'I do not understand you,' the Mhybe replied, faltering as despair slowly stole through her. This was not the place she had believed it to be. She had indeed fled to another person's prison, a place of personal madness. 'I came here for death-'
'You'll not find it, not in these leathery arms.'
'I am fleeing my daughter-'
'Flight is an illusion. Even Mother here comprehends that. She knows I am not her child, yet she cannot help herself. She even possesses memories, of a time when she was a true Matron, a mother to a real brood. Children who loved her, and other children — who betrayed her. And left her to suffer for eternity.
'She never anticipated an escape from that. Yet when she found herself free at last, it was to discover that her world had turned to dust. Her children were long dead, entombed in their barrows — for without a mother, they withered and died. She looked to you, then, Seer. Her adopted son. And showed you your power, so that she could use it. To recreate her world. She raised her dead children. She set them to rebuilding the city. But it was all false, the delusion could not deceive her, could only drive her mad.
'And that,' he continued, 'is when you usurped her. Thus, her child has made her a prisoner once more. There is no escaping the paths of our lives, it seems. A truth you're not prepared to face, Seer. Not yet.'
'My child has made me a prisoner as well,' the Mhybe whispered. 'Is this the curse of all mothers?'
'It is the curse of love.'
A faint howl rang through the dark air.
'Hear that?' the man asked. 'That is my mate. She's coming. I looked for so long. For so long. And now, she's coming.'
The voice had acquired a deeper timbre with these words. It seemed to be no longer the man's voice.
And now,' the words continued, 'now, I answer.'
His howl tore through her, flung her mind back. Out of the cavern, out beyond the straggly forests, back onto the tundra's barren plain.
The Mhybe screamed.
Her wolves answered. Triumphantly.
They had found her once again.
A hand touched her cheek. 'Gods, that was bloodcurdling.'
A familiar voice, but she could not yet place it.
Another man spoke, 'There is more to this than we comprehend, Murillio. Look at her cheek.'
'She has clawed herself-'
'She cannot lift her arms, friend. And look, the nails are clean. She did not inflict this wound on herself.'
'Then who did? I've been here all this time. Not even the old Rhivi woman has visited since I last looked upon her — and there was no wound then.'
'As I said, there is a mystery here …'
'Coll, I don't like this. Those nightmares — could they be real? Whatever pursues her in her dreams — are they able to physically damage her?'
'We see the evidence-'
'Aye, though I scarce believe my own eyes. Coll, this cannot go on.'
'Agreed, Murillio. First chance in Capustan. '
'The very first. Let's move the wagon to the very front of the line — the sooner we reach the streets the better.'
'As you say.'
CHAPTER TWENTY
It is a most ancient tale. Two gods from before the time of men and women. Longing and love and loss, the beasts doomed to wander through the centuries.
A tale of mores, told with the purpose of no resolution. Its meaning, gentle readers, lies not in a soul-warming conclusion, but in all that is unattainable in this world.
Who then could have imagined such closure?
Winter's Love
Silbaratha
The heart of the vast palace lay buried in the cliff. Seas born to the east of the bay battered the cliff's jagged hooves, lifting spray to darken the rockface. Immediately beyond the broken shore's rough spars, the waters of Coral Bay pitched into inky blackness, fathoms deep. The city's harbour was little more than a narrow, crooked cut on the lee side of the cliff, a depthless fissure that opened a split nearly bisecting the city. It was a harbour without docks. The sheer faces of the sides had been carved into long piers, surmounted by causeways. At high tide level, mooring rings had been driven into the living stone. Broad sweeps of thick netting, twice the height of an ocean trader's masts, spanned the entire breadth of water from the harbour's mouth all the way to its apex. Where no tethered anchor could touch the fjord's bottom, and where the shores themselves offered no strand, no shallows whatsoever, a ship's anchors were drawn upward. The cat-men, as they were called — that strange, almost tribal collection of workers who lived with their wives and children in shacks on the netting and whose sole profession was the winching of anchors and the tethering of sway-lines — had made of the task artistry in motion.