Upon the shining floor stood a few persons. They were slender, she realized, dressed in simple white garments. They spoke to her, and a red haze moved before her eyes as though she had been beaten. They spoke, scarcely breaking the stillness of the place, the rarified silence of that height. She tried to count them in growing panic, could not; tried to answer them, could not. There might have been one or two, or a hundred. They lit the air around them with anguish, with a cold perfection of sorrow. She cried out, ‘Stop.’ She staggered, would have fallen had not Hazliah caught her. They did not misunderstand her, but went away, their sorrow colder and more absolute than it had been before.
She was sitting beside Hazliah, gasping, staring uncom-prehendingly at the woman who was offering her water, a haggard woman who had been beautiful, with dark hair and a tender mouth. The woman knelt before Leona.
‘I am Taniel,’ she said.
‘Taniel is dead,’ Leona mumbled, stupidly.
‘No,’ the woman said, offering the cup once more. ‘No. I am Taniel. I live still. As do these of my kindred, the Remnant, whom you have seen.’ Presently she added, ‘I have sometimes wished to be dead, but it is necessary to live.’
‘Who are they?’ Leona drew her body up stiffly. The woman before her was of a familiar kind, a person, only a person and not an agonized flame.
‘They? The Remnant – the Remnant of those who were in Tharliezalor. The Remnant of Thiene. The Remnant who were left after they presumed to do what should not be done. Some call them the Remnant in Orena, the Undying Ones. You may call them what you will.’
‘I will not call them anything. I will go away now.’
‘No. Not you. Not I. Time is spun to this point, and we are upon it. We may not go away, for there is no place to hold our going. Where may we go? What place is there to receive us?’
Tears fled down Leona’s cheeks to fall unregarded upon her hands. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Ah, but you are one of ours, Leona. One of those in whom Urlasthes found the Great Beast and set it free. One he created, freed, like Hazliah. Oh, what wonders he wrought. Leona! What wonders. It is failed, gone. Now there is only the silence, the endless wounds, the maiming without cease.’ The woman fell silent, only to look up with an expression of childish naivete. ‘Can you help us?’
‘Help you?’ Leona cried in her hawk’s voice, drawing in the thin air like a draught of acid. ‘Help you} What are you doing? Planning? Readying yourself for battle? How will you help us?’
The woman who called herself Taniel was mildly astonished. ‘Help you? We can do nothing. The Remnant have done all they can do, all that could be done. They are too maimed to do more. Urlasthes says that if we had the Crown of Wisdom, given, so it is said, by the Spirit of Air in past ages. … Or, if we had the Vessel of Healing given by Earthsoul in the time long gone … well, then we might do something. Heal them, somehow. Grow wise enough to answer. Without such, our hope is gone.’
Leona laughed, shockingly, hysterically. ‘So this is the source of all your calm, Hazliah? This bland cowardice? This furtive acceptance! Oh, you want so little, woman! You are no more the Taniel of whom the Sisters tell than your Remnant are like the giants of old. You want so little! A crown? Well, I have no crown but this maiden circlet I have worn since childhood, and you are welcome to it. The Vessel of Healing? Why not? Why should I not be merely a messenger to bring it to you for your need? I know nothing of the worth of your Remnant. If your Urlasthes did indeed create me, then I owe him nothing, but let him have the Vessel. A gift. For which you may bless the name of Fabla for whose sake it was sought, and of Jasmine who gave it.’
Flinging the flask and her circlet at the woman, Leona laughed until she wept and was drawn into Hazliah’s arms to rest against him as he murmured. ‘Naa, naa, naa, shh, shh,’ as though she had been some horse or dog he quieted in its fear.
When she had sobbed herself quiet, he sat with her still as she blurted bitter apologies and recriminations through a throat grown tight with weeping. ‘I am suddenly weak as a child, weeping, which I have never done…. No. Bombaroba is a child, and he would have behaved better.’
He said, ‘I know none who have first looked upon the Remnant without weeping, Lady … Leona. When we see them first, we go sleepless and in anguish. Few in Orena can bear to come here at all. Only Taniel has been strong enough to survive this close contact throughout the centuries. You have not disgraced yourself, Leona. You have done well. You do well still.’
She wiped tears into her hair, loosened from its knots when she had ripped the circlet away. The circlet was gone, the Vessel was gone, the woman had taken them. ‘Who are they? What are they?’ She leaned against him, not yet able to sit upright.
‘I will tell you what I know. After the Thiene left the world, long, long ago, they lived in Tharliezalor – “High Silver House” that was – beside the eastern sea. They were few, very wise, but some were of one mind and some were of another concerning the goodness of
