The strange woman was still there.
Alfred gasped, shuddered, leaned heavily against the crystal chamber. What was happening? Was he going insane?
“It’s quite likely,” he said. “After all I’ve been through. Perhaps Lya was never there at all. Perhaps I only willed her to be there and now, after all this time away, I can’t call her to mind.”
He looked again, but if his mind was truly behaving irrationally, it was doing it in a most rational manner. The woman was older than Lya, close to Alfred’s age, he guessed. Her hair was completely white; her face—a handsome face, he thought, gazing at it in sorrowful confusion—had lost the elasticity and smooth beauty of youth. But she had gained, in exchange, the becoming gravity and purpose of middle age.
Her expression was solemn and grave, yet softened by lines around that mouth that seemed to indicate a warm and generous smile had graced her lips. A line down the center of her forehead, barely visible beneath the soft folds of her hair, indicated that her life had not been easy, that she had pondered much, thought long and hard about many things. And there was a sadness about her. The smile that touched the lips had not touched them often. Alfred felt a deep hunger and an aching unhappiness. Here was someone he could have talked to, someone who would have understood.
But . . . what was she doing here?
“Lie down. I must lie down.”
Blindly, his vision clouded by his confused thoughts, Alfred stumbled and groped his way along the wall that held many crystal chambers until he came to his own. He would return to it, lie down, sleep … or maybe wake up. He might be dreaming. He—
“Blessed Sartan!” Alfred fell back with a hoarse cry.
Someone was in it! His chamber! A man of early middle years, with a strong, cold, handsome face; strong hands stretched out at his side.
“I am mad!” Alfred clutched at his head. “This . . . this is impossible.” He stumbled back to stare at the woman who was not Lya. “I’ll shut my eyes and when I open them, all will be well again.”
But he didn’t shut his eyes. Not trusting himself to believe what he thought he’d seen, he looked fixedly at the woman. Her hands were folded across her breast—
The hands. The hands moved! They rose . . . fell! She had drawn a breath.
He watched closely for long moments; the magical stasis in which they lay slowed breathing. The hands rose and fell again. And now that Alfred was over his initial shock, he could see the faint flush of blood in the woman’s cheeks, a flush that he would never see in Lya’s.
“This woman’s . . . alive!” Alfred whispered.
He staggered across to the crystal chamber that had been his own, but was now another’s, and stared inside it. The man’s clothing—a plain, simple, white robe—stirred. Eyeballs beneath closed lids moved; a finger twitched.
Feverishly, his mind overwhelmed, his heart almost bursting with joy, Alfred ran from one crystal chamber to another, staring inside each.
There could be no doubt. Every one of these Sartan was alive!
Exhausted, his mind reeling, Alfred returned to the center of the mausoleum and tried to unravel the tangled skein of his thoughts. It was impossible. He couldn’t find the end of the thread, couldn’t find the beginning.
His friends in the mausoleum had been dead for many, many years. Time and again he’d left them, time and again he’d returned, and nothing had ever changed. When he’d first realized that he and he alone, out of all the Sartan on Arianus, had survived, he’d refused to believe it. He’d played a game with himself, told himself that this time, when he came back, he’d find them alive. But he never had, and soon the game became so exceedingly painful that he’d quit playing it.
But now the game was back on and, what’s more, he’d won!
Admittedly these Sartan were strangers, every one of them. He had no idea how they came to be here, or why, or what had happened to those he’d left behind. But these people were Sartan and they were alive!