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choice than you would have allowed Ro Holding.
Yes. Magior cleared her throat. I know. Force is its own justification. It exists primarily because it is
capable of existing. Now that we are made powerless, I can find no justification for what we had
contemplated. I thought I was too old to change. Too old to see Saphier in the light of anything but its
own history. We will need help. Your ideas, Rad, and Brand s. Even Draken s. Perhaps, in seven years,
he will be alive to advise us.
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You would trust him? Rad asked sharply.
I would trust his father, Magior said simply. If he permits Draken to live, he will have changed the
heart of Saphier itself. She paused, her eyes on Nyx. Perhaps, with Brand, it is already changing.
So will Ro Holding, Meguet murmured, if you manage to find each other again.
Across mountains and seas and endless wastes, Nyx said, seeing them spread across the distance
between Ro Holding and Saphier, each mountain, each ocean, pushing them farther apart. And worlds,
she added speculatively. And time. She put a hand to her eyes against the vision, felt Meguet s hand on
her shoulder.
There is always
A way, Nyx finished. She looked at Rad, wondering how anyone so haggard and spent that he could
scarcely cast his own shadow, could possibly be standing upright, Is there a way home? she asked him.
Will the dragon permit you to use Chrysom s lime-path back to Ro Holding?
He nodded, and held out his hand: What he had sought in Ro Holding lay in his palm. One last time, he
said with an effort. Then I must return the key to him. Or he will come back to Saphier looking for it,
and he will not be pleased. You ll have to help me open the paths. I can hardly open the book itself.
Nyx was silent, thinking of the key holding all the mysteries of the Luxour, all Chrysom s innocent, secret
journeys. So was Rad; their minds touched inadvertently, holding the same key. They pulled back; their
eyes met. Nyx said ruefully, Now I would be content for either one of us to keep it.
Yes. He reached out to Meguet, held her wrist as he had when she had been pulled so precipitously
into Saphier s history. So, he said without looking at her, I must return you to your Gatekeeper. She
said nothing, did not move, until he finally raised his eyes. She said softly, I will never forget the dragons.
Or the Luxour.
Or the rose?
She started to speak, then stopped. She smiled suddenly, and a little color came back into his drawn
face. Or the rose that got us into all this trouble.
Now you know why I dropped it there.
Now, she said, I know why I picked it up.
He held her eyes, using her, Nyx realized, as his calm focal point of concentration. She turned abruptly,
for one last glimpse of Brand standing in the Luxour, stones towering behind him in a tumbled jagged
disorder that seemed to be always on the verge of order. In the next moment, in the next... Surrounded
by mages, ail their thoughts and ideas pulling at his attention, he detached himself for a moment, stood
alone, saw only her. The Luxour slowly misted from gold to cobalt-blue to black, until the only clear thing
in the world was the silver path to Ro Holding forming beneath their feet.
Chrysom s tower, building around them out of the mist, seemed, for a moment, another rising of stone at
the moment of change. It did change into a palace and remained changed, though Nyx noted, with an
instant of surprise, without the firebird. Her throat tightened. Rad s white dragon waited for him still; she
freed it. It leaped gracefully to its place across Rad s heart. Together she and Rad fashioned a path back
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to the Luxour while he still had strength to think. Meguet had not even that left; Nyx found her a moment
or two later, sunk deep into a leather chair and fast asleep.
She paced a step aimlessly, bewildered by the silence, some part of her still expecting to see the firebird.
Her bones ached with exhaustion, but she could not bring herself to leave the tower. It seemed the only
bridge between two worlds, and a broken one at that, but alt she had. Memories crowded into her mind,
far too many for the tower to hold; she had no other place to keep them. She touched her face, and still
moving, found a tear on her fingers. Her hand shook, her whole body trembled. She looked at Meguet,
who had escaped the world somehow; not even Nyx s tears brought her back. She was trapped, it
seemed, like the firebird, by memory: impossible to go back, yet equally impossible to open the tower
door, leave the past behind her. She forced herself still finally, stood in a drift of sunlight, her arms tightly
folded to stop her trembling. Still she could shape no path, not even into the next moment.
The door opened abruptly. She caught a glimpse of her mother s face, chalk-white and delicately lined,
before the Holder gripped her, shook her a little, and finally pulled her into an embrace that took her
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