Dewar walked among the dead for an age. One part of his mind, which he shoved away and denied acknowledgement, suggested that the Stone toyed with him: there could be no chance for him to find one woman among the thousands of dead who walked along this unbounded plateau. He would not consider that and looked into each countenance, seen by none, wondering what had their attention.
Their expressions haunted him with their inhuman distance.
Freia, his lips formed, again and again. Freia! Where are you?
He pressed into the blackness whence the dead came, where they were all huddled on the ground. Recent arrivals? Or the dead who do not go forward, who never cross the Balance, he guessed. What might they be? Why not?
He bent and looked in face after blind face. The black boundary flexed; it had nothing to do with whether any of the dead moved or not, or how quickly. It was only there, murky unlight. Dewar crawled on his hands and knees from body to curled body. They were as assorted as the rest of the dead: Death was indifferent, he thought. Not just. Just death would mean all would get the end they deserved. Miranda didn’t. Golias did. That paused his thoughts a moment: Golias, dastard and traitor, here with the rest, travelling onward toward the dimly bright horizon—Dewar would have made a disgusted noise. The man did not deserve so much. He looked at another stony dead person and went on.
He did not grow weary, but his mind became dulled. He mouthed his sister’s name at bowed heads and clenched arms. His spirit flagged, and he was horrified to see that his hands were not as solid-seeming as they should be, not translucent but ill-defined.
Furthermore, he thought, looking up and down at the grey dead, when he found her what must he do then? Perhaps it would become apparent. Dewar crawled on fading legs in the darkness.
He went into the blackest area and looked at the dead there with difficulty, again and again, and he saw her not.
It was when he paused to stand, from desire for variety instead of physical need, that he saw a tongue of blackness recede briefly and then flow back toward a huddled body whose back hinted familiarity. Dewar ran to the bent-over form, jostling the uncaring dead as he did, and dropped to his knees.
“Freia!” he cried soundlessly, seizing her shoulders without feeling.
The world changed; the blackness snapped. The dead were gone. He and Freia were alone on an ashen plain, the two of them dull-colored in the dull light.
“Freia!” Dewar shouted again, and now he heard himself, felt himself, felt her.
Under his hand, she trembled.
“Wake up, Freia! It’s me, Dewar.”
Her hair was loose and long, hiding her face. She was soaking wet, wearing the claret-red gown she had worn that morning. He pushed her hair aside and found that her face was covered by her white hands.
“Freia,” he whispered, and hugged her awkwardly.
A rustling dry-leaf voice came from her behind her hands. “Leave me.”
“No. Freia—I’m sorry, Freia. I wronged you.”
“Leave me.”
“I came to fetch you, sister. I came to give you my life so you can live on.”
“Leave me.”
“Look at me!” he demanded, frustrated, and pulled her hands forcibly from her face with one hand as he lifted her chin with the other.
Her expression was cold and hard, contemptuous. Her left cheek was marked by a reddened bruise.
Dewar released her and sat back, looking down at his hands. “I’m sorry, Freia. There isn’t much time—”
“Leave me.”
“Accept my life. It won’t be the same, Freia—”
“Nothing changes. I’ve had enough of it. There is nothing there for me. Leave me.” Freia folded in on herself again, bending forward.
Dewar caught her, not wanting her to retreat from him, and held her up, against him. “Please, listen,” he whispered in her salty hair, against her ear. “I came to apologize and to restore you. I am sorry, Freia. I was cruel to you. I—”
“You feel guilt.” Freia moved, pushing away.
Dewar wouldn’t let her go. “I am guilty,” he admitted. “I am here to atone. You can return to life, return home, and I will stay—here.”
Her voice was dead, a monotone. “It is nothing to me. I cannot return. There is nothing for me there. I was never alive.” Freia slumped, and Dewar held her up.
“Father—” he began, and she interrupted.
“He hates me,” she said.
“No.”
“You know nothing of it. He hates me.” She trembled, still trying to pull away, and Dewar forced her to look at him. “Leave me,” Freia whispered.
“Prospero doesn’t hate you,” Dewar protested. “He is upset that you are gone. He has been searching everywhere he could for you—”
Freia shook her head, sadly. “He hates me,” she said. “He doesn’t want me. He wants Miranda. I’m a thing he shaped to use, and I’m broken, useless. He likes you. You are like him, and you are useful, and you’re his son. I am a dead thing. I should never have existed.”
“Freia! Of course you’re really Prospero’s,” Dewar said uncomfortably.
“You know I speak the truth. You said it. I have no mother. I was never real. Miranda is real, she was always real. I’m common as dirt. I never was better. I never wanted to be better.”
“Miranda is dead,” Dewar said. “She is no better than you. You can live, Freia!”
“Let her live,” Freia said. “Nobody wants me there. You don’t, you said so.”
He looked away. Freia broke from his grip and stood, began walking away on the featureless grey ground. Every step she took seemed to stretch to the horizon, yet she moved little, if at all.
“Time.” A feeling of cutting-off, of ending.
“Give me more time, Oldest!” cried Dewar, rising and catching Freia, holding her arms. “She doesn’t understand! Freia, you must accept my life—”
“I don’t want your life, I hated life, I never had life,” Freia said, struggling free of him. “I will not return. There is no life there for me. There never was.”
“Balance. Life. Forfeit.” The world was swinging, moving off its perpetual balance; Dewar felt it, a slow sway in reality. The horizon was nearer.
“No,” Dewar moaned. “No.”
“Forfeit?” Freia repeated, looking around.
“I’m dead,” Dewar said. “There’s a limit on how long the living—” Prospero, he thought. And he pitied his father, bereft in a day of his children.
“Who are you? I don’t believe you!” Freia shouted, enraged in an instant. “You’re just like the rest of them, playing nasty games! Who are you, to be pushing people—”
“Freia!”
“All. Balance.”
“You’re taking his life because I won’t?” Freia demanded.
“Forfeit.”
“Bullshit!”
“Freia, shut up—”
“You shut up! You fool. —He doesn’t want to die! He doesn’t know what he wants.”
“Exchange. Balance. Freely.” Monolithically indifferent, the Stone admitted nothing.
“I bet you tricked him! Let him go!” Freia shook Dewar’s arm. “He’s being stupid.”
Dewar, with some surprise, saw that she wept.
“Send him away!” Freia demanded. “I chose death. I was never really alive. He is. He has everything to live for.”
“Freia, stop,” Dewar said, touched, and embraced her. He closed his eyes with a thrill of fear. How did it happen? What did the blank-faced grey dead think? He would know, but would he know he knew? What was on the horizon?
“It’s wrong!” Freia turned away from him to shout into the close grey void.
“Freia.” Her sudden outrage on his behalf at once embarrassed and comforted him; he’d volunteered, though he hadn’t expected to be called, and she was trying to protect him. She couldn’t be so angry with him, if she was trying to help him now.
“Life. His. Life. Yours. Value.
None. Refuse.” Cold crystalline insult, glittering.
Dewar thought that was a rather nasty dig. “She didn’t know—”
“His life is his, not mine!” Freia cried. “You can’t just hand it around like a loaf of bread.”
“Ignorant. Essence. Life.”
“Then it doesn’t just evaporate at a fixed time; it’s always there,” Freia said. Dewar blinked; how did she know that piece of arcana? From Prospero? Freia persisted, “You can give it back. You can send him away.”
“I came for you,” Dewar said. “I want you to live.”
“I do not want to live! I was not alive. I didn’t die accidentally. I stepped into the water myself. You have a good life. Leave me in peace. Go live.”
“It was my fault you did that,” Dewar said, attempting to keep the argument on track.
“You can’t think of anything but yourself. Prospero—” She stopped.
Stung, Dewar demanded, “What did he do?”
“Nothing. As always, nothing,” she said.
“It would make him very happy if you were there,” Dewar said softly. “He loves you—”
“He hates me. He made me, and I’m a failure. He loves Miranda—Miranda is real! I’m not real! I’m useless, a stupid thing, a burden! I’m not what he wanted. I was a mistake. He wants you! You’re real, really human, a real son.” Freia was shouting, nearly screaming, violent and furious and not hearing a word Dewar said.
Frustration made him shout back at her. “I didn’t come here to argue about who Father likes best. If you’re here, Freia, where we are now, you were alive and you are real! Do you understand? You were alive. It doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t matter that he made you. Miranda is dead, beyond life, beyond love. He may have loved her but he loves you too! You must live. You must accept my life!”
Freia threw his hands off her arms. “I don’t care! What made you think I’d want your life?”
“Nothing,” Dewar said, defeated. He turned away. A bitter ache tightened around his heart like a wire. To keep it in, he folded his arms tightly over his chest, closing his eyes. When would the Stone claim him? Or was this an afterlife, a punitive eternity of argument and anger?
“How do you feel now?” Freia asked him after a moment, behind his back.
“Useless. Worthless,” he said dully. His life forfeit, for nothing: the most precious thing he had, worthless.
“I feel that way all the time,” Freia told him. “All the time. Nothing I have, nothing I think, is worth anything to anyone, not him or you or anyone.”
He nodded, understanding. “I’m sorry, Freia,” he whispered.
“You always know you’re so clever,” Freia said, her voice thin and strained, “and you think you can make me do things, and you never really hear anything just like Prospero and—”
“I know,” Dewar said, small before the truth.
“I’m sorry,” his sister said, sniffling. “I like you. I always did. You should have stayed away.”
He felt her hands touch his upper arms, and he unclenched his arms and folded them around her. “I’m sorry,” Dewar said, looking down at her face; the light was growing poorer. “It’s all wasted. I wish I had—done other things.” If only he had done them, had even done one of them. But he had not: now he would not. He could see himself now; he understood where he had lost track of what was important in the greater scheme, of what would endure in value of the sorcerer’s and the gentleman’s worlds he bestrode.
Freia nodded her head against his chest, a comforting feeling. He stared at the dim ground and hugged her. She was cold to his touch.
“Time. Forfeit. Balance. Exchange.”
“No!” Freia said, exploding out of the peace that had settled on them. “No forfeit, no exchange. Return him to his place among the living.”
“Freia, sister, I came to release you.”
Freia put her cool hands on his cheeks, framing his face; her brows drew together, kinked upward in the middle. “No. Dewar, it’s not that I’m ungrateful—but I won’t take everything you have. It’s yours. I don’t deserve anything of yours. Leave me.”
Stubbornly, he shook his head. “I want you to have it. It’s not taking, it’s accepting.”
“It is all you have, Dewar. Too much. Half as much would be too much.”
Dewar stared at her. An idea blossomed in his mind. “Would you accept half?”
“What?” She lifted her eyebrows. “Half?”
“Would—Ancient One, could we not share a life?”
“Divide. Life. Essence.” The concepts didn’t fit together.
“Would you accept a shared life, Freia?” He grabbed her shoulders, made her look at him through her tangled damp hair.
“What would that mean?” She frowned. “Half a life? A half-life?”
“If life is truly an Essence, it may be divided between us, and one life serve both.”
“Past. Never.” A doubt from the Ancient One, with a hint of interest.
“It’s still one life,” Dewar said, looking away from her, around at the suffocating void; it had become lightless, though they two had a wan luminosity. “Embodied in two. It’s been done before. The sorcerer ’Adramasch of Wislaval, for example—”
“One. Life. Two. Live. Never.”
“It’s not that radical a step,” Dewar insisted. “In the case of the Two Prophets of Bachangee—”
“Dewar—” Freia began; he put his hand over her mouth and pulled her to him.
“Balance.” The Oldest couldn’t balance the ideas: life, lives.
“Would you consent?” Dewar whispered to her.
Freia stared up at him, bewildered, her eyes wet and dark. He lifted his hand from her lips and touched her face, leaning close to see her. “Please,” he asked. His voice cracked and broke on the word.
She closed her eyes, shook her head, and said, “It means so much to you.”
“It does.”
“Why?”
“Because.” The reasons tumbled around; he couldn’t seize and speak just one. Because it was justice; because he didn’t really want to meet the horizon, not yet; because of the way Prospero had looked; because he loved her.
Freia shook her head again. “Very well,” she said. “I don’t like it. Very well. I will kill myself again if it is bad.”
“It won’t be. I won’t let it be. I’ll take you home to your Argylle. It’s a good place. You belong there, and they want you.”
“You,” Freia said with an uncommonly sharp look, “don’t care about Argylle, only the Spring.”
He blinked; it was true. She had a discomfiting knack of perception. “I— Let me try, Freia. Let me try again. The Spring—yes, I care about that, but I care about you more. Please let me try. You consent to share my life.” It sounded like a proposal of marriage, Dewar thought.
“Yes.”
“She consents, Ancient One.”
“Forfeit.”
The darkness began to grow closer, drawing around them.
“Ah, too late,” Freia said, and sighed, and sat on the ground. “Too late,” Dewar heard her whisper.
“No!” raged Dewar, “you never said the time was up, you let us—”
“Balance. Life. Cost.”
“What would you require to make it worth your while?” Dewar demanded frantically. “Another life?”
“Balance. Preserve.”
Freia vanished, curling up again.
“Bring her back!” cried Dewar. “Are we not more use to the Balance alive than dead?”
“Past. Balance. Sister. Disrupt.”
The abortion, thought Dewar. “Low blow,” he replied. “Very low. She is unique among all our kind, you know that. Let her live!”
“Ground.”
“That’s ground enough—the Balance is the real problem, is it not? Keeping it in equilibrium?”
“Balance. All.” A pause, and, “Balance. Keep. Possible.”
“Make me an offer.”
“Life. Other. Exchange. Life. Yours.”
“I kill someone?” Dewar asked bluntly. Not Father. Please, no, not Father.
Dewar felt the Stone’s incomprehension; the Ancient One didn’t concern itself with means, only ends. “Exchange. Life. Forfeit. Balance.”
“Whose life?”
“Blood. Yours. First. Afterkin.”
Dewar closed his eyes, opened them on the blackness which enclosed him. “I see,” he said, and swallowed. Two for one, essentially. He had forfeited his own life, taking too long to talk his sister around. She had ample reason for not wanting to live; her life had not been happy lately, and her future was dark. Yet—a child. To sacrifice someone yet unborn, a stranger, but his own blood as much as Freia was—
“Is this one of those midnight-at-the-crossroads affairs?” he asked.
“Choice. Yours.”
Dewar thought the Ancient One was amused. “I don’t so choose.”
“Not,” gravelled the Stone. “You. Do. Nothing. Life. Forfeit. Balance. Need.”
“So you can actually carry an imbalance, so to speak, for a little while—or a long while—”
“Terms. Not. Evade.”
“I don’t intend so, I, ah, I just wondered.” He thought of Freia; he thought of the Spring gleaming and chuckling to itself under Prospero’s fortress, of his thorn-wrapped tower and the workroom there. He had much to live for: she had been right. Surely Freia could find something that mattered as much to her. “I accept your terms,” he said softly.
The darkness flashed white, making Dewar throw up his hands and stagger, and his foot slipped and sent him skidding down in snow, his knee landing on a stick, the black stone snowless and ominous before him.
What had he done? Dewar wondered, and he shivered and pulled his cloak tight. His last bargain with the Stone had been more usual, more of the sort he supposed other sorcerers made or would make if they could. This was sorcerous insanity from start to end. He should never have gambled his own life, were he a proper sorcerer. Now the Stone had her, had him, and had his first child to boot. Dewar shivered again as the wind bit his face. His hair was wet with snow.
The Price of Blood and Honor Page 23