She tilted her head back. He looked so damnably optimistic, like they all did, because they thought that their gods had granted them the right to rule their world. And who was to say that it wasn't true? Certainly, Tess Soerensen and her brother had come down from the heavens and now even more than before were prepared to push the balance in favor of the jaran.
"But we're not going back to Jeds. We're going far away, far across the ocean, back to Erthe, where we came from. Anatoly." Already she felt stripped to the bone with misery. It hurt to have to tell him, while he was holding her this close. He looked bewildered by her anguish. He was so sure there was some solution when there wasn't one and never could have been one. "That journey can't be taken twice, Anatoly. Once I go, I can never come back."
"But, Diana-"
"Oh, you could go with me, perhaps, if Tess Soerensen agreed, but you'd have to leave the tribes forever." Her chest was so tight, her throat so choked with emotion, that she found herself breathing hard. She could not catch her breath. But she had to make him understand how final it was, that there was no hope. That she had no choice. "You'd have to leave your jahar. You could never come back either. You're right, about the gods. They called me to be an actor. I can't turn away from that, no matter how much I might want to stay with you here." She faltered, because his expression frightened her.
Suddenly he embraced her and held her hard against him. She tightened her arms around him and just hung on, for the longest time, forever.
"You mean it," he said finally, but she could not see his face as they lay together on the carpet. "There is nothing I can say, nothing I can suggest, that will change your mind. I can't come with you. You can't stay here. There's no hope even of finding a place between your land and mine, in Jeds."
"No hope," she whispered, wanting never to let him go-He broke free of her and gently pulled away from her grasp. Standing up, he pulled on his boots and sorted out his clothes from the chest and rolled them up in a blanket with a few odds and ends and his scraps of embroidery. She scrambled up to stand beside him. "Anatoly-?" "Then let it be a clean break, and a swift one." He took her by the shoulders and kissed her once on each cheek, in the formal style. "Good-bye, Diana. I will always love you. But you must do as the gods have called you to do, and so must I." And he left.
All that night, all she did was walk from her tent to the main tent and back again; from her tent to the main tent and back again. Quinn came out and walked two circuits with her without speaking a word, and then left to go to bed. Later, in the middle of the night, Gwyn appeared and walked beside her for a time, and before dawn, Hal, from her tent to the main tent and back again.
At dawn, she took down her tent and stowed what she had brought from Earth in a single chest. Gwyn came over, and in the end he persuaded her to let him help carry the rolled-up tent and chest and pillows. They arrived at the Sakhalin encampment just in time: Mother Sakhalin was checking all the wagons. She turned, seeing Diana, and beckoned her over.
"Mother Sakhalin," said Diana. She did not want to play this scene, but she had to. She made herself play it as if she was on the stage. "Because I must leave the jaran, and your grandson, I thought it only right to return these things to you." She risked a glance around and prayed that she would not see him. If she saw him, then everything would go for nothing. If she saw him, she would break down into tears and beg him to give up everything he knew and loved and come with her to Earth.
"Anatoly and his jahar rode out last night," said Mother Sakhalin in a cold voice. "With Bakhtiian's blessing. They rode south, to join up with my nephew's army."
Ah, Goddess, he had meant what he said, that the clean, swift break was the best one. She felt sick to the very core of her heart. She did not know what to say, but Gwyn, good soul that he was, asked Mother Sakhalin in a polite voice which wagons the tent and chest and pillows ought to go in.
She pointed. "In the jaran," she said to Diana as Gwyn carried the other things away, "a woman is married to a man for as long as the mark remains on her face, or he lives. What am I to tell my grandson?"
Diana felt crushed under the weight of Mother Sakhalin's withering stare. The old woman hated her, that was clear, for breaking her favorite grandchild's heart. And why shouldn't she hate her? Mother Sakhalin had known all along that Anatoly should never have married her.
"Tell him," she said, and choked on the words, "tell him that I love him still." She meant to say more, but her voice failed.
Gwyn returned. He held in his hand a small, supple leather pouch. "Di." He faltered. "These fell out of the pillows." He opened the flap to show her the loot, the necklace, bracelet, and earrings that Anatoly had sent her.
"Those you must keep," said Mother Sakhalin. "I insist upon it. It would be rude beyond belief and forgiving to return them to him, who risked his life to gain them for you."
"But-" Diana fished in the pouch and drew out one of the earrings. "Give this to him. Please. To remember me by. So he'll have one, and I'll have one. I-" She cast an anguished glance at Gwyn, pleading for help.
But it was Mother Sakhalin who had mercy on her. "Go on, then. We're leaving now. There's no more time for this. I'll take the earring and I'll see dial he gets it." She took the earring and turned away, just like that.
"Come on, Di," said Gwyn gently. "We may as well go. I'm so sorry."
And that was it. That was the end.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
They laid Ursula's body, shrouded in a simple linen winding-cloth and topped by her beloved helmet and her torn, bloodied surcoat, on the pyre at the feet of the man she had followed here. It was fitting that Ursula be burned. She had died in battle, fighting for the jaran. As for the other corpse-well, Sonia hoped the gods would forgive them for the impiety.
He had, at least, been a soldier, and he had died fighting for his people-khaja though they might be; that ought to satisfy the gods. She only hoped his spirit would not take offense at the substitution. She had made sure that the necklace of gold beads he wore had been left with him, so that he might go to the heavens with something familiar and not just the shroud of the Prince of Jeds.
One of the actors sang a haunting song in farewell. David ben Unbutu spoke a long prayer. Most of them wept, even though Sonia did not think they had loved Ursula overmuch. More than anything, she thought they were simply shocked that Ursula had died. As if they thought that Ursula couldn't die, that none of them could die. Sonia made a sign against Grandmother Night, for even contemplating such a blasphemous thought. Certainly they did not weep for the prince. All of them knew, as she knew, as Hya knew, that Charles Soerensen had not died but simply given up Jeds in order to return to his mother's homeland of Erthe.
Dry-eyed, Tess put the torch to the wood, and it caught. Farther off, ambassadors attended, and etsanas and dyans, out of respect for the dead prince, and behind them, farther still, a knot of soldiers, riders and a few Farisa auxiliaries, who attended out of respect for the woman who had led them. Karkand smoldered behind them and, in some places, still burned.
Flames leapt up the pyre and engulfed the two bodies. The scent of ulyan permeated the air. Tess moved back to stand beside Ilya, and Sonia went over to her and put an arm around her, supporting her. Tess still suffered from exhaustion; she had not yet gotten over her ride of two days past.