“He was the only person you ever really got to know, wasn’t he?” she asked quietly. “He was like a brother, and you feel responsible for what happened to him?”

Menion shrugged disconsolately. “I couldn’t have done anything but what I did. Keeping him in Leah in the first place would have only prolonged the inevitable. But knowing all that doesn’t help. I still feel a sort of… guilt…”

“If he feels as deeply for you as you do for him, then he knows in his heart the truth of what you have done, wherever he is now,” she responded quickly. “No man can fault you for the courage you have shown these past five days-and I love you, Menion Leah.”

Menion stared at her stupidly, the sudden declaration catching him off balance. Laughing at his confusion, the slim girl wrapped her arms around him, the reddish locks falling like a soft veil about his face as she clung to him. Menion held her close for a moment, then gripped her shoulders gently and pushed her back to study her face and eyes. She met his gaze, squarely.

“I wanted to say it out loud. I wanted you to hear it, Menion. If we are going to die…”

She choked suddenly, on the words and looked away, and the wondering Southlander saw tears slowly roll down her cheeks. He reached up and quickly brushed them away, smiling in the old way as he raised himself to his feet, drawing her up with him.

“I came a long, long way,” he murmured gently. “I could have been dead a hundred times, but I survived. I’ve seen the evil there is in this world and in worlds that mortals only dream exist. There is nothing that can hurt us. Love supplies a kind of strength that can withstand even death. But you need a little faith. Just believe, Shirl. Believe in us.”

She smiled in spite of herself.

“I believe in you, Menion Leah. Now you remember to believe in yourself.”

The weary highlander smiled back at her, gripping her hands tightly. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he loved her as much as his own life. He leaned down and kissed her warmly.

“It will be all right,” he assured her quietly. “It will all work out.”

They remained a few minutes longer in the solitude of the gardens, talking quietly and absently following the little paths that wound through the warm, fragrant summer flowers. But Menion was fighting to remain awake, and Shirl was quick to demand that he get some sleep while he had the opportunity. Still smiling to himself, he retired to his bedchamber in the palace, where he collapsed, still fully clothed, onto one of the wide, soft beds and immediately fell into a deep, dreamless slumber. While he slept, the hours of the afternoon drifted slowly away, the sun slipping into the western sky and finally sinking in a brilliant scarlet blaze beneath the horizon. At the coming of complete darkness, the highlander awoke, fully rested but strangely disturbed. He hastened to find Shirl, and together they walked the almost deserted corridors of the Buckhannah home, searching for Hendel and the Elven brothers. The long hallways echoed the low tapping of their boots as they hastened past statue-like sentries and darkened rooms, pausing only momentarily to observe the still, deathlike form of Palance Buckhannah, as his physicians watched over him with expressionless faces. His condition remained unchanged, his wounded body and shattered spirit struggling to survive the crushing weight of a death that was slowly, inevitably pushing down against him. When the two silent forms moved at last from his bedside, there were tears again in Shirl’s dark eyes.