THE SUMMER TREE by Guy Gavriel Kay

“There’s been no rain, Diarmuid said.”

“That’s true.” There was silence. A light breeze had finally come up to cool the evening.

“Have you noticed the moon?” Paul asked, leaning on the parapet.

Kevin nodded. “Larger, you mean? Yes, I did. Wonder what effect that has?”

“Higher tides, most likely.”

“I guess. And more werewolves.”

Schafer gave him a wry look. “I wouldn’t be surprised. Tell me, what did you think about that business back there?”

“Well, Loren and Diarmuid seem to be on the same side.”

“It looks that way. Matt’s not very sure of him.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“Really. What about Gorlaes? He was pretty quick to call in the marines. Was he just following orders, or—”

“Not a chance, Paul. I saw his face when Diarmuid made us guest-friends. Not happy, my friend.”

“Really?” Schafer said. “Well, that simplifies things at least. I’d like to know more about this Jaelle, though. And Diarmuid’s brother, too.”

“The nameless one?” Kevin intoned lugubriously. “He of no name?”

Schafer snorted. “Funny man. Yes, him.”

“We’ll figure it out. We’ve figured things out before.”

“I know,” said Paul Schafer, and after a moment gave a rare smile.

“Oh, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” came a plaintive cry from off to their left. They looked over. Kim Ford, languishing for all she was worth, swayed towards them from the next balcony. The leap was about ten feet.

“I’m coming!” Kevin responded instantly. He rushed to the edge of their own balcony.

“Oh, fly to me!” Kimberly trilled. Jennifer, behind her, began almost reluctantly to laugh.

“I’m coming!” Kevin repeated, ostentatiously limbering up. “You two all right there?” he asked, in mid-flex. “Been ravished yet?”

“Not a chance,” Kim lamented. “Can’t find anyone who’s man enough to jump to our balcony.”

Kevin laughed. “I’d have to do it pretty fast,” he said, “to get there before the Prince.”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer Lowell said, “if anyone can move faster than that guy.”

Paul Schafer, hearing the banter begin, and the laughter of the two women, moved to the far end of the balcony. He knew, very well, that the frivolity was only a release from tension, but it wasn’t something to which he had access any more. Resting his own ringless, fine-boned hands on the railing, he gazed out and down at the denuded garden below. He stood there, looking about him, but not really seeing: the inner landscape demanded its due.

Even had Schafer been carefully scanning the shadows, though, it is unlikely that he would have discerned the dark creature that crouched behind a clump of stunted shrubs, watching him. The desire to kill was strong upon it, and Paul had moved to within easy range of the poison darts it carried. He might have died then.

But fear mastered bloodlust in the figure below. It had been ordered to observe, and to report, but not to kill.

So Paul lived, observed, oblivious, and after a time he drew a long breath and lifted his eyes from sightless fixation on the shadows below.

To see a thing none of the others saw.

High on the stone outer wall enclosing the garden stood an enormous grey dog, or a wolf, and it was looking at him across the moonlit space between, with eyes that were not those of a wolf or a dog, and in which lay a sadness deeper and older than anything Paul had ever seen or known. From the top of the wall the creature stared at him the way animals are not supposed to be able to do. And it called him. The pull was unmistakable, imperative, terrifying. Looming in night shadow it reached out for him, the eyes, unnaturally distinct, boring into his own. Paul touched and then twisted his mind away from a well of sorrow so deep he feared it could drown him. Whatever stood on the wall had endured and was still enduring a loss that spanned the worlds. It dwarfed him, appalled him.

And it was calling him. Sweat cold on his skin in the summer night, Paul Schafer knew that this was one of the things caught up in the chaotic vision Loren’s searching had given him.

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