Rest. No outward voice, but an inward command. Why here? Why now? He closed his eyes, in spite of uncertainty. His thoughts wandered to the past, as far back as his arrival at Aliam’s … as recent as the confrontation with the Lady … as distant as the coast of Aarenis and the king of Pargun …

And once again, his sister’s presence, this time more clear than ever before. They lie. She lies. She did not send the sword.

Kieri tried to hold the same stillness, to listen only.

She called mother. She called you. She did not protect. The image he’d seen before: the Lady’s face. Then another image: two elves talking behind the Lady. They lie. They tell her lies. I saw. She bade me come. I refused. She hated me. A bad place. Evil.

No image for the “bad place.” Kieri struggled with himself, not to press for answers, to listen only, but he had to know, and the question burst from him. Did she kill our mother?

Silence. A sense of overwhelming grief, the grief of a child who does not understand the finality of death. Then: Betrayal. Danger. Judgment. And then, from more than one, unnamed and unnumbered: Peace. Rest now. He sank into that peace despite himself.

“Sir King?” The Seneschal’s soft voice woke him.

Kieri opened his eyes. “I’m fine,” he said. “They wanted to talk to me.”

“Ah.” The Seneschal’s expression showed he understood who “they” were. “I can tell the others, if you like—if you need more time.”

“No.” He felt refreshed, though the ache of losing Arian—he hoped for only a time—still hurt, and the warnings his sister had given him rang in his mind like trumpets. “It was time to wake. I don’t understand it all, but it’s something I needed to do.” The Seneschal, he knew, would ask no more questions and might even understand more than he did himself.

“There have been things said,” the Seneschal said. “About the king’s choice and some disturbance …” It was not quite a question, but permitted an answer.

“What did you hear?” Kieri asked.

“I hear many things,” the Seneschal said. “I repeat none of them.” Then his expression softened. “Although, for the king, I will say that many rejoiced when it seemed the king had found a mate. And were shocked and alarmed when the King’s Squire rode away, and the king returned in a passion. Only later did anyone hear, from the other Squires, something of what happened, though the details were uncertain. It was thought perhaps the taig had forbidden it—”

“The taig rejoiced with us,” Kieri said. “The Lady my grandmother objected. I was angry at the reasons she gave, and she was angry at my choice and my defense of Arian. That disturbed the taig, as you can well imagine. Arian—left.”

“I have no dislike of the Lady,” the Seneschal said, frowning, “but she is not beyond error. To go against the taig’s joy … that is not wise. Arian will return.”