“Dari …” he began, but the nickname didn’t fit any more, it didn’t apply to this golden presence in the glade. He tried again. “Darien, this is what I brought you for, but how did you do it alone?”
He was answered with a laugh that turned apprehension to terror. “You forgot something,” said Darien. “You all did. Such a simple thing as winter led you to forget. We are in an oak grove and Midsummer’s Eve is coming on! With such power to draw upon, why should I need the horned god to come into my power?”
“Not your power,” Paul replied as steadily as he could, watching Darien’s eyes, which were still blue. “Your maturity. You are old enough now to know why. You have a choice to make.”
“Shall I go ask my father,” Darien cried, “what to do?”
And with a gesture he torched the trees around the glade into a circle of fire, red like the red flash of his eyes.
Paul staggered back, feeling the rush of heat as he had not felt the cold. He heard Cernan cry out, but before the god could act, Brendel stepped forward.
“No,” he said. “Put out the fire and hear me before you go.” There was a music in his voice, bells in a high place of light. “Only once,” Brendel said quietly, and Darien moved a hand.
The fire died. The trees were untouched. Illusion, Paul realized. It had been an illusion. He still felt the fading heat on his skin, though, and in the place of his own power he felt a helplessness.
Ethereal, almost luminous, Brendel faced the child of Rakoth. “You heard us name your father,” he said, “but you do not know your mother’s name, and you have her hair and her hands. More than that: your father’s eyes are red, your mother’s green. Your eyes are blue, Darien. You are not bound to any destiny. No one born, ever, has had so pure a choice of Light or Dark.”
“It is so,” came Cernan’s deep voice from the trees.
Paul couldn’t see Brendel’s eyes, but Darien’s were blue again and he was beautiful. No longer a child but young, still, with a beardless open face, and so very great a power.
“If the choice is pure,” said Darien, “should I not hear my father as well as you? If only to be fair?” He laughed then, at something he saw in Brendel’s face.
“Darien,” said Paul quietly, “you have been loved. What did Finn tell you about the choice?”
It was a gamble. Another one, for he didn’t know if Finn would have said anything at all.
A gamble, and he seemed to have lost. “He left,” said Darien, a spasm of pain raking across his face. “He left!”the boy cried again. He gestured with a hand—a hand like Jennifer’s—and disappeared.
There was silence, then a sound of something rushing from the glade.
“Why,” said Cernan of the Beasts again—the god who had mocked Maugrim long ago and named him Sathain—“why was he allowed to live?”
Paul looked at him, then at the suddenly frail-seeming lios alfar. He clenched his fists. “To choose!” he cried with a certain desperation. Reaching within, to the throb of power, he sought confirmation and found none.
Together, Paul and Brendel left the glade and then the Godwood. It had been a long walk there; it seemed even longer going back. The sun was westering behind them when they came again to the cottage. Three had gone out in the morning, but Vae saw only two return.
She let them in, and the lios alfar bowed to her and then kissed her cheek, which was unexpected. She had never seen one of them before. Once, it would have thrilled her beyond measure. Once. They sat down wearily in the two chairs by the fire, and she made an herbal tea while they told her what had come to pass.
“It was for nothing then,” she said when the tale was done. “It was worse than nothing, all we did, if he has gone over to his father. I thought love might count for more.”
Neither of them answered her, which was answer enough. Paul threw more wood on the fire. He felt bruised by the day’s events. “There is no need for you to stay here now,” he said. “Shall we take you back to the city in the morning?’