Mar 14, 2007 19:27
There is a path leading along the gate to the cottage; there is something blocking the path.
If Paul was not who he was, he might have been stopped with fear. But there is recognition in him, and so, though his heart twists yet again, it is not with sorrow. Not this time.
The gray dog, who had saved his life from Galadan while Paul hung on the Summer Tree, looks up at him, and Paul drops to his knees in the snow.
"Bright the hour," he says, with difficulty, around the lump in his throat.
It takes a moment, during which he is momentarily unsure, and then the dog comes down and suffers him to put his arms around its neck. It growls in its throat, and in the sound Paul hears recognition and acceptance.
"You have been guarding him," he says. "I might have known you would." The dog growls again - agreement, and something more, that Paul reads in his eyes. "You must go," he says, understanding. "Your place is with the hunt. It was more than happenstance that drew me here. I will stay tonight and deal with tomorrow when it comes."
The dog faces him for a moment longer, and then moves past, leaving the door to the cottage open. Once again, Paul can see the thick network of scars marring his fur. Scars taken, he remembers, all too well, for him. The dog pauses once more, looking at him.
"What can I say to you? I have sworn to kill the wolf when next we meet," Paul says, helplessly. He can pretend confidence, but not here. "It may have been a rash promise, but if I am dead, who can tax me with it? You drove him back. He is mine to kill, if I can."
He still crouches in the snow. The dog - who is the Companion in every world; whose name, Paul now knows, is Cavall - comes back, and licks his face before turning to go, and Paul realizes, almost in astonishment, that he is crying. As he had not before the Summer Tree, and as he has not since.
"Farewell," he says, softly. Dog or not, he must still perform his task. "And go lightly. There is some brightness allowed. Even for you. The morning will ofer light."
He watches the dog disappear, as he had watched Kevin go. Delaying mechanisms, both, before meeting the woman he must now face.
"He is gone, then?" says Vae the Weaver. Her voice is past tears; as Paul knows, too well, it is worse than weeping would have been.
Paul nods, and tells her - as easily and quietly as he can. For her own sake, and not to wake the child, too, who is sleeping upstairs.
"It is a cold fate," Vae says, dully, "for one with so warm a heart."
"He will ride now through all the worlds of the Tapestry," Paul says, hearing the emptiness of his words even as he says them. "He may never die."
Vae only repeats, "A cold fate," and rocks in her chair.
They both hear Darien, when he turns over in his bed upstairs.
"He was up very late," Vae says. She's looking at the fire, and not at Paul. "Waiting. He did a thing this afternoon - he traced a flower in the snow. They used to do ittogether, as children will, but this one Dari did alone, after Finn left. And . . . he colored it."
"What do you mean?" Paul asks, feeling fear sharpen in himself.
"Just that. I don't know how, but he tinted the snow to color his flower. You'll see in the morning."
"I probably marred it just now, crossing the yard."
"Probably," Vae says, blankly, and they both go to sleep. Vae in her room; Paul to Finn's bed, in the room he had shared with Darien.
Paul lies in the bed of the boy who is gone, and waits. He hears Vae crying for her son. He hears the wind, too, growing in strength in the hours before dawn.
Eventually, he also hears the soft padding of feet - a frightened child's feet - and sits up. "Yes, Darien, what can I do?"
No answer comes. Nothing but the patter of feet, on their way back to their own bed, rejecting a stranger's comfort. Paul doesn't lie back down. He stays up a long time, thinking, and feeling as if, somehow, he has already failed a test.