You must go
down, Suriel had said.
“Our men
are terrified,” Nogilian said again. “They don’t know what happened with the
ship.” He meant that he didn’t either. I’d ordered them to stay put in the
caldera, shimmering golden lights and all.
What would
you do? I wondered again. What could you possibly give them to atone?
“Old friend
of mine,” I said. “Enemy of our enemy. The ship doesn’t like the nightwind.”
I watched
Jerem Cozak’s assault, mind following two tracks at once.
Suppose you
had without realizing nearly destroyed a civilization. Suppose that same
civilization was collapsing around a simple problem: you could talk faster than
light, but never travel that way.
The gate
was collapsing. Jerem Cozak was minutes from breaking through. Then he would
charge into the trap that was going to kill him.
Was there a
Healing Well in Kasora? I had asked Nogilian. Did it go shut about the same
time?
I turned
and started walking back toward my valkyrie.
What would
you gift the ones you so nearly extinguished? Would you maybe give them a bit
of super-intelligent technology? Something to help them crawl back from the
dark years down the road?
I started
trotting up the snowfield.
These Arks,
anything else go quiet about that time? I had asked. Jerem Cozak had always
spoken, from the very first, as though he would finish in Kasora.
Let oceans
swallow you, he’d once said to me.
Yeah.
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