‘The Gate?’ asked Jaer.
‘There. In the chamber. Those buttresses of grey metal with the veil of light between. It was the Gate for what they resumed to do. It is dead now, without power. It will not be used again.’
‘Ahh,’ said Jaer.
‘So, what could we do, we who remained? That taunted and tempted, began to build and woo. We took counsel. The seven we sent to Orena. Elsewhere we learned and schemed and built. I knelt upon the hills, singing the names Omburan had taught me, summoning him, to beg him to help us. So the Magisters came, Omburan among them, and helped us hold that in Tharliezalor. Centuries came and went. Sud-Akwith came, moved by his own ambition perhaps. Moved by that, I believe. Only the Powers saved the world then. The Magisters set the Concealment, with me beneath it for all time to hold it in place. He came there, Omburan, now and again, to look on me and speak into my dream that the world still lived. Still, it could not be forever.’
‘There was a Taniel in Orena,’ said Leona. ‘With them.’
‘Created in my image,’ whispered Taniel, ‘by some of my kindred, to comfort Urlasthes, who had no comfort. I was in Tchent.’
‘She was in Tchent: The voice came from the shadows, and they held their breath to hear it. ‘She was in Tchent, but others moved upon the earth. Omburan had followers, too. Others, who knew the weaving of the fabric of time, the weft of the Powers and the warp of history. Others who could move to set within that history certain patterns.’
‘Patterns,’ said Jasmine. ‘Swords of Power. Vessels of Healing. Girdles of Binding. Crowns of Wisdom. Bits and pieces, woven in, like silver in the web.’
‘Others moved,’ the voice said, ‘to open a Gateway once more.’
There was silence beside the fire, Leona turned to Hazliah suddenly, grasping his hand tight in hers. ‘If anything … anything should happen to me, Hazliah, I set the boy in your care. Sorrow and Silence, too. Care for them. Please.’ His hand tightened upon hers in puzzled promise.
‘To open a Gateway. A way.’
‘A Gate? A way?’ Jaer asked. ‘For some Ahl di or other? Oh, Magister Omburan. What am I?’
‘You know what you are.’
‘Yes. I know what I am. I am a link between what men call myth and what men call reality. Between male and female. Between age and youth. Between one time and another. I can read the pattern within me, built by my thousands for a purpose I never knew. It was not Ephraim’s quest at all, was it?’
‘You have his book.’
Jaer looked at the stained cover between her fingers. Yes. It was Ephraim’s book. It was Ephraim’s quest. ‘It was not entirely his,’ whispered Jaer.
‘It was yours.’
‘Mine all along. Do you know, it was only love for those two old men kept me at it? Funny. Nathan didn’t even know about it, and yet I did it to please them, to repay them.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. Partly. Sometimes. Mosdy. But what was it all for? Was it only to bring Thewson and Jasmine and Medlo and Leona here or wherever else they have been? Only that? It seems an obscure and unnecessarily complicated way to have done that.’
‘Obviously then, not only that’
‘Obviously.’
They let the firelight play across their faces. None of the others spoke, only watched and listened, letting it play out before them as though they had determined upon a course which they did not understand–like a child who says, ‘Let me try that,’ and then must wait endlessly while it is explained. So they waited.
Presently, Jaer asked, ‘Who was it, really, who made the Sword? And the other things? Who?’
‘Yes. Who?’
‘I,’ said Thewson. ‘I will have to put the Crown where it must be. Who else knows of it? Who else can climb the Wall and put the Crown upon the head of Ulum Auwa where it must be? Who?’
‘Yes, Who?’
‘The Sword must be set in Sud-Akwith’s hands,’ said Medlo.
‘The Girdle must be woven,’ said Jasmine. ‘My hands know that.’
‘How?’ whispered Terascouros into the terrified silence. ‘By what Gateway?’
‘By me,’ cried Jaer in a voice not her own. ‘I am the Gate for which the quest was made. Woven out of a thousand lives, male and female, stretched through time, made for this and no other reason, woven into the web of myth, given to be what I am. I have only to … only to …’ Her voice trailed away as she turned, sought, set her eyes upon Leona, who rose, came toward her as though to speak, reached out a hand to touch Jaer’s … and blazed with incredible light and was gone. Vanished. Hazliah stared in anguished disbelief, seeming to hear from a great distance the wild, mournful howling of the great hounds.
Taniel was weeping, Jasmine wept, also, but Thewson set his hands upon her, lifting her up so that she faced Jaer at his side, Hu’ao clutched tightly between them. Jasmine cowered. Together,’ she pleaded. Together, please …’ Something or these words came though. There was an instant’s comprehension in Jaer’s eyes, something of herself as she had been with Jasmine on the road to Byssa. She reached out to touch them both. The light flared. They were gone.
‘Rhees is gone,’ cried Medlo. Trees and meadows only slag and dust. Alan is dead at last. The age is embittered. What is left for me here, Jaer? You have me. Let me go!’ He rushed upon her as though to seize her in his arms and was gone in that same wild flare of light.
Jaer staggered, murmured, ‘Ephraim, Nathan… I only wanted to be … Jaer.’
And
