It was almost invisible. One had to know the place. A mound of earth, no stone, the trees at the edge of Mórnirwood for shade. Sorrow and peace together came over Jennifer as she saw Matt kneel and lay his flowers on the mound.

Sorrow and peace, and then she saw that the Dwarf was weeping, and her own tears came at last from the heart that spring had unlocked. For Aideen she wept, and bright Kevin gone; for Darien she cried, and the choice he had to make; for Laesha and Drance, slain when she was taken; for all the living, too, faced with the terror of the Dark, faced with war and the hatred of Maugrim, born into the time of his return.

And finally, finally by Aideen’s grave in Kevin’s spring, she wept for herself and for Arthur.

It lasted a long time. Matt did not rise, nor did he look up until, at length, she stopped.

“There is heart’s ease in this place,” he said.

“Ease?” she said. A weary little laugh. “With so many tears between the two of us?”

“The only way, sometimes,” he replied. “Do you not feel it, though?”

After a moment she smiled as she had not done for a very long time. He rose from near the grave. He looked at her and said, “You will leave the Temple now?”

She did not reply. Slowly the smile faded. She said, “Is this why you brought me here?”

His dark eye never wavered from her face, but there was a certain diffidence in his voice. “I know only a few things,” said Matt Sören, “but these I know truly. I know that I have seen stars shining in the depths of the Warrior’s eyes. I know that he is cursed, and not allowed to die. I know, because you told me, what was done to you. And I know, because I see it now, that you are not allowing yourself to live. Jennifer, of the two fates, it seems to me the worse.”

Gravely, she regarded him, her golden hair stirred by the wind. She lifted a hand to push it back from her face. “Do you know,” she said, so quietly he had to strain to hear, “how much grief there was when I was Guinevere?”

“I think I do. There is always grief. It is joy that is the rarest thing,” said the onetime King of Dwarves.

To this she made no reply. It was a Queen of Sorrows who stood with him by the Godwood, and for all the earnest certitude of his words, Matt knew a moment of doubt. Almost to himself, for reassurance, he murmured, “There can be no hope for anything in a living death.”