pwyll_twiceborn | (no subject)

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.

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