The Wandering Fire

Jaelle had paled, but again it was Je

It was like cold water in the face; he felt his anger being sluiced away, leaving behind a residue of sorrow and deep pain.

“I know that,” he said after a difficult moment. “I’m sorry. I was frightened last night. The house was the second thing.”

“What was the first?” Jaelle asked, not harshly this time.

“Fordaetha of Rük.”

With some distant satisfaction he saw her hands begin to tremble. “Here?” she whispered. “So far south?” She put her hands in the pockets of her gown.

“She was,” he said quietly. “I drove her back. But not before she killed. I spoke to Loren this morning. Their servant is dead: Zervan. And so is a girl from the tavern.” He turned to Je

”He is to be random,” she replied calmly, standing very tall, golden among the instruments of music. “He is not to be used, Paul.”

So much dark in this, and where were his ravens now? It was a hard, a savage thing, but it had to be said, and so:

“That isn’t really the issue. The issue is whether or not he has to be stopped.”

In the silence that followed they could hear the tread of feet outside in the corridor and the continuing buzz of the crowd not far away. There was a window open. So as not to have to look any more at what his words had done to Je

Behind him Jaelle cleared her throat and spoke with unwonted diffidence. “There is no sign yet of that last, Pwyll,” she said. “Both Vae and her son say so and we have been watching. I am not so foolish as you take me for.”

He turned. “I don’t take you for foolish at all,” he said. He held the look, longer perhaps than necessary, before turning reluctantly to the other woman.

Je

“I know,” Paul said, as gently as he could. “You explained to me.”

“What reason could there be for killing me if… if not because of a child?” How did one comfort a soul to whom this had been done? “What reason, Paul? Could there be another?”

”I don’t know,” he whispered. “You’re probably right, Jen. Please stop.”

She tried; wiped at her tears with both hands. Jaelle walked forward with a square of silk and gave it to her awkwardly. Je

So much yearning in the question, so much of her soul. Kevin would lie, Paul thought. Everyone he knew would lie.

Paul Schafer said, very low, “Good, or a rival, Jen. We can’t know which, and so I must know where he is.”

Somewhere on the road Diarmuid and his men were galloping. They would wield swords and axes in this war, shoot arrows, throw spears. They would be brave or cowardly, kill or die, bonded to each other and to all other men.

He would do otherwise. He would walk alone in darkness to find his own last battle. He who had come back would say the cold truths and the bitter, and make a wounded woman cry as though whatever was left of her heart was breaking even now.

Two women. There were bright, disregarded tears on Jaelle’s cheeks as well. She said, “They have gone to the lake. Ysa

“Why?”

“He is of the andain, Pwyll. I was telling Je

Je

He said, “There is no one I have known so fine as you. Any wound I deal to you is more deeply bestowed upon myself; you must believe this to be true. I did not choose to be what I have become. I am not even sure what that is.”

He could sense her listening.

He said, “You are weeping for fear you have done wrong, or set loose an evil. I will say only that we ca

She had stopped crying. Her hand remained in his, and he did not let it go. She looked up after a moment. “Tell me,” she said to Jaelle, “how are you watching him?”

The Priestess looked uncomfortable. “Leila,” she said.

“The young one?” Paul asked, not comprehending. “The one who spied on us?”

Jaelle nodded. She walked over to the horizontally mounted harp and plucked two strings before answering. “She is tuned to the brother,” she whispered. “Exactly how, I don’t understand, but she sees Fi

His throat was dry again with fear. “What about an attack? Can’t they just take him?”

“Why should they be attacked,” Jaelle replied, lightly touching the instrument, “a mother and two children? Who knows they are even there?”

He drew a breath. It felt like such naked, undefended folly. “Wolves?” he pursued. “Galadan’s wolves?”

Jaelle shook her head. “They never go there,” she said. “They never have. There is a power by that lake warding them.”

“What power?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I truly don’t. No one in Gwen Ystrat knows.”

“Kim does, I’ll bet,” said Je

They were silent for a long time, listening to the Priestess at the harp. The notes followed one another at random, the way a child might play.

Eventually there came a knocking.

“Yes?” said Paul.

The door opened, and Brendel stepped inside. “I heard the music,” he said. “I was looking for you.” His gaze was on Je

They all rose. Je

Kim was edgy and afraid. They had been pla

Frenzied, but controlled. Loren and Matt and Brock, grim-faced, all three of them, hurried off, and so Kim and Arthur, alone in the mages’ quarters, went upstairs and watched the preparations from a second-floor window. It was clear, both to her untrained glance and to his profoundly expert one, that there was a guiding purpose to the chaos below. She saw people she recognized rushing or riding past: Gorlaes, Coll, Brock again; Kevin, racing around the corner with a ba