It was bittersweet, and when she moved at last, Kimberly went out the back door, still alone, into the yard, away from where the soldiers were, and she saw three men picking their way on horseback down the slope north of her, and one of them she knew, oh, she knew. And it seemed that amid all the burdens and sorrows, joy could still flower like a bannion in the wood.

They buried Ailell dan Art in a time of rain. It fell upon the windows of Delevan high above the Great Hall where the King lay in state, robed in white and gold, his sword upon his breast, his great, gnarled hands closed upon the hilt; it fell softly upon the gorgeous woven covering of the bier when the nobility of Brennin, who had gathered for celebration and stayed for mourning and war, bore him out of the palace and to the doors of the Temple where the women took him; it fell, too, upon the dome of that sanctuary while Jaelle, the High Priestess, performed the rites of the Mother, to send back home to her one of the Kings.

No man was in that place. Loren had taken Paul away. She’d had hopes of seeing Silvercloak shaken, but had been disappointed, for the mage had shown no surprise at all, and she had been forced to cloak her own discomfiture at that, and at his bowing to the Twiceborn.

No man was in that place, save for the dead King, when they lifted the great axe from its rest, and no man saw what they did then. Dana was not mocked nor denied when she took her child home, whom she had sent forth so long ago on the circling path that led ever back to her.

It was the place of the High Priestess to bury the High King, and so Jaelle led them forth when the rites were done. Into the rain she went, clad in white among all the black, and they bore Ailell shoulder-high behind her to the crypt wherein the Kings of Brennin were laid to rest.

East of the palace it lay, north of the Temple. Before the body went Jaelle with the key to the gates in her hands. Behind the bier, fair and solitary, walked Diarmuid, the King’s Heir, and after him came all the lesser nobility of Brennin. Among them there walked, though with aid, a Prince of the lios alfar, and there were come as well two men of the Dalrei, from the Plain; and with these walked two men from another world, one very tall and dark, another fair, and between them was a woman with white hair. The common folk lined the path, six deep in the rain, and they bowed their heads to see Ailell go by.