grazed on the eternal grass, or ate the fruits of paradise, or drank from springs that flowed supernally pure. Everywhere was a dream of peace.
The soul that had been Mathias stood on the edge between the sea and the sand. He still wore his human shape: a tallish man in Herald's whites, broad-shouldered, with curling brown hair, and green eyes more fit for laughter than for sorrow. But they had not laughed since well before he died. Here in the land of laughter, they knew no mirth at all.
A slender woman stood beside him. Her eyes were blue; her hair was long and silver-white, drawn back in a straight and shining tail that swung to her haunches. 'My dear,' she said, 'you can't grieve here.'
He kept his eyes fixed obstinately on the place where the horizon would have been if this had been an earthly isle. 'Why can't I grieve? Is there a law against it?'
'Well,' she said, 'no. But-'
'Then I will grieve,' he said.
'But why?' she asked him. 'Your sacrifice ended the war. Your beloved is safe. The traitor's army is broken; she has marched in triumph to the capital, and taken her throne. She is Queen-and by your doing. You should be rejoicing.'
'Yes,' he said dully. 'I should.'
'Dear one,' said the woman who in mortal life had been his Companion, 'is it that you can't be with her? Your two souls are bound, you know that. In the fullness of time, you will both be reborn, and be together again. If I know the laws that constrain the gods, in your next life you will have her, and you will reap the reward of your sacrifice.'
He shook his head. 'No. That's not what it is. I know how the gods parcel out their favors. It's...I can't speak of it. Please, by the gods, don't make me try!'
She was relentless. She was a blessed spirit, he reminded himself, but she was not omniscient. She was not a god, or even a mage with a deathbed gift of prescience. She had not seen what he had seen.
'Tell me,' she said. 'Tell me why you grieve.'
But he would not. After a moment or an age, she went away. Her sadness stung him with guilt, but he could not tell her the horror that he had seen. They were all the blessed dead here. They were all ended, done with, rewarded. Anything that they had left behind, was left forever.
Some would go back to the mortal world, yes, but never soon enough. Not within the lifetime of anyone they had known.
That was his grief, and the core of his terror. By the laws of the cycle of death and rebirth, he had withdrawn from earthly cares. He would return to them, of that he had no doubt, but the life he had given up was gone. He could never get it back again.
Yet what he had seen in the moment of dying, the vision that he had had, tormented him even in these blessed Havens. He spoke it aloud, though only for his own ears to hear, soft beneath the sighing of waves. 'If I don't do something-if I don't take some action-she will never come back. There will be nothing left of her. Her self, her soul-gone. Never again. Never-'
He sank down in the sand, sobbing like a child. He did not even care that the blessed souls stared, or that the more compassionate or the more curious gathered to wonder and whisper.
One of them came to stand over him. It was not Lytha. This one he did not know: it wore Companion's shape, with some quality about it that made him want to bow low before it. The blue eyes were mild, the brush of its mind as soft, as gentle as sleep.
'I can't tell you,' he said, though the core of his resolve was crumbling fast.
The Companion bent its beautiful head.
'The Hidden-but where-'
But the great one was gone. Only then did Mathias realize how very strange it had been: it had been neither male nor female, nor known any distress for its lack of gender.
He straightened slowly. The semicircle of the curious drew back. He looked from face to shining face. 'Where is the Hidden Country?' he asked them. 'What did the great one mean?'
No one knew, or would admit to knowing. Only one of them came forward to say, 'Go inland.
Follow the light.' She would not explain herself; perhaps she could not.
It was as good advice as he was likely to get. He would not have said that he had hope, but his despair was a little lighter. He was doing something. He had a place to go, a riddle to ponder. Maybe it was mere distraction. Or maybe it would show him the way to save Vera's soul-and with it the soul of Valdemar.
* * *
If he had still been in mortal flesh, he would have found this journey tedious, if not particularly exhausting. Inland away from the sea was a sea of grass, greener than any earthly meadow, rolling monotonously into the luminous distance. He began to think that he had been deceived, that this was a punishment for bringing grief into the blessed land: to be condemned to wander forever in the featureless green. Not a soul stirred there, not single sentient thing, living or blessed dead.
Then he realized that without knowing it, he had been following the light. Little by little as he went onward, the sun was brighter, the grass more vivid. He was never blinded, but he was inundated in light.
He came at last to a wall of living fire, pure white, without heat, rising up into infinity. Standing there, contemplating it, he realized that it was not a barrier. He walked toward it.
It took it to itself. It was somewhat like passing a veil of fire, and somewhat like ascending a mountain of living coals. The dead knew no earthly weariness, but certainly they knew pain. It scoured away all that was impure in him, and all that was of earth-save only those memories which he clung to with implacable persistence. That was the price of passage. He paid it as freely as he had paid with his life to save Vera-but in so doing, he had doomed her soul.
With this, the Powers willing, he would save her. He pressed on. It was more like a mountain and less like a veil, the farther he traveled; and little by little the pain faded. In time, it dwindled to nothing. He trod stones underfoot, following a path up a steep slope, rising into a bank of luminous cloud.
There were trees, impossible if this had been an earthly peak, but all things were possible here.
These were slender and tall. Their leaves were deep green; blossoms opened on the branches, pure white enfolding a spark of gold.
The scent that drifted from those branches was ineffably sweet. It tempted Mathias to delay, to slow, to drift and dream in this hall of trees. But he was armored in memory and armed with terror. He climbed onward and ever onward.
The heart of the wood was a space of light. The grass there was so dark a green as to be almost black. The flowers in it were stars.
The Companion was waiting for him. As he approached it, the circle widened immeasurably, expanding into infinite space. He stood in a field of stars, beneath the orb of a sun.
The great one was not alone here. There were others like him, legions of them, as numerous as the stars. All revolved around the sun, singing a song of pure praise.
Mathias' voice was a lone small dissonance. 'Can you help me save my world?'
'Your world is safe,' the great one said.
He shook his head. 'Even you can't see. Before I died, I saw. Dashant works a spell to win back what he lost. That spell will destroy the Queen and enslave every soul in Valdemar. But her soul-her soul will be gone. Unless I do something. Unless I find some help, some hope for her.'
'That is no longer your world,' the great one said. 'There is nothing you can do to save it.'
He clenched his fists. 'There must be! Where is the quality of divine mercy? Where is the care the light takes for its children?'
'It is where it has always been,' said the great one. 'All that is, is meant. Yes, child: even this.'
'Then why did you bring me here?' he cried. 'Why did you let me hope? What use is there in any of you?'
His outcry died into the silence of eternity. The stars shone undimmed. The sun's light burned as bright as ever. It was not mortal, to know pity, nor human, to know sorrow. It knew nothing but the glory of itself.
The great one said, 'There is nothing that you can do.'
