Once more she forced her mind back to the beach. It was growing darker by the minute. In the shadows Diarmuid’s fair hair was still bright, catching the last color of the western sky. It was the Prince who spoke now.
“Very well,” he said. “It seems that what we have been told is all we are going to learn. Let us be grateful to our charming Priestess for such information as we do have. Now, Loren can’t reach Teyrnon anymore. Kim, I gather, has had a vision of Calor Diman but nothing of the armies. And Jaelle has exhausted her store of useful tidings.” The gibe seemed reflexive, halfhearted; she didn’t bother to respond. Diarmuid didn’t wait. “Which leaves us dependent,” he murmured, with what seemed to be a genuinely rueful shake of his head, “upon my own less than exhaustive store of knowledge about what my beloved brother is likely to do.”
In some inexplicable way, the glib flow of words had a calming effect. Once more, Jaelle realized, the one she used to dismiss as the “princeling” knew exactly what he was doing. He had already decided, and now he was making the decision sound effortless and of little consequence. Jaelle looked at Sharra, standing beside the Prince. She wasn’t sure whether or not to pity her, which was another change: once she would have had no trouble doing so.
“At a time like this,” Diarmuid continued, “I can do no better than go back to my precocious childhood memories. Some of you may have known patient, supportive older brothers. I have been blighted sadly by the lack of such a one. Loren will remember. From the time I was able to take my first stumbling steps in my brother’s wake, one thing was manifestly clear: Aileron never, ever, waited for me.”
He paused and glanced at Loren, as if seeking his confirmation, but then continued in a voice from which the flippancy was suddenly gone. “He will not wait now, nor could he, given where we went. If he is on the Plain with the army and the lios with him, Aileron will push for battle; I would stake my life on that. In fact, with your leave, I will stake my life on it, and all of yours. Aileron will take the fight to Starkadh as swiftly as he can, which to my mind means one thing only.”
“Andarien,” said Loren Silvercloak, who, Jaelle suddenly recalled, had taught both Diarmuid and his brother.
“Andarien,” the Prince echoed quietly. “He will go through Gwynir to Andarien.”
There was a silence. Jaelle was aware of the sea, and of the forest to the east, and, acutely now, of the dark shape of Lisen’s Tower looming above diem in the darkness.
“I suggest,” Diarmuid went on, “that we skirt the western edge of Pendaran, going north from here, angle up through Sennett across the River Celyn to meet, if childhood memories have any merit at all, with the army of Brennin and Daniloth and the Dalrei on the borders of Andarien. If I am wrong,” he concluded, with a generous smile at her, “then at least we will have Jaelle with us, to terrify whatever the fifty of us find there.”
She favored him with nothing more than a wintry glance. His smile grew broader, as if her expression had only confirmed his statement, but then, in one of his mercurial changes of mood, he turned and looked at Arthur, who had risen to stand.
“My lord,” said the Prince, with no levity at all, “such is my counsel at this time. I will attend to any suggestion you might make, but I knew the geography here, and I think I know my brother. Unless there is something you know or sense, Andarien is where I think we must go.”
Slowly the Warrior shook his head. “I have never been in this world before,” Arthur said in his deep, carrying voice, “and I never had a brother in any world. These are your men, Prince Diarmuid. Number me as one of them and lead us to war.”
“We will have to take the women,” Diarmuid murmured.
She was about to make a stinging retort, but in that moment something very bright caught her eye, and she turned to see the Baelrath on Kim’s finger burst into even more imperative flame.
She looked at the Seer as if seeing her for the first time: the small slim figure with tangled hair, so improbably white, the sudden appearance of the vertical crease on her forehead. Again, she had a sense that there seemed to be burdens here greater than her own.
She remembered the moment she had shared with Kim in Gwen Ystrat, and she wished, a little surprised at herself, that there were something she could do, some comfort she might offer that was more than merely words. But Jennifer has been right in what she’d said when Darien had gone: none of them had any real shelter to offer each other.
She watched as Kim walked over to Pwyll and put her arms around him, gripping him very hard; Jaelle saw her kiss him on the mouth. He stroked her hair.
“Till next,” the Seer said, an echo, clearly, of the world the two of them had left behind. “Try hard to be careful, Paul.”
“And you,” was all he said.
The Priestess saw her walk over to Jennifer then, and saw the two women speak, though she could not hear what they said. Then the Seer turned. She seemed to Jaelle to grow more remote, even as she watched. Kim gestured Loren and Matt to either side of her. She bade them join hands, and she laid her own left hand over both of theirs. Then she lifted her other hand high in the darkness and closed her eyes. In that instant, as if a connection had been made, the Warstone blazed so brightly it could not be looked upon, and when the blinding light was gone, so were the three of them.
When he woke it was quite dark in the Wood. Putting a hand to his head, Flidais could feel that his wound had healed. The pain seemed to be gone. So too, however, was his right ear. He sat up slowly and looked around. His father was there.
Cernan had crouched down on his haunches, not very far away, and was regarding him gravely, the horned head held motionless. Flidais met the gaze for a long moment in silence.
“Thank you,” he said at length, speaking aloud.
The antlers dipped briefly in acknowledgment. Then Cernan said, also aloud, “He was not trying to kill you.”
Nothing has changed, Flidais thought. Nothing at all. It was too old a pattern, laid down far too long ago, when both he and Galadan were young, for the anger or the hurt to be strong. He said mildly, “He wasn’t trying not to, either.”
Cernan said nothing. It was dark in the forest, the moon not yet high enough to lend silver to the place where they were. Both of them, though, could see very well in the dark, and Flidais, looking at his father, read sorrow and guilt, both, in the eyes of the god. It was the latter that disarmed him; it always had.
He said, with a shrug, “It could have been worse, I suppose.”
The antlers moved again. “I healed the wound,” his father said defensively.
“I know.” He felt the ragged edge of tissue where his ear had been. “Tell me,” he asked, “am I very ugly?”
Cernan tilted his magnificent head in appraisal. “No more than before, “ he said judiciously.
Flidais laughed. And so too, after a moment, did the god—a deep, rumbling, sensuous sound that reverberated through the Wood.
When the laughter subsided, it seemed very quiet among the trees, but only for those not tuned to Pendaran as were both of these, the forest god and his son. Even with only one ear, Flidais could hear the whispering of the Wood, the messages running back and forth like fire. It was why they were talking out loud: there was too much happening on the silent link. And there were other powers in Pendaran that night.
He was suddenly reminded of something. Of fire, to be precise. He said, “It really could have gone worse for me. I lied to him.”