There was another glade in another wood. A glade where one man alone had dared to walk in ten centuries since Amairgen had died.
The glade was small, the trees of the grove about were very old, extremely tall. The moon was almost overhead before she could shine down upon Pendaran’s sacred grove.
When she did, it began. A play of light first, a shimmering, and then a sound following, unearthly like a flute among the leaves. The air itself seemed to quiver to that tune, to dance, to form and reform, coalesce, to shape finally a creature of light and sound, of Pendaran and the moon.
When it was ended, there was silence, and something stood in the glade where nothing had stood before. With the wide eyes of the newly born, dewed so that her coat glistened in the birthing light, she rose on unsteady legs, and stood a moment, as one more sound like a single string plucked ran through Pendaran Wood.
Slowly then, delicately as all her kind, she moved from the glade, from the sacred grove. Eastward she went, for though but newly birthed, she knew already that to the west lay the sea.
Lightly, lightly did she tread the grass, and the powers of Pendaran, all the creatures gathered there, grew still as she passed, more beautiful, more terrible than any one of them.
The Goddess worked by threes; this was the third.
To the highest battlement he had climbed, so that all of black Starkadh lay below him. Starkadh rebuilt, his fortress and his fastness, for the blasting of Rangat had not signified his freedom—though let the fools think so yet awhile—he had been free a long time now. The Mountain had been exploded because he was ready at last for war, with the place of his power rising anew to tower over the northland, over Daniloth, a blur to the south, where his heart’s hate would forever lie.
But he did not look down upon it.
Instead his eyes were riveted on the impossible response the night sky held up to him, and in that moment he tasted doubt. With his one good hand, he reached upwards as if his talons might rake the moon from heaven, and it was a long time before his rage passed.
But he had changed in a thousand years under Rangat. Hate had driven him to move too fast the last time. This time it would not.
Let the moon shine tonight. He would have it down before the end. He would smash Brennin like a toy and uproot the Summer Tree. The Riders would be scattered, Larai Rigal burned to waste, Calor Diman defiled in Eridu.
And Gwen Ystrat he would level. Let the moon shine, then. Let Dana try to show forth empty signs in heavens choked with his smoke. Her, too, he would have kneeling before him. He had had a thousand years to consider all of this.
He smiled then, for the last was best. When all else was done, when Fionavar lay crushed beneath his fist, only then would he turn to Daniloth. One by one he would have them brought to him, the lios alfar, the Children of Light. One by one by one to Starkadh.
He would know what to do with them.
The thunder was almost spent, the rain a thin drizzle. The wind was wind, no more. A taste of salt on it from the sea, far away. The clouds were breaking up. The red moon stood directly over the Tree.
“Lady,” said the God, muting the thunder of his voice, “Lady, this you have never done before.”
“It was needful,” she replied, a chiming on wind. “He is very strong this time.”
“He is very strong,” the thunder echoed. “Why did you speak to my sacrifice?” A slight reproach.
The Lady’s voice grew deeper, woven of hearth smoke and caves. “Do you mind?” she murmured.
There came a sound that might have been a god amused. “Not if you beg forgiveness, no. It has been long, Lady.” A deeper sound, and meaningful.
“Do you know what I have done in Pendaran?” she asked, eluding, voice gossamer like dawn.
“I do. Though for good or ill I do not know. It may burn the hand that lays hold of it.”
“All my gifts are double-edged,” the Goddess said, and he was aware of ancient blood in that tone. There was a silence, then she was finest lace again, cajoling: “I have interceded, Lord, will you not do so?”