THE DARKEST ROAD by Guy Gavriel Kay

He’d thought about asking the white-haired woman about that, but he was uncomfortable now in the enclosed spaces of the cottage, and he was afraid to tell her about the killing. He was afraid she would hate him and go.

Then she’d showed him the Light and she’d said it was meant for him. Hardly daring to believe it, because it was so very beautiful, he’d let her put it on his brow. The Light against the Dark, she called it, and as she spoke Darien remembered another thing Finn had told him, about having to hate the Dark and the voices in the storm that came from the Dark. And now, astonishingly, it seemed that even though he was the son of Rakoth Maugrim he was being given a jewel of Light.

And then it went out.

Only Finn’s going away had ever hurt as much. He felt the same emptiness, the same hollow sense of loss. And then, in the midst of it, because of it, he’d felt his eyes readying themselves to go red, and then they did. He didn’t kill her. He could have, easily, but he only knocked her down and went to take the other shining thing he’d seen in that room. He didn’t know why he took it or what it was. He just took it.

Only when he was turning to go and she tried to stop him did it come to him how he could hurt her as much as she’d hurt him, and so, in that moment, he’d decided be was going to take the dagger to his father. His voice had sounded cold and strong to his own ears, and he’d seen her face go white just before he left the room and went outside and made himself into an owl again.

Later in the day other people had come, and he’d watched them from his tree in the woods east of the cottage. He’d seen the three women talking by the lake, though he couldn’t hear what they said, and he was too afraid, in the owl shape, to go nearer.

But then one of them, the one with dark hair, had stood up and had cried, loudly enough for him to hear, “That poor child! No one else in any world can be so lonely!” and he knew that she was speaking of him. He wanted to go down then, but he was still afraid. He was afraid that his eyes would want to turn red, and he wouldn’t know how to stop them. Or to stop what he did when they were that way.

So he waited, and a moment later the one with white hair walked forward a little, toward him, and she called out to him by name.

The part of him that was an owl was so startled that he flew a few wingbeats, out of sheer reflex, before he was able to control himself again. And then he heard her tell him where his mother was.

That was all. A moment later they went away. He was alone again. He stayed in the tree, in the owl form, trying to decide what to do.

She had been like a queen, Finn had said. She had loved him.

He flew down and took hold of the dagger again in his mouth, and then he started to fly. The part of him that was an owl didn’t want to fly in the day, but he was more than an owl, much more. It was hard to carry the dagger, but he managed it.

He flew north, but only for a little way. West of Pendaran Wood, the white-haired one had said. He knew where that was, though he didn’t know how he knew. Gradually he began to angle his flight northwest.

He went very fast. A storm was coming.

Chapter 5

In the place where they were going—all of them, the Wolflord running in his wolf shape, Darien flying as an owl with a blade in his mouth, the three women sent from the Temple by the power of Dana—Jennifer stood on Lisen’s balcony gazing out to sea, her hair blown back by the freshening wind.