“The Aven!” Dalreidan exclaimed softly. “We have an Aven? Who?”
“Ivor dan Banor,” Tabor said, and Kim could hear the pride. “My father.” Then, after a moment, as the other remained silent, “Do you know him?”
“I knew him,” said Dalreidan. “If you are his son, you must be Levon.”
“Tabor. Levon is my older brother. How do you know him? What tribe are you from?”
In the silence that followed, Kim could almost hear the older man struggle with himself. But, “I am tribeless,” was all he said. His footsteps receded as he walked back toward the circle of Giants.
She was not alone, Kim thought, in carrying sorrows tonight. The conversation had disturbed her, stirring up yet another nagging thread at the corner of her awareness. She turned her thoughts inward again, reaching for quiet.
“Are you all right?”
Imraith-Nimphais moved silently; Tabor’s voice coming so near startled her. This time she did turn, grateful for the kindness in the question. She was painfully aware of what she had done to them. And the more so when she looked at Tabor. He was deathly pale, almost another ghost in Khath Meigol.
“I think so,” she said. “And you?”
He shrugged, a boy’s gesture. But he was so much more, had been forced to be so much more. She looked at the creature he rode and saw that the horn was clean again, shining softly in the night.
He followed her glance. “During the kanior,” he said, wonder in his voice, “while Ruana chanted, the blood left her horn. I don’t know how.”
“He was absolving you,” she said. “The kanior is a very great magic.” She paused. “It was,” she amended, as the truth hit home. She had ended it. She looked back toward the Paraiko. Those who could walk were bringing water from over the ridge—there had to be a stream or a well—to the others. Her companions were helping them. As she watched, she began, finally, to cry.
And suddenly, astonishingly, as she wept, Imraith-Nimphais lowered her beautiful head, careful of the horn, and nuzzled her gently. The gesture, so totally unexpected, opened the last floodgates of Kim’s heart. She looked up at Tabor through her tears and saw him nod permission; then she threw her arms about the neck of the glorious creature she had summoned and ordered to kill, and laying her head against that of Imraith-Nimphais, she let herself weep.
No one disturbed them, no one came near. After some time, she didn’t know how long, Kim stepped back. She looked up at Tabor. He smiled. “Do you know,” he said, “that you cry as much as my father does?”
For the first time in days she laughed, and Ivor’s son laughed with her. “I know,” she gasped. “I know I do. Isn’t it terrible?”
He shook his head. “Not if you can do what you did,” he said quietly. As abruptly as it had surfaced, the boyishness was gone. It was Imraith-Nimphais’ rider who said, “We must go. I am guarding the camps and have been too long away.”
She had been stroking the silken mane. Now she stepped back, and as she did so, the Sight that had been eluding her, drifting at the edges of her mind, suddenly coalesced enough for her to see where she had to go. She looked at the Baelrath; it was dulled and powerless. She wasn’t surprised. This awareness came from the Seer in her, the soul she shared with Ysanne.
She hesitated, looking up at Tabor. “I have one thing more to ask of you. Will she carry me? I have a long way to travel, and not enough time.”
His glance was distanced already, but it was level and calm. “She will,” he said. “You know her name. We will carry you, Seer, anywhere you must go.”
It was time, then, to make her farewells. She looked over and saw that her three guides were standing together, not far away.
“Where shall we go?” Faebur asked.
“To Celidon,” she answered. A number of things were coming clearer even as she stood here, and there was urgency in her. “There was a battle, and it is there that you will find the army, those who survived.”