inward. There was another fire just over the ridge east of them, and Kim could make out the glow and the rising smoke of a fourth about a quarter of a mile away, to the northeast. There were no others to be seen. Four caves then, four sets of prisoners dying of starvation and smoke.
And four bands of svart alfar. Around each of the bonfires below them, about thirty of the svarts were gathered, and there were a handful of the nightmare urgach as well. About a hundred and fifty of them, then, if the same numbers held true beyond the ridges. Not a very great force, in truth, but more than enough, she knew, to subdue and hold the Paraiko, whose pacifism was the very essence of their being. All that the svarts had to do, under the guidance of the urgach, was keep the fires burning and refrain from shedding blood. Then they could claim their reward.