Heart and Soul (53 page)

He didn’t say his good-byes and didn’t wait around for his pay. His pay was unimportant. The carpetship had merely been a way to get him and his rubies back to Cape Town without calling undue attention.

With the carpet he’d brought from the Orient, he disembarked, and as soon as he was far enough away from the carpetship port not to interfere with their flight and landing, he took off, heading toward a destination that had beckoned him all these months.

A few more hours and he would be rid of these rubies, and could resume his interrupted life. Why did this not feel like a triumph?

As he landed atop the flat mountain where the village of the guardians lay, he heard a woman yell, “Nigel!”

Looking over, he saw Emily, who had once been his wife, and who was now the wife of Kitwana, the son of the village chief. She and Kitwana came over, hands extended.

“How well you look, Nigel,” Emily said. “So tanned.”

“You look wonderful, too,” Nigel said, and it was true. Wrapped in a local cloth, with her dark hair unbound, and her blue eyes shining, Emily was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. He should have been jealous, sorry that he’d lost her.

He was neither. He felt only the echo of grief, the certainty that he would never meet anyone who would be to him what Emily was to Kitwana, and Kitwana to Emily.

“You’ll never guess,” Emily said. “Peter and his wife have dropped in on us, just days ago.” She proceeded to tell him about some promise or other Peter had made to a young ensign.

The young ensign, a dashing redhead, poured out his story about thinking to recover the rubies for the queen. To Nigel, it was like meeting himself at the beginning of the adventure, and he was amused and saddened at how innocent he had been.

Nigel smiled at Peter and his beautiful, irreverent wife, and said everything that needed to be said. He hoped he was charming, and he hoped he shared their joy. But all he could think was that he would never have the one woman he wanted, the one woman he wished to spend the rest of his life with.

She had her own life, in another court. And doubtless, she would eventually marry at her brother’s orders. And he…He would eventually marry to produce an heir to his domain. But until then—and even after, he suspected—he’d be alone. Truly alone. Missing part of his soul.

He tried to hand the rubies to Kitwana. “I have returned them,” he said. “Now I must go back.”

But Kitwana only laughed at him. “No, you must—and you will—return them to the avatar yourself. Come.”

THE AVATAR

The cave leading up to the avatar had neither the
tests nor the terrors Nigel remembered. Perhaps having lost both of the rubies, the statue had lost some of its power. Or perhaps they’d paid their way in through their effort once and need not do it again.

They simply walked down a subterranean passageway from the floor of the chieftain’s hut—down and down, into the Earth.

Where Nigel stood, while the rubies climbed, as though of their own accord, to the eyes of the statue.

“Thank you.” The words echoed in their minds, though they were not quite words. At least, Nigel heard them and he could tell from the expression of the others that they did, too. “You have served me well, and all of you have found your soul mates in this. Hold on to your love, all of you—even you, Captain Corridon. The times ahead will try the strongest of men. You and your children must be like beacons of courage and love, lighting up the world, and showing that no land is too distant, no person too different, for human love to conquer.”

Nigel felt tears sting his eyes. He thought he’d found his soul mate. But he had lost her, almost immediately. He supposed this was not something one could explain to an immortal avatar.

He watched as red rays of light from the ruby enveloped Peter, who embraced his wife, Sofie, and Emily, in the shelter of Kitwana’s arms.

A tear fell from Nigel’s eye and rolled down his face.

“Nigel,” a woman’s voice said softly from behind him.

He spun around. Jade, in one of the gowns he’d bought for her in Hong Kong, was standing shyly at the entrance of the chamber. She’d pulled her hair up, as she’d worn it in his dream, and she was looking at him hesitantly, as if not sure what his reception would be.

“The man upstairs told me to come down,” she said. “At least, I think that’s what he told me as I dressed. I got my dresses from the Victoria Hotel before I changed into a dragon and caught up with you. That’s why I’m late. Oh!”

The “Oh” came as, having torn her eyes from his face for a moment, she seemed to realize that there was a glory of light shining down on them from the ruby eyes of the avatar.

He opened his arms to her, silently. She rushed into them. And the light of the rubies enveloped them in peace and love.

CLEARING THE MIST

Adrian Corridon stumbled down the mountain, following
the two couples. He looked at the world through eyes that felt strange, as though misted over. Only, it was the opposite of mist, really.

He wasn’t sure what had happened to the other people in the avatar chamber, but to him…

First there had been a wind that seemed to strip all the flesh from his bones. Only not the flesh, but those things with which one cloaks one’s spirit. Honor, duty, ambition.

Ambition. At the thought of it, he groaned softly. He’d thought…He’d thought if he only unraveled this conspiracy, he would be the most famous of the servants of Her Majesty. He would be as highly placed as a man could be who didn’t sit on the throne.

Instead, had he succeeded in attaining his ambition, he would have unraveled all the universes. Feeling the power of the rubies, he could not help but know that.

As he couldn’t help knowing that everything had changed when they got the rubies back into the avatar’s eyes. The worlds that had spread out, in seeming copies of one another, so that each one contained less magic, now all collapsed into one world.

He felt no great difference in himself, and yet he was sure there was a difference the world over.

For almost a thousand years, the anchor of the universe had been missing. Now it was back, and the power configuration would be quite different.

Stumbling down the path, almost at the bottom of the mountain, he looked at the two couples with him, each lost in their own bliss. Both couples included a were. And now, if he understood correctly, weres controlled China. The world that forbade weres was in for a shock. The world, which had been used to a certain amount of magic, was about to get a much greater infusion from all the remnants of the collapsed worlds. Indeed, the world was about to go tumbling, head over heels, into unknown territory.

They’d reached the end of the path, and turned to the dark-haired girl and the chieftain’s son waving at them from the top. The other four waved back, and Corridon did, too, to be civil. Then they stepped away from the mountain.

One step, two, and then there was a wind that seemed to wrap the mountain—a wind that was mist and that enveloped it wholly.

And then it spun…or gave the impression of spinning, like a top, faster and faster and faster.

Where the mountain had been, there was nothing. Only jungle stretching into the distance.

“Well,” Lord St. Maur said, “I think we should change and return to Cape Town. I presume you and Jade will be having something resembling a legal wedding, Nigel?”

Corridon didn’t hear what Oldhall said. He was thinking that now that the mountain was hidden, the magic was loose in the world.

And he would have to pick through his loyalties and his fears in the confusing times ahead.

Two things only could he be sure of: one, that it was his duty and privilege to protect Hettie. He would do his best to keep her safe, no matter what turmoil enveloped the world. Two, that he must never again believe what anyone told him about magic; he must examine it himself and make sure of it. And he must never again believe his own fevered dreams. From now on, he must use his mind, unclothed in self-deception or wishful thinking.

“Yes,” he said. “Let us get to Cape Town as soon as we can.” And he turned to face the future.

WEDDING NIGHT