Only Rruk went to the burial, however, of all the people in the Songhouse, except for the Deafs who actually did the work. It's not a sight much conducive to song, she told Kyaren as they stood together by the grave, to watch death carry someone into the ground. The dirt closes over him so finally.

And the two women who were the only ones left who had loved him in his childhood stood each with an arm around the other's waist as the Deafs tossed dirt into the grave. He's not dead, you know, said Kyaren. He'll never be forgotten. They'll always remember him.

But Rruk knew that memories, however long they are, grow dim, and eventually Ansset would just be a name lost in the books, to be studied by pedants. Perhaps his stories would survive as folk tales, but again his name would be linked to a life that was scarcely his anymore- already the stories of Mikal's Songbird were far grander than the real events had been. Nobler, and so less painful.

Part of Ansset would live, however. Not that anyone would know it was Ansset. But as singers and Songbirds left Tew and went throughout the galaxy, they would take with them what they had learned from the voices of the singers in the Songhouse. And now a powerful undercurrent in all those voices would be Ansset's life, which he had given them irrevocably, forever theirs and forever powerful and forever full of beauty, pain, and hope.