her. “And you believe that if you bring me to Boann’s ark, she will trust you again?”
The lines around Deirdre’s eyes smoothed. “Yes.”
In her gaze Nicodemus saw a desire so strong that it had become emptiness. She had lost part of herself. She was disabled in love. Just as he would be incomplete until he regained his ability to spell, she would be incomplete until she regained her perfect love.
“And so Kyran and I came to Starhaven to atone,” she said. “Last spring, Boann ordered us to join the druidic delegation that was passing through the Highlands. We brought many of Boann’s devotees and her ark. The other druids, the ones we couldn’t go to when fleeing Starhaven, are the true diplomats who came with concerns about the Silent Blight.They do not trust us; they tolerated us only because they could not refuse a goddess’s request.”
The woman’s fingers clenched into fists. “We must go to Boann as soon as possible.”
Nicodemus frowned. “But I have questions for the Chthonics. I might learn something more of Language Prime. Besides, Fellwroth must be watching Gray’s Crossing. We have to wait—”
“No!” Deirdre’s sharp retort made Simple John stir in his sleep.
“No,” she continued in a lowered voice. “If you don’t come, Boann may send me into another seizure. She may force me to do things I don’t want to.” She was looking at him now with eyes wide with fear.
Nicodemus felt his hands go cold. “You haven’t abducted me yet, Deirdre. You could have easily done so. Your goddess must know it would be foolish. Fellwroth would find us.”
Deirdre pressed a trembling hand to her chin. “Before I met Kyran, I was sure of everything. ‘Deirdre wry-smile’ they called me. You must have seen it sometime. I used to wear that smile like armor. My love for Boann was so true that I found mortals—with their dithering uncertainties—somehow amusing. But now the half-smile runs off my face like water.”
“You wore that smile when I met you.”
“I have embraced every sacrifice Boann required,” she continued, “leaving my husband, my sons, the society of other mortals. I did not miss them so long as I basked in her love. But now…now that Kyran has died because I…”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “And such horrible dreams I have—dreams of standing on a riverbank and being stabbed somehow by a wolf with a man’s head and glowing red eyes.”
Nicodemus’s head bobbed back. “In a Highland river?”
She nodded.
Nicodemus spoke excitedly. “Fellwroth killed Typhon in a Highland river, cut the demon into fragments with some kind of disspelling wand. I saw it happen when the golem touched me. And on the road, Fellwroth said Typhon was trying to infect a minor deity. Perhaps it was your goddess.”
Deirdre looked at him. “Then that must be how my goddess knew of you. She is the sovereign of Highland rivers; she must have seen Fellwroth betray his master. Somehow she must have extracted knowledge of you from the dead demon. That must be why she sends the visions to me. She has invested so much of her soul in me that she cannot express herself outside of her ark. She has no direct way of communicating with me, except by controlling”—she looked down at her lap—“this body.”
Again Nicodemus thought about how she had been disabled by love. He thought about John who, out of love, had sought to protect Nicodemus and who now suffered unimaginably because he had loved Devin. He thought also about what Deirdre had done to Kyran and what Kyran had done to himself.
Gently, he placed a hand on Deirdre’s shoulder. “What you did, you did out of love.”
She laughed cruelly. “Don’t be a romantic fool. There’s no force more savage. My love for Boann destroyed my love for Kyran, then destroyed the man himself.”
“He chose his path.”
Again, the hard laugh. “In that, then, he and I were alike; we loved too well. We all love too well.” She closed her eyes. “Will you read me Kyran’s last message now?”
He looked down at the dim green sentence in his left hand. It was so simple that even his cacographic mind had not misspelled the translation: “I loved you always; I love you still.”
He read it aloud.
Deirdre bent forward, her chin on her chest. Again she wore the half-smile, but it no longer held wry amusement. It pulled her face down into a gruesome mask. She shook silently.
When Nicodemus squeezed her hand, she pulled him into an embrace.