Paul felt it going. Through him. His. His and the God’s. Whose he was. He felt the tears on his face. He felt himself claimed, going, mist boiling through him, ravens rising to fly, the God in the Tree, in him, the moon above the clouds riding in and out, never lost, Rachel, the Summer Tree, the wood, the world, and oh, the God, the God. And then one last thing more before the dark.

Ram, rain, rain, rain, rain.

In Paras Derval that night the people went down into the streets. In villages all over Brennin they did so, and farmers bore their children out of doors, only half awake, that they might see the miraculous moon that was answer of the Mother to the fire of Maugrim, and that they might feel upon their faces and remember, though it might seem to them a dream, the return of rain, which was the blessing of the God upon the Children of Mörnir.

In the street, with Loren and Matt, with Kim and the exiled Prince, Kevin Laine wept in his turn, for he knew what this must mean, and Paul was the closest thing to a brother he’d ever had.

“He did it,” whispered Loren Silvercloak, in a voice choked and roughened with awe. Kevin saw, with some surprise, that the mage, too, was crying. “Oh, bright,” Loren said. “Oh, most brave.”

Oh, Paul.

But there was more. “Look,” Matt Sören said. And turning to where the Dwarf was pointing, Kevin saw that when the red moon that should never have been shone through the scudding clouds, the stone in the ring Kim wore leaped into responding light. It burned on Kim’s finger like a carried fire, the color of the moon.

“What is this?” Aileron asked.

Kim, instinctively raising her hand high so that light could speak to light, realized that she both knew and didn’t know. The Baelrath was wild, untamed; so was that moon.

“The stone is being charged,” she said quietly. “That is the war moon overhead. This is the Warstone.” The others were silent, hearing her. And suddenly her own voice intoning, her role, seemed so heavy; Kim reached back, almost desperately, for some trace of the lightness that had once defined her.

“I think,” she tried, hoping that Kevin, at least, would catch it, would play along, help her, please, to remember what she was, “I think we’d better have a new flag made.”

Kevin, wrestling with things of his own, missed it completely. All he heard was Kim saying “we” to this new Prince of Brennin.

Looking at her, he thought he was seeing a stranger.