Loren Silvercloak, no longer a mage, now dwelt in Banir Lok as principal adviser to the King of Dwarves. Teyrnon and Barak were visibly pleased to have the other two staying with them, if only for a little while. Teyrnon bustled happily about in the sunshine, making sure everyone’s glass was brimming.
“Tell me,” said Barak, a little slyly, to Loren and Matt, “do you think the two of you might be able to handle a pupil for a few months next year? Or will you have forgotten everything you know?”
Matt glanced at him quickly. “Have you a disciple already? Good, very good. We need at least three or four more.”
“We?” Teyrnon teased.
Matt scowled. “Habits die hard. Some, I hope, will never die.”
“They need never die,” Teyrnon said soberly. “You two will always be part of the Council of the Mages.”
“Who is our new disciple?” Loren asked. “Do we know him?”
For reply, Teyrnon looked up at the second-floor window overlooking the garden.
“Boy!” he shouted, trying to sound severe. “I hope you are studying, and not listening to the gossip down here!”
A moment later a head of brown unruly hair appeared at the open window.
“Of course I’m studying,” said Tabor, “but, honestly, none of this is very difficult!”
Matt grunted in mock disapproval. Loren, struggling to achieve a frown, growled fiercely. “Teyrnon, give him the Book of Abhar, and then we’ll see whether or not he finds studying difficult!”
Paul grinned and heard Kim laugh with delight to see who was smiling down on them.
“Tabor!” she exclaimed. “When did this happen?”
“Two days ago,” the boy replied. “My father gave his consent after Gereint asked me to come back and teach him some new things next year.”
Paul exchanged a glance with Loren. There was a genuine easing in this, an access to joy. The boy was young; it seemed he would recover. More than that, Paul had an intuitive sense of the rightness, even the necessity of Tabor’s new path: what horse on the Plain, however swift, could ever suffice, now, for one who had ridden a creature of Dana across the sky?
Later that afternoon, walking back to the palace with Kim, Paul learned that she too would be going home.
They still didn’t know about Dave.
On the next morning, the last, he went back to the Summer Tree.
It was the first time he’d been there alone since the three nights he had hung upon it as an offering to the God, seeking rain. He left his horse at the edge of Mórnirwood, not far (though this he didn’t know) from the place of Aideen’s grave, where Matt had taken Jennifer early one morning in Kevin’s spring.
He walked the remembered path through the trees, seeing the morning sunlight begin to grow dim and increasingly aware, with every step he took, of something else.
Since the last battle in Andarien—when he had released Galadan from the vengeance he’d sworn and channeled his power for healing instead, to bring the rising waters that ended the cycle of Arthur’s grief—since that evening Paul had not sought the presence of the God within himself. In a way, he’d been avoiding it.
But now it was there again. And as he came to the place where the trees of the Godwood formed their double corridor, leading him inexorably back into the glade of the Tree, Paul understood that Mórnir would always be within him. He would always be Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree, wherever he went. He had been sent back; the reality of that was a part of him, and would be until he died again.
And thinking so, he came into the glade and saw the Tree. There was light here, for the sky showed above the clearing, mild and blue with scattered billowy clouds. He remembered the white burning of the sun in a blank heaven.
He looked at the trunk and the branches. They were as old as this first world, he knew. And looking up within the thick green leaves, he saw, without surprise, that the ravens were there, staring back at him with bright, yellow eyes. It was very still. No thunder. Only, deep within his pulse, that constant awareness of the God.