Except it hadn’t been.
A mystery, but it was solved when Loren and Matt returned to Paras Derval and saw the girl, in the dun robes of an acolyte of the sanctuary, waiting outside their quarters in the town.
“My lord,” she said, as they walked up, “the High Priestess bade me tell you to come to her in the Temple so soon as you might.”
“Tell him?” Matt growled.
The child was remarkably composed. “She did say that. The matter is important.”
“Ah,” said Loren. “She brought back the body.”
The girl nodded.
“Because of the moon,” he went on, thinking aloud. “It fits.”
Surprisingly, the acolyte nodded again. “Of course it does,” she said coolly. “Will you come now?”
Exchanging a raised-eyebrows look, the two of them followed Jaelle’s messenger through the streets to the eastern gate.
Once beyond the town, she stopped. “There is something I would warn you about,” she said.
Loren Silvercloak looked down from his great height upon the child. “Did the Priestess tell you to do so?”
“Of course not.” Her tone was impatient.
“Then you should not speak other than what you were charged to say. How long have you been an acolyte?”
“I am Leila,” she replied, gazing up at him with tranquil eyes. Too tranquil; he wondered at the answer. Was her mind touched? Sometimes the Temple took such children.
“That isn’t what I asked,” he said kindly.
“I know what you asked,” she said with some asperity. “I am Leila. I called Finn dan Shahar to the Longest Road four times this summer in the ta’kiena.”
His eyes narrowed; he had heard about this. “And Jaelle has made you an acolyte?”
“Two days ago. She is very wise.”
An arrogant child. It was time to assert control. “Not,” he said sternly, “if her acolytes presume to judge her, and her messengers offer messages of their own.”
It didn’t faze her. With a shrug of acceptance, Leila turned and continued up the slope to the sanctuary.
He wrestled with it for several strides, then admitted a rare defeat. “Hold,” Loren said, and heard Matt’s snort of laughter beside him. “What is your news?”
The Dwarf, he was aware, was finding this whole exchange richly amusing. It was, he supposed.
“He is alive,” Leila said, and suddenly there was nothing amusing about anything at all.
There had been darkness. A sense of movement, of being moved. The stars very close, then impossibly far away, and receding. Everything receding.
The next time there was an impression, blurred as through rain on glass, of candles wavering, with gray shapes moving ambiguously beyond their arc. He was still now, but soon he felt himself slipping back again, as a tide withdraws to the dark sea wherein there lie no discontinuities.
Except the fact of his presence.
Of his being alive.
Paul opened his eyes, having come a long way. And it seemed, after all the journeying, that he was lying on a bed in a room where there were, indeed, candles burning. He was very weak. There was astonishingly little physical pain, though, and the other kind of pain was so newly allowed it was almost a luxury. He took one slow breath that meant life, and then another to welcome back sorrow.
“Oh, Rachel,” he breathed, scarcely a sound. Forbidden once, the most forbidden name. But then intercession had come, before he died, and absolution allowing grief.
Except that he hadn’t died. A thought like a blade pierced him at that: was he alive because he’d failed? Was that it? With an effort he turned his head. The movement revealed a tall figure standing by the bed gazing down at him from between the candles.
“You are in the Temple of the Mother,” Jaelle said. “It is raining outside.”
Rain. There was a bitter challenge in her eyes, but it couldn’t touch him in that moment. He was beyond her. He turned his head away. It was raining; he was alive. Sent back. Arrow of the God.
He felt the presence of Mörnir then, within himself, latent, tacit. There was a burden in that, and soon it would have to be addressed, but not yet, not yet. Now was for lying still, tasting the sense of being himself again for the first time in so very long. Ten months. And three nights that had been forever. Oh, he could go with joy a little ways, it was allowed. Eyes closed, he sank deep into the pillow. He was desperately weak, but weakness was all right now. There was rain.
“Dana spoke to you.”
He could hear the vivid rage in her voice. Too much of it; he ignored her. Kevin, he thought. I want to see Kev. Soon,he told himself, after I sleep.
She slapped him hard across the face. He felt a raking nail draw blood.
“You are in the sanctuary. Answer!”
Paul Schafer opened his eyes. With cold scorn of his own, he confronted her fury. This time, Jaelle looked away.
After a moment she spoke, gazing at one of the long candles. “All my life I have dreamt of hearing the Goddess speak, of seeing her face.” Bitterness had drained her voice. “Not me, though. Not anything at all. Yet you, a man, and one who turned from her entirely for the God in his wood, have been allowed grant of her grace. Do you wonder why I hate you?”
The utter flatness of her tone made the words more chilling than any explosion of anger would have been. Paul was silent a moment, then he said, “I am her child, too. Do not begrudge the gift she offered me.”
“Your life, you mean?” She was looking at him again, tall and slender between the candles.
He shook his head; it was still an effort. “Not that. In the beginning, perhaps, but not now. It was the God who gave me this.”
“Not so. You are a greater fool than I thought if you know not Dana when she comes.”
“Actually,” he said, but gently, for it was a matter too high for wrangling, “I do know. In this case, better than you, Priestess. The Goddess was there, yes, and she did intercede, though not for my life. For something else before the end. But it was Mörnir who saved me. It was his to choose. The Summer Tree is the God’s, Jaelle.”
For the first time he read a flicker of doubt in the wide-set eyes. “She was there, though? She did speak? Tell me what she said.”
“No,” said Paul, with finality.
“You must.” But it was not a command now. He had a vague sense that there was something he should, something he wanted to say to her, but he was so weary, so utterly drained. Which triggered a completely different realization.
“You know,” he said, with feeling, “that I haven’t had food or drink for three days. Is there…?”
She stood still a moment, but when she moved, it was to a tray on a low table by the far wall. She brought a bowl of cool soup to the bed. Unfortunately it seemed that his hands didn’t work very well yet. He thought she would send for one of the gray-clad priestesses, but in the end she sat stiffly on the bed beside him and fed him herself.
He ate in silence, leaning back against the pillows when he was done. She made as if to get up, but then, with an expression of distaste, used the sleeve of her white gown to wipe the blood from his cheek.
She did rise then, to stand tall and queenly by his bed, her hair the color of the candlelight. Looking up at her, he felt at a disadvantage suddenly.
“Why,” he asked, “am I here?”
“I read the signs.”
“You didn’t expect to find me alive?”
She shook her head. “No, but it was the third night, and then the moon rose…”
He nodded. “But why?” he asked. “Why bother?”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be such a child. There is a war now. You will be needed.”
He felt his heart skip. “What do you mean? What war?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve been somewhat out of touch,” he said sharply. “What has happened?”