He was lifting something in his hands, holding it out over the side of the ship toward the two of them, and Jaelle saw, with a second surge of awe, that it was a spear.

“I would be grateful for your prayers,” said Pwyll. She heard a beat of unseen wings. She looked up and then quickly back to him. She saw him step down off the rock where they stood.

And begin to walk across the waves toward the ship. The provinces of Dana ended at the sea. Nevertheless, thought Jaelle, the High Priestess. Nevertheless. She closed her eyes for the first step, knowing she was going to sink, and set out after him.

She did not sink. The waves barely wet the sandals she wore. She opened her eyes, saw Pwyll striding purposefully in front of her, and quickened her pace to catch up. She received a startled glance as she came abreast.

“You may need more than prayers,” she said shortly. “And invocations of Dana hold no sway at sea; I told you that once before.”

“I remember,” he said, stepping a little upward to clear an advancing wave. “Which makes you either very brave or very foolish indeed. Shall we call it both?”

“If you like,” she said, masking an unexpected rush of pleasure. “And accept that I am sorry if what I said before caused you pain. For once, I hadn’t meant it.”

“For once,” he repeated dryly, but she was finally beginning to catch the shifting tones in his voice, and this was mild irony and nothing more. “I know you didn’t mean it,” he said, negotiating a trough between waves. “I did that one to myself. I’ll try to explain someday, if you like.”

She said nothing, concentrating on moving over the water. The sensation was uncanny. Jaelle felt perfectly, flawlessly balanced. She had to watch where they were going, and what the sea was doing in front of them, but having done so, it was no trouble to skim along the surface. The hem of her robe was wet; nothing more. If they hadn’t been walking toward a ship that had been destroyed a thousand years ago, she might even have found it pleasurable.

As it was, though, the closer they came, the more eerily translucent loomed that hollow craft. As they came alongside, Jaelle could clearly see the gaping holes torn in it at the waterline, and in the exposed hold of Amairgen’s ship, the sea sparkled with moonlight.

For such, of course, it was. There was nothing else it could be, not in the bay of the Anor Lisen. She had absolutely no idea what power kept it in the visible world, let alone afloat. But she did know, beyond doubt, who the one mariner high above them had to be. For a moment, when they stopped, standing upon the waves just below that tall, ghostly figure, Jaelle thought about the power of love, and she did pray then, briefly, for Lisen’s peace at the Weaver’s side.

Then Amairgen spoke, or what was left of him spoke, after so long a death, with the moonlight shining through. He said, in a voice like a deep-toned reed played by the wind, “Why have you come?”

Jaelle felt herself rocked, her balance slipped. She had expected—though she couldn’t think why—a welcome. Not this cold, flat query. Suddenly the sea seemed terrifyingly dark and deep, and land a long way off. She felt an impersonal hand on her elbow steadying her. Pwyll waited until he saw her nod, before turning his attention back to the one who had spoken from the deck above their heads.

She saw him look up at the mage slain by the Soulmonger. Pale at the best of times, Pwyll was white and ghostly himself in the long moonlight. There was no flicker of doubt in his eyes, though, no hesitation in his voice as he made reply.

“We have come for the spear, unquiet one. And to bring you the tidings you have sought this many a year.”

“Someone was in the Tower,” the ghost cried. It seemed to Jaelle as if the wind lifted with the pain in the words, the long burden of loss. “Someone was in the Tower, and so I am come again, where I never came as living man, to the place where she died. Who stood in that room to draw me back?”

“Guinevere,” said Pwyll, and waited.

Amairgen was silent. Jaelle was aware of the rocking of the sea beneath her. She glanced down a moment and then quickly back up: it had seemed to her, dizzyingly, that she’d seen stars below her feet.

Amairgen leaned forward over the railing. She was the High Priestess of Dana, and standing above her was the ghost of the one who had broken the power of Dana in Fionavar. She should curse him, a part of her was saying, curse him as the priestesses of the Goddess did at the turning of every month. She should let her blood fall in the sea below where she stood as she spoke the most bitter invocation of the Mother. It was, as much as anything had ever been, her duty. But she could not do it. Such hatred for his ancient deed was not within her tonight, nor would it ever be again, she somehow knew. There was too much pain, too pure a sorrow here. All the stories seemed to be merging into each other. She gazed up at him and at what he held and kept silent, watching. He was foreshortened by the angle, but she could descry his chiseled, translucent features, the long pale locks of his hair, and the mighty gleaming spear he cradled in both his hands. He wore a ring on one finger; she thought she knew what it was.

“Is the Warrior here, then?” Amairgen asked, a breath on a moonlit reed.

“He is,” said Pwyll. And added, after a moment, “So too is Lancelot.”

“What!”

Even in darkness and from where she stood, Jaelle saw his eyes suddenly gleam like sapphires in the night. His hands shifted along the spear. Pwyll waited, unhurried, for the figure above them to absorb the implications of that.

Then, both of them standing on the tossing waves beside the ship heard Amairgen say, very formally now, “What tidings have you for me after so long?”

Jaelle, surprised, saw tears on Pwyll’s face. He said, very gently, “Tidings of rest, unquiet one. You are avenged, your staff has been redeemed. The Soulmonger of Maugrim is dead. Go home, first of the mages, beloved of Lisen. Sail home between the stars to the Weaver’s side and be granted peace after all these years. We have gone to Cader Sedat and destroyed the evil there with the power of your staff held by one who followed you: by Loren Silvercloak, First Mage of Brennin. What I tell you tonight is true. I am the Twiceborn of Mórnir, Lord of the Summer Tree.”

There came a sound then that Jaelle never forgot for what was left of her days. It came not from Amairgen but, rather, seemed to rise from the ship itself, though no one at all was to be seen: a high keening sound, twinned somehow to the slanting moon in the west, balanced achingly between ecstasy and pain. She realized, suddenly, that there were other ghosts here, though they could not be seen. Others manned that doomed ship.

Then Amairgen spoke, over the sound of his mariners, and he said to Pwyll, “If this is so, if it has come to pass, then in the name of Mórnir I release the Spear into your trust. But there is one thing I will ask of you, one thing further that is needed before I can rest. There is one more death.”

For the first time she saw Pwyll hesitate. She didn’t know why, but she did know something else, and she said, “Galadan?”

She heard Pwyll draw a breath, even as she felt the sapphire eyes of the one who had found the skylore fix themselves on her own. She willed herself not to flinch. She heard him say, “You are a long way from your Temples and your thirsty axe, Priestess. Do you not fear the killing sea?”

“I fear the Unraveller more,” she said, pleased to hear her voice strong and unwavering. The killing sea, she registered, sorrowing: Lisen. “And I hate the Dark more than I ever hated you, or any of the mages who followed you. I am saving my curses for Maugrim, and”—she swallowed—“and I will pray, after tonight, to Dana, for your peace and Lisen’s.” She ended, ritually, as Pwyll had done. “What I tell you tonight is true. I am the High Priestess of the Goddess in Fionavar.”