lined and arching brows; his skin was pallid; his cheeks hosted deep hollows
like his colossus’s where it guarded an unknown sea, so fierce that folk there
who had never heard of Sanctuary swore that in those stony caverns demons raised
their broods.
It had cost him much to take flesh and make chase. It cost him more to remove
Cime to the Mageguild’s innermost sanctum before the disturbance broke out above
the celebrants on the lawn. But he had done it.
He said to her, “Your intention, free agent, was not clear. Your resolve was not
firm. I am neither dead nor alive, because of you. Release me from this torture.
I saw in your eyes you did not truly wish my demise, nor the madness that must
come upon the world entire from the destruction of the place of salving dreams.
You have lived awhile, now, in a world where dreams cannot solve problems, or be
used to chart the future, or to heal or renew. What say you? You can change it,
bring sanity back among the planes, and love to your aching heart. I will make
you lady of Meridian. Our quays will once again rise crystal, streets will
glitter gold, and my people will finish the welcoming paean they were singing
when you shattered my heart.” As he spoke, he pulled from his vestments a
kerchief and held it out, unfolded, in his right hand. There on snowy linen
glittered the shards of the Heart ofAskelon, the obsidian talisman which her
rods had destroyed when he wore it on his wrist.
She had them out by then, taken down from her hair, and she twirled them, blue