What was even more surprising to Shalhassan, ultimately, was how entertaining he found the music and the ambience and the undeniably pert serving women in the huge downstairs rooms of the Black Boar tavern and a smaller, darker room upstairs.
It was a late night.
If he did nothing further, Paul thought, nothing at all from now until whatever ending lay waiting for them, no one could tax him with not having done his share.
He was lying on the strand near the river, a little apart, as usual, from all the others. He had lain awake for hours, watching the wheeling stars, listening to the sea. The moon had climbed as high as it could go and was westering now. It was very late.
He lay by himself and thought about the night he had ended the drought and then about the predawn hour when he had seen the Soulmonger and summoned Liranan, with Gereint’s aid, to battle Rakoth’s monster in the sea. And then he let his mind come forward to the moment, earlier this evening, when he had spoken with the voice of Mórnir, and the sea god had answered again and stilled the waves to let the mariners of Prydwen survive the Weaver’s storm.
He had also, he knew, done something else almost a year ago: his had been the crossing between the worlds that had saved Jennifer from Galadan and allowed Darien to be born.
He wondered if those who came after would curse his name for that. He wondered if there would be anyone to come after.
He had done his part in this war. No one could question that. Furthermore, he knew, no one but himself would even think to raise the issue. The reproaches here, the sleeplessness, the striving, always, for something more—all of it was internal, a part of the pattern of his life.
The pattern that seemed woven into what he was, even in Fionavar. It lay at the heart of why Rachel had left him, it encompassed the solitariness Kevin Laine had tried so hard to break through—and had, in some way Paul still hadn’t found time to assimilate.
But solitude appeared, truly, to be bound into the tangled roots of what he was. Alone on the Summer Tree he’d come into his power, and it seemed that even in the midst of a great many people, he still came into it alone. His gift seemed profoundly secret, even from himself. It was cryptic and self-contained, shaped of hidden lore, and solitary stubborn resistance to the Dark. He could speak with gods and hear them but never move among them, and every such exchange drew him farther away from everyone he knew, as if he’d needed something to do that. Not feeling the cold of the winter or the lash of the rain that had passed. Sent back by the God. He was the arrow of Mórnir, and arrows flew alone.
He was, he realized, hopelessly far from falling asleep. He looked at the half-moon, out over the sea. It seemed to be calling him.
He rose, with the sound of the surf loud in his ears. North, toward the Anor, he could see the shadows that were the sleeping men of South Keep. Behind him the river ran west toward the sea. He followed it. As he walked, the sand became pebbles and then boulders. He climbed up on one of them by the water’s edge and saw, by moonlight, that he was not the only sleepless person on the beach that night.
He almost turned back. But something—a memory of another beach the night before Prydwen had sailed—made him hesitate, and then speak to the figure sitting on the dark rock nearest to the lapping waves.
“We seem to be reversing roles. Shall I give you a cloak?” It came out more sardonically than he’d intended. But it didn’t seem to matter. Her icy self-possession was unsettlingly complete.
Without turning or startling, her gaze still on the water, Jaelle murmured, “I’m not cold. You were, that night. Does it bother you so much?”
Immediately he was sorry he’d spoken. This always seemed to happen when they met: this polarity of Dana and Mórnir. He half turned to climb back down and away but then stopped, held by stubbornness more than anything else.
He drew a breath and, carefully keeping any inflection from his voice, said, “It really doesn’t, Jaelle. I spoke by way of greeting, nothing more. Not everything anyone says to you has to be taken as a