Paul said, “I had help.”
After another moment, Liranan, as Cernan had done long ago, bowed to him. Then the god disappeared into the darkness of the sea.
Paul looked at Loren. He saw the tracks of tears on the mage’s face. “You know?” he asked. Loren nodded jerkily.
“What?” said Diarmuid.
They had to be told. Paul said, over the grief, “The singing was the lios alfar. The ones who sailed. They never got farther west than here, since the Bael Rangat. Not one of them.” Brendel, he was thinking. How will I tell Brendel?
He heard the men of South Keep. Their helpless rage. It was Diarmuid he watched.
“What did you go for?” he asked the Prince.
“Yes, what?” Loren repeated.
Diarmuid turned to the mage. “You didn’t see?” He released Paul’s arm and limped over to the steps leading up to the tiller. He came back with something that glittered white in the moonlight. He held it out to the mage.
“Oh,” said Matt Sören.
Loren said nothing. It was in his face.
“My lord First Mage of Brennin,” Diarmuid said, holding his emotion rigidly in check. “Will you accept as a gift from me a thing of greatest worth? This is the staff of Amairgen Whitebranch that Lisen made for him so long ago.”
Paul clenched his hands. So many levels of sorrow. It seemed that someone else hadn’t made it past this point either. Now they knew what had happened to the first and greatest of the mages.
Loren took the staff and held it sideways, cradled in both his hands. For all its years in the sea, the white wood was unworn and unsullied, and Paul knew there was a power in it.
“Wield it, Silvercloak!” he heard Diarmuid say. “Take revenge for him, for all the dead. Let his staff be used at Cader Sedat. For this did I bring it back.”
Loren’s fingers closed tightly around the wood.
”Be it so,” was all he said, but the sound of doom was in his voice.
“Be it so now, then,” said a deeper voice. They turned. “The wind has shifted,” Arthur said.
“North,” said Coll after a second.
Arthur looked only at Loren. “We reach Cader Sedat by sailing due north into a north wind. Can you do this, mage?”
Loren and Matt turned to each other as Paul had seen them do before. They exchanged an intensely private glance, unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world. Matt was desperately weary, he knew, and Loren had to be, as well, but he also knew it wasn’t going to matter.
He saw the mage look up at Coll. He saw the bleakness of his smile. “Man your ship,” he heard Loren say, “and point her to the north.”
They hadn’t noticed the dawn coming on. But as Coll and the men of South Keep sprang to obey, the sun leaped up behind them out of the sea.
Then it was on their right, as Coll of Taerlindel grappled his ship over straight into the strong north wind. Loren had gone below. When he reappeared he was clad in the cloak of shifting silver hues that gave him his name. Tall and stern, his hour begun at last, his and Matt’s, he strode to Prydwen’s prow and he carried the staff of Amairgen Whitebranch. Beside him, equally stern, equally proud, walked Matt Sören, who had once been King under Banir Lok and had forsaken that destiny for the one that led him to this place.
“Cenolan!” Loren cried. He extended the staff straight out in front of him. “Sed amairgen, sed remagan, den sedath iren!” He hurled the words out over the waves, and power surged through them like a greater wave. Paul heard a roar of sound, a rushing of winds as if from all the corners of the sea. They flowed around Prydwen as Liranan’s whirlpool had spun past her sides and, after a chaotic, swirling moment Paul saw that they were sailing on a hushed and windless sea, utterly calm, like glass, while on either side of them the wild winds raged.
And ahead, not very far at all, lit by the morning sun, lay an island with a castle high upon it, and the island was slowly revolving in the glassy sea. The windows of the castle were begrimed and smeared and so, too, were its walls.