the puppet case. A few moments longer she knelt there, her back to Diverus.
She set aside the bowl and stood. Beside her, the other puppet case lay open. Glancing down, she found that the figure of Meersh lay on top of the pile. She picked it up and carried it to Diverus.
“Hold this,” she told him. Then gingerly she wrapped her arms around his waist and guided him to the standing case.
Either he realized or saw what she intended and tried to struggle. “No, Leodora, no,” but she covered his mouth with her hand.
“Epama Epam,” she said. “Go into the pool. The goddess will help you. She’s called Yemoja.”
“No. I have to—”
“Do it, Diverus, you’ll die if you don’t. You’re dying right now. And someone has to look after Meersh.” She lifted him, and he hadn’t enough strength to defy her.
She pressed her lips to his, tasting his sweat, his pain like cold fire. “Goodbye, my love,” she whispered in his ear, and then let go.
The moment he was gone, she pulled the case aside and laid it down. There was only a shiny puddle of water on the floor, a many-colored oil sliding snake-like upon its surface.
She opened the second case. The flat-piled puppets waited for her to bring them to life. She crossed to the larger case.
“What is wrong, storyteller?” called Tophet the Destroyer. “Can’t get your musician to play?” Then, “Where is my story?”
“It’s here,” she answered. From the larger case, she took out the puppets and set them aside, then reached in and tugged the ribbon, lifting the lid on the secret compartment.
A hiss of surprise escaped her. She took a step back.
In his cavity in the case, the Coral Man had turned to dust.
Kneeling beside the open case, she sorted through the puppets but kept staring at the powdered coral. In the middle of it something black sparkled in the lantern light. She turned from the puppets and dusted the thing off. It wasn’t very big, a knobbly fused lump like a clump of beach sand that had been struck and transformed by lightning. She smiled grimly. Her last lingering doubts of the Coral Man—doubts she had kept even from Soter—had been banished.
Rising, she carried a piece of setting with her to the stool.
“I want my story!” yelled Tophet like an angry child.
“Here, then,” she replied, and she hooked the flat strip of scenery onto the screen. It cast the shadow of a rough surface, representing a span, any span, all spans.
“This tale,” she announced, “took place long ago and far away in the season of the monsoon on a span called Dyauspitar.”
There was a commotion on the far side of the screen.
“Dyauspitar sat low, a curl hovering just over shallow marshy water. Gnarled and twisted trees grew on either side of it in incalculable numbers, and the people harvested the wood for their every need. The buildings were made of strips of this wood woven with great skill, houses like giant baskets that could flex and bend against the terrible winds that came with the season of monsoons.”
While she spoke, she lifted up a handful of the dust and threw it at the screen. It burst like a cloud into the air, and as it floated between the lantern and the screen it created an illusion of soft rain. Then she took the goblet of wine and flung the contents across the screen, and the sky burst crimson.
“Stop!” cried Tophet. “Stop it now!”
She only lifted another handful of dust and flung it into the air above herself. Then she grabbed the strap of the large undaya case and hauled it, empty of puppets, around the screen in front of the throne.
“You will not tell that story!” commanded Chaos.
“Why?” she asked. “It’s the one you’ve asked to hear, time and again. From every single storyteller you kidnapped and killed—all of these petrified forms surrounding us—you anticipated that story, the only one that ever concerned you. Bardsham with his tales of Meersh, of girls who gave up their arms for their fathers, of brothers who fought over magical gifts out of a Dragon Bowl—you didn’t really care about any of those. There was only the one, and nobody knew it. But you put them to death anyway, just in case. As someone said to me not so long ago, how many stories we keep is the secret everyone wants to know.”
She tipped the box and poured the dust of the Coral Man across the floor, into