The swan showed her unnatural teeth. “I will take pleasure in the sight,” she hissed.
“No doubt,” said Galadan wryly. “Is there word for me?”
“North,” the swan replied. “You are asked to go north with your friends. Make haste. There is little time.”
“It is well,” said Galadan. “I have one task left here, then I follow.”
“Make haste,” Avaia said again. “And now I go.”
“No!” Jennifer screamed, as cold svart hands grabbed for her. Her cries cut the air of the clearing and fell into nothingness. She was bound across the back of the giant swan and the dense, putrefying smell of it overwhelmed her. She could not breathe; when she opened her mouth, the thick black feathers choked her, and as they left the earth for the blazing sky, Jennifer fainted for the first time in her life, and so could not have known the glorious curving arc she and the swan made, cutting across the sky.
The figures in the clearing watched Avaia bear the girl away until they were lost in the shimmering of the white sky.
Metran turned to the others, exultation still in his eyes. “You heard? The Cauldron is mine!”
“So it seems,” Galadan agreed. “You are away across the water, then?”
“Immediately. It will not be long before you see what I do with it.”
Galadan nodded, then a thought seemed to strike him. “I wonder, does Denbarra understand what all this means?” He turned to the source. “Tell me, my friend, do you know what this Cauldron is all about?”
Denbarra shifted uneasily under the weight of that gaze. “I understand what is needful for me to know,” he said sturdily. “I understand that with its aid, the House of Garantae will rule again in Brennin.”
Galadan regarded him a moment longer, then his glance flicked away dismissively. “He is worthy of his destiny,” he said to Metran. “A thick-witted source is an advantage for you, I suppose. I should get dreadfully bored, myself.”
Denbarra flushed, but Metran was unmoved by the gibe this time. “My sister-son is loyal. It is a virtue,” he said, unconscious of the irony. “What about you? You mentioned a task to be done. Should I know?”
“You should, but evidently you don’t. Give thanks that I am less careless. There is a death to be consummated.”
Metran’s mouth twitched at the insult, but he did not respond. “Then go your way,” he said. “We may not meet for some time.”
“Alas!” said Galadan.
The mage raised a hand. “You mock me,” he said with intensity. “You mock us all, andain. But I tell you this: with the Cauldron of Khath Meigol in my hands, I will wield a power even you dare not scorn. And with it I shall wreak such a vengeance here in Brennin that the memory of it will never die.”
Galadan lifted his scarred head and regarded the mage. “Perhaps,” he said finally, and very, very softly. “Unless the memory of it dies because everything has died. Which, as you know, is the wish of my heart.”
On the last words, he made a subtle gesture over his breast, and a moment later a coal-black wolf with a splash of silver on its head ran swiftly westward from the clearing.
Had he entered the forest farther south, a great deal of what ensued might have been very different.
At the southern edge of the woodcutter’s clearing a figure lay, hidden among the trees, bleeding from a dozen wounds. Behind him on the trail through the forest the last two lios alfar lay dead. And ten wolves.
And in the heart of Na-Brendel of the Kestrel Mark lay a grief and a rage that, more than anything else, had kept him alive so far. In the sunlight his eyes were black as night.
He watched Metran and his source mount horses and swing away northwest, and he saw the svarts and wolves leave together for the north. Only when the clearing stood utterly silent did he rise, with difficulty, and begin his own journey back to Paras Derval. He limped badly, from a wound in the thigh, and he was weak unto death from loss of blood; but he was not going to let himself fall or fail, for he was of the lios alfar, and the last of his company, and with his own eyes he had seen a gathering of the Dark that day.