“Is your time so close, then?” Dukasti asked.
Igesia nodded. “I am tired, son of my heart. Would you deny an old man his rest?”
Outside, the sand stretching away to the horizon flared as the setting sun painted it in streaks of shadow and orange. Pellin sighed. If the voice of the desert spoke through Elieve again, the death of the day would have Igesia’s passing to accompany it. “What must we do?”
“The border of the desert’s evil lies a few hundred paces from here,” Igesia said. “I placed a marker there.” The gaps in his joyful smile accentuated his mirth. “Let us see what wonders Aer will reveal to us this night.”
Mark stiffened, but Igesia shuffled over on his spindly legs to buss Elieve on the forehead. “Such a lovely girl,” he said.
Elieve smiled, and Pellin remarked how within the last week, the quality of her expression had changed from that of a child to that of a young woman.
“Thank you,” she said.
Even her voice had matured, settling into a lower register, as if she’d grown older physically as well as mentally.
Igesia leaned to one side to speak to Mark. “I will keep her as safe as I can, young Mark.”
Mark’s face clouded. No doubt he caught the ambiguity in Igesia’s reassurance. “That’s not quite a promise.”
Igesia’s expression sobered. “Such guarantees are evil, young Mark. They are beyond the scope of men. But I will do not only my utmost to guard her but also to provide healing, if I see a way.”
They left the shelter of Igesia’s home and walked west, toward the dying sun, with Igesia leading. Pellin looked back to see his guard searching the rolling dunes for threats, but each time his gaze passed over Elieve, it sharpened.
Though undoubtedly the oldest man in the world, Igesia still set a pace that had Pellin breathing hard. They climbed the shadowed side of a low dune and crested it in time to see the sun deepen from orange to red. “There,” Igesia pointed. A few dozen paces away at the bottom of the dune a ragged bit of yellow cloth clung to a short pole. “That’s the border.”
“How do you know that the sands haven’t shifted, Honored One?” Mark asked.
Igesia nodded. “The pole is quite long. It’s anchored to the bedrock beneath the sand. That was a worthy question, though. I can see why Pellin apprenticed you.”
Mark laughed. “He didn’t have a whole lot of choices at the time, Honored One.”
Igesia nodded as though Mark had uttered some deep wisdom. “Then allow me to restate, young Mark. I can see why Aer chose you. I have noticed that Aer often brings us to extreme circumstances to give us the opportunity to make the choice we should.”
“What happens when we don’t?” Mark asked.
Igesia sighed. “History is replete with the answer.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to read much history, Honored One.”
Igesia’s voice lost its usual singsong, turning serious. “You should remedy that.”
“I will,” Mark said. At a look from the Honored One, he amended his answer. “If Aer wills.”
They arrived at the marker, the cloth hanging limply in the dead air. “A pace or two beyond should suffice,” Igesia said. “Allta, will you take Elieve in your arms? A wise man prepares for the unexpected and often receives a joyful surprise.” He shuffled around the big guard so that he was shielded from Elieve’s vision. “Be ready for anything, my friend.”
They stood watching as the last ruddy light faded from the desert sky and stars to the east winked into view.
“You’ve returned already,” Elieve said in a voice that carried no hint of youth or innocence.
Pellin nodded, as much for Igesia as for the thing that spoke using Elieve’s voice. “I have. You promised knowledge. What do you have to offer?”
“Much,” the voice said, “but first tell me of your world.”
By the first light of the moon, Pellin saw Igesia nod, urging him to continue. “We are peoples of two continents,” Pellin said.
“Only two?” the voice asked. “Still, the possibility cannot be ruled out. What of your rulers or governors?”
Caution filled Pellin at the question. He sensed pitfalls, but surely the intelligence in the desert would have learned of the gift of kings from those few unfortunate souls it had corrupted in the past, just as it must have known of the two continents peopled by man. “We are governed by those Aer has gifted to rule, though we are not immune to envy and strife and the wars that accompany them.”
“It is as I said so long ago,” Elieve said in that other voice.
Pellin assayed a question in the pause that followed. “Who are you?”
“I have many names,” the voice said, laughing at some hidden jest. “As many as I could gather.” Elieve’s laughter scaled upward, and Mark’s hand tightened on his dagger.
“I don’t understand,” Pellin said. He kept his gaze fixed on Elieve, but in his peripheral vision, he saw Igesia reach forward to touch her.
The Honored One’s eyes widened at the contact, and Elieve jerked in Allta’s grip. “You think to try me at last, stripling?” Elieve howled with laughter. “Long you have teased me at the edge of my power. Come then.”
Elieve offered no struggle, but tension in Allta’s arms and legs showed he expected violence any moment. Mark, his face stricken, held one of her hands and put his mouth to her ear. In the silence, Pellin could hear him whispering over and over. “You are loved. I love you.”
Time lengthened and stretched, and the space between Pellin’s heartbeats became an eternity as Igesia and Elieve stilled until they might have been nothing more than statues of themselves. All the while Mark held Elieve’s hand and whispered his devotion into
