The ledge trembled beneath Paithan’s feet. Another giant joined its fellow, large fingers grabbing, gripping. Paithan looked down at the huge hands with a terrible kind of fascination, saw that the fingers were stained red with dried blood.
The giants pulled, the fungus shivered, and Paithan heard it ripping away from the tree. Almost losing their balance, the elf and human clung to each other.
“Paithan!” Rega cried, her voice breaking, “I’m sorry! I love you. I truly do!”
Paithan wanted to answer, but he couldn’t. Fear had closed off his throat, stolen his breath.
“Kiss me!” Rega gasped. “That way, I won’t see-”
He caught hold of her head in his hands, blocking her vision. Closing his own eyes, he pressed his lips against hers.
The world dropped out from underneath them.
CHAPTER 18
SOMEWHERE ABOVE PRYAN
HAPLO, DOG AT HIS FEET, SAT NEAR THE STEERING STONE ON THE BRIDGE
and gazed wearily, hopelessly out the window of the Dragon Wing. They had been flying for how long?
“A day,” Haplo answered with bitter irony. “One long, stupid, dull, everlasting day.”
The Patryns had no timekeeping devices, they did not need them. Their magical sensitivity to the world around them kept them innately aware of the passage of time in the Nexus. But Haplo had learned by previous experience that the passage through the Death’s Gate and entering into another world altered the magic. As he became acclimated to this new world, his body would realign itself to it. But for right now, he had no idea how much time had truly passed since he had entered Pryan.
He wasn’t accustomed to eternal sunshine, he was used to natural breaks in the rhythm of his life. Even in the Labyrinth there was day and night. Haplo had often had reason to curse the coming of night in the Labyrinth, for with night came darkness and, under the cover of darkness came your enemies. Now he would have fallen on his knees and begged for the blessed respite from the blazing sun, for the blessed shadow that brought rest and sleep-no matter how guarded.
The Patryn had been alarmed to catch himself, after another sleepless sun-lit “night,” seriously considering gouging out his own eyes.
He knew, then, that he was going mad.
The hellish terror of the Labyrinth had not been able to defeat him. What another might consider heaven-peace and quiet and eternal light-would be his downfall.
“It figures,” he said, and he laughed and felt better. He had staved away insanity for the time being, though he knew it wasn’t far off.
Haplo had food and he had water. As long as he had some left of either, he could conjure more. Unfortunately, the food was always the same food, for he could only reproduce what he had, he couldn’t alter its structure and come up with something new. He soon grew so sick of dried beef and peas that he had to force himself to eat. He hadn’t thought to bring a variety. He hadn’t expected to be trapped in heaven.
A man of action, forced to inactivity, he spent much of his time staring fixedly out the windows of his ship. The Patryns do not believe in God. They consider themselves (and grudgingly their enemies, the Sartan) the nearest to divine beings existent. Haplo could not pray for this to end, therefore. He could only wait.
When he first sighted the clouds, he didn’t say anything, refusing to admit even to the dog that they might be able to escape their winged prison. It could have been an optical illusion, a trick of the eyes that will see water in a desert. It was, after all, nothing more than a slight darkening of the green-blue sky to a whitish gray.
He took a quick walk around the ship, to compare what he saw ahead of him with what lay behind and all around.
And then it was, staring up into the sky from the ship’s top deck, that he saw the star.
“This is the end,” he told the dog, blinking at the white light Sparkling above him in the hazy, blue-green distance. “My eyes are going.” Why hadn’t he noticed stars before? If it was a star.