He took Karon’s hand and sat down beside him. Dar’Nethi leave-taking could extend a very long time, Karon had told me, but it always began this way, a little conversation, quiet meditation, embracing with eyes and heart the evidence of one’s loss. I did not disturb Ven’Dar. His presence was a comfort.

After a while he shook off his silence, came around the table and took my hand once more. “There are no words sufficient to this day, my lady, even for one so comfortable with words as myself. The event is too complex for ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘thank you’ is far too ordinary.”

“To hear your hopeful news and to see you living is thanks enough. You will be D’Arnath’s Heir as my husband intended. I wish you a path of great beauty.”

He eased himself onto the stone platform beside me. “Would it pain you to tell me what happened? I’ve heard only bits and pieces since I’ve come back to my senses.”

“I believe it went very much as Karon had planned, even after he understood about Radele and the oculus. You probably know more than I do.”

“Not at all. He told me nothing of his plan save my own part: I was to be named his successor because it wasn’t possible for his son to serve, as the boy’s mind was still linked to the Lords. My first duty as his successor would be to bait the trap for Men’Thor with myself. Yes, you were to be his witness to tell the Preceptorate of Men’Thor’s treachery if it came necessary. That’s all I knew.”

When I had told the full story, he punctuated it with a puff of amazement. “Vasrin’s Hand! If this is true… if the Lords were fully joined with the boy at the moment of his death… Well, we shall see what results from it. Your son was blessed that you were here to remind him of his own goodness before the end. It sounds as if you did exactly what was needed.”

“Play the part. Follow the Way,” I murmured. Somewhere beyond the outer guardroom a door opened and banged shut again, causing a slight movement in the air. The torchlight flickered.

“What’s that?”

I told Ven’Dar of Karon’s nighttime visit and the words that had echoed in my head all day. He looked bemused. “He told you not to give up even in the depths of sorrow and also to follow the Way - contradictory admonitions, for, of course, following the Way could be said to be ‘giving up,’ relinquishing our desires to change what is.”

Like a bubble rising to the surface of a pond, words welled out of my grief. “If he would just have told us more of his intent. Gerick was in such pain, such despair, and Karon offered him nothing until he was almost lost. I didn’t understand it. I still don’t.” It didn’t seem right I should be saying such a thing, but I couldn’t stop myself.

“Think, dear lady. He planned to rob the Lords of their prize by an extraordinary means. And if the Lords took possession of the boy, both living in his body and linked to his soul at the moment of his soul weaving… his transference into his father… his death… perhaps the Lords would die, too. But if Gerick, or any of us, had the least suspicion of what was to occur… ”

“… the Lords might never have come.”

“In order to make their sacrifice meaningful, the Prince had to proceed alone, to relinquish the very comfort for the boy and for himself and for you that might have made it bearable.”

“So we’re left with his words. ‘Follow the Way. You must not give up… ’ Give up what? It’s been three hours; they’re beyond the Verges. I should let Mem’Tara have her way with them, and go find Paulo and Roxanne.”

“Mem’Tara?”

“She wanted to take the pyramid stone. I couldn’t bear the thought of her touching it, so I reminded her that the bodies shouldn’t be moved for half a day.”

“Follow the Way… must not give up… play the part… ” Ven’Dar’s calm voice took on an edge of excitement. “Tell me, my lady, have you - please, don’t think me foolish or rude - spoken to your son or the Prince as you stood vigil with them here?”

Ven’Dar wouldn’t pry without reason. Politeness and embarrassment were trivialities. “So much never gets said, and we’d been apart so long. In a way I’ve been speaking to them since it happened, but - ”

“And before the Prince touched the crystal?”

“Yes.”

“As you did in Zhev’Na when the boy was transformed?”

“I suppose it’s much the same. Why?”

The Preceptor - no, he was the Prince of Avonar now - jumped up and went to the other side of the platform, where he closed his eyes and placed his hands on Gerick’s breast. After several suspended moments, Ven’Dar sighed deeply and shook his head. “I thought perhaps - Paulo told us that when your son first entered him, he unlocked his own cell door and pulled his own body, still breathing, from confinement. To take young Gerick with him beyond the Verges, the Prince would have had the boy come into him - perform his soul weaving. Only then could the stone have released them both. Your bond with your son was strong enough to survive his transformation into a Lord of Zhev’Na; with the thread of love and words, you led him out of that darkness. And so I had a brief hope…”

“But he does not breathe.”

“No. His heart is still.”

You must not give up hope…

Red-clad guards from Ustele’s house carried Men’Thor and Radele away on velvet-draped litters, and Ce’Aret and Mem’Tara finished their examination of the room. “We should go now, my lord,” they said to Ven’Dar. “The people are afraid and hear only one rumor more dreadful than the next. When word goes out with Men’Thor’s and Radele’s bodies, it will be worse. They need reassurance from their Prince.”

Ven’Dar shook his head. “As most senior Preceptor, Ce’Aret, it is your place to inform the people of Gondai that Prince D’Natheil is dead. Do so, and tell them I stand vigil with him as our Way prescribes. I would ask them to do the same - to hold the Prince and his beloved son in their thoughts as a lighthouse shines its brilliance into the tempest, so that wherever they journey, they may find the Way.”

The two women bowed and left us there, Ven’Dar and me, sitting together with Karon and Gerick. After a while Paulo’s torch guttered out, leaving us in the dark, but Ven’Dar made no move to create another light. Instead he held my hand in quiet companionship, and I felt his gentle thoughts of Karon entwine with my own. As it had been sixteen years before on a bitter day in Leire, I was left to mourn, only this time, I was not alone.

And so it was in the darkness of the silent guardroom, as I drowsed against Ven’Dar’s shoulder, trying to maintain my one-sided conversation with Karon and Gerick, that I felt the first tug on the other end of the lifeline…

CHAPTER 33

Gerick

It was a long wicked time from the moment I possessed my father’s body until I realized we were dead. The last true physical sensation was the touch of my father’s hand. He gripped it firmly… I gripped it firmly, for I was both of us. And more. I was not only Gerick, not only Karon, not only some intrusive scrap of D’Natheil, but I was also the Three, the vile, immortal, all-powerful Lords of Zhev’Na, who believed their day of victory was come after a thousand years of devouring desire. I could scarcely hold a single thought together, and if I’d waked in the madhouse in Montevial, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all.

I suspected my father had done something extraordinary when I looked down to see our bodies draped across the palace guardroom… or perhaps I was traveling with the Lords again, on my way to call down lightning over the Wastes. But I’d never felt sorrow when I traveled with the Lords, not like that which overwhelmed me when I saw my mother kneel weeping at our sides just before the darkness fell. And the Lords and I had never reached out to comfort one who wept at our passing as my father reached out for my mother with his body’s last breath.