Galadan’s eyes were cold and grey and fixed downward on his own. “Were there not flowers?” he whispered, and menace was suddenly a vivid, rustling presence where they stood. Feigning nothing at all, his heart racing, mouth suddenly dry, Flidais said, “There were, my lord. They . . . crumbled from age when I was dusting the room. I can get more for you. Would you desire me to—”
He got no further. Faster than eye could follow or most cunning mind anticipate, the figure in front of him melted away and in its stead a wolf was there, a wolf that leaped, even in the instant it appeared. With one swift, precisely calculated motion, a huge paw raked the forest andain’s head. Flidais never even moved. He was cunning and wise and surprisingly swift within his Wood, but Galadan was what he was. And so, an instant later, the little bearded andain lay, writhing in genuine agony on the sodden forest floor, holding both hands to the bloodied place where his right ear had been ripped away.
“Live a while longer, forest one,” he heard, through the miasma of pain flowing over him. “And name me merciful in your innermost heart. You touched the flowers I laid in that place for her,” the voice said, benign, reflective, elegant. “Could you really expect to have been allowed to live?”
Fighting to hold consciousness, Flidais heard, within his reeling mind, another voice then, that sounded near and very far away, at one and the same time. And the voice said, Oh, my son, what have you become?
Wiping away blood, Flidais managed to open his eyes. The forest rocked wildly in his vision, then righted itself, and through the curtain of blood and pain he saw the tall, naked, commanding figure and the great horns of Cernan of the Beasts. Whom he had called to this place just before Galadan came.
With a snarl of rage mingled with another thing, the Wolflord turned to his father. A moment later, Galadan was in his human shape again, elegant as ever. “You lost the right to ask me that a long time ago,” he said.
He spoke aloud to his father, a part of Flidais noted, even as he himself had spoken aloud to Galadan, to deny him access to his thoughts.
Majestic and terrible in his nakedness and power, the god of the forests came forward. Speaking aloud, his voice reverberating, Cernan said, “Because I would not kill the mage for you? I will not make answer to that again, my son. But will ask you once more, in this Wood where I fathered you, how have you so lost yourself that you can do this thing to your own brother?”
Flidais closed his eyes. He felt consciousness slipping away, ripple by ripple, like a withdrawing sea. But before he went out with the tide he heard Galadan laugh again, in mockery, and say to his father, to their father, “Why should it signify anything to me that this fat drudge of the forest is another by-blow of your profligate seed? Sons and their fathers,” he snarled, halfway to the wolf he could so easily become. “Why should any of that matter now?”
Oh, but it does, Flidais thought, with his last shred of consciousness. Oh, but it matters so much. If only you knew, brother! He sent it out to neither of the others, that thought. Closely to himself he clutched his memory of the torched tree, and Darien with the Circlet of Lisen on his brow. Then Flidais, having kept his oath, having found his heart’s desire, was hit by another surge of pain and knew nothing more at all of what his father said to his brother in the Wood.
In the east, at Celidon, the sun was low in a sky unmarred by clouds or the hint of any storm as the army of Brennin came at last to the mid-Plain. Galloping beside Niavin, Duke of Seresh, at the front of the host, Teyrnon the mage, weary to the bone after three days of riding, nonetheless managed to pull his chunky body erect in the saddle at his first glimpse of the standing stones.