What would we care for that? The dead are at peace!
And for a painless death for ourselves, would we let our world be destroyed in the fires of Sharra?
The dagger dropped from my hand. It lay on the sheets beside us, but for me it was as far away as if it were on one of the moons. I regretted bitterly that I could not give Marjorie, at least, that swift and painless death. She had suffered enough. It was right that I should live long enough to expiate my treason in suffering. It was cruel, unfair, to make Marjorie share that suffering. Yet, without her Keeper’s training, I would not live long enough to do what I must.
She opened her eyes and said tremulously, “Don’t wait, Lew. Do it now.”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“We cannot take such an easy way, beloved. Oh, we will die. But we must use our deaths. We must close the gateway into Sharra before we die and destroy the matrix if we can. We have to go into it. There’s no chance—you know there’s no chance at all—that we will live through it. But there is a chance that we will live long enough to close the gateway and save our world from being ravaged by Sharra’s fire.”
She lay looking at me, her eyes wide with shock and dread. She said in a whisper, “I would rather die.”
“So would I,” I said, “but such an easy way is not for us, my precious.”
We had sacrificed that right. I looked with longing at the little dagger and its razor sharpness. Slowly, Mariorie nodded in agreement. She picked up the little dagger, looked at it regretfully, then rose from the bed, went to the window and flung it through the narrow window-slit. She came back, slipped down beside me. She said, trying to steady her voice, “Now I cannot lose my courage again.” Then, though her eyes were still wet, her voice held just a hint of the old laughter. “At least we will spend one night together in a proper bed.”
Can a night last a lifetime?
Perhaps, If you know your lifetime is measured in a single night.
I said hoarsely, drawing her into my arms again, “Let’s not waste any of it.”
Neither of us was strong enough for much physical love-making. Most of that night we spent resting in each other’s arms, sometimes talking a little, more often caressing one another in silence. From long training at disciplining unwelcome or dangerous thoughts, I was able to put away almost completely all thought of what awaited us tomorrow. Strangely enough, my worst regret was not for death, but for the long, quiet years of living together which we would never know, for the poignant knowledge that Mariorie would never know the hills near Armida, that she would never come there as a bride. Toward morning Marjorie cried a little for the child she would not live long enough to bear. Finally, cradled in my arms, she fell into a restless sleep. I lay awake, thinking of my father and of my unborn son, that too-fragile spark of life, barely kindled and already extinguished. I wished Marjorie had been spared that knowledge, at least. No, it was right that someone should weep for it, and I was beyond tears.
Another death to my account…
At last, when the rising sun was already staining the distant peaks with crimson, I slept too. It was like a final grace of some unknown goddess that there were no evil dreams, no nightmares of fire, only a merciful darkness, the dark robe of Avarra covering our sleep.
I woke still clasped in Marjorie’s arms. The room was full of sunlight; her golden eyes were wide, staring at me with fear.
“They will come for us soon,” she said.
I kissed her, slowly, deliberately, before I rose. “So much the less time of waiting,” I said, and went to draw back the bolt. I dressed myself in my best, defiantly digging from my packs my finest silk under-tunic, a jerkin and breeches of gold-colored dyed leather. A Comyn heir did not go to his death like a common criminal being hanged! Some such emotion must have been in Marjorie yesterday, for she had evidently put on her finest gown, pale-blue, woven of spider-silk and cut low across the breasts. Instead of her usual plaits, she coiled her hair high atop her head with a ribbon. She looked beautiful and proud. Keeper, comynara.