Loren and Matt turned to each other as Paul had seen them do before. They exchanged an intensely private glance, unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world. Matt was desperately weary, he knew, and Loren had to be, as well, but he also knew it wasn’t going to matter.

He saw the mage look up at Coll. He saw the bleakness of his smile. “Man your ship,” he heard Loren say, “and point her to the north.”

They hadn’t noticed the dawn coming on. But as Coll and the men of South Keep sprang to obey, the sun leaped up behind them out of the sea.

Then it was on their right, as Coll of Taerlindel grappled his ship over straight into the strong north wind. Loren had gone below. When he reappeared he was clad in the cloak of shifting silver hues that gave him his name. Tall and stern, his hour begun at last, his and Matt’s, he strode to Prydwen’s prow and he carried the staff of Amairgen Whitebranch. Beside him, equally stern, equally proud, walked Matt Sören, who had once been King under Banir Lok and had forsaken that destiny for the one that led him to this place.

“Cenolan!” Loren cried. He extended the staff straight out in front of him. “Sed amairgen, sed remagan, den sedath iren!” He hurled the words out over the waves, and power surged through them like a greater wave. Paul heard a roar of sound, a rushing of winds as if from all the corners of the sea. They flowed around Prydwen as Liranan’s whirlpool had spun past her sides and, after a chaotic, swirling moment Paul saw that they were sailing on a hushed and windless sea, utterly calm, like glass, while on either side of them the wild winds raged.

And ahead, not very far at all, lit by the morning sun, lay an island with a castle high upon it, and the island was slowly revolving in the glassy sea. The windows of the castle were begrimed and smeared and so, too, were its walls.

“It shone once,” Arthur said quietly.

From the very highest point of the castle a black plume of smoke was rising, straight as a rod, into the sky. The island was rocky and bare of vegetation.

“It was green once,” Arthur said. “Cavall!”

The dog was growling and straining forward, his teeth bared. He quieted when Arthur spoke.

Loren never moved. He held the staff rigidly before him.

There were no guards. Soulmonger had been guard enough. When they came close, the spinning of the island stopped. Paul guessed that they were spinning with it now, but he had no idea where they were. It was not Fionavar, though, that much he understood.

Coll ordered the anchors cast overboard.