“I know,” Paul said, as gently as he could. “You explained to me.”
“What reason could there be for killing me if … if not because of a child?” How did one comfort a soul to whom this had been done? “What reason, Paul? Could there be another?”
”I don’t know,” he whispered. “You’re probably right, Jen. Please stop.”
She tried; wiped at her tears with both hands. Jaelle walked forward with a square of silk and gave it to her awkwardly. Jennifer looked up again. “But if I’m right . . . if he was afraid of a child, then . . . shouldn’t Darien be good?”
So much yearning in the question, so much of her soul. Kevin would lie, Paul thought. Everyone he knew would lie.
Paul Schafer said, very low, “Good, or a rival, Jen. We can’t know which, and so I must know where he is.”
Somewhere on the road Diarmuid and his men were galloping. They would wield swords and axes in this war, shoot arrows, throw spears. They would be brave or cowardly, kill or die, bonded to each other and to all other men.
He would do otherwise. He would walk alone in darkness to find his own last battle. He who had come back would say the cold truths and the bitter, and make a wounded woman cry as though whatever was left of her heart was breaking even now.
Two women. There were bright, disregarded tears on Jaelle’s cheeks as well. She said, “They have gone to the lake. Ysanne’s lake. The cottage was empty, so we sent them there.”
“Why?”
“He is of the andain, Pwyll. I was telling Jennifer before you came: they do not age as we do. He is only seven months old, but he looks like a five-year-old child. And is growing faster now.”
Jennifer’s sobs were easing. He walked over to the bench where she was and sat down beside her. With a real hesitation, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
He said, “There is no one I have known so fine as you. Any wound I deal to you is more deeply bestowed upon myself; you must believe this to be true. I did not choose to be what I have become. I am not even sure what that is.”
He could sense her listening.
He said, “You are weeping for fear you have done wrong, or set loose an evil. I will say only that we cannot know. It is just as possible that Darien will be our last, our deepest hope of light. And let us remember”—he looked up and saw that Jaelle had come nearer—“let all three of us remember that Kim dreamt his name and so he has a place. He is in the Tapestry.”
She had stopped crying. Her hand remained in his, and he did not let it go. She looked up after a moment. “Tell me,” she said to Jaelle, “how are you watching him?”
The Priestess looked uncomfortable. “Leila,” she said.
“The young one?” Paul asked, not comprehending. “The one who spied on us?”
Jaelle nodded. She walked over to the horizontally mounted harp and plucked two strings before answering. “She is tuned to the brother,” she whispered. “Exactly how, I don’t understand, but she sees Finn and he is almost always with Darien. We take them food once a week as well.”
His throat was dry again with fear. “What about an attack? Can’t they just take him?”
“Why should they be attacked,” Jaelle replied, lightly touching the instrument, “a mother and two children? Who knows they are even there?”
He drew a breath. It felt like such naked, undefended folly. “Wolves?” he pursued. “Galadan’s wolves?”
Jaelle shook her head. “They never go there,” she said. “They never have. There is a power by that lake warding them.”
“What power?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I truly don’t. No one in Gwen Ystrat knows.”
“Kim does, I’ll bet,” said Jennifer.
They were silent for a long time, listening to the Priestess at the harp. The notes followed one another at random, the way a child might play.
Eventually there came a knocking.