in the shape of a wolf, growing out of the front of The Guardian’s head.
All other eyes were on the two floggers and their victim, who now lay still.
Didn’t anyone else see?
The wolf was flowing up out of the boy’s corpulent body. Like a stream of black ink it poured down over his lap and onto the steps which led down from the throne. Then, finding its feet, the wolf scampered to where Saemil lay.
Again there was a rift in the crowd and Ginna could see through. The wolf was lapping up the old woman’s blood. The executioners didn’t seem to notice and went on with their work.
On the throne Kaemen sat, his face gone, his head hollow.
Ginna’s knees buckled. He fell against the table. Grabbing wildly for support, he struck a tray and sent it clattering to the floor. For an instant he was kneeling, his head and one hand against the edge of the table. Then he pitched forward and rolled under it, onto his back, vaguely aware of a vast forest of legs extending in three directions and a wall blocking the fourth.
* * * *
For a long time after that there was nothing but warm haze. Slowly it cleared, until he could see every detail of the great hall. It was empty now, and dark. The crowd had departed. The corpse of the nurse lay sprawled on the stone tiles, atop, curiously enough, a mosaic of the dark aspect of The Goddess like the one on the opposite wall.
He was not quite alone. Kaemen still sat on his throne, still leaning forward. His face was still gone, his head still hollow. But the darkness was stirring inside, slowly rising. It began to pour out of the opening, over his chin, like an underground river suddenly emerging out of a cavern, spilling down the steps and onto the floor. There seemed no end to it. It gathered around the carcass and splashed over it in oily waves, spreading to all comers of the room. Toward Ginna. He wanted to rise and flee, but his body would not respond. In helpless terror he watched the stuff ooze toward him. He counted the squares of the tile as they were covered one by one. The floor was almost entirely hidden, and still the stuff came forth from the Guardian in great gouts.
It was not a substance at all, but a lack of anything. A total void, a dark, limitless emptiness erasing the world.
It touched him on one shoulder, then all along one side. He was numb and cold, so cold. The waves washed over him, covering him until only his face was above the surface.
All sensation faded. He lay there, staring up at the underside of the table for a long time. He had no way of telling how long. It seemed as if his body were gone, and only his face remained. He concentrated. Yes, he could feel the air on his cheeks, and something else. A tingling. A sense of floating.
His face was becoming detached from his head. He could feel it peeling off, flapping as the fluid darkness found its way underneath. The cold was inside his brain now, stabbing, killing. His face drifted free. His awareness seemed to go with it He saw the underside of the table whirling around, or so it seemed. In fact it was he—his face only—which was turning, spinning like a leaf in a swollen stream. The waves caressed his cheeks from beneath. His vision shifted as he rose and fell with the current.
He was in the center of the room, near the dais. The black fountain of Kaemen’s head had not slacked off in the slightest. The level of the flowing void was rising, carrying Ginna’s face with it, past the throne, toward one of the huge brass and wood doors, which stood open. He floated into a corridor, then dropped roughly down a flight of stairs, somehow never capsizing. He was sure that if he did, if what remained of him were touched by the blackness, he would cease to exist altogether.
For an endless time he drifted through deserted rooms and passageways in the palace, until he emerged through a window into a courtyard. The level was still rising. He was lifted up, up, over a wall, past a roof. In the periphery of his sight he could make out a featureless expanse of blackness spreading to the horizon. The sky was clear and filled with stars, but their light did not reflect off the surface. He caught a glimpse of the golden dome of the palace, the highest point of Ai Hanlo, just before it was covered over.
The whole world was flooded. He floated alone. He was somehow aware that he would float for a time, then slowly dissolve, and blackness would rise to blot out the stars, filling the universe. No one would be there to witness the end. He was the last.
The experience of floating was vastly unpleasant, like falling slowly into a bottomless pit of cold air, but all his feelings were dulled. He blinked again and again, trying to remain aware, but the last of his senses were slipping away.
He was conscious next of a hump of land rising above the ebon sea. On it the black wolf stood. The current drew him toward it inexorably. The wolf leaned over, ready to blend in with the greater nothingness. Just as its snout was over his face, he saw it rise on its hind legs and begin to change. It was becoming the hideous bent old woman whose face had replaced Kaemen’s momentarily. The old woman no one else could see.
Still, like the wolf, she was not more than a black outline, a pit without a bottom, but somehow she seemed two-dimensional. Only in profile could he see the hooked nose that almost touched her chin and the wild hair that hung in a matted tangle. When she bent over him as the wolf had, her face was a blurry oval.
“Flesh of my flesh,” she tittered. “My receptacle, my useless, empty vessel through which my revenge was begun, what am I to do with you now?”
Ginna tried to speak, but no sound came out of his mouth. Instead the blackness spurted through the opening from underneath. He was sinking. The cold spread over his chin, up his cheeks, toward his eyes.
The black hag crawled to the edge of the little island, hung on with both hands, and raised a foot to stamp him down under the surface, but paused.
The last thing he saw was the sky beginning to lighten.
She looked even darker in contrast to the dawn.
* * * *
His eyes blinked open. An overturned tray lay by a table leg, a few inches from his face. Astonished, he felt his body to assure himself it was whole. Painfully, stiffly, he rolled over. He could see all the way across the room. The throne was empty. The corpse of the nurse was gone. The faint light of early dawn seeped through the skylight
He crawled out from under the table and staggered to his feet His head hurt as if split by an axe.
He was more disoriented now than he had been at any time before. He knew where he was and when, but was unsure of anything leading up to that instant. How much had really happened? What had he actually seen, and what was delirium?
In the center of the room, before the dais, he found the brown stains of dried blood spread over the image of the dark half of The Goddess. There was also a fistful of white hair and a strip of leather which had come off one of the whips. Here and there across the floor were broken drink glasses, a dropped veil, a trampled flume, a handkerchief, a cap, a walking stick. A large crowd had indeed been here, as he remembered it, and had doubtless departed in a hurry.
When he made his way outside, the world seemed too familiar, too real to have contained such a thing. He looked out over the lower city and the road beyond it. The sun was coming up. A trading caravan from some remote land was approaching Ai Hanlo along the great highway that led to the River Gate.
The cool morning breeze made him shiver. His wooden-soled slippers were awkward and uncomfortable, so he took them off. The paving stones were hard and cold underfoot
He passed members of the night watch making their last rounds. He had seen them all his life, but now, for the first time, they frightened him. They were all his enemies. He did his best to hide any emotion, but was scarcely able to prevent himself from screaming and breaking into a blind run.
When he got back to his room he found Amaedig asleep in a chair. She had tried to wait up for him.
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