Julian spoke in a frantic, panting whisper, as if he feared he might give way to gibbering panic at any moment. “The crown. It lacks only the crown. That’s how it will happen. The—the other one will enter through my mind, inhabit my body, and make it immortal. I have to—I have to give up my head.”

Chance regarded the man with amazement. “And how do you propose to do that?”

Julian’s hands twitched toward him in a helpless motion. He tried to say something but kept silent.

“You expect me to kill you?” Chance guessed.

“Send me where the rest went,” Julian pleaded. “That should do it.”

“The rest died long before you came here. Those you met in my labyrinth were shadows and echoes. This,” said Chance, digging his heel into the soft desert sand, “is real.”

“Then—then kill me! Yes! That should do it! I should die before becoming immortal. It makes perfect sense!”

Chance shook his head in pity. “More than you realize, and yet not so. I do not have the authority to kill you, as much as I would like to.”

He turned away and started walking toward the slowly growing light at the line of land and sky.

“Wait! Wait! If this is real . . . you can’t leave me to die in the desert!”

“Why not?” Chance asked calmly without turning back or slowing down.

“It has to be done properly!”

“Not by me.” He stopped short and looked more closely at the dawn. “Not by me,” he said again, turning around to face Julian.

They moved like slow lightning or a groundling star, the sword plowing a line of flame in the sand behind them. Julian barely had time to realize that the stunned expression on Chance’s face was not for him, barely had time to start to turn around, and then the blade and flame were at his neck and all was asunder, dry bones and tattered clothes flung to the sand. It was quick, carried out with the skill of an executioner accustomed to taking life with Time instead of edged metal.

“It is done,” they declared without sorrow, without anger. “It is accomplished.”

“You killed him,” Chance said, voice hushed in wonder. “I didn’t—”

The angel looked at him. It was a look that promised no explanation, no apology. Chance met the look and nodded with all the deference of a junior to a senior.

“Thank you, Uriel,” was all he said.

Uriel inclined their head. All around, the horizon blazed with a light that no longer resembled dawn. The angel stooped, took up the smooth, empty skull that had belonged to a living man, and held it out to Chance. “Are you ready?”

Somber, Chance replied, “Now I am.”

He knew where to go. He did not take the hollow skull with him. He did not have to.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR