With a shock, Michael saw Emaleth’s face collapse as the bullets struck it, saw the body fall over backwards! Was this why Rowan was crying, or was she merely tired and wondering, eyes watering slightly as she watched Ash looking down at the woman and the woman looking up. What must this be for her?
“Beautiful Tessa,” Ash said with a slight rise of his eyebrows.
“What’s wrong?” asked Gordon. “Something is wrong—for both of you. Tell me what’s wrong.” He moved closer, but stopped, obviously not willing to step between them. His voice was rich and sorrowful now. It had the quality of an orator, or of someone who knew how to affect his listeners. “Oh, God in heaven, this is not what I imagined—to meet here in this place, surrounded by those who can’t truly grasp the meaning.”
But he was too full of emotion for there to be any artifice in what he was saying or doing at all. His gestures were no longer hysterical. They were tragic.
Ash stood as still as ever, smiling at Tessa very deliberately, and then nodding with pleasure as her little mouth opened and expanded, and her cheeks grew small and plump with her own smile.
“You’re very beautiful,” Ash whispered, and then he raised his hand to his lips, and kissed his fingers and gently placed this kiss on her cheek.
She sighed, stretching her long neck and letting her hair tumble down her back, and then she reached out for him, and he took her in his arms. He kissed her, but there was no passion in it. Michael could see it.
Gordon came between them, circling Tessa’s waist with his left hand and gently drawing her back.
“Not here, I beg you. Oh, please, not as if it were in a common brothel.”
He let go of Tessa and approached Ash, hands clasped as if praying, peering up without fear now, caught in something more crucial to him even than his own survival.
“What is the place for the wedding of the Taltos?” he said reverently, voice rich and imploring. “What is the holiest place in England, where St. Michael’s line runs over the crest of the hill, and the ruined tower of the ancient Church of St. Michael is a sentinel still?”
Ash regarded him almost sadly, composed, merely listening, as the impassioned voice continued.
“Let me take you there, both of you, let me see the wedding of the Taltos on Glastonbury Tor!” His voice dropped low and the words came evenly, almost slowly. “If I see this, if I see the miracle of the birth there on the sacred mountain, in the place where Christ himself came to England—where old gods have fallen and new gods risen, where blood was shed in the defense of the sacred—if I see this, the birth of the offspring, full-grown and reaching out to embrace its parents, the very symbol of life itself, then it doesn’t matter whether I go on living, or whether I die.”
His hands had risen as if he held the sacred concept in them, and his voice had lost all its hysteria, and his eyes even were clear and almost soft.
Yuri watched with obvious suspicion.
Ash was the picture of patience, but for the first time Michael saw a deeper and darker emotion behind Ash’s eyes and even his smile.
“Then,” said Gordon, “I will have seen the thing that I was born to see. I will have witnessed the miracle of which poets sing and old men dream. A miracle as great as any ever made known to me from the time my eyes could see to read, and my ears could hear the tales told to me, and my tongue could form words that would express the strongest inclinations of my heart.
“Grant me these last precious moments, the time to travel there. It’s not far. Scarcely a quarter of an hour from here—a mere few minutes for us all. And on Glastonbury Tor, I will give her over to you, as a father would a daughter, my treasure, my beloved Tessa, to do what you both desire.”
He stopped, looking to Ash desperately still, and deeply saddened, as if behind these words were some complete acceptance of his own death.
He took no notice of Yuri’s plain though silent contempt.
Michael was marveling at the transformation in the old man, the sheer conviction.
“Glastonbury,” Stuart whispered. “I beg you. Not here.” And finally, he shook his head. “Not