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cheek and ran from the hall to find Laesha, leaving a normally phlegmatic
Dwarf in a remarkably unsettled state.
And so did it come to pass, three hours later, that the two women had galloped
with Diarmuid's man to the crest of a ridge east of the town, where they
stilled their tired horses in disbelief, as a small party of ethereal figures
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ascended the slope towards them, their tread so light the grass seemed not to
bend beneath their feet.
"Welcome!" said their leader as he stopped before them. He bowed, his long
silver hair glinting in the light. "This hour is brightly woven." His voice
was like music in a high place. He spoke directly to Jennifer. She was aware
that Drance beside her, the prosaic soldier, had tears shining on his
transfigured face.
"Will you come down among the trees and feast with us this evening?" the
silver-haired figure asked. "You are most welcome. My name is Brendel of the
Kestrel Mark, from Daniloth. We are the lios alfar."
The return to Brennin was almost effortless, as if they were being propelled
homeward by a following wind. Erron, fluid and agile, went first again on the
climb back up the cliff, and he hammered iron spikes into the rock face for
the rest of them.
They came again to the horses, mounted, and began galloping north once more on
the dusty roads of the High Kingdom. The mood was exhilarated and chaotic.
Joining in the bawdy chorus of a song Coll was leading, Kevin couldn't
remember feeling happier; after the incident on the river, he and Paul seemed
to have been completely accepted by the band, and because he respected these
men, that acceptance mattered. Erron was becoming a friend, and so, too, was
Carde, singing away on Kevin's left side. Paul, on the other side, wasn't
singing, but he didn't seem unhappy, and he had a lousy voice anyway.
Just past midday they came to the same inn where they had stopped before.
Diarmuid called a halt for lunch and a quick beer, which became, given the
prevailing mood, several slow beers. Coll, Kevin noticed, had disappeared.
The extended break meant that they were going to miss the banquet in the Great
Hall that night.
Diarmuid didn't seem to care.
"It's the Black Boar tonight, my friends," he announced, glittering and
exhilarated at the head of the table. "I'm in no mood for court manners.
Tonight I celebrate with you and let the manners look after themselves.
Tonight we take our pleasure. Will you drink with me to the Dark Rose of
Cathal?"
Kevin cheered with the others, drank with the others.
Kimberly had dreamt again. The same one at first: the stones, the ring, the
wind-and the same grief in her heart. And again she woke just as the words of
power reached her lips.
This time, though, she had fallen asleep again, to find another dream waiting,
as if at the bottom of a pool.
She was in the room of Ailell the King. She saw him tossing restlessly on his
bed, saw the young page asleep on his pallet. Even as she watched, Ailell woke
in the dark of his chamber. A long time he lay still, breathing raggedly, then
she saw him rise painfully, as if against his own desire. He lit a candle and
carried it to an inner doorway in the room, through which he passed.
Invisible, insubstantial, she followed the King down a corridor lit only by
the weaving candle he bore, and she paused with him before another door, into
which was set a sliding view-hole.
When Ailell put his eyes to the aperture, somehow she was looking with him,
seeing what he saw, and Kimberly saw with the High King the white naal fire
and the deep blue shining of Ginserat's stone, set into the top of its pillar.
Only after a long time did Ailell withdraw, and in the dream Kim saw herself
move to look again, standing on tiptoe to gaze with her own eyes into the room
of the stone.
And looking in, she saw no stone at all, and the room was dark.
Wheeling in terror, she saw the High King walking back towards his chamber,
and waiting there for him in the doorway was a shadowed figure that she knew.
His face rigid as if it were stone, Paul Schafer stood before Ailell, and he
was holding a chess piece in his outstretched hand, and coming nearer to them,
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Kim saw that it was the white king, and it was broken. There was a music all
about them that she couldn't recognize, although she knew she should. Ailell
spoke words she could not hear because the music was too loud, and then Paul
spoke, and she needed desperately to hear, but the music . . . And then the
King held high his candle and began to speak again, and she could not, could
not, could not.
Then everything was blasted to nothingness by the howling of a dog, so loud it
filled the universe.
And she awoke to the morning sunlight and the smell of food frying over the
cooking fire.
"Good morning," said Ysanne. "Come and eat, before Malka steals it all. Then I
have something to show you."
Coll rejoined them on the road north of the town. Paul Schafer eased his horse
over to the roan stallion the big man rode.
"Being discreet?" he asked.
Above his broken nose Coil's eyes were guarded. "Not exactly. But he wanted to
do something."
"Which means?"
"The man had to die, but his wife and children can be helped."
"So you've paid them. Is that why he delayed just now in the tavern? To give
you time? It wasn't just because he felt like drinking, was it?"
Coll nodded. "He often feels like drinking," he said wryly, "but he very
rarely acts without reason.
Tell me," he went on, as Schafer remained silent, "Do you think he did wrong?"
Paul's expression was unreadable.
"Gorlaes would have hanged him," Coll pressed, "and had the body torn apart.
His family would have been dispossessed of their land. Now his eldest son is
going to South Keep to be trained as one of us. Do you really think he did
wrong?"
"No," said Schafer slowly, "I'm just thinking that with everyone else
starving, that farmer's treason was probably the best way he could find to
take care of his family. Do you have a family, Coll?"
To which Diarmuid's lieutenant, who didn't, and who was still trying to like
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