“None, my lord,” said Sleet gently.
“None? None at all? Has he not been seen, or heard?”
Carabella said, “He was beside us in the water, Valentine, before our floater went down.”
“Yes. I remember that. But since then?”
“Nothing,” said Tunigorn.
Valentine gave him a quizzical look. “Has his body been found, and are you not telling me?”
“By the Lady, Valentine, you know as much as I about what has happened to Elidath!” Tunigorn blurted.
“Yes. Yes. I do believe you. This frightens me, not knowing what has become of him. You know he means much to me, Tunigorn.”
“You think you need to inform me of that?”
Valentine smiled sadly. “Forgive me, old friend. This night has unsettled my mind some, I do believe.” Carabella put her hand, cool and damp, over his; and he put his other on hers. Quietly he said again, “Forgive me, Tunigorn. And you, Sleet, and you, Carabella.”
“Forgive you, my lord?” Carabella asked, amazed. “For what?”
He shook his head. “Let it pass, love.”
“Do you blame yourself for what has happened tonight?”
“I blame myself for a great deal,” said Valentine, “of which what has happened tonight is but a small part, though to me it is a vast catastrophe. The world was given into my stewardship, and I have led it to disaster.”
“Valentine, no!” Carabella cried.
“My lord,” said Sleet, “you are much too harsh on yourself!”
“Am I?” He laughed. “Famine in half of Zimroel, and three false Coronals proclaiming themselves, or is it four, and the Metamorphs coming around to collect their overdue reckoning, and here we sit at the edge of Piurifayne with sand in our craws and half our people drowned and who knows what dread fate overtaking the other half, and—and—” His voice was beginning to crack. With an effort he brought it under control, and himself, and said more calmly, “This has been a monstrous night, and I am very weary, and it worries me that Elidath has not appeared. But I will not find him by talking this way, will I? Will I? Come, let us rest, and wait for morning, and when morning comes we will begin to repair all that can yet be repaired. Eh?”
“Yes,” said Carabella. “That sounds wise, Valentine.”
There was no hope of sleep. He and Carabella and Sleet and Tunigorn lay close by one another, sprawled out in the sand, and the night passed in wakefulness amid a welter of forest sounds and the steady rumble of the river. Gradually dawn crept upon them out of Gihorna, and by that early gray light Valentine saw what horrendous destruction the storm had wrought. On the Gihorna side of the river, and for a short distance into Piurifayne, every tree had been stripped of its leaves, as if the wind had breathed fire, leaving only pitiful naked trunks. The ground was heaped with sand, strewn thinly in some places, piled high into miniature dunes in others. The floater in which Tunigorn and Elidath had arrived still sat upright on the far side of the river, but its metal skin had been scoured and pitted to a dull matte finish. The one floater that remained of Valentine’s own caravan lay on its side like a dead sea dragon cast up by the waves.
One group of survivors, four or five of them, sat together on the opposite bank; half a dozen more, mainly Skandars of the Coronal’s personal bodyguard, were camped just downslope from Valentine; some others could be seen walking about a hundred yards or so to the north, evidently searching for bodies. A few of the dead had been laid out neatly in parallel rows beside the overturned floater. Valentine did not see Elidath among them. But he had little hope for his old friend, and he felt no emotion, only a chill numb sensation beneath his breastbone, when shortly after dawn one of the Skandars appeared, carrying Elidath’s burly body in his four arms as easily as though he held a child.
“Where was he?” Valentine asked.
“Half a mile downstream, my lord, or a little farther.”
“Put him down, and begin seeing about graves. We will bury all our dead this morning, on that little rise overlooking the river.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Valentine peered down at Elidath. His eyes were closed, and his lips, slightly parted, seemed almost to turn upward in a smile, though it might just as easily be a grimace, Valentine thought. “He looked old last night,” he said to Carabella. And to Tunigorn he said, “Did you not think also that he had aged greatly this past year? But now he seems young again. The lines are gone from his face: he might be no more than twenty-four. Does it not seem that way to you?”
“I blame myself for his death,” Tunigorn said in a flat empty voice.
“How so?” Valentine asked sharply.
“It was I who called him down off Castle Mount. Come, I said, hurry to Zimroeclass="underline" Valentine is contemplating strange deeds, though I know not what they are, and you alone can discourage him from them. And he came: and now see him. If he had stayed at the Castle—”
“No, Tunigorn. No more of this.”
But in a stunned dreamlike way Tunigorn went on, apparently uncontrollably, “He would have been Coronal when you went on to the Labyrinth, and he would have lived long and happily at the Castle, and ruled wisely, and now—instead—instead—”
Gently Valentine said, “He would not have been Coronal, Tunigorn. He knew that, and he was content. Come, old friend, you make his death harder for me with this foolish talk. He is with the Source this morning, which with all my heart I would not have wished happen for another seventy years, but it has happened, and it cannot be undone, however much we talk of it and maybe and what might have been. And we who have lived through this night have much work to do. So let us begin it, Tunigorn. Eh? Eh? Shall we begin?”
“What work is that, my lord?”
“First, these burials. I will dig his grave myself, with my own hands, and let no one dare say me no to that. And when all that is done, you must find your way back across the river, and go in that little floater of yours eastward into Gihorna, and see what has become of Deliamber and Tisana and Lisamon and the rest of them, and if they live, you must bring them here, and lead them onward to me.”
“And you, Valentine?” said Tunigorn.
“If we can right this other floater, I will continue on deeper into Piurifayne, for I still must go to the Danipiur, and say certain things to her that are long overdue to be said. You will find me in Ilirivoyne, as was my first intention.”
“My lord—”
“I beg you. No more talk. Come, all of you! We have graves to dig, and tears to shed. And then we must complete our journeys.” He looked once more to Elidath, thinking, I do not yet believe that he is dead, but I will believe it soon. And then there will be one more thing for which I will need forgiveness.
5
In early afternoon, before the regular daily Council meetings, Hissune made a practice of wandering by himself through the outlying reaches of the Castle, exploring its seemingly infinite complexities. He had lived atop the Mount long enough now so that the place no longer intimidated him, indeed was starting to feel very much like his true home: his Labyrinth life now seemed most distinctly a closed chapter of his past, encapsulated, sealed, stored away in the recesses of his memory. But yet he knew that even if he dwelled at the Castle fifty years, or ten times fifty, he would never come to be truly familiar with it all.