She spoke his name and embraced him heartily. There was no longer any heat or passion between them. It was the embrace of a sister, not a wife or lover.
“Why have you come?” she asked him.
Her eyes said: Please do not say that you have come for me.
“I need to speak with Iardu,” he said. “I must know the truth once and for all.”
Sharadza sighed and led him into a courtyard beyond the gate. The trees here were full of tiny, domed huts like oversized beehives. Chattering monkeys pale as clouds darted in and out of them. A lion creature with the head of a beautiful girl watched D’zan and Sharadza approach the doors of the citadel, petite wings fluttering on its tawny back. What other strange beings lived in the Shaper’s domain? D’zan could not begin to guess. The scents of the wild garden were overpowering: citrus, jasmine, vanilla, starberry, and a hundred others he could not name. He became dizzy amid the mélange of exotic fragrances.
Sharadza sat beside him on a stone bench before a gurgling fountain carved into the shapes of impossible creatures. “Iardu is not here,” she said. “He has not returned from… wherever he has gone.” Her voice was tinged with sorrow. Yet it was obviously a sorrow she had lived with for some time, not some fresh wound. D’zan could always read her moods.
With careful words she explained to him what he had not understood after the siege of Uurz. The Shaper had sacrificed his own living heart to work a spell that turned the invaders away from the Five Cities and sent them back to their side of the world in peace. Yet it had done far more than that.
“Iardu changed their hearts with the power of his own,” Sharadza said. She told him more, but D’zan could not understand exactly what the Shaper had done. Only that he had apparently given up his life to save the Five Cities and create peace between the two sides of the world.
“Are you telling me the Shaper is dead?” he asked.
“Iardu cannot truly die,” Sharadza said. “One day he will return.”
“When will that be? I must know the truth of what he told me.”
“I do not know when,” she said. “He has gone beyond my power to reach him.”
“Then why do you stay here alone?” he said. “Come to Yaskatha, or return to your family in Udurum. Surely either would be better than this isolation.”
Sharadza shook her head. “I wait for him.”
He tried once more to sway her.
“I wait for him,” she said again.
He gave up and accepted her offer of food and drink. Now that he was on solid ground again, his appetite had returned. The inter ior of Iardu’s manse was as opulent as any palace. The dining hall was thick with ancient silk hangings in colors of mauve, ochre, and gold. D’zan ate roasted fowl and drank an entire bottle of amber Uurzian wine. The lion-lady sat upon a purple rug in the next room. D’zan sensed that the creature was watching over Sharadza. Perhaps it was a specimen of some lost race that Iardu had preserved in his sanctuary. Or the Shaper himself might have created the beast specifically to guard his house.
“What is this truth you seek?” Sharadza asked.
He put down the cup of wine and swallowed a mouthful of meat. He laid his hand upon hers, and the words came tumbling out of him.
“Iardu told me about the nature of this body that you and he created for me. If not for its magic, I would be dead many times over. He told me I will not sicken or age. Yet he also told me that my children would be normal. Human.”
Sharadza blinked. Her hand twitched beneath his own.
He understood her enough to know what these small things meant.
“You are not barren, are you?”
She said nothing.
“I must know,” he said. The wine had loosened his tongue, and he let the words spill forth. “I look at my son and I do not see myself in him. I remember your pain and my accusation, and it tears me apart. You must know as Iardu knew. Is Theskalus my son? Can I have a son? I must know the truth now or I will go mad. It is why I have come all this way, sailing every league in the shadow of nightmares. I will not leave this place without an answer.”
Sharadza took a deep breath and turned away from his eyes. “You cannot father children in this body,” she said. Her voice was only a whisper.
Gods of Earth and Sky, I knew it. Somehow I knew it.
“Then… Theskalus is not mine?”
Sharadza shook her head.
“I could not tell you,” she said. “I wanted to spare you pain. D’zan, I am sorry.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. The lion-lady sprang up but did not advance. Her eyes were upon D’zan, yet she was a civilized creature.
“No,” he said. The tears began to fall and he did not try to stop them. “I am the one who must apologize. I blamed you for not giving me an heir. I let this ruin our love, when all the time it was my own fault. Can you ever forgive me?”