THE WANDERING FIRE by Guy Gavriel Kay

She closed her eyes. Moonlight made a marble statue of her, pale and austere. She said, “Dana has no sway at sea. I know not what this might mean.” She opened her eyes again.

“Nor I,” he said.

“Pwyll,” she asked, “can this be done? Can you get to Cader Sedat?”

“I’m not sure,” he said truthfully. “Or even if we can do anything if we do get there. I know Loren is right, though. We have to try.”

“You know I would come if I could—”

“I do know,” Paul said. “You will have enough, and more, to deal with here. Pity the ones like Jennifer and Sharra, who can only wait and love, and hope that that counts for something beyond pain.”

She opened her mouth as if to speak, but changed her mind and was silent. Unbidden, the words of a ballad came to him and, almost under his breath, he offered them to the night breeze and the sea:

“What is a woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?”

”Weaver forfend,” Jaelle said, and turned away.

He followed her along the narrow track to Taerlindel. On their right, as they went, the moon sank into the sea and they came back into a town lit only by the stars.

When the sun rose, the company made ready to set sail in Prydwen. Aileron the High King went aboard and bade farewell to his First Mage, to Paul Schafer and Arthur Pendragon, to the men of South Keep who would man that ship, and to Coll of Taerlindel who would sail her.

Last of all he faced his brother. With grave eyes they looked at each other: Aileron’s so brown they were almost black, Diarmuid’s bluer than the sky overhead.

Watching from the dock, unmindful of her tears, Sharra saw Diarmuid speak and then nod his head. Then she saw him move forward and kiss his brother on the cheek. A moment later Aileron spun about and came down the ramp. There was no expression at all in his face. She hated him a little.

Prydwen’s sails were unfurled and they filled. The ramp was drawn up. The wind blew from the south and east: they could run with it.

Na-Brendel of Daniloth stood beside the High King and his guard. There were three women there as well, watching as the ship cast loose and began to slip away. One woman was a Princess, one a High Priestess; beside them, though, stood one who had been a Queen, and Brendel could not look away from her.

Jennifer’s eyes were clear and bright as she gazed after the ship and at the man who stood in its stern gazing back at her. Strength and pride she was sending out to him, Brendel knew, and he watched her stand thus until Prydwen was a white dot only at the place where sea and sky came together.

Only then did she turn to the High King, only then did sorrow come back into her face. And something more than that.

“Can you spare a guard for me?” she said. “I would go to Lisen’s Tower.”

There was compassion in Aileron’s eyes as if he, too, had heard what Brendel heard: the circles of time coming around again, a pattern shaping on the Loom.

“Oh, my dear,” said Jaelle in a strange voice.

“The Anor Lisen has stood empty a thousand years,” Aileron said gently. “Pendaran is not a place where we may safely go.”

“They will not harm me there,” Jennifer said with calm certitude. “Someone should watch for them from that place.”

He had been meaning to go home to Daniloth. It had been too long since he had trod the mound of Atronel.

“I will take you there and stay with you,” Brendel said, shouldering a different destiny.

Chapter 15

Before and above everything else, Ivor thought, there were Tabor and Gereint.

The Aven was riding a wide circle about the gathered camps. He had returned from Gwen Ystrat the evening before. Two slow days’ riding it had been, but Gereint had not been able to sustain a faster pace.

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