Then, when prepossessing Audiart spoke of Midsummer, the part of Kim that was Ysanne, and shared her knowledge, understood where the power was coming from.
Nothing to be done though. Not by her, in this place. Dun Maura had nothing to do with a Seer’s power, nor with the Baelrath either. When the company began to break up— she saw Kevin ride back into Morvran with Brock and two of Diarmuid’s men—Kim followed Jaelle and the mages to the Temple.
Just inside the arched entranceway, a priestess stood with a curved, glinting dagger, and an acolyte in brown, trembling a little, held a bowl for her.
Kim saw Loren hesitate, even as Gereint extended his arm for the blade to cut. She knew how hard this would be for the mage. For any follower of the skylore, this blood offering would be tainted with darkest overtones. But Ysanne had told her a thing once, in the cottage by the lake, and Kim laid a hand on the mage’s shoulder. “Raederth spent a night here, I think you know,” she said.
There was, even now, a sorrow in saying this. Raederth, as First Mage, had been the one who’d seen the young Ysanne among the Mormae in this place. He had known her for a Seer and taken her away, and they had loved each other until he died—slain by a treacherous King.
The lines of Loren’s features softened. “It is true,” he said. “And so I should be able to, I suppose. Do you think I could stroll about and find an acolyte to share my bed tonight?”
She looked at him more closely and saw the strain she had missed. “Maidaladan,” she murmured. “Is it taking you hard?”
“Hard enough,” he said shortly, before stepping forward after Gereint to offer his mageblood to Dana, like any other man.
Deep in thought, Kim walked past the priestess with the blade and came to one of the entrances to the sunken dome. There was an axe, double-edged, mounted in a block of wood behind the altar. She stayed in the entrance looking at it until one of the women came to show her to her chamber.
Old friends, thought Ivor. If there was a single bright thread in the weaving of war it was this: that sometimes paths crossed again, as of warp and weft, that had not done so for years and would not have done, save in darkness. It was good, even in times like these, to sit with Loren Silvercloak, to hear Teyrnon’s reflective voice, Barak’s laughter, Matt Sören’s carefully weighed thoughts. Good, too, to see men and women of whom he’d long heard but never met: Shalhassan of Cathal and his daughter, fair as the rumors had her; Jaelle the High Priestess, as beautiful as Sharra, and as proud; Aileron, the new High King, who had been a boy when Loren had brought him to spend a fortnight among the tribe of Dalrei. A silent child, Ivor remembered him as being, and very good at everything. He was a taciturn King now, it seemed, and said to still be very good at everything.
There was a new element too, another fruit of war: among these high ones, he, Ivor of the Dalrei, now moved as an equal. Not merely one of the nine chieftains on the Plain, but a Lord, first Aven since Revor himself. It was a very hard thing to compass. Leith had taken to calling him Aven around the home, and only half in teasing, Ivor knew. He could see her pride, though the Plain would wash to sea before his wife would speak of such a thing.
Thinking of Leith led his mind to another thought. Riding south into Gwen Ystrat, feeling the sudden hammer of desire in his loins, he had begun to understand what Maidaladan meant and to be grateful to Gereint, yet again, for telling him to bring his wife. It would be wild in Morvran tomorrow night, and he was not entirely pleased that Liane had come south with them. Still, in these matters the unwed women of the Dalrei took directions from no man. And Liane, Ivor thought ruefully, took direction in precious few other matters as well. Leith said it was his fault. It probably was.
His wife would be waiting in the chambers given them here in the Temple. That was for afterward. For now there was a task to be done under the dome, amid the smell of incense burning.
In that place were gathered the last two mages in Brennin, with their sources; the oldest shaman of the Plain, and by far the most powerful; the white-haired Seer of the High Kingdom; and the High Priestess of Dana in Fionavar—these seven were now to move through the shadows of space and time to try to unlock a door: the door behind which lay the source of winter winds and ice on Midsummer’s Eve.
Seven to voyage and four to bear witness: the Kings of Brennin and Cathal, the Aven of the Dalrei, and the last one in the room was Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior, who alone of all men in that place had not been made to offer blood.
“Hold!” Jaelle had said to the priestess by the doorway, and Ivor shivered a little, remembering her voice. “Not that one. He has walked with Dana in Avalon.” And the grey-robed woman had lowered her knife to let Arthur pass.
Eventually to come, as had Ivor and the others, to this sunken chamber under the dome. It was Gereint’s doing, the Aven thought, torn between pride and apprehension. Because of the shaman they were in this place, and it was the shaman who spoke first among that company. Though not as Ivor had expected.
“Seer of Brennin,” Gereint said, “we are gathered to do your bidding.”
So it came back to her. Even in this place it came back, as had so much else of late. Once, and not a long time ago, she would have doubted it, wondered why. Asked within, if not aloud, who she was that these gathered powers should defer to her. What was she, the inner voice would have cried, that this should be so?
Not any more. With only a faint, far corner of her mind to mourn the loss of innocence, Kim accepted Gereint’s deference as being properly due to the only true Seer in the room. She would have taken control if he had not offered it. They were in Gwen Ystrat, which was the Goddess’s, and so Jaelle’s, but the journey they were now to take fell within Kimberly’s province, not any of the others’, and if there was danger it was hers to face for them.
Deeply conscious of Ysanne and of her own white hair, she said, “Once before, I had Loren and Jaelle with me—when I pulled Jennifer out from Starkadh.” It seemed to her the candles on the altar shifted at the naming of that place. “We will do the same thing again, with Teyrnon and Gereint besides. I am going to lock on an image of the winter and try to go behind it, into the mind of the Unraveller, with the vellin stone to shield me, I hope. I will need your support when I do.”
“What about the Baelrath?”
It was Jaelle, intense and focused, no bitterness to her now. Not for this. Kim said, “This is a Seer’s art and purely so. I do not think the stone will flame.”
Jaelle nodded. Teyrnon said, “If you do get behind the image, what then?”
“Can you stay with me?” she asked the two mages.
Loren nodded. “I think so. To shape an artifice, you mean?”
“Yes. Like the castle you showed us before we first came.” She turned to the Kings. There were three of them, and a fourth who had been and would always be, but it was to Aileron she spoke. “My lord High King, it will be hard for you to see, but we may all be sightless under the power. If there is anything shaped by the mages, you must mark what it is.”
“I will,” he said in his steady, uninflected voice. She looked to the shaman.
“Is there more, Gereint?”
“There is always more,” he replied. “But I do not know what it is. We may need the ring, though, after all.”