‘Go – on – without – me.’ He began to crawl towards the border. ‘Go – on. Go.’

He was sinking slowly back down into the black waters, drowning, drowning…

‘Go,’ he whispered, falling forward.

Sliding slowly into the heart of the Rose, from black petal to black petal, soft velvet kiss of oblivion…

At the Rose’s burning core a figure opens its arms to embrace, to enfold.

The Lotos Priestess opens the gateway to the incandescent heart of the mystery…

Black melds into white. The Rose is One with the Lotos.

The mud-spattered coach lurched across the border into Tourmalise.

‘I can’t leave him here alone!’ cried Khassian. ‘I can’t –’

Orial let out a hoarse cry. She started up – hands raised, palms outward. Her eyes slid upwards until only the whites showed.

‘Sweet Mhir, not you too,’ Khassian whispered.

Words issued from her mouth. Incomprehensible words. Gibberish, maybe – but there was a coherence to them that implied a language with which he was not familiar.

‘Orial,’ he crooned, holding her rigid body in his arms. Tears were streaming down his cheeks unchecked. ‘Orial.’

The Tourmalise border guards approached the traveller warily. Was he drunk? One of them knelt down beside him and gently turned him over.

Even in the lantern-light, they could see that he was not drunk. His lips were blue-tinged, his eyes glazed, unfocussed.

The blue lips moved a fraction. The border guard leanted near, to catch what the Captain was trying to say.

The last whispered syllable died in a hoarse rattle – and the Captain’s head slipped sideways.

It was then that the phaeton arrived out of the darkness.

‘Papers!’ demanded the guard.

A woman came running over – and stopped, seeing the body, hands clasped over her mouth, as if to stifle a cry.

‘Acir,’ she said. She dropped to her knees. ‘Acir!’

‘You know this man?’ asked the guard.

She extended one hand and tremblingly drew her fingers down over the lids, closing the sightless blue eyes.

She knelt there, head bowed. Her shoulders began to shake with suppressed sobs but she made no sound. The guards looked on, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot.

When she raised her head, she seemed to have taken control of herself.

‘Did he – did he say anything before he died?’ she asked in a toneless voice.

They nodded.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said… “Elesstar”.’

CHAPTER 25

Dawn was breaking over Sulien as the battered fiacre came slowly down the green mountain road into the valley of the Avenne.

Khassian opened his eyes to the clear light. Orial’s head lay against his shoulder. They must both have fallen asleep, lulled by the dragging pace of the spent horses. The arm he had wrapped around her had gone numb – excruciatingly numb, threatening pins and needles – and yet he was loath to wake her.

There was a kind of trust in the way her body had moulded itself to his in sleep, born not just of exhaustion but of familiarity.