“Oh,” said Matt Sören.
Loren said nothing. It was in his face.
“My lord First Mage of Brennin,” Diarmuid said, holding his emotion rigidly in check. “Will you accept as a gift from me a thing of greatest worth? This is the staff of Amairgen Whitebranch that Lisen made for him so long ago.”
Paul clenched his hands. So many levels of sorrow. It seemed that someone else hadn’t made it past this point either. Now they knew what had happened to the first and greatest of the mages.
Loren took the staff and held it sideways, cradled in both his hands. For all its years in the sea, the white wood was unworn and unsullied, and Paul knew there was a power in it.
“Wield it, Silvercloak!” he heard Diarmuid say. “Take revenge for him, for all the dead. Let his staff be used at Cader Sedat. For this did I bring it back.”
Loren’s fingers closed tightly around the wood.
”Be it so,” was all he said, but the sound of doom was in his voice.
“Be it so now, then,” said a deeper voice. They turned. “The wind has shifted,” Arthur said.
“North,” said Coll after a second.
Arthur looked only at Loren. “We reach Cader Sedat by sailing due north into a north wind. Can you do this, mage?”
Loren and Matt turned to each other as Paul had seen them do before. They exchanged an intensely private glance, unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world. Matt was desperately weary, he knew, and Loren had to be, as well, but he also knew it wasn’t going to matter.
He saw the mage look up at Coll. He saw the bleakness of his smile. “Man your ship,” he heard Loren say, “and point her to the north.”
They hadn’t noticed the dawn coming on. But as Coll and the men of South Keep sprang to obey, the sun leaped up behind them out of the sea.
Then it was on their right, as Coll of Taerlindel grappled his ship over straight into the strong north wind. Loren had gone below. When he reappeared he was clad in the cloak of shifting silver hues that gave him his name. Tall and stern, his hour begun at last, his and Matt’s, he strode to Prydwen’s prow and he carried the staff of Amairgen Whitebranch. Beside him, equally stern, equally proud, walked Matt Sören, who had once been King under Banir Lok and had forsaken that destiny for the one that led him to this place.
“Cenolan!” Loren cried. He extended the staff straight out in front of him. “Sed amairgen, sed remagan, den sedath iren!” He hurled the words out over the waves, and power surged through them like a greater wave. Paul heard a roar of sound, a rushing of winds as if from all the corners of the sea. They flowed around Prydwen as Liranan’s whirlpool had spun past her sides and, after a chaotic, swirling moment Paul saw that they were sailing on a hushed and windless sea, utterly calm, like glass, while on either side of them the wild winds raged.
And ahead, not very far at all, lit by the morning sun, lay an island with a castle high upon it, and the island was slowly revolving in the glassy sea. The windows of the castle were begrimed and smeared and so, too, were its walls.
“It shone once,” Arthur said quietly.
From the very highest point of the castle a black plume of smoke was rising, straight as a rod, into the sky. The island was rocky and bare of vegetation.
“It was green once,” Arthur said. “Cavall!”
The dog was growling and straining forward, his teeth bared. He quieted when Arthur spoke.
Loren never moved. He held the staff rigidly before him.
There were no guards. Soulmonger had been guard enough. When they came close, the spinning of the island stopped. Paul guessed that they were spinning with it now, but he had no idea where they were. It was not Fionavar, though, that much he understood.
Coll ordered the anchors cast overboard.
Loren lowered his arm. He looked at Matt. The Dwarf nodded once, then found a place to sit. They rode at anchor in the windless sea just offshore from Cader Sedat.
“All right,” said Loren Silvercloak. “Diarmuid, Arthur, I don’t care how you do it, but this is what I need.”
It is a place of death, Arthur had said to him. As they came near, Paul realized that it had been meant literally. There was a tomblike feel to the castle. The very doors—four of them, Arthur said—were set within the slopes of the grey mound from which Cader Sedat rose. The walls climbed high, but the entranceway went down into the earth.
They stood before one of these great iron doors, and for once Paul saw Diarmuid hesitate. Loren and Matt had gone another way to another door. There were no guards to be seen. The deep silence was unsettling. Nothing lived near that place, Paul saw, and was afraid.
“The door will open,” said Arthur quietly. “Getting out again was the hard thing, last time.”
Diarmuid smiled then. He seemed about to say something, but instead he went forward and pushed on the door of Cader Sedat. It opened soundlessly. He stepped aside and, with a gesture, motioned Arthur to lead them. The Warrior drew a sword and went in. Forty of them followed him out of the sunlight into the dark.
It was very cold; even Paul felt it. This chill went beyond the protection of Mórnir, and he was not proof against it. The dead, Paul thought, and then had another thought: this was the center, where they were, everything spiraled around this island. Wherever it was. In whatever world.
The corridors were dusty. Spiderwebs tangled them as they walked. There were branching hallways everywhere, and most of them led down. It was very dark, and Paul could see nothing along those corridors. Their own path led upward, on a slowly rising slant, and after what seemed a long time they rounded a corner and, not far off, saw a glow of greenish light.
Very close to them, not five feet away, another corridor branched left, and up. From it, running, came a svart alfar.
The svart had time to see them. Time to open his mouth. No time to scream. Six arrows ripped into him. He threw up his arms and died.
Flat out, without thought, Paul dived. A guess, a glimpse. With one desperate hand outstretched he caught the flask the svart had carried before it could smash on the floor. He rolled as he landed, as silently as he could. They waited. A moment later Arthur nodded. No alarm had been raised.
Paul scrambled to his feet and walked back to the others. Wordlessly, Diarmuid handed back his sword.
“Sorry,” Paul murmured. He had tossed it without warning when he leaped.
“I will bleed to death,” Diamuid whispered, holding up the scratched hand with which he’d made the catch. “What was he carrying?”
Paul handed over the flask. Diarmuid unstoppered it and sniffed at the neck. He lifted his head, mock astonishment visible even in the wan green light.
“By the river blood of Lisen,” said the Prince softly. “South Keep wine!” And he raised the flask and took a long drink. “Anyone else?” he asked politely.
There were, predictably, no takers, but even Arthur allowed himself a smile.
Diarmuid’s expression changed. “Well done, Pwyll,” he said crisply. “Garde, get the body out of the hallway. My lord Arthur, shall we go look at a renegade mage?”
In the shadows Paul thought he saw starlight flash for a moment in the Warrior’s eyes. He looked at Cavall, remembering something. In silence, he followed the two leaders down the last corridor. Near the end they dropped to their knees and crawled. Diarmuid made room for him, and Paul wriggled along on his belly and came up to the doorway beside the Prince. They lay there, the three of them, with the South Keep men behind, and looked out over a scene shaped to appal.
Five steps led down from the arched doorway where they were. There were a number of other entrances to the huge chamber below. The roof was so high it was lost in darkness. The floor was illuminated, though: there were torches set around the walls, burning with the eerie green light they had seen from the corridor. The doorway they had reached was about midway along the Great Hall of Cader Sedat. At the head of the chamber, on a dais, stood Metran, once First Mage of Brennin, and beside him was the Cauldron of Khath Meigol over a roaring fire.