“I think so. He can do almost anything he wants with so much power.”
The two of them turned to lean on the railing on either side of Matt. They gazed out at the empty sea.
“I took flowers to Aideen’s grave,” the Dwarf said, after a moment. “With Jennifer.”
Loren looked at him. “I don’t think Denbarra has her choice,” he repeated after a moment.
“In the beginning he did,” the Dwarf growled.
“Were I Metran, what would you have done?”
“Cut your heart out!” Matt Sören said.
Loren looked at his source, a smile beginning to play about his mouth. “Would you?” he asked.
For a long time Matt glared back at him. Then he grimaced and shook his head. He turned once more to the sea. Paul felt something ease in his heart. Not to lightness, but toward acceptance and resignation. He wasn’t sure why he found strength in the Dwarf’s admission, but he did, and he knew he had need of that strength, with greater need yet to come.
He’d been sleeping badly since Kevin died, so Paul had volunteered to take one of the pre-dawn watches. It was a time to think and remember. The only sounds were the creaking of the ship and the slap of waves in the darkness below. Overhead, Prydwen’s three sails were full, and they were running easily with the wind. There were four other watchmen stationed around the deck, and red-haired Averren was at the helm.
With no one near him, it was a very private time, almost a peaceful one. He went with his memories. Kevin’s death would never be less than a grief, nor would it ever be less than a thing of wonder, of glory, even. So many people died in war, so many had died already in this one, but none had dealt such a blow to the Dark as they passed over into Night. And none, he thought, ever would. Rahod hedai Liadon, the priestesses had moaned in the Temple at Paras Derval, while outside the green grass was coming back in a night. Already, through the net of sorrow that wrapped his heart, Paul could feel a light beginning to shine. Let Rakoth Maugrim fear, and everyone in Fionavar—even cold Jaelle— acknowledge what Kevin had wrought, what his soul had been equal to.
And yet, he thought, to be fair, Jaelle had acknowledged it to him twice. He shook his head. The High Priestess with her emerald eyes was more than he could deal with now. He thought of Rachel and remembered music. Her music, and then Kev’s, in the tavern. They would share it now, forever, in him. A difficult realization, that.
“Am I intruding?”
Paul glanced back and, after a moment, shook his head.
“Night thoughts,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Coll murmured, and moved up to the railing. “Thought I might be of some use up top, but it’s a quiet night and Averren knows his business.”
Paul smiled again. Listened to the easy sound of the ship and the sea. “It’s a strange hour,” he said. “I like it, actually. I’ve never been to sea before.”
“I grew up on ships,” Coll said quietly. “This feels like coming home.”
“Why did you leave, then?”
“Diar asked me to,” the big man said simply. Paul waited and, after a moment, Coll clasped his hands loosely over the rail and went on. “My mother worked in the tavern at Taerlindel. I never knew who my father was. All the mariners brought me up, it sometimes seemed. Taught me what they knew. My first memories are of being held up to steer a ship when I was too small to reach the tiller on my own.”
His voice was deep and low. Paul remembered the one other time the two of them had talked alone at night. About the Summer Tree. How many years ago it seemed.
Coll said, “I was seventeen when Diarmuid and Aileron first came to spend a summer at Taerlindel. I was older than both of them and minded to despise the royal brats. But Aileron… did everything impossibly quickly and impossibly well, and Diar…” He paused. A remembering smile played over his face.
“And Diar did everything his own way, and equally well, and he beat me in a fight outside my mother’s father’s house. Then, to apologize, he disguised us both and took me to the tavern where my mother worked. I wasn’t allowed in there, you see. Even my mother didn’t know me that night—they thought I’d come from Paras Derval with one of the court women.”
“Women?” Paul asked.
“Diar was the girl. He was young, remember.” They laughed softly in the dark. “I was wondering about him, just a little; then he got two of the town girls to walk with us on the beach beyond the track.”
“I know it,” said Paul.
Coll glanced at him. “They came because they thought Diarmuid was a woman and I was a lord from Paras Derval. We spent three hours on the beach. I’d never laughed so hard in my life as I did when he took off his skirt to swim and I saw their faces.”
They were both smiling. Paul was beginning to understand something, though not yet something else.
“Later, when his mother died, he was made Warden of the South Marches—I think they wanted him out of Paras Derval as much as anything else. He was even wilder in those days. Younger, and he’d loved the Queen, too. He came to Taerlindel and asked me to be his Second, and I went.”
The moon was west, as if leading them on. Paul said, looking at it, “He’s been lucky to have you. For ballast. And Sharra now, too. I think she’s a match for him.”
Coll nodded. “I think so. He loves her. He loves very strongly.”
Paul absorbed that, and after a moment it began to clear up the one puzzle he hadn’t quite understood.
He looked over at Coll. He could make out the square, honest face and the large many-times-broken nose. He said, “The one other night we talked alone, you said to me that had you any power you would curse Aileron. You weren’t even supposed to name him, then. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” said Coll clamly. Around them the quiet sounds of the ship seemed only to deepen the night stillness.
“Is it because he took all the father’s love?”
Coll looked at him, still calm. “In part,” he said. “You were good at guessing things from the start, I remember. But there is another thing, and you should be able to guess that too.”
Paul thought about it. “Well—” he began.
The sound of singing came to them over the water.
“Listen!” cried Averren, quite unnecessarily.
They all listened, the seven men awake on Prydwen. The singing was coming from ahead of them and off to starboard.
Averren moved the tiller over that they might come nearer to it. Elusive and faint was that sound, thin and beautiful. Like a fragile web it spun out of the dark toward them, woven of sweet sadness and allure. There were a great many voices twined together in it.
Paul had heard that song before. “We’re in trouble,” he said.
Coll’s head whipped around. “What?”
The monster’s head broke water off the starboard bow. Up and up it went, towering over Prydwen’s masts. The moon lit its gigantic flat head: the lidless eyes, the gaping, carnivorous jaws, the mottled grey-green slimy skin. Prydwen grated on something. Averren grappled with the helm and Coll hurried to aid him. One of the watchmen screamed a warning.
Paul caught a glimpse in the uncertain moonlight of something white, like a horn, between the monster’s terrible eyes. He still heard the singing, clear, heartachingly beautiful. A sick premonition swept over him. He turned instinctively. On the other side of Prydwen the monster’s tail had curved and it was raised, blotting the southern sky, to smash down on them!
Raven wings. He knew.
“Soulmonger!” Paul screamed. “Loren, make a shield!”
He saw the huge tail reach its full height. Saw it coming down with the force of malignant death, to crush them out of life. Then saw it smash brutally into nothing but air. Prydwen bounced like a toy with the shock of it, but the mage’s shield held. Loren came running up on deck, Diarmuid and Arthur supporting Matt Sören. Paul glimpsed the racking strain in the Dwarf’s face and then deliberately cut himself off from all sensation. There was no time to waste. He reached within for the pulse of Mórnir.