For only the briefest moment Kim hesitated; then she said, “I had help. I’m only going to tell you and Loren, and Aileron, I think, because I’m not sure what will come of it and I want to go carefully.”
“What help?” Jaelle said.
“The Paraiko,” Kim replied. “The Giants are still alive and under siege in Khath Meigol.”
Jaelle sat down quite suddenly. “Dana, Mother of us all!” she breathed. “What do we do?”
Kim shook her head. “I’m not sure. We talk. But not tonight, I guess. As you said, I don’t think anything important will happen tonight.”
Jaelle’s mouth twitched. “Tell that to the ones in grey who have been waiting a year for this.”
Kim smiled. “I suppose. You know what I mean. We’ll have to talk about Darien, too.”
Jaelle said, “Pwyll is with him now.”
“I know. I guess he had to go, but I wish he were here.”
Jaelle rose again. “I’m going to have to leave. It will be starting soon. I am glad to see you better.”
“Thank you,” Kim said. “For everything. I may look in on Gereint and the sources. Just to say hello. Where are they?”
Again Jaelle colored. “We put them in beds in the chambers I use. We thought it would be quiet there—not all the priestesses go out if there are men in the Temple.”
In spite of everything, Kim had to giggle. “Jaelle,” she said, “you’ve got the only three harmless men in Gwen Ystrat sleeping in your rooms tonight!”
After a second she heard the High Priestess laugh, for the first time she could remember.
When she was alone, for all her good intentions, she fell asleep again. No dreams, no workings of power, just the deep sleep of one who had overtaxed her soul and knew there was more to come.
The bells woke her. She heard the rustle of long robes in the hallway, the quick steps of a great many women, whispers and breathless laughter. After a while it was quiet again.
She lay in bed, wide awake now, thinking of many things. Eventually, because it was Maidaladan, her thoughts went back to an incident from the day before, and, after weighing it and lying still a while longer, she rose, washed her face, and put on her own long robe with nothing underneath.
She went along the curving hallway and listened at a door where a dim light yet showed. It was Midsummer’s Eve, in Gwen Ystrat. She knocked, and when he opened it, she stepped inside.
“It is not a night to be alone,” she said, looking up at him.
“Are you sure?” he asked, showing the strain.
“I am,” she said. Her mouth crooked. “Unless you’d prefer to go in search of that acolyte?”
He made no reply. Only came forward. She lifted her head for his kiss. Then she felt him unclasp her gown and as it fell she was lifted in Loren Silvercloak’s strong arms and carried to his bed on Midsummer’s Eve.
She was finally beginning to get a sense of what he might do, Sharra thought, of the forms his quest for diversion took. She had been a diversion herself a year ago, but that one had cost him a knife wound and very nearly his life. From her seat at the high table of the banquet hall she watched, a half smile on her lips, as Diarmuid rose and carried the steaming testicles of the boar to the one who had been gored. Miming a servant’s gestures, he presented the platter to Kevin.
She remembered that one: he had taken the same leap as she the year before, from the musicians’ gallery in Paras Derval, though for a very different reason. He too was handsome, fair as Diarmuid was, though his eyes were brown. There was a sadness in them too, Sharra thought. Nor was she the first woman to see this.
Sadness or no, Kevin made some remark that convulsed those around him. Diarmuid was laughing as he returned to his seat between her father and the High Priestess, on the far side of Aileron. Briefly, he glanced at her as he sat down, and expressionlessly she looked away. They had not spoken since the sunlit afternoon he had so effortlessly mastered all of them. Tonight, though, was Maidaladan, and she was sure enough of him to expect an overture.
As the banquet proceeded—boar meat from the morning and eltor brought down from the Plain by the Dalrei contingent—the tone of the evening grew wilder. She was curious, certainly not afraid, and there was an unsettling disquiet within her as well. When the bells rang, she understood, the priestesses would be coming out. She herself, her father had made clear, would be in the Temple well before that. Already, Arthur Pendragon and Ivor, the Aven of the Dalrei, who had talked entertainingly on either side of her all evening, had gone back to the Temple. Or she assumed that was where they had gone.
There were, therefore, empty seats beside her in the increasingly unruly hall. She could see Shalhassan begin to stir restively. This was not a mood for the Supreme Lord of Cathal. She wondered, fleetingly, if her father was feeling the same upwelling of desire that was becoming more and more obvious in all the other men in the room. He must be, she supposed, and suppressed a smile—it was a difficult thing to envisage Shalhassan at the mercy of his passions.
And in that instant, surprising her despite everything, Diarmuid was next to her. He did not sit. There would be a great many glances turned to them. Leaning on the back of the chair Arthur had been sitting in, he said, in a tone of mildest pleasantry, something that completely disconcerted her. A moment later, with a polite nod of his head, he moved away and, passing down the long room with a laugh or a jibe every few strides, out into the night.
She was her father’s daughter, and not even Shalhassan, looking over with an appraising glance, was able to read even a hint of her inner turmoil.
She had expected him to come to her tonight, expected the proposition he would make. For him to murmur as he had just done, “Later,” and no more was very much what she had thought he’d do. It fit his style, the indolent insouciance.
What didn’t fit, what had unnerved her so much, was that he had made it a question, a quiet request, and had looked for a reply from her. She had no idea what her eyes had told him, or what—and this was worse—she had wanted them to tell.
A few moments later her father rose and, halfway down the room, so did Bashrai. An honor guard, creditably disciplined, escorted the Supreme Lord and Princess of Cathal back to the Temple. At the doorway, Shalhassan, with a gracious gesture if not an actual smile, dismissed them for the night.
She had no servants of her own here; Jaelle had assigned one of the priestesses to look after her. As she entered her room, Sharra saw the woman turning down her bed by the light of the moon that slanted through the curtained window. The priestess was robed and hooded already for the winter outside. Sharra could guess why.
“Will they ring the bells soon?” she asked.
“Very soon, my lady,” the woman whispered, and Sharra heard a straining note in her low voice. This, too, unsettled her.
She sat down in the one chair, playing with the single gem she wore about her neck. With quick, almost impatient movements, the priestess finished with the bed.
“Is there more, my lady? Because, if not… I’m sorry, but—but it is only tonight…” Her voice trembled.
“No,” Sharra said kindly. “I will be fine. Just… open the window for me before you go.”
“The window?” The priestess registered dismay. “Oh, my lady, no! Not for you, surely. You must understand, it will be very wild tonight, and the men of the village have been known to…”
She fixed the woman with her most repressive stare. It was hard, though, to quell a hooded priestess of Dana in Gwen Ystrat. “I do not think any men of the village will venture here,” she said, “and I am used to sleeping with a window open, even in winter.” Very deliberately, she turned her back and began removing her jewelry. Her hands were steady, but she could feel her heart racing at the implication of what she had done.