'You had no choice,' Tristan said, numb with shock as he held his daughter in his arms.
'What happened to her?' demanded Alicia, her voice almost a wail. 'Why did she do it?'
'It wasn't Deirdre,' Robyn said softly, her own voice numb with grief and shock. 'It was all the enemies of the goddess … all those jealous deities who wouldn't let her survive in peace. They were the ones who killed Deirdre, and the only thing we could do was try to stop the monster she'd become.'
'But why?' Alicia persisted, shaking her head in disbelief.
'That's not a question we can answer-but at least it's over now,' Robyn said.
Slowly the others came limping back. Hanrald, his face blanched with his own grief, bore a slight form in his arms. Ranthal dragged a twisted leg, while even Newt settled, unspeaking, onto Tristan's shoulder. The earl brushed Brigit's golden hair, now streaked with blood, back from her face, and when he laid the sister knight gently on the ground, it almost looked as though she slept. Even the gruff Finellen couldn't hold back her tears at the sight of her old rival's lifeless body.
Brandon, too, came up to the king. The northman's battle-axe was stained with green trollish blood. 'Where's Alicia?' he asked Tristan, and the king looked around in surprise.
'I don't know-she was just here.'
'There she is,' Brandon said, his voice falling. Following the northman's gaze, Tristan saw his daughter run into Keane's arms as the wizard slowly approached them. The lanky magic-user held the sobbing princess silently, allowing her grief to fall against him, soothing the pain that she felt.
The Prince of Gnarhelm turned away, his face tinged with the sadness of his own loss, when Brandon's eyes fell on someone else. 'Tavish!' he cried. 'I thought you were lost with the Princess of Moonshae!'
'No,' chuckled the bard ruefully, rubbing a bruised lump on her head where the priest's spiritual hammer had struck. 'And your ship's not lost, either. That big giant had the sense to pull it up onto the shore.'
'He's a shrewd one, that firbolg,' Brand agreed as several of Finellen's dwarves approached with the surviving giant-kin under guard. 'I wonder what made him do it.'
'You know, they didn't fight at the end,' Tristan remarked thoughtfully. 'They could have turned the tables by joining the trolls, but they just stood there and watched.'
'The firbolgs?' Finellen asked grimly. 'What should we do with 'em?' The tone of her voice indicated that she favored a quick and permanent disposal of the captives.
'This one saved my life,' Tristan said, picking out Thurgol among the dejected giants. 'He made the troll put down his sword when I was unarmed. Otherwise I'd have been dead before the earthquake.'
'They deserve a pardon,' Robyn noted.
'I don't want them back in the vale!' Finellen protested.
The king looked around at the wilderness of rocks and trees that surrounded them. No firbolgs lived on Oman's Isle, so far as he knew, but perhaps that could change. There were far fewer humans here than on Gwynneth.
'Can you make a home here?' Tristan asked Thurgol. 'Can your people live in these highlands and stay away from the settlements of humans?'
The giant-kin blinked in surprise, obviously having expected a more brutal suggestion. 'Yes-we stay,' he agreed with a jerk of his head. The king saw an old hag of a giantess nodding at the chieftain. The new community would get off to a solid start, he suspected.
'I have learned a truth about my own home,' Robyn said quietly. 'For too long I have ignored the depth of my calling, the commitment that is rightly the cost of our triumph. I wanted it both ways-the strength of spirit within, while I surrounded myself with the trappings of royalty. But it was wrong.
'I cannot live in the castle, nor in the shelter of the town. My calling is real and true. I am a druid again, and such shall be my destiny until I die. There is only one place I can live.'
'Where …?' Tristan began, but of course he knew the answer. He surprised himself by greeting the knowledge with a sense of pastoral calm, almost of relief.
'I must go to Myrloch Vale, return to the grove of the Great Druid.'
For a time, no one spoke. Hanrald looked at the queen in wonder, Tristan and Finellen in shrewd appraisal. The king nodded once, with regal dignity, and then again as the idea settled in.
'Will you have room for another there?' Tristan asked. 'One who will be a hard worker, although he has only one hand?'
Robyn smiled gently, touching the king's arm. 'You'd come to live in the wilderness with me? What about the kingdom? How will you rule?'
'We've ruled together for twenty years-a good, long reign,' Tristan replied. 'But you don't think I could do it apart from you, do you?'
'But what… how …?' The queen's eyes shone as she looked at her husband. He smiled and took her in his arms without at first replying.
Alicia and Keane came up arm in arm. The princess's eyes were red, but at least her grief-stricken expression had given way to a look of, if not joy, a mixed sense of happiness.
'Our daughter will make a splendid queen,' Tristan continued. 'She has proven many times over that she's ready to rule. And now, perhaps, she may even be ready to announce her king!'
As if signaling approval, a high, keening voice rolled through the highland, and all the companions grew silent as they listened for several moments to the cry of a proud, lone wolf.
