You might give thought as to whether control matters too much to you.

One last farewell to make.

He's been putting it off. He has a feeling it will be difficult, though he is not quite sure how; still, it must be done.

"Hello, Shiel," he says, as the priestess comes to greet him at the door to the Temple. She smiled to see him - a new thing, that. A sign of harmony, in a way, if one wanted to take it like that.

"I know you have given blood," Shiel says, almost apologetically.

"I'll do so again," he suggests, in the spirit of harmony, and she shakes her head, flushing, and sends an acolyte to find the High Priestess.

There is a path leading along the gate to the cottage; there is something blocking the path.

If Paul was not who he was, he might have been stopped with fear. But there is recognition in him, and so, though his heart twists yet again, it is not with sorrow. Not this time.

The gray dog, who had saved his life from Galadan while Paul hung on the Summer Tree, looks up at him, and Paul drops to his knees in the snow.

"Bright the hour," he says, with difficulty, around the lump in his throat.

It takes a moment, during which he is momentarily unsure, and then the dog comes down and suffers him to put his arms around its neck. It growls in its throat, and in the sound Paul hears recognition and acceptance.

"You have been guarding him," he says. "I might have known you would." The dog growls again - agreement, and something more, that Paul reads in his eyes. "You must go," he says, understanding. "Your place is with the hunt. It was more than happenstance that drew me here. I will stay tonight and deal with tomorrow when it comes."

The dog faces him for a moment longer, and then moves past, leaving the door to the cottage open. Once again, Paul can see the thick network of scars marring his fur. Scars taken, he remembers, all too well, for him. The dog pauses once more, looking at him.

"What can I say to you? I have sworn to kill the wolf when next we meet," Paul says, helplessly. He can pretend confidence, but not here. "It may have been a rash promise, but if I am dead, who can tax me with it? You drove him back. He is mine to kill, if I can."

He still crouches in the snow. The dog - who is the Companion in every world; whose name, Paul now knows, is Cavall - comes back, and licks his face before turning to go, and Paul realizes, almost in astonishment, that he is crying. As he had not before the Summer Tree, and as he has not since.

"Farewell," he says, softly. Dog or not, he must still perform his task. "And go lightly. There is some brightness allowed. Even for you. The morning will ofer light."

He watches the dog disappear, as he had watched Kevin go. Delaying mechanisms, both, before meeting the woman he must now face.




"He is gone, then?" says Vae the Weaver. Her voice is past tears; as Paul knows, too well, it is worse than weeping would have been.

Paul nods, and tells her - as easily and quietly as he can. For her own sake, and not to wake the child, too, who is sleeping upstairs.

"It is a cold fate," Vae says, dully, "for one with so warm a heart."

"He will ride now through all the worlds of the Tapestry," Paul says, hearing the emptiness of his words even as he says them. "He may never die."

Vae only repeats, "A cold fate," and rocks in her chair.

They both hear Darien, when he turns over in his bed upstairs.

"He was up very late," Vae says. She's looking at the fire, and not at Paul. "Waiting. He did a thing this afternoon - he traced a flower in the snow. They used to do ittogether, as children will, but this one Dari did alone, after Finn left. And . . . he colored it."

"What do you mean?" Paul asks, feeling fear sharpen in himself.

"Just that. I don't know how, but he tinted the snow to color his flower. You'll see in the morning."

"I probably marred it just now, crossing the yard."

"Probably," Vae says, blankly, and they both go to sleep. Vae in her room; Paul to Finn's bed, in the room he had shared with Darien.




Paul lies in the bed of the boy who is gone, and waits. He hears Vae crying for her son. He hears the wind, too, growing in strength in the hours before dawn.

Eventually, he also hears the soft padding of feet - a frightened child's feet - and sits up. "Yes, Darien, what can I do?"

No answer comes. Nothing but the patter of feet, on their way back to their own bed, rejecting a stranger's comfort. Paul doesn't lie back down. He stays up a long time, thinking, and feeling as if, somehow, he has already failed a test.

They had come to Taerlindel by the sea late in the day; the sun which had led them there was out over the sea then, and it is to the sea that Paul turns his attention now in the cool silver light of the full moon.

He hadn't even tried to sleep. His dreams have been restless, since Kevin died, and it is for the best after all - there is little enough time to do what must be done as is. Besides, such a thing as he is now going to attempt would be difficult, if not impossible, to manage in the presence of a dozen curious onlookers.

He hardly knows how he is going to manage it as it is.

He pauses to take off his boots and stockings and leaves them on the sand, and walks forward into the water, ankle-deep, and waits. Trying to stretch towards something - a moment, perhaps; he doesn't know, only that he is going to do something, and this is the place, and very soon -

- and now, he knows, is the hour.

Mornir, he thinks, some kind of hope for guidance, even as he shouts "Liranan!" Once, twice, and a third time, to coincide with the surging of power in his blood, but the next time the surge comes he waits - and is rewarded with the sight of a white wave, cresting unnaturally high above the tide.

"Catch me if you can!" comes the answer, the answer from the god, and, refusing to think about what he is doing, he dives into the ocean (shallow, only ankle-height a moment ago; he's not thinking about that, either) in pursuit.

It is neither dark or cold. Pale lights shimmer in the water and reflect in a flash off the side of a silver fish, darting in front of him. Paul follows; it doubles back to lose him, darting under the arch of a coral reef, and by the time Paul has followed it is gone.

He cries once more "Liranan!" and feels Mornir's thunder rock the deep.

Somehow, water doesn't flood in and fill his lungs. Somehow, he sees the god again, flashing silver, and follows - swimming between coral in rich rainbow colors, past lurking menaces in the lower depths, up breaking water again and now Paul is ankle-deep in the tide once more, no longer swimming but running after the god, and it would almost feel familiar to Paul the basketball player if it was not for the fact that they were running over water, straight out to sea.

Somewhere, faint and far off and achingly beautiful, a sound trickles over the waves. It frightens Paul - he can't say why - but he has no time to think about it, because Liranan is running ahead of him and he reaches out with the power in his mind and catches the god of the sea out on the waves.

"Caught you!" he says, from the beach where he has not moved at all, where he still stands ankle-deep. And yet he is breathing hard, and knows the running was not a lie, either. "Come - and let me speak with you, brother mine."

The god has taken his true form by now - colored like the moon, wearing robes of water with all the colors of the coral falling through them.

"You have named me as a brother," Liranan says; his voice sound like the waves. What it doesn't sound is happy. "How do you so presume? Name yourself!"

"You know my name," says Paul, though his voice no longer rings with the thunder of Mornir. "You know my name, Sealord, else you would not have come to my call."

"Not so," Liranan says, coldly. "I heard my father's voice. Now I do not. Who are you who can speak with the thunder of Mornir?"

Paul meets Liranan's moon-colored eyes with his own, blue-grey, and says, "I am Pwyll Twiceborn, Lord of the Summer Tree."

The waves crash around them both. "I have heard tell of this," Liranan says, finally. "Now I understand."

He is very tall. Paul is a small man, still, and speaking with his own voice, but it does not matter, because what is happening is greater than the god in front of him. "We sail for Cader Sedat in the morning."

The god makes a noise that in anyone else would be consternation; in him it is a wave striking a high rock. Then he is silent, for a long time, and when he speaks, there is sorrow in his voice. "It is a guarded place, brother."

"Can the guarding prevail over you?"

"I do not know," Liranan says, "but I am barred from acting on the Tapestry. All the gods are. Twiceborn -" He sounds genuinely regretful. "You must know that this is so."

Rules, thinks Paul, with sudden bitterness, and the mocking Raven's voice that he hears now is not, for once, that of the ravens of Mornir.

"Not," he says, abruptly, "if you are summoned."

The god had not expected that, and there is silence again. "you are in Brennin now," he says, eventually, "and near to the wood of your power. You will be far out at sea then, mortal brother. How will you compel me?"

"We have no choice but to sail," says Paul. "The Cauldron of Khath Meigol is at Cader Sedat."

"You cannot bind a god in his own element, Twiceborn."

Watch me, Paul thinks, with fierce stubbornness - the stubbornness that had sent him out on the basketball field time and time again, while ill, until he nearly collapsed; the stubbornness that had caused him to play Rachel's song through, over and over again, to reach the end; the stubbornness that had allowed him to last three nights on the Summer Tree. But this is probably not politic to say to a god; he says, instead, "I will have to try."

Liranan regards him, and then says something Paul cannot hear, and before he has a chance to ask the god raises an arm over Paul's head, spreads the fingers out, and vanishes.

Paul feels the spray hit him, and is once more back on the beach, too tired, almost, to think. He feels lightheaded, and for some reason ringing in his head is the song he heard out on the sea.

He collapses onto the sand, arms resting on his knees and his head lowered between them, and slowly feels his breathing return to normal as the song fades in the air.

They had arrived in Fionavar to a barrage of questions, thrown out by all sides. The first thing Paul himself had asked about was the winter, now nine months in length - unsurprising, due to the warning passed through Milliways, but far from pleasant to have confirmed. King Aileron, of course, had demanded to know where his Seer was; Kevin, meanwhile, was craning his neck to look for Prince Diarmuid.

The one, Paul had explained, was on her way, with a guest. As for the other - well, there was only ever one place to look for Diarmuid, in times of peace and in times of trouble, and it's there that Paul, Kevin and Dave had gone.

Paul leans against the wall by the door, now, and watches the surging mass of men in the middle of the Black Boar with a certain bemusement. The mock-jousting that had been going on when they arrived, one man sitting on another's shoulders, has turned into a general free-for-all. At the center, of course, is Diarmuid.

Kevin and Dave certainly seem to be enjoying themselves, at least, and Paul supposes that that's something. As for himself - despite the heat of the tavern, he cannot forget the unnatural winter outside, nor the reason for it. All the same, when irrepressible Kevin climbs up on Dave's shoulders to charge at Diarmuid, he can't help but grin, and even bring his hands together in dry mock applause -

- which means he doesn't notice the cloaked and hooded figure picking its way carefully through the brawling patrons of the tavern towards him.

But someone else does.

"Hold it, sister! This one is mine first," cries Tiene - the brown-haired barmaid who had taken him to her bed, all those months ago. Who had cried, for what she could not give him. Who had triggered a song that led him to the Summer Tree.

Who bursts in between Paul and the cloaked figure, now. Paul turns; the other, meanwhile, reaches out a hand and touches the girl. A touch, no more than that - but Tiene gasps, and falls, and, feeling herself falling, reaches out to grab the cloak from around the one who has just killed her.

Paul can do nothing for Tiene. He knows this as soon as he sees the face revealed, with her skin so white it's almost blue, and her glacial eyes, the color of moon and ice. He knows this, because a pair of ravens are speaking in his ears, and in the moment when the hand reaches out to strike him down as Tiene had been struck he opens his mouth and says what they tell him to say:

"White the mist that rose through me
Whiter than the land of your dwelling
It is your name that will bind thee
Your name is mine for the telling."

No one else pays any attention. The Black Boar is a tavern; people come there and get drunk, and fall down, and sometimes say strange things. But the figure across from him flinches, her movement arrested, and Paul presses his advantage.

"I am the Lord of the Summer Tree," he says, and his voice is the low inhuman one that comes, sometimes, with the deep old magic that comes with it. The eyes of ice lock onto his.

"There is no secret to my name, no binding there. But you are far from the Barrens, and from your power. Curse him who sent you here, and be gone, Ice Queen, for I name thee now by thy name, and call thee Fordaetha of Ruk!"


As the name is spoken, she screams.

And now the Black Boar pays attention, at last, as the scream echoes on and on. The men break off their fighting and their laughing to turn to stare at the source of the terrible wailing vibration - but as it dies away, all that's left is Paul, crouching by a brown-haired girl now blue with death, an empty cloak in front of him.





Kevin and Dave and Diarmuid rush over; take in the scene, ask the necessary questions, his friends stunned and Diarmuid hard with concentration. He explains, and his voice seems flat and faraway to his own ears.

Only Kevin, who knows him best, hears the desperation contained within it. And so, when Paul turns abruptly to leave, Kevin doesn't stop him, but stays behind in the warmth and companionship of the Black Boar.

Warmth and companionship which Paul cannot partake in. He walks in the snow, and doesn't feel the cold; he is the Lord of the Summer Tree, and so set apart - a fair trade, he thinks, bitterly, for power he's achingly unaware of how to control. He had been forced to flee from Galadan; had had to beg Jaelle to send he and Jennifer back, last time.

He had not even noticed Fordaetha tonight, until Tiene had bought him the necessary time with her life.

He feels like a child. A defiant child walking in winter without his coat, when there is more than the world at stake.

He thinks, at first, that his wanderings are aimless. It takes him a moment to realize that his feet know what his head doesn't (his head seems to be eternally out of the loop these days). He's standing in front of the shop of Vae the Weaver, where Finn dan Shahar and his adoptive little brother Darien should be sleeping peacefully.

Should be, of course, being the key word here. Because a slant of moonlight falls across the shop window, turning Paul's blood suddenly cold.

He steps forward and pushes the door open. There's no resistance; it opens easily onto the shop, snow piled up in all the aisles and counters that had once been so busy. Faster and faster, Paul moves, now, from empty shop to empty apartments above, determined to see the worst.

And here it is.

An broken window. A bitter wind. And an empty cradle, rocking.

He's been waiting all morning for the pomp of the King of Cathal's arrival with his troops to be over, paying as much attention to the antics of Diarmuid and Aileron as they attempt to one-up each other as he can, fear and fury growing with each passing moment.

He knows this is important - the whole elaborate power play spread out in front of him, balance shifting from King to King to Princess to Prince, and under ordinary circumstances judging the consequences of Brennin's polite triumph over Cathal in matters of military sagacity would be taking up all of his mind.

But important as the leadership of this war is, more important by far is the location Jennifer's son.

As much power as King Shalhassan wields, Darien's may - will - outstrip that of any mere human, whether that human be Shalhassan of Cathal, Aileron of Brennin, knife-bright Prince Diarmuid, or Paul himself.

So when the pageantry ends, Paul sets straight off after Jaelle, resenting even Kevin's brief interruption to comment on Diarmuid's brilliance and their plans to go fetch the shaman of the Dalrei. Much as Paul would like to listen - more than that, much as he would like to go with, to savor the companionship and laughter that accompanied Kevin and Diarmuid and even Dave wherever they went - he does not have the time to convey any of this, and he lets his best friend go with a brief shoulder-squeeze and continues his pursuit of the Priestess.

It's a shock to see Jennifer with her, but he doesn't let it show.

"I need you both," he says to them.

Hi guys!

So - what we really need to figure out, at present, is when we're going to arrange this mass transit of Canadians to Fionavar/DiRians to the Summer Country. We'd originally planned to work this out last week, before Rym left, but, uh, that time has passed - mostly due to my own lack of skills at catherding, for which I apologize to everyone - so a new date must now be named.

Possibly we can hash it out in comments to this post; however, I would also very much like to try to organize a group chat of as many people as we can to be on at the same time for ease of discussion and so forth, especially as we are going to have a new Diarmuid player (HI DIARMUID-PLAYER CAN YOU TELL I AM EXCITED? :D!!) who may want a different time schedule than we'd originally planned for.

So! If everyone can post here with times they will be available and preferences for how soon to do this, that would be awesome. If we can arrange a group chat, that would be great, and if not, let's get discussion going here! Talk amongst yourselves.

"Fear not. We went so deep because we are so near to Gwen Ystrat. The old stories are true after all."

He shook his head. He had to travel a long way back to do that much, and farther still to speak. "Everywhere," he said. "This deep."

Deep As You Go
Lyrics

. . . and she knew that they were glorious, wheeling across the wide night sky, Imraith-Nimphais and the Rider who knew her name.

Walking In the Air
Lyrics

As he drifted to sleep, Dari heard Finn murmur in his ear, "I love you, little one."

Dari loved him back. When he fell asleep he dreamt again, and in his dream he was trying to tell that to the ghostly figures calling from the wind.

Nature Boy
Lyrics

He'd gone four weeks before her recital. Had convinced them both it made sense - the time was too huge for her, it meant too much.

Blue Caravan
Lyrics

They stood on the mound in the clear moonlight. She shone for him softly, like the moon.

Calling the Moon
Lyrics

He had only been born less than a year ago. How could he know what he wanted? He knew only that his eyes could turn red like his father's, and when they did trees burned and everyone turned away from him. Even the Light had turned away.

Funeral In His Heart.
Lyrics

You had to pay the price, one way or another. You certainly weren't allowed to weep. Too much hypocrisy, that would be. Part of the price, then: no tears, no release.

(I first got this one as a Blodwen song. So it made me flail a little at first because Paul is not Blodwen whut but - it is so Paul on the tree. It is the most Paul song ever.)

Drought
Lyrics

"Rahod hedai Liadon!" Jaelle cried. "Liadon has died again!"

King of May
Lyrics

"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."

Dark Time
Lyrics

And who was he, Kevin Laine, to swear an oath of revenge? It all seemed so pathetic, so ridiculous . . .

Doubting Thomas
Lyrics

"Don't you have any idea how he's feeling? Don't you care?" Kimberly had shouted.

Answer: no, and no. How could she come to such a human thing as caring, anymore?

I Don't Care Much
Lyrics

She needed grey. No fire or blood, no colors of desire, access to love.

Numb
Lyrics

It seemed to her a heartbreaking thing that she could not remember the last words he had said to her.

Fire and Rain
Lyrics

He wondered if anyone would ever understand what had happened. He hoped so. So that someone might come, in time, to his mother and tell her of the choice he'd made.

Carry On, My Wayward Son
Lyrics

These next two work as a pair. A dialogue, if you will. *intertextual!*

"I am better as I am. Paul brought me this far, he and another thing. Leave it rest. I am here and not unhappy, and I am afraid to try for more light lest it mean more dark."

Fortress Around Your Heart
Lyrics

CastleDown
Lyrics

"Abba, he's been closing himself off. To everyone. I don't . . . I'm afraid for what might happen. And I can't seem to get through."

His Work And Nothing More
Lyrics

She looked out to the sea, searching. The wind was very strong now, and there were storm clouds coming up fast. She forced herself to keep her features calm as she gazed, but inwardly she was as open, as exposed, as she had ever been.

Edge of the Ocean
Lyrics

"You failed because humans fail. It is a gift as much as anything else."

Hymn to Breaking Strain
Lyrics

"I've plucked the fairest rose in Shalhassan's garden!"

Kiss From a Rose
Lyrics

. . . he poured out the brimming cup of his blood into the dark chasm, to summon Dana from the earth on Midsummer's Eve.

La Tribu de Dana
Lyrics

The grief at the heart of a dream, the reason why she was here, and Lancelot. The price, the curse, the punishment laid on the Weaver by the Warrior . . .

Guinevere
Lyrics

A sheet of lightning seared the sky west of them. Then thunder again. Then Darien: "Don't you see? The Light has turned away, and now you have as well."

Mother I Climbed
Lyrics

For a thousand years the lios had set forth, singly and in pairs, over a moonless sea . . .

Dig Ophelia
Lyrics

"I am not a goddamned subway system," Kim snapped. "I got us out because the Baelrath was somehow unleashed. I can't do it on command."

"Which means we're stuck here," Kevin said.

Pacing the Cage
Lyrics

Of course there was light in the meadow, of course there was. She was here.

With the Baelrath blazing in wildest summons on her hand.

My Medea
Lyrics

He watched her stand thus until the Prydwen was a white dot only at the place where sea and sky came together.

The Prydwen Sails Again

"I wanted to have the child. There are reasons words will not reach. His name is Darien, and he was here not long ago, and went away because I made him go away."

The Child Is Gone
Lyrics

"Are you really going to leave me?"

Tear In Your Hand
Lyrics

"Pity the ones like Jennifer and Sharra, who can only wait and love, and hope that that counts for something beyond pain."

Harbor
Lyrics

And now a couple I don't have quotes for. But they work. Because they work for everything!

Miri It Is
Lyrics

Wheel in the Sky
Lyrics

And, of course:

Bury My Lovely
Lyrics

Dark seed of a dark god, Paul is thinking.

They are strolling through the museum - nineteenth-century Japanese prints have never held any particular interest for Paul, except inasmuch as he appreciates all beautiful things, and still less so now. Still, he continues to direct his gaze at the pictures on the walls, rather than at the lady walking next to him.

It is enough that she is next to him, for now, and not sitting in her apartment waiting for some dark fate - more than enough; it is no small grace. He will not make her regret it by staring at her. He will give her the comfort of normality, as much as he can.

But although he keeps his gaze studiously on the cranes and twisted trees as they pass by, he cannot tear his mind away from Jennifer, nor the burden she carries in her womb.

Darien.

There's a restaurant in Toronto with cheap good coffee and cheaper bad food; for this reason, it tends to be patronized almost exclusively by students.

The man who's sitting at a table with a cup of that cheap coffee, occasionally checking his watch and trying not to look impatient, is therefore almost certainly a student. (Though he hasn't got any books or notes with him, and there's something about him . . .)

Still. Almost definitely a student.