His father’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”
“He wanted to know who had been in the Anor. He was aware that someone had. You know why. I said: only myself. Which was not true.” He paused, then said softly. “Guinevere was, as well.”
Cernan of the Beasts rose to his feet with a swift animal-lithe motion. “That,” he said, “explains something.”
“What?”
In response, Flidais was offered an image. It was his father who was offering, and Cernan had never done him actual harm, although, until just now, little good either. And so, in uncharacteristic trust, he opened his mind and received the image: a man walking swiftly through the forest with an utterly distinctive grace, not stumbling, even with the darkness and the entangling roots.
It was not the one he’d expected to see. But he knew, quite well, who this was, and so he knew what must have happened while he lay unconscious on the forest floor.
“Lancelot,” he breathed, an unexpected note, most of the way to awe, in his voice. His mind raced. “He will have been in Cader Sedat. Of course. The Warrior will have awakened him. And she has sent him away again.”
He had been in Camelot. Had seen those three in their first life, and seen them again, without their knowing him, in many of the returnings they had been forced to make. He knew the story. He was a part of it.
And now, he remembered with a flash of joy, like light in the darkness of the Wood, he knew the summoning name. That, however, brought back the memory of his oath. He said, “The child is in the Wood as well… Guinevere’s child.” And urgently, “Where is my brother now?”
“He is running north,” Cernan replied. For an instant he hesitated. “He passed by the child, not a hundred yards away… some time ago, while you slept. He did not see or sense him. You have friends in the Wood angry for your shed blood: he was offered no messages. No one is speaking to him.”
Flidais closed his eyes and drew a ragged breath. So close. He had a vision of the wolf and the boy passing by each other in the blackness of the Wood in the hour before moonrise, passing by so near and not knowing, not ever to know. Or did they? he wondered. Was there a part of the soul that reached out, somehow, toward possibilities barely missed, futures that would never be, because of such a little distance in a forest at night? He felt a stir of air just then. Wind, with a hint—only imagined, perhaps—of something more.
He opened his eyes. He felt alert, sharpened, exalted still, by what had come to pass. There was no pain. He said, “I need you to do one thing for me. To help me keep an oath.”
The dark eyes of Cernan flashed with anger. “You too?” he said softly, like a hunting cat. “I have done what I will. I have healed the damage my son did. How many of the Weaver’s bonds would you have me break?”
“I too am your son,” Flidais said, greatly daring, for he could feel the wrath of the god.
“I have not forgotten. I have done what I will do.”
Flidais stood up. “I cannot bind the forest in a matter such as this. I am not strong enough. But I do not want the child killed, even though he burned the tree. I swore an oath. You are god of the Wood as well as the Beasts. I need your help.”
Slowly, Cernan’s anger seemed to fade away. Flidais had to look up a long way to see his father’s face. “You are wrong. You do not need my help in this,” the god said, from the majesty of his great height. “You have forgotten something, wise child. For reasons I will never accept, Rakoth’s son has been given the Circlet of Lisen. The powers and spirits of the Wood will not harm him directly, not while he wears it. They will do something else, and you should know what that is, littlest one.”
He did know. “The grove,” he whispered. “He is being guided to the sacred grove.”
“And against what will meet him there,” said Cernan, “what will meet him and kill him, I have no power at all. Nor would I desire such power. Even could I do so, I would not intervene. He should never have been allowed to live. It is time for him to die, before he reaches his father and all hope ends.”
He was turning to go, having said all he intended to say, having done the one thing he felt bound to do, when his son replied, in a voice deep as tree roots, “Perhaps, but I think not. I think there is more to this weaving. You too have forgotten something.”
Cernan looked back. There was a first hint of silver in the space where they stood. It touched and molded his naked form. He had a place where he wanted to be when the moon rose, and the very thought of what would be waiting for him there stirred his desire. He stayed, though, for one more moment, waiting.
“Lancelot,” said Flidais.
And turned, himself, to run with that always unexpected speed toward the grove where Lisen had been born so long ago in the presence of all the goddesses and gods.
In his anger and confusion, the bitterness of rejection, Darien had run a long way into the forest before realizing that it was not the wisest thing to have done.
He hadn’t intended to burn the tree, but events, the flow of what happened, never seemed to go the way he expected them to, they never seemed to go right. And when that happened, something else took place inside of him, and his power, the change in his eyes, came back and trees burned.
Even then, he’d only wanted the illusion—the same illusion of fire he’d shaped in the glade of the Summer Tree—but he’d been stronger this time, and uneasy in the presence of so many people, and his mother had been beautiful and cold and had sent him away. He hadn’t been able to control what he did, and so the fire had been real.
And he’d run into the shadows of the Wood from what seemed to be the colder, more hurtful shadows on the beach.
It was quite dark by now, the moon had not yet risen, and gradually, as his rage receded, Darien became increasingly aware that he was in danger. He knew nothing of the history of the Great Wood, but he was of the andain himself and so could half understand the messages running through Pendaran, messages about him, and what he had done, and what he wore about his brow.
As the sense of danger increased, so too grew his awareness that he was being forced in a particular direction. He thought about taking his owl shape to fly over and out of the forest, but with the thought he became overwhelmingly conscious of weariness. He had flown a long way very fast in that form, and he didn’t know if he could sustain it again. He was strong, but not infinitely so, and he usually needed a cresting tide of emotion to source his power: fear, hunger, longing, rage. Now he had none of them. He was aware of danger but couldn’t summon any response to it.
Numbed, indifferent, alone, he stayed in his own shape, wearing the clothes Finn had worn, and followed, unresisting, the subtly shifting paths of Pendaran Wood, letting the powers of the forest guide him where they would, to whatever was waiting for him there. He heard their anger, and the anticipation of revenge, but he offered no response to it. He walked, not really caring about anything, thinking about his mother’s imperious, cold face, her words: What are you doing here? What do you want, Darien?
What did he want? What could he be allowed to want, to hope for, dream of, desire? He had only been born less than a year ago. How could he know what he wanted? He knew only that his eyes could turn red like his father’s, and when they did trees burned and everyone turned away from him. Even the Light turned away. It had been beautiful and serene and sorrowful, and the Seer had put it on his brow, and it had gone out as soon as it was clasped to him.
He walked, did not weep. His eyes were blue. The half-moon was rising; soon it would shine down through spaces in the trees. The Wood whispered triumphantly, malice in the leaves. He was guided, unresisting, the Circlet of Lisen on his brow, into the sacred grove of Pendaran Wood to be slain.