I thought again of the lavender link between the twins and wondered if a spirit-bond could be so strong that it would bind two people even when one was dying, so that both would die. Then another thought struck me. Could a link forged between two spirits last even beyond death? I was thinking of Miryum and Straaka now, of the look on the coercer’s face when Straaka fell and she knew that she loved him, and of the dreams in the dream-books that had described a cord or rope running from one of them to the other. Was it possible that the link was strong enough to keep Straaka’s spirit from entering the mindstream?

I wondered what the link that Rushton and I had forged between us this night would mean in the future. Perhaps I should have been afraid, but I could only feel comforted by the thought that the link would endure, no matter that we would never see one another again.

I looked down at Rushton. His bright spirit overspilled the dull shadow that was his flesh in a shimmering multitude of blue hues that flowed and melded, broken by occasional streaks of yellow-green. My own fleshy form, lying cradled against his chest, was barely visible to my spirit-eyes, lacking the overlay of spirit, but the cord that pulsed from Rushton’s spirit to my spirit-form seemed brighter than all else.

I felt a strong urge to run my fingers through it again, to feel an echo of what I had felt earlier, but instead I unfolded the wings of my spirit-form and rose into the air. Again I felt the tug of the golden cord, but it was no more than the slight but unfamiliar weight of it, and when I flapped my wings again and rose higher, the golden cord payed out just as smoothly as the silver etheric cord that connected me through my own flesh to the spirit stream.

So, the link would not prevent me from moving away from Rushton. I did not know whether to be glad or sorry.

It occurred to me that since I had taken on a spirit-form, I could seek out Atthis on the dreamtrails, but first I needed to ensure that the knowledge of my quest and everything linked to it, which Rushton had learned in merging with my mind, was safe and inviolable.

I dived down into Rushton’s spirit even as I had done when we were deep inside the Beforetime complex under Ariel’s residence on Norseland. I dropped through the layers of his mind, knowing there was nothing I had not already seen or known during our merge, but I was astonished to find all the layers of his mind reverberating with a lush, delicate music that I realised was the memory of our lovemaking.