She had thought that Gorlaes, the Chancellor of Brennin, was a deep-voiced, mellifluous speaker; she had even feared his persuasiveness in the early days. She had heard Diarmuid dan Ailell in the Great Hall of Paras Derval and remembered the power of his light, sardonic, riveting words. She had heard Na-Brendel of the lios alfar take speech to the edge of music and beyond. And within herself, engraved on her heart and mind, she held close the sound of Arthur Pendragon speaking to command or to reassure—with him, somehow, the two became as one.
But in Seithr’s Hall within Banir Lok that day she learned how words could be claimed and mastered, brought to a scintillant, glorious apex—turned into diamonds, truly—and all in the service of evil, of the Dark.
Kaen spoke, and she heard his voice rise majestically with the passion of a denunciation; she heard it swoop downward like a bird of prey to whisper an innuendo or offer a half-truth that sounded—even, for a moment, to her—like a revelation from the warp and weft of the Loom itself; she heard it soar with confident assertions of the future and then shape itself into a cutting blade to slash to ribbons the honor of the Dwarf who stood beside him. Who had dared to return and strive a second time with Kaen.
Her mouth dry with apprehension, Kim saw Kaen’s hands—his large, beautiful, artisan’s hands—rise and fall gracefully as he spoke. She saw his arms spread suddenly wide in a gesture of entreaty, of transparent honesty. She saw a hand stab savagely upward to punctuate a question and then fall away, open, as he spoke what he deemed to be—what he made them believe to be—the only possible response. She saw him point a long shaking finger of undisguised, overwhelming rage at the one who had returned, and it seemed to her, as to all the others in Seithr’s Hall, that the denouncing hand was that of a god, and it became a source of wonder that Matt Sören had the temerity still to be standing upright before it, instead of crawling on his knees to beg for the merciful death he did not deserve.
From the weight of the silence, Miach had said, from the shape and texture of it, the Dwarfmoot would seek guidance. As Kaen spoke, the stillness in Seithr’s Hall was a palpable thing. It did have shape, and weight, and a discernible texture. Even Kim, utterly unversed in reading such a subtle message, could feel the silent Dwarves responding to Kaen, giving him back his words: thousands of voiceless auditors for chorus.
There was awe in that response, and guilt, that Kaen, who had labored so long in the service of his people, should be forced yet again to defend himself and his actions. Beyond these two things—beyond awe and guilt— there was also a humbled, grateful acquiesence in the rightness and clarity of everything Kaen said.
He came one step forward from where he had been standing, seeming with that small motion to have come among them, to be one with all of them, to be speaking directly, intimately, to every single listener in the Hall. He said: “It may be thought that the Dwarf beside me now will see farther with his one eye than anyone else in this Hall. Let me remind you of something, something I must say before I end, for it cries out within me for utterance. Forty years ago Matt, the sister-son of March, King of the Dwarves, shaped a crystal for Calor Diman on a new moon night: an act of courage, for which I honored him. On the next night of the full moon, he slept by the shore of the Lake, as all who would be King must do: an act of courage, for which I honored him.”
Kaen paused. “I honor him no more,” he said into the silence. “I have not honored him since another thing he did forty years ago—an act of cowardice that wiped away all memory of courage. Let me remind you, people of the twin mountains. Let me remind you of the day when he took the Scepter lying here beside us and threw it down upon these stones. The Diamond Scepter, treated like a stick of wood! Let me remind you of when he discarded the Crown he so arrogantly claimed just now—after forty years! — discarded it like a trinket that no longer gave him pleasure. And let me remind you”—the voice dipped down, laden, with marrow-deep sorrow— “that after doing these things, Matt, King under Banir Lok, abandoned us.”
Kaen let the grim stillness linger, let it gather full weight of condemnation. Said gently, “The word-striving forty years ago was his own choice. The submission of the matter of the Cauldron of Khath Meigol to the Dwarfmoot was his own decision. No one forced his hand, no one could. He was King under the mountains. He ruled not as I have striven to do, by consensus and counsel, but absolutely, wearing the Crown, wedded to the Crystal Lake. And in pique, in spite, in petulance, when the Dwarfmoot honored me by agreeing that the Cauldron I sought was a worthy quest for the Dwarves, King Matt abandoned us.”
There was grief in his voice, the pain of one bereft, in those long-ago days, of sorely needed guidance and support. “He left us to manage as best we could without him. Without the King’s bond to the Lake that has always been the heartbeat of the Dwarves. For forty years I have been here, with Blod, my brother, beside me, managing, with the Dwarfmoot’s counsel, as best I could. For forty years Matt has been far away, seeking fame and his own desires in the wide world across the mountains. And now, now he would come back after so long. Now, because it suits him—his vanity, his pride—he would come back and reclaim the Scepter and Crown he so contemptuously threw away.”
One more step forward. From his mouth to the ear of their hearts. “Do not let him, Children of Calor Diman! Forty years ago you decided that the search for the Cauldron—the Cauldron of Life—was worthy of us in our time. In your service, following the decision the Dwarfmoot made that day, I have labored all these years here among you. Do not turn away from me now!”
Slowly, the extended arms came down and Kaen was done.
Overhead, high above the rigid, absolute silence, the birds fashioned from diamonds circled and shone.
Her chest tight with strain and apprehension, Kim’s glance went, with that of everyone else in Seithr’s Hall, to Matt Sören, to the friend whose words, ever since she’d met him, had been parceled out in careful, plain measures. Whose strengths were fortitude and watchfulness and an unvoiced depth of caring. Words had never been Mart’s tools: not now, not forty years ago when he had lost, bitterly, his last striving with Kaen, and, losing, had surrendered his Crown.
She had an image of how it must have been that day: the young proud King, newly wedded to the Crystal Lake, afire with its visions of Light, hating the Dark then as he did now. With her inner Seer’s eye she could picture it: the rage, the anguished sense of rejection that Kaen’s victory had created in him. She could see him hurling away the Crown. And she knew he had been wrong to do so.
In that moment she thought of Arthur Pendragon, another young King, new to his crown and his dreams, learning of the child—incestuous seed of his loins—who was destined to destroy everything Arthur shaped. And so, in a vain attempt to forstall that, he’d ordered so many infants slain.
For the sins of good men she grieved.
For the sins, and the way the shuttling of the Loom brought them back. Back, as Matt had come back again after so long to his mountains. To Seithr’s Hall, to stand beside Kaen before the Dwarfmoot.
Praying for him, for all the living in search of Light, knowing how much lay in the balance here, Kim felt the cast spell of Kaen’s last plea still lingering in the Hall, and she wondered where Matt would ever find anything to match what Kaen had done.
Then she learned. All of them did.
“We have heard nothing,” said Matt Sören, “nothing at all of Rakoth Maugrim. Nothing of war. Of evil. Of friends betrayed into the Dark. We have heard nothing from Kaen of the broken wardstone of Eridu. Of the Cauldron surrendered to Maugrim. Seithr would weep, and curse us through his tears!”