The GateKeeper lifted a metal ball from one bowl and held the hand over the other bowl. "Are you going through, Katie?"
"Aye," Katie said, then her expression cleared and she smiled. "Rejoice, GateKeeper, for your task is done. Time is ended, and the Gate must close."
The GateKeeper smiled also, an expression of such sweetness that Azhure, watching, felt her eyes fil with tears.
"Then go through, my child, and rejoice yourself that your task is done."
"Katie?" Azhure said. "Katie —"
Katie turned her head very slightly so she could see Azhure. "When you see Faraday," she said, "will you tell her that I love her? That I love her enough to die for her this time?"
And then she was gone.
The instant she glided through the doorway the GateKeeper seized her two bowls and flung them into the air.
"Done!" she screeched. "Done!"
Metal balls rained down, and Azhure, as SpikeFeather and the two ice women covered their heads with their arms.
"Take my hands!" the GateKeeper cried, and literally lunged over her table towards the foursome.
"Take my hands!"
And she grabbed Azhure with one hand, and SpikeFeather with the other as the sisters gripped the GateKeeper's forearms.
The Gate exploded.
Azhure screwed her eyes shut and screamed, but even as she did so she heard the GateKeeper cry out herself. "The Gate is dead! Time is extinct!" And then there was nothing but a black void.
Chapter 67
Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold...
Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Qeteb knew it the instant the blood splattered out from Katie's throat.
He had gutted the wrong girl. DragonStar had chosen correctly.
But how could this be so when his captains had won, three to two?
They had won, hadn't they?
Or was there something he'd misinterpreted?
Tencendor took one last, dying breath, and the devastation of death consumed the land as the last of Katie's blood flowed from her tiny, frail body.
The sky cracked.
The earth shattered.
The air exploded.
Qeteb threw Katie's drained corpse to one side. "Then it's just you and me," he said, calm now in the face of disaster, "as it ever was."
"As it ever was," DragonStar agreed.
Qeteb, blank-faced, stepped away, vanishing into the shadowy land beyond the encircling columns of the mausoleum. The silent, dark forms of Mot, Barzula and Sheol vanished directly after him.
DragonStar took Faraday — now deep in shock — and led
her unresisting to one side, sitting her down against one of the columns. "Wait," he said. "All will be well."
Axis, as everyone in the column, panicked as Creation withered about them.
Firestorms raced across the plains, and mountains trembled and collapsed in upon themselves.
The darkness and coldness of a complete vacuum descended upon the land.
Wait, a voice echoed through the minds of all within the convoy, and they knew it for the voice of Leagh's Child, all will be well.
And even though darkness consumed them, and the feel of the land beneath their feet vanished, all continued to survive.
All that remained of the land that had once been Tencendor was the black pulsing thing that was the Maze: an island of madness in a sea of destruction.
DragonStar straightened, and whistled.
The baying of the Alaunt filled the air, and their creamy, eager bodies wound about his legs.
A shadow darkened the doorway of the mausoleum.
