“Oh, my King!” cried Brock of Banir Tal. “I knew you would not fail!”
Over Eridu the rain clouds were gone. Sunlight streamed from a sky laced only with the thin, benevolent cirrus clouds of a summer’s day.
Far to the west, in the spinning place of Cader Sedat, the Cauldron of Khath Meigol lay shattered in a thousand pieces and Metran of the Garantae was dead.
Kim felt the shadows of her dream dissolve as hope flared within her like the brilliant sun. She thought of Kevin in that moment. There was sorrow in the memory, there always would be, but now there was joy as well, and a burgeoning pride. The summer had been his gift— the green grass, the birdsong, the mild seas that had allowed Prydwen to sail and the men who sailed her to do this thing.
There was a keen brightness in Dalreidan’s face as he turned back to look at her. “Forgive me,” he said. “I doubted.”
She shook her head. “So did I. I had terrible dreams of where they had to go. There is a miracle in this. I do not know how it was done.”
Brock had come up to stand beside her on the narrow trail. He said nothing, but his eyes were shining beneath the bandage Kim had wrapped about his wound. Faebur, though, had his back to them, still gazing to the east. Looking at him, Kim sobered quickly.
At length he, too, turned to look at her, and she saw the tears in his eyes. “Tell me something, Seer,” he said, sounding older, far, than his years. “If an exiled man’s people are all dead, does his exile end or does it go on forever?”
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.