The Gem Lords

Lord Sapphire - Part 6

      The next few days were a nightmare for Lirenna.

     No-one was available to teleport her back to Haven, and without her real memories Lirenna didn't know that Thomas was there, waiting for her. Meanwhile, everyone she knew in the valley wanted to offer their condolences, and she couldn't escape them by hiding in the dwelling tree. They came to visit her, and so long as they didn't venture deeper into the shaewoods the shae folk did nothing to stop them. They even offered her another tree closer in towards the centre of the wood, where she'd be surrounded by close neighbours, finally becoming a full member of their community in a way she'd never expected. She would rather have been an outcast, though, forbidden ever to have anything to do with the shae folk again, if she could have had Thomas back.

     Three days passed, and she was just thinking she might be over the worst of it, when Tassley came, having been up on Kronos and only just having heard the terrible news. Her grief was almost as great as Lirenna's herself. She held onto the demi shae as if it were the only way she could remain standing and poured out her grief in great braying sobs, bringing Lirenna's pain back as strong as ever, and they ended up spending the whole morning in each others' arms, not saying a word, just crying. The awful ordeal was made all the worse by the knowledge that she'd have to go through it all over again when she returned to Haven. If she could have gotten the whole thing over with here and now, that would have been a sort of a comfort for her, but now the knowledge of how popular he'd been in the Hidden Kingdom weighed on her like great loops of iron chain.

     Only Timothy Birch was able to express his sorrow in a way that didn't add to her pain. He remained calm and soft voiced, holding her hand as he reminded her of all he'd accomplished in his life, the lives he'd saved and the people he'd helped. "You can be sure that My Lady was there to welcome him personally into the next life," he said, his soft brown eyes flicking between her grey ones. "She remembers all the good he did in his life, more than most of Her own clerics accomplish, and you can be sure that he'll be well rewarded, as you will when you also come before Her."

     Lirenna nodded gratefully. She would see Thomas again. He would be there waiting for her when her life came to an end. She’d long since decided that she would choose the human afterlife when her end came. The shayen afterlife, Ta-La-Lorna, held nothing that she wanted. What she wanted was Thomas.

     Then she looked up him. "While we’re on the subject, could you ask Her something?"

     "The Goddess Caroli? I can ask, yes. I can include it in my prayers. She may not answer, of course. She usually doesn’t, but there’s no harm in asking. What do you want to know?”

     "I want to know if the world's going to end."

     He stared at her. "What?"

     "I want to know if the world's going to end, if skydeath's going to start raining down out of the sky and kill every living thing on the face of the planet. Maybe Caroli Herself doesn't know, and even if She does She might not want to say, but I'd like you to ask Her anyway. Please."

     He continued to stare at her, wondering whether she'd gone mad in her grief, but he could see that she was totally serious. "What put a thought like that in your head?" he asked.

     "It's what the Gem Lords think. Saturn thinks they're wrong, and I pray he's right, but I'd feel a lot better if you could give me a definitive answer. If a slow, lingering death is destined to inflict every person on the planet, then the Goddess of Healing is the one who'd know about it."

     "Well, a definitive yes or no answer probably won’t be forthcoming. We pray, and She replies in the form of signs or dreams. Only very rarely does She honour someone with a waking visitation."