I am afraid . . .
You are wrong, Lord, Haplo said silently. Vasu cares only for his people, not for power. He is not afraid. He is what you were, Lord. He will not become what you are—afraid. You will rid yourself of Vasu, because you fear him. Then you will destroy all those Patryns who have Sartan ancestry. Then you will destroy the Patryns who were friends of those who have been destroyed. And at the end, there will be no one left but yourself—the person you fear most.
“The end is the beginning,” Haplo murmured.
“What?” Xar leaned forward, sharp, intent. “What did you say, my son?”
Haplo had no recollection. He was in Chelestra, world of water, drifting in the seawater, sinking slowly beneath the waves, as he had done once before. Except that now he was no longer afraid. He was only a little sad, a little regretful. Leaving matters undone, unfinished.
But others were left to pick up what he had been forced to let fall. Alfred, bumbling, clumsy . . . golden, soaring dragon. Marit, beloved, strong. Their child . . . unknown. No, that was not quite true. He knew her. He’d seen her face . . . faces of his children ... in the Labyrinth. All of these . . . drifting on the waves.
The wave bore him up, cradled him, rocked him. But he saw it as it had once been—a tidal wave, rising, rising to a fearful promontory, crashing down to engulf, deluge the world, split it apart.
Samah.
And then the ebb. Debris, wreckage, floating on the water. The survivors clinging to fragments until they found safe haven on strange shores. They flourished, for a time. But the wave must correct itself.
Slowly, slowly, the wave built again, in the opposite direction. A vast mountain of water, threatening to again crash down on and drown the world.
Xar.
Haplo struggled, briefly. It was hard—hard to leave. Especially now that he was finally beginning to understand . . .
Beginning. Xar was talking to him, cajoling him. Something about the Seventh Gate. A child’s poem. End is the beginning.
A muffled whimper came from beneath the stone bed, was louder than Xar’s voice. Haplo found just strength enough to move his hand. He felt a wet lick. He smiled, fondled the dog’s silky ears.
“Our last journey together, boy,” he said. “But no sausages . . ,”
The pain was back. Bad. Very bad.
A hand took hold of his. A hand gnarled and old, strong and supportive.
“Easy, my son,” said Xar, holding fast. “Rest easy. Give up the struggle. Let go . . .”
The pain was agony.
Closing his eyes, Haplo sighed his last breath and sank beneath the waves.
9
Xar clasped his hand around Haplo’s wrist. The Lord kept his hand on the wrist even when he could no longer feel life pulsing through it. Xar sat silently, staring into the darkness, seeing nothing at first. And then, as time passed and the flesh in his fingers grew cool, Xar saw himself.
An old man, alone with his dead.
An old man, sitting in a dungeon cell far below the surface of a world that was its own tomb. An old man, head bowed, stoop-shouldered, grieving over his loss. Haplo. Dearer to him than any son he’d fathered. But more than Haplo.
Closing his eyes against the bitter darkness, Xar saw another darkness, the terrible darkness that had fallen over the Final Gate. He saw the faces of his people, lifted to him in hope. He saw that hope change to disbelief, then to fear in some, anger in others, before his ship swept him into Death’s Gate.
He could remember a time, countless times, when he’d emerged from the Labyrinth, weary, wounded, but triumphant. His people, stern and taciturn, had not said much, but their very silence was eloquent. In their eyes he saw respect, love, admiration . . .
Xar looked into Haplo’s eyes—wide open and staring—and the lord saw only emptiness.
Xar let fall Haplo’s wrist. The lord gazed in dull despair around the dark cell.
“How have I come to this?” he asked himself. “How, from where I began, did I end up here?”
And he thought he heard, in the darkness, sibilant, hissing laughter.
Furious, Xar bounded to his feet. “Who is there?” he called.
No reply, but the sounds ceased.
His moment of self-doubt was over, however. That hissing laughter had caused the emptiness to fill with rage.
“My people are disappointed in me now,” Xar muttered to himself. He turned back, slowly and purposefully, to the corpse. “But when I rejoin them in victory, coming to them through the Seventh Gate, bringing to them a single world to conquer, to rule—then they will revere me as never before!
“The Seventh Gate,” Xar whispered, as he gently, tenderly, composed the body’s limbs, folding the flaccid arms across the chest, stretching out the legs. Last, he shut the staring, empty eyes. “The Seventh Gate, my son. When you were a living man, you wanted to take me there. Now you will have the chance. And I will be grateful, my son. Do this for me, and I will grant you rest.”
The flesh was cool beneath his fingers now. The heart-rune—with its dreadful, gaping wound—was beneath his hand. All he had to do was close the sigil, mend it, then work the magic of the necromancy on Haplo’s corpse, on all the rest of the runes tattooed upon the body.
Xar rested his fingers on the heart-rune, the words of mending on his lips. Abruptly, he drew his hand back. His fingertips were stained with blood. His hand, which had always held firm in battle against his foes, began to tremble.
Again a sound, outside the cell. Not a hissing sound, but a shuffling. Xar turned, staring hard into the darkness. “I know you are there. I hear you. Are you spying on me? What do you want?”
In response, a figure advanced on the cell. It was one of the lazar, one of the frightful living dead of Abarrach. Xar eyed the shambling corpse suspiciously, thinking it might be Kleitus. Former Dynast of Abarrach, now a lazar, murdered by his own people, the Sartan Kleitus would have been quite happy to return the favor by murdering Xar. The lazar had tried arid failed, but was ever on the lookout for another opportunity.
This lazar was not Kleitus, however. Xar breathed an involuntary sigh. He was not afraid of Kleitus, but the Lord of the Nexus had other, more important matters to consider now. He did not presume to waste his magical talents fighting a dead man.
“Who are you? What do you want here?” Xar demanded testily. He thought he recognized the lazar, but could not be certain. One dead Sartan looked a great deal like another to the Patryn.
“My name is Jonathon,” said the lazar.
“. . . Jonathon . . .” came the echo that was the trapped soul, forever trying to free itself from the body.
“I come, not to you, but to him.”
“. . . to him . . .”
The lazar’s strange eyes, which were sometimes the blank eyes of the dead and sometimes the painfilled eyes of one living in torment, fixed on Haplo.
“The dead call to us,” the lazar continued. “We hear their voices . . .”
“. . . voices . . .” whispered the echo sadly.
“Well, this is one call you needn’t bother to answer,” Xar said sharply. “You may depart. I have need of this corpse myself.”
“Perhaps you could use my assistance,” the lazar offered.
“. . . assistance . . .”
Xar started to rebuff the lazar, bid it be gone. Then he remembered that the last time he’d tried to use the necromancy on Samah’s corpse, the spell had failed. Giving life to Haplo was far too important to Xar to take a chance. The lord glanced distrustfully at the lazar, doubting its motives.