Part 17 (2/2)

Wykla looked mildly shocked at the question. ”Alouzon! With our lives!”

”Then, come on. Run. Someone called the heat.”

”The heat?”

”I'll explain later. Follow me.”

She sheathed the Dragonsword, grabbed the beach towel, and set off towards Wils.h.i.+re at a run. Her wet jeans squeaked and flapped, and Wykla and Manda pounded after her, boots thumping on the short gra.s.s. Without comment, they vaulted the low concrete wall along with her, and when she swung open the door of the VW and told them to get in, they shrugged and obeyed.

Scrunched up in the back seat, Wykla giggled nervously. ”This is some kind of magic, is it not, Alouzon?”

Manda took the front pa.s.senger side. ”There is nothing else to call it, beloved.”

Alouzon handed her sword to Manda and fell in behind the wheel. In a moment, the VW had coughed into life, and she thanked the Grail that the black-and-whites had not yet appeared as she pulled out from the curb and squealed the car into a U-turn.

Beside her, Manda's eyes were wide, and she clutched at the strap on the door pillar. ”Dragonmaster?”

”It's okay, Manda.” In the rear view mirror, she could see that Wykla, her face white in the street lights, had her hands pressed to her mouth. ”Just trust me, huh?”

Manda nodded, her hand tight on the strap. ”We do, Dragonmaster.”

”Call me Alouzon.”

Alouzon reached Park View and, ignoring the light, spun the VW to the north. The police would be at the park within minutes, and she wanted to be safely out of sight on a side street, not fleeing openly down a thoroughfare as wide and brightly lit as Wils.h.i.+re. At the next intersection, she turned again, and the car fishtailed for a moment, tossing Wykla back and forth in her seat and throwing Manda against the door.

The VW settled down. They were heading west on Sixth Street. Alouzon slowed to the speed limit and switched on the headlights. ”That should do it. Everyone okay?”

No reply. Outside the car, Asbury Apartments flickered past, its windows a patchwork of waking and sleeping, its neon sign red against the pale night sky that was all that Los Angeles had to offer.

Manda and Wykla exchanged glances. Wykla shrugged: she had seen stranger things in the last two years. ”Where are we, Alouzon?”

Her voice, though puzzled and slightly frightened, was a joyful familiarity in this alien city. ' 'It's called Los Angeles,” said Alouzon.

”Los Angeles.” Wykla tried the name, and Alouzon had to fight to keep herself from stopping the car, turning around, and hugging her. Suddenly, this world was not so foreign and threatening. Suddenly she had friends with her. ”A strange name.”

Alouzon nodded. ”It's a fairly weird place.”

”Is this your world?” said Manda.

Alouzon thought for some time, and the First Congregational Church had pa.s.sed before she answered. ”Nah,” she said with a proud tightness in her throat. ”I just live here right now.” She felt her smile, was sure of it. Manda and Wykla were alive and in Los Angeles. Hope had blossomed among the asphalt, concrete, and fetid water of a metropolitan park. ”If you can call this living.” She laughed.

A small hand on her shoulder. ”Dragonmaster,” said Wykla, ”we are very glad that you live.”

The tightness in her throat persisted. ”Were you worried?”

”Greatly.”

”Me too,” said Alouzon. She covered Wykla's hand with her own for a moment, then reached over and patted Manda's bare knee. ”G.o.ds, I'm glad to see you're both okay. Last I saw of you, you were in that temple in Broceliande. What happened? What's going on now?”

Staring out at the pa.s.sing lights and cars, periodically shaking their heads in a kind of dazed wonder, Wykla and Manda took turns telling the tale as Alouzon navigated a circuitous route home. The rest of the company were safe. Marrha and Manda were reconciled. And Kyria-who had sloughed off her hate like an old skin-had taken Santhe for a lover, and had pledged her allegiance not only to the king of Gryylth, but to the world as a whole.

Alouzon wanted to shout, cheer, pound the steering wheel. But there were other, darker sides to her friends' story, and so her joy was, by necessity, tempered. ”So Helwych had everybody fooled, huh?” she said as she turned onto the street that led to her apartment building.

”Everyone save Relys, Timbrin, and Hahle,” said Wykla. ”Hahle was in Quay the last we heard, but of Relys and Timbrin we know nothing. We are all afraid for them. And for all of Gryylth.”

Alouzon recalled Helwych as she had last seen him: insolent, manipulating. ”f.u.c.king p.r.i.c.k.”

Manda understood her tone. She nodded. ”And so we decided to help Vaylle as best we could until something happened that might give us hope of a return to Gryylth.”

Alouzon's hands gripped the plastic steering wheel, but they ached for a sword. ”You know, Manda, I think something just happened.”

”Aye, Alouzon,” said the maid. The street lights flickered over her face, gleamed in her golden hair. ”I think that is so.”

* CHAPTER 14 *

The night was warm, and the tall stones of the Lachrae temple stood blackly against a sky gleaming with stars. Off in the west, above the Cordillera, swung a waxing moon.

Kyria and Dindrane approached the pair of carved monoliths that marked the entrance of the temple precincts. The sun had set long before, but torchlight and moonlight were enough to show the incised figures: a young woman and an old man. The woman held a sword. The man looked sad.

Suzanne and Solomon. The G.o.ddess and the G.o.d.

The two women bent and washed their faces and hands at the fountain, then pa.s.sed into the ring of stones. Beyond the edges of the temple, the King's House and Lachrae lay soundly asleep. Sorceress and priestess were alone.

”Ignorant still I am of your plans, Kyria,” said Dindrane. ”You questioned me long and hard about my service to the G.o.ddess and the G.o.d after we heard the report from the patrol commanded by Wykla and Manda, and since then you have said nothing to me.”

”To anyone.” Kyria tried to appear calm, tried not to look too intently at Dindrane.

She sat down on the gra.s.s, put her hands on the ground, felt the soft energies that flowed through this place. If a piece of Vaylle could embody divinity, this was it. This was Alouzon: not as she used to be, but as she could be. Here was love and loyalty fit to make a planet spin. Here was friends.h.i.+p enough to send it whirling about a star. Here was nurture sufficient to kindle that star into golden radiance and warm the empty void.

And though here too was Solomon in all his uncultivated potential and disappointed endeavor, here also was that blinding moment in which he had sacrificed himself for his people, one act of utter, selfless love that was by these stones prolonged into something that might in some way redeem those bleak and unremitting sins.

Had a part of her not died in the ruins of Helen's house, Kyria would have hated him still. But with the objectivity of death and rebirth, she looked in her heart and found pity. It could have been so different. For both of them.

Her eyes were damp. ”Oh, Solomon,” she murmured. ”I am as sorry as you.”

Dindrane stood behind her, arms folded. ”Do you address the G.o.d, sorceress?”

Kyria nodded. ”As much of Him as I can, my friend.”

Dindrane did not move. ”I have considered what you asked me, and my answers. I think I understand what you might want me to do. But I think you will understand that, before I do that thing, I would know ...” She looked to the moon as though asking for counsel. ”... everything.”

Kyria had expected nothing less. ”It is your right.”

”Who is Suzanne?” demanded the priestess. ”Who is Solomon?”

Speaking simply, Kyria told her. About Suzanne, student from UCLA and refugee from Kent State. About as much of her hopes and fears as the sorceress knew. About the genesis of Vaylle.

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