“Silvercloak, there were other mages on Amairgen’s ship. Three of them, with their sources. None came back.” It was Jaelle, Paul saw. She glittered that morning, more coldly formidable than ever before. If there was an ascendency that day, it was hers, for Dana had acted and the winter was over.

They were not going to be allowed to forget it. Even so, he felt sorry for his last words yesterday evening. Hers had been a gesture unlikely to be repeated.

“It is true,” Aileron was saying. “Loren, how can I let you go? Where will we be if you die? Lisen saw a death ship from her tower—what mariner could I ask to sail another?”

“This one.” They all turned to the door in astonishment. Coll took two steps forward from his post beside Shain and said clearly, “The High King will know I am from Taerlindel. Before Prince Diarmuid took me from that place to serve in his company, I had spent all my life at sea. If Loren wants a mariner, I will be his man, and my mother’s father has a ship I built with him. It will take us there with fifty men.”

There was a silence. Into which there dropped, like a stone in a pool, the voice of Arthur Pendragon.

“Has your ship a name?” he asked.

Coll flushed suddenly, as if conscious for the first time of where he was. “None that will mean anything,” he stammered. “It is a name in no language I know, but my mother’s father said it was a ship’s name in his family far back. We called it Prydwen, my lord.”

Arthur’s face went very still. Slowly the Warrior nodded, then he turned from Coll to Aileron. “My lord High King,” he said, “I have kept my peace for fear of intruding myself between you and your First Mage. I can tell you, though, that if your concern is only for finding Cader Sedat—we called it Caer Sidi once, and Caer Rigor, but it is the same place—I have been there and know where it is. This may be why I was brought to you.”

“What is it, then?” asked Shalhassan of Cathal. “What is Cader Sedat?”

“A place of death,” said Arthur. “But you knew that much already.”

It was very quiet in the room.

“It will be guarded,” Aileron said. “There will be death waiting at sea, as well.”

Thought, Memory. Paul rose. “There will be,” he said as they turned to look at him. “But I think I can deal with that.”

It didn’t take very long, after that. With a sense of grim purpose, the company followed Aileron and Shalhassan from the room when the council ended.

Paul waited by the doorway. Brendel walked past with a worried expression but did not stop. Dave, too, looked at him as he went out with Levon and Tore.