“You have two wives at least that I know of,” I said primly, an effort in itself as my heart was going like mad. It wasn’t that I was so bowled over at the thought of being an empress, not even a princess or queen but an empress, and of Atlan—Well, it wasn’t all that—but mainly because I was to be his wife, the first one he had ever married without the ulterior motive of rising in the world.

He yawned loudly. “Them? What, one princess in the Southern Court and the other in the Northern, both soon to be conquered by me? When one is an Emperor one can start over again as far as wives are concerned.”

I didn’t really take to the sound of that plural. “You really think I’m worthy of this honour?”

The sarcasm went right over his head. “If,” he said seriously “it had ever occurred to me (which of course it never did) to wish for some particular kind of a girl, you are what I would have wished for.”

“You’ll look after me? And be with me? And not put me 472

aside when someone greater comes by? But then, I suppose no one can be much higher than Empress of Atlan and Southemland and the Northkingdom.”

“And you can’t have forgotten you’re a Goddess, too? I’ll even have the gold-coin-floor of the Northern King transferred here for you.”

“Smahil said it must be mythical. He said gold is so soft they’d lose their imprint as soon as they were walked on and might as well not have been coins in the first place.”

He laughed. “That up-and-coming young officer was far too smart. Gold coins are invariably made with an alloy that hardens them. Look—hail coming down outside.” He reached out into the shimmer and clatter, said, “Open your mouth.” I thought of the wrath, the heart of Atlan pouring out its icy lament, its last passionate protest, but I let him feed me hailstones. It was good to be foolish with him, to forget the passion he had aroused for he would lift me high above it. Presently he said softly, “Would you mind if I held you?”

So I discovered that Zerd’s neck is eight kisses long.

He has won. It is all over, all defence, all despair, the purpose and the fighting done with. And I am held in the arms of the death’s head, close to it, separated from its corruptness only by his body’s and young soul’s own ignorance of the corruptness time will break him to, separated from the corruption of earthly war itself only by time and his present ignorance and glory, the blaze of his beauty and arrogance and his body’s noknowledge and I love him.

EPILOGUE