t will make a change." The words sounded as if they were scraped from his throat.
Elena felt herself beginning to cry, from exhaustion as much as anything else. And even as she was nodding from within the abyss of her weariness, trying to let Donar see her understanding, her support, wanting to ease the rawness of his pain, even as the Others drew near again, triumphant, hideous, unwearied, she abruptly realized that Baerd wasn't with them on the bank. She wheeled toward the river, looking for him, and so she saw the miracle begin.
He was never in any doubt, none at all. From the moment the mist-wrapped figure appeared on the black hill Baerd knew what it was. In an odd way he had known this even before the shadow-figure came. It was why he was here, Baerd realized. Donar might not know it, but this was why the Elder had had a dream of someone coming, why Baerd's steps that night had taken him to the place where Elena was watching in the dark. It seemed to have been a long time ago.
He couldn't see the figure clearly but that didn't matter, it really didn't. He knew what this was about. It was as if all the sorrows and the lessons and the labors of his life, his and Alessan's together, had brought him to this river under this green moon that someone here might know exactly what the figure on the black hill was, the nature of its power. The power the Night Walkers had not been able to withstand because they could not understand.
He heard a splash behind him and knew instinctively that it would be Mattio. Without turning he handed him his strange sword. The Others, the Ygrathens of his dreams and hate, were massing again on the western bank.
He ignored them. They were tools. Right now they did not matter at all. They had been beaten by the courage of Donar and the Walkers; only the shadow-figure signified now, and Baerd knew what was needed to deal with that. Not a prowess of blades, not even with these swords of grain. They were past that now.
He drew a deep breath, and he raised his hands from his sides and pointed up at that shrouded figure on the hill, exactly as the figure was pointing down at them. And with his heart full to overflowing with old grief and a young certainty, conscious that Alessan would say it better, but knowing that this had become his task, and knowing also what had to be done, Baerd cried aloud in the strangeness of that night:
"Be gone! We do not fear you! I know what you are and where your power lies! Be gone or I shall name you now and cut your strength apart, we both know the power of names tonight!"
Gradually the raucous cries subsided on the other side of the river, and the murmurs of the Walkers faded. It grew very still, deathly still. Baerd could hear Mattio's labored, painful breathing just behind him. He didn't look back. He waited, straining to penetrate the mist that wrapped the figure on the hill. And as he stared it seemed to him, with a surge in his heart, that the upraised arms were lowered slightly. That the concealing mist dissipated a very little.→→網→文→檔→下→載→與→在→線→閱→讀→
He waited no longer.
"Be gone!" he cried again, more loudly yet, a ringing sureness in his voice now. "I have said I know you and I do. You are the spirit of the violators here. The presence of Ygrath in this peninsula, and of Barbadior. Both of them! You are tyranny in a land that has been free. You are the blight and the ruin in these fields. You have used your magic in the west to shape a desecration, to obliterate a name. Yours is a power of darkness and shadow under this moon, but I know you and can name you, and so all your shadows are gone/"
He looked, and even as he was speaking the words that came to him he saw that they were true! It was happening. He could see the mist drifting apart, as if taken by a wind. But even in the midst of joy something checked him: a knowledge that the victory was only here, only in this unreal place. His heart was full and empty at one and the same time. He thought of his father dying by the