She turned sharply, glaring at him. Her mouth opened and then closed, and even by moonlight he could see her flush.

“I didn’t mean that to sting,” he added quickly. “Truly, Jaelle. I have some idea of what it meant for you to do this.”

Her color slowly faded. Where the moon touched it her hair gleamed with a strange, unearthly shading of red. Her circlet shone. She said simply, “I don’t think you do. Not even you, Pwyll.”

“Then tell me,” he said. “Tell someone something, Jaelle.” He was surprised at the intensity in his voice.

“Are you one to talk?” she shot back reflexively. But then, as he kept silent, she added, more slowly and in a different voice, “I named someone to act in my stead, but I broke the patterns of succession when I did so.”

“Do I know her?”

She smiled wryly. “Actually, you do. The one who spied on us last year.”

He felt the edge of a shadow pass over him. He looked up quickly. No clouds across the moon; it was in his mind.

“Leila? Is it a presumption to ask why? Is she not very young?”

“You know she is,” Jaelle said sharply. Then, again as if fighting her own impulses, she went on. “As to why: I am not certain. An instinct, a premonition. As I told you all earlier this evening, she is still tuned to Finn, and so to the Wild Hunt. I am not easy with it, though. I don’t know what it means. Do you always know why you do what you do, Pwyll?”

He laughed bitterly, touched on the raw nerve that had kept him awake. “I used to think I did. Not anymore. Since the Tree I’m afraid I don’t know why I do any of what I do. I’m going by instinct too, Jaelle, and I’m not used to it. I don’t seem to have any control at all. Do you want to know the truth?” The words tumbled out of him, low and impassioned. “I almost envy you and Kim—you both seem so sure of your places in this war.”

Her face grave, she considered that. Then she said, “Don’t envy the Seer, Pwyll. Not her. And as for me…” She turned away toward the water again. “As for me, I have been feeling uneasy in my own sanctuary, which has never happened before. I don’t think I need be an object of anyone’s envy.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, risking it.

And seemed to fail, as her glance flashed swiftly back to him.

“That is presumption,” she said coldly, “and unasked for.” He held her gaze, refusing to yield to it but reaching, nonetheless, for something to say. Even as he did, her expression changed and she added, “In any case, such sorrow as you might feel would be balanced—overbalanced, in truth—by Audiart’s pleasure, did she learn of this. She would sing for joy, and, Dana knows, she cannot sing.”

Paul let his mouth drop open. “Jaelle,” he whispered, “did you just make a joke?”

She gestured in exasperation. “What do you think we are in the Temple?” she snapped. “Do you think we stalk around intoning chants and curses day and night, and gathering blood for amusement?”

He left a little silence before answering, over the sound of the waves. “That sounds about right,” he said gently. “You haven’t been at pains to suggest otherwise.”

“There are reasons for that,” Jaelle shot back, quite unfazed. “You are sufficiently acquainted with power by now, surely, to be able to guess why. But the truth is that the Temples have been my only home for a long time now, and there was laughter there, and music, and quiet pleasures to be found, until the drought came, and then the war.”

The problem with Jaelle, or one of the problems, he decided wryly, was that she was right too much of the time. He nodded. “Fair enough. But if I was wrong you must concede that it was because you wanted me to be wrong. You can’t tax me with that misunderstanding now. That’s one blade that shouldn’t cut both ways.”

“They all cut both ways,” she said quietly. He had known she would say that. In many ways she was still very young, though it seldom showed.

“How old were you when you entered the Temple?” he asked.

“Fifteen,” she answered, after a pause. “And seventeen when I was named to the Mormae.”

He shook his head. “That is very—”

“Leila was fourteen. She is only fifteen now,” she cut in, anticipating him. “And because of what I did this morning, she is of the Mormae now herself, and even more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

She fixed him with a careful regard. “I have your silence on this?”

“You know you do.”

Jaelle said, “Because I named her to act for me while I was away and in a time of war, it will follow, by the patterns of Dana, that if I do not return to Paras Derval, Leila is High Priestess. At fifteen.”

Despite himself, he felt another chill, though the night was mild and the skies fair. “You knew this. You knew this when you named her, didn’t you?” he managed to ask.

“Of course,” she said, with more than a trace of her effortless scorn. “What do you think I am?”

“I don’t really know,” he said honestly. “Why did you do it, then?”

The question was direct enough to give her pause. At length, she answered, “I told you a few moments ago: instinct, intuition. I have little more than those, much of the time, which is something for you to consider. You were lamenting your lack of control just now. Power such as ours is not so easy to manipulate, nor, in truth, should it be. I do not command Dana, I speak for her. And so, it seems to me, do you speak for the God, when he chooses to speak. You might give thought, Twiceborn of Mórnir, as to whether control matters too much to you.”

And with the words, he was suddenly on a highway in the rain again, hearing the woman he loved tax him with the same cold flaw, hearing her announce that she was leaving because of it, unable to find a place in him where need of her found a true voice.

He seemed to be on his feet, standing above the Priestess by the sea. He wasn’t sure how that had happened. He looked down and saw his hands clenched at his sides. And then he turned and was walking away, not from the truth, for that came with him under the stars, but from the icy green eyes and the voice that had spoken that truth here.

She watched him go, and surprised herself with regret. She had not meant to wound. Dana knew, she’d intended to hurt with so many things she’d said to him at one time or another, but not with that last. It had been kindly meant, as much so as lay within her nature, and instead she’d found a place where he was raw and vulnerable.

She should, she knew, keep that knowledge in readiness for encounters to come. But sitting on the rock, thinking back over what they each had said, it was hard to hold to such cold, controlling thoughts. She smiled a little to herself at the irony and turned back toward the sea—to see a ghost ship passing between herself and the setting moon.

“Pwyll!” She cried the name almost without thought. She was on her feet, her heart pounding with terror and awe.

She could not take her eyes from the ship. Slowly it moved from north to south across her line of sight, though the wind was from the west. Its sails were tattered and ragged, and the low moon shone through them easily. It lit the broken masts, the shattered figurehead, the smashed upheaval of the deck where the tiller was. Low down by the waterline she thought she could see a dark hole in the side of the ship where the sea must have rushed in.

There was no way that ship could remain afloat. She heard Pwyll’s quick, running footsteps, and then he was beside her again. She did not turn or speak. She registered the sharp intake of his breath and voiced an inward prayer of relief: he, too, saw the ship. It was not a phantom of her own mind, not a prelude to madness. Suddenly he extended one hand, pointing in silence. She followed the line of his finger.

There was a man, a solitary mariner, standing near the prow of the ship by the railing nearest to them, and the moon was shining through him as well.