"Sometimes," said Yilan slowly, "I live my whole life without seeing the pattern of what I do; sometimes. . . there is no design evident, and Boga and I and you and Gunesh. . . live apart and lost; sometimes in little lives and sometimes in great ones; sometimes I've been a baby that died before a year, only marking time til my soul could be elsewhere. Or resting, perhaps, just resting. Some of my deaths are hard."

"I'll go out with you this time. I've no fear of it."

Yilan chuckled and winced, a little twinge of pain in the gut. "Shimshek, you lie; you are afraid."

"Yes."

"And losing Gunesh would break your heart and mine; take care of her."

"Ah, Baba."

"You're the one who loves, you understand. My dear friend, I do think this time you may outlive me. You'll see a measure of revenge if you wait and watch."

"What is revenge if it never ends?"

"Indeed. Indeed, old friend. I'll tell you something I've begun to see. The balance swings. I move men only so far in a lifetime; only so much help to any side. I was Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, Kushite, Greek, Macedonian. . . I brought Persia to birth; defended Greece against it at Thermopylae; built an eastern empire as Alexander; and a western one as Hannibal; checked both as Caesar, and drove north and south; was Chinese and Indian and African. . . side against side. We live by balances; there is no revenge, and there is. Point of view, Shimshek." Shimshek only stared.

"Love Gunesh," Yilan said. "Live. I want you out of here before the dawn; slip her into your camp. When I am dead, there will be a bit of noise. Then sound the horn and ride. Probably there'll be great confusion—some attacking the city, some coming this way; you see the old man's still thinking. It's one of my best stratagems."

"No, Baba. I'll not leave you here to be killed."

"Don't be obstinate. You'll only hasten your death. And hers."

"Shall I tell her. . . what you've told me?"

"Is it peace to you, to know what I've told you?"

"No," Shimshek said heavily. "No, Father; no peace— There's no ending, is there?"

"As to that, I don't know. But from the world's dawn to the world's ending. . . we're the same. Unchangeable."

"Boga and you are the great ones," Shimshek said, "Isn't it so. . . that she and I are powerless?"

"Mostly," he said and watched pride vastly hurt. "Only—Shimshek, if it weren't for you—I might beBoga. Think of that. If not for you. . . and for her. Because I love you."

"Baba," Shimshek murmured, and laid down the pipe and put gentle arms about him, kissed his brow.

"Go," he said. "Go now, and when you hear the uproar that will follow when I'm dead. . . ride with Gunesh."

"I will not leave you, Baba. Not to die in your bed."

"Can you not? Do you grudge me a quiet death? Even Boga has chosen that for me this time, and I am tired, young firebrand; the old man is tired."

The curtain drew back. Shimshek reached frantically after his sword, but it was Gunesh.

"How much time must I give you?" she asked.

"Sit," Yilan said, patting the rug beside him, and she sat down there on her heels. "You have some persuasion in you, woman. Move this young man."

"To leave you?"

Yilan nodded grimly, motioned with the bowl of his pipe toward the peripheries of the camp.

"How does it look out there?"

"Like stars," she said. "If the sky could hold so many."

"Like the old sky," he said. "So many, many more than now. Do you ever dream of such stars, Gunesh? I do. And I tell you that you have to go with this mad young man, and not to lose that baby of yours and his. Can you ride, Gunesh?"

She nodded, moist-eyed; he had had enough of tears from Shimshek.

"No nonsense," he said.

"I have dreamed," she said, "that we've said this before."

"Indeed," he said. "Indeed. And shall again. Someday Shimshek will tell you."

"They're true," she said, and shivered violently.

"Yes," he admitted finally, knowing full well what they she meant. "Yes, Gunesh. The dreams. Perhaps we all three have them."

Shimshek shut his eyes and turned his face away.

"Yilan," Gunesh wept.

"So there'll not be argument. You two have to get out of here. That's the pattern this time. I've ceased to need you."

"Have you?" Shimshek asked.

"Not in that way," he admitted. He could never bear to hurt them. And it began to have the flavor of something they had often done, a movement like ritual to which they knew the words; had known them for all the age of the Earth. "Hold me," he said, and opened his arms. It was the only real thing left, the thing they all wanted most of all. They made one embrace, he and she and he, and it was reward of all the pain, more than cities, more than empires—it was very rare that they understood one another so well; Montmorency and Dunstan and Kuwei; Arslan and Kemal; so many, many shapes. They were given nothing to take with them, but the memory, and the love and the knowledge—that the pattern went on.

"I love you," he told them. "The night is half done and there's nothing more for you to do. I'll see you again. Can you doubt it?"

The smoke of the pyres had died to a steady ascending plume, which the wind whipped away. A great number of the people of the City of Heaven gathered in the darkened square to mourn; white bones showed in that pathetic tangle, in the embers of that fire into which much of the wealth of the city had been cast, to keep the hands of barbarians from it. It was much of the past which died, more bitter loss than the lives. It was the city's beauty which had died.

And some prayed and some were drunken, anticipating death.

And some sought their own places, and their familiar homes.

And lovers touched, mute. There were no words for what was happening, though it had been happening since the first army raided the first straw village. There were no words because it was happening to them, and it was tomorrow, and they were numb in that part of the mind which should understand their situation; and all too quick in that part of the heart which felt it. They touched, Kan Te and Tao Hua, and touches became caresses; then caresses became infinitely pleasurable, a means to deny death existed. They were not wed—it was not lawful—but there was no time left for weddings. The ashes of the dead settled on their roof and drifted in the open window to settle on their bed.

They loved; and spent themselves, and slept with tears on their lashes, the exhausted sleep of lovers who had no tomorrow.

"No," said Gunesh, and touched Yilan's face in that secret, loving way. There were, for them, too many tomorrows. "This time. . . we stay. This time—after all the world's ages—we might make the difference. We might, mightn't we? If we've been trapped before, can't we fight, this time?" A strange warmth pricked Yilan's cold heart. He turned, painful as it was, and cupped Gunesh's fair face between his scarred hands. "I have thought. . . perhaps. . . someday— you might have some part to play."

"Then let us," exlcaimed Lancelot/Shimshek/Antony. "O Yilan, let us." He thought. "We proceed slowly, my friends. O so slowly; perhaps the old pattern is for changing; perhaps it does resolve itself, in the long ages. I grow wiser; and Boga. . . perhaps wiser too. It may be, someday, that you can change what is. Perhaps we've gained more than an empire in that, my friends; and maybe you arethe ones. . . someday. But not this time. Not this time, I think; it's too late; we've lost too much."