He was the only one in the hall to see the moon when it first shone through the eastern windows. It was full and this was Midsummer’s Eve, and the thing at the edge of his mind was pushing harder now, straining toward a shape. Quietly he rose and went out, not the first to leave. Even in the cold, there were couples clinched heedlessly close outside the banquet hall.
He moved past them, his wound aching a little now, and stood in the middle of the icy street looking up and east at the moon. And in that moment awareness stirred within him, at last, and took a shape. Not desire, but whatever the thing was that lay behind desire.
“It isn’t a night to be alone,” a voice from just behind him said. He turned to look at Liane. There was a shyness in her eyes.
“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t see you at the banquet.”
“I didn’t come. I was sitting with Gereint.”
“How is he?” He began to walk, and she fell in stride beside him on the wide street. Other couples, laughing, running to warmth, passed them on all sides. It was very bright, with the moonlight on the snow.
“Well enough. He isn’t happy, though, not the way the others are.”
He glanced over at her and then, because it seemed right, took her hand. She wasn’t wearing gloves either, and her fingers were cold.
“Why isn’t he happy?” A random burst of laughter came from a window nearby, and a candle went out.
“He doesn’t think we can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Stop the winter. It seems they found out that Metran is making it—I didn’t understand how—from the spiraling place, Cader Sedat, out at sea.”
A quiet stretch of road. Inside himself Kevin felt a deeper quiet gathering, and suddenly he was afraid. “They can’t go there,” he said softly.
Her dark eyes were somber. “Not in winter. They can’t sail. They can’t end the winter while the winter lasts.”
It seemed to Kevin, then, that he had a vision of his past, of chasing an elusive dream, waking or asleep, down all the nights of his life. The pieces were falling into place. There was a stillness in his soul. He said, “You told me, the time we were together, that I carried Dun Maura within me.”
She stopped abruptly in the road and turned to him.
“I remember,” she said.
“Well,” he said, “there’s something strange happening. I’m not feeling anything of what’s hitting everyone else tonight. I’m feeling something else.”
Her eyes were very wide in the moonlight. “The boar,” she whispered. “You were marked by the boar.”
That too. Slowly he nodded. It was coming together. The boar. The moon. Midsummer. The winter they could not end. It had, in fact, come together. From within the quiet, Kevin finally understood.
“You had better leave me,” he said, as gently as he could.
It took a moment before he realized that she was crying. He hadn’t expected that.
”Liadon?” she asked. Which was the name.
“Yes,” he said. “It looks as if. You had better leave me.”
She was very young, and he thought she might refuse. He underestimated her, though. With the back of her hand she wiped away her tears. Then, rising on tiptoe, she kissed him on the lips and walked away in the direction from which they had come, toward the lights.
He watched her go. Then he turned and went to the place where the stables were. He found his horse. As he was saddling it, he heard bells ring from the Temple and his movements slowed for a moment. The priestesses of Dana would be coming out.
He finished with the saddle and mounted up. He walked the horse quietly up the lane and stopped in the shadows where it joined the road from Morvran to the Temple. Looking north, he could see them coming, and a moment later he watched the priestesses go by. Some were running and some walked. They all wore long grey cloaks against the cold and they all had their hair unbound and loose down their backs, and all the women seemed to shine a little in the full moonlight. They went past and, turning his head to the left, he saw the men coming out to meet them from the town, and the moon was very bright and it shone on the snow and ice, and on all the men and women in the road as they came together.
In a very little while the street was empty again and then the bells were silent. There were cries and laughter not very far away, but he carried his own deep quiet now, and he set his horse toward the east and began to ride.
Kim woke late in the afternoon. She was in the room they had given her, and Jaelle was sitting quietly beside the bed.
Kim sat up a little and stretched her arms. “Did I sleep all day?” she asked.
Jaelle smiled, which was unexpected. “You were entitled.”
“How long have you been watching me?”
“Not long. We’ve been checking on all of you periodically.”
”All of us? Who else?”
“Gereint. The two sources.”
Kim pushed herself into a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
Jaelle nodded. “None of us went so far as you. The sources were recovering, until they were drained again.”
Kim asked with her eyes, and the red-haired Priestess told her about the hunt and then the boar. “No lasting damage to any of them,” she finished, “though Kevin came very close.”
Kim shook her head. “I’m glad I didn’t see it.” She drew a long breath. “Aileron told me that I did send something back. What was it, Jaelle?”
“The Cauldron,” the other woman replied, and then, as Kim waited: “The mage says Metran is making the winter with it from Cader Sedat, out at sea.”
There was a silence as Kim absorbed this. When it sunk in, all she felt was despair. “Then I did no good at all! We can’t do anything about it. We can’t get there in winter!”
“Nicely planned, wasn’t it?” Jaelle murmured with a dryness that did not mask her own fear.
“What do we do?”
Jaelle stirred. “Not much, tonight. Don’t you feel it?”
And with the question, Kim realized she did. “I thought it was just an aftermath,” she murmured.
The Priestess shook her head. “Maidaladan. It reaches us later than the men, and more as restlessness than desire, I think, but it is almost sundown, and Midsummer’s Eve.”
Kim looked at her. “Will you go out?”
Jaelle rose abruptly and took a few paces toward the far wall. Kim thought she’d given offense, but after a moment the tall Priestess turned back to her. “Sorry,” she said, surprising Kim for the second time. “An old response. I will go to the banquet but come back afterward. The grey-robed ones must go into the streets tonight, to any man who wants them. The red Mormae never go, though that is custom and not law.” She hesitated. “The High Priestess wears white and is not allowed to be part of Maidaladan or to have a man at any other time.”
“Is there a reason?” Kim asked.
“You should know it,” Jaelle said flatly.
And reaching within, to the place of her second soul, Kim did. “I see,” she said quietly. “Is it difficult?”
For a moment Jaelle did not answer. Then she said, “I went from the brown of acolyte straight to the red and then the white.”
“Never grey.” Kim remembered something. “Neither was Ysanne.” And then, as the other stiffened, she asked, “Do you hate her so much? Because she went with Raederth?:
She didn’t expect an answer, but it was a strange afternoon, and Jaelle said, “I did once. It is harder now. Perhaps all the hate in me has gone north.”
There was a long silence. Jaelle broke it awkwardly.
“I wanted to say… you did a very great thing last night, whatever comes of it.”