Dash nodded. “Then let’s be off.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the closed door, behind which sat the old man who claimed one of the most mysterious names in the history of Krondor, the Upright Man. Dash wondered if he’d ever see the old man again.
They set off in the gloom.
Pug sat quietly considering the choices that were rapidly approaching. Miranda watched him.
After a few moments, he turned his attention from whatever image hung in the air outside his window and said, “What?”
She laughed. “You were millions of miles away, weren’t you?”
He smiled at her. “Not really. Just a few hundred. But I was years away.”
“What were you thinking of?”
“My past, and my future.”
“Our future, you mean.”
He shook his head. ‘ “There are still some choices left to me alone.”
She rose up from her seat next to the fireplace. A small fire, more for comfort than warmth, which had been allowed to burn down to coals, smoked there. She glanced at it, and came to stand before her husband. She settled easily into his lap and said, “Tell me.”
“Gathis’s choice. The Gods’ choice, really.”
“Have you decided what you must do?”
He nodded. “I think for me there is only one choice.”
After a moment of silence, she said, “Care to share it with me?”
He laughed, kissing her on the neck. She squealed appreciatively, then playfully pushed herself away. “You’ll not divert me that easily. What are you thinking?”
Pug smiled. “When I lay in Death’s Hall, I was given the choice to become your father’s heir.”
At mention of Macros the Black, Miranda frowned. She had never had a close relationship with her father, and the primary reason for that had been his association with great powers. His role as human surrogate for Sarig, the lost God of Magic, had reduced his role in her life to a scant decade out of nearly two hundred years she had lived so far.
Pug continued. “I can’t be Sarig’s agent on Midkemia. That’s not my role.”
“From what you told me, your other choices weren’t that appealing.”
Pug looked worried. “I didn’t die, so that narrows my choice down to one: I must live and watch destruction and death and lose that which is most dear to me.”
She returned to his lap, and said, “That has already been fulfilled. Your daughter and son were taken from you, weren’t they?”
Pug nodded, and she could see the echoes of pain still not dulled within his eyes. “But I fear there is more to lose.”
She settled into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder. “There is always the potential for loss, my love. Until we are at last dead, we can lose. That is the irony of life. Nothing is forever.”
Pug said, “I am almost a hundred years old, yet I feel like such a child.”
Miranda laughed and held him close. “We are children, my love, and I’m twice your age. Compared to the Gods we are infants, just learning our first steps.”
“But infants have teachers.”
“You had teachers,” she said. “So did I.”
“I could use one now, I think.”
Miranda said, “I shall teach you.”
Pug looked at her. “You will?”
She kissed him. “And you shall teach me. And we shall teach your students on my father’s island, and they shall teach us. We have books yet to be read and understood, and we have the Hall of Worlds, through which we can reach out to wisdom undreamed of on this tiny orb. And we have ages to do it.”
Pug sighed. “You make me feel as if there’s hope.”
Miranda said, “There is always hope.”
There came a knock at the door and Miranda stood, allowing Pug to rise to answer the door. Outside stood a royal page, and he said, “My lord, the Prince requests your presence at once.”
Pug glanced at Miranda, who shrugged in curiosity but said nothing. He nodded to her, and followed the page.
He wended his way through Castle Darkmoor, until he came to the old Baron’s quarters, being used presently by Prince Patrick. The page opened the door and stepped aside, allowing Pug to enter.
Patrick looked up from old Baron Otto’s desk and said, “Magician, we have a problem I hope you can deal with.”
“What may that be, Your Highness?”
Patrick held up a rolled-up parchment. “A report in from the North. The Saaur have decided to put in an appearance.”
“From the North?” Pug looked puzzled. When he had persuaded the Saaur to quit the field in the final battle for Darkmoor, their leader, the Sha-shahan, had vowed a blood price would be extracted for the wrongs done the Saaur. But to the North lay the armies of Fadawah, the most likely object of that vengeance. How could the Saaur have returned to their old allies after withdrawing? Pug said, “Where in the North, Highness?”