The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay Page A

from the mud and started over towards that torchlit half-circle of men. Someone was speaking; he was too far away yet to hear. He saw that Siawn and Gryffeth and the others had come out now, the big, red-bearded Erling gripped between two of them. He looked over at his cousin, and then away: Gryffeth had seen him kneeling beside Dai, so he knew. He was using his sword for support, point down in the earth, looked as if he wanted to sink into the dark, trampled grass. They had grown up together, the three of them, from childhood. Not so long ago.
    Rhiannon mer Brynn was in the yard as well now, beside her mother, who was standing straight as a Rhodian marble column, not far from the arc of men, gazing at her captive husband through the smoke and flames.
    HE SAW OWYN’S YOUNGER SON —Owyn’s only son now, a sorrow under Jad—moving too quickly towards the other men, sword in hand, and he understood what was working in him. It could be like a poison, grief. Ceinion went forward swiftly, at an angle, to intercept him. A necessary life was still in the balance. It was too dark to read faces, but you could sometimes tell a man’s intention from the way he moved. There was death around them in the farmyard, and death in the way the young Cadyri prince was going forward.
    Ceinion spoke, almost running, calling his name. Alun kept going. Ceinion had to catch him, lay a hand on the young man’s arm—and received a look that chilled him, for his pains.
    “Remember who you are!” the cleric snapped, deliberately cold. “And what is happening here.”
    “I know what happened here,” said the boy—he was still something of that, though his father’s heir as of tonight. And there were ripples that might flow from that, for all of them. Princes mattered, under Jad.
    “It is still happening. Wait, and pray. That man with the sword is the Volgan’s grandson.”
    “I thought as much,” said Alun ab Owyn, a bleakness in his voice that was a sorrow of its own to the cleric hearing it. “We learned he was leading them, inside.” He drew a breath. “I need to kill him, my lord.”
    There were things you were supposed to say to that, in the teachings, and he knew what they were, he had even written some of them. What Ceinion of Llywerth, high cleric of the Cyngael, anchor and emblem of his people’s faith in Jad, murmured amid the orange flickering of torches and the black smoke was: “Not yet, my dear. You can’t kill him yet. Soon, I hope.”
    Alun looked at him, and after a stiff moment nodded his head, once. They went forward together into that half-circle of men and were in time to see what happened there.
    The taken-away sword had struck the tumbled raider first, but a second Erling’s axe from behind and above had killed the Cyngael sooner.
    She crouches by the fence until those first two bodies are left alone again—the one who knelt beside one of them standing and walking away—and then, not allowingany time for fear to take hold of her, she goes straight in, at speed, and claims a soul for the queen.
    A moonless night. Only on a moonless night.
    Once it was otherwise and easier, but once, also, they were able to fly. She lays hands on the body, and speaks the words they are all taught, says them for the first time, and— yes, there! —she sees his soul rise from blood and earth to her summoning.
    It hovers, turning, drifting, in a stray breath of wind. She exults fiercely, aroused, her hair changing colour, again and then again, body tingling with excitement, even amid the fear of shod hooves and the presence of iron, which is weakening and can kill her.
    She watches the soul she’s claimed for the Ride float above the sprawled, slain mortal body and she sees it turn to go, uncertain, insubstantial, not entirely present yet in her world, though that will come, it will come. She didn’t expect to feel so much desire. This isn’t hers, though, this is for the queen.
    He turns completely around in the air, moves