To the High Redoubt (50 page)

“You may try,” said the Child. “But there are two of us, and we have the strength of each, as well as the strength of both together. You will be surfeited long before we are empty.” Its smile became a beatific grin, and the light of it grew brighter
.

More staves bent toward the Child, fastening their wooden mouths wherever there was open space on the little body. Only the Subtle Centers and the head were untouched as the staves fed and fed
.

“You will be nothing! You are nothing! You are mine!” the Bundhi gloated
.

“No, you are ours,” the Child corrected him. “You have always given your staves your own fear for fodder. We do not fear.”

“You must!” the Bundhi demanded
.

“Why? Because you do?” the Child responded. “What have we to fear from you?”

“You will die!” the Bundhi thundered at the Child. “You will be nothing.”

“Not even eternity endures forever,” said the Child, watching as the first few staves dropped away from it, leaving nothing more than a small red mark on its skin. “They will all fade,” said the Child. “Including your portal, and all that you have called through it will have to gain strength from you or vanish. You have brought too much to do your bidding—you cannot give sustenance to them all.”

More than half the staves had fallen from the Child's arms and body; they lay, small, pale twigs, scattered on the plateau, light enough to be carried away on the afternoon breeze
.

“They will grow again,” The Bundhi promised
.

“We will be here when they do,” said the Child, rising from its place, nothing attached to it any longer
.

The Bundhi began to chant, but he stopped almost at once. “Why don't they answer?”

“Because we fed them, not you, and they cannot hear you now,” the Child said, a bit sadly. “The portal is failing.”

“It cannot!” the Bundhi shrieked
.

The Child put its hand on the last of the staves and watched as they shrank to little sprouts. “Your high redoubt is gone, O Bundhi.”

There was no answer. Only the wind sighed over the plateau
.

Slowly the Child walked to the edge of the plateau, then deliberately stepped off into
the ecstatically entwined bodies of Arkady Sól and Surata.

Epilogue

A confused old man sat beside the trail, his hands uselessly joined in his lap. He scowled at the tall young man leading the blind woman up the swath of the recent avalanches. As the two approached him, he crawled away, mewling in terror.

The sun stood high over the gorge; Arkady shaded his eyes to look up at it. “Well?” he said to Surata at last.

“Well?” she repeated.

“Where do we go now?”

She smiled. “Where would you like to go? What would you like to do?”

“I don't know,” he answered after a moment. “What does a man who used to be a soldier do?”

“You…could return to your homeland,” she suggested without enthusiasm.

“And do what? I am disgraced, I have no one waiting for me. Where are you going?” There was a stronger light in his eyes. “Where are
you
going, Surata?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. Perhaps Gora Čimtarga.”

At that name, the old man cried out from his hiding place.

“Gora Čimtarga? Why?” Arkady asked, looking up the narrow, rocky trail.

“It's a place to begin. It's empty. Of everything. There is no Right Hand Path or Left Hand Path there. I can make my own way.” She held out her hand to him, grateful when he took her fingers in his.

“You'll never get there on your own,” he pointed out.

She said nothing; tears stood in her blighted eyes.

“What will you do there?” He brushed a stray lock of hair off her face.

She shrugged. “Study.”

“You need two to do it properly,” he said, wishing she could see his grin. “Are you going to make me ask?” he demanded after a moment.

“Are you going to make
me?
” she countered, the tears spilling at last.

He took her into his arms, laughing though his throat was tight. “God, Surata, I was so afraid…”

She kissed him. “Haven't you learned yet that when you fear something, go toward it?”

He said nothing. Gently he wiped her tears from her cheeks. “Right. We go to Gora Čimtarga.”

She held him more tightly. “And then?”

“Who knows? First we have to get there.”

“Arkady…”

“Not ‘immai'? Not ‘champion'? Just Arkady?” he teased her kindly.

“How can I call you that when you are so many more things to me?” She was very serious now, her unseeing eyes directed at his.

“Do you think we could ever do that again?” He could not tell her what had happened to him because of their victory.

“We have accomplished it once,” she pointed out. “My father and my uncles never achieved that.”

“But we could,” he said with growing hope.

Her smile was splendid. “Yes, it's possible, if that is what we truly want to do.”

Arkady lifted her hands to his lips. “Then perhaps I should call you Child.”

“Child,” she said with him, making the word a pledge.