And there was another parting now. Ivor’s guard led out the blind shaman, Gereint, toward where the Aven waited with his wife and daughter. Liane, Kim saw, was red-eyed, still. So many smaller griefs there were within the larger ones.
Gereint, in his uncanny way, stopped right in front of her. She accepted the sightless touch of his mind. He was weak, she saw, but not finished yet.
“Not yet,” he said aloud. “I’ll be fine when I’ve had a haunch of eltor meat on the grass under the stars.”
Impulsively, Kim stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. “I wish I could join you,” she said.
His bony hand gripped her shoulder. “I wish you could too, dreamer. I am glad to have stood with you before I died.”
”We may do so again,” she said.
He made no reply to that. Only gripped her shoulder more tightly and, stepping nearer, whispered, so only she could hear, “I saw the Circlet of Lisen last night, but not who was wearing it.” The last phrase was almost an apology.
She drew a breath and said, “That was Ysanne’s to see, and so it is mine. Go easy, Gereint, back to your Plain. You will have tasks enough waiting there. You cannot be everything to all of us.”
“Nor can you,” he said. “You shall have my thoughts.”
And because of who he was, she said, “No. You won’t want to share what I think I’m about to do. Send them west, Gereint. The war is Loren’s now, and Matt’s, I think. In the place where Amairgen died.”
She let him reach into her, to see the twin shadows of her dream. “Oh, child,” he murmured and, taking her two hands between his own, raised them to his lips and kissed them both. Then he walked away as if weighted by more than years.
Kim turned around to where her companion waited patiently. The grass was green, the birds sang everywhere. The sun was well above the Carnevon Range. She looked up, shielding her eyes against the light.
“Are we ready?” she asked.
“We are,” said Brock of Banir Tal.
She mounted up and fell into stride beside his horse for the long ride to Khath Meigol.
Traveling toward the Goddess all his life, Jaelle had said of Kevin, and, alone of those in the room, Jennifer had truly understood. Not even the High Priestess could know how deeply true that was. Hearing the words, Jennifer felt suddenly as if every nerve within her had been stripped of its sheath and laid open.
All the nights, she saw now with terrible clarity. All the nights she had lain beside him after the arc of lovemaking was done, watching Kevin struggle to come back from so far. The one uncontrolled thing in him she had never understood, had feared. His was a descent, a downward spiral into passion, that her soul could not track. So many nights she’d lain awake, looking at the simplified beauty of his face as he slept.
She understood now, finally.
And so there was a last sleepless night for her shaped by Kevin Laine. She was awake when the birdsong began outside the Temple, and she had parted her curtains to watch the morning come. The breeze was fresh with the scents of spring, and there were leaves budding on all the trees. Colors, a great many colors in the world again, after the black branches and white snow of winter. There was green once more, so bright and alive it was stronger, at last, than the green unlight of Starkadh. As her eyes looked out on the spring, Jennifer’s heart, which was Guinevere’s, began to look out as well. Nor was this the least of Kevin’s legacies.
There came a knocking at her door. She opened it to see Matt Sören with a walking stick in one hand and flowers in the other.
“It is spring,” he said, “and these are the first flowers. Loren is meeting in the palace with a great many people. I thought you might come with me to Aideen’s grave.”
As they walked around the lower town and then struck a path to the west, she was remembering the story he had told her so long ago. Or not really as long as it seemed. The story of Nilsom, the mage who had turned evil, and of Aideen, his source, who had loved him: the only woman since Lisen to be source to a mage. It was Aideen who had saved Brennin, saved the Summer Tree, from Nilsom and the mad High King, Vailerth. She had refused to be source for her mage at the end. Had denied her strength to him and then killed herself.