Kim stepped back. She knew her eyes were red from weeping, but there was no point in dissembling, not with Jaelle. She was going to need help, not least of all in deciding what to do.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said quietly. “How did you know?”
“Leila,” Jaelle said. “She’s still tuned to this cottage, where Finn was. She told us you were here.”
Kim nodded. “Anything else? Did she say anything else?”
“Not this morning. Did something happen?”
“Yes,” Kim whispered. “Something happened. We’ve a lot to catch each other up on. Where’s Jennifer?”
The other two women exchanged glances. It was Sharra who answered. “She went with Brendel to the Anor Lisen when the ship sailed.”
Kim closed her eyes. So many dimensions to sorrow. Would there ever be an ending?
“Do you want to go into the cottage?” Jaelle asked.
She shook her head quickly. “No. Not inside. Let’s stay out here.” Jaelle gave her a searching look and then, without fuss, gathered her white robe and sat down on the stony beach. Kim and Sharra followed suit. A little distance away the men of Cathal and Brennin were watchfully arrayed. Tegid of Rhoden, prodigious in brown and gold, walked toward the three of them.
“My lady,” he said, with a deep bow to Sharra, “how may I serve you on behalf of my Prince?”
“Food,” she answered crisply. “A clean cloth, and a lunch to spread upon it.”
“Instantly!” he exclaimed and bowed again, not entirely steady on the loose stones of the shoreline. He wheeled, and scrunched his way over the beach to find them provisions. Sharra looked sideways at Kim, who had an eyebrow raised in frank curiosity.
“A new conquest?” Kim asked with some of her old teasing, the tone she sometimes thought she’d lost forever.
Sharra, surprisingly, blushed. “Well, yes, I suppose. But not him. Um . . . Diarmuid proposed marriage to me before Prydwen sailed. Tegid is his Intercedent. He’s looking after me, and so—”
She got no further, having been comprehensively enveloped in a second embrace. “Oh, Sharra!” Kim exclaimed. “That’s the nicest news I’ve heard in I don’t know how long!”
“I suppose,” Jaelle murmured dryly. “But I thought we had more pressing matters to discuss than matrimonial tidings. And we still don’t have any news of the ship.”
“Yes, we do,” said Kim quickly. “We know they got there, and we know they won a battle.”
“Oh, Dana be praised!” Jaelle said, suddenly sounding very young, all cynicism stripped away. Sharra was speechless. “Tell us,” the High Priestess said. “How do you know?”
Kim began the story with her capture in the mountains: with Ceriog and Faebur and Dalreidan and the death rain over Eridu. Then she told them of seeing that dread rain come to an end the morning before, of seeing sunshine to the east and so knowing that Metran on Cader Sedat had been stopped.
She paused a moment, for Tegid had returned with two soldiers in his wake, carrying armloads of food and drink. It took a few minutes for things to be arranged in a fashion that, to his critical eye, was worthy of the Princess of Cathal. When the three men had withdrawn, Kina took a deep breath and spoke of Khath Meigol, of Tabor and Imraith-Nimphais, of the rescue of the Paraiko and the last kanior, and then, at the end, very softly, of what she and her ring had done to the Giants.
When she finished it was quiet on the shore again. Neither of the other women spoke. They were both familiar with power, Kim knew, in a great many of its shadings, but what she had just told them, what she had done, had to be alien and almost impossible to grasp.
She felt very alone. Paul, she thought, might have understood, for his too was a lonely path. Then, almost as if reading her thoughts, Sharra reached out and squeezed her hand. Kim squeezed back and said, “Tabor told me that the Aven and all the Dalrei rode to Celidon three nights ago to meet an army of the Dark. I have no idea what happened. Neither did Tabor.”