Shih-ka’i could no longer hear her. Light passed through her now. He shouted, “You’re forgiven.” He turned to Mist. “Princess, are you all right?”

“Yes. Just a little shaken. I thought you’d disposed of it.”

“I thought I had. We dumped the thing into a transfer with no exit side. How could it have escaped?”

The wizard Varthlokkur spoke for the first time. He sounded contemptuous. “Use your reason, Lord Ssu-ma. Time doesn’t obtain in the transfer stream. Neither does death. Now, finally, we know the nature of the horror that’s lurked there since Tuan Hua opened the first pair of portals. It was that thing.

“He found himself alive after you thought you were rid of him. He cruised back and forth across the centuries preying on unlucky travelers. He searched out the one time Ethrian made a transfer, penetrated him, and hibernated till his own absence from the present wakened him. Why do you think the boy assumed the thing’s madness so willingly? He wasn’t that sort of child. Had he not had his father’s strength and stubbornness he would have succumbed far more swiftly and completely.”

Varthlokkur turned away, took his wife from Ragnarson. “I’m sorry, dear. I tried to protect you from this.”

“You were wrong, Varth. You shouldn’t have shielded me. I’m not a child. We might have saved him if we’d come earlier.”

Pain filled the wizard’s eyes.

Shih-ka’i considered the dark pillar of cloud, the coruscation doming the fallen Deliverer. He searched himself for some sign of elation. There was nothing there. His war was over and won, and he felt like a loser. He started trudging toward the city. The others followed, except the foreign woman. She remained near her fallen son.

Tasi-feng hurried to meet Shih-ka’i. “Lord… It’s your man Pan ku.”

“What?” Shih-ka’i ran, his stubby legs wobbly.

Pan ku lay across the engine that had discharged the shaft that Ragnarson had turned. His throat had been cut. At his feet lay the remains of another man, a man almost wholly putrefied. Tasi-feng said, “He died trying to protect you, Lord.”

Moisture stained the inner faces of the jewels in Shih-ka’i’s mask. He did not correct Tasi-feng. The stone thing had had its revenge. It had slain his man and used him to launch a missile against his master. “He was like a son to me, Lord Lun-yu. Like a son and a brother. We’ll see him off with a hero’s honors.”

Shoulders slumped, Shih-ka’i faced the rising sun. Lord Ssu-ma Shih-ka’i, pig farmer’s son, Commander of Armies and Victor Over the East. He snorted derisively.

Nepanthe approached the darkness and scintillation as nearly as she dared. She looked within herself for some deep feeling about what the morning meant. She could locate nothing but a hollowness. She couldn’t feel more than mildly bitter about Varthlokkur having kept the truth from her. Her knowing or not knowing had been irrelevant. Ethrian had been lost the moment those devils of the Pracchia had forced him through a transfer.