pushed on. “Listen to me, please! He cannot be only yours now, Jen. He can’t. There is too much at stake, and we don’t even know what he is!”
“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 Jennifer, Paul walked over to it. Even on the main level of the palace they were quite high up. Below, to the south and east, a party of thirty men or so were just leaving Paras Derval. Diarmuid’s band. With Kevin, who might in fact have understood, if Paul had known clearly what he wanted to explain.
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.
Jennifer had been looking pale a long time, it was almost a year since she’d had a healthy tan, but never had he seen her as white as now she was. For a disoriented instant he thought of Fordaetha. But this was a mortal woman, and one to whom unimaginable damage had been done. Against the white of her skin, the high cheekbones stood out unnaturally. He wondered if she was going to faint. She closed her eyes; opened them. “He told the Dwarf I was to die. Told him there was a reason.” Her voice was an aching rasp.
“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. Jennifer looked up again. “But if I’m right… if he was afraid of a child, then… shouldn’t Darien be good?”
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. Ysanne’s lake. The cottage was empty, so we sent them there.”
“Why?”
“He is of the andain, Pwyll. I was telling Jennifer before you came: they do not age as we do. He is only seven months old, but he looks like a five-year-old child. And is growing faster now.”
Jennifer’s sobs were easing. He walked over to the bench where she was and sat down beside her. With a real hesitation, he took her hand and raised it to his lips.
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