For a very little while longer.

She turned again to try to peer beneath the trees. She could mark Arhys's striding progress across the camp by the sounds of terror, she thought, as his enemies flew screaming before his pale face and deadly blade. And by the streams of white fire rising in his wake. He was unhorsed; she was uncertain when that had happened. She hoped he was not yet alone, without one comrade left to guard his back.

I think he is alone now.

A weird wet thunk sounded behind her. She glanced back to see her helpers rushing to press pads to Illvin's and Cattilara's stomachs. That was a crossbow bolt. She wondered if Arhys had plucked it out to throw back at his dazed enemies, or left it in place like a badge. It would have been a killing strike, on any other man, at any other time. Soon there will be more. By the gods, a dy Lutez does know how to die three times, and three times three if needed.

She fell to her knees behind the parapet, clinging to the stone.

It seemed to her that some great black glacier, some ice dam in her soul, was melting, as if a hundred summers' heat had fallen on it in an hour. Cracking, coming apart. And that in the mile-deep, mile-long lake of icy green water backing it up, an expectant surge rippled from bank to bank, from the surface to the uttermost depths, troubling the waters. I passed blessing to you in the forecourt. But you passed blessing back to me, too. Trading rescues. Five gods watch us ride out together in this breaking dawn.

You Five may awe us. But I think we must awe You, too.

"Seven," she whispered aloud.

Then something went wrong. A hesitation, a turning away. Too many, far too many, soul-sparks swirled around that gray flame. Now he is surrounded, cut off. Dozens who ran away now run toward, encouraged by their own numbers, daring to take him down.

In the midst of your enemies, your Father has prepared a feast for you, on a table your father set long ago. Here it comes...

Another thunk, and another. From behind her, Liss's sharp voice cried, "Lady, there are too many wounds splitting open! You must stop this!"

Dy Cabon's strained rumble, "Royina, remember you promised Arhys that Lady Cattilara would live—!"

And a certain fat white god has promised Illvin to me, if I did not mistake Him. If we both live. A god-given lover, importunate and bold as a scarred stray cat, rubbing past my guard into my good graces. If I can keep him fed.

She glanced over her shoulder. Illvin's body jerked upward with the transferred force of some massive blow to Arhys's back, and Goram, his face frantic, rolled him over to reach the red rent. Cattilara's white hand half split from its wrist, and Liss pounced to staunch the spurting.

Now. Oh yes, now. Ista clenched her hand about the torrent of white fire running past her shoulder. The flow stopped abruptly. Wild shocks pulsed back in both directions from her grip. The violet channel shattered. The white fire, the constant companion of her inner eye for days, winked out.

A hushed hesitation: then, in the shadowed grove, a grotesque roar of hysteria-tinged triumph went up from half a hundred Jokonan throats.

The ice dam exploded. A wall of water towered, bent, and broke, thundering forward, bursting its banks, blasting her soul wide, wider, scouring and flushing a lifetime of stones, rubble, rotted and clotted trash before it. Boiling, roaring outward. Ista spread her arms wide, and opened her mouth, and let it go.

The gray thread, almost lost to view in the violent blazes, stiffened to a taut rope. It began to move back through her new dilation, faster and faster, until it seemed to smoke with the heat of its passage, like an overstrained fiber rope about to char and burst into flame. For an instant, Arhys's astonished, agonized, ecstatic soul moved through hers.

Yes. We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death. Arhys was sundered from his own gate, and lost the way back to it forever. So it was given to me to lend him mine, for a little time. But so great a soul does need a wide portal; so knock down my gates and breach my walls and burst them wide, and pour through freely, by my leave. And farewell. "Yes," Ista whispered. "Yes."

He did not look back. Given what he must be looking on toward, Ista was not in the least surprised.

It is done, Sire. I hope You find it was done well.

She heard no voice, saw no radiant figure. But it seemed to her she felt a caress upon her brow, and the ache there, which had throbbed for hours as though her head were bound in a tight iron band, stopped. The end of the pain was like a morning birdsong.

There was a real morning birdsong, she realized muzzily, here in matter's lovely realm, a cheery, brainless warble from the bushes below the castle walls. The gray cloud-feathers among the fading stars were just beginning to blush a faint, fiery pink, color creeping from east to west. A little thread of lemon light lined the eastern horizon.

Illvin groaned. Ista turned to find him sitting up in dy Cabon's grip, pulling blood-soaked bandages from his unmarked body. His lips parted with dismay as he took in the extent of the mess, starting to glow scarlet as color seeped back into the world. "Five gods." He swallowed against a surge of bile. "That was bad, at the end. Wasn't it." It was no question.

"Yes," said Ista. "But he's gone, now. Safe and gone." In the grove below, the fear-crazed Jokonans, she somehow knew, were hacking Arhys's body to bits, pulling it apart, terrified that it might yet reassemble and rise once more against them. She did not see any merit in mentioning this to Illvin just now.

Cattilara lay on her side, curled up. She cried in quiet, stuttering sobs, almost unable to breathe, clutching the sponge that had stanched her stomach so hard that the blood bubbled through her fingers. The sewing woman patted her clumsily and uselessly on the shoulder.

The world darkened around Ista, as if dawn, appalled by the scene, retreated again over the horizon. Strolling into in her mind like some casual wayfarer, a Voice spoke: familiar, ironic, and immense.

My Word. Spacious in here all of a sudden, is it not?

"What are You doing here now? I thought this was become your Step-father's battlefield."

You invited Me. Come, come, you can't deny it: I heard you whispering over in that corner.

She was not sure she had any emotions left for this. Not rage, in any case. Her disembodied quietude might be either serenity or shock. But the Bastard was surely a god to be approached with caution. "Why do you not appear in front of me?"

Because I am behind you, now. The Voice grew warm and amused. The press of an enormous belly seemed to heat her back, along with an obscene implication of loins against her buttocks, and a pressure of wide hands upon her shoulders.

"You have a vile sense of humor," she said weakly.

Yes, and you catch every one of My jokes, too. I love a woman with a keen ear. He seemed to breathe into hers. You should have a keen tongue to go with them, I vow.

Her mouth filled with fire.

"Why am I here?"

To complete Arhys's victory. If you can.

The Voice was gone. The darkness faded into a streaked pale dawnlight. She found herself fallen on her knees on the tower platform, leaning into Illvin's alarmed grip.

"Ista? Ista!" he was saying into her ear. "Royina, dear, don't frighten a poor naked cavalier. Speak to me, yes?"

She blinked open blurry eyes. He was only a nearly naked cavalier, she discovered to her disappointment. The bloodstained rags of his linen trousers were still rucked up around his loins. He was a most magnificent mess otherwise, true, dark matted hair falling in a wild tangle over his face and shoulders, sweaty and soot-smeared and smelly and striped with red. But all his scars were old ones, healed and pale. He huffed with relief when he saw her looking back at him and bent his neck to kiss her. She fended off his lips with her palm. "Wait, not yet."