Magda stared at the two figures atop the tower parapet. They were close, almost touching. She saw the red of Glaeken's hair turn to fire as it caught the light of the rising sun, saw a flash of metal, and then the two figures grappled. They twisted and teetered on the edge. Then they fell as one.
Her own scream rose to join the fading wail from one of the struggling pair as their intertwined forms fell into the ebbing mist and were lost from sight.
For a long frozen moment time stood still for Magda. She did not move, did not breathe. Glaeken and Rasalom had fallen together, and had been swallowed up by the fog in the gorge. Glaeken had fallen! She had watched helplessly as he plunged to certain death.
Dazed, she stepped to the edge of the causeway and looked down at the spot where this man who had come to mean everything to her had disappeared. Her mind and body were completely numb. Darkness encroached on the periphery of her vision, threatening to overwhelm her. With a start she shook off the awful lethargy, the creeping desire to lean farther and farther over the edge until she, too, toppled forward and joined Glaeken below. She turned and began to run along the causeway.
It can't be! she thought as her feet pounded the timbers. Not both of them! First Papa and now Glaeken—not the two of them at once!
Off the causeway, she ran to the right toward the closed end of the gorge. Glaeken had survived one fall into the gorge—he could survive two! Please, yes! But this fall was so much farther! She scrambled down the wedge of rocky debris, unmindful of the scrapes and bruises she collected along the way. The sun, although not high enough yet to shine directly into the gorge, was warming the air in the pass and thinning the mist. She made her way swiftly across the floor of the gorge, stumbling, falling, picking herself up and pushing on, as close to a run as the broken, rutted terrain permitted. Passing under the causeway, she blotted out the thought of Papa's body lying up there alone, unattended. She splashed across the stream to the base of the tower.
Panting, Magda stopped and turned in a slow circle, her frantic eyes searching among the boulders and rocks for some sign of life. She saw no one... nothing.
"Glaeken?" Her voice sounded weak and raspy. She called again, "Glaeken?"
No answer.
He has to be here!
Something glittered not far away. Magda ran over to look. It was the sword ... what was left of it. The blade had shattered into countless fragments; and among the fragments lay the hilt, bereft of its glossy gold and silver hues. An immeasurable sense of loss settled over Magda as she lifted the hilt and ran her hands over its dull-gray surface. A reverse alchemy had occurred; it had turned to lead. Magda fought against the conclusion, but deep within her she knew that the hilt had served the purpose for which it had been designed.
Rasalom was dead, therefore the sword was no longer necessary. Neither was the man who had wielded it.
There would be no miracle this time.
Magda cried out in anguish, a formless sound that escaped her lips involuntarily and continued for as long and as loud as her lungs and voice could sustain it. A sound full of loss and despair, reverberating off the walls of the keep and the gorge, echoing away into the pass.
And when the last trace of it had died away, she stood with bowed head and slumped shoulders, wanting to cry but all cried out; wanting to strike out at whoever or whatever was to blame for this, but knowing everyone—everyone but her—was dead; wanting to scream and rage at the blind injustice of it all but too dead inside to do anything more than give way to deep, dry, wracking sobs from the very core of her being.
Magda stood there for what seemed like a long time and tried to find a reason to go on living. There was nothing left. Every single thing she had cherished in life had been torn from her. She could not think of one reason to go on...
And yet there had to be. Glaeken had lived so long and had never run out of reasons to go on living. He had admired her courage. Would it be an act of courage now to give up everything?
No. Glaeken would have wanted her to live. Everything he was, everything he did, had been for life. Even his death had been for life.
She hugged the hilt against her until the sobs stopped, then turned and began walking away, not knowing where she would go or what she would do, but knowing she would somehow find a way and a reason to keep going.
And she would keep the hilt. It was all she had left.
EPILOGUE
I'm alive.
He sat in the darkness, touching his body to reassure himself that he still existed. Rasalom was gone, reduced to a handful of dust flung into the air. At last, after ages, Rasalom was no more.
Yet I live on. Why?
He had plummeted through the fog, landing on the rocks with force enough to shatter every bone in his body. The blade had broken, the hilt had changed.
Yet he lived on.
At the moment of impact he had felt something go out of him and he had lain there waiting to die.
Yet he hadn't.
His right leg hurt terribly. But he could see, he could feel, breathe, move. And he could hear. When he had picked up the sound of Magda approaching across the floor of the gorge, he had dragged himself to the hinged stone at the base of the tower, opened it, and crawled within. He had waited in silence as she called out his name, covering his ears to shut out the pain and bewilderment in her voice, longing to answer her, yet unable to. Not yet. Not until he was sure.
And now he heard her splashing away through the stream. He swung the stone open all the way and tried to stand. His right leg wouldn't support him. Was it broken?—he had never had a broken bone before. Unable to walk, he crawled down to the water. He had to look. He had to know before he did another thing.
At the edge of the stream he hesitated. He could see the growing blue of the sky in the rippled surface of the water. Would he see anything else when he leaned over it?
Please, he said in his mind to the Power he had served, the Power that might no longer be listening. Please let this be the end of it. Let me live out the rest of my allotted years like a normal man. Let me have this woman to grow old with instead of watching her wither away while I remain young. Let this be the end of it. I have completed the task. Set me free!
Setting his jaw, he thrust his head over the water. A weary red-haired man with blue eyes and an olive complexion stared back. His image was there! He could see himself! His reflection had been returned to him!
Joy and relief flooded through Glaeken. It's over! It's finally over!
He lifted his head and looked across the gorge to the slowly receding figure of the woman he loved like no other woman in all his long life.
"Magda!" He tried to stand but the damn leg still wouldn't hold him up. He was going to have to let it heal like anybody else. "Magda!"
She turned and stood immobile for an eternity. He waved both his arms over his head. He would have sobbed aloud had he remembered how. Among other things, he would have to learn how to cry again.
"Magda!"
Something fell from her hands, something that looked like the hilt to his sword. Then she was running toward him, running as fast as her long legs would carry her, her expression a mixture of joy and doubt, as if she wanted him to be there more than anything in the world but could not allow herself to believe until she had touched him.
Glaeken was there, waiting to be touched.
And far above, a blue-winged bird with a beak full of straw fluttered to a gentle perch on a window ledge of the keep in search of a place to build a nest.