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His sight stars grew suddenly forceful, nearly as clear as I’d seen them last, when he was fit and healthy. He seized my wrist in a powerful grip.
“Do not be like me, boy,” he hissed urgently. “If you want a chance... at a mate... you must forget her. Do not... let the Lavrika pass you by... because you are busy... loving... someone else. Forget her!”
I placed my hand over top of his where he held my arm.
“Could you have forgotten her?” I asked him softly. His grip went suddenly slack, his sight stars dispersing with weary pain.
“No.” He looked away from me, up toward the ceiling of the tent. “Sometimes... when the sun rises... I still expect... to hear her greet me. To hear her... say my name.” He returned his gaze to me, and he smiled, but the smile was very tired. “If you... cannot forget her... there is... only one thing for it.”
“And what is that?” I asked, wary but hopeful he might actually have some advice that could help me.
“If you... cannot forget her... then you must... love her. Love her... this day... all days... even if it hurts.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dalk
Two days later, I took my uncle’s body into Gahn Fallo’s lands to set him upon his funeral pyre. Valeria and Grim had returned to the Deep Sky, taking the shuttle with them, so I brought Taraken upon my own irkdu, much the same way I’d brought Fiona into these same lands, on this same irkdu, more than three ages ago now.
Gahn Fallo accompanied me, along with his Gahnala, and together with the other two men who’d been with my uncle at the time of his wound, we built up the pyre in the flower-and-thorn-covered lands of our birth and laid Taraken to rest in the flames.
For a long time, I watched the fire. When that became difficult, I looked out over the hills of this place.
But they were covered in flowers. Just like she was. And that was difficult, too.
When it was finished, and Taraken was truly gone, we hunted and ate together around a smaller fire, far away from where we’d built the pyre.
“You don’t have to go back right away if you don’t want to,” Gahnala Chapman said as we ate dakrival.
My Gahn grunted in agreement.
“I have too few men of good sense around me as it is,” he growled. “You are a strong warrior. Stay here, and I will send another in your place.”
I was honoured by my Gahn’s compliments. There was a time when I would not have even entertained the thought of saying no to him.
But that time was before Fiona.
“I am not finished in the Deep Sky,” I told him. “There is... There is someone waiting for me.”
Gahn Fallo’s red sight stars buzzed. His mouth opened, no doubt to ask me who could possibly be waiting that was more important than him? Gahn of this place and ruler of our tribe? But Gahnala Chapman placed a gentle hand upon his shoulder, settling him before the words could ever leave his mouth.
“That’s alright, Dalk. If you want to go back to your post there, of course you can. I just wanted to give you the option. That’s all,” she said with a kind smile. “It’s always difficult to lose somebody.”
Difficult to lose somebody. Even more difficult to leave them while they cried and promised they would wait for you.
Yes. I would return to the Deep Sky. I would likely leave at dawn tomorrow, or, if I could not sleep, maybe even tonight. I had no idea what I would say to Fiona when I got there, but I supposed I had more than fourteen long, hard days of travel ahead of me in order to figure it out.
Fourteen days might not be long enough...
I brooded upon this so thoroughly, staring with such intense focus into the cooking fire, that I did not see the other four stiffen and look behind me with wild, wide eyes.
It was not until Ghanala Chapman said, “Um, Dalk? I think it’s not just someone in the Deep Sky waiting for you,” that I finally looked up. I jumped up and spun round, spurred on by the clutching thought that somehow Fiona had made her way here to me.
But it was not Fiona who stood ahead of me, high on a flower-dotted hill.
It was the Lavrika.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
