“No offence was meant, my friend,” said Ailell, “but you know that all the guardians must burn the naal fire. And know you this as well: the people of Conary and Colan, and of Ginserat himself, do not forget the Bael Rangat, either. Our stone is blue as it ever was, and as, if the gods are kind, it ever will be.” There was a silence; Brendel’s eyes burned now with a luminous intensity. “Come!” said Ailell suddenly, rising to stand tall above them. “Come, and I will show you!”
Turning on his heel he stalked to his bedroom, opened the door, and passed through. Following quickly behind, Paul caught a glimpse of the great four-postered, canopied bed of the King, and he saw the figure of Tarn, the page, asleep on his cot in a corner of the room. Ailell did not break stride, though, and Paul and the lios alfar hastened to keep up as the King opened another door on the opposite wall of the bedchamber and passed through that as well into a short corridor, at the end of which was another heavy door. There he stopped, breathing hard.
“We are above the Room of the Stone,” Ailell said, speaking with some difficulty. He pressed a catch in the middle of the door and slid back a small rectangle of wood, which allowed them to see down into the room on the other side.
“Colan himself had this made,” the King said to them, “when he returned with the stone from Rangat. It is told that for the rest of his days, he would often rise in the night and walk this corridor to gaze upon Ginserat’s stone and ease his heart with the knowledge that it was as it had been. Of late I have found myself doing the same. Look you, Na-Brendel of the Kestrel; look upon the wardstone of the High Kingdom.”
Wordlessly the lios stepped forward and placed his eye to the opening in the door. He stayed there for a long time, and was still silent when at length he drew back.
“And you, young Pwyll, look you as well and mark whether the blue of the binding still shines in the stone.” Ailell gestured and Paul moved past Brendel to put his eye to the aperture.
It was a small chamber, with no decorations on the walls or floor and no furnishings of any kind. In the precise center of the room there stood a plinth or pillar, rising past the height of a man, and before it was set a low altar, upon which burned a pure white fire. Upon the sides of the pillar were carven images of kingly men, and resting in a hollowed-out space at the top of the column lay a stone, about the size of a crystal ball; and Paul saw that that stone shone with its own light, and the light with which it shone was blue.
Back in the room they had left, Paul found a third goblet on a table by the window and poured wine for the three of them. Brendel accepted his cup, but immediately began a restless pacing of the room. Ailell had seated himself again in his chair by the game-board. Watching from the window, Paul saw the lios alfar stop his coiled movement and stand before the King.
“We believe the wardstones, High King, because we must,” he began softly, almost gently. “But you know there are other powers that serve the Dark, and some of them are great. Their Lord may yet be bound beneath Rangat, but moving over the land now is an evil we cannot ignore. Have you not seen it in your drought, High King? How can you not see? It rains in Cathal and on the Plain. Only in Brennin will the harvest fail. Only—”
“Silence!” Ailell’s voice cracked high and sharp. “You know not of what you speak. Seek not to meddle in our affairs!” The King leaned forward in his chair, glaring at the slim figure of the lios alfar. Two bright spots of red flushed his face above the wispy beard.
Na-Brendel stopped. He was not tall, but in that moment he seemed to grow in stature as he gazed at the High King.