In the now charged ambience, Levon walked forward, uncomfortable but not abashed, and Dave felt a surge of pride to hear his new brother say, “Never in our long history have the Riders failed the High Kingdom in time of need. I can say to you all that the sons of Revor will follow the sons of Conary and Colan into the Riik Barrens and beyond against Maugrim. Aileron, High King, I pledge my life to you, and my sword; do with them what you will. The Dalrei shall not fail you.”
Quietly Tore stepped forward. “And I,” he said. “My life, my sword.”
Stern and erect, Aileron nodded to them, accepting it. He looked a king, Kevin thought. In that moment he came into it.
“And Cathal?” Aileron asked, turning to Galienth. But it was another voice that answered him.
“A thousand years ago,” said Sharra, daughter of Shalhassan, heir of Shalhassan, “the men of the Garden Country fought and died in the Bael Rangat. They fought at Celidon and among the tall trees of Gwynir. They were at Sennett Strand when the last battle began and at Starkadh when it ended. They will do as much again.” Her bearing was proud before them all, her beauty dazzling. “They will fight and die. But before I accede to this counsel of attack, there is another voice I would hear. Throughout Cathal the wisdom of the lios alfar is a byword, but so, too, and often it has been said with a woven curse, is the knowledge of the followers of Amairgen. What say the mages of Brennin? I would hear the words of Loren Silvercloak.”
And with a jolt of dismay, Kevin realized that she was right. The mage hadn’t said a thing. He had barely made his presence known. And only Sharra had noticed.
Aileron, he saw, seemed to have followed the same line of thought. He wore a sudden expression of concern.
And even now, Loren was hesitating. Paul gripped Kevin’s arm. “He doesn’t want to speak,” Schafer whispered. “I think I’m going to—”
But whatever intervention he had planned was forestalled, for there came then a loud hammering on the great doors at the end of the hall, and as they turned, startled, the doors were opened, and a figure walked with two of the palace guard between the high pillars towards them all. He walked with the flat, halting steps of absolute exhaustion, and as he drew nearer, Kevin saw that it was a Dwarf.
In the loud silence, it was Matt Sören who stepped forward. “Brock?” he whispered.
The other Dwarf did not speak. He just kept walking and walking, as if by willpower alone, until he had come the length of the Great Hall to where Matt stood. And there he dropped to his knees at last, and in a voice of rawest grief, cried aloud, “Oh, my king!”
In that moment the one eye of Matt Sören truly became a window to his soul. And in it they all saw a hunger unassuageable, the deepest, bitterest, most forsaken longing of the heart.
“Why, Matt?” Kim remembered asking after her tranced vision of Calor Diman on that first walk to Ysanne’s lake. “Why did you leave?”
And now, it seemed they were to learn. A chair had been set for Brock before the throne, and he had collapsed into it. It was Matt who spoke, though, as they gathered around the two Dwarves.
“Brock has a tale to tell,” Matt Sören said in his deep tones, “but I fear it will mean little to you unless I first tell you mine. It seems the time for privacy is past. Listen, then.
“In the time of the passing of March, King of the Dwarves, in his one-hundred-and-forty-seventh year, only one man could be found who would assay the test of full moon night by Calor Diman, the Crystal Lake, which is how we choose our King, or have the powers choose him for us.
“Know you that he who would rule under the twin mountains must first lie at full moon night beside the lake. If he lives to see the dawn and is not mad, he is crowned under Banir Lok. It is a dark ordeal, though, and many of our greatest warriors and artisans have been broken shards when the sun rose on their vigil.”