Freelorn looked back at him, and his eyes were sad too. 'That's usually true,' he said, 'but it's going to take at least Hergotha to make a king out of me, I'm afraid. I'm not enough myself yet to do it alone.'
For a while neither of them spoke. The river was branching out now, the marshes of the Arlid delta reaching out northward before them, toward the Sea. Freelorn and Herewiss picked their way from stream to stream as along a winding path, stepping carefully so as not to upset the fish, 'I've never been this way before,' Herewiss said, very quietly. He felt afraid.
'Maybe it's time,' Freelorn said. 'I was here once, when I was very young. Don't be scared. I won't leave you alone.'
The river bottom was getting shallower and sandier. The stream that bore them turned a bend, past a little spinney of stunted willow trees, and suddenly there it was, the Shore.
Herewiss looked out past the beach and was so torn between terror and awe that he could hardly think. Under the dark sky the Sea stretched away forever, and it was a sea of light, not water. It was as liquidly dazzling as the noon Sun seen through some clear mountain cataract. But there was no Sun, no Moon, no stars even; only the long vista of pure brilliant light, brighter than any other light that ever was. Herewiss began to understand how the Starlight could only be a faint intimation of this last Sea, for stars are mortal, and bound with the laws and ties of materiality. This was a place that time would never touch, and mere matter was too fragile, too ephemeral, to survive it.
The waves of white fire came curling in, their troughs as bright as their crests, and broke in foaming radiance on the silver beach, and were drawn in sheets of light back into the Sea. But all silently. There was no sound of combers crashing and tumbling, no hiss of exhausted waves climbing far up the sand: nothing at all. Along the shore there walked or stood many vague forms, shadows passing by in as deep a silence as the waves. Herewiss was very afraid. The fear held his chest in its hand and squeezed, so that the breath couldn't come in. He thought suddenly of the choking darkness behind the door in the hold, where the hralcin waited and hungered for him, and the fear squeezed harder. But Freelorn stepped from the water, and held out his hand; and Herewiss took that hand and went with him.
They went down the Shore together, slowly, looking at each of the shadows they passed, but recognizing none. There were men and women of every age, and many young children walking around or playing quietly in the sand. There were couples, some of them young lovers, and some of them old, and some couples where one person ravaged by time walked with one hardly touched by it, but walked all the same with interlaced arms and gentle looks. Freelorn would stop every now and then and question one or another of the people they passed. They always answered quietly, with grave, kindly words, but also with an air of preoccupation.
Herewiss was not paying attention to either questions or answers. His fear was too much with him. All he perceived with any clarity was the rise and fall of the quiet voices, which arose from the silence and slipped back to become part of it again when the speakers were finished. He began to feel that if he spoke again, the words and the thoughts behind them would be lost forever in that silence, a part of himself gone irretrievably. But no-one asked him to speak, and Freelorn led him down the sand as if he had a sure idea of which way they were headed.
'Are we going the right way?' Herewiss said finally, watching carefully to see if the thought behind the question became lost.
'I think so. This place will come around on itself, if we give it enough time.'
They walked, and their feet made no sound on the sand. They passed more people than Herewiss had ever seen or known, some of them looking out over the gently moving brilliance of the Sea, or standing rapt in contemplation of the sand, or of something less obvious. When someone turned to watch them pass, it was with a look of mild, unhurried wonder, a wonder which soon slipped away again. The fear was beginning to ebb out of Herewiss, little by little, when suddenly he saw someone making straight for them across the strand, not quickly, but with purpose.
He could hear his heart begin hammering in his ears again. 'Your father?' he said.
Freelorn shook his head. 'My father was a bigger man — is.'
Herewiss stopped, still holding Freelorn's hand. He knew that shadowed form, knew the way it walked, the loose, easy stride. 'Oh Goddess,' he whispered into the eternal silence. 'Goddess no.'
Freelorn looked at him with compassion, and said nothing.
Herewiss stood there, frozen in the extremity of terror. The world was about to end in ice and bitterness, and he would welcome it. He deserved no better. He waited for it to happen.
And out of the darkness and fixity to which he thought he had completely surrendered himself, a voice spoke; his own voice, not angry or defiant, but matter-of-fact and calm, speaking a truth: If this is the worst thing in the world about to happen, we won't just stand here and wait. We'll go meet it.
He stepped forward, pulling Freelorn with him, and the strain of taking the first step shook him straight through, like a convulsion. His bones, his flesh rebelled. But he kept going. The shadowy form approached them steadily, and they walked to meet it. Fear battered Herewiss like a stormwind. He wanted to flee, to hide, anything, but he pushed himself into the teeth of the wind, into the face of his fear. He had been struggling against it, walking into it head down. Now he raised his head, and opened his eyes again. The wind smote tears into his eyes, and he looked up at his brother.
He was as he had been the day he died. Tall and dark-haired, like most of the Brightwood line, with the droopy eyes that ran in Herewiss's family, he came and stood before them. His eyes smiled, and his face smiled, and the blood welled softly from the place where Herewiss's sword had struck him through, an eternity ago.
'Hello, Herelaf,' Freelorn said.
Herewiss let go of Freelorn's hand and sank down to his knees in the sand, trembling with terror and grief. He hid his face in his hands, and began to weep. All the things he had wanted to say to his brother after he died, all the apologies, all the guilt, everything that he had decided to say when they met after his own death, now froze in his throat. And the worst of it was that he felt quite willing to let the tears take him. Anything was better than trying to deal with the person who stood before him.
But there were hands on his hands, and they pulled gently downward until Herewiss had no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away. 'Dusty,' his brother's voice said, 'don't you have anything to say to me?'
The old name, so rarely used, so much missed, pierced Herewiss with more pain than he had thought possible to stand without dying — but then, how could he die on these shores? He sobbed and coughed and caught his breath, and finally dared to look up again into his brother's face. There was no anger there, no hatred, not even any sorrow. Herelaf was glad to see him.
'Why are you so surprised that I'm here?' his brother said. 'You know how the drug works. I'm as likely to turn up in your realm as you are in mine. And if you walk here, you're more than likely to run into me.'
'I—' Herewiss choked, cleared his throat. 'I suppose I knew it. But I was so sure that I wouldn't, wouldn't lose control—'
'—and run into me. Yes, I can imagine.' Herelaf held Herewiss's hands in his, and the touch was warm. 'I'm glad you came.'
'But — but I killed you—!' The words were too much for him, despite all the thousand times he had whispered and moaned and cried them into the darkness in the past. He crumpled back into tears. Freelorn was crouched down beside him, holding him again, and his brother's hands touched his face to wipe the tears away.