Her hands were cradling him to her, running through his hair, the grey amid the brown. She tried to speak, could not. Could scarcely breathe. She lifted his face that she might look at him and saw the tears of bitter longing pouring down. “Oh, my love,” she gasped and, lowering her head, she tried to kiss them all away. She found his mouth with her own, blindly, as if they were both blind and lost without the other. She was trembling as with fever. She could hardly stand. He rose and gathered her to him and, after so long, her head was on his chest again, and she could feel his arms around her and could hear the strong beat of his heart, which had been her home.

“Oh, Guinevere,” she heard him say after a space of time. “My need is great.”

“And mine,” she replied, feeling the last dark webs of Starkadh tear asunder so that she stood open to desire. “Oh, please,” she said. “Oh, please, my love.” And he took her to his bed, across which a slant of sunlight fell, and they rose above their doom for part of an afternoon.

After, he told her where it was he had to go and she felt all the griefs of the worlds return to rest in her. She was clear, though; she had spun free from Rakoth, and she was stronger for every single thing she had survived, as Matt had said. She rose up and stood in the sunlight of the room, clad only in her hair, and said, “You must come back to me. What I told you before is true: there is no Lancelot here. It has changed, Arthur. Only the two of us are here now, only us.”

In the slant of sun she watched the stars sliding through his eyes. The summer stars, whence he had come. Slowly he shook his head, and she ached for his age and his weariness.

“It cannot be so,” he said. “I killed the children, Guinevere.”

She could find nothing at all to say. In the silence she could almost hear the patient, inexorable shuttling of the Loom.

Saddest story of all the long tales told.

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

In the morning came Arthur and Guinevere together out of Paras Derval to the great square before the palace gates. Two companies were gathered there, one to ride north, the other west to the sea, and there was not a heart among all those assembled that did not lift to see the two of them together.

Dave Martyniuk, waiting behind Levon for the signal to ride, looked past the five hundred men Aileron had given them to lead to the Plain, and he gazed at Jennifer with a memory flaring in his mind.