Matt had told her the tale in the Great Hall at Paras Derval. Before she went riding and found the lios alfar. Before Galadan had, in turn, found her and given her to the swan.
Westward, they walked now, through the miracle of this spring, and everywhere Jennifer looked there was life returning to the land. She heard crickets, the drone of bees, saw a scarlet-winged bird take wing from an apple tree, and then a brown rabbit dart from a clump of shrubbery. She saw Matt drinking it in as well with his one eye, as if slaking a long thirst. In silence they walked amid the sounds of hope until, at the edge of the forest, Matt finally stopped.
Every year, he had told her, the Council of Mages would curse Nilsom at midwinter when they met. And every year, as well, they would curse Aideen—who had broken the profoundest law of their Order when she betrayed her mage—even though it had been to save Brennin from destruction, and the Tree that lay within this wood.
And every spring, Matt had said, he and Loren would bring the first flowers to this grave.
It was almost invisible. One had to know the place. A mound of earth, no stone, the trees at the edge of Mórnirwood for shade. Sorrow and peace together came over Jennifer as she saw Matt kneel and lay his flowers on the mound.
Sorrow and peace, and then she saw that the Dwarf was weeping, and her own tears came at last from the heart that spring had unlocked. For Aideen she wept, and bright Kevin gone; for Darien she cried, and the choice he had to make; for Laesha and Drance, slain when she was taken; for all the living, too, faced with the terror of the Dark, faced with war and the hatred of Maugrim, born into the time of his return.
And finally, finally by Aideen’s grave in Kevin’s spring, she wept for herself and for Arthur.
It lasted a long time. Matt did not rise, nor did he look up until, at length, she stopped.
“There is heart’s ease in this place,” he said.
“Ease?” she said. A weary little laugh. “With so many tears between the two of us?”
“The only way, sometimes,” he replied. “Do you not feel it, though?”
After a moment she smiled as she had not done for a very long time. He rose from near the grave. He looked at her and said, “You will leave the Temple now?”
She did not reply. Slowly the smile faded. She said, “Is this why you brought me here?”
His dark eye never wavered from her face, but there was a certain diffidence in his voice. “I know only a few things,” said Matt Sören, “but these I know truly. I know that I have seen stars shining in the depths of the Warrior’s eyes. I know that he is cursed, and not allowed to die. I know, because you told me, what was done to you. And I know, because I see it now, that you are not allowing yourself to live. Jennifer, of the two fates, it seems to me the worse.”
Gravely, she regarded him, her golden hair stirred by the wind. She lifted a hand to push it back from her face. “Do you know,” she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear, “how much grief there was when I was Guinevere?”
“I think I do. There is always grief. It is joy that is the rarest thing,” said the onetime King of Dwarves.
To this she made no reply. It was a Queen of Sorrows who stood with him by the Godwood, and for all the earnest certitude of his words, Matt knew a moment of doubt. Almost to himself, for reassurance, he murmured, “There can be no hope for anything in a living death.”
She heard. Her gaze came back to him. “Oh, Matt,” she said. “Oh, Matt, for what should I hope? He has been cursed to this. I am the agent of the Weaver’s will. For what should I hope?”
Her voice went to his heart like a blade. But the Dwarf drew himself up to his fullest height and said the thing he had brought her there to say, and there was no doubt in him for this.