We walked along the cold corridors of the palace, through empty antechambers that had once been packed with courtiers entertaining themselves and pressing for a glimpse of the king. Inside the banquet hall, the party was gathered in a whispering huddle. At the far end of the room stood a man in black, the same man who had offered us a ride in his coach from Stavis.
“Will,” said Renthrette, “you remember Ambassador Linassi?”
I stopped in my tracks. How could I forget?
I had planned for this meeting, rehearsed my anger and outrage, mentally staged the way I would fly at him and beat him. But now that the moment had come, I forgot my lines and could not think what to do. I was corpsed. My mouth opened and nothing came out.
He looked at me, smiled his undertaker smile, and it was almost like being back with the hooded soul of the Arak Drül. But I felt his thoughts and they were at once benevolent and mildly amused. I said nothing. He looked at each of us in turn, then said, “Ready to go home?”
No praise, no thanks, no apology; just that. I found my voice again. “Oh, no,” I began. “Not that easy, mate. You’re going to do a lot of talking before I get in that magic hearse of yours. You can’t just whisk us across the world-presuming we’re still in the world-and drop us into a war from which we emerge by the skin of our teeth, having been chewed by talking bears and generally inconvenienced by an elaborate collection of things that shouldn’t exist in any rational. .”
“Shouldn’t exist?” he smiled.
I hesitated. I was suddenly overcome by the sense that I had a significant moment in my grasp, and could easily get us all into a lot more trouble by saying the wrong thing. The rest of the party seemed to be holding their breath. “Shouldn’t exist,” I said, “but apparently do. Here. Wherever that is.”
Lisha moved. I caught her eye and she nodded fractionally, as if with approval.
“But, look,” I began. “I still don’t understand a lot of this. That’s a state of mind that I’ve gotten quite used to. But the fact is that I think we need some explanations. I mean, we were prophesied to be here, or something. Now what’s all that about, for a start?”
“I don’t think there was ever a real prophecy,” said Orgos. “Not in the sense you mean.”
“But they knew we were coming,” I said. “They said we would have a hand in their war and they were right.”
“There’s nothing in the library,” said Lisha. “I’ve been looking. I think the prophecy was just a rumor that came from paranoia and xenophobia. The world of the Arak Drül was defined against the Stehnites. It makes sense that the one thing they might fear above anything else was people who would not fit in either camp, outsiders who would not see good and evil in the ways they wanted. Such people might erode the Arak Drül’s sense of order just by being here.”
“So they learned to watch for strangers,” agreed Orgos, “for anyone who wasn’t ‘goblin’ but didn’t see the world as the Arak Drül did.”
“That’s it?” I said. “No prophecy? No cosmic hand writing us into the future? No promise that we were destined to shape the world?”
“No,” said the ambassador, simply.
I thought for a moment and then nodded.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t believe in destiny.”
Everyone looked to the ambassador to see how he would respond to this, and when, after a tense moment, he smiled, you could feel everyone breathing out with something like relief. I caught Lisha’s eye and she nodded again, but this time the approval held a note of warning. I was being told that what I had said thus far was plenty, and now I should shut up. I thought about it, and shut up as requested.
“Then we are ready to move on,” said the ambassador.
I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, and was suddenly struck by a reluctance to leave at all. Rose was waiting for me in my room, I thought. I was a hero, an honored guest.
But “guest” was right. I didn’t belong in this land of sorcery and chocolate-covered birds. I didn’t know where I did belong, but it wasn’t here.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
There was a tiny ripple among the group, a kind of resolution that did not come easily, but came definitively.
“My coach is outside,” Linassi said. “As is your stallion.”
“Tarsha!” exclaimed Renthrette, and everything else, the pain of parting from Toth and his people, the strangeness of all we had seen, and the various extreme feelings that accompanied all we had done since we had got here was forgotten. As soon as Renthrette imagined meeting her beloved warhorse, her memories of Sorrail and what, if anything, she had felt for him evaporated as only the memories of old love can. I defy any man to compete for her affections with that bloody horse.
We didn’t even get to say good-bye, though that was probably a blessing. I had been popular briefly enough that I wasn’t sure I knew how to leave those who valued me, if only as someone who had done Significant Things. I wouldn’t even be leaving any friends, not exactly. I was on the verge of getting to know Rose, and I no longer jumped a foot in the air when Toth showed up at my door, but I had spent too much of my time here alone to have made lasting acquaintances.
I left Rose a book of poems that I had been carrying about with me. They were addressed to people with dark eyes, but I didn’t think she’d mind. It was odd to think that a few weeks before she might have been revolted by them.
Toth was there to see us off, but no one else knew we were leaving. He bowed to each of us in turn, including me, and embraced Orgos and Mithos. Then the coach was moving off, silent and dark as before, with Renthrette mounted on Tarsha at our rear and Garnet sitting beside the coachman. Orgos’s eyes met mine and he smiled. “Worried, Will?”
“Always,” I answered, honestly.
Mithos grinned, a real smile that split his face so you could almost see his teeth. It was like glimpsing a very rare bird, and within moments I had convinced myself that it had been a trick of the light. I peered out of the window as Phasdreille, white and glorious, receded slowly behind us and we got onto the road proper. It was a clear, cold day, and the early afternoon light was turning the city to gold as it had been when I first saw it. Back down the road, a familiar silver wolf with a flash of white on its throat was loping easily after us. The ambassador touched my arm and I leaped in my seat.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I muttered. “It’s like rolling over and finding you’re in bed with the grim reaper. No offense.”
“None taken,” he replied. “I was merely going to suggest that you pull your head inside the carriage. I think I hear a storm coming.”
I glanced hastily out of the window and saw that the land around me was darkening fast. Overhead, I heard the distinct rumble of thunder. Then the heavens opened and a great torrent of rain came crashing down upon us, lashing the carriage and the horses. As the lightning flashed hard and white, I remember thinking that so much water might just wash the world away.
“Brace yourself, Will,” said Orgos. “We’re going home.”
“That,” said the ambassador, “remains to be seen.”
I was about to ask him what the hell he meant by that, when there was another brilliant flash which seemed to linger impossibly, and then I was thrown face-first onto the carriage floor. When I opened my eyes and got up to my knees, everything had changed. There was no storm, and the light from outside had dropped to almost nothing.
I fought with the latch on the carriage door to get out of that oppressive darkness and bundled myself out into the dim courtyard of the Fisherman’s Arms, the tavern where we had first met the ambassador.
“Stavis,” I muttered to myself. “We’re back in Stavis.”