“I’m quite sure. We’re fettered by our fear of Mac Dara. His influence governs our every thought. We’ve talked about it, and we both feel the same. It’s wrong. It’s letting Mac Dara win. We’ve gone over and over it, and now Cathal’s in such a state of guilt and confusion that he won’t listen to me anymore. I think he’ll listen to you.”

Gods, this was fraught with peril. If I managed to persuade him, and then he was killed . . . If he came with us and failed to protect me from harm . . . If we both sailed away, and came home to find that Clodagh had died in childbirth . . .

“Go now, please, Sibeal,” Clodagh said. “I’ll finish your packing. I can fit twice as much in that bag. It’s all in the folding.”

It was late in the day, and the seer’s cave was full of soft light: violet, lavender, gray. Shades of sadness. Cathal had spread out his cloak and was sitting on it, not scrying, simply gazing straight ahead of him. On his troubled features I saw the shadow of a far older man.

I sat down at a little distance.

“Clodagh sent you,” he said after a while.

“She asked me to talk to you, yes. I wish she’d done so somewhat earlier. My chances of changing your mind are not great, one day before we leave.”

“True. I can’t imagine why she thought you could do what she cannot.”

Cathal’s tone was scathing. I was tempted to get up and walk out, but I swallowed my annoyance. You’ll never really understand, Clodagh had said. I must use what limited understanding I had to reach him. I owed it to her.

“You know, I suppose, how much courage it has taken for Clodagh to decide that you should go,” I said.

“I don’t need to hear this.”

I drew a deep breath. “You will hear it, Cathal. That choice is based on love; nothing more, nothing less. She’s putting her own wishes aside to do what’s right for everyone she cares about. Me, you, Gull, Johnny, your child yet unborn. Love will govern Clodagh’s choices, always. That’s the woman you married. If you do as she asks, you honor the woman she is.”

He did not so much as blink an eyelid. I might as well not have been there.

“Besides,” I said, “deep down you’re like all the other warriors. Their hearts were captured by this mission: loyalty beyond terror, survival beyond endurance. Don’t tell me part of you isn’t longing to rush to those men’s rescue.”

I thought he might turn on me in a fury after that; his face was full of darkness. I sat quietly, watching the still water. I waited. The silence drew on and on.

“Sibeal,” said Cathal, and his voice was not angry at all, but sounded more as if he were choking back tears, “how can this be the right choice for our child?”