There was darkness between, like a black-winged creature, screening the other from her. She was almost gone. Almost, but not yet. She had been a red arrow, then a stone. Now she made herelf into a sword, red as it had to be. She turned. In this directionless world she somehow turned and, with the last blazing of her heart, she slashed through the curtain, found the other where he lay, and grasped an image to send back. She had to do it alone, for the mages were gone. With her very last power, using fire like love, she threw the vision back, unimaginably far, toward the sanctuary in Gwen Ystrat. Then it was dark.

She was a broken vessel, a reed on which a wind could play if there could be a wind. She was a twinned soul without form. The ring had faded utterly. She had done what she could.

There was someone with her, though, chanting still.

Who? she sent, as everything began to leave her.

Ruana, he replied. Save us, he sent. Save us.

And then she understood. And, understanding, knew she could not let go. There was no release for her yet. No directions existed in this place, but from where her body lay his chanting would be north and east.

In Khath Meigol, where the Paraiko had once been.

We are, he sent. We still are. Save us.

There was no fire left in the ring. With only the slow chanting to guide her in the black, she began the long ascent to what there was of light.

When the Baelrath blazed Ivor closed his eyes, as much against the pain in the Seer’s cry as against the surging of red. They had been asked to bear witness, though, and a moment later he forced himself to look again.

It was hard to see in the punishing glow of the Warstone. He could just make them out, the young Seer and the others around her, and he marked the clenched strain on the faces of Matt and Barak. He had a sense of massive striving, of almost shattering effort. Jaelle was trembling now. Gereint looked like some Eridun death mask. Ivor’s heart ached for them, journeying so far in such a silent battling.

Even as he thought this, the chamber exploded with echoing voices as, almost simultaneously, Jaelle and Gereint and tall Barak cried aloud in despair and pain. For a moment longer Matt Sören was silent, perspiration pouring down his craggy face; then Loren’s source, too, cried out, a deep tearing sound, and fell to the floor.

As he rushed forward with Arthur and Shalhassan to succor them, Ivor heard Loren Silvercloak murmur with numbed tonelessness, “Too far. She went too far. It is over.”

Ivor took the weeping Barak in his arms and led him to a bench set into the curving wall. He went back and did the same for Gereint. The shaman was shaking like the last leaf on a tree in an autumn wind. Ivor feared for him.

Aileron the High King had not moved. Nor had he taken his gaze from Kim. The light was still blazing and she was still on her feet. Ivor glanced at her face and then quickly away: her mouth was wide open in a soundless, endless screaming. She looked as if she were being burned alive.

He went back to Gereint, who was breathing in desperate gasps, his wizened face grey, even in the red light. And then, as Ivor knelt beside his shaman, that light exploded anew, so wildly it made the glow from before seem dim. Power pulsed like an unleashed presence all around them. It seemed to Ivor that the Temple shook.

He heard Aileron cry, “There is an image! Look!”

Ivor tried. He turned in time to see the Seer fall, in time to see a blurred shaping in the air beside her, but the light was too red, too bright. He was blinded by it, burned. He could not see.

And then it was dark.

Or it seemed that way. There were still torches on the walls, candles burning on the altar stone, but after the crazed illumination of the Baelrath, still raging in his mind’s eye, Ivor felt surrounded by darkness. A sense of failure overwhelmed him. Something had happened; somehow, even without the mages, Kim had sent an image back and now she was lying on the floor with the High King standing over her, and Ivor had no idea what she had sent to them with what looked to have been the last effort of her soul. He couldn’t see if she was breathing. There was very little he could see.

A shadow moved. Matt Sören rising to his feet.

Someone spoke. “It was too bright,” said Shalhassan. “I could not see.” There was pain in his voice.

“Nor I,” Ivor murmured. Far too late his sight was returning.

“I saw,” Aileron said. “But I do not understand.”

“It was a Cauldron.” Arthur Pendragon’s deep voice was quietly sure. “I marked it as well.”

“A Cauldron, yes,” Loren said. “At Cader Sedat. We know that already.”

“But there is no connection,” Jaelle protested weakly. She looked close to collapse. “It quickens the newly dead. What does the Cauldron of Khath Meigol have to do with winter?”

What indeed? Ivor thought, and then he heard Gereint. “Young one,” the shaman rasped, almost inaudibly, “this is the mages’ hour. You have lived to come to this. First Mage of Brennin, what is he doing with the Cauldron?”

The mages’ hour, Ivor thought. In the Temple of Dana in Gwen Ystrat. The Weaving of the Tapestry was truly past all comprehending.

Oblivious to their beseeching looks, Loren turned slowly to his source. Mage and Dwarf looked at each other as if no one else was in the room, in the world. Even Teyrnon and Barak were watching the other two and waiting. He was holding his breath, Ivor realized, and his palms were damp.

“Do you remember,” Loren said suddenly, and in his voice Ivor heard the timbre of power that lay in Gereint’s when he spoke for the god, “do you remember the book of Nilsom?”

“Accursed be his name,” Matt Sören replied. “I never read it, Loren.”

“Nor I,” said Teyrnon softly. “Accursed be his name.”

“I did,” said Loren. “And so did Metran.” He paused. “I know what he is doing and how he is doing it.”

With a gasp, Ivor expelled air from his lungs and drew breath again. All around him he heard others doing the same. In Matt Sören’s one eye he saw a gleam of the same pride with which Leith sometimes looked at him. Quietly, the Dwarf said, “I knew you would. We have a battle then?”

“I promised you one a long time ago,” the mage replied. He seemed to Ivor to have grown, even as they watched.

“Weaver be praised!” Aileron suddenly exclaimed.

Quickly they all looked over. The High King had crouched and was cradling Kim’s head in his arms, and Ivor could see that she was breathing normally again, and there was color in her face.

In a rapt silence they waited. Ivor, close to tears, saw how young her face was under the white hair. He was too easily moved to tears, he knew. Leith had derided it often enough. But surely it was all right now? He saw tears on the face of the High King and even a suspicious brightness in the eyes of dour Shalhassan of Cathal. In such company, he thought, may not a Dalrei weep?

In a little while she opened her eyes. There was pain in their greyness, and a great weariness, but her voice was clear when she spoke.

“I found something,” she said. “I tried to send it back. Did I? Was it enough?”

“You did, and it was enough,” Aileron replied gruffly.

She smiled with the simplicity of a child. “Good,” she said. “Then I will sleep now. I could sleep for days.” And she closed her eyes.