brave enough to face that. But there’s another part I can’t control, and it takes over. Every time. Once in a while I just throw myself at the wall like a madwoman, and Erithusme feels it, and does the same on the other side, raging and smashing, and I start to think we might just do it, might just tear the wall to pieces. That’s when the other part of me begins crying out, crying out, and it doesn’t stop until every crack is sealed.’
‘Crying out to whom?’
Thasha froze, as if deeply shocked by the question. ‘Who do you mucking think?’ she said.
Her tears grew stronger, racking her body. The loyal officer struck three bells. Pazel held her tighter, heartbroken and deeply afraid. Was he supposed to save her, sacrifice her? Was there any reason to keep trying, to torture her with hope in these final, blessed moments before the end?
As he lay there facing the ceiling, blinking his own tears from his eyes, Pazel felt something small tickle the back of his neck. He shifted his gaze and saw a hint of blue and gold. Thasha’s Blessing-Band. The embroidered ribbon from the Lorg School, meant for the wedding ceremony on Simja. He lifted it: the silk was partly torn, but he could still read the ambiguous words: YE DEPART FOR A WORLD UNKNOWN, AND LOVE ALONE SHALL KEEP THEE
Within him, something changed. Thasha felt it. Still weeping uncontrollably, she moved her hand to his face, probing.
‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Have you started hating me?’
‘Oh, Thasha-’
‘You don’t have to hide it. I wouldn’t. I’d tell you the truth.’
Then he told her to stop crying, kissed her hand, her hair, and promised her he wasn’t crazy, that he loved her now and had done so since the day she first pinned him to the floor in the adjoining cabin, that they must get up and call the others together, that they must hurry, because at long last he knew.
The wall was indeed enormous, the stairs many and steep. In the pale light of early morning Pazel and Thasha watched the long procession. Men, dlomu, ixchel, augrongs, selk. Not that you could really tell them apart. He smiled. From this distance they were simply his crew.
And they were making good time, he thought, even though some were bearing stretchers, and others splints. But then they had to be quick. Dry land would soon be scarce, if things went as planned.
Their friends looked back often, and waved: Bolutu, Olik, Nolcindar, Hercol and Neda linking hands. Above them, already blurred with distance, climbed Neeps and Marila. They had started early, in case Marila had to set a slower pace. Pazel smiled. No chance of that.
Only the Mzithrinis were slow, for they carried the heaviest and strangest burden: the Shaggat’s corpse, embalmed in the mariner’s fashion, in a coffin sealed in wax. They still had a task to perform with it, a cult of murder to destroy.
Murder. It made Pazel think of the one figure who was missing from the crowd. Sometime in the last few hours, Sandor Ott had simply disappeared. No one had seen him depart, but their last sweep of the ship had turned up nothing. Had he raced ahead of them? Was he hiding out among the trees? Or could he have escaped into a vanishing compartment? Was he sitting, even now, on that speck of an island just vacated by the ixchel, beside that other
They might never find out. Pazel merely hoped that Ott was finished with his bloody intrigues. That he would stop hurting others, perhaps even himself.
‘Well, Felthrup,’ said Thasha, ‘it’s time you were on your way.’
‘But I do not wish to leave you, Thasha,’ he said.
‘The dogs will not climb without you,’ said Ramachni, ‘and neither, for that matter, will I. Come, rat-friend; you know this is the only way.’
‘It is cruel.’
‘Perhaps, but not only cruel. And the alternative does not bear thinking about. Go, Jorl; bear him off. Suzyt and I will catch you by the second switchback.’
At a gesture from Thasha, the great mastiff bent down, and Felthrup, sniffling, crawled onto his back. ‘Do not forget me, Thasha!’ he said. ‘If we do not meet again, remember that I loved you with all the heart I had.’
Thasha bent down and kissed his muzzle on both sides. ‘That’s more heart than anyone I know,’ she said. ‘But this isn’t the end. I’ll find you. Just be strong until that day comes. And remember for us, will you?’
‘It would appear I have no choice. I will wait for you above, Pazel Pathkendle.’
‘Don’t wait,’ said Pazel. ‘Get to the ridgetop, and for Rin’s sake, be sure there’s no one left behind you. Except me, of course.’
Thasha kissed her brave Jorl too, and stroked him and whispered loving words into his ear. Then she pointed to the mountain stair and said, ‘Go on.’ Reluctantly, Jorl obeyed, with Felthrup crouched low upon his back.
Now only Ramachni and Suzyt were left beside them. The mage looked at each youth in turn. ‘I knew,’ he said. ‘When I first saw you together, I knew I beheld a power to redeem this world.’
‘That makes one of us,’ said Thasha, holding Pazel tight.
‘Do what you must do, Pazel,’ said the mage, ‘and then take the stairs at a run. If you drown I shall never forgive you. As for you, Thasha my champion-’
He gazed at her a long time. ‘What words can be enough?’ he said at last. ‘Know this: that long ages ago, there was one for whom I felt so deeply that I dreamed of renouncing magic, living a natural life, knowing human love. I made the right choice: this mission proves it, and there have been other proofs across the centuries. But the pain of that choice was so great that I had to flee not only my friends and family, but my body, and my world. Casting everything aside let me forget that pain, and no one ever evoked such feelings in me again. Until your birth. In you, I saw the daughter that might have been mine, the life I had chosen to forsake. That is why I asked my mistress to name me your guardian. Never was anyone so grateful for his charge.’
They walked with him into the trees, and along the path to the foot of the first staircase. Thasha lifted him a last time and squeezed him tight against her neck. ‘I’m all out of tears,’ she said.
‘Then smile for me, and for your triumph,’ said the mage, ‘and know that I, too, plan to see you again — in this world or the next. Come, Suzyt.’
The great dog bounded after Jorl, with Ramachni clinging tight to her back. Thasha and Pazel watched them until they reached the top of the first flight and vanished around a rock. Then they walked back towards the water until the trees began to thin. They could see the huge, empty ship canted over on her side. The Swarm was closing. The starry window above them like a porthole, now, but all the more beautiful as it shrank.
Thasha glanced to their left. A soft light was flickering among the trees. ‘What’s that?’ she said.
‘A gift from Neeps and Marila,’ said Pazel.
‘What is it, a campfire?’
Pazel nodded, and led her to the clearing, the sweet smell of crackling pine, the heat on his legs. There was a folded blanket. He turned to Thasha and brushed the hair from her eyes.
‘Now I’ll make love to you,’ he said.
He knew it was what he wanted, and knew also that it would increase the pain to come, and it did. To do in haste what they would rather have done gently, slowly; to kiss her and taste her and try to know every inch of her; to risk now what they hadn’t risked before, because now was what they had and all they might ever have: yes, it would hurt for the rest of his life. And maybe sustain him, gladden him in whatever future he found.
‘It might not last,’ she said. ‘The effect, I mean. It might fade in month or two, or even less.’
They hadn’t moved yet. He said nothing, kept his chin on her shoulder, his mind on what he’d felt, could still feel, would never feel with any other. He wouldn’t say
‘It will last, though, won’t it?’
‘It will,’ said Pazel. ‘Long enough. Maybe forever.’
‘You could just
He raised his head a few inches. She made a small sound of grief and clutched his hips, not letting him leave. Pazel moved his hand to her breast and cupped it, and doubted anything Ramachni had learned in twenty centuries could be worth losing this.
A memory came. Another fire, beside a cold lakeshore in the mountains, far away in the South. Thasha drying his hair with a towel, then plucking from an exquisite shard of crystal. A shard that melted in her hand. We can possess a thing but not its loveliness: that always escapes. Kirishgan had warned him, but no warning could be
