THE WANDERING FIRE by Guy Gavriel Kay

He looked over at her, the wide-set dark eyes gentle. “It is my responsibility,” said Arthur Pendragon, “to see such things.”

Midafternoon, it was. The breath of men and horses showed as puffs of smoke in the cold. The sun, high in a clear blue sky, glittered on the snow. Midafternoon, and at the window Kimberly thought again, looking in his eyes, of stars.

She recognized the tall guard who opened the door: he had escorted her to Ysanne’s lake the last time she went. She saw, from his eyes, that he knew her as well. Then his face changed as he took in the man who stood quietly beside her.

“Hello, Shain,” she said, before he could speak. “Is Loren here?”

“Yes, and the lios alfar, my lady.”

“Good. Are you going to let me in?”

He jumped backward with an alacrity that would have been amusing were she in any state to be amused. They feared her, as once they had feared Ysanne. It wasn’t funny now, though, not even ironic; this was no place or time for such shadings.

Drawing a deep breath, Kim pushed back her hood and shook out her white hair, and they walked in. She saw Loren first and received a quick nod of encouragement—one that did not mask his own tension. She saw Brendel, the silver-haired lios alfar, and Matt, with Brock, the other Dwarf, and Gorlaes the Chancellor.

Then she turned to Aileron.

He hadn’t changed, unless it were simply to become more, in a year’s time, of what he had already been. He stood in front of a large table that was spread with a huge map of Fionavar. His hands were clasped behind his back, his feet balanced wide apart, and his deep-set, remembered eyes bored into her. She knew him, though: she was his Seer, his only one.

Now she read relief in his face.

“Hello,” she said calmly. “I’m told you got my last warning.”

“We did. Welcome back,” Aileron said. And then, after a pause, “They have been walking on tiptoe around me this past half hour, Loren and Matt. Will you tell me why this is and whom you have brought with you?”

Brendel knew already; she could see the wonder silver in his eyes. She said, raising her voice to make it clear and decisive, as a Seer’s should be, “I have used the Baelrath as Ysanne dreamt long ago. Aileron, High King, beside me stands Arthur Pendragon, the Warrior of the old tales, come to make one with our cause.”

The lofty words rose and then fell into silence, like waves breaking around the King’s rock-still face. Any of the others in this room would have done it better, she thought, painfully aware that the man beside her had not bowed. Nor could he be expected to, not to any living man, but Aileron was young and newly King, and—

“My grandfather,” said Aileron dan Ailell dan Art, “was named for you, and have I a son one day he too will be.” As the men in the room and the one woman gasped with astonishment, the High King’s face broke into a joyful smile. “No visitation, not even of Colan or Conary, could be more bright, my lord Arthur. Oh, brightly woven, Kimberly!” He squeezed her shoulder hard as he strode past and embraced fiercely, as a brother, the man she had brought.

Arthur returned the gesture, and when Aileron stepped back, the Warrior’s own eyes showed, for the first time, a glint of amusement. “They led me to understand,” he said, “that you might not entirely welcome my presence.”

“I am served,” said Aileron, with a heavy emphasis, “by advisers of limited capacities. It is a sad truth that—”

“Hold it!” Kim exclaimed. “That’s not fair, Aileron. That’s . . . not fair.” She stopped because she couldn’t think of what else to say, and because he was laughing at her.

“I know,” Aileron said. “I know it isn’t.” He controlled himself, then said in a very different voice, “I don’t even want to know what it is you had to go through to bring us this man, though I was taught as a boy by Loren and I think I can hazard a guess. You are both full welcome here. You could not be otherwise.”

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