There was a lot of laughter and a rough, boisterous humor all around. He went with it, enjoying the camaraderie. When they entered the Movran meeting house—a dining hall for the night—spontaneous applause burst forth from the companies of Brennan and Cathal, and he realized they were cheering for him and Dave.
They sat with Diarmuid’s men and the two young Dalrei. Before dinner formally began, Dairmuid, true to his word, rose from his seat at the high table, bearing a platter ceremoniously before him, and came to Kevin’s side.
Amid the gathering hilarity and to the rhythm of five hundred hungry men banging their fists on the long wooden tables, Kevin reminded himself that such things were said to be a delicacy. With a full glass of wine to hand, he stood up, bowed to Diarmuid, and ate the testicles of the boar that had almost killed him.
Not bad, actually, all things considered.
“Any more?” he asked loudly and got his laugh for the night. Even from Dave Martyniuk, which took some doing.
Aileron made a short speech and so did Shalhassan, both of them too wise to try to say much, given the mood in the hall. Besides, Kevin thought, the Kings must be feeling it too. The serving girls—daughters of the villagers, he gathered—were giggling and dodging already. They didn’t seem to mind, though. He wondered what Maidaladan did to the women: to Jaelle and Sharra, even to that battleship Audiart, up at the high table. It was going to be wild later, when the priestesses came out.
There were windows high on all four sides. Amid the pandemonium, Kevin watched it growing dark outside. There was too much noise, too much febrile excitement, for anyone to mark his unwonted quiet.
He was the only one in the hall to see the moon when it first shone through the eastern windows. It was full and this was Midsummer’s Eve, and the thing at the edge of his mind was pushing harder now, straining toward a shape. Quietly he rose and went out, not the first to leave. Even in the cold, there were couples clinched heedlessly close outside the banquet hall.
He moved past them, his wound aching a little now, and stood in the middle of the icy street looking up and east at the moon. And in that moment awareness stirred within him, at last, and took a shape. Not desire, but whatever the thing was that lay behind desire.
“It isn’t a night to be alone,” a voice from just behind him said. He turned to look at Liane. There was a shyness in her eyes.
“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t see you at the banquet.”
“I didn’t come. I was sitting with Gereint.”
“How is he?” He began to walk, and she fell in stride beside him on the wide street. Other couples, laughing, running to warmth, passed them on all sides. It was very bright, with the moonlight on the snow.
“Well enough. He isn’t happy, though, not the way the others are.”
He glanced over at her and then, because it seemed right, took her hand. She wasn’t wearing gloves either, and her fingers were cold.
“Why isn’t he happy?” A random burst of laughter came from a window nearby, and a candle went out.
“He doesn’t think we can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Stop the winter. It seems they found out that Metran is making it—I didn’t understand how—from the spiraling place, Cader Sedat, out at sea.”
A quiet stretch of road. Inside himself Kevin felt a deeper quiet gathering, and suddenly he was afraid. “They can’t go there,” he said softly.
Her dark eyes were somber. “Not in winter. They can’t sail. They can’t end the winter while the winter lasts.”
It seemed to Kevin, then, that he had a vision of his past, of chasing an elusive dream, waking or asleep, down all the nights of his life. The pieces were falling into place. There was a stillness in his soul. He said, “You told me, the time we were together, that I carried Dun Maura within me.”
She stopped abruptly in the road and turned to him.