He wept for Jindigar's pain at the loss of a student, crying out in his last moment, "This's not your doing, Jindigar. I wanted to learn too much, too fast. Save Krinata!" Torn to shreds by pain, he dwindled to nothing and was gone.
Krinata, stunned by the sheets of fiery pain, clung to the , triad bond to the very moment of its snapping, certain that she would be sucked into dissolution/death too. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
She sensed presences around her, fleeing the pain like particles flying from a disintegrating nucleus. But she clung, determined to accept the fate she'd brought on her zunre. She felt a touch—a light, nap-skinned whisper.
//Krinata?//
She was clinging now to a cold, hard, faceted pinnacle, her hands touching– //Jindigar!//
Jindigar clung to the other side of the chipped flint pinnacle, his hands barely able to reach hers. Around them was blackness, a starless void. She knew, with his knowledge, that in the pit below was the Archive. They clung to the highest apex of his memory, but it didn't reach to outside reality. The memory between them, tapering up to a sharp point, every facet lacerating their flesh, was the memory of Prey's death.
He knew, with her memory, why her human pride had insisted she deal with Desdinda alone, and though that decision was far down this pinnacle, it wasn't the base, for knowing her character, he should have predicted her behavior. Always she'd coped with her problems without leaning. She was independent, and thus what she did, felt, and decided didn't have to affect everyone around her.
She knew, with his sense of Purpose behind the Laws of Nature, that her independence was an illusion arising from the ephemeral existence in which all memory was lost at each Renewing Birth. Any Dushau could see that everything was a manifestation of the energy represented by the flicker-flash of the lightning bolt. Living and nonliving were all part of one fabric. Every thought and feeling, conscious and unconscious, registered permanently on this substrata, which supported all manifestation and affected all reality.
She defended herself against this idea, unable to face the weight of responsibility for every tiny feeling she'd ever had, every moment wasted indulging in the simpleminded diversions she mistook for pleasure. The abyss below held less terror than this dread truth.
Anxiety rising, she thought, We can't stay here, at the point of Prey's death! She shinnied around the pinnacle, grabbing his hand in both of hers, and tore him off his perch, sending them both into a swan dive toward the abyss.
Only after it was done did she remember her fear of emptiness. But Grisnilter taught me about this. It should be easy. She peered with eyes that saw above her head and below, to left and to right, all at once, Dushau eyes, normal eyes. She felt with the nap of her skin sensitive to a thousand signals from her environment. She heard with twice her audible range. She remembered deep into the past and could see patterns imperceptible from the perspective of an ephemeral.
//There!// she told Jindigar. //An unSealed Gate!// Gleaming in the darkness, a tesseract form warped into other dimensions. Faceted sides twirled, showing scenes from within, like windows enticing the unwary. To enter by any of those scenes was certain death, for it would lead them only into the vortex at the center of the Archive, the point of contact with Infinity, the Gateway to Dissolution, the Archive's Eye. A Sealed Archive was a self-contained maze with no exit—but no entry, either. A partially unSealed Archive was a deadly trap for those lacking the key. No key would work on a Tampered, Mai-edited, or Distorted Archive. Such an Archive was an abomination capable of closing the Gate to Completion for-an entire generation.
//No!// He pulled away from her grasp, hand trembling with fear. //Takora! No! We mustn't Tamper– //
//Not to Tamper! We can't get out through Frey, because he ended inside. We have to search for a contact point. There must be several that anchor the Archive to you.//
The logic was impeccable, but still he resisted with the stubbornness of the superstitious. A horrifying thought occurred to her. //You haven't dared to interact with that Archive, have you?//
//No! I swear it, Takora, by my Oaths and Offices!//
She believed him. //Then there's no prob– //
They were almost at the unSealed Gate, a black panel amid the brightly colored ones. At the last minute, before they breasted the Gate, Jindigar screamed, //No! I swore to Grisnilter—I'll take the Archive to Dissolution rather than risk an alteration!//
He wrenched and twisted, pitching them into a panel -showing a lavishly appointed, royal sickroom.
An old, old human woman lay shriveled and nearly invisible among sumptuous covers on a bed sheltered from drafts by a gorgeously embroidered canopy, Jindigar's crest on the Dushaun colors. The room was close and humid, yet the old woman complained bitterly of the chill.
Jindigar, trembling visibly, adjusted the thermal currents for her. He still glowed with the vital luminosity of Renewal, the brimming energy of returning youth. He had decades yet to go. Grisnilter knew now how integral the human had become to Jindigar's Renewal. Her death would leave a gaping hole to be filled by scar, leaving the youth handicapped when he finally came for Historian's training. A scar acquired mid-Renewal. How will I ever train him around that? But he's too talented to abandon.
"Ontarrah, you won't suffer long now," said Jindigar.
"You shouldn't have come. I never wanted you to see me like this. You must remember me forever young as you are."
"Not forever, Ontarrah—there's only a minor discrepancy between our lifespans."
"I believed that once. I was wrong."
Jindigar edged onto the bed and took one wandering, skeletal hand in his.
She smiled up at him, a spark of youth in her eyes, her teeth pearly, her hair ashen blond, but her skin old beyond numbering the years. "If I hadn't decided to chase you all the way to Dushaun, I'd have taken my own life long ago.
I know that now, but I also know I'm leaving you to tens of lifetimes longer than I'd have faced. I was selfish, Jindigar. That's no way to Completion."
Eyes bright, he whispered, "I pay the price of your company these years gladly." He leaned over and kissed her forehead gently as her eyes closed. He stayed that way a long moment, waiting for Ontarrah to draw another breath. Then he sat up, and Grisnilter heard him whisper, "I loved you. I hope you knew that. I hope it helped."
When at long last he rose and turned, his face showed the unmitigated desolation possible only in Renewal. His wife was behind him, and both their children. The moment of payment was upon him, and Grisnilter felt he should leave, his job as Recorder completed with the death of the first ephemeral to join a Renewing household.
For the first time Grisnilter noticed the family's obvious pain, betraying how they'd valued the human too. What has the youth done?
With tender candor Jindigar's wife said, "I envied her what you could never give me. Only now, I've realized I loved her as a sister." She collapsed to the floor at the foot of Ontarrah's bed and commenced a Renewal's kindred mourning.
It was only then that the children understood. His son said in a voice that hadn't hardened yet, "Dissolution/death?'
"I think not," Jindigar articulated as if his throat were clogged. "She'll return. Ephemerals do, you know. But even more changed than a Renewal, and with total amnesia." He spoke kindly to the older girl. "It doesn't hurt them. Only we suffer the pain. Don't deny it to yourself—it's not healthy. She's gone from our lives, if not her own. If we see her again, she won't know us, and we won't know her."