Finally understanding, Ahad caught my arm. I was holding Deka. There was a flicker as we moved through space, and then Ahad had Itempas by the arm as well. Itempas looked startled, but cottoned on faster than Ahad had; he did not fight. But then Ahad frowned. “Where can we go that he won’t find us?”
I almost wailed the words. “Anywhere, anywhere, you fool!” The planet was going to die. All reality was beginning to falter, bleeding out through the mortal wound that the Maelstrom had punched into its substance. All we could do was start running, anywhere we could, and hope that Kahl did not catch up. Though if he did…“Dear gods, I hope you’ve found your nature by now.”
Ahad’s face went too impassive. “No.”
“Demonshitting brak’skafra—” There was a hollow whoosh behind me, louder even than the Maelstrom’s growing roar, and Deka turned quickly, barking a command to counter whatever I’d stupidly unleashed. The sound went silent; Deka glared at me. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“Anywhere,” Ahad said, but he was looking away from us. Something bloomed against the horizon like a round, white sun. I wanted to cheer for magnificent demon girls, but the light died too quickly for me to feel comfortable, and then Ahad took us away from the palace.
With his attention so thoroughly divided, I should have realized where we would end up. When the world resolved around us, we stood on tumbled white stones littered with the debris of everyday life: torn bedsheets, broken perfume bottles, an overturned toilet. Looming high overhead: broken, wilting limbs as thick as buildings.
“Sky?” I rounded on Ahad, wishing for once that I had a cane. I had to shout to be heard over the rising cacophony, but that was fine, because I was furious. “You brought us to Sky, you stupid son of a demon? What were you thinking?”
“I—”
But whatever Ahad might have retorted died in his mouth as his eyes widened. He whirled, looking north, and we all saw it. A great amorphous blotch of blackness was fading from view, but against its contrast we could see a tiny, blazing white star.
Falling, and winking out of sight as it fell.
Ahad took a great, shuddering breath, and the air around him turned the color of a bruise. The sound that he made was less a word than an animal, maddened shriek. For an instant he became something else, shapeless and impossible, and then we were all flung sprawling as daystone and Tree wood and the air itself whipped into an instant tornado around him. He was a god, and his will forged reality. All the matter nearby hastened to do his bidding.
Then he was gone, and all the debris that had been blasted away in his wake pelted onto whatever body parts we’d been foolish enough to turn upright.
I pushed myself up slowly, trying to get a broken Tree branch off my back and daystone dust out of my mouth. My hands hurt. Why did my hands hurt? I’d never had arthritis on any of the previous occasions I’d become old. Then again, that had been old age as I’d imagined it; perhaps the reality was simply more unpleasant than I’d thought.
Hands grabbed me, helping me up: Deka. He pushed the branch away, then pushed my hair out of my face; it was waist-long now, though thin and stringy white. No matter how old I got, the stuff kept growing. Why couldn’t I go bald, damn it?
“Should’ve seen that coming,” I muttered as he helped me to my feet.
“Seen what?”
Then Itempas was there, also helping me. Between the two of them, I was able to scramble over the jagged, unstable stones of the fallen Sky. “That one.” Itempas nodded in the direction Ahad had gone. In another life I would have laughed at his refusal to use Ahad’s borrowed name. “Apparently, his nature has something to do with love.”
No wonder it had taken Ahad so long to find himself. He had lived the past century in the antithetical prison of his own apathy—and his centuries of suffering in Sky had probably not predisposed him to attempt love, even when the opportunity came along. But Glee… I bit my lip. In spite of everything, I prayed that she would be all right. I did not want to lose my newest sister, and I did not want this other, surrogate son of mine to discover himself through grief.
It is not an easy thing to climb a pile of rubble the size of a small city. It is harder when one is a half-blind old man of eighty or so. I kept having to stop and catch my breath, and my coordination was so poor that after a few close calls and nearly broken ankles, Itempas stepped in front of me and told me to climb onto his back. I would have refused, out of pride, but then Deka, damn him, picked me up bodily and forced me to do it. So I locked my arms and legs round Itempas, humiliated, and they ignored my complaints and resumed climbing.