“Everyone together,” Edeard said.

“No matter what,” they all chorused.

The Pythia bowed to Edeard. “Waterwalker, may the Lady Herself bless your journey. She will greet you soon, I’m sure. What you have done for this world is beyond praise. The Heart awaits you with eagerness, as do your friends who dwell there now. You go there with the undying thanks of all of us who live on Querencia, whose fulfillment you have worked so hard toward.”

Edeard looked up into her face, kind and stern, as all the Pythias seemed to be, but radiant with concern. A concern that extended a great deal further than the tower. Should I tell her? Somehow, he couldn’t risk the woman’s disapproval, so all he said was: “Thank you.”

The Novices and Mothers began their walk back down the tower’s spiral stair.

Macsen let out a comfortable groan as he slumped back onto the cushions. “Right, then we’ve got a minute. Anyone bring some booze?”

“I think you’ve had enough now, dear,” Kanseen longtalked quietly. Watching her juddering breaths, Edeard knew it was willpower alone that kept her body alive. Dinlay came over and perched beside Edeard. The lenses in his glasses were like balls of glass, they were so thick. Edeard knew very well he was virtually blind; it was only his farsight that allowed him to move around these days.

“Do you think Boyd got there?” Dinlay asked.

Edeard smiled wistfully. “If he didn’t, we’ll have to organize a search of the Void for him.”

“I’m sure a Skylord would help,” Kanseen longtalked. “He deserves his place in the Heart.”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Kristabel said. “A voyage across the universe, a bigger version of our trip around the world.”

“Yes, my love, it would be quite something.”

He saw her head turn to stare at him, eyes narrowing in that oh so beautifully familiar expression. “Is there something wrong?”

“Not wrong, no. But tell me this, all of you: If there was something you knew, an ability you had which could change everything, the way you lived, your beliefs, the way you thought, even, would you keep it to yourself?”

“What ability?” Macsen asked keenly. “The way you talk to the city?”

“No, something much greater than that.”

“Would it change things for the better?” Kristabel asked.

“It just brings change. How it is applied, for better or worse, depends on the user.”

“You cannot judge people,” Dinlay said. “Not even you, Waterwalker, have that right. We have our courts of law to maintain order, but to decide the nature of a person’s soul is not something we are worthy of. The Heart alone decides.”

“If the ability exists, it exists for a reason,” Kanseen longtalked.

“I thought so,” Edeard said.

Down below, the city gasped and then cheered as the Skylord rose above the horizon. The tremendous flood of rapturous blessings directed from Makkathran’s crowds rose to a crescendo. It was enough to bestow Edeard’s body with a final surge of strength. He reached out with his third hand and drew his friends to him. They held hands as the Skylord swept in across the Lyot Sea. Wind rushed on in front of it, causing their robes to flap about. All around them, the spires of the tower began to glow, a vivid corona of light that spilled out across the platform, filling the air with sparks, as if the stars themselves were raining down.

“Will you accept us?” Edeard asked of the Skylord. “Will you guide us to the Heart?”

“Yes,” the giant creature replied benevolently.

Tears of gratitude seeped down Edeard’s cheeks as the light grew stronger and the shadow of the Skylord slid across Eyrie. This was his last chance.

The light flared, overwhelming his eyes. He sensed his body starting to dissolve into whatever force the towers unleashed. Yet his mind remained intact. If anything, it grew stronger, his thoughts clearer than they had been in decades. His perception expanded, taking in the whole of the city.

“I have one last gift for you,” he said to the glittering enraptured minds below. “Use it well.” And he showed them how to travel back through their own lives to begin again where they chose.

“That’s how we always won?” a laughing Macsen asked.

Edeard’s soul shone with happiness. Rising beside him into the giant fluctuations of light that ran through the Skylord’s body, Macsen’s spectral form had returned to his handsome adolescent self.

“Not always,” he promised his friends. “And not for two hundred years. I swear upon the Lady that your achievements here are your own.”

“Whatever will they do with it?” Dinlay asked, looking down at the world shrinking away below the glare of their disintegrating bodies.

“The best they can, of course,” Kanseen said.

“You did the right thing,” Kristabel told him.

Edeard cast his perception up, growing aware of the songs calling down from the nebulae. They seemed to speak directly to him, a promise of such glory that he was filled with wonder and anticipation. “They’re so beautiful,” he exclaimed. “And we’ll soon be there.”

OSCAR MUNCHED AWAY absentmindedly on his chocolate twister as he reviewed the astrogration charts his u-shadow was extracting from various files. On the other side of the exovision displays Liatris McPeierl was running through an energetic exercise routine, stripped to the waist to show off perfectly proportioned chest muscles that were gleaming rather nicely with sweat. A sight that was not a little distracting; Oscar found it hard to concentrate on transgalactic navigation with all that joyous hunk flesh flexing lithely just a couple of meters away.

Liatris finished his routine and reached languidly for a towel. “I’m for a shower,” he announced, and twitched his bum in Oscar’s direction as teasingly bogus thoughts of lust burst out into the gaiafield.

Oscar bit firmly down into a big chunk of his pastry, inhaling a lot of the dusty icing sugar it was coated with, which made him cough, which made him look really stupid. He took a drink of tea to clear his throat. When he’d finished, Liatris was gone and Beckia was giving him a pitying smile from the other side of the starship’s main cabin.

“What?” he grumbled.

“Liatris is spoken for back home,” she said.

“Back home is a long way away.”

“You’re a wicked old Punk Skunk.”

“And proud of it. Wanna take a look at my scorecard?”

“You just have no dignity at all, do you?”

He flashed her a lecherous grin and ordered his u-shadow to pull files from the unisphere on all previous known and rumored transgalactic flights. “Part of what makes me lovable.”

“Part of you is lovable?”

Tomansio and Cheriton rose up through the airlock chamber into the center of the cabin. Both of them were wearing toga suits with quite flamboyant iridescent surface shimmers and gaiamote emissions toned down to zero. They were letting everyone know they were staunch Viotia citizens and had nothing to do with Living Dream in any respect.

“It’s not getting any better out there,” Cheriton complained.

For a couple of weeks now the team had been accessing and experiencing the attempts of Viotia’s government as it tried to reestablish normal services and deal with the damage caused by the invasion, an operation not helped by the lynching of their prime minister two days after the Ellezelin troops had withdrawn from the capital, Ludor. It had been a messy affair with a mob storming into the National Parliament Building while the guards had been content to stand back and let natural justice take its place. The rest of the cabinet, fearful for their own bodyloss, had been reluctant to stand up and issue instructions. Relief was being coordinated mainly by local authorities while tempers were given time to cool.