Dyrsse laughs. “Candar is far indeed from Afrit. I share your desire to subjugate Candar and destroy the power of Recluce. Are you ready to commit all your fleet? It will take no less.”
“Surely the third of the fleet that has arrived…”
Dyrsse laughs again. “Take your ships home. Send a courier boat out to tell those en route to return to Hamor.”
Stupelltry flushes.
“Forget Candar. Recluce is what has stopped the Emperor. With Recluce’s power destroyed, twoscore ships would be enough to capture and hold Candar. Without Recluce’s destruction, your fleet will never provide enough support to take Candar.”
“You presume-”
“Too much? I presume nothing.” Dyrsse straightens. “It will take all of your ships to destroy the handful of black ships and the city of Nylan.” He shrugs. “Once that is done…”
“And what clever tactics will accomplish such a difficult feat?” Stupelltry pauses but for a moment before pressing on. “You are so sure of your mandate-”
Dyrsse ignores the irony placed on the word “difficult” and leans forward. “The Emperor is the liege lord of Afrit, Regent of the Gates of the Ocean, and Emperor of Hamor, the mightiest empire in the history of the world. Yet, for all that mightiness, twice before have we been humbled in Candar and before Recluce. Our traders continue to labor under trade rules forced by Recluce. Over the years, those unseen black warships have sunk traders for trifling violations of the trade laws laid down by one small isle. For whose benefit are those rules enforced? For the black isle, of course.
“Candar is rife with strife, with chaos wizardry, and with violence. People live in terror of most of the rulers. Compare that to Afrit, where no one fears invasion or war. And who fosters that terror? The black isle, no less.”
Dyrsse pauses and smiles. “Are you sure you would not like some of the wine?”
“No, thank you.”
“As you wish.” The marshal leans forward again. “You asked about clever tactics. Clever tactics won’t work. What will work is thousands of iron shells falling on Nylan nearly all at once. It’s that simple and that difficult. Can you do that, Fleet Commander Stupelltry? Can you bring your ships to Nylan through the heaviest storms you have ever seen and pound that city into a mass of crushed stone and black gravel?” He pauses. “That is what the Emperor needs. That is our duty, the one laid on me personally by His Mightiness Stesten-to crush Nylan into black gravel.”
“I am a fleet commander, not a stone crusher.”
“No… you and I are the Emperor’s stone crushers… and we will be crushed if we fail.”
CX
IT WASN’T THAT long on that late afternoon before I finally went back to Dayala, and ended up sitting on the stool again, looking down at her as she sat there cross-legged and open-eyed.
“I don’t have any choice.” For all the concern about honesty, I couldn’t lie, and I couldn’t see that there was any real choice if I wanted to live with myself.
She looked at me with those deep eyes, and my tongue seemed to swell.
“All right, even ponies have choices. But I don’t want to end up like Sammel, and that’s not a real choice.” She just kept looking at me.
“What am I supposed to do? I’ve seen what power does. I know I have the ability to tap a lot of power. Am I supposed to beg and grovel to you and Krystal and Justen? ‘Please save me. Please save me from myself.’ I’ll bet Justen didn’t beg.”
I could feel a deep sadness welling up in the druid, but I waited.
“No. He and Creslin were forced. They had no choice.”
“And you? Did you force Justen? Like you’re forcing me?”
“I chose. Justen would have been linked to someone. I chose to be that druid.”
“She also saved my life when I would have died,” added Justen, stepping into the room. “More than once. And she’s suffered a lot of pain because I didn’t choose to understand.” He laughed. “Like you, Lerris. It must run in the blood. Like self-serving pride.”
He looked at me, and I finally looked away. “You want to believe that you’re always doing things to be good, Lerris. And you are good at heart. But you’re also doing good things to get the praise you never got from Gunnar because you weren’t perfect. And Gunnar couldn’t praise you because he felt he wasn’t perfect, and I have trouble because I’m not. All of that’s self-deception. Why can’t you tell Krystal you need to be praised?”
I just looked at him. He looked back at me again.
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. If I had to ask for praise, it wasn’t worth anything, and I couldn’t voice that, either.
Then I looked at Dayala and back at Justen. They said nothing.
“If this link is so wonderful, why doesn’t it happen more?”
“Because it could kill you both,” said Justen bluntly. “If one dies, so does the other.”
“Let me get this right. If you link us together the way you and Dayala are, it could kill us both. And I’m supposed to consider this as a solution?”
Dayala stood. “I will be back.”
Justen nodded at her, although I knew more had passed between them than the spoken words. He slipped onto the other stool.
“Well, Uncle Justen. Give me one good reason.”
“I can’t. It would be my reason. You know who you are. You know who Krystal is. You know what you are. If I give you a reason, Lerris, then you will use that reason either to reject the link or to put the responsibility on us. You know who you are. You know what the link is, and what it does. You should know that it makes two people one, and that if they cannot stand each other inside it will destroy them. You also know that such closeness makes deception impossible, and most people cannot live without self-deception. Most people cannot face themselves. We will not make those judgments for you. You have to make those judgments, or you will blame me or Dayala, as you have blamed Recluce… and Krystal.” He sat on the stool and waited.
I walked over to the narrow window. All the barracks windows were narrow. From there, I could see the ruined walls of the harbor fort, and the sagging waterfront buildings across the narrow tip of the bay-and the long shadows.
All I wanted was to… to what? To be close to Krystal? So why had I pushed her away? Or had she pushed me away? Could I take her honesty, or was I supposed to be honest for her?
My eyes burned for a moment, and I shook my head. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. I could walk away, but, even as I thought that, I knew I wouldn’t have another chance, because Krystal would stay in Ruzor… and Justen and Dayala would die if they had to save the city-I’d seen enough to know that. And that wasn’t fair, either.
I didn’t have to be fair. Who had been fair to me? I’d been deceived, and maneuvered, and forced to choose between risking my life and losing Krystal. Why did I have to be fair? I didn’t owe it to anyone.
So easy… just walk away and become the great Lerris. In time, who would know? Who would know? Who?
The faintest murmur slipped up the walls from the courtyard, so faint I could not make out the words.
So who would know if I left Ruzor and Kyphros? I would. I remembered the faces in the depths, and now they all had my face-even Shervan. It wasn’t fair that he died, but he had.
Fair? I would have laughed, but my mouth was dry, even when I swallowed.
The waters of the bay were flat, without the slightest hint of whitecaps, and the hulls of the wrecked ships seemed more like enormous boulders, sunken remnants of a past that would not die.
Yet, though he had Sephya with him, Antonin died alone. And so did Gerlis, and Sammel]… because no one cared.
Was that what I wanted? I’d hated it when I felt no one in Recluce had cared. But why couldn’t Krystal understand? Why wouldn’t she?
I recalled Dayala’s word-acceptance. A faint puff of warm air caressed my face, with an acrid scent, the scent of death, perhaps from townspeople, or more decomposing sailors’ bodies.
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I turned, but Justen sat there, waiting, not saying a word. The harbor seemed flat, the waves lifeless. Acceptance… of what? I took a deep breath.
Outside the air was still, acrid, hovering between life and death, it seemed.
I turned back to Justen and nodded.
“It takes two,” he said. “Dayala is talking to Krystal.”
He sat, and I waited, looking out beyond the breakwater, wondering how Krystal felt, wondering how it had come to this, wondering why love was so hard and took so much work and hurt so much.
CXI
THE TWO WOMEN sat on opposite ends of the bed, and the hot breeze wrapped around them.
“I told Lerris he was in great danger, because as he grew more powerful, he faced constant temptation to become less honest with himself.” Dayala looked toward the commander.
“I’ve already seen that. That’s why we’re having troubles.” Krystal did not look at the druid, but glanced toward the open window, toward the ruined harbor and city beyond.
“You are not honest, either, Lady,” said Dayala, “and that is also part of your problem.”
Krystal continued to study the harbor. “Part, perhaps, but it didn’t start there.”
“You wanted love and affection from Lerris-unquestioning love and affection. He has grown, and he has questions, but he loves you.”
“Love shouldn’t be given with reservations and questions.” Krystal’s voice was hard.
“No. It should not,” says Dayala. “Love flowers on acceptance of what is, not what is desired. Lerris desires praise, especially your praise, and he will do almost anything to earn it. You are afraid that as Lerris has grown, so he will see you as you are, and not as the perfect woman as he has.”
“I just want him to accept me.”
“He does, but he feels you do not accept him. Do you?”
“I love him, but he doesn’t always have to save the world.” Krystal’s hands twisted around each other, and her eyes fell toward the blade at her side.
“Would you love him so much if he did not wish to do well?”
“He doesn’t always have to be a hero and save the world.”
“No one does, but if no one does…” The druid did not finish her sentence.
“That’s not fair. He doesn’t have to be the one.”
The two women’s eyes met, and the hint of putrescence drifted into the room on a puff of hot air.
“But he does. If he does not save the world, he will destroy it.”
“You are asking me to chain myself to him to save the world? That’s not a choice-it’s as much force as a blade is.”
“I am saying that the man you love will destroy the world you love unless you can accept him and he can accept you. If you choose to call that force, then it is.” Dayala pauses. “That is what is. That is what makes the choice hard, because you must put aside your resentment and your anger. They will not change the world. You must accept Lerris, and you must not hate him because of the choice, or, in the end, you will destroy not only yourselves, but the world you love.”
“I already accept him.”
Dayala looked steadily at the commander.
Finally, Krystal’s eyes dropped down to the coverlet. Her fingers traced out the star pattern. “Why does he have to save the world? Why does it have to be him?”
Dayala did not answer, but waited.
“Why does he have to be a hero?”
The druid continued to remain silent, and her deep eyes watched the woman in leathers.
“Why… ?” Krystal shook her head and stood. “Why doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No.” Dayala smiled sadly once more.
They walked out of the tower room.
CXII
THE DOOR OPENED, and Krystal stood there with Dayala. Her eyes were bleak, like the rocks on the shore in a storm. Mine didn’t look much better, I was sure.
“Hello,” I said. I could hear the unsteadiness in my voice.
“Hello.” Her voice trembled.
My commander’s competent voice trembled.
After a moment, I couldn’t see her because my eyes burned so much, or maybe because the ground was shaking, but I did manage to stammer out her name. I still couldn’t see much beyond her blurred figure in blue, but she was shaking, too, I think, and I took a step toward her. She must have taken one, too, because we did manage to hang on to one another. That was about all we did.
“Holding on is harder than finding each other. I think you’re beginning to find that out,” Justen said after a time.
By then we’d stopped shaking, but Krystal’s fingers were as tightly wound around mine as mine were around hers. “I take it that you two are willing to do this.” I nodded. I was afraid to speak. Krystal nodded. Maybe she was, too.
“Just sit on the stools, next to each other.” We looked at each other, and then sat down. The physical procedure didn’t seem terribly mystical or powerful-a slight cut, some mixing of blood-but Dayala put what I could only call an order-chaos lock and twist on the blood, and with my senses, I could feel immediately the thin line of order between us.
No thoughts, no feelings, just order. “Like anything living, it takes a while to grow, for which you should both be thankful.” Justen’s voice was rough, almost gruff. “Be kind to each other.”
Be kind to each other. Just a simple statement, yet one that made all others secondary.
“Remember,” Dayala said softly, almost like the whispering of the Great Forest from which she had come and which I doubted we’d ever see, “you have chosen each other twice.”
“Now, get out of here, and leave us ancients in peace,” added Justen.
Krystal and I walked out of the room slowly and stopped in the narrow corridor. We looked at each other. She didn’t look any different-the same black eyes, the same short silver-tinged black hair. Neither did I. “Let’s take a walk,” I said. “Where?”
“Down to the old fort on the breakwater.”
“That would be nice.”
I still hadn’t let go of her hand, and I wasn’t about to, not then, even if our hands were getting sticky.
“Lerris… ?”
“Yes?”
“Could we change hands? I won’t go away.”
So I let go, crossed behind her, and took her right hand in my left. We both were sweating by the time we reached the breakwater, and we probably looked like the demons’ hell, but I didn’t care.
Only the corner of the one tower remained. The rest was rocks, little gray rocks, big gray stones, fragments of bricks, and gray dust.
I spied a flat chunk of stone in the shade of the tower. “We could sit there.” My feet hurt, in fact, I ached all over. “Do you ache all over?” I asked.
“Not all over. My hair doesn’t hurt.”
We laughed for a moment, and hugged, and then sat down.
From across the bay came the sound of rebuilding-hammers, saws, and the clinking of stonemasons’ tools-not to mention the voices. Nothing in Kyphros ever got done quietly, or without a lot of conversation.
A puff of warm air, still bearing a hint of death and decay, wafted past us. The harbor waters lapped the stones like a murmur from a distant corridor.
“Why did we do this?” she asked.
I squeezed her hand. “Because we’re desperate. Because we don’t want to lose what we think we’re losing, and we’re willing to risk our lives to keep it.”
She looked out at the flat waters.
“Do you want children?”
I swallowed. I hadn’t thought about it.
“I hadn’t really thought about it, except that someday we would.”
“When will someday be?”
When will someday be? Just a simple question, but I held her, and we both cried… because… because someday might never come, and we both knew it.
The harbor waters murmured, and the hammers hammered, and we held on.
The next morning, we woke with a cool breeze
coming in through the open window, and I reached for the coverlet.
I didn’t quite make it because my arms were full.
“Don’t… we can’t lose each other… not again…” Krystal’s words were in my ears. But she shivered; so I did pull up the coverlet, but only with one hand.
In time, we got up, but I kept reaching out to touch her, perhaps a few times too often.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she finally grumped, possibly because I had startled her as she was washing, and she had to blot water off her trousers. So I refrained while she dressed. Instead, I straightened up the room.
“You do good work.”
“Thank you.”
“But don’t let it go to your head again.” She smiled, and it was warm, not edged, and I smiled back.
When we left the room for breakfast in the dining hall, Herreld was outside.
“Good morning,” I said.
Krystal nodded to him.
“Take care,” said Herreld. “Both of you.” He looked down at the stones before we could answer.
Krystal squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back, but I didn’t say anything until we were down one flight of stairs and around the corner. “Herreld’s getting soft.”
“He always was. He just didn’t want to show it.”
Like most people, I figured, even Tamra.
CXIII
FOR SEVERAL DAYS, nothing out of the ordinary happened, thank darkness, except that Krystal and I talked and spent time together, when she wasn’t meeting or strategizing. I went back to working with her trainees with the staff. That way, I could at least look over at her occasionally. Sometimes, I even caught her looking at me. We tried not to laugh.
That morning, three days after our “rediscovery,” I was looking out the window, just after sunrise. Krystal was still asleep, curled up on my side of the bed. I’d stayed in bed for a time, but I was stiff, perhaps from more exercise, or from the age I hadn’t wanted, and I’d needed to get up, but I hadn’t wanted to wake her. She seemed tired, and I wanted to let her sleep.
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