Epilogue
And so, if you could exit a trap of velvet and gold, amid all the confusion… if you could follow the fading trail of dead friends to the Sunset Lands… would you? There was certainly chaos and clamor enough to let one of those wretched unwilling princes get away. Both of them wanted to leave. Which one of them actually made it?
The war bells rang continuously over Karellon. Emperor Ildarion was dead, his exiled once-nameless son returned from long banishment. The gods were no more; shattered to dust or else taking a last-ditch physical form. Magic was ebbing away like a silvery tide. Meanwhile, the rank stench of fire and death clamped down like a pall over Five Points, the city’s fractured bone of a main square.
Val could help out, so he did; tending those wounded folk that a healer’s touch could revive, easing passage for the others. His great-grandfather Alexion stood a few hundred yards away, arranging a funeral pyre for Ilarion’s battered corpse and that of Prince Korvin. Of Nalderick, Magister Serrio and Lady Sheraza, there was no sign… but the dead were piled up in limb-tangled drifts, sightless, scorched and dripping. The missing ones might have been anywhere. Tough to say, as smoke and prayers and screams filled the air; as war bells thundered and pealed.
Val turned to Alfea, his wife (safe and whole despite everything, with little Bean drowsing close to her heart).
“I haven’t the patience or time to sort out relative rank, Fee,” he said to the violet-haired sprite. “I won’t try to give you an order, but this is a dangerous place for you and the baby. I would… be clearer of mind, freer to act, if I knew that the two of you were safe back home in Illyrian.”
She was a Quetzali princess, he’d discovered. A glorious, powerful being who’d disguised herself, diminished her magic for love of him.
“You are planning to leave,” she guessed or foresaw, her blue eyes gazing directly into his own very grey ones. Though the chaos and noise of that ruined fairground was tremendous, Valerian was a high-elf and Alfea just a little less than a goddess. They could easily filter out noise and commotion to speak.
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“Yes,” he said honestly. “I owe Gildyr’s folk the truth of what happened to him. I mean to render my thanks and (if needed) my service. After that… Filimar and Cinda have got to be somewhere. Merlo took them from me inside the great machine, when he was still a vampyre. Fate has restored him to life, along with the banshee. Whatever grip he had on my heart-friends is broken. I… would seek them, Fee. I would learn what’s become of them, and of Salem.”
Alfea nodded, first shifting the baby, then pulling a gauzy cloth over her chubby small face to defend her from smoke. The fey-lights added their bit, as well, buzzing small wings to keep away corpse-dust and fumes.
“Then we shall come with you, Van,” Alfea decided, lifting her chin. “You are going to end up in trouble. You always do, only this time, I will be there to help keep your hide unpierced and your heart defended, when the way grows dark and uncertain.”
He ought to have tried to forbid her; used slow-time, or something. Instead, placing a finger in Bean’s little fist, Val said,
“She would be safer in the palace than out on the road, Fee. I do not intend to bring a whole entourage.”
Alfea snorted rudely.
“Safe, smothered, bounded by rules and traditions,” argued his beautiful wife. “The very things you seek to escape, Van. You’d risk your life to bring news to the Greenwood and chase after ghosts, all to avoid being placed on a throne.”
He smiled, not denying the truth of her words.
“And you left the heavens to marry a foolish young elf,” he reminded her. “Would they take you back?” Val wondered. “Would your folk grant escape from this nightmare of chaos and blood?”
Alfea stepped into Valerian’s arms, closing her eyes. He was careful of her wing-buds, holding her close and bending his head to hers as she murmured,
“I spent most of my time avoiding just that, Van. If you had ever seen me in my true form, I would have had to leave you and Bean, forever.”
But the gods and their rules were no more, except for Firelord, trapped in the heart of that awful machine, like Sherazedan before him. As Val was meant to be. Would have been, had his god not taken his place… and that was debt that he had to repay. Here and now, though,
“You told me to leave you alone on the fourteenth day of each month, and I did. I’ve read all the Epics, and I’m not a complete idiot,” he whispered into her shimmering lavender hair. Then, “If you refuse to be safe, I suppose that we’ll have to escape this place together, Fee. You, me and the little one. The court can find somebody else’s rump to warm up their wretched throne.”
…and maybe together they’d find those whose absence still bled like a death wound. Maybe they’d find a way to free the last god. Maybe...
Because stories and roads never end.
