“Unreal, you say? Well . . .” Eanrin shrugged, his cloaked shoulders rising beneath his ears. “There’s no excuse for you now, my boy. You’ve heard the Sphere Songs. You know that Faerie tales are far more real than the reality to which you once clung with such vigor.”
At this, Alistair nodded. Then the smile fell from his face, replaced by a pensive expression. He saw Lady Mintha standing not far off. Like him, she remained separate from the gathering. She had somehow, between the moment her chains fell away and now, found some of her old finery and bedecked herself in brocade and veils. But, even after only seven days of slavery, there was something altogether broken about her. Something that said she would never be the lady she had once been. She stared up at the House of Lights, but it wasn’t the House she saw. Instead, her gaze filled with the sight of the king upon the makeshift throne.
Leaving Eanrin where he stood, Alistair made his way to her side. He was obliged to touch her elbow to make her aware of his presence, and even then she refused to turn to him. “Mother,” he said and saw a spasm cross her face.
“Do you see that?” she said, her voice trembling. “That king over there?”
“Mother, please, look at me.”
“That was supposed to be my son. I had planned it. I had seen it all.”
“Sometimes dreams must die so we can live,” Alistair said, feeling again the deadly dream that had torn apart his face. “You must let it go, Mother. Let it go so that we can find our place in this new world.”
He grasped her shoulders, turning her to him. She fixed her eyes upon the ground, and he flushed with frustration. “I know,” he said, “I have not become what you always hoped. But I have become what I am supposed to be, which is better. I have a purpose of my own to discover, and it’s not his purpose.” He tossed his head to indicate the Smallman on the throne. “He must live this life and rule Gaheris and all the North Country. I must move on.”
Still she would not look up. He felt her quivering in his hands and realized how frail she had become since Ferox’s funeral. It seemed much longer ago now. From her expression, it might have been twenty years. “Mother, look at me. Accept who I am. And let me accept you.”
For an instant her gaze moved to his face, perhaps for too brief a span even to see the changes wrought there. Alistair glimpsed the Sphere Songs in the depths of her gaze and knew that she had heard them. Then her eyes rolled in her head, looking again up to the throne and the House. She had heard the Sphere Songs, yet already she had forgotten. Fixed as she was upon that one dream of her heart, she could not let it go, not even for something far grander.
“Why do you call me mother?” she asked, and her voice was that of an old woman. “I’m no one’s mother.”
“You’re my mother,” said Alistair.
“I had a son once,” she said. “The goblins killed him. He would have been king, but the goblins killed him, so they made the dwarf king instead. Isn’t that sad?”
Tears clogged Alistair’s throat. Mintha stepped back, and he let her go, his hands falling to his sides. He watched her vaguely wander away, her eyes fixed upon the throne. She passed like a lost soul into the throng, and people parted ways for the grandly clad Lady Mintha, the king’s aunt. Soon Alistair could see her no more.
Eanrin’s hand fell upon his shoulder, and Alistair was surprised to find it comforting. “It is the hardest thing in the world to let go of a dead dream,” Eanrin said, his voice more serious than Alistair had ever before heard it. “Many people cling to their dreams and watch them die again and again rather than release them entirely. Don’t think too harshly of your mother after you’ve gone.”
“Gone?” Alistair gave the cat a quizzical glance. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean?” the cat-man replied, some of the natural sarcasm returning. “Don’t tell me you intend to sit around here watching another man live the life that was to be yours? That would equal any nightmare your mother makes for herself.”
“The king might need me,” Alistair said.
“The king will get on well enough. I’ll be keeping an eye on him, making sure those goblins don’t return. Though I doubt any man of Arpiar will have a taste for the mortal world for many generations to come, not after seeing Halisa borne in a mortal’s hands. Ha!” The cat-man laughed and shook his head, but his eyes were wide and wondering. “It’s not a sight I’ll soon forget myself! The will of my Lord is strange indeed, and he does seem to place high value on your lot.”
He shrugged again and passed a hand over his face as though suddenly tired. “It’s strange,” he said, “but I think I’m beginning to . . . I don’t know. Understand a little, perhaps. I never much cared for mortals, what with all your living and dying and so forth. But you have pluck, don’t you? Not a Faerie alive would’ve marched into the Netherworld more boldly!”