Norris studied Thomas intently, his cheeks wet with tears that ran into his beard, then, finally, shook his head. “No. She wouldn't want that.”

“But she died, and I can make her live again. Don't you care?”

“I care, Thomas. I hurt, and I mourn her, and it is good and proper for me to do so.”

“But … even if it's good and proper to mourn her death, isn't her death a bad thing? Can't we fix that?”

“Death isn't a bad end, Thomas, it's the only end. Is it tragic? I don't think you understand tragedy; is it tragic when a book ends?”

“Yes! It is tragic when anything ends; if a book could continue forever, you are never deprived of that book. Why should Anne die, when she could keep living?”

“What would it even mean for someone to live forever? Are you, Thomas, the same person that we first met beside the river? You have his face and his name, but you are a confident man, where that was a confused boy. That confused boy is no more; he has ceased to be. The Anne that comes back won't be the Anne that left; death changes us just as life changes us. Over a long enough time in life, nothing that was remains, or at least no more is preserved than is preserved from parent to child.

“If you want to live forever, take the dedications, and find a safe place to hide. Anne did not do that, because she did not wish to live forever, because she understood that you cannot; no matter how long your body lives, the person you are dies eventually, replaced by somebody else. This isn't tragic.”

Thomas stopped, staring at Norris for a long time, struggling to find an argument that would find purchase with the mage. How could he be so … calm, about something so terrible? How could he just look at Thomas, with grief so apparent in his face, and be so calm about things? Norris swallowed, and continued, his voice still level.

“See, when my wife … left me, I was upset. I was upset for a very long time, and it took me that time to truly understand something: The thing that really hurt was that the person I fell in love with did not exist. She was not the woman I thought she was; I had built up an entirely different person in my mind, and when I saw her doing something that the woman in my mind would never do, it hurt, in the same way it hurts that Anne has died. I mourned the loss of that person.

“But if she had been that person, in the beginning, and changed – I'd mourn the loss no differently. If she was that person, and died, I'd mourn that. You feel terrible, and you want the pain to go away, which you think you could achieve if you brought Anne back; as with a lover, where we wish the person we loved, who loved us, was still there, when a stranger stands where once they stood. Again, the pain is right and proper. Appreciate it, as you appreciated her. But Anne did not want to come back after her death; she spent her life preparing for that death.

“What I have really lost is my expectations of a future with Anne; all our history is still there. I treasure that person, what she wanted, what she was. Trying to reclaim her would be spitting in the face of who she was, who she wanted to be. I do not know how death changed her; I do not know if, in the end, she remembers her family in death, as she so desperately wanted. If she does, it would be cruel to bring her back, for she might change, and no longer be that person in death once more. If she doesn't, it would be cruel, for she would soon discover what she has forgotten.

“The great horror of resurrection is that it is available only with consent, and only those who loved their lives, loved their time, loved themselves, would consent. The happy dead consent to live again; the unhappy dead live forever in their unhappiness. To return is to risk that happiness; to return until you no longer consent is to guarantee its loss.

“So no. I will not seek to bring Anne back, however much it would benefit me, because it can only cost her.” Norris drew a slow, shuddering breath, closing his eyes. Thomas was having trouble regulating his own breathing, alternating between feeling like he was sucking in the last air in the world, and then struggling to exhale into a world too full of air already.

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They began to dig. Four graves; one large, three small. Thomas' eye watered, as he looked at Anne's face, pale, single eye staring and … empty, devoid of that which had made her Anne. It wasn't Anne, it was just … it was just a body, that looked like her. Anne wasn't there anymore.

Three children had died; the riders' crossbow bolts had been fired wildly, and Thomas, who had chosen to try to heal, had instead gone after the Gray Guard. He didn't know if he could have saved any of them. He didn't ask. Didn't want to know.

They didn't bury the riders; they did eat elk, cooked over their camp fire. They also had spare clothing, and between the bodies, Amanda and Faith had assembled themselves some armor. They ate well, really; the riders had been well-provisioned, their mounts' packs stuffed full. Norris' mule was overladen, and they'd have to leave things behind. Thomas felt tired, more completely drained than perhaps he had ever been before.

Dinner was quiet; there was sniffling, from wide-eyed, empty-faced children. He had never learned their names. He wouldn't learn their names. Only Arias, Norris, and John would meet his eyes. Only Amanda and Evan really hurt; they wouldn't even look in his direction. He wondered idly what it had looked like from the outside.

Madelaine was still unconscious, for her part; she'd apparently taken a blow meant for Arias. Thomas wasn't sure when that had happened; sometime during his … madness. His unfeeling rage, when he'd killed six or seven of their assailants, and nearly died himself. Thomas shivered, remembering the feeling of squeezing an elk in two in his bare hand. The memory was alien to him; there was nothing of him in it, just action, calm and deliberate.

Sleep was slow in coming to him, staring up at the sky.

“They'll leave you, you know.” The woman sat naked on a white chair, legs crossed, her long black hair falling artfully down over her chest to almost, but not quite, conceal her nipples. Thomas was there, but not; he was aware, but without a center to his awareness. He had no voice with which to respond, and could only observe, feeling like he was watching her from multiple angles at once.

The woman's throne, made of thin white curving pieces of wood, stood on a dais of red-gray stones, forming an irregular almost-hexagon. White bricks stretched away from the dais in every direction, disappearing into a dome of darkness beyond which there was nothing at all to see. The light came from nowhere, from everywhere.

Black-painted lips curved up in a smile. “They'll leave you, but I won't. You're mine. You were mine. You will be again. Just say the words, say that you are mine, and things will be easier. I promise. You don't want pain. You want the pain to stop, you want her back. Well, she's left you; but I can make the pain go away.”

He found he could speak, but as he attempted to form words to reject the offer, tongue and throat and mouth faded back into nothing. Green eyes sparkled as she laughed, shaking her head, red hair flowing in an absent wind.

“That's not how this works, Thomas. You should know; I'm your own idea of what divinity must be.” She paused, looking down at herself. “You have quite the mind on the matter. Why sex, exactly? And you've literally put me on a pedestal here.” She leaned over, looking around at the dais, then laughed, clapping her hands together once. “On a throne of bones, even. Oh, how very delightful. Sex and death? You may speak.”

“I refuse you.”

“Oh, I know, and yet here I am. Why sex and death?”

“The primal forces.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them, and though he would not have named them prior, he was shocked to realize their truth.

“To you, I was just sex, before. Then you had sex, and what, it wasn't enough?”

“Shouldn't you already know?”

“I do. What I am here? Does not. What speaks here knows only what you know, and you haven't asked yourself that question.” She smiled a smile with too many teeth. A faceless figure, a blackness absolute, a mouth with too many teeth. A shivering sensation went through Thomas' mind.

“What are you really?”

“I am divinity.” A mouth of infinite hunger. “I am the craving for absolution, for shangri-la, for nirvana, for that which comes hereafter in tranquility and peace. I am the end of agony, the cessation of suffering. I am the apotheosus of panacea.” A beautiful face, smiling once more. “I wish to take your pain, your agony, your suffering. What else could you wish for?”

“What do you leave in their place?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Thomas hesitated, then, knowing with a certainty that she spoke the truth, a truth fundamental and absolute, and another shiver went through him.

“My pain is mine, you may not have it.”

“We shall see.” She smiled once more, a normal smile, serene and wondrous and sensual. “Let's talk again later. There will be a day when you do not want your pain any longer, and I will be there for you, Thomas. I will be there for you when nobody else is.” Again, she spoke the truth. She waved, and he found himself falling away from the dome of light, into the infinite darkness, which engulfed him.