"And you think I must take her? To begin the righting of the world?"

For the first time Ariane showed a flash of her old authority. "I told you that I have no control over anything here. It is too soon, in any case. I do think—since you ask—that any man who shares his life with that one will be blessed beyond deserving all his days. Even you, Blaise."

He had seen her, of course, twice. Rinette. Had exchanged hard, haughty words by the lake in spring after he'd killed six corans of Miraval. We have been waiting for you, she'd said to him, self-possessed beyond her years, and he had feared those words. Perhaps, he thought now, perhaps they had meant something other than what either of them had understood or guessed that spring day. Perhaps the goddess truly did work in ways men and women could not comprehend. He thought suddenly of the red arrow that had killed Ademar. He still had no idea—and was trying not to dwell upon the thought—how that arrow had come straight down from a clear sky.

He said, looking up at Ariane, "I will see you? You will not leave my life?"

She smiled then. Said formally, "The king of Gorhaut will always be welcome in Carenzu."

She was guiding them back together to solid ground. Her gifts had always been generous, and this not the least of them. He tried to match her tone. "And Carenzu's lord and lady, wherever I am."

There was a short silence. She bit her lip. "There were other words that were part of that Midsummer Night. A song sung in the tavern where we met. I wonder if you remember the ending of it?"

He shook his head. Lisseut of Vezét had sung that song, he remembered, but the words were lost to him. Ariane smiled then, with tenderness and sadness, and a returning hint of the wise, worldly awareness that had always seemed to be hers. "Let me ride back alone, Blaise. If you don't mind. I don't think I'll be by myself very much in the next little while."

He nodded his head. What else could he have done? Bring her down into his arms in the fading light? Not in this world, he thought. She touched a finger to her lips, still with that same smile, and turned away. She was as beautiful as any woman he had ever known. She would have offered so much comfort, he knew. Comfort and passion and wisdom. Offered, and taken whatever he had to give in return, had he but asked. His heart full, Blaise watched her ride slowly away from him at sunset through the tall grass. He was thinking of her at thirteen, with a new-born child in her arms.

That child had grown into the woman it seemed the world and his own growing understanding of it might have him wed. Nothing would or could be done swiftly, and indeed it might never be done at all; there were so many layers of complexity to this world he had entered now. She was waiting in Talair, Ariane had said. He let his mind move forward towards such a meeting. Only his thoughts, though: Blaise remained where he was for a long time, sitting quietly in the doorway as the sun slid down in the west and the colours of sunset gradually suffused the fields and the bare vineyards and the trees, and fell gently, like a late benediction, on that small cabin by the forest.

Blaise looked back once through the open doorway before he finally left, and he saw how that muted crimson light slanted through the western window to fall upon the small, neat bed against the wall. He stood there for a moment, motionless, and then he gently closed the door, that the wind and rain might not enter in after these years.

It was dusk, the first faint stars shining in the east, when he rode back towards Talair. And because it was so nearly dark and he wasn't really thinking about his path—his thoughts ahead of him and far behind—he rode straight past the woman standing quietly beside her horse in shadow under the elms on the far side of the arch.

Lisseut had meant to call out to him, but in the moment he actually appeared and went by she found that her voice would not obey her. She could not say his name. She had seen the duke ride past earlier, and then Ariane de Carenzu, and she had remained out of sight beneath the trees, holding her thoughts close to her as the sun went down and the shadows grew deeper beneath the looming arch.

Her thoughts. No comfort there at all. The man she had followed, as she had followed him once before, was the king of Gorhaut, or would be before many days had passed. He was already wearing the cloak of royalty. She had seen it from the isle.

In the moment Blaise appeared she was thinking, actually, of her mother and father and of home, of sunrise seen through the window of her own small room, morning light filtering through the grey-green leaves of the olive trees, the air carrying the scent of the sea from below.

She had always been impetuous, always found herself pushing hardest when she thought, inwardly, that it might, in fact, be no time to push at all. Her mother had told her, endlessly, that it was a trait that could lead her greatly wrong one day.

Perhaps it was because of that memory of her mother's words, with the heart-breaking lucidity of that image of home, that Lisseut kept silent as the man went by, riding away from her, from the arch and the winter elms, back to the world that was waiting for him. She lost sight of Blaise in the darkness where the avenue of elms ended and the path curved east towards the shore of the lake.

She remained where she was; it had become curiously difficult to move just then. She clung to that image of home for a while yet, and then that too seemed to leave her. After a time in the deepening shadows, Lisseut found that her thoughts had turned elsewhere again, and then it seemed that her voice had come back to her and that, perhaps not surprisingly, there were words she needed to offer to the twilight and the empty path before her where she had watched him go:

Thy table set with rarest wine,

Choice meats, sweet ripened fruit

And candlelight when we dine In

Fionvarre.

On we two the high stars will shine.

And the holy moon lend her light.

If not here you will be mine

In Fionvarre.

She sighed. There was truly no point in lingering here, she told herself. It was time to go back. She still felt this curious reluctance to move, though. It was cold in the night now but the elms blocked the worst of the wind and in the darkness the disturbing, sculpted shapes of prisoners and slaves on the arch could not be seen. It was, in fact, unexpectedly peaceful where she stood, holding the reins of a quiet horse.

She stayed quite a long time. It was much later, in fact, when she heard a single horseman go by along the edge of the woods behind her, heading south. She became a little frightened for the first time then, alone here in the darkness. She mounted up and began the ride back to where there would be lights and shelter and friends and such comfort as any and all of these might offer.

On the way, as she came up to the shore of the lake and rode alongside the water towards the distant castle, carrying loss and love, remembering home, trying to comprehend the shape of the future opening up before them all, Lisseut found herself thinking of a song. Not an old lullaby this time, its origins long lost, not a tune by Anselme of Cauvas, the first of all the troubadours, nor of Count Folquet or Alain or En Bertran, nor even of lost Remy or Aurelian.

This tune and its words belonged to none of them. This, for the first time ever, as she passed beside the shore of Lake Dierne in the starlit, wintry dark, riding towards the castle lights, was a song of her own.

It was cold here outside, but Rinette had felt awkwardly enveloped within the warm, firelit rooms of Talair Castle. She had asked them where the garden was and someone had escorted her there. Then, when she'd walked into the walled enclosure, she had asked if she could be left alone and they had done that for her as well. Everyone was being extraordinarily obliging, even beyond what could be expected by a ranking priestess of Rian.