In a time removed from ruin the Trian might have smiled. “But we have a purpose. Still, it would have been a kindness to kill them, and more sure.”
“Yes, but not just,” Ealdor breathed, hot with anger that still surprised him.
They strode from the empty wreckage of the city of Tolamec, a beacon even during the war, and boarded the fyrlen platform that would take them to the last prison. Ealdor stopped to run the tips of his fingers along the smooth surface, a combination of steel and fiber as light as air and stronger than diamonds. So much had been lost. Soon he and his fellow priests would enter the long dark to ensure the rest of it would be lost as well.
The trip northwest to the prison took less time than he expected, the resonance engine of the platform humming with power. The Dara piloted, skimming the land as if fixing the images in his mind. Outside the burning ruin of the city, the signs of war and destruction lessened, but deep canyons gouged the earth, and sharp rock signaled where new mountain ranges would rise, testimony to the resonance they’d harnessed, power they’d turned on each other.
The fyrlen platform touched the earth, the landing gear flexing on the uneven ground to keep the seating level, and the hum of the engine died away as the rotors slowed. The platforms would have to be destroyed, of course, just as everything else.
They disembarked and walked the short distance to the massive cube where the last enemy awaited. The amount of pure resonant metal they’d committed to the prison still made his mind reel, the wealth of an entire world fashioned into three perfect cubes. The resonance field kept Atol Bealu imprisoned behind shimmering waves of power that diminished sound, but some instinct or premonition must have pulled his head up from unknown contemplations, and their eyes latched on to each other, victor and defeated.
Ealdor resisted the temptation to commence Bealu’s imprisonment. Even in this, he would not give Atol the pleasure of believing himself to be the first priority. Though it made his skin crawl to turn his back on the horror Bealu had become, Ealdor willed himself forward to pull his brother and his wife into a clutching embrace.
As if their touch would always hold the power to know him, he voiced his doubt and fear at last. “Are you sure you must do this?”
Soft laughter, amused and rueful at the same time, came from Cuman and Endela. Cuman pulled back from the embrace and swept his arm in a wide arc that somehow encompassed the earth in all its wasted destruction. “Aer gave you and your fellow priests the command that we must surrender our immortality—and now you doubt?
“Look at us, Ealdor.” He pointed at Bealu. “Look at him. We became too much. Aer placed the earth in our charge, and we failed to stem the ambition of Atol and his like. The choice between departing or living mortal lives is Aer’s last, best mercy.”
“It seems a hard choice to me now,” Ealdor said. “Everyone else has departed. I don’t understand why you decided to stay. Your lives will be nothing but a breath, a wisp of morning mist to be burned away by the sun.”
Endela, Aer bless her, put a hand to his face, her eyes carrying nothing of grief, her gaze holding only compassion. That incomprehensible strength was exactly why Ealdor wanted her to live on.
“Ealdor, our children will have the chance to be both less and more than us. In their weakness they will come to depend on Aer as we were intended to and didn’t,” she said. “Their shortened lives will draw them close.”
Because he would never see them again after this day, he asked the question closest to his heart. “Does it hurt to know you will be less than you were?”
Cuman nodded. “Yes, but our children will have no reference for it.”
Endela added her assurance to his. “With each birth, I will grieve what had to be lost, but I’m hopeful that our sons and daughters will be free from the pride that destroyed our world.” Then she shrugged. “But even if they are not, the necessity remains.”
“Our strengths will be parceled among our children and theirs and theirs until evil such as Atol’s becomes impossible,” Cuman said. “The glory of Aer, Iosa, and Gaoithe will fill this world in a new way.”
The Trian spoke from behind him. “Imprisoned is not the same as dead.”
They all knew the Trian well enough to understand his unspoken question, his accusation.
Endela nodded. “Should the need arise, our descendants will have a way to call you for help. I will craft words to accompany the liturgy Aer has given Cuman. We will teach them to our children, and they will teach them to their children after us, time without end.”
“And we will be standing guard,” Ealdor said, “should your descendants need us.”
The Trian nodded, but whether in approval or acknowledgment, he couldn’t tell.
Cuman pointed over Ealdor’s shoulder to the prisoner. “Come. Endings and beginnings await us. Our decisions have been made, and the rest of those who have chosen to diminish await us on the southern continent. It is past time we put this abomination away.”
Ealdor turned to speak to the Dara and the Trian. “Close the prison.” He took a deep breath that felt oddly cleansing, as if his brother’s certitude had somehow made a home within him. Odd that Cuman should be able to influence him in such a way after choosing to surrender everything that defined him. “The three of us have countless turnings of work ahead of us, and now I find myself impatient to begin it.”
The Dara’s brows lifted. “Will you deny Atol his last speech?”
Behind the shimmering wall of force that kept the last of the three imprisoned, Atol glared at him. Perhaps he had been able to discern what they spoke of without sound, but it
