It was as if the closer she moved toward death, the older she became. She seemed nearly as ancient as Yasammez now. Perhaps it’s the nearness of eternity and whatever it brings, he thought, but did not share it with her.
When you have finished your moment with the mortal girl, she told him, come to me. I would like to see you with my eyes.
He stood over Qinnitan for a long while, trying not to think. Before he left he lowered himself to his knees and took her hand, but it was so limp and cold, he could not bear to hold it. He kissed it and laid it back on her breast.
Saqri was on a bed that Barrick had asked be made, although if the queen of the fairies had been given her way, she would have been laid on the naked rocks and covered only with her cloak. If we are given the choice of how to die, she had said, we of the old ways, then we prefer the elements just as they are. It is good to learn to deal with the chill of night, because as it comes, death also blows its cold breath upon us. We learn to move less and think more.
But you aren’t being given any choice, Barrick had told her, and so the Daughter of the First Flower was kept comfortable and warm because she was too weak to have it be otherwise. I will not let you die here in this place, Barrick had sworn to her. I will return you to the People’s House.
Foolish boy. Like Yasammez, I will die when the Book says I must die.
Liar. You are alive now when anyone else would have long since crossed the river. It is the strength of your will that gives us this time and you know it.
You saw your sister, she said. She burns more brightly than I had guessed. She would have made a good mate for you.
Barrick could only stare at her. That is disgusting.
Not among our kind—not in our ruling family. I loved Ynnir before I hated him, and hated him before I loved him. I knew him each moment of my life. That is how entwined we were. But your ways are not ours, I realize.
Don’t say such things. Besides, she and I are no longer close. I’ve changed too much.
Have you?
You know I have!
She smiled at him. It was such a small wrinkle of her lips that someone watching less carefully might have missed it. “All can be foretold,” as the Oracles say. In truth, I think you should stay with your people… I am sorry, Barrick Eddon—with your other people.
Never! I can never live among them again. I am nothing like that anymore.
She went on as though he had not responded. I meant no insult. You have earned your blood with us as well, there is no doubt. Even the smallest and most distant of the People’s clans will know about you.
Barrick didn’t care about such things—what did any kind of fame matter when the rest of his life would be little better than a long funeral procession as the Qar and their knowledge slowly died away? And at last he would die, too, either alone among a people that his family had helped destroy or as an alien in the land of his birth. Either way he would be a stranger to those around him.
Be of good cheer, Saqri told him. Life is short at best. Even the long span of Yasammez was a mere flicker beside the stars, and the stars too will go dark some day.
There was nothing to be said to such a blindingly joyful sentiment. Barrick nodded and turned away.
No, she said. Come back. Please sit beside me.
When he had seated himself, he looked at her more carefully. Saqri seemed almost translucent, like a candle that had become little more than a shell, its wick burned far down inside it. Though he knew her blood was red like his, it was not apparent from the outside just now; she seemed to be something other than flesh, like the petal of a white lily.
Why did it all happen? he asked at last.
She did not need to ask him what he meant. It had to, dear manchild. The balance was too precarious to last forever. When Crooked finally died, everything tumbled loose. Now our time is over.
But why? Even without both halves of the Fireflower, there must be something left for the People! They don’t have to simply lie down and die.
Almost a smile again. No, they need not lie down and die, Barrick—but our great age of blooming is over. Perhaps something will come after… perhaps… but I cannot see it.…
She was growing tired, he knew, and he dared not waste her strength. Still, when she was gone, there would not be another person on all the earth who would understand him. Have I told you what I have found?
Her eyes fluttered but stayed closed. No, tell me, manchild.
It was just like the time before he knew the full horror of his father’s illness, those days when Olin would move and talk like a man who had spent the previous days unpleasantly drunk. Poor, blighted man. He understood what plagued him less than I do, and I still cannot fathom it all… To Saqri he said, I learned from some of the Xixian prisoners that there may still be tribes of the People living in the southern deserts and the hills—the Xixians call them Khau-Yisti. And there are tales of beings who must have some kinship to our People in the islands to the south and west of Xand as well…
He realized that Saqri was not listening anymore—she had fallen back into her deep, deep sleep, a retreat to a place just this side of death. Each time it was harder to draw her out, each time she returned there more quickly. Soon the other half of the Fireflower would be gone forever.
Ynnir? What shall I do?
But that voice had also fallen silent.
“Elan, just speak to me. Surely that is not too much to ask from a man who has loved you as truly as I have?”
She frowned at him, but not in anger. “You know I care for you, Matt. I will always be grateful that you tried so hard to rescue me from Hendon.”
“Tried? Did!”
“Of course. For a time. But things have changed now—you must see that.”
“See what? That you are throwing me over for a dying man… ?”
She drew back from him. “Gailon won’t die! Back at Summerfield Court, he will have the best physicians. He can’t die! The gods would not let such a miracle occur only to snatch it away!”
After the past weeks, Matt Tinwright had a different view of what sort of thing the gods would and wouldn’t do, but he knew it was pointless to argue. Elan had loved Gailon Tolly since she was a girl, and now she would be able to nurse the dying man through his last months.
“There are miracles all around you, Elan,” he said. “I should be dead! I was shot in the heart with a bolt from a crossbow. But the very prayer book I tried to give you stopped the arrow.” He took the small book from his doublet and held it out. Torn parchment flowered from a jagged hole in the cover as big as a silver coin. “Look! My blood is on its back pages! If I hadn’t had it, the arrow would have reached my heart, but instead it merely gouged me. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means that I was right to return it, Master Tinwright. If I had accepted your gift, you would have died.”
Tinwright slumped. He had barely slept during the nights since Midsummer. Sometimes he thought that if he couldn’t have Elan, his heart would break and he would die, too—sooner than Gailon Tolly, perhaps—and wouldn’t Elan feel sorry then… !