Part 7 (1/2)
As he pa.s.sed over the threshold of death, from life to Afterlife, Hector finally saw what his father had told him of, and what he had relayed to Anais. Just beyond his sight, closer than the air of his last breath, and at the same time a half world away, he could see his friend in the branches of the World Tree, could see his father in knee-deep surf, standing vigil, Talthea and Aidan behind him on the sh.o.r.e, the baby in her arms. MacQuieth's eyes were on him, watching him from the other side of the earth, the other side of Time.
As his spirit fled his body, dissipating and expanding to the farthest reaches of the universe at the same time, Hector willed himself to hold for a moment to the invisible tether, paused long enough to breathe a final kiss on his wife and children, to whisper in his father's ear across the threshold over which they were bound to each other by love.
It's done, Father. You can cease waiting; go back to living now.
His last conscious thought was one of ironic amus.e.m.e.nt. As the sea poured in, sealing the entrance to the Vault once more beneath its depths, his body remained behind, fired into clay, forming the lock that barred the doors, vigilant to the end in death as he had been in life.
The key of living earth lay behind him, buried in the sand of the ocean floor, just out of reach for all eternity.
”Apple, Canfa, peez.”
The daughter of the wind looked down solemnly into the earnest little human face. Then she smiled in spite of herself. She reached easily into the gnarled branches of the stunted tree that were beyond the length of his spindly arms and plucked a hard red fruit, and handed it to the boy.
She glanced to her left, where the woman sat on the ground of the decimated orchard, absently eating the apple she had been given a moment before and staring dully at Cantha's silver mare grazing on autumn gra.s.s nearby.
A deathly stillness fell, like the slamming of a door.
The winds, howling in fury as they had been for weeks uncounted, died down into utter silence.
And Cantha knew.
She stood frozen for a moment in the vast emptiness of a world without moving air, poised on the brink of cataclysm. And just before the winds began to scream, she seized the child by the back of the s.h.i.+rt and lifted him through the heavy air, bearing him to the horse as the apple fell from his hand to the ground.
She was dragging the startled woman to her feet and heaving her onto the horse as well when the sky turned white. She had mounted and was spurring the beast when the horizon to the northwest erupted in a plume of fire that shot into the sky like a spark from a candle caught by the wind, then spread over the bottom of the melting clouds, filling them with light, painful in intensity. Cantha uttered a single guttural command to the horse and galloped off, clutching the woman and the boy before her.
Even at the southern tip of the Island they could feel the tremors, could see the earth shuddering beneath the horse's hooves. Cantha could feel the child's sides heave, thought he might be wailing, but whatever sound he made was drowned in the horrifying lament of the winds. She prayed to those winds now tospeed her way, to facilitate her path and her pace, but there was no answer.
At the foot of the battlements she pulled the humans from the horse's back, slashed the saddle girdings, and turned it loose, silently wis.h.i.+ng it G.o.dspeed. Then she seized the woman by the hand and tucked the boy beneath her arm as she began the daunting climb up the steps of the rock face.
She was halfway up, her muscles buckling in exertion, when the winds swelled, rampant, heavy with ash and debris. They whipped around her, dragging the air from her lungs, threatening her balance. Finally she had to let go of the woman lest she lose her grip on the boy.
”Climb!” Cantha shouted to the woman, but the woman merely stopped, rigid, where she was. Cantha urged her again, and again, pus.h.i.+ng her futilely, finally abandoning her, running blindly up the steps as the sky turned black above her.