Part 15 (1/2)

She opened her eyes, though without hope of seeing anything. They ached, painfully cold. Then something struck one of them, a hot, stinging drop. Another fell upon her brow, then ran burning and salt into her other eye. She flinched, blinking, and became aware of stars overhead, a blaze of them. Someone was bending over her.

”Aeriel, Aeriel,” he said.

She moaned and, moving, realized how stiff she was. The pearlstuff in her blood made her feel hazy and strange.

”Irrylath,” she muttered, reaching for him. ”I was drowning, and you came for me.”

To have rescued her, she realized, he must have dived from Avarclon's back. Her dream returned to her, clear at last: Irrylath plunging headlong from high above into the roiling confusion of the flood below. The starhorse had been trying to bear him to safety, carry him up and away, but he had refused to be saved without her, had come after her instead. Not fallen.

Dived. Irrylath clasped her to him.

”Oriencor is dead,” he whispered. ”You killed her, and the palace fell.”

She felt him shudder. His tears ran onto her cheek and forehead. Blinking the burning drops from her eyes, she saw mud flats stretching all around, black soil fanning out on every hand. Water lay in sheets, a cool misty smoke rising from it in wraithlike clouds. Broken bits of furniture, tapestry, devices lay scattered about them like a s.h.i.+pwreck.

Her wedding sari, yellow and immune to any moisture, tangled in a patch of scrub nearby. The mist, full of colored sparks still, swirled and drifted, at times obscuring the sky. Ocea.n.u.s hung canted in heaven amid a fiery swirl of stars.

Strangely, the night did not feel cold. At last, Irrylath drew back from her.

”Not I,” he said. ”Not I, but you-you killed her.” She had never been so close to him before. Even by starlight, she saw the four long scars that raked one side of his face, and the fifth that trailed just below the jaw. The scars Pendarlon had given him, an age-no, only two years-ago, when he had been a half-darkangel in Avaric. She laid her hand along those scars.

”In Winterock,” she said, ”while the palace stood, the pearl gave me a glimpse of what the White Witch did to you.”

She saw him flinch, felt the shock that pa.s.sed through him. He gazed at her. ”I thought you knew all along,” he whispered.

”I thought your green eyes saw everything.”

She shook her head. Was that why he had stayed away-shunning not her, but the things he feared she knew?

”It's why I thought I wanted Sabr,” he said, ”because she knows nothing of that, and even if she ever learns, she'll not believe it. She'll insist on thinking I was brave.”

”You were brave,” said Aeriel. She remembered him leading the battle from Avarclon's back, swooping to rescue Sabr, confronting his own and his brothers' darkangels. ”You are the bravest one I know.”

Irrylath shook his head. ”I wasn't. I'm not. Oriencor found my every flaw. In the end, she broke me like a toy.”

”And you imagined I might do the same?” Aeriel mused, stung, full of wonder at her own stupidity. Blind! Until this moment, she had been blind. ”So you turned to Sabr, who adores you- lonely for someone who did not know your past, longing only to escape that painful memory.”

She saw the prince's jaw set, as he nodded, thinking of the Witch. His eyes were like two lampflames burning.

”But Oriencor is dead now,” he whispered fiercely. ”I will never dream of her or feel her touch or hear her voice again. My rescuer. You have delivered me.”

She wanted to contradict him, to protest: he had turned away from Oriencor of his own volition, striking her seventh son from the air long before Aeriel had handed her the pearl. But all she did was put her lips to his to make him still. The night was a blaze of Ocea.n.u.slight and stars. The mist swirled around them in whispers, like wraiths.

Scattered sparks still drifted randomly, alighting in Irrylath's hair. Her husband put his arms about her, drew her to him like a man so long dying of thirst he almost feared to drink.

Then something with a human shape but made all of golden light glided past them and vanished into the mist. Aeriel started back from the prince with a cry. The first apparition was gone, but a moment later, from another quarter, a different figure strode by-again of golden light-this one a young man, garbed in a style she did not recognize. He might have glanced at them before disappearing into the fog. Aeriel felt Irrylath's arms about her tighten.

”What are they?” she gasped.

”Souls,” he whispered. ”All the souls Oriencor or her darkangels ever captured or drank. All those she kept prisoner in the walls of Winterock. Delivered now. Look. The air is full of them.”

Aeriel gazed upward, following the line of his arm. The sky above s.h.i.+mmered with revenants of golden light, ascending toward deep heaven. They seemed to add to the number of the stars. The mist and the night were lit by them. The air felt heavy and electrified. The hair on Aeriel's arms and along the nape of her neck stood on end. She held on to Irrylath.

”They mean us no harm,” he murmured, then stopped himself, s.h.i.+vering. ”At least, they mean you no harm. You freed them.”

A luminous figure resembling a woman of Zambul came to a halt not ten paces from them. The sparkling fog swirled and thickened all around. As the spirit gazed at them, the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly in the beginning of a smile.

Then she lifted her arms and arose, right in front of them, elongating and attenuating as she ascended.

The mist closed denser and denser before lifting suddenly without dissipating. Gazing upward, Aeriel saw that the stars were now completely obscured. She could no longer see the confluence of souls ascending, caught only glimmers of them in the distance, like flashes of light. The electrical quality of the air intensified. She heard a long, low rumble she could not identify.

More flashes. Another rumbling. Something wet and cold struck her skin.

She flinched in surprise, felt Irrylath do the same. The shock repeated itself: a spattering of droplets. The scent of water pervaded the air. The pattering drops grew larger and more numerous. They began to fall harder, more steadily. A wet breeze rose and slapped at them. The sensation was cold, thrilling, strange. She huddled against the shelter of Irrylath's body. The sound of falling water drummed against the night, marked by low booming and glimmers of light.

”What is it?” she exclaimed.

”Water from heaven,” he answered wonderingly, holding out one hand to catch the falling drops. ”Such as fell in Ancient times-a dozen thousand daymonths past.”

The water came in wind-whipped spatters now, gusting and unabating. Aeriel cupped her own hands and brought them to her lips. The taste was cool and sweet, full of air and minerals. She held her joined palms up to Irrylath and let him, too, drink.

Still clasping her to him, he kissed her hands.”The drought of the White Witch is broken,” he told her. ”It's rain.”

FIFTEEN.

Rime's End

Inward voice whispered. The pale girl s.h.i.+fted, dozing. Her husband lay sleeping beside her, his breaths even and deep. The strange pattering of rain drummed lightly now. Their makes.h.i.+ft tent rustled gently with the soft, constant wind. Aeriel pressed closer to Irrylath, too drowsy to listen to any sounds but these.

After the flood, Irrylath had made them this small pavilion out of her wedding sari. Gathering poles from the surrounding flotsam, he had set them upright in the soft ground, then draped and wound the yards and yards of yellow stuff about their frame. The magical airthin cloth kept out the damp. Their clothing dried quickly, and the ground over which their shelter stood soon, inexplicably, became dry.

The quiet murmur came again: Aeriel, awake. Still half-dozing, she forgot it the moment she opened her eyes. Pillowing her head on one arm, she gazed at Irrylath. For the first time since she had known him, his face was at rest-no longer troubled by the Witch's dreams. Smiling now, she remembered the heat of his body these few hours past: what she had hungered for all these day-months, ever since their marriage day.

”No longer my husband only in name,” she murmured, kissing him as she reached to pull a few stray strands of hair back from his lyon-scored face.

Irrylath s.h.i.+fted, sighing, deeply asleep. He never roused. Only a little while ago, he had clasped her to him with such urgency and pa.s.sion-as though some intervention loomed to part them, as though only a little time remained. Aeriel laughed, amazed at her own unaccustomed happiness. Here beneath their wedding silk, she gazed at her husband with the greatest attention, a lover's gaze. Every inch of him was beautiful to her.

Aeriel. The soft utterance came again, more insistently. Aeriel sat up with a start. She cast about her, baffled, but she and Irrylath were alone. The voice-eerily familiar-seemed to come from the air.

”Where are you?” she whispered.

Here, the answer came. Within. I am within you now.

Aeriel felt a tremor, something stirring in her blood. The scent came to her suddenly of Ancient flowers, dusky and sweet.