Rhapsody sat up and saw her silk dress crumpled in a heap on the floor at the foot of the bed, his mariner’s clothes scattered across the room. Color rose in her cheeks as she lay back under the blankets once more and looked at him again.
“We made love, then?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
Rhapsody looked uncomfortable. “You—you did want to, didn’t you? I didn’t make you feel guilty or beg you, did I?”
Ashe laughed. “Not at all. As if you would ever need to.”
She turned away from him so he could not see the sorrow in her eyes. “I wish I could remember,” she said sadly.
Ashe took her carefully by the shoulders and turned her to face him, kissing her gently. “You will, one day,” he said. “I am holding the memory for you, Aria. One day it will be ours to share again.”
Tears began to form in the emerald eyes. “No,” she whispered. “It may be mine to keep someday, but it’s time for you to begin making memories with someone else.”
Ashe pulled her closer so she could not see him smile. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Today I am still here with you. Perhaps there is a way to make up for the loss until the memory is yours once more.” He laid her back down on the pillow and kissed her again, his hands caressing her breasts lovingly.
Fire, mingled with guilt, coursed through Rhapsody’s body as his lips moved lower. She quickly gave herself over to the passion, fueled by the pain of her imminent loss, and they made love again, clinging to each other desperately, as though they thought they would never see each other again.
When it was over, neither of them looked happy. Rhapsody lay quietly in his arms, in the throes of silent guilt. The pensive sadness in Ashe’s eyes was much worse; he had felt their souls touch the night before in ecstasy, and today it was gone, replaced by bitter regret, the pain of being so close to ultimate happiness and still having it elude them.
Finally, Rhapsody rose from the bed and gathered some fresh clothes. She disappeared into the bathroom, and while she was gone Ashe dressed in the clean garments she had left out for him on top of his pack. He cursed Llauron, he cursed Anwyn, he cursed himself, anyone and anything that had conspired to keep them apart and was to blame for any part of the sorrow in her eyes.
As he waited for her to come out again Ashe’s senses, then his eyes, turned to the threepenny piece lying unnoticed in the rug before the fire. He bent to pick it up, smiling. He looked in the pile of hastily discarded clothes and found her locket, then carefully replaced the coin within it. He had Emily back, and she was his wife. Now if he could only keep her safe and in love with him until she knew it.
54
Meridion slammed back in his chair, his pulsing aurelay twisting red and hot with frustration. He had been trying for hours; his eyes stung from the painfully close work. Deep grooves had been worn into the flesh of his fingers from gripping the instruments so tightly, but it had been to no avail. He could not catch another dream-thread.
Rhapsody was no longer any use for such a purpose. It had been an utter fluke the first time, even less possible now; there was no give in the fabric of her dreams now that they were inextricably bound to Ashe. Despite her loss of the memory of that night, she still had given her unconscious mind over solely to thoughts of him. His attempts to pry a thread free to attach elsewhere, where it needed to be, was only causing her pain and despair; he could see it in the restless terrors and fever that haunted her sleep the night after she and Ashe parted. Meridion threw down the thin silver pick in despair.
The end was coming. And there was no way to warn them.
All his manipulation of the Past had come to nothing; the result was going to be the same, after all.
Meridion put his head down on the instrument panel of the Time Editor and wept.
Beneath his face were fragments of time, splinters and scraps of film left over from the destruction of the original strand from the Past he had tried to unmake. He brushed them away dejectedly. One stuck fast to his sweating fingers.
Meridion shook his hand, but still the scrap clung to it. He held it up to the Time Editor’s lightsource.
There was nothing left of the image; the heat of the Time Editor’s rending had marred the film irretrievably. The top edge was similarly rent, taking out the sensory information. The bottom edge of the film piece was the only part left intact, the piece that housed the sound from the Past. Meridion held it up to his ear.
At the edge of his hearing the Grandmother’s dry, insectlike voice whispered.
The deliverance of that world is not a task for one alone. A world whose fate rests in the hands of one is a world far too simple to be worth saving.
Meridion pondered the words. Not a task for one alone.
Not for one alone.
The idea flashed through him so intensely, along with the heat of excitement, that he felt hot and weak, almost dizzy.
Meridion reignited the Time Editor. The machine roared to life. Bright light flashed around the glass walls of his spherical room, suspended above the dimming stars, the heat from the boiling seas churning up a blanket of mist on the world’s surface below him.
There was another way, another connection that could be made with dream-thread. A path that had already been blazed, synchronicity that already existed.
A name that had already been shared.
When the machine was fully engaged, Meridion looked through the eyepiece again. Carefully he backed the film up one night, and repositioned it under the lens to another place in the dark mountains, in the night black as pitch. It took him a moment to find what he was looking for in the gathering storm, crystals of harsh snow beginning to form in the wind of the Teeth.
He caught the dream-thread easily, anchored it without difficulty. The warning was in place.
Now it was only a matter of seeing whether they heeded it.
A shaft of sunlight as golden as Rhapsody’s hair broke through the morning clouds. Ashe stepped into the glow, the mist from his cloak sparking into a million tiny diamond droplets, hanging heavy in the new-winter air.
From beneath her hood Rhapsody smiled. The sight was a beautiful one, a memory she would hold on to in the sad days to come. Standing there in the sunlight, even swathed in his cloak and mantle, Ashe looked like something almost godlike, here at the crest of the first barrier peaks, on his way to the foothill rise. Soon they would part company at the pass that led to the lower rim, and he would be gone from her life.
A billowing roar echoed through the Teeth, sending shivers through her. The sound echoed off the crags and over the wide heath, frightening the wildlife that still remained in the sight of winter’s coming. The sound was unmistakable.
“Grunthor!” Rhapsody spun around, searching blindly in the blaze of morning light for the source of the scream.
Ashe put his hand to his eyes, scanning the panorama of the crags bathed in the sun’s brilliance. He pointed to a pass in the guardian peaks, the barracks of the mountain guard.
“There,” he said.
Rhapsody put her hand to her brow as well. From the cave door that led to the barracks hall, figures were spewing forth like ash from a rampant volcano. The Bolg soldiers of the barracks scrambled to evacuate the corridor, taking shelter behind whatever outcroppings of rocks afforded them cover. Rhapsody shook her head.
“Grunthor must be having nightmares again,” she said, watching the Bolg scatter.
A moment later, her assumption was confirmed. A much bigger figure, still dwarfed by the mountain peak, emerged from the opening. Even from a great distance, his distress was unmistakable.
Rhapsody felt for a friendly gust of wind, making certain it would carry up to the top crag. “Here, Grunthor!” she called, wrapping her voice in the gust. A moment later the figure stopped and sighted on her, then waved frantically. Rhapsody waved back.