One for Earno! He would have shouted it if he could. Blood for blood and life for life.

He spun about the shining warrior in midair, stabbing and slashing, shattering plate after plate of the warrior’s armor.

Finally Naevros was moved to take a risky step. He turned the misty blade on his own armor, prying it apart as if he were opening a shellfish. The Guardians sang out, a choir of agony, but then Naevros’ avatar stepped forth, a wiry skeleton of steel, unprotected from Morlock’s sword but unencumbered now.

Naevros flew through the dark air and met Morlock in the empty sky. They circled around each other, striking when they could.

Morlock discovered something: now the advantage of speed belonged to Naevros. Tyrfing was made of matter, at least in part; it took an effort of his mind, and expense of his tal, to move it. Whatever Naevros’ sword was, it was something else: weightless, freighted with death. Naevros could move it as quick as his thoughts. The advantage was slight: just enough to kill Morlock.

Morlock took refuge in the thorny lattices holding the bulbs of sunlife. Naevros’ speed would matter less there, he hoped. Also, Morlock could bask and heal in the tal leaking from the sunbulbs. But so could Naevros, of course. . . .

Naevros’ wiry, shining avatar landed among the thorns and stabbed through them at Morlock.

Morlock vaulted over the thorns and tried to catch Naevros while he was entangled in them.

Naevros slashed with his misty sword and slid through the gap he had made in the wall of thorns.

He swung his sword as Morlock landed, sweeping it through the thorny lattices as if they were dry grass.

Morlock dodged the blow and struggled to bring up Tyrfing in time to parry.

Now a sunglobe was between the two swords, the disruptive blade of mist and glittering unbreakable Tyrfing.

It shattered between them and its light and life and tal were released in a single instant.

The thorny lattices were on fire—actual red fire, as ordinary as bread and water. Another sunglobe burst, and another. Morlock was dazed, exalted, dazzled.

Trapped in the burning lattices, surrounded by exploding sunglobes, Naevros writhed in agony.

The whole valley was exploding. Light was leaping into the lightless sky. The unworld was distorting under it, and Morlock knew he had to flee or die. He left Naevros dying there and arced through the empty sky toward where he thought the gateway to his world might be.

Except the dark sky was no longer empty.

A bright, white eye opened in the dark world. The Sunkillers scattered across the dark plain fell away before its glance, stretching like shadows at sunrise, and Morlock felt the shape of the dark world change around him. Naevros was gone. Skellar’s bitter, rusty ghost was gone. The Soul Bridge was going; he felt/heard it fragmenting behind him in the tide of sudden light.

The eye looked at Morlock, and the monochrome flame of his talic self flared back, back toward the gulf between the worlds.

He raised Tyrfing in defiance and salute. Khai, ynthara! he said or thought. Praise to you, Day. He fell back into a nothingness he feared and hoped was death.

A world away, Naevros syr Tol stood on the Witness Stone and screamed. His eyes filled for a moment with sunlight, and the Guardians looked away, unable to bear the light. His voice trailed off. His hands dropped. His eyes faded. He fell to the floor. By the time they reached him, he was dead, or at least no longer alive.

PART FOUR

Fall

We’re getting a bit short on heroes lately.

—Ian Anderson, “A Cold Wind to Valhalla”

CHAPTER ONE

The Way Back

The blue, empty sky at the end of the world blinked and was suddenly gold. Deor felt the heat of a thousand summers on his face, a bright light that baked him to his chilled, gray bones. He wondered if he would die of it. He did not think that he cared. It was wonderful to be alive, even for a moment, after so much death. It was something to be warm after so much bitter cold. It was something to know that Morlock had defeated the Sunkillers, even if he never talked to his harven-kin again.

Then the moment passed and the bolt of light from beyond the end of the world spread out into the sky above, and Deor heard his voice laughing. It was a kind of light, pleasant cold, like on Cymbalsday morning. That was a traditional day for snowball fights, so he made a snowball and hit Kelat in the face with it.

The Vraidish prince shook the snow off his mask and laughed. He grabbed some snow and replied in kind. His aim would have been perfect if Deor had been even five feet tall, so the dwarf took the precaution of ducking behind a snowy hill before the Vraid struck again.

Deor looked around, hoping to enlist Ambrosia and Morlock in the ongoing snowfight.

Morlock’s body still lay beside Skellar’s on the bridgehead at the end of the world. The bridge beyond was gone, shattered by the freed sunlight.

Deor dropped the snowball he was making and ran over to where Ambrosia was kneeling beside her brother.

She turned her face toward Deor. Her eyes were closed and he could see her blue irises shining through the thin skin of the eyelids. She was still aloft in rapture. She spoke, in the toneless voice of the enraptured, “He is falling through the void. There is no here, there is no there. Falling. Many are lost, but he is not lost yet. I am losing him. I am losing him. Help me. Deor. Uthar. Help. . . .”

“Kelat!” shouted Deor, and the Vraid was there, his brown eyes wide with concern.

“I don’t know what to do,” Deor said to Ambrosia.

She lifted her hands blindly, trapped in her vision. “Your strength to mine. We may hold him. We may draw him back.”

“Or?”

“Or we may fall with him into emptiness.”

Fall with him into emptiness! Would the gateway in the west open for a soul lost, falling endlessly, at the northern edge of the world? Deor doubted it. It would be the second death for him, damnation, trapped in the earth where Those-Who-Watch could not see him or bless him.

But it was Morlock. It was Morlock. Better to be damned than to go back without him, to explain to Aloê, to Vetrtheorn, to everyone, Yes, he is gone. Perhaps I could have saved him but I was afraid. . . . That would be damnation.

He grasped one of Ambrosia’s outstretched hands, and Kelat took the other. The males kneeled beside the woman in the melting snow.

Then the prison of Deor’s skull broke open and his soul was drifting free in the endless air over the edge of the world. He didn’t like it. His body was gone and he seemed to himself a shell of silver scales with nothing inside. He didn’t like that either.

He wasn’t alone, though. He saw a green-and-gold whirlwind that he knew immediately was Ambrosia. Beyond her was a kind of coppery lightning bolt that he recognized as Kelat.

They moved together through the abyss, guided by Ambrosia’s will. The dome of the sky was close enough that Deor could see/feel its curve.

Ambrosia focused on an entity adrift in the gulf between the end of the world and the end of the sky: a flickering of black-and-white mingled with white-and-black. Morlock.

Deor stood in the air where he was, at Ambrosia’s unspoken command. Kelat passed onward with her, until he, too, was told to stop. Then Ambrosia went on alone into the gulf until she was almost as distant as Morlock, and the bond with her grew as tenuous as an old man’s memory.

From far away, Deor heard Ambrosia speaking without words to Morlock. He tried to add his unvoice to hers, was unsure if it had any effect.