Then the mood changed, the interlude was over, for Aileron had come forward, too, to stand in front of Paul as Diarmuid stepped aside.
For what seemed like forever, the two men gazed at each other, their expressions equally unreadable. No one there could know what had passed between them in the Godwood two nights before, but what lay in the room was palpable, and a thing very deep.
“Mörnir be praised,” Aileron said, and dropped to his knees before Paul.
A moment later, everyone in the room but Kevin Laine and the three women had done the same. His heart tight with emotion, Kevin suddenly understood a truth about Aileron. This, this was how he led, by pure force of example and conviction. Even Diarmuid, he saw, had followed his brother’s lead.
His eyes met Kim’s across the heads of the kneeling brothers. Not clearly knowing what it was he was acquiescing to, he nodded, and was moved to see the relief that showed in her face. She wasn’t, it seemed, such a stranger after all, white hair notwithstanding.
Aileron rose again, and so did all the others. Paul had not moved or spoken. He seemed to be conserving his strength. Quietly the Prince said, “We are grateful beyond measure for what you have woven.”
Schafer’s mouth moved in what was only half a smile. “I didn’t take your death after all,” he said.
Aileron stiffened; without responding, he spun and walked back to the throne. Ascending the steps, he turned again to face them all, his eyes compelling. “Rakoth is free,” he said. “The stones are broken and we are at war with the Dark. I say to all of you, to you, my brother”—a sudden rawness in the voice—“I tell you that this conflict is what I was born for. I have sensed it all my life without knowing. Now I know. It is my destiny. It is,” cried Aileron, passion blazing in his face, “my war!”
The power of it was overwhelming, a cry of conviction torn whole from the heart. Even Jaelle’s bitter eyes held a kind of acceptance, and there was no mockery at all in Diarmuid’s face.
“You arrogant bastard,” Paul Schafer said.
It was like a kick in the teeth. Even Kevin felt it. He saw Aileron’s head snap back, his eyes go wide with shock.
“How presumptuous can you get?” Paul went on, stepping forward to stand before Aileron. “Your death. Your crown. Your destiny. Your war. Your war?” His voice skirled upward. He put a hand on the table for support.
“Pwyll,” said Loren. “Paul, wait.”
“No!” Schafer snapped. “I hate this, and I hate giving in to it.” He turned back to Aileron. “What about the lios alfar?” he demanded. “Loren tells me twenty of them have died already. What about Cathal? Isn’t it their war, too?” He pointed to Sharra. “And Eridu? And the Dwarves? Isn’t this Matt Sören’s war? And what about the Dalrei? There are two of them here now, and seventeen of them have died. Seventeen of the Dalrei are dead. Dead! Isn’t it their war, Prince Aileron? And look at us. Look at Kim—look at her, at what she’s taken on for you. And”—his voice roughened—“think about Jen, if you will, just for a second, before you lay sole claim to this.”
There was a difficult silence. Aileron’s eyes had never left Paul’s while he spoke, nor did they now. When he began to speak, his tone was very different, a plea almost. “I understand,” he said stiffly. “I understand all of what you are saying, but I cannot change what else I know. Pwyll, I was born into the world to fight this war.”
With a strange light-headedness, Kim Ford spoke then for the first time in public as Seer of Brennin. “Paul,” she said, “everyone, I have to tell you that I’ve seen this. So did Ysanne. That’s why she sheltered him. Paul, what he’s saying is true.”
Schafer looked at her, and the crusading anger she remembered from what he had been before Rachel died faded in the face of her own certitude. Oh, Ysanne, she thought, seeing it happen, how did you stand up under so much weight?
“If you tell me, I will believe it,” Paul said, obviously drained. “But you know it remains his war even if he is not High King of Brennin. He’s still going to fight it. It seems a wrong way to choose a King.”
“Do you have a suggestion?” Loren asked, surprising them all.
“Yes, I do,” Paul said. He let them wait, then, “I suggest you let the Goddess decide. She who sent the moon. Let her Priestess speak her will,” said the Arrow of the God, looking at Jaelle.
They all turned with him. It seemed, in the end, to have a kind of inevitability to it: the Goddess taking back one King and sending forth another in his stead.
She had been waiting, amid the tense dialogue back and forth, for the moment to stop them all and say this thing. Now he had done it for her.
She gazed at him a moment before she rose, tall and beautiful, to let them know the will of Dana and Gwen Ystrat, as had been done long ago in the naming of the Kings. In a room dense with power, hers was not the least, and it was the oldest, by far.
“It is a matter for sorrow,” she began, blistering them with a glance, “that it should take a stranger to Fionavar to remind you of the true order of things. But howsoever that may be, know ye the will of the Goddess—”
“No,” said Diarmuid. And it appeared that there was nothing inevitable after all. “Sorry, sweetling. With all deference to the dazzle of your smile, I don’t want to know ye the will of the Goddess.”
“Fool!” she exclaimed. “Do you want to be cursed?”
“I have been cursed,” Diarmuid said with some feeling. “Rather a good deal lately. I have had quite a lot happen to me today and I need a pint of ale very badly. It has only just occurred to me that as High King I couldn’t very easily drop in to the Boar at night, which is what I propose to do as soon as we’ve crowned my brother and I get this dagger out of my arm.”
Even Paul Schafer was humbled by the relief that flashed in that moment across the bearded face of Aileron dan Ailell, whose mother was Marrien of the Garantae, and who would be crowned later that day by Jaelle, the Priestess, as High King of Brennin to lead that realm and its allies into war against Rakoth Maugrim and all the legions of the Dark.
There was no banquet or celebration; it was a time of mourning and of war. And so at sundown Loren gathered the four of them, with the two young Dalrei Dave refused to be parted from, in the mages’ quarters in the town. One of the Dalrei had a leg wound. That, at least, his magic had been able to deal with. A small consolation, given how much seemed to be beyond him of late.
Looking at his guests, Loren counted it off inwardly. Eight days; only eight days since he had brought them here, yet so much had overtaken them, he could read changes in Dave Martyniuk’s face, and in the tacit bonds that united him to the two Riders. Then, when the big man told his story, Loren began to understand, and he marveled. Ceinwen. Flidais in Pendaran. And Owein’s Horn hanging at Dave’s side.
Whatever power had been flowing through him when he chose to bring these five had been a true one, and deep.
There had been five, though, not four; there were only four in the room, however, and absence resonated among them like a chord.
And then was given voice. “Time to start thinking about how to get her back,” Kevin Laine said soberly. It was interesting, Loren noted, that it was still Kevin who could speak, instinctively, for all of them.
It was a hard thing, but it had to be said. “We will do everything we can,” Loren stated flatly. “But you must be told that if the black swan bore her north, she has been taken by Rakoth himself.”