There had been sachen after, and good food by the fires, and many remembered faces. Including Liane’s.
“How many times am I going to have to dance an urgach kill of yours?” she asked, bright-eyed, pert, her mouth soft on his cheek where she’d kissed him on tiptoe before moving off.
Tabor had come in quite a while later, and he’d wanted to embrace the boy but something in Tabor’s face stopped him. It stopped all of them, even his father. It was then that Ivor had gestured Dave over to join a meeting around a smaller fire off to the side of the room.
With Dave, there were seven people there, and Diarmuid, carrying his own beaker, made a slightly disheveled eighth a moment later. Dave wasn’t sure what he thought of this Prince; he’d been rather more impressed with Aileron, the older brother who was now High King. Diarmuid seemed altogether too suave for Dave’s taste; on the other hand, there had been nothing soft about the pace he’d set on the ride, or the control he’d asserted in the matter of the Dalrei he’d ordered killed. Ivor, Dave noticed, hadn’t brought the issue up either.
And Diarmuid, despite the drinking, seemed very much in command as he concisely outlined the wish of the High King and his First Mage that Gereint the shaman ride back with him to Paras Derval. There to join with the mages in seeking the source of the winter that was slowly grinding them all down under its malevolent heel.
“For it is malevolent,” the Prince added quietly from where he’d crouched in front of blind Gereint. “The lios have confirmed what we’ve all guessed. We would like to leave tomorrow—if it suits the shaman, and all of you.”
Ivor nodded an acknowledgment of the courteous proviso. No one spoke, though; they waited for Gereint.
Dave had still not gotten over the uneasiness he felt in the presence of this wrinkled ancient whose hollowed eye sockets seemed, nonetheless, to see into the souls of men and down the dark avenues of time. Cernan, god of the wild things, had spoken to Gereint, Dave remembered—and had called Tabor to his fast, to the animal they had seen in the sky. That thought led him to Ceinwen, and the stag in Faelin Grove. And this was his own dark avenue.
He turned from it to hear Gereint say, “We are going to need the Seer as well.”
“She hasn’t come yet,” Diarmuid said.
Everyone looked at Dave. “She was bringing someone,” he said. “She sent us ahead.”
“Who was she bringing?” the man called Tulger asked from beside Ivor.
But a rare discretion led Dave to murmur, “I think that’s for her to say, not me.” Ivor, he saw, nodded his agreement.
Gereint smiled thinly. “True,” the shaman said. “Although I know, and they have arrived by now. They were in Paras Derval before you left.” This was exactly what drove Dave crazy about Gereint.
Diarmuid didn’t seem bothered. “With Loren, probably,” he murmured, smiling as if at a jest. Dave didn’t get the joke. “Will you come then?” the Prince continued, addressing the shaman.
“Not to Paras Derval,” Gereint replied placidly. “It is too far for my old bones.”
“Well, surely—” Diarmuid began.
“I will meet you,” Gereint went on, ignoring him, “in Gwen Ystrat. I will leave tomorrow for the Temple in Morvran. You will all be coming there.”
This time even Diarmuid looked discomfited. “Why?” he asked.
“Which way did the wolves fly?” the shaman asked, turning unnervingly to where Tore sat.
“South,” the dark man said, and they were silent. There was a burst of laughter from the largest fire. Dave glanced over involuntarily and saw, with a sudden chill, that Liane was sitting next to Kevin, and the two of them were whispering in each other’s ears. His vision blurred. Goddamn that flashy skirt-chaser! Why did the slick, carefree Kevin Laines always have to be around to spoil things? Inwardly seething, Dave forced himself to turn back to the conclave.
“You will all be there,” Gereint was repeating. “And Gwen Ystrat is the best place for what we will have to do.”