It seemed to Charis as she listened that all Taliesin had ever thought or said about his imaginary realm Was coming together in his song, ideas coalescing into solid sounds, words taking shape with utterance, flesh gathering onto the bones of philosophy.

The Kingdom of Summer is born tonight, she thought, even as the babe in my arms took flesh and was born. The two are made each for the other; they are one.

She looked down at the babe suckling at her breast. “Do you hear, Merlin?” she whispered softly. “Your destiny calls to you across the years. Listen, my son. This is the night your father sang the world into a new shape. Hear and remember.”

They left early the next morning, turning south toward the great sea inlet along the River Usk. The harbor in the river mouth was crowded with cargo vessels and smaller fishing boats; Eiddon searched among the larger boats for one to ferry them across. “We must wait,” he said when he returned. “There is but one boat that can take us, and it is waiting for cargo to come from Caer Gwent. The steersman will come for us when they are ready to sail. I fear it will be late when we make our landing.”

“Then let us eat something while we wait,” suggested Taliesin, “and rest the horses.”

They dismounted and spread their cloaks on the mounded bank above the timber pier and settled to wait. Salach rode the short distance upriver to the settlement, returning a little while later with wine to add to the bread and cheese they had brought with them, and a fresh-roasted chicken wrapped in a scrap of cloth. “I smelled the chicken,” he explained, slicing it into pieces with his dagger, “and asked the widow to sell it. She was glad of the silver.”

“Well done, Salach!” said Taliesin. “A resourceful companion is welcome on a journey. Ride with me anytime, friend.”

The youth colored under this praise and turned his face, hiding his shy smile. They ate and waited. The sun rose higher in the sky, and low clouds came sliding in from the sea like gray fingers reaching across the land. Soon the sun was gone and a chill wind rippled the water at the shoreline. It was then the steersman appeared. “If you want to come with us, come now,” he called. “We are putting off at once.”

Gathering their things, they followed him along the pier to the ship riding low in the water. “Get you aboard,” called the ship’s owner, standing at the rail. “We are losing the weather!”

While the horses were secured to a line in the center of the deck, Charis found a place for herself and the child beneath a canvas canopy at the stern of the ship just below the steersman’s platform. She gathered her fur-lined cloak around her and held the baby close. Rhuna sat facing her, sheltering both Charis and the baby from the wind with her body. A few moments later the ship swayed away from the pier and nosed out into the current.

Not long after the ship reached open water, a freshening wind swept in, driving a low, murky fog before it. Soon the boat was bound in a heavy, wet mist that beaded up on their cloaks and hair, seeping slowly into the folds of their clothing. The ship’s owner, Bellowing oaths to a dozen different gods and cursing the steersman in the same breath, ran from one side of the deck to the other, peering helplessly into the soup-thick mess, vainly trying to see a few inches further into the gloom.

The crossing was damp but uneventful, and they were put to shore at a small wharf downriver from the settlement of Abonae on the Aquae Sulis road. This was far north of the place they had hoped to land, but the owner could not be persuaded to take them further south, claiming that low tide would make another landing impossible. No sooner had the travelers stepped onto the wharf man the ship was being poled back out again.

“Perhaps it is just as well,” said Eiddon as they remounted. “This way we have the road, and with a little luck we might reach Aquae Sulis before nightfall.”

“I would welcome a dry bed tonight,” said Taliesin, helping Charis into her saddle. He noted her vacant expression. “Are you well, my love?”

Charis started and came to herself. “I have been dreaming,” she replied, shaking her head. “It is the fog and mist.”

“We could rest a while,” put in Eiddon.

“No,” she said, forcing a smile. “I am only a little sleepy. It is nothing. It will pass.”

“I will take the baby, my lady, if you please,” offered Rhuna. Charis handed her the child and they continued on, falling into single file. Although Charis fought to remain alert, she soon drifted into the same heavy, drowsy reverie-a waking sleep wherein her mind drifted lazily like a full-laden boat in a sullen, turgid stream. Her eyes closed even as the dull, gray mist closed around her.

It seemed like only a moment passed, but when she opened her eyes once more the mist had darkened and deepened. The road was wet and silent, the only sound heavy drops falling from the branches of trees and the thicket hedge that formed an impenetrable wall along the roadside. The instant she raised her head, Charis sensed danger.

The silence felt unnatural. She looked around quickly. Rhuna rode just behind her, followed by Taliesin. A little way ahead Eiddon, shoulders straight and head cocked to one side, listened, his hand on the sword at his Belt. Ahead of Eiddon, Salach, spear in hand, was just barely discernible as a gray and ghostly shape in the mist.

“What is it?” she asked. Her voice was instantly muffled and lost in the dead still air.

Up ahead she saw Salach stop and stretch tall in the saddle. Eiddon rode to him and the two put their heads together. Then Eiddon wheeled his horse around and came toward her. She saw his face taut in the gloom. His sword was in his hand.

Merlin! Where was her baby? She whirled in the saddle to look behind.

In the same instant she heard a strange and frightening sound, like the whirring buzz of an angry wasp or the thin feathered shriek of an eagle’s pinions slicing the air. It was cut off by a dull, thudding chunk.

Eiddon’s horse swept past her as Rhuna came alongside. “Give Merlin to me!” she whispered tersely.

As the girl unwrapped the child from the warmth of her cloak, Taliesin’s horse came apace. Charis turned to ask what was happening but the words stuck in her throat.

She reached out to him.

Then she saw it-the arrow buried deep in his chest.

His head was toward her, but his eyes were fixed on something far in the distance, his face alight with the vision: the Kingdom of Summer. It was only the briefest of moments and then the light flickered and died. Taliesin slumped forward, the reins still in his hands.

The scream that tore the deep-wooded silence was her own. The motions around her were confused; shapes tumbled from the fog and somehow she was on the ground, bending over Taliesin’s body, the arrow in her hands. She was whimpering and trying to drag the evil thing from her husband’s heart.

She felt hands close over hers as Eiddon knelt beside her. Taliesin gazed upward, his eyes dark and empty, the warmth of life slowly seeping from his body.