“And so you told him exactly what you thought.” She could picture the scene.
“I did. And he exiled me.”
“Not very effectively,” she said wryly.
“Would you have me leave my land, Seer?” he snapped, the voice suddenly commanding. It pleased her; he had some caring, then. More than some, if she were being fair. So she said, “Aileron, he did right. You must know that. How could the High King let another die for him?”
And knew immediately that there was something wrong.
“You don’t know, then.” It was not a question. The sudden gentleness in his voice unsettled her more than anything.
“What? Please. You had better tell me.”
“My father did let another go,” Aileron said. “Listen to the thunder. Your friend is on the Tree. Pwyll. He has lasted two nights. This is the last, if he is still alive.”
Pwyll. Paul.
It fit. It fit too perfectly. She was brushing tears away, but others kept falling. “I saw him,” she whispered. “I saw him with your father in my dream, but I couldn’t hear what they said, because there was this music, and—”
Then that, too, fell into place.
“Oh, Paul,” she breathed. “It was the Brahms, wasn’t it? Rachel’s Brahms piece. How could I not have remembered?”
“Would you have changed anything?” Aileron asked. “Would you have been right to?”
Too hard, that one, just then. She concentrated on the cat. “Do you hate him?” she asked in a small voice, surprising herself with the question.
It drove him to his feet with a startled, exposed gesture. He strode to the window and looked out over the lake. There were bells. And then thunder. A day so charged with power. And it wasn’t over. Night to come, the third night. . . .
“I will try not to,” he said at last, so softly Kim could scarcely hear it.
“Please,” she said, feeling that somehow it mattered. If only to her, to ease her own gathering harvest of griefs. She rose from the bed, holding the cat in both arms.
He turned to face her. The light was strange behind him.
Then, “It is to be my war,” said Aileron dan Ailell.
She nodded.
“You have seen this?” he pushed.
Again she nodded. The wind had died outside; it was very quiet. “You would have thrown it away on the Tree.”
“Not thrown away. But yes, it was a foolishness. In me, not in your friend,” he added after a moment. “I went to see him there last night. I could not help myself. In him it is something else.”
“Grief. Pride. A dark kind.”
“It is a dark place.”
“Can he last?”
Slowly, Aileron shook his head. “I don’t think so. He was almost gone last night.”
Paul. When, she thought, had she last heard him laugh?
“He’s been sick,” she said. It sounded almost irrelevant. Her own voice was funny, too.
Aileron touched her shoulder awkwardly. “I will not hate him, Kim.” He used her name for the first time. “I cannot. It is so bravely done.”
“He has that,” she said. She was not going to cry again. “He has that,” she repeated, lifting her head. “And we have a war to fight.”
“We?” Aileron asked, and in his eyes she could see the entreaty he would not speak.
“You’re going to need a Seer,” she said matter-of-factly. “I seem to be the best you’ve got. And I have the Baelrath, too.”
He came a step towards her. “I am . . .” He took a breath. “I am . . . pleased,” he managed.
A laugh escaped her, she couldn’t help it. “God,” she said on a rising note. “God, Aileron, I’ve never met anyone who had so much trouble saying thank-you. What do you do when someone passes you the salt?”
His mouth opened and closed. He looked very young.
“Anyhow,” she said briskly, “you’re welcome. And now we’d better get going. You should be in Paras Derval tonight, don’t you think?”
It seemed that he had already saddled the horse in the barn, and had only been waiting for her. While Aileron went out back to bring the stallion around, she set about closing up the cottage. The dagger and the Circlet would be safest in the chamber down below. She knew that sort of thing now, it was instinctive.