Alfred sat hunched in silent thought. He glanced back, one last time, at the ships. The Sartan vessels gleamed faintly, bright specks against the darkness. The Patryn ship tracked them, magic burning.
“You are right, Haplo,” Alfred said, with a deep sigh. He stared after the ships. “You let Marit go with them.”
“I had to,” Haplo said quietly. “She is marked by Lord Xar’s sigil, bound to him. He would know our plans through her. Besides, there’s another reason.”
Alfred drew in a shivering breath.
“In destroying the Seventh Gate, we may well destroy ourselves,” Haplo said calmly. “I am sorry to bring this fate upon you, my friend, but, as I said, I need you. I couldn’t do this without you.”
Alfred’s eyes dimmed with tears. For long minutes, he couldn’t speak for the lump in his throat. If Haplo had been there, Alfred would have reached out, clasped his friend’s hand. Haplo wasn’t. His body lay, still and lifeless, back in the chill dungeon cell. It was difficult to touch a spirit, but Alfred did his best. He reached out his hand anyway. The dog, with a glad bark, jumped down to be comforted. The animal would be relieved to get off the dragon.
Alfred smoothed the silky fur.
“This is the greatest compliment you could have paid me, Haplo. You are right. We must take this chance.”
Alfred continued to pet the dog’s head; his hand began to tremble slightly. He spoke his doubts aloud. “But have you considered, my friend, the doom we might bring on our people? By closing Death’s Gate, we seal off their only escape route. They could be trapped forever inside the Labyrinth, forever battling the serpents, forever battling each other.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Haplo answered. “The choice would be theirs, wouldn’t it? To keep fighting ... or to try to find peace. And remember, the good dragons are in the Labyrinth now, too. The Wave could correct itself.”
“Or drown us all,” Alfred said.
23
The fire dragon carried them as near the city of Necropolis as she could, swimming into the very bay in which the Patryns had been hiding their ship. The dragon kept close to shore, avoiding the massive whirlpool rotating slowly in the center of the bay. Alfred glanced once at the whirlpool, at the molten rock sluggishly spiraling downward, at the steam and smoke lazily coiling up from the gaping maw in the center. He hastily averted his gaze.
“I always knew there was something strange about that dog,” remarked Hugh the Hand.
Alfred smiled tremulously; then the smile faded. There was one other problem he had to resolve. One for which he had to take responsibility.
“Sir Hugh,” Alfred began hesitantly, “did you understand . . . any of what you heard?”
Hugh the Hand eyed him shrewdly, shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to me it much matters whether I understand or not, does it?”
“No,” Alfred answered in some confusion. “I guess it doesn’t.” He cleared his throat. “We’re ... um ... going to a place known as the Seventh Gate. Here, I think ... I believe ... I may be wrong, but—”
“That’s where I’ll die?” Hugh asked bluntly.
Alfred gulped, licked dry lips. His face burned, and not from the heat of the Fire Sea. “If that is truly what you want . . .”
“I do,” Hugh the Hand said firmly. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a ghost. Things happen and I can’t feel them anymore.”
“I don’t understand.” Alfred was puzzled. “It wasn’t that way at the beginning. When I”—he swallowed, but he had to take responsibility—“when I first brought you back.”
“Perhaps I can explain,” Jonathon offered. “When Hugh came back to the realm of the living, he left that of the dead far behind. He clung to life, to the people in his life. Thus he remained closely bound to the living. But one by one, he has severed those ties. He has come to realize that he has nothing more to give them. They have nothing to give him. He had everything. And now he can only mourn its loss.”
“. . . loss . . .” sighed the echo.
“But there was a woman who loved him,” Alfred said in a low voice. “She loves him still.”
“Her love is only a very small fraction of the love he found. Mortal love is our introduction to the immortal.”
Alfred was chagrined, aggrieved.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Brother,” Jonathon said. The phantasm entered the body, gleamed in the dead eyes. “You used the necromancy out of compassion, not for gain or hatred or vengeance. Those among the living who have encountered this man have learned from him—some to their despair and fear. But he has given others hope.”
Alfred sighed, nodded. He still didn’t understand, not completely, but he thought he might perhaps forgive himself.
“Good luck in your endeavors,” said the dragon, when she deposited them on the jagged-toothed shore surrounding the Firepool. “And if you are responsible for ridding the world of those who have ravaged it, you have my gratitude.”
They meant well, Alfred said to himself. That seemed the saddest indictment of all.
Samah meant well. The Sartan all meant well. Undoubtedly Ramu meant well. Maybe even, in his own way, Xar meant well.
They simply lacked imagination.
Though the dragon had taken them as near as she could, the journey from the bay to Necropolis was still a long one, particularly on foot. Particularly on Alfred’s feet. He had no sooner stumbled onto shore when he nearly fell into a bubbling pool of boiling-hot mud. Hugh the Hand dragged him back from the edge.
“Use your magic,” Haplo suggested wryly, “or you’ll never make it to the Chamber of the Damned alive.”
Alfred considered this suggestion, hesitated. “I can’t take us inside the Chamber itself.”
“Why not? All you have to do is visualize it in your mind. You’ve been there before.” Haplo sounded irritated.
“Yes, but the warding runes would prevent us from entering. They would block my magic. Besides”—Alfred sighed—“I can’t see it all that clearly. I believe I must have blotted it out of my memory. It was a horrifying experience.”
“In some ways,” Haplo said, thoughtful. “Not in others.
“Yes, you are right about that.”
Though neither would admit it at the time, their experience in the Chamber of the Damned had brought the two enemies closer together, had proved to them that they were not as different as each had believed.
“I remember one part,” Alfred said softly. “I remember the part where we entered the minds and bodies of those who lived—and died—in that Chamber centuries ago . . .”
... A sense of regret and sadness filled Alfred. And though painful to lim, the feelings of sorrow and unhappiness were better—far better—than not feeling anything, the emptiness he’d experienced before joining this brotherhood. Then he had been a husk, a shell containing nothing. The dead—dreadful creations of those who were beginning to dabble in necromancy—had more life than he. Alfred sighed deeply, lifted his head. A glance around the table revealed feelings similar to his softening the faces of the men and women gathered together in this sacred chamber.
His sadness, his regret wasn’t bitter. Bitterness comes to those who have brought tragedy on themselves through their own misdeeds. But unless they changed, Alfred foresaw a time for his people when bitter sorrow must encompass them all. The madness must be halted. He sighed again. Just moments before, he had been radiant with joy; peace hid spread like a balm over the boiling magma sea of lis doubts and fears. But that heady sense of exaltation could not last in this world. He must return to face its problems and perils and, thus, the sadness, the regret.
A hand reached on, clasped his. The hand’s grip was firm, the skin smooth and unwrinkled, a contrast to Alfred’s aged, parchment-paper skin, his weakened grasp.
“Hope, Brother,” said the young man quietly. “We must have hope.”