him about her meeting with Jaelle two days ago. The Dwarf blinked when she explained how she was made guest-friend, and again when she described Jaelle’s questions about Loren. But once more he reassured her.
“She is all malice, Jaelle, all bright, bitter malice. But she is not evil, only ambitious.”
“She hates Ysanne. She hates Diarmuid.”
“Ysanne, she would hate. Diarmuid… arouses strong feelings in most people.” The Dwarf’s mouth twisted in his difficult smile. “She seeks to know every secret there is. Jaelle may suspect we had a fifth person, but even if she were certain, she would never tell Gorlaes—who is someone to be wary of.”
“We’ve hardly seen him.”
“He is with Ailell, almost all the time. Which is why he is to be feared. It was a dark day for Brennin,” Matt Sören said, “when the elder Prince was sent away.”
“The King turned to Gorlaes?” Jennifer guessed.
The Dwarf’s glance at her was keen. “You are clever,” he said. “That is exactly what happened.”
“What about Diarmuid?”
“What about Diarmuid?” Matt repeated, in a tone so unexpectedly exasperated, she laughed aloud. After a moment, the Dwarf chuckled, too, low in his chest.
Jennifer smiled. There was a solid strength to Matt Sören, a feeling of deeply rooted common sense. Jennifer Lowell had come into adulthood trusting few people entirely, especially men, but, she realized in that moment, the Dwarf was now one of them. In a curious way, it made her feel better about herself.
“Matt,” she said, as a thought struck her, “Loren left without you. Did you stay here for us?”
“Just to keep an eye on things.” With a gesture at the patch over his right eye, he turned it into a kind of joke.
She smiled, but then looked at him a long moment, her green eyes sober. “How did you get that?”
“The last war with Cathal,” he said simply. “Thirty years ago.”
“You’ve been here that long?”
“Longer, Loren has been a mage for over forty years now.”
“So?” She didn’t get the connection. He told her. There was an easiness to the mood they shared that morning, and Jennifer’s beauty had been known to make taciturn men talkative before.
She listened, taking in, as Paul had three nights before, the story of Amairgen’s discovery of the skylore, and the secret forging that would bind mage and source for life in a union more complete than any in all the worlds.
When Matt finished, Jennifer rose and walked a few steps. Trying to absorb the impact of what she had been told. This was more than marriage, this went to the very essence of being. The mage, from what Matt had just said, was nothing without his source, only a repository of knowledge, utterly powerless. And the source…
“You’ve surrendered all of your independence!” she said, turning back to the Dwarf, hurling it almost as a challenge.
“Not all,” he said mildly. “You give some up any time you share your life with someone. The bonding just goes deeper, and there are compensations.”
“You were a king, though. You gave up—”
“That was before,” Matt interrupted. “Before I met Loren. I… prefer not to talk about it.”
She was abashed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was prying.”
The Dwarf grimaced, but by now she knew it for his smile. “Not really,” he said. “And no matter. It is a very old wound.”
“It’s just so strange,” she explained. “I can’t even grasp what it must mean.”
“I know. Even here they do not understand the six of us. Or the Law that governs the Council of the Mages. We are feared, respected, very seldom loved.”
“What Law?” she asked.
At that he hesitated, then rose. “Let us walk,” Matt said. “I will tell you a story, though I warn you, you would do better with one of the cyngael, for I am a poor tale-spinner.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Jennifer said with a smile.
As they started to walk the outer edges of the hall, he began. “Four hundred years ago, the High King went mad. Vailerth was his name, the only son of Lernath, who was the last King of Brennin to die on the Summer Tree.”
She had questions about that, too, but held her peace. “Vailerth was brilliant as a child,” Matt continued, “or so the records from that time say, but it seems something bent in him after his father died and he came to the throne. A dark flower blossomed in his brain, the Dwarves say when such a thing occurs.
“First Mage to Vailerth was a man called Nilsom, whose source was a woman. Aideen