Jaelle hesitated. “I heard it. yes.”
“No one else?”
“I was tapping the avarlith for her.”
“I remember. It was unexpected.” She made an impatient movement. “They listened to you then?”
“Eventually.” This time she gave nothing away. He could guess, though, what had happened, knowing the deep mistrust the men in the Great Hall that morning would have had for the High Priestess.
“What now?” was all he said.
“We wait for spring. Aileron takes council with everyone who will talk to him, but everyone waits for spring. Where is the Seer?” Some urgency there.
“Waiting also. For a dream.”
“Why are you here?” she asked.
Smile fading, then, with no levity at all, he told her: Arrow of Mórnir to Priestess of the Mother. Everything. Softly he gave her the name of the child and, more softly yet, who the father was.
She didn’t move during the telling of it or after; no indication anywhere in her of the impact. He had to admire her self-control. Then she asked again, but in a different voice, “Why are you here?”
And he said, “Because you made Jennifer a guest-friend last spring.” She hadn’t been ready for that—this time it showed in her face. A triumph for him of sorts, but the moment was too high by far for petty score-keeping in the power game. He went on, to take away the sting, “Loren would mistrust the wildness of this too much, but I thought you could deal with it. We need you.”
“You trust me with this?”
His turn to gesture impatiently. “Oh, Jaelle, don’t exaggerate your own malevolence. You aren’t happy with the power balance here, any fool can see that. But only a very great fool would confuse that with where you stand in this war. You serve the Goddess who sent up that moon, Jaelle. I am least likely of all men to forget it.”
She seemed very young in that moment. There was a woman beneath the white robe, a person, not merely an icon; he’d made the mistake of trying to tell her that once, in this very room, with the rain falling outside.
“What do you need?” she said.
His tone was crisp. “A watch on the child. Complete secrecy, of course, which is another reason I came to you.”
“I will have to tell the Mormae in Gwen Ystrat.”
“I thought as much.” He rose, began pacing as he spoke. “It is all the same, I gather, within the Mormae?”
She nodded. “It is all the same, within any level of the Priestesshood, but it will be kept to the inner circle.”
“All right,” he said, and stopped his pacing very close to her. “But you have a problem then.”
“What?”
“This!” And reaching past her, he pulled open an inner door and grabbed the listener beyond, pulling her into the room so that she sprawled on the carpeted floor.
“Leila!” Jaelle exclaimed.
The girl adjusted her grey robe and rose to her feet. There was a hint of apprehension in her eyes, but only a hint, Paul saw, and she held her head very high, facing the two of them.
“You may owe a death for this.” Jaelle’s tone was glacial.
Leila said hardily, “Are we to discuss it with a man here?”
Jaelle hesitated, but only for a second. “We are,” she replied, and Paul was startled by a sudden change in her tone. “Leila,” the High Priestess said gently, “you must not lecture me, I am not Shiel or Marline. You have worn grey for ten days only, and you must understand your place.”
It was too soft for Paul’s liking. “The hell with that! What was she doing there? What did she hear?”
“I heard it all,” Leila said.
Jaelle was astonishingly calm. “I believe it,” she said. “Now tell me why.”
“Because of Finn,” said Leila. “Because I could tell he came from Finn.”
“Ah,” said Jaelle slowly. She walked toward the child then and, after a moment, stroked a long finger down her cheek in an unsettling caress. “Of course.”
“I’m lost,” said Paul.
They both turned to him. “You shouldn’t be,” Jaelle said, in complete control again. “Did Jennifer not tell you about the ta’kiena?”
“Yes, but—”
“And why she wanted to bear her child in Vae’s house? Finn’s mother’s house?”
“Oh.” It clicked. He looked at slim, fair-haired Leila. “This one?” he asked.
The girl answered him herself. “I called Finn to the Road. Three times, and then another. I am tuned to him until he goes.”
There was a silence. “All right, Leila,” Jaelle said. “Leave us now. You have done what you had to do. Never breathe a word.”
“I don’t think I could,” said Leila, in a small voice. “For Finn. There is an ocean inside me sometimes. I think it would overrun me if I tried.” She turned and left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Looking at the Priestess in the light of the tall candles, Paul realized that he had never seen pity in her eyes before.
“You will do nothing?” he murmured.
Jaelle nodded her head, still looking at the door through which the girl had gone. “Anyone else I would have killed, believe me.”
“But not this one?”
“Not this one.”
“Why?”
She turned to him. “Leave me this secret,” she said softly. “There are some mysteries best not known, Pwyll. Even for you.” It was the first time she had spoken his name. Their eyes met, and this time it was Paul who looked away. Her scorn he could master, but this look in her eyes evoked access to a power older and deeper, even, than the one he had touched on the Tree.
He cleared his throat. “We should be gone by morning.”
“I know,” said Jaelle. “I will send in a moment to have her brought here.”
“If I could do it myself,” he said, “I would not ask this of you. I know it will drain the earthroot, the avarlith.”
She shook her head; the candlelight made highlights in her hair. “You did a deep thing to bring her here by yourself. The Weaver alone knows how.”
“Well, I certainly don’t,” he said. An admission.
They were silent. It was very still in the sanctuary, in her room.
“Darien,” she said.
He drew a breath. “I know. Are you afraid?”
“Yes,” she said. “And you?”
“Very much.”
They looked at each other across the carpeted space that lay between, a distance impossibly far.
“We had better get moving,” he said finally.
She raised her arm and pulled a cord nearby. Somewhere a bell rang. When they came in response she gave swift, careful orders, and it seemed very soon when the priestesses returned, bearing Jennifer.
After that it took little time. They went into the dome and the man was blindfolded. She took the blood from herself, which surprised some of them; then she reached east to Gwen Ystrat, found Audiart first, then the others. They were made aware, manifested acceptance, then traveled down together, touched Dun Maura, and felt the earthroot flow through them all.
“Good-bye,” she heard him say, as it changed for her, in the way it always had—the way that had marked her even as a child—into a streaming as of moonlight through her body. She channeled it, gave thanks, and then spun the avarlith forth to send them home.
After, she was too weary to do anything but sleep.
In the house by the green where the ta’kiena had been chanted, Vae held her new child in her arms by the fire. The grey-robed priestesses had brought milk and swaddling clothes and promised other things. Finn had already put together a makeshift crib for Darien.
She had let him hold his brother for a moment, her heart swelling to see the brightness in his eyes. It might even keep him here, she thought; perhaps this awesome thing was so powerful it might overmaster the call that Finn had heard. It might.