They were waiting for her. She kept silent and let them wait. After a moment it was Levon who resumed—it was his idea, after all. He said, “I learned that verse from Gereint as a boy. I remembered it last spring when Davor found the horn. Then we located the tree and the rock. And so we know where Owein and the Sleepers are.” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. “We have the horn that calls them and . . . and it is my guess that the Baelrath roused is the flame that wakes them.”
“It would fit,” said Diarmuid. He had kicked off his boots and was lying on her bed. “The Warstone is wild, too. Loren?”
The mage, by exercise of seniority, had claimed the armchair by the window. He lit his pipe methodically and drew deeply upon it before answering.
“It fits,” he said at length. “I will be honest and say I do not know what it forms.”
The quiet admission sobered them. “Kim?” Diarmuid asked, taking charge from where he lay sprawled across her bed.
She was minded to give them a hard time, still, but was too proud to be petty. “I haven’t seen it,” she murmured. “Nothing of this at all.”
“Are you sure?” Paul Schafer asked from by the door, where he stood with Matt Sören. “You were waiting for Levon, weren’t you?”
He was awfully clever, that one. He was her friend, though, and he hadn’t given away her first apprehension about Diarmuid. Kim nodded, and half smiled. “I sensed he was coming. And I guessed, from before, what he wanted to ask. I don’t think we can conclude much from that.”
“Not much,” Diarmuid concurred. “We still have a decision to make.”
“We?” It was Kevin Laine. “Kim’s ring, Dave’s horn. Their choice, wouldn’t you say?”
Levon said, “They aren’t really theirs. Only—”
“Anyone planning to take them away and use them?” Kevin asked laconically. “Anyone going to force them?” he continued, driving the point home. There was a silence. Another friend, Kim thought.
There was an awkward cough. “Well,” said Dave, “I’m not about to go against what gets decided here, but I’d like to know a little more about what we’re dealing with. If I’ve got the horn that calls these . . . ah, Sleepers, I’d prefer to know who they are.”
He was looking self-consciously at Loren. They all turned to the mage. The sun was behind him, making it hard to see his face. When he spoke, it was almost as a disembodied voice.
“It would be altogether better,” he said, from between the setting sun and the smoke, “if I could give a fair answer to Dave’s question. I cannot. Owein and the Wild Hunt were laid to rest an infinitely long time ago. Hundreds and hundreds of years before Iorweth came from oversea, or the Dalrei crossed the mountains from the east, or even men pushed into green Cathal from the far lands in the southeast.
“Even the lios alfar were scarcely known in the land when the Hunt became the Sleepers. Brendel has told me, and Laien Spearchild before him, that the lios have only shadowy legends of what the Wild Hunt was before it slept.”
“Was there anyone here?” Kevin murmured.
“Indeed,” Loren replied. “For someone put them under that stone. Tell me, Levon, was it a very great rock?”
Levon nodded without a word.
Loren waited.
“The Paraiko!” Diarmuid said, who had been student to the mage when he was young. His voice was soft; there was wonder in it.
“The Paraiko,” Loren repeated. “The Giants. They were here, and the Wild Hunt rode the night sky. It was a very different world, or so the legends of the lios tell. Shadowy kings on shadowy horses that could ride between the stars and between the Weaver’s worlds.”
“And the child?” Kim asked this time. It was the question that was gnawing at her. A child before them all.
“I wish I knew,” Loren said. “No one does, I’m afraid.”
“What else do we know?” Diarmuid asked mildly.
“It is told,” came a deep voice from the door, “that they moved the moon.”