not yet something else.
“Later, when his mother died, he was made Warden of the South Marches—I think they wanted him out of Paras Derval as much as anything else. He was even wilder in those days. Younger, and he’d loved the Queen, too. He came to Taerlindel and asked me to be his Second, and I went.”
The moon was west, as if leading them on. Paul said, looking at it, “He’s been lucky to have you. For ballast. And Sharra now, too. I think she’s a match for him.”
Coll nodded. “I think so. He loves her. He loves very strongly.”
Paul absorbed that, and after a moment it began to clear up the one puzzle he hadn’t quite understood.
He looked over at Coll. He could make out the square, honest face and the large many-times-broken nose. He said, “The one other night we talked alone, you said to me that had you any power you would curse Aileron. You weren’t even supposed to name him, then. Do you remember?”
“Of course I do,” said Coll clamly. Around them the quiet sounds of the ship seemed only to deepen the night stillness.
“Is it because he took all the father’s love?”
Coll looked at him, still calm. “In part,” he said. “You were good at guessing things from the start, I remember. But there is another thing, and you should be able to guess that too.”
Paul thought about it. “Well—” he began.
The sound of singing came to them over the water.
“Listen!” cried Averren, quite unnecessarily.
They all listened, the seven men awake on Prydwen. The singing was coming from ahead of them and off to starboard.
Averren moved the tiller over that they might come nearer to it. Elusive and faint was that sound, thin and beautiful. Like a fragile web it spun out of the dark toward them, woven of sweet sadness and allure. There were a great many voices twined together in it.
Paul had heard that song before. “We’re in trouble,” he said.
Coll’s head whipped around. “What?”
The monster’s head broke water off the starboard bow. Up and up it went, towering over Prydwen’s masts. The moon lit its gigantic flat head: the lidless eyes, the gaping, carnivorous jaws, the mottled grey-green slimy skin. Prydwen grated on something. Averren grappled with the helm and Coll hurried to aid him. One of the watchmen screamed a warning.
Paul caught a glimpse in the uncertain moonlight of something white, like a horn, between the monster’s terrible eyes. He still heard the singing, clear, heartachingly beautiful. A sick premonition swept over him. He turned instinctively. On the other side of Prydwen the monster’s tail had curved and it was raised, blotting the southern sky, to smash down on them!
Raven wings. He knew.
“Soulmonger!” Paul screamed. “Loren, make a shield!”
He saw the huge tail reach its full height. Saw it coming down with the force of malignant death, to crush them out of life. Then saw it smash brutally into nothing but air. Prydwen bounced like a toy with the shock of it, but the mage’s shield held. Loren came running up on deck, Diarmuid and Arthur supporting Matt Sören. Paul glimpsed the racking strain in the Dwarf’s face and then deliberately cut himself off from all sensation. There was no time to waste. He reached within for the pulse of Mórnir.
And found it, desperately faint, thin as starlight beside the moon. Which is what, in a way, it was. He was too far. Liranan had spoken true. How could he compel the sea god in the sea?
He tried. Felt the third pulse beat in him and cried with the fourth, “Liranan!”
He sensed, rather than saw, the effortless eluding of the god. Despair threatened to drown him. He dove, within his mind, as he had done on the beach. He heard the singing everywhere and then, far down and far away, the voice of Liranan: “I am sorry, brother. Truly sorry.”
He tried again. Put all his soul into the summoning. As if from undersea he saw the shadow of Prydwen above, and he apprehended the full magnitude of the monster that guarded Cader Sedat. Soulmonger, he thought again. Rage rose overwhelmingly in him, he channeled all its blind force into his call. He felt himself breaking with the desperate strain. It was not enough.
“I told you it would be so,” he heard the sea god say. Far off he saw a silver fish eluding through dark water. There were no sea stars. Overhead, Prydwen bounced wildly again, and he knew Loren had