A long time afterward Mouse and Ciaran and Bas the Immortal stood in
the opal-tinted glow of the great room of the _crux ansata_. Outside
the world was normal again, and safe. Bas had left full instructions
about controlling and tending the centrifugal power plant.
The slaves were freed, going home across the Forbidden
Plains--forbidden no longer. The Kalds were sleeping, mercifully; the
big sleep from which they would never wake. The world was free, for
humanity to make or mar on its own responsibility.
Mouse stood very close to Ciaran, her arm around his waist, his around
her shoulders. Crimson rags mingling with yellow; fair shaggy hair
mixing with black. Bas smiled at them.
"Now," he said, "I can be happy, until the planet itself is dead."
"You won't stay with us? Our gratitude, our love...."
"Will be gone with the coming generations. No, little man. I built
myself a world where I belong--the only world where I can ever belong.
And I'll be happier in it than any of you, because it is my world--free
of strife and ugliness and suffering. A beautiful world, for me and
Marsali."
There was a radiance about him that Ciaran would put into a song some
day, only half understanding.
"I don't envy you," whispered Bas, and smiled. Youth smiling in a
spring dawn. "Think of us sometimes, and be jealous."
He turned and walked away, going lightly over the wide stone floor and
up the steps to the dais. Ciaran struck the harpstrings. He sent the
music flooding up against the high vault, filling all the rocky space
with a thrumming melody.
He sang. The tune he had sung for Mouse, on the ridge above the burning
sea. A simple tune, about two people in love.
Bas lay down on the couch of furs and colored silks, soft on the shaft
of the stone cross. He looked back at them once, smiling. One slim
white arm raised in a brief salute and swept down across the black
stone.
The milky light rose on the platform. It wavered, curdled, and
thickened to a wall of warm pearl. Through it, for a moment, they could
see him, his dark head pillowed on his forearm, his body sprawled in
careless, angular grace. Then there was only the warm, soft shell of
light.
Ciaran's harp whispered to silence. The tunnel into the pit was sealed.
Mouse and Ciaran went out through the golden doors and closed them,
very quietly--doors that would never be opened again as long as the
world lived.
Then they came into each other's arms, and kissed.
Rough, tight arms on living flesh, lips that bruised and breaths that
mingled, hot with life. Temper and passion, empty bellies, a harp that
sang in crowded market squares, and no roof to fight under but the open
sky.
And Ciaran didn't envy the dark-haired boy, dreaming on the stone cross.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: Transcriber's note: text missing from original: The red hunter froze to a dead stop. ]