She saw it all, through to the end.

Afterward, it was utterly silent in Khath Meigol. She could not hear anyone breathe. Her own numbed, battered soul longed for sound. For birdsong, water falling, the laughter of children. She needed light. Warmer, kinder light than the red glow of the fires, or the mountain stars, or the moon.

She was granted none of these. Instead she was made conscious of something else. From the moment they had entered Khath Meigol there had been fear: an awareness of the presence of the dead in all their inviolate sanctity, guarding this place with the bloodcurse that was woven into them.

Not any more.

She did not weep. This went too far beyond sorrow. It touched the very fabric of the Tapestry on the Loom. She held her right hand close to her breast; it was blistered and painful to the touch. The Baelrath smoldered, embers seeming to glow far down in its depths.

“Who are you?” Ruana asked, and his voice broke on the words. “Who are you to have done this deed unto us? Better we had died in the caves.”

It hurt so much. She opened her mouth, but no words came.

“Not so,” a voice replied for her. It was Brock, loyal, steadfast Brock of Banir Tal. “Not so, people of the Paraiko.” His voice was weak when he began, but grew in strength with every word. “You know who she is, and you know the nature of what she carries. We are at war, and the Warstone of Macha and Nemain summons at need. Would you value your peacefulness so highly that you granted Maugrim dominion? How long would you survive if we went away from here and were destroyed in war? Who would remember your sanctity when all of you and all of us were dead or slaves?”

“The Weaver would,” Ruana replied gently.

It stopped Brock, but only for a moment. “So too would Rakoth,” he said. “And you have heard his laughter, Ruana. Had the Weaver shaped your destiny to be sacrosanct and inviolate, could you have been changed by the image we have seen tonight? Could you hate the Dark as now you do? Could you have been brought into the army of Light, as now you are? Surely this is your true destiny, people of Khath Meigol. A destiny that allows you to grow when the need is great, however bitter the pain. To come forth from hiding in these caves and make one with all of us, in all the Weaver’s worlds afflicted by the Dark.”

He ended ringingly. There was silence again. Then: “We are undone,” came a voice from the circle of the Giants.

“We have lost the bloodcurse.” “And the kanior.” A wailing rose up, heartrending in its grief and loss.

“Hold!” Another voice. Not Ruana. Not Brock. “People of the Paraiko,” said Dalreidan, “forgive me this presumption, but I have a question to ask of you.” Slowly, the wailing died away. Ruana inclined his head toward the outlaw from the Plain. “In what you did tonight,” Dalreidan asked, “in the very great thing you did tonight did you not sense a farewell? In the kanior that gathered and mourned every Paraiko that ever was, could you not find a sign from the Weaver who shaped you that an ending to something had come?”

Holding her breath, clutching her burned hand, Kim waited. And then Ruana spoke.

“I did,” he said, as a sigh like a wind in trees swept over the bare plateau. “I did sense that when I saw Connla come, how bright he was. The only one of us who ever stepped forward to act in the world beyond this pass, when he bound the Hunt to their long sleep, which our people called a transgression, even though Owein had asked him to do so. And then he built the Cauldron to bring his daughter back from death, which was a wrong beyond remedy and led him to his exile. When I saw him tonight, how mighty he was among our dead, I knew that a change was come.”

Kim gasped, a cry of relief torn from her pain. Ruana turned to her. Carefully he rose, to tower over her in the midst of the ring. He said, “Forgive me my harshness. This will have been a grief for you, as much as for us.”

She shook her head, still unable to speak. “We will come down,” he said. “It is tune. We will leave this place and play a part in what is to come. But hear me,” he added, “and know this for truth: we will not kill.”

And with that, finally, words came to her. She too rose to her feet. “I do know it for truth,” she replied, and it was the Seer of Breenin who spoke now. “I do not think you are meant to. You have changed, but not so much as that, and not all your gifts, I think, are lost.”

“Not all,” he echoed gravely. “Seer, where would you have us go? To Brennin? Andarien? To Eridu?”

“Eridu is no more.” Faebur spoke for the first time. Ruana turned to him. “The death rain fell there for three days, until this morning. There will be no one left in any of the places of the Lion.”

Watching Ruana, Kim saw something alter deep in his eyes. “I know of that rain,” he said. “We all do. It is a part of our memories. It was a death rain that began the ruin of Andarien. It only fell for a few hours then. Maugrim was not so strong.”

Fighting his weariness with a visible effort, he drew himself up very straight.

“Seer, this is the first role we will play. There will be plague with the rain, and no hope of return to Eridu until the dead are buried. But the plague will not harm the Paraiko. You were not wrong: we have not lost all of what the Weaver gave to us. Only the bloodcurse and the kanior, which were shaped of the peace in our hearts. We have other magics, though, and most of them are ways of dealing with death, as Connla’s Cauldron was. We will go east from this place in the morning, to cleanse the raindead of Eridu, that the land may live again.”

Faebur looked up at him. “Thank you,” he whispered. “If any of us live through the dark of these days, it will not be forgotten.” He hesitated. “If, when you come to the largest house in the Merchant’s Street of Akkaize, you find lying there a lady, tall and slender, whose hair would once have gleamed the color of wheat fields in sunlight… her name will have been Arrian. Will you gather her gently for my sake?”

“We will,” said Ruana, with infinite compassion. “And if we meet again, I will tell you where she lies.”

Kim turned and walked from the circle. They parted to make way for her, and she went to the edge of the plateau and stood, her back to everyone else, gazing at the dark mountains and the stars. Her hand was blistered and painful to the touch, and her side ached from yesterday. The ring was utterly spent; it seemed to be slumbering. She needed sleep herself, she knew. There were thoughts chasing each other around in her head, and something else, not clear enough yet to be a thought, was beginning to take shape. She was wise enough not to strain for the Sight that was coming, so she had walked toward darkness to wait.

She heard voices behind her. She did not turn, but they were not far away, and she could not help but hear.

“Forgive me,” Dalreidan said, and coughed nervously. “But I heard a story yesterday that the women and children of the Dalrei had been left alone in the last camp by the Latham. Is this so?”

“It is,” Tabor replied. His voice sounded remote and thin, but he answered the exile with courtesy. “Every Rider on the Plain went north to Celidon. An army of the Dark was seen sweeping across Andarien three nights ago. The Aven was trying to outrace them to the Adein.”

Kim had known nothing of this. She closed her eyes, trying to calculate the distance and the time, but could not. She offered an inner prayer to the night. If the Dalrei were lost, everything the rest of them did might be quite meaningless.

“The Aven!” Dalreidan exclaimed softly. “We have an Aven? Who?”

“Ivor dan Banor,” Tabor said, and Kim could hear the pride. “My father.” Then, after a moment, as the other remained silent, “Do you know him?”

“I knew him,” said Dalreidan. “If you are his son, you must be Levon.”