And with the words, he was suddenly on a highway in the rain again, hearing the woman he loved tax him with the same cold flaw, hearing her announce that she was leaving because of it, unable to find a place in him where need of her found a true voice.
He seemed to be on his feet, standing above the Priestess by the sea. He wasn’t sure how that had happened. He looked down and saw his hands clenched at his sides. And then he turned and was walking away, not from the truth, for that came with him under the stars, but from the icy green eyes and the voice that had spoken that truth here.
She watched him go, and surprised herself with regret. She had not meant to wound. Dana knew, she’d intended to hurt with so many things she’d said to him at one time or another, but not with that last. It had been kindly meant, as much so as lay within her nature, and instead she’d found a place where he was raw and vulnerable.
She should, she knew, keep that knowledge in readiness for encounters to come. But sitting on the rock, thinking back over what they each had said, it was hard to hold to such cold, controlling thoughts. She smiled a little to herself at the irony and turned back toward the sea—to see a ghost ship passing between herself and the setting moon.
“Pwyll!” She cried the name almost without thought. She was on her feet, her heart pounding with terror and awe.
She could not take her eyes from the ship. Slowly it moved from north to south across her line of sight, though the wind was from the west. Its sails were tattered and ragged, and the low moon shone through them easily. It lit the broken masts, the shattered figurehead, the smashed upheaval of the deck where the tiller was. Low down by the waterline she thought she could see a dark hole in the side of the ship where the sea must have rushed in.
There was no way that ship could remain afloat. She heard Pwyll’s quick, running footsteps, and then he was beside her again. She did not turn or speak. She registered the sharp intake of his breath and voiced an inward prayer of relief: he, too, saw the ship. It was not a phantom of her own mind, not a prelude to madness. Suddenly he extended one hand, pointing in silence. She followed the line of his finger.
There was a man, a solitary mariner, standing near the prow of the ship by the railing nearest to them, and the moon was shining through him as well.
He was lifting something in his hands, holding it out over the side of the ship toward the two of them, and Jaelle saw, with a second surge of awe, that it was a spear.
“I would be grateful for your prayers,” said Pwyll. She heard a beat of unseen wings. She looked up and then quickly back to him. She saw him step down off the rock where they stood.
And begin to walk across the waves toward the ship. The provinces of Dana ended at the sea. Nevertheless, thought Jaelle, the High Priestess. Nevertheless. She closed her eyes for the first step, knowing she was going to sink, and set out after him.
She did not sink. The waves barely wet the sandals she wore. She opened her eyes, saw Pwyll striding purposefully in front of her, and quickened her pace to catch up. She received a startled glance as she came abreast.
“You may need more than prayers,” she said shortly. “And invocations of Dana hold no sway at sea; I told you that once before.”
“I remember,” he said, stepping a little upward to clear an advancing wave. “Which makes you either very brave or very foolish indeed. Shall we call it both?”
“If you like,” she said, masking an unexpected rush of pleasure. “And accept that I am sorry if what I said before caused you pain. For once, I hadn’t meant it.”
“For once,” he repeated dryly, but she was finally beginning to catch the shifting tones in his voice, and this was mild irony and nothing more. “I know you didn’t mean it,” he said, negotiating a trough between waves. “I did that one to myself. I’ll try to explain someday, if you like.”
She said nothing, concentrating on moving over the water. The sensation was uncanny. Jaelle felt perfectly, flawlessly balanced. She had to watch where they were going, and what the sea was doing in front of them, but having done so, it was no trouble to skim along the surface. The hem of her robe was wet; nothing more. If they hadn’t been walking toward a ship that had been destroyed a thousand years ago, she might even have found it pleasurable.
As it was, though, the closer they came, the more eerily translucent loomed that hollow craft. As they came alongside, Jaelle could clearly see the gaping holes torn in it at the waterline, and in the exposed hold of Amairgen’s ship, the sea sparkled with moonlight.
For such, of course, it was. There was nothing else it could be, not in the bay of the Anor Lisen. She had absolutely no idea what power kept it in the visible world, let alone afloat. But she did know, beyond doubt, who the one mariner high above them had to be. For a moment, when they stopped, standing upon the waves just below that tall, ghostly figure, Jaelle thought about the power of love, and she did pray then, briefly, for Lisen’s peace at the Weaver’s side.
Then Amairgen spoke, or what was left of him spoke, after so long a death, with the moonlight shining through. He said, in a voice like a deep-toned reed played by the wind, “Why have you come?”
Jaelle felt herself rocked, her balance slipped. She had expected—though she couldn’t think why—a welcome. Not this cold, flat query. Suddenly the sea seemed terrifyingly dark and deep, and land a long way off. She felt an impersonal hand on her elbow steadying her. Pwyll waited until he saw her nod, before turning his attention back to the one who had spoken from the deck above their heads.
She saw him look up at the mage slain by the Soulmonger. Pale at the best of times, Pwyll was white and ghostly himself in the long moonlight. There was no flicker of doubt in his eyes, though, no hesitation in his voice as he made reply.
“We have come for the spear, unquiet one. And to bring you the tidings you have sought this many a year.”
“Someone was in the Tower,” the ghost cried. It seemed to Jaelle as if the wind lifted with the pain in the words, the long burden of loss. “Someone was in the Tower, and so I am come again, where I never came as living man, to the place where she died. Who stood in that room to draw me back?”
“Guinevere,” said Pwyll, and waited.
Amairgen was silent. Jaelle was aware of the rocking of the sea beneath her. She glanced down a moment and then quickly back up: it had seemed to her, dizzyingly, that she’d seen stars below her feet.
Amairgen leaned forward over the railing. She was the High Priestess of Dana, and standing above her was the ghost of the one who had broken the power of Dana in Fionavar. She should curse him, a part of her was saying, curse him as the priestesses of the Goddess did at the turning of every month. She should let her blood fall in the sea below where she stood as she spoke the most bitter invocation of the Mother. It was, as much as anything had ever been, her duty. But she could not do it. Such hatred for his ancient deed was not within her tonight, nor would it ever be again, she somehow knew. There was too much pain, too pure a sorrow here. All the stories seemed to be merging into each other. She gazed up at him and at what he held and kept silent, watching. He was foreshortened by the angle, but she could descry his chiseled, translucent features, the long pale locks of his hair, and the mighty gleaming spear he cradled in both his hands. He wore a ring on one finger; she thought she knew what it was.
“Is the Warrior here, then?” Amairgen asked, a breath on a moonlit reed.