“What is this I hear?” Lar growled.
Imin had not come in smiling, and he did not make a joke now. For many moons something in their relationship had been shifting, and now it seemed to have slipped away entirely, like a slide of rocks when the dirt of the hillside is worn away.
“Friend?” Cat whimpered, forgetting his name for a moment in her confusion and her fright.
“It’s only I, Mina,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”
“Paul!” Cat cried. “There you are!”
Paul seemed to be trying to make himself inconspicuous, but he came to stand in the doorway. He did not smile.
The sun was sinking behind the world, but the air was warm with the humid heat of rapidly growing things. The leaves had come out early this year, and it was a glad thing to Surr, for it seemed that some of his mother’s old happiness had come out again with them. If he was not mistaken, his father had left her one last gift before he had gone away forever. Perhaps she would even have her heart’s fondest wish: a daughter.
To Britamund’s astonishment, she did not even have the chance to see the look on the Queen’s face before she was being squeezed in a long hug, complete with a gentle back-patting.
She had summoned all her courage and her pride to prepare for shock and outrage, but she had never dreamt that she would be greeted as one in need of comforting. She was so unprepared for this that she immediately began to cry.
Caedwulf caught Ari by the wrist and spun her around.
“This one,” he whispered.
“How are you this evening, my daughter?”
Catan had been feeling somewhat optimistic, for her sister had eaten a bowl of soup an hour before and managed to keep it down, but the sight of so much emotion stirred up her own troubles again.
Paul came to a sudden stop at the bottom of the stairs. “My father!”
He was quite pleased to see him, but he put on a disapproving smile. His father, on the other hand, was looking suitably sheepish.
“Where is everybody?” Imin cried. “Smell me coming?”
“I sent them out,” Lar said coldly. “I want to speak to you alone.”
The clouds were so hurried and low that the sky seemed to be sliding almost across the crests of the hills. Beyond the dark hedges, the young flax was laid flat by the wind, showing the silvery green of its under-leaves. The fields sloped shining and slippery all the way to the river, smoothing the way, and above Lor’s head, the new leaves of the old trees shivered in dread of their first real storm.
“Is this elf certain we should be doing this now?” he asked uneasily. “This storm is coming up more quickly than I expected. The elf could come any time to take her back to the castle.”
“You are the twentiest twenty-year-old I have met today, and that is saying a lot.”
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