I was sobbing so hard I couldn't see his face when he turned away, but I heard him.

"You have only ever been second-best and you know it. I could never love you. You have used me, used our friendship, and I have paid the price. Why should I ever speak to you again?'

Someone put their arms around me and held me as I mourned. I think it must have been Will.

That was my mistake, of course. I wept. Not tears seeping out for the beauty of the dragon-song, but true weeping, for Shikrar's passing, for Varien lost forever—for too many things. The only problem was that I couldn't stop.

Akor, the Lord of the Kantri now again in truth, came spiralling down to land as soon as the lament for Shikrar was done, but I could not look at him. The others sang for their own dead. I heard them, but I heard nothing, I felt nothing beyond myself My world encompassed only my own body, and my own pain, and a sorrow beyond words. Beyond living. Even then some part of me, some last rational voice, reminded me that he was changed, not dead, but at that moment I could see no difference. I knelt there on the cold ground, my arms wrapped around my chest, rocking back and forth in a vain search for comfort, my body forcing me to breathe, great ragged breaths rattling painfully into my chest.

Gone, gone, knelled my ravaged heart. He is gone beyond any hope of returning. I will never hold him in my arms again, our children will be alien to him forever. He is lost to me forever. Unbound our vows, unbound our future, the pain I have borne, the children yet in my womb fatherless.

I am told that I screamed. I must believe it, for my throat was raw.

And as suddenly I found myself on my feet, and it wasn't only my throat that was sore. My right cheek blazed pain at me. My eyes flew open, and there before me, her right fist closed about a thick fold of my tunic, her eyes locked on my face, her left arm drawing back to strike again, stood my mother Maran Vena.

I threw up my right arm to stop her hand. She loosed me instantly.

I shouted and threw a punch back at her. She avoided it neatly and caught my hand. Damn she was fast, and strong as iron. "What in all the Hells are you doing?" I screeched. "Leave me alone!"

"No, I think you've had long enough," she said, letting go my hand as she calmly looked me over and obviously found me wanting. "I've seen this sort of thing before. If I let you indulge yourself it will only get worse."

"Damn you!" I cried, furious. "My future just disappeared before my eyes!" I wrapped my arms around myself again, cold at the thought, and my anger left all in the instant. "He's gone, Maran. He's gone. Mother. He's gone from me forever," I said, my eyes stinging with yet more tears.

She took me by the shoulders and shook me. "How dare you?" she said, her eyes lighting with anger. "He is here, idiot child! He stands before you, whole and unhurt," she said, gesturing towards Akor, who stood yet some way off, his face turned away from me. "Unhurt save for your words, that are like to kill him more surely than any demon ever spawned," she added. She put her hands on either side of my face and forced me to meet her gaze.

"Lanen, since the moment you took your first breath I have known your warrior soul," she said sternly. "You have been my shining daughter all these years, you have borne more than I could ever have done. Do not fail now, here at the bitter test." Her eyes blazed. "Goddess knows, I have failed in every kind of love, but you are better than that."

"I am weary of being better, Maran!" I cried, and in my extreme of passion I let slip the childish cry of my heart. "It's not fair] I've been alone all my life, with none but Jamie to care if I lived or died, until I met Akor. I nearly died a dozen times on that island, and then he changed, and—I thought we would have our whole lives together!" I was weeping again. "It hasn't been the half of a year! Is that all the happiness I am to know in life? One half of one year? Goddess, what have I done to deserve so little?"

"Life is not fair, Lanen," she said quietly. "That is no argument for a woman grown. Did you expect life, or love, to be perfect? Or easy? In my experience it is seldom either. Only in bards' tales does anyone live happily ever after. You have had a whole six moons of happiness. Some never even know that much."

"Hells, even you and Jamie had three years!" I cried.

"That is enough, Lanen," said Maran. She stood square before me, her anger plain. 'Think you that you are the only one whose heart is riven by this? Listen to him!" she said, pointing to Akor. "Hells, girl, I don't have truespeech and even I can hear his heart breaking."

"So is mine, damn it!" I cried.

"You cannot give up now," she said, implacable. "Broken or no, your heart must yet beat. You bear his children under your heart. They need you. You cannot fail them. You must not."

And suddenly she stepped in and held me tight, her arms strong about me, her words softer than I expected in my ear. "Lanen, for all that you have done, you must yet do one more thing. One last thing, dear one, dear daughter, and all is done." She held me again at arm's length. "You must forgive him."

I burst into sobs, my whole body shaking, out of my control. T can't! I can't bear it, I can't face him, I beg you, no ..."

"You can and you will," she said firmly, and dragged me bodily to the place where Akor lay upon the ground. He still faced away from me, his head held at its natural level, far, far above my own.

'Turn around, damn you!" shouted Maran, making a fist and striking as hard as she could at the nearest bit of him she could reach.

Akor ignored her and kept his face firmly turned from me.

"You Hells-be-damned coward, you will face the mother of your children or you'll answer to me!" cried Maran, as loud as she could.

He turned then and looked down. He still did not speak, but his eyes, deep as the sea, old as time and wild with all regret, were locked on mine.

Maran left us to it.

His soulgem gleamed a little in the last rays of the dying sun, and his vast silver faceplate shone with tears.

Tears. From a creature of fire.

It was as if a human were to weep blood.

The sight shook me as nothing else could have. Gready daring, I attempted truespeech.

"Akor?" I said, tentatively. No response. "Akor my heart?" I said. Nothing.

Aloud, then.

"Akor?" I said, my traitor voice cracking.

"I am here, little sister," he answered, finally. His own voice shook me. It was much deeper than it had been when last he wore his natural shape, and with my new perception I heard far more than his words. By speaking at all he laid his heart naked before me, and I saw in it all that roiled in my own—hurt, anger, weary sorrow, longing. Despair. And over and around all, through the pain and behind it, love.

Little sister. So he had called me when first we met on the Dragon Isle.

"And still you leak seawater," he said, bringing his great head down to my level. His soulgem was dark, now, and somehow that touched me more than ahnost anything. "I wished long ago that all your tears might be tears of joy. Alas, that I have been the means—" And the last of his control broke, and he bowed his head. "Lanen, kadreshi, my own heart, I am as confounded as you. I know not how this has happened. Some cruel trick of the Winds, some price perhaps required for the death of that terrible beast—Lanen, by my soul, it was never my wish that this might happen, but I know not how I might undo what has been done. I hear your anger, I share it, but I can do nothing—" And then, the true cry from his heart, "I beg you, Lanen, my wife, do not turn from me." He lifted his great eyes again and I felt the touch of his soul, my husband, my lover, and felt his despair sweep through to meet mine. "My only soulfriend in all the world is gone to sleep on the Winds this day, my Lanen, and I am severed from your arms forever. Do not leave me alone here in this desert, lest I run mad, or die of sere loneliness and sorrow."