THE DARKEST ROAD by Guy Gavriel Kay

He heard a strangled sound from beside him and realized that Darien, too, had registered what had happened. He looked over, briefly, at the boy, and his heart stopped, literally, for a moment. Over and over in his hands Darien was twisting a bright dagger blade, seeming almost oblivious to the fact that he was doing so. Flidais had glimpsed a telling flash of blue, and so he knew what that blade was.

“Be careful!” he whispered urgently. He coughed; his throat was dry. “What are you thinking of doing?”

For only the second time Darien looked directly at him. “I don’t know,” the boy said, painfully young. “I made my eyes red before you came . . . that is how I have my power.” Flidais fought, successfully this time, to conceal his fear. He nodded. Darien went on, “But nothing happened. The rock thing said it was because I did not go deep enough to master it. That I had no power here. So I. . .” He paused and looked down at the knife. “I thought I might . . .”

Through the black night, and through the blackness of what was happening and the pity and horror he felt, Flidais of Pendaran seemed to see, within his mind, a faint, almost illusionary light gleaming in a far, far distance. A little light like the small cast glow of a candle in a cottage window at night, seen by a traveler in a storm far from home.

He said, in his rich, deep voice, “It is a good thought, Darien. It is worthy of you, and worthy of the one who is doing this for you. But do not do it now, and not with that blade.”

“Why?” Darien asked, in a small voice.

“Once shall I tell you, and for your ears only, and once is enough for those who are wise,” Flidais intoned, reverting, if briefly, to his cryptic elusiveness. He felt a familiar rush of pleasure, even here, even with what was happening, that he knew this. And that reminded him—past pleasure, reaching joy—of what else, now, he knew. And remembering that, he remembered also that he had sworn an oath earlier that night, to try to shape a light from the darkness all around. He looked at Darien, hesitating, then said, quite directly, “What you are holding is named Lokdal. It is the enchanted dagger of the Dwarves, give to Colan dan Conary a long time ago.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, to summon up the exact phrasing, given him by a wine-drowsy mage one spring night seven hundred years ago beside an evening fire on the edge of the Llychlyn Marsh. “Who strikes with this blade without love in his heart,” said Flidais, as the words came back, “shall surely die. ” And then he told the rest of it: “Who kills with love may make of his soul a gift to the one marked with the pattern on the dagger’s haft.” Potent words, and a deep-delved, intricate magic.

Darien was looking down, gazing at the traced pattern on the hilt of the blade. He glanced up again and said, so quietly Flidais had to strain to hear him, “I wouldn’t wish my soul on anything alive.” And then, after a pause, the andain heard him say, “My gift was to be the dagger itself, before I was brought to this place.”

“A gift to whom?” Flidais asked, though within himself he knew.

“To my father, of course,” said Darien. “That I might find a welcome somewhere in the worlds.”

There had to be something to say to that, Flidais was thinking. There had to be an adequate response, so much depended on it. But he couldn’t think, for once. He couldn’t find words, and then, suddenly, he didn’t have time for them either.

There came a rumbling crash from the glade, louder than any before, and this time there was a resonance of triumph within it. Flidais turned back just in time to see Lancelot hurtle through the air, clipped by the very end of a hammer swing he’d not quite dodged. It would have smashed the life from him had it hit more squarely. As it was, the merest glancing blow had knocked him flying halfway across the glade, to a bruising, crumpled landing beside Darien.