But Niren was suddenly, horribly still. Her breathing stopped. Her pulse was gone.
“Where is the physician?” Eda demanded. “WHERE IS THE PHYSICIAN?”
“Here, Your Imperial Majesty.”
The physician rushed into the room, Ileem hard on her heels.
Eda clung to her friend. “Bring her back. Do you hear me? BRING HER BACK!”
The physician stepped over to the bed, felt for Niren’s pulse, shook her head. “I’m sorry, Your Imperial Majesty. She’s gone.”
“She can’t be gone.”
“Eda.” Ileem came up beside her. He loosened her hand from Niren’s, drew her to her feet. “She’s gone, Eda. She’s gone.”
Mutely, Eda allowed herself to be led from the room, ears ringing, eyes unseeing.
It didn’t make any sense.
Gods above, it didn’t make any sense.
She couldn’t be gone.
Shecouldn’t.
And yet somehow, she was.
They laid Niren to rest in the Place of Kings the night before Eda and Ileem were to be married. Ileem stood beside her, both of them breaking the Denlahn custom of isolation. She was glad he was there, glad he deemed her more important than his traditions. His presence made the world a little less sharp, a little more stable. Even so she could hardly bear to stand there, watching the guards lower Niren’s coffin into the ground, while Niren’s ghost stared at her from among the other tombs.
Besides Ileem and Eda’s guards, the only other person in attendance was one of the new priestesses. There hadn’t been time to send for Niren’s family, and Eda was ignoring all kinds of rules by burying her friend in the Place of Kings. But Niren deserved to be laid to rest with honor. She deserved to be among kings. It was all Eda could do for her.
Tuer’s voice, forgotten almost in the weight of the years, echoed in her mind:The gods will have their payment.
Ileem folded Eda’s hand in his own, steady and solemn beside her.
The priestess, a girl of perhaps fifteen, uttered the formal words of burial in her wispy voice: “May your spirit be gathered beyond the Circles of the world and your body rest quiet until the end of time, when the world is unmade.”
“Until the end of time,” Eda, Ileem, and the guards chorused together. “When the world is unmade.”
Eda turned away as the guards shoveled earth into the grave and erected the memorial stone. She couldn’t watch. She let go of Ileem’s hand and wound through the other memorials and tombs to the old temple’s doorway, following the steps down into the darkness. He didn’t follow, sensing her need for solitude. She lit a candle and placed it on the ancient altar. A smear of ashes and oil still stained the floor from her last visit. The air was close and dank in here; she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.
She paced the tiny chamber, footsteps raising clouds of dust.
Every part of her blazed with anger. Every part of her pulsed with pain. She beat her fists against the stone, like she’d done as a child. She screamed her wordless rage into the echoing room, and dropped at last to her knees.
“You tricked me,” she spat at the dust. “I kept my promise, and you took Niren anyway.You tricked me.”
The words from the story in Niren’s book filled her mind:
But what is greater than time? What can contain it?
He didn’t think of love, which would have led him straight to the realm of the One and then home again, for he had not experienced love in the same way as mankind.
But he had known sorrow.
She climbed the stairs back out into the night, where Ileem was waiting for her—the priestess had gone, and the guards hung back at a respectful distance.
And there he sits still, in the midst of the Circle of Sorrow that he made for himself.
