He rose, with the sound of the surf loud in his ears. North, toward the Anor, he could see the shadows that were the sleeping men of South Keep. Behind him the river ran west toward the sea. He followed it. As he walked, the sand became pebbles and then boulders. He climbed up on one of them by the water’s edge and saw, by moonlight, that he was not the only sleepless person on the beach that night.
He almost turned back. But something—a memory of another beach the night before Prydwen had sailed—made him hesitate, and then speak to the figure sitting on the dark rock nearest to the lapping waves.
“We seem to be reversing roles. Shall I give you a cloak?” It came out more sardonically than he’d intended. But it didn’t seem to matter. Her icy self-possession was unsettlingly complete.
Without turning or startling, her gaze still on the water, Jaelle murmured, “I’m not cold. You were, that night. Does it bother you so much?”
Immediately he was sorry he’d spoken. This always seemed to happen when they met: this polarity of Dana and Mórnir. He half turned to climb back down and away but then stopped, held by stubbornness more than anything else.
He drew a breath and, carefully keeping any inflection from his voice, said, “It really doesn’t, Jaelle. I spoke by way of greeting, nothing more. Not everything anyone says to you has to be taken as a challenge.”
This time she did turn. Her hair was held back by the silver circlet, but the ends still lifted and blew in the sea breeze. He could not make out her eyes; the moonlight was behind her, shining on his own face. For a long moment they were both silent; then Jaelle said, “You have an unusual way of greeting people, Twiceborn.”
He let out his breath. “I know,” he conceded. “Especially you.” He took a step, and a short jump down, and sat on the boulder nearest to hers. The water slapped below them; he could taste salt in the spray.
Not answering, Jaelle turned back to look out to sea. After a moment, Paul did the same. They sat like that for a long time; then something occurred to him. He said, “You’re a long way from the Temple. How were you planning to return?”
She pushed a loop of hair back with an impatient hand. “Kimberly. The mage. I didn’t really think about it. She needed to come here quickly, and I was the only way.”
He smiled, then suppressed it, lest she think he was mocking her. “At the risk of being cursed or some such thing, may I say that that sounds uncharacteristically unselfish?”
She turned sharply, glaring at him. Her mouth opened and then closed, and even by moonlight he could see her flush.
“I didn’t mean that to sting,” he added quickly. “Truly, Jaelle. I have some idea of what it meant for you to do this.”
Her color slowly faded. Where the moon touched it her hair gleamed with a strange, unearthly shading of red. Her circlet shone. She said simply, “I don’t think you do. Not even you, Pwyll.”
“Then tell me,” he said. “Tell someone something, Jaelle.” He was surprised at the intensity in his voice.
“Are you one to talk?” she shot back reflexively. But then, as he kept silent, she added, more slowly and in a different voice, “I named someone to act in my stead, but I broke the patterns of succession when I did so.”
“Do I know her?”
She smiled wryly. “Actually, you do. The one who spied on us last year.”
He felt the edge of a shadow pass over him. He looked up quickly. No clouds across the moon; it was in his mind.
“Leila? Is it a presumption to ask why? Is she not very young?”
“You know she is,” Jaelle said sharply. Then, again as if fighting her own impulses, she went on. “As to why: I am not certain. An instinct, a premonition. As I told you all earlier this evening, she is still tuned to Finn, and so to the Wild Hunt. I am not easy with it, though. I don’t know what it means. Do you always know why you do what you do, Pwyll?”
He laughed bitterly, touched on the raw nerve that had kept him awake. “I used to think I did. Not anymore. Since the Tree I’m afraid I don’t know why I do any of what I do. I’m going by instinct too, Jaelle, and I’m not used to it. I don’t seem to have any control at all. Do you want to know the truth?” The words tumbled out of him, low and impassioned. “I almost envy you and Kim—you both seem so sure of your places in this war.”
Her face grave, she considered that. Then she said, “Don’t envy the Seer, Pwyll. Not her. And as for me…” She turned away toward the water again. “As for me, I have been feeling uneasy in my own sanctuary, which has never happened before. I don’t think I need be an object of anyone’s envy.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, risking it.
And seemed to fail, as her glance flashed swiftly back to him.
“That is presumption,” she said coldly, “and unasked for.” He held her gaze, refusing to yield to it but reaching, nonetheless, for something to say. Even as he did, her expression changed and she added, “In any case, such sorrow as you might feel would be balanced—overbalanced, in truth—by Audiart’s pleasure, did she learn of this. She would sing for joy, and, Dana knows, she cannot sing.”
Paul let his mouth drop open. “Jaelle,” he whispered, “did you just make a joke?”
She gestured in exasperation. “What do you think we are in the Temple?” she snapped. “Do you think we stalk around intoning chants and curses day and night, and gathering blood for amusement?”
He left a little silence before answering, over the sound of the waves. “That sounds about right,” he said gently. “You haven’t been at pains to suggest otherwise.”
“There are reasons for that,” Jaelle shot back, quite unfazed. “You are sufficiently acquainted with power by now, surely, to be able to guess why. But the truth is that the Temples have been my only home for a long time now, and there was laughter there, and music, and quiet pleasures to be found, until the drought came, and then the war.”
The problem with Jaelle, or one of the problems, he decided wryly, was that she was right too much of the time. He nodded. “Fair enough. But if I was wrong you must concede that it was because you wanted me to be wrong. You can’t tax me with that misunderstanding now. That’s one blade that shouldn’t cut both ways.”
“They all cut both ways,” she said quietly. He had known she would say that. In many ways she was still very young, though it seldom showed.
“How old were you when you entered the Temple?” he asked.
“Fifteen,” she answered, after a pause. “And seventeen when I was named to the Mormae.”
He shook his head. “That is very—”
“Leila was fourteen. She is only fifteen now,” she cut in, anticipating him. “And because of what I did this morning, she is of the Mormae now herself, and even more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
She fixed him with a careful regard. “I have your silence on this?”
“You know you do.”
Jaelle said, “Because I named her to act for me while I was away and in a time of war, it will follow, by the patterns of Dana, that if I do not return to Paras Derval, Leila is High Priestess. At fifteen.”
Despite himself, he felt another chill, though the night was mild and the skies fair. “You knew this. You knew this when you named her, didn’t you?” he managed to ask.
“Of course,” she said, with more than a trace of her effortless scorn. “What do you think I am?”
“I don’t really know,” he said honestly. “Why did you do it, then?”
The question was direct enough to give her pause. At length, she answered, “I told you a few moments ago: instinct, intuition. I have little more than those, much of the time, which is something for you to consider. You were lamenting your lack of control just now. Power such as ours is not so easy to manipulate, nor, in truth, should it be. I do not command Dana, I speak for her. And so, it seems to me, do you speak for the God, when he chooses to speak. You might give thought, Twiceborn of Mórnir, as to whether control matters too much to you.”