It was not dark or cold. Lights seemed everywhere, palely hued—it was as if he moved amid constellations of sunken stars.

Something flashed: a silver fish. He followed and it doubled back to lose him. He cut back as well, between the water stars. There was coral below, green and blue, pink, orange, shades of gold. The silver fish slipped under an arch of it, and when Paul came through, it was gone.

He waited. Felt another pulse.

“Liranan!” he called and felt thunder rock the deep. When the echoes rolled away he saw the fish again, larger now, with rainbow colors of the coral stippling its sides. It fled and he followed.

Down it went and he with it. They plunged past massive, lurking menaces in the lower depths where the sea stars were dim and colors lost.

Up it shot as if hurtling back to light. Past the sunken stars it went and broke water in a moonlit leap; from the beach, ankle deep in the tide, Paul saw it flash and fall.

And then it ran. No twisting now. On a straight course out to sea, the sea god fled the thunder voice. And was followed. They went so far beyond the memory of land that Paul thought he heard a thread of singing in the waves. He was afraid, for he guessed what he was hearing. He did not call again. He saw the silver fish ahead of him. He thought of all the dead and the living in their need, and he caught Liranan far out at sea and touched him with a finger of his mind.

“Caught you!” he said aloud, breathless on the beach where he had not moved at all. “Come,” he gasped, “and let me speak with you, brother mine.”

And then the god took his true form, and he rose up in the silvered sea and strode, shimmering with falling water, to the beach. As he came near, Paul saw that the falling water was as a robe to Liranan, to clothe his majesty, and the colors of the sea stars and the coral fell through it ceaselessly.

“You have named me as a brother,” said the god in a voice that hissed like waves through and over rocks. His beard was long and white. His eyes were the same color as the moon. He said, “How do you so presume? Name yourself!”

“You know my name,” said Paul. The inner surge had died away. He spoke in his own voice. “You know my name, Sealord, else you would not have come to my call.”

“Not so. I heard my father’s voice. Now I do not. Who are you who can speak with the thunder of Mórnir?”

And Paul stepped forward with the retreating tide, and he looked full into the face of the sea god, and he said, “I am Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree,” and Liranan made the sea waves to crash around them both.

“I had heard tell of this,” the sea god said. “Now I understand.” He was very tall. It was hard to discern if the sliding waters of his robe were falling into the sea about his feet, or rising from the sea, or the both at once. He was beautiful, and terrible, and stern. “What would you, then?” he said.

And Paul replied, “We sail for Cader Sedat in the morning.”

A sound came from the god like a wave striking a high rock. Then he was silent, looking down at Paul in the bright moonlight. After a long time he said, “It is a guarded place, brother.” There was a thread of sorrow in his voice. Paul had heard it in the sea before.

He said, “Can the guarding prevail over you?”

”I do not know,” said Liranan. “But I am barred from acting on the Tapestry. All the gods are. Twiceborn, you must know that this is so.”

“Not if you are summoned.”

There was silence again, save for the endless murmur of the tide washing out and the waves.

“You are in Brennin now,” said the god, “and near to the wood of your power. You will be far out at sea then, mortal brother. How will you compel me?”

Paul said, “We have no choice but to sail. The Cauldron of Khath Meigol is at Cader Sedat.”

“You cannot bind a god in his own element, Twiceborn.” The voice was proud but not cold. Almost sorrowful.

Paul moved his hands in a gesture Kevin Laine would have known. “I will have to try,” he said.

A moment longer Liranan regarded him, then he said something very low. It mingled with the sigh of the waves and Paul could not hear what the god had said. Before he could ask, Liranan had raised an arm, the colors weaving in his water robe. He spread his fingers out over Paul’s head and then was gone.

Paul felt a sprinkling of sea spray in his face and hair; then, looking down, he saw that he was barefoot on the sand, no longer in the sea. Time had passed. The moon was low now, over in the west. Along its silver track he saw a silver fish break water once and go down to swim between the sea stars and the colors of the coral.

When he turned to go back he stumbled, and only then did he realize how tired he was. The sand seemed to go on for a long way. Twice he almost fell. After the second time he stopped and stood breathing deeply for a time without moving. He felt lightheaded, as if he had been breathing air too rich. He had a distant recollection of the song he had heard far out at sea.

He shook his head and walked back to where he’d left his boots. He knelt down to put them on but then sat on the sand, his arms resting on his knees, his head lowered between them. The song was slowly fading and he could feel his breathing gradually coming back to normal, though not his strength.

He saw a shadow fall alongside his own on the sand. Without looking up, he said acidly, “You must enjoy seeing me like this. You seem to cultivate the opportunities.”

“You are shivering,” Jaelle said matter-of-factly. He felt her cloak settle over his shoulders. It bore the scent of her.

“I’m not cold,” he said. But, looking at his hands, he saw that they were trembling.

She moved from beside him and he looked up at her. There was a circlet on her brow, holding her hair back in the wind. The moon touched her cheekbones, but the green eyes were shadowed. She said, “I saw the two of you in a light that did not come from the moon. Pwyll, whatever else you are, you are mortal, and that was not a shining wherein we can live.”

He said nothing.

After a moment she went on. “You told me long ago, when I took you from the Tree, that we were human before we were anything else.”

He roused himself and looked up again. “You said I was wrong.”

“You were, then.”

In the stillness the waves seemed very far away, but they did not cease. He said, “I was going to apologize to you on the way here. You seem to always catch me at a hard time.”

“Oh, Pwyll. How could there be an easy time?” She sounded older, suddenly. He listened for mockery and heard none.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. And then, “Jaelle, if we don’t come back from this voyage, you had better tell Aileron and Teyrnon about Darien. Jennifer won’t want to, but I don’t see that you’ll have any choice. They’ll have to be prepared for him.”

She moved a little, and now he could see her eyes. She had given him her cloak and so was clad only in a long sleeping gown. The wind blew from off the sea. He rose and placed the cloak over her shoulders and did up the clasp at her throat.

Looking at her, at her fierce beauty rendered so grave by what she had seen, he remembered something and, aware that she had access to knowledge of her own, he asked, “Jaelle, when do the lios hear their song?”

“When they are ready to sail,” she replied. “Usually it is weariness that leads them away.”

Behind him he could still hear the slow withdrawing of the tide. “What do they do?”

“Build a ship in Daniloth and set sail west at night.”

“Where? An island?”

She shook her head. “It is not in Fionavar. When one of the lios alfar sails far enough to the west, he crosses to another world. One shaped by the Weaver for them alone. For what purpose, I know not, nor, I believe, do they.”

Paul was silent.

“Why do you ask?” she said.