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never gone before.
The grass was frosted with snow that powdered with the brush of their legs and
fell on their feet, melting into their cloth shoes until they were soaked.
Only hyloka kept their feet from freezing.
When they were far enough away from everything to suit her, she cleared the
snow away for him to sit, laid out the cloth and arranged the articles and
squatted opposite him. He could barely see her. Only a few stars peeped
through rifts in the clouds. The cream on her face glowed slightly and he
followed her movements that way.
"You wish to go home," she said, her tone more stern than he had heard it
before.
"Yes," he said.
"You wish to get there by Sidhe magic."
"I do."
"There is some risk. Do you accept that?"
"Yes." He didn't much care.
"Do you accept this gift from me, given out of love?"
"I do." He felt a pressure in his chest. "I appreciate this very much,
Eleuth."
"How much?" she asked, almost bitter.
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He shrugged in the darkness. "I'm not worth much. I don't know why you feel so
strongly toward me."
"You acknowledge that love?"
"Yes."
"Do you return it?"
He leaned toward her dim features. "I love you, too," Michael said. "As a
friend. As the only friend I have here. Wherever we are."
"As a friend, then," Eleuth said, her tone less astringent. She laid the twigs
out on the cloth in a circle, pointing toward the center. Near one of the
twigs she laid the beetle. Next to another she placed one of the pebbles. The
rest of the pebbles she piled on one comer of the cloth.
"Is that all you need?" Michael asked.
"That, and my training," Eleuth said. "I'm still not very good." She stood,
took his hand, and made him stand in the middle of the circle of twigs. "For
you, I wish I were a full-blooded Sidhe," Eleuth said, holding out her arms.
She assumed the same pose he had seen in the crystal portrait of Nare. "But
Lirg's blood is good and I rely on him, too. Wherever he is now." She danced
lightly around him, spinning from one toe to the next. He turned his head to
follow her. "Face straight ahead," she said.
After a few minutes she stopped, breathing more heavily than when she had
begun. "Did the Sidhe pass his test?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Did he take his flesh, drink his blood?"
"I think so."
"He left the Crane Women this evening," she said. "He goes to his new home.
Perhaps he will see Lirg."
file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%...er%2001%20-%20The%20Infinity%20
Concerto.html (114 of 198) [5/21/03 12:42:32 AM]
Bear, Greg - Songs of Earth and Power Vol. 1 - The Infinity Concerto
"I don't know."
"Do you know what your friends in Euterpe are doing tonight?" she asked.
"No."
"All the Breeds stay in tonight. We don't know either, but we have our
suspicions." She resumed the dance, reaching now and then to brush his
shoulders with her fingers. "Michael," she said, her breath harsh, spinning
around him. "Look straight ahead. It is time for you to go home& very soon."
Light sprang up around his feet. He glanced down and saw the twigs burning
brightly from the outside in, like multiple fuses.
"Out of love," Eleuth said. She formed her arms into a circle. Two circles of
light leaped from the arcs of her fingers, rose and fell around him, stopping
at waist level. The twigs burned to their ends. He stood in the middle of a
radiance of fire that rose around his feet but did not bum.
Eleuth stood rigid in front of him, arms held high, breasts pulled taut
against her rib cage, stomach flat, heaving. Her hair was disarrayed and her
eyes were closed. She twisted her head to one side. "I will guard," she said.
"For as long.
As.
I.
Can."
Her eyes opened. They were black, rimmed with blazing red. He felt himself
falling toward them. His feet lifted from the cloth. The circles tightened
around his waist like belts, cinching close. The fire spread to Eleuth,
crackling and hissing, searing away the darkness until the land around them
was bright as day.
When the flames touched her naval, she flinched and screamed.
The fire surrounded her. Arced outward to the snow-covered grass. Melted the
snow into steam. Dried the grass and set it ablaze. She twisted in her own
fire, mouth open to reveal darkness much deeper than the night. Michael rose
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toward her and felt the cold electric destruction of the power she had
unleashed.
"Please," she said, barely audible over the crackle and roar. "I will guard.
Careful! Out of love "
She became smaller and darker, twisting in the fire until she receded to a
black point.
Michael was no longer on the grassland but high above, looking out across the
infinite expanse of the
Realm, its forests, plains and mountains laid out beneath him like a
topographical relief map. The river snaked far to the northeast through
forests, scrub lands, blank desert and swamps. There was a mountain surrounded
by a city with walls like a tangle of silvery roots
And a black, spiky something beyond.
To the north he saw a broad lake glowing cobalt in the night Nebchat Len,
possibly. Beyond the lake stretched more forest, and beyond that massive
jagged mountains. Looking down, he saw the Pact Lands mounted in the middle of
the Blasted Plain, a yellow-green circle surrounded by warm, forbidding
orange-
tinted darkness. This darkness seemed to writhe, rise up to grab him. Then
everything writhed and vanished.
He could have been suspended in nothingness for all eternity. The sensation of
time left him. In the void was a flicker of light, somewhere above where his
head had been. He was aware of a canopy of leaves, then of something beneath
his feet, hard and gray. His circle of vision expanded. His head filled with
rushing blood, and the sensation of weight returned.
Michael closed his eyes and rubbed them. The rush of exultation was dizzying.
He wanted to jump, to shout. He glanced at his wrist to see what time it was
what time the trance had come to an end. But his watch was missing. He still
wore the clothes Helena had scrounged for him; his feet were still shod in
cloth.
A flicker of fire played around his ankles. He stared down at the fire,
watching it brighten, fade and brighten again. Suddenly it flared up around
his calves until it obscured the sidewalk. Tendrils rushed to
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