Free The Darkest Road by Guy Gavriel Kay

her. She was silent, though, and kept going, head down, watching the path and the long legs of Faebur climbing in front of her. Dalreidan was leading them; Brock, who had to be hurting far more than she was, brought up the rear. No one spoke. The trail was difficult enough without wasting breath on words, and there was, really, not a great deal to say.
    She had dreamt again the night before, in the outlaw camp not far from the plateau where they had been captured. Ruana’s deep chanting ran through her sleep. It was beautiful, but she found no comfort in that beauty—the pain was too great. It twisted through her and, what was worse, a part of it came from her. There was smoke in the dream again, and the caves. She saw herself with lacerations on her arms but, again, no blood was flowing. No blood in Khath Meigol. The smoke drifted in the starlit, firelit night. Then there was another light, as the Baelrath blazed into life. She felt it as a burning, as guilt and pain, and in the midst of that flaming she watched herself looking up into the sky above the mountains and she saw the red moon ride again and she heard a name.
    In the morning, heavily wrapped in her thoughts, she had let Brock and Dalreidan make arrangements for their departure, and in silence all morning and into the afternoon she had climbed upwards and east towards the sun.
    Towards the sun
.
    She stopped abruptly. Brock almost ran into her from behind. Shielding her eyes, Kim gazed beyond the mountains as far as she could, and then a cry of joy escaped her. Dalreidan turned, and Faebur. Wordlessly, she pointed. They spun back to look.
    “Oh, my King!” cried Brock of Banir Tal. “I knew you would not fail!”
    Over Eridu the rain clouds were gone. Sunlight streamed from a sky laced only with the thin, benevolent cirrus clouds of a summer’s day.
    Far to the west, in the spinning place of Cader Sedat, the Cauldron of Khath Meigol lay shattered in a thousand pieces and Metran of the Garantae was dead.
    Kim felt the shadows of her dream dissolve as hope flared within her like the brilliant sun. She thought of Kevin in that moment. There was sorrow in the memory, there always would be, but now there was joy as well, and a burgeoning pride. The summer had been his gift—the green grass, the birdsong, the mild seas that had allowed
Prydwen
to sail and the men who sailed her to do this thing.
    There was a keen brightness in Dalreidan’s face as he turned back to look at her. “Forgive me,” he said. “I doubted.”
    She shook her head. “So did I. I had terrible dreams of wherethey had to go. There is a miracle in this. I do not know how it was done.”
    Brock had come up to stand beside her on the narrow trail. He said nothing, but his eyes were shining beneath the bandage Kim had wrapped about his wound. Faebur, though, had his back to them, still gazing to the east. Looking at him, Kim sobered quickly.
    At length he, too, turned to look at her, and she saw the tears in his eyes. “Tell me something, Seer,” he said, sounding older, far, than his years. “If an exiled man’s people are all dead, does his exile end or does it go on forever?”
    She struggled to frame a reply and found none. It was Dalreidan who answered. “We cannot unsay the falling of that rain, or lengthen the cut threads of those who have died,” he said gently. “It is in my heart, though, that in the face of what Maugrim has done no man is an exile anymore. Every living creature on this side of the mountains has received a gift of life this morning. We must use that gift, until the hour comes that knows our name, to deal such blows as we can against the Dark. There are arrows in your quiver, Faebur. Let them sing with the names of your loved ones as they fly. It may not seem like a true recompense, but it is all we can do.”
    “It is what we must do,” said Brock softly.
    “Easy for a Dwarf to say!” snarled Faebur, rounding on him.
    Brock shook his head. “Harder by far