When they returned, there was no sign of Shiastred’s servants-the halls were silent and empty.
“My people will return to me now,” said Kastenid, “and I shall be able to show you a more fitting welcome. I would have you treat my home as your own.”
Corson was relieved to find the hall deserted. It seemed a different place, and no longer afflicted her with nightmarish memories and forebodings. She took full advantage of Kastenid’s hospitality and enjoyed her unaccustomed idleness at first, but soon began to grow restless. Only her concern for Nyctasia made her reluctant to be on her way.
It seemed that nothing would ever rouse Nyctasia from her grief. She barely left her chamber, sitting day after day at the window, long after it grew too dark to see more than the moonlit surface of the quiet pool below. Her will to heal herself had left her.
“Do not war against the vahn in this way,” Kastenid pleaded with her. “You must allow it to console you. Despair destroys the spirit.”
“… and mourning denies the Discipline,” Nyctasia rejoined. She looked up from the piece of sewing that lay across her lap. “I know the Principles as well as you, my friend. But now that I need them the most, I find them hollow… No, the fault is in myself, not in the Discipline, I know that. I am too weak to achieve Balance.”
“Then let me help you.”
“You’ve tried to help me before, and you did not find me grateful.”
“You know now that I am not your enemy.”
“No, I have been my own enemy all the while. You think me as true a vahnite as yourself, but I tell you I’ve done things that would turn you against me if you but knew-”
“You have left Rhostshyl, yet you still dwell within its walls, Edonaris. That life is behind you now.”
“Erystalben is part of that life.”
He watched her draw the silver needle deftly through the dark cloth. “You follow a dangerous course, my lady.”
“What ’Ben did was more dangerous! He couldn’t know what awaited him beyond that Threshold. It was madness!”
“It was his only hope of escape.”
Nyctasia’s voice trembled. “No, he wasn’t afraid. He risked that spell rather than strike at me-though I had turned on him!”
“You cannot blame yourself for that, you had no choice. Shiastred used you.”
Nyctasia shook her head. “I warned you that I would stand with him-you refused to take me at my word.” Her voice grew hard. “I turned to you because I had to protect Corson. But he believed that I’d betrayed him; that is why I must do this, danger or no. He may be dead-I have to know.” She shook out the folds of the mended cloak, neatly stitched where Erystalben ar’n Shiastred had torn it.
“I don’t believe it either,” Corson said. Kastenid had found her in the stable, busy grooming her horse. “But I don’t believe much of what Nyc says about anything.” She had finished with the curry comb and was going over the animal a second time with a soft brush. Kastenid took up another and began working on the horse’s other side.
“She believes it, and as long as she does she’ll, never be free of him,” he said.
“That one’s such a clever liar she’s begun to believe her own lies.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Corson knelt and gently ran her fingers down the horse’s foreleg. Then, lifting the hoof, she began to clean out the mud and pebbles with a pick.
“I’m afraid of what she may do,” he said at last.
Corson looked up at him. “You’re in love with her yourself.”
He did not deny it. “She will take nothing from me,” he said helplessly. “I have won, and yet I am defeated.”