Cracks of fire ran over the boy of darkness. Smouldering flakes fell away. Smoke drifted on a rising breeze. Suddenly—whoosh!—the rest of him flung skyward in one roaring, expanding black cloud.
Shih-ka'i felt that same despairing cry he had sensed after hurling the box into the portal on Hsu Shen's island. The earth trembled and glowed where the boy had stood. A dome of air shimmered overhead.
"He's gone," said the woman in white. "And when he goes, I must follow. We'll trouble you no more." Though the breeze persisted, her clothing no longer stirred. She faced the woman weeping against Ragnarson's chest. "I'm sorry. Tell her I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I just never found the will to... "
Shih-ka'i could no longer hear her. Light passed through her now. He shouted, "You're forgiven." He turned to Mist. "Princess, are you all right?"
"Yes. Just a little shaken. I thought you'd disposed of it."
"I thought I had. We dumped the thing into a transfer with no exit side. How could it have escaped?"
The wizard Varthlokkur spoke for the first time. He sounded contemptuous. "Use your reason, Lord Ssu-ma. Time doesn't obtain in the transfer stream. Neither does death. Now, finally, we know the nature of the horror that's lurked there since Tuan Hua opened the first pair of portals. It was that thing.
"He found himself alive after you thought you were rid of him. He cruised back and forth across the centuries preying on unlucky travelers. He searched out the one time Ethrian made a transfer, penetrated him, and hibernated till his own absence from the present wakened him. Why do you think the boy assumed the thing's madness so willingly? He wasn't that sort of child. Had he not had his father's strength and stubbornness he would have succumbed far more swiftly and completely."
Varthlokkur turned away, took his wife from Ragnarson. "I'm sorry, dear. I tried to protect you from this."
"You were wrong, Varth. You shouldn't have shielded me. I'm not a child. We might have saved him if we'd come earlier."
Pain filled the wizard's eyes.
Shih-ka'i considered the dark pillar of cloud, the coruscation doming the fallen Deliverer. He searched himself for some sign of elation. There was nothing there. His war was over and won, and he felt like a loser. He started trudging toward the city. The others followed, except the foreign woman. She remained near her fallen son.
Tasi-feng hurried to meet Shih-ka'i. "Lord... It's your man Pan ku."
"What?" Shih-ka'i ran, his stubby legs wobbly.
Pan ku lay across the engine that had discharged the shaft that Ragnarson had turned. His throat had been cut. At his feet lay the remains of another man, a man almost wholly putrefied. Tasi-feng said, "He died trying to protect you, Lord."
Moisture stained the inner faces of the jewels in Shih-ka'i's mask. He did not correct Tasi-feng. The stone thing had had its revenge. It had slain his man and used him to launch a missile against his master. "He was like a son to me, Lord Lun-yu. Like a son and a brother. We'll see him off with a hero's honors."
Shoulders slumped, Shih-ka'i faced the rising sun. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka'i, pig farmer's son, Commander of Armies and Victor Over the East. He snorted derisively.
Nepanthe approached the darkness and scintillation as nearly as she dared. She looked within herself for some deep feeling about what the morning meant. She could locate nothing but a hollowness. She couldn't feel more than mildly bitter about Varthlokkur having kept the truth from her. Her knowing or not knowing had been irrelevant. Ethrian had been lost the moment those devils of the Pracchia had forced him through a transfer.
Could she blame anyone but herself? She had gotten them into that situation...
The sun pushed through the pillar of darkness. She glanced up. It was beginning to dissipate. The woman in white was now no more than a twitch in the air, like heat rising off bare stone. The coruscation where Ethrian had fallen was losing its color, turning milky, threatening to go watery.
She glanced toward the city. The chunky little Tervola had outdistanced everyone. He was at the gate already. Bragi and Mist were ambling along, apparently talking. Bragi's gestures looked dispirited.
Varthlokkur had stopped. He faced her from two hundred yards, waiting. The Unborn floated above his head. She stared back at him. There lay the new life. The last vestige of an old life lay dead at her feet. The end of an era was written...
The coruscation died. And there lay the body of her son. "But... " she murmured. "I saw him explode. I did." Frantically, she beckoned Varthlokkur.
The wizard approached reluctantly. Too many sharp words had been exchanged. Their relationship was severely wounded.
Ethrian groaned.
"Oh! Damnit, hurry up!" Nepanthe shrieked. "Varth, please!"
The wizard sensed the quickening in the boy. He ran.
Ethrian's eyes opened a crack. "Momma?" he croaked.
Nepanthe flung herself on him and wept.
The orders from the Princess were terse but explicit. Shih-ka'i reported as directed. Like his brethren, he had remained in quarters while Ragnarson and Varthlokkur remained in Lioantung. The two meant less to him than they did to most Tervola, but he had gone along in the interest of morale and solidarity. He had a good team here. He had to stand with them as they had stood with him against the Deliverer.
"Mistress?" he inquired, standing at attention in the wreckage of what had been his headquarters.
"They've departed. Cancel the games."
"As you command, Mistress."
"I wanted to commend you, Lord Ssu-ma. And reward you. I have a new task for you, if you're willing to undertake it."
"I'm a soldier, Mistress. I am the empire's to command."
What new task? The Matayangan front? He wouldn't relish being tossed into that bloody cauldron.
Mist smiled. "No. Not Southern Army. The command every Tervola wants: Western Army."
Shih-ka'i's eyes narrowed behind his mask. Western Army? A plum, certainly. The glamor command. He was blunt. "Why? What of Lord Hsung?"
"I want a western commander who'll keep his mind on business. Not one who'll be plotting against me or taking off on his own. Someone who isn't foaming at the mouth for revenge." Softly, with humor, she added, "Besides, I can't stand Lord Hsung."
Shih-ka'i had only a passing acquaintance with the man. Nevertheless, he nodded. The one favorable thing he knew of Lord Hsung was that he could be a very good commander—when forced to concentrate on his calling.
He asked, "When would you want me?"
"Moving him out will be ticklish. But before the end of the year. Take the intervening time off. My friend Lord Ch'ien will take over here."
"I'll use the time to familiarize myself with the western situation." And, he thought, begin the fruitless search for someone able to replace Pan ku.
"Very well. I can't force you to take a vacation, though I wish you would."
"I've been in harness too long. Mistress. One more question. Did Ragnarson and the wizard patch it up? That will be important."
Mist smiled, rose, stepped down, embraced him momentarily. "Thank you, Lord Ssu-ma. For everything you've done." And, as she started away, "No. They didn't. The woman tried to make peace. Varthlokkur has much too stiff a neck."
And inside his beastmask Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka'i smiled himself.
After the challenge in the east anything else looked easy.