(no subject)

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul spends a day at the cottage with Dari.

He spends a long time talking to him; Dari doesn't say much back, and Paul doesn't expect him to. He talks to him anyways, and not as one talks to a child.

He already has an idea, then, of what he thinks he must do.

He watches Dari make a flower in the snow - without a stick, but with a movement of his hand. He watches him color it, and he sees the child's eyes turn red.

Paul tells Dari it is very good, and carries him on his shoulders on the way back. At night, he puts Dari to bed, and makes him laugh with shadow figures on the wall.

Then he tells Vae what he is plannning to do.





In the morning, he teaches Dari how to skip stones before Brendel of the lios alfar arrives. Kevin had told him. "He said you would be angry," Brendel says, "but not very."

Kevin knows Paul too well.

"He said something else," Brendel goes on. "He said there seemed to be a choice of Light or Dark involved, and, perhaps, the lios alfar should be here."

"He's the cleverest of us all, you know," Paul says, after a moment. "I never thought of that."

Then he tells Brendel, also, what he wants to do.

And then the three of them - Brendel, Paul, and Darien of the andain - go into the woods through the trees. Into the Godwood.

Towards the Summer Tree, which he has not seen. Not since the night, a year ago, when he died.

"Cernan," he says, aloud, "I would speak with you."

Comments

[inthetapestry]

This is the Godwood, and here Paul became Pwyll Twiceborn, the Arrow of the God--this is why Cernan hears him. Hears him, and acknowledges him, too, as he steps sideways from his usual place and emerges from a screen of trees, tall and long-limbed and wild, seven-tined antlers turning this way and that before his eyes settle on Paul, and he stands very still.

"I am not to be summoned so," he says, and all the depths of the dark forests untamed echo in his voice. The light in the clearing grows dimmer--a hazard of riling the embers of a god's temper.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul stands very still, and very calm.

"By me you are," he says. "In this place."

This is the Summer Tree, and here Paul is Lord. A title he had not truly known the meaning of until now.

[inthetapestry]

Thunder rumbles, quiet and threatening, and it matches very well the stern, cruel look on Cernan's face.

"You were to have died."

It is simply enough said.

"I bowed to honor the manner of your death."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Even so."

Paul hears the thunder again; a physical manifestation of the power he feels in the air, almost crackling with energy.

The sun is shining, but it seems insignificant.

"Even so. I am alive, and returned hither to this place."

[inthetapestry]

Thunder crashes again, but Cernan remains still and poised.

The stern set of his face never wavers.

"What would you, then?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"You know who the child is?"

His voice sounds like his own again, he notes, absently.

[inthetapestry]

And still Cernan's attentions do not change, neither in focus nor intensity.

He was summoned here for this?

"I know he is of the andain. And so he belongs to Galadan," And oh, despite all the time that has passed, it is still no longer easy to say, "to my son."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Galadan belongs to me."

He says it, hears the harshness in his own voice, even as he is shouting at himself not to be a fool; Cernan is Galadan's father. And he is not trying to provoke him.

And yet he keeps talking.

"When next we meet, which will be the third time."

[inthetapestry]

There is no rumble of thunder, this time, no change in the light to reflect what Cernan feels.

He does, however, take a step forward, quick and light.

"My son is very strong. Stronger than us, for we may not intervene."

There is no wince of pain to pass across his face, no wince of pain either new or remembered. But something changes in his voice, and it may be memory, or it may be foreknowledge, or it may be some old, old sorrow brought to new light.

"He was not always as he is."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul opens his mouth to speak, but Brendel of the lios gets there first.

"He killed Ra-Termaine at Andarien. Would you have us pity him?"

[inthetapestry]

Dark brown eyes (stag eyes) turn toward the lios alfar.

"He is my son," Cernan says simply.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul intervenes before Brendel can speak again.

(There is so much pain. Pain on all sides, and no ravens are appearing to guide him. Only his own intuition, and how can that be trusted?)

"We need you, Woodlord," he says, quietly. "Your counsel and your power. The child has come into his strength, and it is red. There is a choice of Light we all must make, but his is the gravest of all, I fear, and he is but a child."

There is a pause, before he names him. The reason they are all here.

"He is Rakoth's child, Cernan."

[inthetapestry]

Silence falls, thick and heavy and so very fragile.

"Why?"

Cernan's voice too, is quiet, hushed. Some things are too heavy to bear.

"Why was he allowed to live?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"To make the choice."

The trees, Paul becomes aware, are murmuring to each other.

He remembers it, and does not let it disturb him.

"The most important choice in all the worlds. But not as a child; his power has come too soon."

[inthetapestry]

There are reasons gods deal but rarely with mortals, and for all that he is god-touched, Paul is mortal yet. He cannot be blamed for his thinking (or lack of same)--not entirely.

"It is only as a child that he can be controlled."

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul shakes his head.

"There is no controlling him, nor could there ever be," he says, and feels a certain weariness.

Is this how gods think?

"Woodlord, he is a battlefield and must be old enough to know it!"

As he says it, he can feel the truth of it. There is no other right choice, for Darien - and for Jennifer. Jennifer, who only wanted him not to be used.

"Cernan," he says, "can you take him through to his maturity?"

[inthetapestry]

Madness. Utter madness.

This, this Pwyll can be held responsible for. Pwyll, and Paul, too.

Cernan raises his mighty head, and around him something--perhaps power--gathers, louder than thunder even in the heavy silence.

He opens his mouth to speak--

[inthetapestry]

He is interrupted by a flash of light - near-blinding, despite all the sunlight coming down from the trees - that comes from the far side of the glade.

The area of the glade that Darien, some time earlier, had wandered off too.

"Weaver at the Loom," hisses the lios alfar; and, "Not quite," says Darien, as he comes out from behind the Summer Tree and stands in front of them.

He has no clothes - of course he doesn't. Dari's would no longer fit this boy, fair-haired and tall and no longer truly a boy but a young man.

Of about the age that Finn dan Shahar had been.

[inthetapestry]

This moment, here and now, is a moment the gods would have feared, had they seen it coming.

As it is Cernan can only stand and stare, stricken to the heart with fear for this world, for all worlds.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul recognizes the age; he recognizes the height, too.

He is, he realizes, more afraid than he has ever been.

"Dari . . ." he begins, and then breaks off; this is not the child he carried on his shoulders yesterday.

"Darien, this is what I brought you for, but how did you do it alone?"

[inthetapestry]

Darien laughs, and the sound is chilling.

"you forgot something," he says. "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?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

"Not your power."

Paul's attention is fixed on Darien's eyes. They are still blue (for now, for now) and Paul makes his voice as steady as he can.

"Your maturity. You are old enough now to know why. You have a choice to make."

[inthetapestry]

They have all been talking about him. They have all been talking about him, and they are all afraid of him.

And Finn had left him.

And perhaps they should be.

"Shall I go ask my father," he cries, "what to do?" And his eyes flash red, with hurt and loss and power, and with a gesture he torches the trees around the glade into a circle of fire.

[inthetapestry]

Cernan cries out just before the trees spark into flame, hands reaching out, power reaching out--

[inthetapestry]

Before the god can act, Brendel steps forward.

"No," he says. "Put out the fire and hear me before you go. Only once."

Darien hesitates, and then moves his hand.

The fire dies. The trees are untouched. All of it was an illusion - but the heat still lingers on the skin of all those in the glade.

Brendel goes onn, inexorable: "You heard us name your father," he says, "but you do not know your mother's name, and you hae 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."

[inthetapestry]

For all the foolishness of mortals, lios alfar and human alike, they do occasionally stumble on the right of it.

And so that is why Cernan's voice, deep and cool and distant, emerges from the trees.

"It is so."

[inthetapestry]

Darien's eyes are blue again.

"If the choice is pure," he says, "should I not hear my father as well as you? If only to be fair?"

He looks at Brendel, and laughs, at the fear he sees in his face. Afraid, again, of him.

[pwyll_twiceborn]

A bright boy, Finn had said.

A bright boy, and a trusting one. Of all those here, Paul has had the only chance to know Darien the child, and the brother who raised him.

And so he takes a gamble.

"Darien," he says, "you have been loved. What did Finn tell you about the choice?"

[inthetapestry]

Darien's face crumples.

There is no more laughter, not now. If Finn were here . . .

"He left," he says, sharply, and then shouts, again, "He left!"

He gestures with a hand - a hand like his mother's, if he only knew it - and disappears.

[inthetapestry]

Silence falls, broken only by the sound of something rushing from the glade.

Cernan of the Beasts, he who mocked Maugrim and named him Sathain, can think of only one thing to say, one question to ask.

It is, perhaps, the most important question to exist in this moment.

"Why was he allowed to live?"

[pwyll_twiceborn]

Paul looks from Cernan, to the lios alfar - who seems suddenly frail and helpless. As helpless as Paul feels.

He looks back at Cernan.

"To choose," he says, and there's a certain desperation in his voice.

He cannot feel any power within him - no ravens, no knowledge - no confirmation at all.