“My room. Let’s go.” She walked out, leaving them to follow her. Her and the Baelrath.

“The flame will wake from sleep,
The Kings the horn will call,
But though they answer from the deep,
You may never hold in thrall
Those who ride from Owein’s Keep
With a child before them all.”

Levon’s voice faded away. In the silence Kim became aware, annoyingly, of the same faint static she’d heard two nights ago; again it was from the east. Gwen Ystrat, she decided. She was getting herself tuned in to whatever sendings the priestesses were throwing back and forth out there. It was a nuisance and she pushed it from her mind. She had enough to worry about, starting with all these men in her bedroom. A frustrated woman’s dream, she thought, unable to find it amusing.

They were waiting for her. She kept silent and let them wait. After a moment it was Levon who resumed—it was his idea, after all. He said, “I learned that verse from Gereint as a boy. I remembered it last spring when Davor found the horn. Then we located the tree and the rock. And so we know where Owein and the Sleepers are.” He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. “We have the horn that calls them and… and it is my guess that the Baelrath roused is the flame that wakes them.”

“It would fit,” said Diarmuid. He had kicked off his boots and was lying on her bed. “The Warstone is wild, too. Loren?”

The mage, by exercise of seniority, had claimed the armchair by the window. He lit his pipe methodically and drew deeply upon it before answering.

“It fits,” he said at length. “I will be honest and say I do not know what it forms.”

The quiet admission sobered them. “Kim?” Diarmuid asked, taking charge from where he lay sprawled across her bed.

She was minded to give them a hard time, still, but was too proud to be petty. “I haven’t seen it,” she murmured. “Nothing of this at all.”

“Are you sure?” Paul Schafer asked from by the door, where he stood with Matt Sören. “You were waiting for Levon, weren’t you?”

He was awfully clever, that one. He was her friend, though, and he hadn’t given away her first apprehension about Diarmuid. Kim nodded, and half smiled. “I sensed he was coming. And I guessed, from before, what he wanted to ask. I don’t think we can conclude much from that.”

“Not much,” Diarmuid concurred. “We still have a decision to make.”

“We?” It was Kevin Laine. “Kim’s ring, Dave’s horn. Their choice, wouldn’t you say?”

Levon said, “They aren’t really theirs. Only—”

“Anyone planning to take them away and use them?” Kevin asked laconically. “Anyone going to force them?” he continued, driving the point home. There was a silence. Another friend, Kim thought.