She looked at Dalreidan, who was hesitating, hanging back. “My friend,” she said, in the hearing of all of them, “you said words to Faebur this morning that rang true: no one in Fionavar is an exile now. Go home, Dalreidan, and take your true name on the Plain. Tell them the Seer of Brennin sent you.”
For a moment he remained frozen, resisting. Then he nodded slowly. “We will meet again?” he asked.
“I hope,” she said, and stepped forward to embrace him, and then Faebur as well. She looked at Brock. “And you?” she asked.
“I will go with them,” he answered. “Until my own King comes home I will serve the Aven and the High King as best I can. Will you be careful, Seer?” His voice was gruff.
She moved closer and out of habit checked the bandage she’d wrapped about his head. Then she bent and kissed him on the lips. “You too,” she whispered. “My dear.”
At the very last she turned to Ruana, who had been waiting for her. They said nothing aloud.
Then in her mind she heard him murmur: The Weaver hold your thread fast in his hand, Seer.
It was what, more than anything else, she had needed to hear—this last forgiveness where she had no right to any. She looked up at his great, white-bearded patriarch’s head, at the wise eyes that had seen so much. And yours, she replied, in silence. Your thread, and that of your people.
Then she walked slowly back to where Tabor waited, and she mounted behind him upon Imraith-Nimphais, and told him where it was she had to go, and they flew.
There were hours yet before dawn when he set her down. Not at a place of war but in the one place in Fion-avar where she had known a moment’s peace. A quiet place. A lake like a jewel, with moonlight glancing along it. A cottage by the lake.
He was in the air again, hovering, as soon as she dismounted. He wanted to be back, she knew. His father had given him a task and she had drawn him from it, twice now.
“Thank you,” she said. There was nothing more she could think of to say. She raised a hand in farewell.
As he did the same she saw, grieving, that the moonlight and the stars were shining through him. Then Imraith-Nimphais spread her wings, and she and her rider were gone. Another star for a moment, and then nothing at all.
Kim went into the cottage.
PART II—Lisen’s Tower
Chapter 4
Leaning back against the railing of the afterdeck, Paul watched Lancelot dueling with his shadow. It had been going on for most of yesterday, from the time they sailed from Cader Sedat, and had continued for much of this second morning and into the afternoon. The sun was behind them now. Lancelot stood with his back to it and advanced and retreated along the deck, his feet sliding and turning intricately, his sword a blur of thrusts and parries, too fast to follow properly.
Almost every man on Prydwen had spent some time watching him, either covertly or, as Paul was, with open admiration. He had finally begun to pick out some of the disciplined patterns in what Lancelot was doing. And as he watched it go on and on, Paul understood something else.
This was more than merely training on the part of someone newly wakened from the Chamber of the Dead. In these relentless, driven repetitions Paul had finally begun to see that Lancelot was masking, as best he could, the emotions rising within himself.
He watched the dark-haired man go through his systematic drills without fuss or wasted motion of any kind. Now and always there was a quiet to Lancelot, a sense of a still pool wherein the ripples of turbulent life were effortlessly absorbed. On one level it was deeply reassuring, and that reassurance had been present from the moment he had come among them, rising from his bed of stone to bring Matt Sören back from the dead as well.
Paul Schafer was too wise, though, for that to be the only level on which he perceived what was happening. He was Pwyll Twiceborn, had spoken to gods and summoned them, had lived three nights on the Summer Tree, and the ravens of Mórnir were never far from him. Prydwen was sailing back to war, and Lancelot’s training was apt and fit for the role he would play when they landed again.