“It would have been,” Loren agreed, “but the lios alfar say another thing in their legends.” He paused. His face was quite lost in the glare of the sun. “They say there was no clash. That Owein and the Hunt asked Connla to bind them, but they do not know why.”

Kim heard a sound, or thought she did, as of quick wings flying. She looked to the door.

And heard Paul Schafer say, in a voice that sounded scraped up from his heart, “I know.” His expression had gone distant and estranged but when he continued, his voice was clear. “They lost the child. The ninth one. They were eight kings and a child. Then they made a mistake and lost the child, and in grief and as penance they asked the Paraiko to bind them under the stone with whatsoever bonds they chose and whatsoever method of release.”

He stopped abruptly and passed a hand before his eyes. Then he leaned back for support against the wall.

“How do you know this?” Levon asked in amazement.

Paul fixed the Dalrei with those fathomless, almost inhuman eyes, “I know a fair bit about half-death,” he said.

No one dared break the silence. They waited for Paul. At length he said, in a tone more nearly his own, “I’m sorry. It… catches me unawares, and I’m thrown by it. Levon, I—”

The Dalrei shook his head. “No matter. Truly not. It is a wonder, and not a gift, I know, but earned. I am grateful beyond words that you are here, but I do not envy you.”

Which, Kim thought, was about it. She said, “Is there more, Paul? Do we wake them?”

He looked at her, more himself with each passing second. It was as if an earthquake had shaken the room and passed. Or a roll of very great thunder.

“There is no more,” he said, “if you mean do I know anything more. But, for what it’s worth, I did see something just before we left the other room.”

Too clever by half, she thought. But he had paused and was leaving it for her. “You don’t miss much, do you?” she murmured. He made no reply. She drew a breath and said, “It’s true. The Baelrath glowed for a moment when Levon came up to me. In the moment when I understood what he had come for. I can tell you that, for what, as Paul says, it’s worth.”

“Something, surely,” Levon said earnestly. “It is as I have been saying: why else have we been given the horn, shown the cave? Why, if not to wake them? And now the stone is telling us!”