Eanrin nodded, though his heart was heavy. But he put on a bright smile. “You enjoy that,” he said and slapped Alistair on the shoulder. “Ready, lad?”
They began climbing down the narrow gorge path, the cat-man first, the Chronicler after, bearing Halisa. Alistair went last of all. He allowed himself a final look and wave, and called out loudly, “Farewell, Sight-of-Day.”
Then he was gone. The red shock of hair vanished like the setting sun.
Mouse turned to Imraldera. Her eyes were tearful, but she managed to smile and realized it was sincere.
“You were right, Silent Lady,” she said. “My name is big and full of hope.”
Imraldera smiled. “And I am not silent,” she said.
1
EVERYTHING SHE HAD BEEN TOLD as a child was true, though the tellers themselves had long since ceased to believe.
Leta pushed through the door of hanging greenery and branches and stepped into a hall that was both a corridor of tall trees and a solid structure of wood and stone. She saw windows that were leaf-draped boughs; she saw carpet that was moss and ferns. And it was all true. She knew it with more certainty than she had known anything before now. It was more real than her life at Aiven, even than her life at Gaheris. It was full and rich, and every sensation in her body experienced that fullness and richness to a degree she had never thought possible.
Leta had now spoken to a star. She had stood up to goblins and passed from the Near World into the Between. Now she could almost see the Brothers Ashiun as they labored to build this Haven in the dangerous Wood, could almost hear the lingering whispers of their voices. In this place, past and present were not so greatly divided, for Time was not master here. She felt herself caught up in the greatness of a story far too big for her mortal understanding, caught up and carried in a rolling current. But she was unafraid. For the first time, she believed she was truly alive.
She recognized Dame Imraldera’s library from nursery tales. And she found the poem on the good dame’s desk and read for the first time the strange Faerie letters.
Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,
Though furied falls the Flame at Night.
“Come home,” she whispered as the words took shape in her mind. “Come home and accomplish your purpose, Smallman.”
At first there was no answer but the golden stillness of the great library. She breathed in that stillness and felt it, warm and calming in her heart.
Then she heard a voice she did not know speaking from the hall beyond: “There’s someone here, I tell you, and we’re not going back to your world until I know who it is.”
“Very well, Eanrin. But I wish you would hurry.”
Leta whirled about. That second voice she knew well indeed.
The next moment she flew from the library, calling, “Chronicler!”
“M’lady?”
They met in the passage, between two rows of towering pines, and light fell through the needles and cast them both into green shadows. And they stared at each other as though they were strangers. For Leta saw the Chronicler standing with a sword in hand that should have been too large for him, but which he wielded now with unnatural grace. All traces of his protective silence had fallen, and for the first time, she thought she looked on the man he was born to be.
And the Chronicler saw Leta, tattered and worn, exhausted and yet . . . strong. He saw a woman not a girl. A woman who had faced monsters and not crumbled. A woman who would never again be told what she ought to be.
They stood across from each other, and pine shadows fell between them. “I thought you were dead,” Leta said.
“So I thought you,” he replied.
Alistair and Eanrin looked on from the end of the hall. Eanrin folded his arms and rolled his eyes ceilingward. “Of course. Prophetic destinies can’t be played out without the proper sense of poetry. Even the girl must be here at the end! Though, Lights Above, I don’t know how she managed it. I don’t think I could have fixed it that way even in verse!”
Alistair made no reply. He hung back, hiding his face, and watched yet another vestige of his intended life disintegrate before his eyes. His dream had indeed come true, he thought, and one hand touched the ravages marking his face. And yet somehow, he wasn’t as sorry as he supposed he should be. After all, he had never thought that destiny was meant for him.
“Your mother knew,” said Leta to the Chronicler. “I found her letters to you. I read them.”
The Chronicler nodded, and though he flushed, he did not look away.
“You saw what she wrote,” Leta persisted. “Why did you not believe?”
“I was afraid,” he said.
“But not anymore?”
“No. Not anymore.”
“And you will be king?”
“I will drive out the goblin.”
“And you will open the House of Lights,” Leta said, and her eyes shone bright as stars. “I found it, Chronicler. I know where the last House stands. Shall I tell you?”