He strengthened the wards, giving her all that he was, for her protection. She was not a mage of any kind, but she was a sensitive; she felt some at least of what he did for her. Her hand reached across the small space between them and clasped his, as warmly trusting as if they were both still children.
The earth boiled up with an army three, four, five times as large as the one that they had faced and, they thought, defeated. It swarmed over the Heir's weary forces. Its hordes of warriors were fresh and well-fed, with unscarred weapons and bright new armor. The spell that had concealed them was shredded and tattered, but still fuddled the minds and hearts of Vera's army.
They had forgotten why they fought, or whom they fought for. Swords dangled from slack hands.
Spears struck without force. Arrows flew wide of the mark.
It was all Mathias could do to hold off that mind-blurring magic from himself while sustaining the wards about Vera. The guards were useless; each of them was fighting for his own skin.
The enemy could see the Heir. The heart of her own forces' blindness was clear to Dashant's troops. They converged on her.
Mathias was beyond desperation. Lytha, his Companion, fought with every weapon and wile at her disposal. He dropped his sword and bow and raised his hands. The spell that rose up in him was a spell for the other side of hope. It would kill him, but it would break the spell on Vera's army and weaken and befuddle Dashant's horde, and maybe just maybe-give Vera enough cover to run for safety.
There was no time to explain. He had to hope against hope that both his Companion and his Queen would understand; that their hearts were close enough to let them see the sacrifice he had made-and that Vera, at least, would save herself.
He was not afraid. Fear was lost somewhere in the life that he was leaving. The spell was whole inside him. It was beautiful, a structure as intricate as a snowflake and as deadly as the track of a viper in the sand. It stirred and shimmered, tugging at the edges of his control, drawing power from the roots of his earthly self.
The horde was almost upon them. Vera held her sword in both hands, raised above her head, ready to fight to the last.
No grief. No hesitation. One more instant and the spell would be cast, and his life and magic with it. He let it go.
The world shattered. All spells broke-every one, except those which guarded Vera. Mathias' body was gone, and so was every enemy within a furlong of it. Vera's forces reeled, stumbling over the sudden dead.
He clung to the reality of them, and most of all to Vera. But the world was whirling him away. He looked down into her white, shocked face-and if he had still had throat or tongue, he would have cried aloud. He knew-he understood-he foresaw-so clear, so terribly, appallingly clear-
* * *
Long waves sighed upon a shining shore. The foam on their breasts was the color of moonlight and snow. The sand on which they rolled was dust of jewels, opal and moonstone, lapis, malachite, chalcedony. The sky was silver, and the sun was gold, fixed it in forever, never shifting, never changing.
Somewhere, in another heaven, were moon and stars, but not in this place. Here, it was morning for all eternity.
Luminous spirits walked in the jeweled sand or on grass the color of emeralds. Some wore the forms of men or women; others chose the shapes of moon-white horses, blue-eyed, silver-hooved, mystical and magical. They grazed on the eternal grass, or ate the fruits of paradise, or drank from springs that flowed supernally pure. Everywhere was a dream of peace.
The soul that had been Mathias stood on the edge between the sea and the sand. He still wore his human shape: a tallish man in Herald's whites, broad-shouldered, with curling brown hair, and green eyes more fit for laughter than for sorrow. But they had not laughed since well before he died. Here in the land of laughter, they knew no mirth at all.
A slender woman stood beside him. Her eyes were blue; her hair was long and silver-white, drawn back in a straight and shining tail that swung to her haunches. "My dear," she said, "you can't grieve here."
He kept his eyes fixed obstinately on the place where the horizon would have been if this had been an earthly isle. "Why can't I grieve? Is there a law against it?"
"Well," she said, "no. But-"
"Then I will grieve," he said.
"But why?" she asked him. "Your sacrifice ended the war. Your beloved is safe. The traitor's army is broken; she has marched in triumph to the capital, and taken her throne. She is Queen-and by your doing. You should be rejoicing."
"Yes," he said dully. "I should."
"Dear one," said the woman who in mortal life had been his Companion, "is it that you can't be with her? Your two souls are bound, you know that. In the fullness of time, you will both be reborn, and be together again. If I know the laws that constrain the gods, in your next life you will have her, and you will reap the reward of your sacrifice."
He shook his head. "No. That's not what it is. I know how the gods parcel out their favors. It's...I can't speak of it. Please, by the gods, don't make me try!"
She was relentless. She was a blessed spirit, he reminded himself, but she was not omniscient. She was not a god, or even a mage with a deathbed gift of prescience. She had not seen what he had seen.
"Tell me," she said. "Tell me why you grieve."
But he would not. After a moment or an age, she went away. Her sadness stung him with guilt, but he could not tell her the horror that he had seen. They were all the blessed dead here. They were all ended, done with, rewarded. Anything that they had left behind, was left forever.
Some would go back to the mortal world, yes, but never soon enough. Not within the lifetime of anyone they had known.
That was his grief, and the core of his terror. By the laws of the cycle of death and rebirth, he had withdrawn from earthly cares. He would return to them, of that he had no doubt, but the life he had given up was gone. He could never get it back again.
Yet what he had seen in the moment of dying, the vision that he had had, tormented him even in these blessed Havens. He spoke it aloud, though only for his own ears to hear, soft beneath the sighing of waves. "If I don't do something-if I don't take some action-she will never come back. There will be nothing left of her. Her self, her soul-gone. Never again. Never-"
He sank down in the sand, sobbing like a child. He did not even care that the blessed souls stared, or that the more compassionate or the more curious gathered to wonder and whisper.
One of them came to stand over him. It was not Lytha. This one he did not know: it wore Companion's shape, with some quality about it that made him want to bow low before it. The blue eyes were mild, the brush of its mind as soft, as gentle as sleep. :Little one,: it said, :what troubles you?:
"I can't tell you," he said, though the core of his resolve was crumbling fast.
The Companion bent its beautiful head. :Come to us,: it said, :in the Hidden Country.:
"The Hidden-but where-"
But the great one was gone. Only then did Mathias realize how very strange it had been: it had been neither male nor female, nor known any distress for its lack of gender.
He straightened slowly. The semicircle of the curious drew back. He looked from face to shining face. "Where is the Hidden Country?" he asked them. "What did the great one mean?"
No one knew, or would admit to knowing. Only one of them came forward to say, "Go inland.
Follow the light." She would not explain herself; perhaps she could not.
It was as good advice as he was likely to get. He would not have said that he had hope, but his despair was a little lighter. He was doing something. He had a place to go, a riddle to ponder. Maybe it was mere distraction. Or maybe it would show him the way to save Vera's soul-and with it the soul of Valdemar.
* * *
If he had still been in mortal flesh, he would have found this journey tedious, if not particularly exhausting. Inland away from the sea was a sea of grass, greener than any earthly meadow, rolling monotonously into the luminous di
stance. He began to think that he had been deceived, that this was a punishment for bringing grief into the blessed land: to be condemned to wander forever in the featureless green. Not a soul stirred there, not single sentient thing, living or blessed dead.
Then he realized that without knowing it, he had been following the light. Little by little as he went onward, the sun was brighter, the grass more vivid. He was never blinded, but he was inundated in light.
He came at last to a wall of living fire, pure white, without heat, rising up into infinity. Standing there, contemplating it, he realized that it was not a barrier. He walked toward it.
It took it to itself. It was somewhat like passing a veil of fire, and somewhat like ascending a mountain of living coals. The dead knew no earthly weariness, but certainly they knew pain. It scoured away all that was impure in him, and all that was of earth-save only those memories which he clung to with implacable persistence. That was the price of passage. He paid it as freely as he had paid with his life to save Vera-but in so doing, he had doomed her soul.
With this, the Powers willing, he would save her. He pressed on. It was more like a mountain and less like a veil, the farther he traveled; and little by little the pain faded. In time, it dwindled to nothing. He trod stones underfoot, following a path up a steep slope, rising into a bank of luminous cloud.
There were trees, impossible if this had been an earthly peak, but all things were possible here.
These were slender and tall. Their leaves were deep green; blossoms opened on the branches, pure white enfolding a spark of gold.
The scent that drifted from those branches was ineffably sweet. It tempted Mathias to delay, to slow, to drift and dream in this hall of trees. But he was armored in memory and armed with terror. He climbed onward and ever onward.
The heart of the wood was a space of light. The grass there was so dark a green as to be almost black. The flowers in it were stars.
The Companion was waiting for him. As he approached it, the circle widened immeasurably, expanding into infinite space. He stood in a field of stars, beneath the orb of a sun.
The great one was not alone here. There were others like him, legions of them, as numerous as the stars. All revolved around the sun, singing a song of pure praise.
Mathias' voice was a lone small dissonance. "Can you help me save my world?"
"Your world is safe," the great one said.
He shook his head. "Even you can't see. Before I died, I saw. Dashant works a spell to win back what he lost. That spell will destroy the Queen and enslave every soul in Valdemar. But her soul-her soul will be gone. Unless I do something. Unless I find some help, some hope for her."
"That is no longer your world," the great one said. "There is nothing you can do to save it."
He clenched his fists. "There must be! Where is the quality of divine mercy? Where is the care the light takes for its children?"
"It is where it has always been," said the great one. "All that is, is meant. Yes, child: even this."
"Then why did you bring me here?" he cried. "Why did you let me hope? What use is there in any of you?"
His outcry died into the silence of eternity. The stars shone undimmed. The sun's light burned as bright as ever. It was not mortal, to know pity, nor human, to know sorrow. It knew nothing but the glory of itself.
The great one said, "There is nothing that you can do."
"That is not the truth," said Mathias, almost spitting the words. "There are stories, memories, tales of powers-Avatars-"
"There is nothing you can do," the great one repeated. "This is ordained. You are forbidden."
"If I am forbidden, why was I allowed to see? Why, except to torment me?"
"Sometimes," said the great one, "in extremity, a mortal can see where no mortal eyes should ever see. That vision was not meant for you."
"Yet it came to me," he said. "I will save her. I must."
"Even if it costs you your soul?"
"If it saves hers," he said, "yes."
The great one bent its glimmering head. The field of stars shrank to a field of grass and flowers under a silver sky. Mathias stood in it with a creature like a Companion, surrounded by blossoming trees.
"You are forbidden," the great one said. But in its eyes was another word.
He held that stare for a long moment, lost in an infinity of blue. "What will they do to you," he asked. "if-"
The great one shook its head infinitesimally. "Peace is yonder," it said, "on the shores of the Havens."
But Mathias was listening to what it did not say. He looked around him and recognized this place, this circle of trees, this grass; this spring that bubbled forth from the great one's feet, just as it must have done in the morning of the world.
"Do not drink from this spring," said the great one. "Mortals who drink of it are doomed. The hounds of heaven will hunt them, and the Powers will condemn their souls."
"But you," he said. "You children of heaven who drink of it, what does it do? What powers does it give you?"
"That is forbidden," the great one said. "Go, seek peace. Forget this place."
Even as it spoke, it turned its back. The spring had bubbled into a pool. It seemed perfectly harmless, a pool of clear water, reflecting the sky. Mortal sky-blue as a Companion's eye, and mortal sun in it, looking down on living earth.
The great one's tail switched. Another instant and it would return to its guardianship. Mathias bent quickly and cupped water in his hands. It was cold, as spring water should be; it numbed his fingers. He did not pause to marvel at so earthly a sensation in this unearthly place. He lifted it to his lips and drank.
It was like liquid ice, like living fire. It was the wine of angels. His mortal spirit was not made to imbibe such potency. It rocked him with agony. It tore him, twisted him, rent him asunder. Darkness took him even here, in this land of perpetual light.
* * *
Mathias lay winded on bruised grass. But, he thought, grass did not bruise here. The dead did not breathe. He was notHe staggered up. His body moved strangely. His head was too heavy, his neck, his hands and feet-He had no hands. When he scrabbled at the grass, long white legs responded, and silver hooves.
His neck twisted about, impossibly long. White mane flew as he whirled; white body spun. When he cried out, a shrill whinny pierced his ears.
His forefeet tangled; he fell to his knees. It hurt. Earth was hard. He heaved himself erect. Through the whirl of confusion, still he recognized this place. He was in the Companions' Grove. He wore that all-too familiar shape, and it was not that of a newborn foal either. He, though mortal, had drunk from the well of the Powers. It had done to him what it must do to the great ones, the shining spirits: it had given him Companion's form.
Such a thing was forbidden to mortal soul-impossible, he would have said. He had defied the will of heaven. He wore flesh again, with full capacity of the body, and full memory of the life that he had lived before. And it was still-gods, it must still be the time in which he had lived.
As he paused to will his gratitude toward the one who had shown him the way, a shudder ran across his skin. Something was rising in the Grove, some force of wrath.
The hounds of heaven were coming to hunt him down. He must run with all his magical strength, and find her before they found him. Then it did not matter; the hounds could rip him into nothingness, he did not care. But first he must save her soul.
His body knew how to run. He had only to let it go. There was glory in speed, and joy-he had thought never to know joy again. Behind him the earth heaved and the spring boiled. He heard, faint but drawing nearer, the baying of hounds.
He ran for Vera's life. Companion's Field was full of white almost-horses and their Heralds in white, and the usual scattering of attendants, gawkers, and hangers-on. They were all gaping at him. He hardly needed to hear the word that ran even faster than he: "Grove-born! There's not been a Grove-born since-"
Since before his human life began. In
tentionally or otherwise, they were gathering, clotting, blocking his way. He darted around and through them, and sometimes over them.
"But," said someone, who sounded young, "his eyes are green!"
That checked his stride and nearly sent him sprawling. He got his legs under control again. The road from the Field was not so crowded. The sight of a Companion at full gallop parted the stream of passersby and left them murmuring in his wake.
She was not in the palace. He had known it before he came there, in his heart that was like a needle quivering toward the lodestone. Yet he had to go, had to see-had to prove to himself that those halls, though full of people, were empty of her.
It was a long and desperate while before he found someone who could hear when he Mindspoke.
His throat would not produce a human voice, nor would his lips or tongue shape even the few words he needed to say. :Where is she? Where is the queen?:
The child in the servant's smock blinked hard. He was frightening her with his intensity. He tried to control it a little, but he did not succeed very well: she was very young and he was desperate. Thank the Powers, she mustered her courage and said steadily enough, "She's gone out riding, sir. With-with the Consort. The one who's to be, I mean. After the wedding."
.:Consort?:
She blinked even harder. "Yes, sir. Lord Terrell. Don't you know-you aren't-are you new here, sir?"
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