ecstasy of bliss. His life had been pure numbers, and in the end he’d discovered that they were beautiful numbers.
Farewell, Gilhaelith, she thought. I’m glad for you.
She watched Merryl coming up the hill, just walking, now that he could see she was unhurt. Another thing she’d done right.
‘I suppose we’d better head for home,’ said Tiaan. ‘It’s going to be a long, long march. Will you — will you walk with me a little of the way, Malien?’
‘My way and yours are sundered, Tiaan,’ Malien snapped, and stalked off down the hill. But after thirty or forty paces she slowed, stopped, and turned around, staring at Tiaan; then she came trudging back.
‘We’ve been great friends and companions, this past year and three-quarters, and I would not have us part in such a way.’ Malien held out her hand, took one look at Tiaan’s bloody palms and opened her arms instead. ‘It falls to few people to change the world, but you’re one of them. And who am I to say that you haven’t done the right thing? Farewell, Tiaan. The times have certainly been eventful since we met. I’m glad we did.’
Tiaan embraced her. ‘And so am I. Thank you, Malien. You’ve done so much for me. Are you sure we can’t walk a little way together?’
Malien shook her head. ‘You’re heading south to the sea, while I’m going back to Ashmode to find Clan Elienor’s soldiers. But you’ll have Merryl with you – the best of company.’
He joined them and Malien shook his hand. ‘If we never meet again, live well. Farewell, Tiaan. Farewell, Merryl.’
‘Farewell,’ they echoed, ‘wherever you roam.’
They gathered their gear from the thapter and Tiaan turned towards the south and the Sea of Thurkad, with her father. She regretted, for a moment, that she would probably not see Nish or Irisis, nor any of the others, again. But all things must pass, and that phase of her life was over.
Malien watched her go, collected her possessions, then began her own weary journey east to Ashmode. She felt closer to Clan Elienor now than she did to her own people, who had exiled her from Stassor. Clan Elienor would not go to Faranda with the rest of the Aachan Aachim, for they were exiles too. She planned to offer them a home at Shazmak, in the mountains behind Bannador, across the Sea of Thurkad in Meldorin. It would take a lot of work to restore Shazmak to the grandeur and the glory it had possessed in ancient times, especially without the Art to assist them, but her people had never been afraid of hard work.
And besides, her beloved son Rael had died at Shazmak and she’d not been back since the time of the Forbidding. It would be like going home.
What would have happened, she wondered, had the crystal succeeded in gaining control of the nodes of Santhenar? Would it have turned the world into a volcanic hell like Aachan? Or used it to extend its reach to other worlds, and perhaps, after infinite time, even to the stars themselves? No one would ever know. Only one person had ever achieved the mastery of geomancy to have a hope of understanding the amplimet’s purpose, and he was no more.
Well, it was over. Malien shrugged her bag over her shoulder, adjusted her hat and set out in the direction of Ashmode. She felt as though a great weight had left her shoulders. Perhaps Tiaan had done the right thing after all.
As Tiaan trudged up the road beside Merryl, she wondered where it had all gone wrong. How could her youthful dreams have all come to nothing? Had she made the wrong choices, or was she incapable of the right ones? Or had it just been luck, or fate? Had her life, in a sense, been doomed from the beginning?
Would it have been better if she’d never lived at all? Would her ghosts, especially Minis, haunt her forever? She felt very low. She’d made bad choices for good reasons, Tiaan knew, and she couldn’t forgive herself for what had come from them. She’d tried to do what was good and right and decent, and over and again it had gone terribly wrong. Yet Irisis, who seldom agonised over her choices, had ended up ennobling herself.
Perhaps it’s because, in the end, I’m always thinking of myself, Tiaan thought. I could never be as selfless as Irisis, who gives simply because that is her nature, with no expectation of return. I’ve