“Guinevere,” said Pwyll, and waited.
Amairgen was silent. Jaelle was aware of the rocking of the sea beneath her. She glanced down a moment and then quickly back up: it had seemed to her, dizzyingly, that she’d seen stars below her feet.
Amairgen leaned forward over the railing. She was the High Priestess of Dana, and standing above her was the ghost of the one who had broken the power of Dana in Fionavar. She should curse him, a part of her was saying, curse him as the priestesses of the Goddess did at the turning of every month. She should let her blood fall in the sea below where she stood as she spoke the most bitter invocation of the Mother. It was, as much as anything had ever been, her duty. But she could not do it. Such hatred for his ancient deed was not within her tonight, nor would it ever be again, she somehow knew. There was too much pain, too pure a sorrow here. All the stories seemed to be merging into each other. She gazed up at him and at what he held and kept silent, watching. He was foreshortened by the angle, but she could descry his chiseled, translucent features, the long pale locks of his hair, and the mighty gleaming spear he cradled in both his hands. He wore a ring on one finger; she thought she knew what it was.
“Is the Warrior here, then?” Amairgen asked, a breath on a moonlit reed.
“He is,” said Pwyll. And added, after a moment, “So too is Lancelot.”
“What!”
Even in darkness and from where she stood, Jaelle saw his eyes suddenly gleam like sapphires in the night. His hands shifted along the spear. Pwyll waited, unhurried, for the figure above them to absorb the implications of that.
Then, both of them standing on the tossing waves beside the ship heard Amairgen say, very formally now, “What tidings have you for me after so long?”
Jaelle, surprised, saw tears on Pwyll’s face. He said, very gently, “Tidings of rest, unquiet one. You are avenged, your staff has been redeemed. The Soulmonger of Maugrim is dead. Go home, first of the mages, beloved of Lisen. Sail home between the stars to the Weaver’s side and be granted peace after all these years. We have gone to Cader Sedat and destroyed the evil there with the power of your staff held by one who followed you: by Loren Silvercloak, First Mage of Brennin. What I tell you tonight is true. I am the Twiceborn of Mórnir, Lord of the Summer Tree.”
There came a sound then that Jaelle never forgot for what was left of her days. It came not from Amairgen but, rather, seemed to rise from the ship itself, though no one at all was to be seen: a high keening sound, twinned somehow to the slanting moon in the west, balanced achingly between ecstasy and pain. She realized, suddenly, that there were other ghosts here, though they could not be seen. Others manned that doomed ship.
Then Amairgen spoke, over the sound of his mariners, and he said to Pwyll, “If this is so, if it has come to pass, then in the name of Mórnir I release the Spear into your trust. But there is one thing I will ask of you, one thing further that is needed before I can rest. There is one more death.”
For the first time she saw Pwyll hesitate. She didn’t know why, but she did know something else, and she said, “Galadan?”
She heard Pwyll draw a breath, even as she felt the sapphire eyes of the one who had found the skylore fix themselves on her own. She willed herself not to flinch. She heard him say, “You are a long way from your Temples and your thirsty axe, Priestess. Do you not fear the killing sea?”
“I fear the Unraveller more,” she said, pleased to hear her voice strong and unwavering. The killing sea, she registered, sorrowing: Lisen. “And I hate the Dark more than I ever hated you, or any of the mages who followed you. I am saving my curses for Maugrim, and”—she swallowed—“and I will pray, after tonight, to Dana, for your peace and Lisen’s.” She ended, ritually, as Pwyll had done. “What I tell you tonight is true. I am the High Priestess of the Goddess in Fionavar.”