It would have to endure in the days to come, he knew, the full power of the Dark coming down. And he also knew that it might not. Tomorrow, Ivor thought, I will worry tomorrow; and riding in peace over the prairie beside his son, he came back to the camp and saw Leith waiting for them by the western gate.

Seeing her, Tabor slipped from his horse and ran into her arms. Ivor willed his eyes to stay dry as he watched. Sentimental fool, he castigated himself; she was right. When Leith, still holding the boy, looked a question up at him he nodded as briskly as he could.

“To bed, young man,” she said firmly. “We’re riding in a few hours. You need sleep.”

“Oh, Mother,” Tabor complained, “I’ve done nothing but sleep for the—”

“Bed!” Leith said, in a voice all her children knew.

“Yes, Mother,” labor replied, with such pure happiness that even Leith smiled watching him go into the camp. Fourteen, Ivor thought, regardless of everything. Absolutely regardless.

He looked down at his wife. She met the look in silence. It was, he realized, their first moment alone since the Mountain. “It was all right?” she asked.

“It was. It is something very bright.”

“I don’t think I want to know, just yet.” He nodded, seeing once more, discovering it anew, how beautiful she was.

“Why did you marry me?” he asked impulsively. She shrugged. “You asked.” Laughing, he dismounted, and with each of them leading a horse, his and Tabor’s, they went back into the camp. They put the animals in the stockade and turned home.

At the doorway Ivor looked up for the last time at that moon, low now in the west, over where Pendaran was.

“I lied,” Leith said quietly. “I married you because no other man I know or can imagine could have made my heart leap so when he asked.”

He turned from the moon to her. “The sun rises in your eyes,” he said. The formal proposal. “It always, always has, my love.”

He kissed her. She was sweet and fragrant in his arms, and she could kindle his desire so…

“The sun rises in three hours,” she said, disengaging. “Come to bed.”

“Indeed,” said Ivor.

“To sleep,” she said, warningly.

“I am not,” Ivor said, “fourteen years old. Nor am I tired.”

She looked at him sternly a moment, then the smile lit her face as from within.

“Good,” said Leith, his wife. “Neither am I.” She took his hand and drew him inside.

Dave had no idea where he was, nor, beyond a vague notion of heading south, where to go. There weren’t likely to be signposts in Pendaran Wood indicating the mileage to Paras Derval.