Just
a suggestion...you might want to download Georgia
and Verdana.
|
Just
a suggestion...you might want to download Georgia
and Verdana.
|
Chapter Four: The Great Deceiver
Ram looked down and just let her legs lose their purpose. They obligingly deposited her, thunk, onto the rocky roadside overlooking Grand Old 'Couver by the Bay. She estimated it had taken her two days to walk this far, but she was beginning to recover and she should make the Cross Estates in a week. Besides, most of the time she'd wasted down in the bayside burg was spent looking for clothes and food and bandages.
Ram might have flown to the Estates in an hour, but as long as she was already in the Gate, she reasoned she might as well use it to her purpose. Part of her purpose was penance. She had waited too long to seek out Nicolae--she'd had good reasons, other concerns, limited time--but it was still too long, and it was her fault. Not a great fault, not like...
She laughed aloud and the tinny, echoless mirth swirled at the edge of the Gate and vanished.
They would call what she had done a "mortal sin." As if--
More like an Immortal Sin--certainly where poor Sean was concerned. Ram regretted her having to make him grow up, when she'd been doing such a good job up to then, just showing him the pathway he should take on his own. This was a shock from which he would be a long time recovering. Another Adam, Ram sighed and waited as the reverberations tremored through the edge and away again.
Such a bloody poor showing. No wonder she was damned to hell eternal. Too bad for Connor. He'd jumped in at just the most inopportune time imaginable and she had sent him whimpering down some dark, drear corridor.
Ram readjusted the sling on her left arm and levered up to standing with her right.
The light said it was still morning outside the Gate.
Ten more miles and then I will sleep, she promised herself.
Was that three leagues or one?
She couldn't remember.
Ten miles north of 'Couver, Ram's dreams pulled her all the way back to the start of her journey, as if she had taken not one single step.
Ram hung in her chains trying to remember when, if ever, she had had a headache quite this terrible, even in Hell. She'd provoked the poor old Immortal, speaking the very truth from which he ran so diligently. Why had she forced him to hear it? Probably just to exonerate herself for having failed him so miserably. Then again, it was dreadfully rude, indeed, cruel, for him to have stabbed her in the eye. Maybe his inward master, telling him to stop her sight of his true nature.
Ram felt Sean approaching, "heard" the fight on the landing above. Damnation! This was not the heroic rescue she had planned for his participation. Had something gone wrong with Molly's rescue? No, no, there, she was at Joe's, she was telling them...Oh, Bloody Hell!
"I am going to be so not happy about this, Molly!" Ram screamed aloud. That was how Sean knew to come to this shrimp morgue. Well, they would just have to make do with this unexpected turn in "Sean's lessons in manhood."
It was a little soon for him to take a head, but Nicolae would be easy. He couldn't handle a sword at all, didn't even own one. Damn fine with a scalpel, though, she reminded herself as another teeth-jolting wave rattled her senses. When it had passed, she stared straight at the old Interpol detective and announced that he was about to die. She sent him dread and hopelessness and a trembling horror--all of which she knew too well to suit her. He would be--what did Lucille say?-ah, yes, easy pickings.
And there was Sean at the door, the splendid katana, Duncan's own dragonblade, gripped solidly in his right hand. Ram stilled the clamor inside her head and tried to relax her face out of the twist it had acquired. She couldn't do anything about the scalpel handle, or her dissected arm either, but she tried to look less a horror, and more a grateful woman about to be rescued by her own dear, heroic son.
But the son wasn't buying it. Sean wasn't used to unpleasantness, and this was certainly that and more. He just hovered, stunned and impotent, by the door, trying to make his eyes stop sending him such ugliness.
The fear Ram had engendered in Nick, on the other hand, mobilized him into action and he dove for the back counter and a drawer and a--gun!
Ram wheedled and pleaded and reasoned and quarreled with the paralyzed boy at the door, all to no avail.
She was just about to foul the mechanism on Nicolae's nasty little weapon when it happened.
Far away, north of this spoliary, Mary Palmer MacLeod took a short, confused breath in and--
All the rest was of no importance at all. Ram opened her mind to them both, killed the one, maneuvered the other to take his head and then took just enough of the energy to gain the Gate before Mary actually felt the contraction.
She pulled her right arm out of its tether and unfastened what was left of the left, tucking it close to her side while she undid her ankles. After a few aborted efforts, she finally managed to stand up and wrap herself in a white lab coat that was wadded up in the corner. At the door, she glanced back at Sean, frozen in the stasis outside the Gate. His face was pale and contorted with the Quickening and with his own secondary transformation out of childhood.
She saw also the disgust with which he had done this thing. He would never have survived in the "Old Days," when the Gathering was at full force. He did not have his father's battle lust. He just did not have the heart for killing. Sean would never have survived in the Game. Not alone, in any case, but he had the two finest players at his beck and call.
He would need them when this was over.
Ram grew restless in her sleep. She began to murmur her litany of a thousand apologies to all the beings, mortal and Immortal, and Danaan, whom she had wounded and mutilated and murdered...
All with the best of intentions.
Somewhere in the long course of "sorry, sorry's" Connor snuggled in behind her and threw an arm over her shoulder, telling her to be still, like a mother whose babe is troubled with the night terrors.
And after that, the dreams receded and Ram finally came to rest.
Five days and many long miles later, Ram hit the mountain road and knew she was nearly there. Two days more, a day and a half, if she did not sleep again, but that would not be wise. She needed all her energy, everything she was and might be, must come to bear upon this Day of Days, which was still mid-morning outside the Gate. She might have waited to recover in the bay town, and then manifested and flown the distance, still within the stasis of the Gate's outer edge, but the walk north had been her penitent's preparation for the glorious day. She was the more settled for it.
And Connor had become quite pleasant company, for no earthly reason that she could ken. Perhaps after the debacle at the shrimpery, he wisely reckoned that no amount of torment would deter or persuade, and now he was trying charm and grace. These latter two affects he had in surprising abundance.
Connor understood he would have to be silent when Ram exited the Gate, and she promised in return not to repeat the unthinking blow she had dealt him in the midst of Nicolae's and Sean's fiasco, when he popped up and tried to scare her back to Hell. He knew now about Mary and the babies, and why his timing alone had earned him the devastating punishment. He knew how sorry she was to have lost her temper. He believed her apologies.
He still called her "little lizard," but it sounded now more like a term of respect, if not endearment, when he said it.
Ram stopped calling him that other thing.
And they had gotten along quite handily the whole hike.
Still mid-morning, still the same just-breaking overcast of winter clouds, ten days of sameness wherein only the dragon moved and all else was stillness and silence. The Elder MacLeod had checked out to a deep, unbothered sleep somewhere back at day seven or eight. It was so difficult to keep time where time did not exist.
Ram had tried to enter the house Connor's son had built for Mary's mother, which was a mere ten miles from the Cross Estates, but none of the doors were open. No family pet was let out at that particular moment. No child was scolded at a cracked door about not wearing enough sweaters for sledding. No window was even slightly open.
It was not impossible to break those things which remained outside the Gate, but it took a great deal of energy and Ram had none to spare. She simply pushed on, planning on a cold dip in the overflow spring that ran south of the Estates from all the new underground waterworks, the nursery and new home for Mary's babes.
Ten days' worth of contemplation and Ram was clear in her thoughts, light in her heart. The most wonderful thing would happen today.
The most horrible thing would happen today.
Ten days' of walking and meditating about this Day of Days for which all had been readied over five long millennia. Ram was ready to be brave about this, ready to ensure that the horror did not eclipse the great joy, ready to receive what was to come.
Ready.
Ram reconsidered her readiness when she tried to step into the water south of Thomas Cross' grand estate. Of course, it was hard as glass. She had known it would be, but she hadn't believed it somehow. The edge of the Gate was such a rigidly ordered state, that she assumed a more natural chaos where none would exist. There would be no bath, just the transition.
She hoped Mary would not mind, or Malak either, for that matter. He was surely not going to be happy about presenting himself stinking like a graveyard for shrimp. She should have stayed longer in 'Couver, but she would have had to exit the Gate there and fly to Mary--still no time for a bath, and then she would have been three contractions late. No, what she should have done was stay out of the Molly thing altogether. She knew this day was near. She had no business trying to play shepherd, no business at all.
Five thousand years and you are not ready for this, not at all.
Well it is now. Now.
Ram slipped the coat and her makeshift sling and gathered her will. This is the gift I have waited so long to deliver to you, Malak. Come now and greet your children, your blessed wife.
He needn't have worried about the smell, Malak thought. The fire of the apotheosis more than obliterated the fish. A bit of airing, out of the Gate, and he would stop smelling like brimstone as well.
Malak stretched his shoulders and braced the deep keel of his wings. His keen mind sought out the security 'puter and set all the alarms to silent, and then he overflew the fence, lifting high into the morning haze, and then diving, straight and sure towards the glass and marble of the library pool where Mary was finally exhaling the breath she had started ten days earlier.
"Bird?" Mary felt his arms circle her shoulders from behind. "I--ummm. Oh." She sighed. "I had a little catch or a kick, umm. What are you doing, Bird?"
"Wait," Malak said breathily. "I haven't done this for a while. Let me get--into--the--"
"Are you all right, Bird?" Mary craned around trying to look at him.
"And--," Malak took a large breath that tickled the back of her neck. "Yes, yes, Mary, Beloved. I am superb.
"And yourself?" he added quickly.
"You're really here, Bird!" she exclaimed, as he came around to kneel in front of her and stroke her blimpish belly. "I'm not just dreaming you. You are really here!"
"Yes, Mary. Really here," he said softly. "You are so lovely."
"I am so sure," Mary snorted. "You're not too ugly yourself, Bird. Have you been well?"
"I am now, Mary, supremely well. Thank you."
"Hey!" she complained as he picked her up from the marble bench.
"I'm not hurting you, am I, Mary?"
"No, Bird. I just wasn't expecting it. What are you doing?"
"It's a surprise, Beloved. I readied everything before I left, before--. You'll see," Malak couldn't think with Mary in his arms.
"Why are we going downstairs into the tunnels, Bird?" Mary squirmed. There was little enough sun in the winter. She didn't fancy spending the day underground.
"Please, Mary," Malak whispered, "that's where the surprise is. I promise you won't be disappointed."
He said it in a way that made Mary wonder what he thought fat old pregnant ladies were capable of. "Listen, Bird, maybe this isn't such a good idea."
"Careful," she said, looking up as the knuckle of his furled wings banged into one of the stone groins.
Malak lowered his wings all the way down his back and proceeded in a conspiratorial silence that took all of Mary's attention.
"And here we are," Malak announced setting Mary down at the entrance to a very dark cave.
"I'm surprised," Mary said.
Malak laughed gently. "Here," he said, reaching into the arch and engaging the lights. "Well?"
Mary put her hands up to her cheeks. "Oh, my. Oh, Bird, it's lovely!"
With his arm around her back for support, Mary waddled carefully down the stairsteps into the balneary. It was a warm, humid room with simple concrete walls, its own misty fog, and a sensuous, sultry lighting, mostly cast off the central pool, but counterpointed by a single arched window which seemed to let the sunlight drift in.
Of course this couldn't be sun, Mary thought, because the sky was overcast when we came down here...and we came down at least four flights. She thought a moment. "We must be under that big pool that Adam was always swimming laps in."
Malak smiled and nodded. "Yes, Mary. Very good. It pleases you?"
"Oh, yes, Bird, very much. Oooh, dolphins!"
Malak helped her over to the bas relief of three dolphins which he had carved in the western wall. The caustic patterns of light reflected over them from the pool surface made it seem they were swimming underwater.
"Do you think," Mary tucked her chin down, "Do you think they know how beautiful they are when they jump like that, Bird?" There was a teasing, jovial tone to the question.
"I can't say that I know the answer to that, Mary," Malak teased back, refusing to play.
"I just wondered if it were a random thing with them--," she hesitated.
Malak stopped preening his left flight pinions and surrendered. "Of course not, Mary," he sighed, "they do it on porpoise."
Which sent Mary off in gales of happy laughter and made Malak grit his teeth. He hated puns. All the different languages were difficult enough as it was. Mary adored them, and never missed a chance to pull him into a game of words.
"Mary, would you like to swim?" Malak indicated the pool. "The water is warm and--"
"Scented with apricots. My favorite--but of course, you always know, Bird. Yes, I would, but they don't make suits for whales, Love," she complained.
Malak thought for a moment. "Except for Kyle who is just playing in the pool upstairs and a few watchmen with Dragon at the gates, no one is here."
"You are here, Bird," Mary corrected him.
"Well I seem to be doing fine without a suit, Beloved."
"I'll say," the way Mary said this made the angel blush. "All right," she said finally. "I suppose it's only fair and the water looks so soothing. You don't think it will hurt the babies?"
"No, Mary. I promise. It will not hurt the babies." He helped her out of her Master Cross' soft flannel bathrobe which turned out to be the sum total of her morning ensemble, except for a pair of fuzzy slippers, almost, but not quite so ugly, as the ones he had bought for her wedding gift.
When she was settled on the pool steps, waist-deep in the warm water, Malak climbed down beside her and folded his wings over them both.
"It can't be too good to get them all over chlorine like that," she indicated the sopping end of his pristine pinions.
"There is no chlorine in this pool," Malak replied aghast.
"Sorry," Mary thought about pouting. "Okay, never mind. My head's so fuzzy. I keep forgetting all these things I want to ask. I'm thinking now's the time, Bird."
Malak stifled a sigh. "Ask."
"I like the waterfall," she pointed up to the stream of bright water pouring through the lower sill of the archwindow and down into a small pond adjacent the main pool near the steps. "What are those?" She stared at the glass and copper affairs at the back wall. They looked like two gigantic coffee percolators.
"You said you had questions, Mary," Malak reminded her. She leaned back against his chest, to the right side of the sharp wing keel. "There are things that just don't make sense, Bird. So many things."
"Wait," Malak's chest muscles tightened suddenly, but he forced them to relax. "Things, Mary?"
"Are you sure you're all right, Bird?"
"Yes, Mary. I am fine. Things?"
"Oh, yes. Well, hmm, where to begin? All right--" Mary cleared her throat. "There is that thing that Ram did after Sean was delivered."
"Yes?" Malak answered uncertainly.
"You know, how she knew what everyone was going to do and she planned for it, even though she thought she was going to be dead, well and she sort of was dead there for a while. Still, she knew where they would be and what they would need and--do you know what I'm saying?"
"Not really, Mary, but go on."
"I'm not saying this well. She was dead, or absent at least, and yet she was still there, because she knew so precisely what she would be if she still was. No, that's not it. Let me see. It all ties in somehow. I'm just not exactly sure how."
"I'm listening," Malak stroked her hair.
"A little like the way you know me, what I like, what I am, what I wish for, even before I do, Bird."
"That's because I love you, Mary," Malak chuckled. "How could I not?"
"But love was not enough for you to know exactly how to save me in that field when I was a child. Master Thomas says you knew all the ways that things would happen and finally found the one way that I would survive the attack by the Immortals that day."
"Believe me, Mary. Love is a magical thing."
"Be quiet, Bird. You're not helping."
Malak said nothing, just sorted through her curls and began reordering her hair clips.
"All right. Where was I? Oh, I read that Malak story Adam had, about how Malak was turned into Ram and the Wicked King made her submit to him by force nightly until she ran away and got raped again by a gang of mortal barbarians, and--"
"I thought the book was destroyed," Malak said uneasily.
"Oh, it was, but Uncle Dahm copied it out before he gave it away and he let me read it. Well, maybe I read it without his permission, but I'm sure he would have let me had he known."
Malak swirled the water with his wing tips and waited.
"Then there's that thing about Uncle Dahm not recognizing you, I mean Ram, when they first met at the Watchers. That doesn't make any sense at all, Bird."
"Thousands of years is a long time, Beloved."
"Not long enough to forget your own mother, Bird."
Malak hissed.
"Bird? Bird? Something IS wrong with you. I know it!" She turned around and reached up to hold his face in both her hands.
"I am dead, Beloved. It is difficult for me to be here." Malak closed his eyes and exhaled. "There. I'm all right now. Stop worrying, Mary. Everything will be all right."
"Oh," Mary drew back from him, reached in the pool with her hands cupped and proceeded to sploosh him straight in the face with as much pool water as she could toss.
"Mary!" Malak backpeddled out of the pool.
"I know what you're doing and I don't like it," Mary seethed. "I can do some things myself, Bird."
"Mary!" Malak pleaded.
"Go away," Mary pouted. "I don't want you here."
"But then there will be no one to answer your questions, Mary," Malak offered.
Mary reconsidered. "All right, but no more labor for you, Bird. These are my babies, our babies, but I'm the Mommy. Got that?"
"I have that. Yes," Malak settled himself cautiously at the pool's edge, under the bower of ferns and slowly waved his wings, drying them.
"Okay, now for instance, Sweet Lucille told me a heck of a story, several stories, about how Adam got killed that first time. And you know, not a one of them makes any sense at all," Mary moved down two steps and let the warm water soothe her very sore breasts.
"I don't know the stories, Beloved," Malak shrugged and his wings sent the mist clouds dancing to the high ceiling.
"My first question is: tell me the story of how Adam died," Mary folded her arms over the shelf her belly now made.
Malak took a very deep breath. "We had a terrible argument, and he attacked me, and I killed him."
"He didn't rape you? Sean says--"
"No, Mary, Adam did not rape me. He would not be alive today if he had."
"You lie alot, don't you, Bird?"
"I never lie to you, Mary," Malak replied.
"Oh, Bird. I think that was a whopper!"
"Mary!"
"Bird?" Mary paled suddenly and she started to swallow, pressing her lips together and balling up her fists.
"Forgive me, Mary," he said.
"See that wasn't so bad, Bird. I can--. Oh, Bird!" she leaned for him, her arms outstretched.
"It's easier," he whispered. "If you just--stay still--Mary. Yes," he said finally as the color returned to his cheeks.
"Can I get you anything?" she asked lamely.
"No, really. Thank you, Mary."
"Is it okay to talk?" Mary asked.
"Of course, Mary. You're the Mommy, after all," he laughed.
"I've had nothing at all to do but just put all these things together, Bird. And I have. You want to hear what I think?"
"I don't know, Mary," Malak sighed. "Do I?"
"Well, it's not like I'm going to live to tell anybody about it, Bird."
"Mary," the elegant features softened in sorrow as he sang her name. "That will be your decision, Love."
"Well, then," Mary said, "I choose to live, Bird. I want that on record."
"As you wish," Malak nodded.
"Really?"
"Oh, absolutely, Mary. I have told you this from the beginning."
Mary shifted on the steps. "Okay, I believe you. And I think you DO want to hear what I think."
"I am listening, Beloved."
Mary sank deeper in the pool and then, on a whim, pushed off and floated towards the middle of this peculiar little inland pond. "It's like a grotto," she said, rolling to her back. "Like I'm a Mrs. Whale cast here by the tides and too lazy to leave. Yo, Mr. Whale there, bring me something cold to drink."
She thought he would go to the percolator things, but instead Malak strode over to the dolphin wall, patted the middle beastie and the whole wall turned around to reveal a lovely little lounging/sitting room with a sunny window, a brass daybed, throws and furs, shelves of books, and a tiny kitchen, more a wetbar. One wall had an archway through to another room, where she could just make out the corner of a tub, the kind with feet, draped with soft blue towels.
Malak returned with a tray of icy lemonade and mints. "Shall I send this by whaler, or will you be dining beachside, Beloved?"
"Very funny, Bird," Mary paddled over to the side of the pool, steadied herself with one hand, and reached for a glass with the other. She sipped some. It was almost too sweet, but it was good nonetheless, and just exactly what she wanted. She popped a mint and let it melt in her mouth. Also perfect. "Not much of a last meal, Bird."
Malak set the tray down and slipped into the water beside her. "You don't have to believe anything else, Mary, but you must believe this. Nothing will happen without your consent. You will decide. When the time comes," he ammended.
"Well, Bird, you have my decision on record," Mary reminded him. "I won't repeat it."
"Yes, Mary," Malak wrapped his arms around her and floated her in circles out to the deeper portion of the pool.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Didn't you get my note?" he stopped circling.
"Of course I did, Bird?"
"Well, then, consider this practice for when we go dancing in the stars," Malak guided her tenderly through two more circuits and then he towed her "back to shore."
When the contraction was done, Malak pushed up to sitting on the edge, but Mary opted to stay floating in the pool. Pregnant women really did make better sea creatures than land dwellers. She wondered that she hadn't thought of this sooner, but the pools were always under construction or occupied by Uncle Dahm or Cousins Sean and Kyle before now.
"Bird?"
"Yes, Mary?"
"I put all the things together and this is what I got: Malak is dead," she said it solemnly.
"Right you are, Beloved," he smiled. "Sorry, can't help it. Just one of those little quirks of Time and Fate."
"Hush," she admonished him. "Malak has been dead for a very long time."
As if it were possible, Malak's pale blond features went paler still and he drew his legs up out of the water.
Mary continued, "Are you really Adam's mother?"
Malak's head bowed over so deeply that she could no longer see his face. His wings drew forward, reflexively, and he looked as if he were cloaked in a great feathered mantle. After a long silence, he said, "No. No, Mary, I am not Adam's mother."
"I didn't think so," Mary waited for him to furl his wings, to lift his face again. "I think you must have loved Malak very, very much, Bird."
His eyes, exactly the color of the brite pool water, began to fill, but he willed them dry. "Very much," he rasped in very uncharacteristic disonant tones.
Mary intoned the next permutation, "You are not Malak. You are not Ram."
He looked so pained just then, that Mary thought she was having another contraction, but her belly was soft, and it was only her words made him so. She gave him some silence and time to form his answer and stand away from his pain.
"Believe me, Dear and Gentle Mary, I am as authentically, as precisely, Malak, as he would have been himself, without a single difference."
Mary floated over to him, lifted her hands, and he pulled her out of the pool, wrapping her, first in his wings and then in Cross' soft robe. "You know, Bird. I do believe you," she said as she followed him through the dolphin wall into the study room and melted onto the daybed, bundling under the furs. "You are far and away clever enough to have pulled this off, to have been Malak's surrogate, simply because Malak could not survive to see his obsession to its completion. What I don't understand is: Why?"
"Mary," Bird's wings were giving him fits even in the fairly spacious environs of the study. "I need to--umm--" he pointed at his shoulders, "get out of these. If you will give me a moment."
Mary pushed up off the couch and her eyes grew almost feverish with her sudden delight. "Nooo," she warbled.
"Excuse me?" Malak turned back.
"Come on," she waddled past him back to the pool. "I want to see you, Bird."
"You see me now, Mary," Bird followed her, closing the dolphin wall behind him. "I do not understand," he said as he caught up with her, floating her hands through the miniature fall.
"I want to see you, Bird," she repeated. "Surely you are not Malak's twin."
"I wish," said Bird, before he could think of a less hazardous answer.
"Are you ugly, Bird?" Mary had not considered this. She wondered how this would make her feel, but she really didn't think it would matter.
Bird answered slowly, "My appearance is not--not what I would wish. I--it's hard to explain, Mary. Each solstice, I changed back, for the meeting of the Council." Bird hesitated. He did not really know what to do. As much as he respected Mary's wit and boldness, still, he never imagined she would guess this. "Your father finally came to me and voiced something the entire Council desired, which was, if I wouldn't mind too much, and since it was such a bother and all, couldn't I just stay as Malak for Council and stop coming in my own form."
"Oh, My God, Bird," Mary could not imagine what would make him so ugly that even dragons asked him to come in disguise. Maybe it was not such a good idea to see him as he was, after all. No, she had to know. "Do it, Bird. Get naked. Now," she added for emphasis.
"You are not going to like this, Mary," he warned.
"I don't care," Mary had set her course and she would not be swayed. But she couldn't help asking, "Will the children be marked?"
"As you have so rightly guessed, Beloved," Bird reentered the pool and swam to the middle, his wings folded behind him like a swan. "They are not my children. They are Malak's. I am just the deliverer, like the InterEx man."
"But you are related to Malak?" she asked.
"I can talk or I can change or--oh, wait--"
Mary was so still through the next contraction that she actually fell asleep, a tiny nap beneath the sparkles that the pool water cast over her. When she woke, Bird was just sinking below the surface. The water began to bubble, and then to smoke. She steadied her nerves. Maybe she shouldn't have asked for this. Oh, God, let me not scream or show any disgust, no matter how horrible he is. He is still Bird. I still love him, no matter what. Please, let me remember that and not hurt him in any way simply because he may seem monstrous. Please, she prayed silently, as the roiling surface calmed. He will ascend now, himself. Please let me see the truth and bear it with some grace, some bravery. Please.
She trembled so badly, she could hardly take a breath.
"Oh, Dear Lord!" she couldn't help the words, nor the laughter which followed them like tiny wind bells. "You're a little boy!"
"I like to think of myself as a young man, Mary. I'm not a child." He swam towards her and stood up in the shallows.
"A skinny, little boy," Mary exclaimed. "You can't be more than twelve. You're voice hasn't even changed yet."
Bird placed both elegant hands--all long, alabaster fingers, they seemed--on the pool edge and lifted up to sit beside her. He was beautiful in his own way. Long lines of muscle beneath pale skin, but unlike Malak, with just a frosting of freckles here and there, just like--.
Mary looked more closely at his face, set now in a miserable scowl which brightened the moment she touched him. He was so young that it was a little hard to see the resemblance at first, but when he smiled it was there, unmistakably.
"You lied, Bird," she said, chuckling.
Bird's tender grey-green eyes closed and he sighed. "About what now, Dear?"
"You said Adam wasn't your son, Bird." She took his hands, so like Uncle Dahm's, and almost as long, in her own.
"I never said that," he protested.
Mary tried to remember exactly what he had said. "You said you were not Adam's mother, that you were not Ram, Setan'm, whatever she was called then--."
"Ra," he supplied, "Rael Malach, more formally, and, yes, that is what I said, and that is true."
"Adam is not your son?" Mary asked.
"That is not true," Bird looked nervously away from her intent gaze.
Mary worked the words over in her mind until they spoke the answer, and when she had it, she slapped Bird's left shoulder. "Oh, shame on you, Bird!" she giggled lovingly. "You're the Wicked King."
Birds head slumped forward dejectedly. "Yes, Mary. That is exactly who I am."
"You are Adam's father!"
"Yes, Mary," he murmurred, speaking to his palms that were curled up in surrender and lying on his thighs.
"Is Ram--umm--Rael, is she Adam's mother?" Mary's wonderful wit spun out another permutation.
"Yes, she was," Bird sounded tiny and lost and as if he were about to weep.
"But that would mean--," Mary tried to think about Uncle Dahm in this new light. "Does he know any of this?"
Bird looked up at her wearily. He seemed suddenly so old to look so young. "I believe that was the very argument we spoke of earlier.
"I think he does know, Mary, but he just could never accept it. He--"
"Oh, Bird!" Mary put her finger up to the middle of his forehead and traced an irregular scar that ran over the bridge of his nose and down his left cheek. "What happened?"
"Mary, please," Bird gently pulled her hand away from his face. "It's nothing, really. I--I didn't understand how deeply Malak felt about you. I-I didn't even believe you were real. It was our first night together. She tried to put a battleaxe through my skull."
"Well, she surely could not have been afraid of you, Bird. That--" Mary stared down at Bird's lap. "--doesn't look like it could hurt anybody."
Bird started laughing hysterically. "Oh, Mary," he said in the same devilish tones she had used to pronounce him the wicked king. "Mary, Mary."
They both laughed for a long time, then Mary said, "Bird, I'm a little tired and the contractions seemed to have stopped for now. Why don't we go back into the study, and I can lie down, and you can brew us some nice tea, and you can tell me the story of how the boy-king gave up five thousand years of his life for a lady who drove a hatchet into his face."
Bird was not exactly happy to comply, but where Mary was concerned, he could not remember the word--in any of a thousand languages--for "no."
"I know this can't be easy for you, Pops," Sean waited for Duncan to rinse the next batch of breakfastware, so he could continue drying. Duncan MacLeod had more or less ordered a moratorium on any conversations until breakfast had been cooked, consumed, and cleaned-up-after.
Adam puttered around the loft, making the bed, tidying the shelves, slipping silently around the fifth floor apartment, staying just within earshot of what might prove to be a most interesting tale. No one except Duncan, and Ram, of course, knew exactly what had happened the night of Sean's conception. Everyone had their own ideas, and there had surely been enough evidence after, Sean included, but the details had remained a mystery. That didn't keep the Oldest Immortal from beating the Scot to death with his bare hands the morning after. Duncan's admission of guilt had been enough to precipitate that, even without the particulars.
My, how things have changed, Adam mused, not realizing he was laughing out loud.
"You think this is funny?" Duncan called over in his best "we are not amused" voice.
"No," Adam plopped down on the long leather couch--the newest version in a long line of such sofas, time and circumstance being so hard on Duncan's simple furnishings. "I was just thinking about how I arrived in town the morning after Sean was conceived. I was remembering that altercation--."
"I had forgotten that," Duncan pulled the plug on the suds and rinsed the last pot, handing it over to Sean. "You'll be happy to know, Sean, that your mother was suitably revenged by kith and by kin."
"Revenged for what?" Sean pressed.
"All right," Duncan twisted the water out of the sponge and set it behind the faucet. "I'll get the coffee and you go sit by Dahm, and I will do my best to explain."
"You don't want me to leave?" Adam asked without conviction, trying to be polite, which was a stretch for him.
"I'm not going to tell this twice," Duncan warned, setting a tray on the thick wood top of the low table. "So, if you want to hear it, you might as well stay."
Adam's long frame recontoured into his best imitation of a couch lizard. Oh, he definitely wanted to hear this.
"I can't remember exactly what Ram was doing in 'Couver to begin with," Duncan waited for his resource-in-residence to provide the background.
"She brought me a sword I asked for, because she wanted to meet Joe and she wanted to visit this very loft," his long arms waved wide and his smirk completed silently the "I haven't a clue why" portion of the report.
"No," Duncan warmed his broad hands around his mug of Adam's most excellent coffee. "That was the first time she came to 'Couver. I meant when I met her, which would have been the second."
"Well, since I was combing the New England back country with Dawson, looking for her at the time, I don't know why she came back to 'Couver," Adam shrugged.
"You know," Sean commented. "I think I'm too tired to stay up the three days it's going to take to tell this tale by the way you're starting out. Somebody just give me the bones and I'll get the rest later."
Duncan thought a moment, then began again. "For whatever reason she was here, and I met her and we got to be friends, and then she sort of disappeared for six months. Ram was still in town, working--some computer place, I think-- and--uh, uh--" he stared at Adam. If ever there were a time for obscuring with words.
"She was making friends with Lucille and just generally resting up," Adam suggested. "We put a Watcher on her and that was that."
The ball popped over into the Scot's court again.
Sean sited on first his brother and then his father. "Friends?" he said. "Look," his ample beak flared in frustration. "I love you both--more than I can say--but if I don't start getting some answers--some ACTUAL answers," he emphasized, "then I'm going to have to kick some serious butt around here."
Adam's neck seemed to collapse as his head sunk down between his shoulders and a wicked glee lit his eyes.
"I know you bested me, Son," Duncan held his anger in check. "I know you killed Breslaw and you are just come from your first Quickening, but--"
"NO," Sean's voice said loudly, but still with a modicum of control. "You have sugar-coated everything, all my life. I don't have the first notion about what your life is really like. You've made everything over in a, a fine little fantasy or fairytale of the gentle family. That's not a bad thing, but I'm completely at a loss when it comes to the real world. I am still a virgin in many more ways than I care to admit. I don't blame you. I am grateful you were both so good to me. But unless I want to be a child all the rest of what probably will be a very long life, then it has to stop. It has to stop now.
"It isn't exactly lying," he finished. "But it isn't the truth, either. I know I don't want to see things as they are, but I also know that I have to, that that is what a man does. And, God Damn It!, I am going to be one."
There was a long silence and then Duncan said, "You are right. Sit down."
Sean hadn't even known he'd risen to speak. He lowered himself down again and folded his hands, waiting.
"Ram hired Sweet Lucille to teach her how to have sex in a way that would be pleasing to Joe Dawson, and to herself, too, I expect. She wanted to bed Joe, and, as you no doubt have noticed yourself, Ram doesn't do anything by half- measures. Close your mouth, Sean. It's no good asking for the truth and then being appalled by it." Duncan pinned Adam in a dark stare by way of example.
"I invited her here to uh--" Duncan waited for the just the right word to occur to him.
"Inveigle, coerce, conspire, entrap--" Adam supplied.
"Charm, bedazzle, seduce?" Sean chimed in.
Those weren't, any of them, the right word.
"Discuss," Duncan said distinctly with a hiss that shut them both up. "To discuss how best to--"
Sean and Adam turned slowly to gaze at each other making a mirror of their reaction, a wordless, "Oh, bruuther!"
"Oh, all right!" Duncan snorted. "I have a special way with women, not because I use them, or trick them, but because I truly care about them. I was sure I could charm Ram into having my son, she being the only person I knew of who could do that very thing. I invited her here. I cooked a grand dinner, and this old loft never looked nicer."
"Oh, my yes," Adam elaborated. "He even changed the sheets and drugged the wine." He shrugged. "Joe told me his Chloral was missing. I just assumed."
Sean coughed. "So much for your special way, Pops."
"Yes, I drugged her," Duncan admitted. "She passed out and I--"
"Oh, BoyScout!" Adam scolded.
"I didn't do anything," Duncan scowled. "I thought about it, but I knew it wasn't right. I waited until she woke up."
"And then you nailed her," Adam pressed his luck to the limit. "Ever the gentleman." He almost never got an advantage like this, and who was he to waste it.
"Adam!" the stern and silencing command came, not from the clan chief, but from the heir.
"I do remember her sitting over there where that rug is now," he pointed behind the couch. "She was covered with steak grease, ear to ear and both hands, and her forearm, where'd she taken a swipe at wiping her mouth. I brought her a pillow for her back and then I pressed her down and then I took her. She fought at first, but then she didn't and then there was a moment when her sadness and mine, her loneliness and mine, connected somehow, and we made you, Sean, together, in a consent of equals," he chuckled, "in a storm of fire and sparks, the most spectacular Quickening I have ever experienced."
"It was a rape to begin with, Sean. I will not lie to you," Duncan put down his mug and reached across the table. He made no comment as the younger MacLeod drew away from him. "But you were not conceived in anger or cruelty or any other way, but because we loved you and brought you into being, both of us, at such a great price,
"and every bit worth it," Duncan finished.
Sean pushed up the back of the couch and rolled over it to crouch on the floor, touching his palm to the place where he came into the world. "You should have told me, Pops. Why didn't you?"
"I didn't think I could stand your hating me," Duncan replied.
"I would have found a way to understand, Pops," Sean stroked the carpet softly. "You just never gave me a chance."
And then Duncan MacLeod said something he had probably only admitted twice before in his whole long life, even to himself,
"I was afraid."
"Oh, you look so cute," Mary warbled from the day bed as Bird set about brewing the requested tea, an orange mixture that was a favorite of Master Cross. Bird cringed, but he thanked her anyway.
"I could put something on," Bird suggested.
"I'm sorry," Mary stretched into a more comfortable position, left side, pillow under belly. "I'll stop teasing you, Bird. What shall I call you?"
"My name is a joke, from the tenets of kings," Bird brought over the tea and the lemon and the lovely little blue sugar crystals that Mary, and every horse on the Cross Estates, adored. "One of the King's duties is to bring order out of chaos," he said as he poured the tea, just three drops of lemon, just two lumps of sugar. "Because we manifest--I mean we look like what we are inside--the Council, and all the Danae, for that matter, took my appearance as a sign of some essential immaturity on my part. Sip slowly, it's still quite warm.
"Well, they decided I was too disordered in their eyes, too wild, too childish, I suppose, so they took to calling me Chaos behind my back, and fairly soon to my face, and then so often and for so long that I was thereby baptized.
"Chaos at your service, Lady," he bowed his head.
"The little wispy curls are especially nice," she commented. Then she licked her lips. "Did you put something in my tea?"
"Just a little of the electrolyte solution that Horse, that Thomas uses for the colts," he replied.
"Do I look like I'm dehydrated, Chaos?"
"Just a precaution, Mary. I can remix the tea if you wish."
"What I wish," Mary sipped again. No, as with everything else, just perfect. "What I wish, you winsome little bird, is to hear the story of the honeymoon hatchet."
"It almost sounds like you were there," Chaos smiled.
"Well, Bird," Mary didn't think she would be calling him by his real name, too harsh sounding, and he was really Bird, and would always be Bird to her. "Thanks to you I have met a reasonable facsimile of Ram, of Rael, I mean, and I can easily imagine that encounter, even if I wasn't there."
"Well, then, I can hardly add anything," Bird reasoned.
"Bird," she admonished him.
"It's too sad a story for such a happy day, Mary. Don't make me tell it."
"I am sorry, Bird, but I want to know what could have compelled you to wait for me, when I was only a vision in someone else's eye and not one that you even believed in. I think I have a right to know why you did this. It is important to me, because it is so important to you. I'm so sorry it is sad, though. I hope finding me has made it easier for you."
Chaos closed his soft eyes and tilted his head a little to one side, remembering--the past, the present, all the forces that had led to this holy day.
Close your eyes, Mary, and I'll tell you a story of how very stupid an old king may be. I was king from my birth and all the ages after, though the Council chafed to be led by a "lad," still they did not complain when the battle was joined, for there was none to equal my size or my splendor in ascension. It was Heaven's Own Irony then, that in the form we take to mate, I should be in early adolescence. Yet each year I bedded and settled the five consorts, ensuring my place as the Throne of God, The Crown.
So, in that bright age when Malak was born at Bavil, it only seemed simple Fate that we would one day enter into that most holy union, the Ryn, and that our babies would be fair and fine, a blessing on the world of Men and Danaan alike.
But the vision of his Mary at the fountain that day changed simple Fate into Destiny Itself, and all of us, except the bright Lord Malak, were powerless to stop that Destiny, or even understand it.
Malak's feverish proclamations were dismissed to his youth and his vigor, but all the same there were many not a little disappointed who had set their eyes and their intentions upon the fair prince.
And there were many more who had set their intentions against me and openly suggested I might abdicate in favor of your father, Marak, who, while not a Throne Lord, was beloved of all, and much more in keeping with the image of a true king.
And this you will appreciate, I think. They hated me because they did not fear me, because, as you so aptly noted, Beloved, I do not look as if I could hurt anyone sexually. I am potent, but I am not imposing, not frightening. You have to understand that for a Danaan to manifest in Kyr, in the brooding form, is a most helpless and uncomfortable proposition. In ages farther distant even than my birth, the Ryn was a violent and bloody affair.
Each of them who came to my bed hated me because I knew their fears, and worse than this, I put their fears to rest and gave them pleasure and caring and gentleness. They were supremely grateful and ardent during the time of the Ryn, but as soon as the Hatching and their return to "manhood," they despised me all the more. I had "unmanned" them more with my kindness than the violence would have done.
I think they hated Malak because he was too much man, as well as being unattainable as a partner, because of his vow.
They hated me because I was too little man, all the more because of their relief that they would not have to deal with a brute when it came time to clutch.
What I wrote in Adam's journal is essentially what happened. My tenderness failed to persuade Malak and when I forced the issue, I got an axe in my face for my transgression. But Rael Malach was my fifth consort for that year and if I failed to settle her, then I would have been overthrown. For both of our protection, I bound her, but I never hurt her. I thought, "She will lose these silly notions when she is brooding the clutch and all will be right with us again."
But of course, she never did, and it never was. Rael was so sick of heart that she nearly lost all the babes. Only Adam survived. As soon as she could manage it, Rael escaped and rode into the wilds of the Westron Steppes.
I went after her, but I was too late. Rael was already dying when I found her, ravaged and torn, devastated in body and spirit, she had been too weak to defend herself against the barbarians, too dissipated to manifest.
Dying in my arms, she made me vow to take up her vision, to find you and save you and father her children, and to raise her only son and see to his safety and care.
I took her to Last Gate and vowed there to take her place in the world, to lead the life I had stolen from her, to raise the son I had forced upon her,
...to atone for the terrible deed which had turned my love and my desire into a cruelty most foul.
I left Rael Malach at Last Gate that terrible day, and I believe with all my heart that he stands there, waiting, still.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
"Oh, Bird," Mary pushed back a little and patted the bed, indicating he should sit down, now he was done with the story. "It is sad, Bird. I am sorry. Tell me when I can ask one, no, two more questions.""Now, Mary," Bird perched a moment and then he was gone again, cleaning the tea tray, fluffing the quilts, always in motion. "Now is good," he called over his shoulder when she did not reply.
"You know I was raised in Catholic boarding schools," Mary began, "so I can't help asking this next question."
"And I can't help not answering it, Beloved," Bird hastened to interject.
"No?" Mary pouted.
"I can't speak about this directly, Mary. It is not allowed. But listen closely and I'll remind you that you have already received your answer, though you don't remember it."
"Chirp, chirp, chirp," Mary implied he was making senseless bird song again.
"You remember almost three decades back, Mary? When you were off for the weekend and your mother came down from London to spend the day?" Bird looked for a sign of recognition, but Mary just shook her head. Bird tried again, "You had just gone to a movie, a lovely piece about faith and duty and how the two may be made to coincide in the face of honor."
"Bird!"
"It was about the early Olympics and the holy man who couldn't race on Sundays," he said.
"Oh, yes--Chariots. I do remember. But what has that to do--?"
"Think hard, Mary Dear. You were sitting at that outside cafe, having an early dinner after the show. You were arguing about the lyrics to the poem by Blake on which the title was based--" Bird prompted.
Mary shook her head. "It seemed I never talked to Mom but only argued."
"She said it started with 'bring me my chariots of fire,' and you said--" he was coming just about as close to the subject as he dared and still Mary had not remembered well enough, the answer to the unasked question.
"I sort of remember," Mary tried to think. So long ago, another life away from now. "I started singing. I remember that: And did these feet, in ancient times, walk upon England's mountains green?--Oh, yes, now I remember! That rude man came up behind me and hissed in my ear and Mom told him to get lost."
"I saw," Bird said softly.
"You were there?" Mary found this a little disturbing somehow.
"I am the proverbial Hound of Heaven," he laughed. "At least where you are concerned."
"Oh, Bird," she giggled, "a wicked king and a stalker!"
"I have often wondered what He said to you, Beloved," Bird continued. "He hardly ever speaks to people in public anymore."
"You don't mean? Oh, Lord!"
"Precisely, Mary. If it's not too much--could you tell me what he said?"
"Just one word, and it made no sense--" she paused, "at the time, but now I see, I DO see!" She grabbed Bird and hugged him around the waist. "Oh what gifts we are given," she proclaimed, "and we never even know!"
Bird melted in her arms and leaned down to kiss her forehead.
"I asked Blake's question: Did these feet in ancient times, Walk upon England's mountains green?
"And he said, 'Yes.' "
"I think I'd like to go for another swim," Mary started to push up to sitting.
Bird pressed her back to the pillows and sat down beside her. "You forgot your second question?"
"I seem to have done," Mary felt suddenly very drowsy and stupid. "And after that answer, who needs another question."
"Perhaps it was about the war with the mortals," he suggested.
"No."
"Or how the Council reacted when I told them I would be celibate in my mourning for Rael, and there was nothing they could do about it?" Bird stroked her cheek. "Or maybe 'how many angels can dance--?' "
"Or how about: Why don't you let me up so I can go swim, eh, Bird?"
"Please, Mary, you have to be very still," Bird said, then he added, "It is time to decide now."
"You could at least wait until I deliver," Mary snapped. "And besides, I already told you. I have decided to live."
"You have delivered, Mary," Bird said carefully, "all but the last and that babe is too large for you to deliver. The baby is beginning to die, Mary. You have to decide soon."
It was no good asking when she had delivered. He had done something to soften the memory, but it was still there, linked in with the balneary tubes and the fall and the dolphin wall and the bower. "Why didn't you let me hold them?" she wailed.
"Oh, Beloved, you did not want to see them. You were too afraid."
"What I want is NOT always what's best, Bird!" she screeched.
"It is the adrenaline, Mary," Bird spoke soothingly. "You have lost a lot of blood and your body is responding to the shock."
"Why didn't I deliver in a hospital? Why didn't I make Mother stay to help? Why Bird?"
Bird shook his head. "It wasn't possible and they would have killed all the children or worse with their ignorance and curiosity. You know that your Mother would have stayed were it possible. I am sorry, but I am all there is, and powerful as I am, still I can bring you back from Last Gate, or I can bring the Child, but I cannot do both, much as I wish it were elsewise."
"It's Piper, isn't it, Bird?"
"What?"
"I know the tradition, to name the children at Hatching, but Sean's little lady was so, so definite and funny. She was like a Puck or a Robin Goodfellow or Tom Bombadil, an Elemental, you know? So I took to calling her Piper."
"Oh, of course, for Piper at the Gates of Dawn. How lovely, Mary. Yes, it is Piper," he intoned.
Mary collapsed in his arms. How could it be so dreadful? Sean did not even believe about Piper, but she would be born for him--if she were born. Why couldn't Malak, the true Malak's, waiting be met by the coming of Piper to Last Gate, instead of herself. How could she go on living if she knew she had killed a child to do so? How could she leave Dear Bird so terribly alone for all eternity? No matter what she decided, many would suffer, and it would all be her fault.
"Oh, I can't decide Bird. Help me!"
"It is not allowed. I cannot sway you, because, because--" Bird's soft, bright eyes grew brighter and welled.
"Because you fell in love with me when you weren't supposed to," Mary finished. "Because you want me to stay with you and you think you have betrayed your vow because of that."
"Come," he said lightly, "I know who will help you, even if I cannot."
"HorseMaster," Sean whispered into the phone. "No, I can't speak up. Pops and Dahm are in the next room and I don't want to worry them if this is nothing. Have you tried to contact the Estates? Dragon won't answer. The 'puter won't answer. Can you get through?"
Sean pushed a button above the toilet and a shelf rolled out instead of the old-fashioned lids. He sat down and waited on hold, while Thomas checked the lines. He hoped his parents would stay asleep. They were both exhausted. He had himself settled down on the couch for a "warm winter's nap," but a terror, in the form of his dead Grandfather, Connor, had awakened him. He had come in here to call and see if Mary was all right.
"Yes? Oh, you neither. Oh, Tom, I think something is wrong with Mary," Sean put words to the indistinct fear that was still building beneath his heart though he was now wide awake. Yes. Yes, the roof. I understand. You'll start for the dojo by car and I'll call you from the Hover with Grant if I can get through and nothing's wrong there. If not, then you can bring Pops and Dahm. We should get there in twenty minutes, even with Mr. Granite weighing the hover down.
"Nooo, don't tell him I said that. Sheesh. Five minutes, I'll be up on the roof.
"And, Thomas--?
"Say a prayer for Mary."
Mary let her eyes grow accustomed to the half light and the vaporous ground cloud. This was a very different place from the cozy knoll where she met with Bird usually. It was dark and dreary and seemed to stretch on forever, even though she couldn't see much farther than ten yards in any direction because of the dank mists everywhere.
"I thought there would be a bright light," Mary said, trying to make a joke, but the sound of her voice in this place was as flat and affectless as the jest. She looked down, but her feet disappeared under the fog carpet. Before she could voice her fears, a bright voice called out and the mist parted.
"I'm sorry, Child," the great white bear proclaimed. "I did not mean to be late."
"Oh, Father!" Mary threw her arms around the thick fur of his neck. "You came. You came!"
"I told you I would take you, Little Mary. Here," he plopped down on his belly and waited for her to mount, then he rose like a mountain and lumbered forward down a path that only he could see.
"But I haven't decided," Mary murmured trying not to give in to the peaceful sway of his comforting fur. "Bird said he would find me someone to help me decide. Did he mean you, Father?"
"Oh, no, Child. I would not presume, but we will be there shortly. Have no fear, Little Mary. You are not alone in this." The Bear rumbled from somewhere deep inside the great barrel of his chest, not so much a growl as a reassuring hum.
Bird will tear me apart to save the baby, Mary thought, Or he will tear the baby apart to save me. Poor Bird. What a terrible price he has paid for a single mistake so long ago.
"We are here, Mary," Marak, the Bear--sometimes Mark Palmer, and ever Mary's Loving Father--said, waking her from her grim reveries.
"Where?" she asked, slipping down the broad slope of his shoulders.
"They are coming, Mary," he nudged her forward with his cold, black nose. "Go on, now it's not too far and they will meet you before you are halfway there."
Mary peered through the fog and saw two people coming towards them. She turned to ask the Bear who they were, but he was gone, vanished. When she looked back, the two had nearly closed the distance to her. A sudden spasm of fear made her curse Bird for bringing her to this disturbing place to be all alone, with no help for her decision at all, and strangers coming to bother her besides.
One was tall and one was shorter, but both of the shadow people were taller than Mary. When they got close enough to make her really tremble, the tall--man in a cloak, she thought--one stopped and sent the other one on ahead of him.
What now? Mary wondered. How could these strange shadow folk be any help at all? She felt so odd and disconnected that it was starting to make her nauseous, and all she wanted to do was go home and curl up under one of Bird's furs. "Go away," she said feebly.
"I will if you want me to, Dear." The light came up in the woman's face.
"Mother?" Mary lunged forward, answering her own question with an embrace of love and gladness and sheer relief. "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Oh, Mother! Did you die?"
"As a matter of fact," Anne laughed. It was such a happy sound, uncluttered by the care and restlessness that Mary usually associated with her mother. "I didn't quite make it down to 'Couver after all. Poor Stoner. You must tell him I am all right, if you see him again."
"All right?" Mary gasped. "You're dead! How all right is that?"
Anne didn't really answer. She just laughed again as if that were the silliest thing she'd ever heard.
Mary remembered why she was here. She started to explain to her mother, so Anne could help her decide.
Anne raised her palms. Her hands were smooth and graceful as an artist. The knuckles did not protrude anymore and the tendons no longer stood out in high relief like rigorous claws. "I am not the one to say, Mary. I am only here to introduce you to someone I think you might know." She kissed Mary on the forehead. "Don't be afraid, Honey. Whatever will happen will happen, and when it does, I will be here."
Mary opened her eyes and Anne, despite her promise, wasn't there at all. Only the tall man in the cloak remained to bother her. Oh, very well, she thought, Might as well be done with this. "Who--?" she began to ask, but the cloak unfurled high above the man's shoulders and he stepped into the light and all other words she might have said, or any decisions she might have made were suddenly rendered moot.
It was as if her heart had leapt from her breast and manifested itself before her in a glowing illumination of timeless courage and splendid tenderness. Mary did not even feel herself moving toward him. She only knew the instant when she was at last complete, drifting at utter peace within his arms.
There was nothing outside of this blessed circle, everything within it, and the only sadness she felt was an indistinct regret that those who remained outside of the light were not already here.
Bird dimmed his inner sight and looked away from the two whom he loved above all others. Because of the damnation, Bird would never die, but their rapture had killed something in him nonetheless. He was not brave enough to see more. Instead he focused on his hands and the treasure therein.
His chest and arms and face were smeared, as they had been the night of Sean's conception, but he saw only the wonder which Mary had left them, her blessing to the generations. Her particular blessing on Sean MacLeod.
Tiny as a hope,
Brilliant as a star,
Piper,
At the Gates of Dawn.
