Ynnir brought his open hand to his chest, then spread his fingers, a ges¬ture called Significance Incomplete. "We can only wait and be patient, old one, hard as that is. Many threads still remain unbroken."

"I would not have spent my last seasons this way," said Zsan-san-sis. "I lolding together what is broken, knowing that my daughter's daughter's daughters will bear their young in pools without light."

Ynnir shook his head. "We all do what we can. You have done more than most. This defeat was authored when Time began-all we do not know is the hour of its coming."

"Who could not say with certainty that it is upon us?"

"I could not." Ynnir said it gently, letting it pass to the ancient guardian with an undertone of spring, of hope, of renewal even after death. "Neither should you. Do as you have always done-do as your broodsire raised you. We will face it bravely, and who knows? We may yet be surprised."

Zsan-san-sis' glow guttered for a moment, then burned more strongly. "You are more king than your father was, or his father before him," he said.

"I am my father, and his father before him," said the blind king. "But I thank you."

He did not clasp the old chieftain's hand-it would be unwise even for the king to touch one of the Children of the Emerald Fire-but he nodded his head so slowly it might almost have been a bow. He left the robed guardian in a posture of surprise as he walked into the Deathwatch Chamber.

The beetles on the walls shifted minutely as he entered and the move¬ment of their iridescent wingcases sent a ripple of changing colors across the entire chamber. They settled again; the flickers of blue and pale green were replaced by an earthier tone that better reflected the gray and peach of the cloud-wreathed sunset outside the open window. Blind for cen¬turies, Ynnir could smell the sea as powerfully as a drowning man could taste it, and he hoped that his sister-wife could smell it too, that it gave her a little relief in the growing dark.

He stood over the bed and looked at her, so wan, so still. It had been a full turning of the seasons since she could even bear to be sat up in Hall of Mirrors like some obscene, floppy icon. He was almost grateful that those

humiliating days had passed, that she had slipped down into herself so far that she could not even be moved.

Even as he stared in silent contemplation he realized he saw no traces of life at all. Alarmed, he looked to her lips, the pink now paler than ever, al¬most white, and felt a moment of real fear. Always before, even on the worst days, she had greeted him before he spoke. So still…!

My queen, he called to her, shaping each word so clearly that he could imagine it as a stone dropped into a still pond, the ripples sending every¬thing that swam beneath them scattering, until the stone itself struck into the softness at the bottom. Can you hear me? My twin?

Despite all that had gone between them, the fair and the foul, his heart leaped in his breast when he at last heard her words, as quiet as if they did indeed issue from beneath the mud at the bottom of a deep, deep pond.

Husband?

I am here, at your bedside. How are you today?

Weaker. I… I can barely hear you. I sent my words to Yasammez. She did not think the name, but rather a flutter of ideas-Grandmother's Fierce Beau¬tiful Sister of the Bloodletting Thorns and the Smoking Eye. / should not have done it, she told him, almost an apology. J did not have the… strength… but I was…

Afraid she would use up what little of her music remained, he hastened to finish her thought. You were wondering if she had succeeded. And she told you she had.

Succeeded at your plan. Fulfilled the Pact. Not at what I wished…

Which would have availed you nothing. Trust me, my sister, my wife. Many things have passed between us over all these years, but never lies. And it could yet be my own compromised plan, like the despised, bent tree in the corner of the orchard, that will bear fruit:

What would it matter? There is nothing that can be done now. All that we love will perish. Her thoughts were so full of blackness he could almost feel him¬self pulled down by them, like a man so fixed on the swirling clouds below his mountain path that he leans toward them and falls free…

No. He pulled himself back, disentangling himself from her. Hope is the only strength left to us and I will not give it up.

What hope? For me? I… doubt it. And even if so, then what of you…? He sensed her amusement, that old, bitter mirth that sometimes over the long centuries had felt to him like a slow poison. What of you,Ynnirit-so?

/ ask for nothing I cannot bear. And Yasammez has given tlie glass to her clear¬est, closest servitor, Gyir.

The Encauled One? But he is so young in years…!

He will bring it to us. He will stop for nothing-he knows its importance. Do not despair, my queen. Do not go down into the darkness yet. Things may change.

Things always change, she told him, that is the nature of things… but she was fading now, weary and in need of that deeper blackness that was her sleep, and which might last days. A last bubble of dark amusement drifted up to him. Things always change, but never for the better. Are we not the People, and is that not the substance of all our story?

Then her thoughts were gone and he stood alone with her silent, coolly slumbering shell. The beetles shifted on the walls again, a quiet unfurling and resettling of wings that rippled sunset-colored lightning all around the chamber until they too settled down to sleep once more.

They were back.

The dark men, the faceless men, once more pursued him through burn¬ing halls, sliding in and out of the rippling shadows as though they were nothing but shadows themselves. Was it a nightmare? Another fever dream? Why couldn't he wake up?

Where am I? The tapestries curled and smoked. Southmarch. He knew the look of its corridors as completely as he knew the sound and feel of his own blood rushing through his veins. So had all the rest been a dream? Those endless hours in the dripping forest behind the Shadowline? Gyir and Vansen, and that bellowing, one-eyed giant-had they all been fever-fancy?

He ran, gasping and clumsy, and the faceless men in black oozed behind him like something that had been melted and poured, losing bodily form as they flowed around corners and snaked along the walls in sideways drips and smears only to regain shape once more, a dozen shapes, and spring out after him, heads following his every movement, fingers spreading and reaching. But even as he ran for his life, even as the tapestries flamed and now even the roofbeams began to smolder, he felt his thoughts float free, light and in¬substantial as the flakes of ash swirling around him on hot winds.

Who am I? What am I?

He was coming apart, fragmenting like a kori-doll on an Eril's Night

bonfire, his limbs Hailing but useless, his head a tiling of straw, dry (unlet, full of sparks.

Who am I? What am I?

Something to hold-he needed something cool as a stone, thick and hard as bone, something real to keep himself from falling into flaming pieces. He ran and it was as though he grew smaller with every step. He was losing himself, all that made him up charring, disappearing. The rush and thump of the faceless men's pursuit echoed in his head as if he were listening to his own blood coursing through the gutters of his body, his own filthy, corrupted blood.

I'm like Father-worse. It burns in me-it burns me up!

And it hurt like the most dreadful thing he could imagine, like needles under his skin, like white-hot metal in his marrow, and it shifted with every movement, driving bolts of pain from joint to joint, rushing up into his head like fire exploding from a cannon's barrel. He wanted only to get away from it, but how? How could you run away from your own blood?