“You make it sound so exciting, Kaliq!” Lara told him. She caressed his cheek.
His bright blue eyes looked down into her upturned face. “It will be,” he promised her. Then his lips touched her again. “To spend forever with you is more than I could have ever hoped, Lara.” His lips met hers again in a deep and potent kiss. Then he released her, smiling into her faerie green eyes.
“Why is it so quiet?” Lara asked him, suddenly aware of the deep silence.
“The Shadow Princes have gone from Hetar,” Kaliq answered her. “We are the only ones left in Shunnar, my love.”
“Where have they gone?” Lara wanted to know. “Will we ever see them again, Kaliq? Lothair did not say goodbye, nor Nasim, nor Coilen, nor any of the others.”
“They have gone into the Cosmos to seek another home for us,” Kaliq said. “We will not make a new home on Belmair. It is too small a world for us,” he said. “We will rejoin them eventually, Lara, but not yet.”
“How will we know how to find them?” she asked.
“We will know,” he promised.
She nodded. “Does Kolgrim know?”
Kaliq shook his head. “Nay. My presence leads him to believe that everything is as it has always been in Shunnar. The High Council has not yet reconvened after its summer recess, and so our representatives are not yet missed.”
“What of the faerie post? Surely we will not leave them behind,” Lara said.
“They will disappear tomorrow when all of The City is involved in Yamka Ahasferus’s wedding celebration. Remember we must use our magic to make it possible for the two worlds to move easily back and forth between Hetar and Terah,” he reminded her. “’Twas a clever way to end the stalemate between the two sides over the wedding.”
“It is not difficult,” Lara said. “We simply open a short Golden tunnel between Hetar and Terah, but of course we will have to see it looks like a well-lit and beautifully decorated corridor so the wedding guests are not frightened by it. The bridal couple will be the first to pass through it, and the others will follow.”
“Going from night to dawn will astound the Hetarians,” Kaliq remarked. “They have no real concept of anyone or anything but themselves.”
“The Terahns are little better,” Lara agreed, “but few of them will go to the Hetarian ceremony. Vaclar’s father and mother, of course. His uncle and great-uncle, perhaps. But simple Terahns are little interested in Hetar even today, although they have certainly embraced certain Hetarian customs and ways that the trading vessels and their sailors brought,” Lara noted disapprovingly. “I remember Terah as I first saw it, and it was glorious, Kaliq. Now with that ridiculous imitation of The City on the plain before the castle…” She shook her head. “Dasras and I loved riding over that plain. But those times are gone, and they cannot be retrieved, more’s the pity.”
“Seeing something you love die is always difficult, my love, but we have a new life awaiting us in the Cosmos,” Kaliq said.
“But first the wedding, a visit to Belmair, and then…”
“And then new adventures,” he replied. “We will gallop together, you and I, upon Dasras’s back amid the stars of the Cosmos, my darling. There are so many worlds out there, Lara, and new ones being born every day.”
He sounded so happy, Lara thought. She had not heard that tone in his voice in years. It was boyish, excited. He was eager to move on now, and so was she. They had done their best for Hetar, but they were only magic, and magic could not correct all mortal ills. And sometimes it made them worse. Perhaps protecting Hetar from itself had been an error, and the magic should have left long ago.
As the servants had been sent from Shunnar, Lara fed them that night with faerie bread, and Kaliq conjured up a decanter of forest berry frine for them to drink. She did not know that he placed a strong protection spell about Shunnar that night, for he sensed the darkness reaching out with curious fingers. They must not be taken. He hoped that Kolgrim would keep the peace between them for the wedding, but he did not trust to it. Kaliq knew that, like a greedy child, Kolgrim was already tasting his victory, and was more than eager to have it all.
THE MORNING CAME. The bloodred sun rising into a dun-colored sky. They ate their final meal in their garden. Lara noticed that the flowers were drooping, and the sound of birdsong was gone. They hardly spoke, either with voice or in the silent language of their race. They ate, and then they bathed. The silence surrounding them had become almost eerie. Only the soft sound of the water soothed them.
Kaliq dressed himself in his white silk trousers and tunic. The tunic was simple, but its high collar and the cuffs of its sleeves were sewn with gold threads in a geometric design and tiny diamonds. On his feet were deep blue leather slippers. Atop his dark head he had a small turban centered with a large diamond. His long white silk cloak was lined with cloth-of-gold. He looked handsomer than Lara could ever remember. He was both powerful and impressive in appearance, and she told him so.
Lara, however, had done as she had promised him. She wore fawn-colored fitted leather trousers, a forest- green silk vest over a full-sleeved cream-colored silk shirt, which was open to reveal her thin gold chain with its sparkling crystal star. Within the star her guardian spirit, Ethne, resided. Ethne had been silent of late, but suddenly she spoke.
“Did you hear her?” Lara said to Kaliq as she drew on her well-worn boots.
“I did,” he answered.
“Protect Marzina at all costs,” Lara said to him. She strapped her singing sword, Andraste, onto her back. “I can protect myself.”
“It is time to go,” Kaliq said. “Say your farewell to Shunnar, my love, for we shall not see it again.” His bright blue eyes swept about his garden, and then he led her out to the wide corridor with its open balustrade. Looking down into the valley below, they saw the grassy meadow that had always been there but then, before their eyes, it disappeared, turning to bloodred sand. “Kolgrim’s warning to us that he is now in charge,” Kaliq said grimly. “The darkness has begun, but the light will come again one day.”
Lara looked up into his face. She touched his sensuous lips with hers. “The light will always overcome the darkness, my lord. I will see you in Terah.” And then she was gone in a puff of violet smoke that he noticed was suddenly tinged darker.
Wrapping his cloak about him, Kaliq transported himself to the beautiful rotunda of Grugyn Ahasferus’s house, where the Hetarian wedding ceremony was just beginning. The auburn-haired bride garbed in cream-and-gold silk was weighed down with jewels. The groom was equally resplendent, and the guests were suitably impressed by the ceremony joining the heir to Terah with Grugyn Ahasferus’s last granddaughter.
As it came to an end, Kaliq discreetly opened a Golden tunnel in a rear wall of the rotunda. To the mortal eye it appeared to be a grand corridor with a floor of gold and white marble squares down the center of which had been laid a dark red carpet. The walls of the corridor were lined with gold and crystal sconces burning scented candles that perfumed the air with the fragrance of late-summer lilies. The lights flickered and gleamed, but amazingly did not burn down. The ceiling of this grand passageway was glass that went from sunset to night and finally predawn. Terahns were wed at sunrise. Vaclar and his bride would reach the great gardens of his father’s castle just in time.
Lara had already arrived. At first she was not recognized as the warrior she was. Lara smiled wickedly. “What, Cadarn? You do not know your own great-grandmother?”
He gaped at her.
“This is what you wear to a wedding?” Domina Paulina cried angrily. “Your garb was finer for your son’s wedding. Is Terah to be less respected than Hetar, but then you are Hetarian,” she sneered.
“I am faerie, Domina. Neither Hetarian nor Terahn. This is my natural garb, and I honor you by reminding you of the faerie woman who, not once, but twice, saved Terah. By making a fresh blood tie between the children of
