Then he drew a quiet, satisfied breath, for when the Wolflord addressed him again it was aloud and with the courtly grace that had always been a part of him. “Forgive me,” he murmured, and bowed in his turn with unconscious elegance. “I have been two days running to get here and am not myself.” His scarred features relaxed into a smile. “Whoever that is. I sensed someone in the Anor, and . . . wanted to know who.”
There was some hesitation at the end, and this, too, Flidais understood. In the cold, rational, utterly clinical soul that was Galadan’s, the blinding passion that still assailed him in connection with Lisen was brutally anomalous. And the memory of his rejection in favor of Amairgen would be a wound scraped raw every time he neared this place. From the new harbor of peace where his soul was moored, Flidais looked at the other figure and pitied him. He kept that out of his eyes, though, having no pressing desire to be slain.
He also had an oath to keep. So he said, reaching for the right tone of casual appeasement, “I’m sorry, I should have known you would sense it. I would have tried to send word. I was in the Anor myself, Galadan I am just now leaving it.”
“You? Why?”
Flidais shrugged expressively. “Symmetry. My own sense of time. Patterns on the Loom. You know they sailed from Taerlindel some days ago, for Cader Sedat. I thought someone should be in the Anor, in case they returned this way.”
The rain had stopped, though the leaves overhead were still dripping. The trees grew too thickly to show much of the clearing sky. Flidais waited to see if his bait would be taken, and he guarded his mind.
“I did not know that,” Galadan admitted, a furrow creasing his brow. “It is news and it matters. I think I will have to take it north. I thank you,” he said, with much of the old calculation in his voice again. Careful, very careful, not to smile, Flidais nodded. “Who sailed?” the Wolflord asked.
Flidais made his expression as stern as he could. “You should not have hurt me,” he said, “if you were going to ask questions.”
Galadan laughed aloud. The sound rang through the Great Wood. “Ah, Flidais, is there anyone like you?” he queried rhetorically, still chuckling.
“There is no one with the headache I have!” Flidais replied, not smiling.
“I apologized,” Galadan said, sobering quickly, his voice suddenly silken and low. “I will not do so twice.” He let the silence hold for a moment, then repeated, “Who sailed, forest one?”
After a brief pause, to show a necessary flicker of independence, Flidais said, “The mage and the Dwarf. The Prince of Brennin. The one called Pwyll, from the tree.” An expression he could not read flashed briefly across Galadan’s aristocratic fece. “And the Warrior,” he concluded.
Galadan was silent a moment, deep in thought. “Interesting,” he said at length. “I am suddenly glad I came, forest one. All of this matters. I wonder if they killed Metran? What,” he asked swiftly, “do you think of the storm that just passed?”
Off balance, Flidais nonetheless managed to smile. “Exactly what you think,” he murmured. “And if a storm has driven the Warrior to land somewhere, I, for one, am going to look for him.”
Again Galadan laughed, more softly than before. “Of course,” he said. “Of course. The name. Do you expect him to tell you himself?”
Flidais could feel a bright color suffuse his face, which was all right; let the Wolflord think he was embarrassed. “Stranger things have happened,” he said stoutly. “Have I your leave to go?”
“Not yet. What did you do in the Anor?” A flicker of unease rippled through the forest andain. It was all very well to have successfully dissembled with Galadan so far, but one didn’t want to push one’s fortune by lingering too long. “I cleaned it,” he said, with an edgy impatience he did not have to feign. “The glass and the floors. I rolled back the windows to let air in. And I watched for two days, to see if the ship would come. Then, with the storm, I knew it had been driven to land, and since it was not here . . .”