“But I—”
“You are chronicler now,” Hresh said.
“What? Father, I have no training! And the chronicler has never been a woman.”
Hresh managed the bare outlines of a smile. “All that’s changing now. Everything is. Chupitain Stuld will work with you. And Io Sangrais and Plor Killivash, if they live through the war. The chronicles must stay in our family.” He reached for her hand and clutched it tightly. His fingers seemed tiny, she thought. He was becoming a child again. He opened his eyes for a moment and said, “I never expected to have a daughter, you know. To have any child at all.”
“And to think, father, how much grief I’ve caused you!”
“Never. Only joy, child. You must believe that.” His hand grew even tighter on hers. “I’ve always loved you, Nialli. And I always will. You’ll send my love to Taniane, won’t you? My partner all these years. My mate. How sad she’ll be. But she mustn’t be. I’ll be sitting beside Dawinno, asking him so many things.” He paused. “Is my brother here?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he was. Send him to me.”
But Thu-Kimnibol was already on his way to Hresh’s side. He knelt and reached out his hand, and Hresh touched it, very lightly, fingertips to fingertips. “Brother,” he murmured. “I’ll carry your love to Minbain for you. And now you must go out. What follows must be just for Nialli and me. She can tell you afterward, if she likes.”
Thu-Kimnibol nodded. Lightly, lovingly, he let his hand rest a moment on Hresh’s forehead, as though he hoped the wisdom would pass into him at a touch. Then he rose, and left the tent without looking back.
Hresh said, “At my side, under my sash, you’ll find a little velvet pouch.”
“Father—”
“Take it. Open it.”
She let the small piece of polished stone tumble into her palm and stared at it in wonder. She had never handled it before. No one, so far as she knew, was permitted to touch it but Hresh. She had hardly ever been allowed even to see it. In some ways it was like the amulet he had just given her, for it was very smooth, and along its edges a pattern of lines had been carved into it, lines so fine that she couldn’t clearly make out the pattern. It gave off a barely perceptible warmth. But the amulet had little mass or weight, and seemed only a flimsy thing. The Wonderstone, though scarcely any larger, felt as weighty as a world to Nialli Apuilana. It made her uneasy to hold it. The power that it contained was frightening.
Hresh said, “Do you know what that is?”
“The Barak Dayir, father.”
“Yes. The Barak Dayir. But what the Barak Dayir is, not even I can say. The old Beng prophet told me that it is an amplifier, which means that which makes something greater than it is. As I told you once, it was the humans who once ruled the Earth that made it, before the Great World ever was. And gave it to us, to protect us when they would no longer be here. That’s all I know of it. You must keep it, now. And master the art of using it.”
“But how will I—”
“Twine with me, Nialli.”
Her eyes widened. “Twine — with — you, father?”
“You must. No harm can come of it, and much good. And when we are joined, take the Barak Dayir and place it by the tip of your sensing-organ, and seize it and grasp it tightly. You’ll hear a music, then. And I’ll help you after that. Will you do that, Nialli?”
“Of course I will.”
“Come closer, then.”
She cradled him in her arms. He weighs almost nothing now, she thought. All that remains of him now is the husk, and the mind that burns within it.
“Your sensing-organ, close to mine—”
“Yes. Yes.”
It was a communion Nialli Apuilana had never expected to have. But the moment her sensing-organ touched his, all fear and uncertainty went from her; and it was with almost unimaginable joy that she felt the rich torrent of his spirit come flooding into hers. It was a joy so great that it dizzied her and for a moment it swept her away; but then she remembered the Wonderstone, and carefully she curled the tip of her sensing-organ around it and gripped it with all her strength. The world turned to mist. A column of music rose beneath her. A great overwhelming chord of love buoyed her upward, carrying her soul toward the sky.
But Hresh was beside her, smiling at her tenderly, serenely, holding her, steadying her, guiding her. Together they soared across the vault of the heavens. A great golden glow was streaming from the west, a brilliant outpouring of dazzling radiance, darkening now into a stunning crimson, and then into rich deep scarlet, and then to silky purple. The darkness was beginning to reach out for him. But as they journeyed toward that waiting realm, he offered her a final sharing, the girl of his light, his love, his wisdom. He told her in a single unbroken flow all that she must know, until he could tell her no more.
So now it begins, Hresh thinks. The last journey of all. The world is growing dark around him.
Nialli, he thinks. Minbain. Taniane.
The vortex comes whirling up to claim him. He stares into it.
Is that where I’m going? What will it be like? Will I feel anything? Will I be able to taste and smell? If only I could see a little more clearly—
Ah. That’s better, now. But how strange it looks in there. Is that you, Torlyri? Thaggoran? How strange it all is!
Mother. Nialli. Taniane.
Oh, look, Taniane! Look!
When she emerged from the tent she found Thu-Kimnibol with Chham. The two men broke off their conversation as she approached, and looked at her strangely, as though she had been transformed into some unworldly creature of a kind they had never before beheld.
“How is it with your father?” Thu-Kimnibol asked.
“He’s with Dawinno now.” She was dry-eyed and oddly calm.
“Ah.” A shiver passed through Thu-Kimnibol’s massive frame, and he made the Five Heavenly Signs, slowly and deliberately, twice through, and Dawinno’s sign a third time afterward. “There was no one like him ever,” he said after a while, in a splintered voice. “We had the same mother, but I tell you I never truly felt myself his brother, because he was what he was. His mind was almost like a god’s. How will it be for us without him, I wonder?”
Nialli Apuilana held out her hand to show him the Barak Dayir in it in its pouch.
“I have the Wonderstone,” she said. “And I have much of Hresh within me now too. You heard him say that I’m to be the chronicler? I am to be Hresh for us now, if I can. I’ll say the words for him tonight, and we’ll put what remains of him to rest. But he is already with Dawinno.”
“He was always with Dawinno, lady,” said Chham suddenly. “Or so it was reported of him, that he walked with the gods from the day of his birth. Surely it was so. I wouldn’t doubt it, though I never knew him myself. What a day of great losses this has been!”
Thu-Kimnibol said, “King Salaman has died this day also. Prince Chham — King Chham, is it now? — has just come from him.”
“Then we mourn together,” Nialli Apuilana said. “When I say the words for my father, I’ll say them also for yours.”
“If you will, lady. It would please me greatly.”
“We will lay them here side by side, in this forlorn place,” said Thu-Kimnibol. “Which will be forlorn no more, because Salaman and Hresh were buried here. They were the two wisest men in all the world.”
Taniane, resting her left hand on the Mask of Koshmar and her right on that of Lirridon, fought back the numbness that had been growing in her soul all afternoon, a strange disagreeable coldness behind her breastbone; and with such strength as she could muster she compelled herself to follow what Puit Kjai was trying to tell her.