"Erin," she said as she took his hand in hers, the arcane fires from his weapon snaking across her skin to no ill effect, "You don't have to worry. I've come for you. It's time for us. Finally, my love, our time may begin."

"You're not real," he said.

She touched the side of his face with her free hand. Gently she raised his hand until the gauntlet was at eye level. "Take this thing off, that I may kiss your fingers, one by one. Then you may tell me if I am real."

Shandower felt his legs weaken, and Mahrissah guided him to the bed they once had shared. "It can't come off. Don't you see, it's fused to my skin. The magic-"

"The power does as you command," she said. "You are afraid to be parted from your weapon and so it makes that a near impossibility. Will it and it may be so. Anything you will, anything you desire, may be made so. You have only to want it, only to want me."

His lips trembled as he said, "Mahrissah, you died!"

"Yes," she said as she caressed his fingers, touching only metal that was now cooling, the magic fading like the surrender of twilight to the darkness. "\bu buried me here, and you vowed that when it was your time, you would return here and we would be together. Erin, that time has come."

"The battle-"

"Will be fought and won," she said as she touched the stump of his severed arm. "You have already given too much. Come with me and be whole."

"I don't know," he whispered in anguish. "I can still feel it, do you understand? My hand, the one that is gone, I can still feel it."

She leaned forward and kissed the gauntlet. "Surrender your avenging sword, Erin. You have done enough. Your reward has come. Do not torture yourself anymore."

"Am I dying?" he asked dully.

"Yes. A clot of blood is racing to your brain. Your wounds were more severe than you knew. In moments your life will pass. Please, Erin," she said as she bit her lip, "You cannot face what comes next if you are determined to bring the tools of slaughter with you."

Shandower stared at the skin surrounding the base of the gauntlet. The weave of flesh connecting the two was coming apart, and suddenly his hand was no longer fused to the weapon. "Take it off for me," he said in desperation, "Hurry!"

Mahrissah did as he asked, her eyes alight with rapture as she discarded the weapon and allowed the bare flesh of his hand to close around hers. Suddenly her grip became too tight and she said, "Watch my eyes, Erin, and see the truth."

Within her eyes he saw a particular patch of darkness, which the light had not been able to ward off, a tiny splash of shadow that threatened to grow and fill the canvas of his thoughts with nightmares engineered to drive him to the point of madness and beyond.

"Kill yourself," a voice whispered from the darkness.

Shandower rose and walked to a display of edged weapons he had collected from the corpses of the monsters he had killed. His fingers were inches from the hilt of a dagger, which he planned to ram into his own throat, when he identified the owner of that voice.

By then it was too late.

Myrmeen found Krystin sitting at the edge of the pit where Shandower had secreted the apparatus. Her long legs hung over the edge and she kicked absently as if she were trying to swim through the darkness that seemed to rise from below. Myrmeen sat beside her, tucking her legs beneath her, afraid of the abyss waiting beyond the shaft's cleanly polished lip.

The locket was in Krystin's hand, and she stared at its emerald surface in frustration. "So close," she whispered. "I'm sorry?" Myrmeen asked. "I didn't hear you." "Nothing," Krystin said as she slipped the locket into her breast pocket and looked at Myrmeen with eyes that mirrored the older woman's sadness and exhaustion.

They sat quietly, appreciating each other's company, when a sudden flicker of memory came to Myrmeen, chilling her. "By the gods," she whispered. "What's wrong?" Krystin asked.

Myrmeen hesitated, then decided she would never keep secrets from Krystin again. Haltingly, she began her story.

"Fourteen years ago I did something terrible. It was the night of the great storm. I guess I was delirious with pain. I couldn't think clearly. I know that's no excuse, but-"

"Go on," Krystin urged.

"It was a few seconds after the delivery. My mind was swimming. Dak said the baby was gone. In that moment, a nightmare came to me. I saw a madwoman in red carrying her dead child in her arms. The woman wailed her agony for all to hear as she shambled through the streets. She begged anyone who came close to her for the smallest gesture of reassurance, a hint of kindness, a compliment for the noisome, bloated body she cradled in her arms.

" 'My child,' the woman whispered, 'my child is beautiful.'

"But it wasn't a nightmare. I had seen that scarlet woman wandering the marketplace when I was a little girl. A handful of drunken guards, evil men, all of them, had threatened to arrest her for making a public spectacle of herself-and, more importantly, for frightening off the tourists and their much needed gold.

"The woman had ignored them, and finally a guard snatched the corpse from her hands and threw it to one of his comrades. The scarlet woman chased after her child, but it was kept out of her reach. When she attacked one of the men, clawing at him with her bony hands, her fingernails scraped away, the guard ran her through and left her to die slowly in an alley. He stood there and waited until she was dead before he gave her back the child."

Myrmeen shuddered at the horror of that distant morning. She looked at Krystin. "Dak told me you were gone, and all I could think about was the scarlet woman. I suppose I thought that if I had seen the baby, I would have become her. My sanity would have been lost, so I didn't ask to see the baby. I just let it go.

"I made a mistake, a horrible mistake. I allowed my fear to overtake me. If I hadn't, I might have saved you."

"Or you might have died in the attempt," Krystin said. "Besides, you don't know for sure that I'm your daughter."

Myrmeen thought about her next words carefully, afraid to say the first thing that came to her mind. That doesn't matter, she wanted to say, but she knew those words would ring false, because it mattered to a great degree. There was something, however, that had equal importance.

"Krystin, all I can say is that if something were to happen to you, I would feel as if I had lost my daughter a second time."

The young woman stared at Myrmeen in shock. She was unprepared for such an admission and had no idea how to react. With a cry of longing, Krystin threw her arms around Myrmeen and began to weep.

Myrmeen's arms closed over Krystin, gently caressing her hair and the flowing line of her back. She told Krystin how their lives would be in Arabel, of the palace they would live in, the luxury and splendor, the people who would be her friends, the subjects who would adore her. "An education," Myrmeen said excitedly, "a proper one. The finest tutors, only the best. You will have everything you want. Everything."

Krystin pulled back slowly and Myrmeen wiped away the child's tears. "It sounds wonderful."

"It will be," Myrmeen promised. "Believe me, it will."

Krystin touched Myrmeen's hand. "You're shaking."

The older woman rose and kissed Krystin on the forehead. "I need to talk with Reisz and Ord. Then I'm going to get some sleep. Will you be all right here?"

"Yes, Myrmeen," she said, fighting back the urge to call the magnificent woman before her by the name they both desperately needed to hear: "Mother." Instead, she said something that rocked them both even more. "I love you."

Myrmeen dropped to her knees and hugged Krystin so tightly that she feared she would hurt the girl. "Sweet dreams," she said as she pulled away and covered her face with her hands to mask the tears that were welling up in her eyes as she walked away. She found the tunnel that led to the chamber shared by the Harpers, and disappeared from view, leaving only the slight echo of her boots on the stone floor in her wake.