DAROS SWAM UP OUT OF DEEP WATER. HE LEFT THE ARMS OF Mother Night and drifted through stars, drawn inexorably upward.
The thing that he had fled, the ceaseless, whispering temptation, had faded greatly, but it was not gone. It had set in his bones. It murmured through his walls and barriers; it thrummed in the stones of the dark world.
Darkness and corruption. Doom and damnation. He dived back into oblivion, but strong hands held him up. He struggled; he fought. They would not let go. They were too many, too strong.
They wrenched him out of darkness and into searing, agonizing light. He twisted, gasping, biting back the cry. The taste of blood filled his mouth: he had bitten his tongue.
Something hard and cold clasped his face. He lay in blessed dimness. His eyes were shielded. He looked into faces recognizable even to what his sight had become. Mages: Kalyi, Urziad, a stranger or two. Merian. And—
He could flee, but there was nowhere to run. He could not hide. She had seen—she knew—
“Later,” his mother said. Her voice was taut with pain. “Help us. The dark—”
The dark was rising. A great hunger was in it, a craving for the blood and bones of living worlds. It beckoned to him, whispering, tempting. He would be its greatest servant, its most dearly beloved. The light was bitter pain. Darkness was sweet; was blessed. It would embrace him and make him its own. He would be the great lord, the emperor of the night. All worlds would bow before him.
“Indaros!”
The light of the Sun’s child was bitter beyond endurance. She was made of light; filled with it, brimming over. She touched him with it; he gasped. She, merciless, gripped tighter. “Remember,” Merian said fiercely. “Remember what you are!”
Doomed. Damned. Lost to darkness.
“Indaros.”
Foolish child. Did she imagine that she could bind him with that name? In the darkness, all names were taken away.
“Indaros!”
It struck like a scorpion whip. It seared him with light and filled his veins with fire. It shot him like an arrow, full into the heart of the dark.
He laughed. Death, had he yearned for? Here was the death of the shooting star: pure glory. He was a conflagration across the firmament, a stream of fire in the face of the night.
The dark fought back, thrusting again and again into his heart. Its whisper rose to a roar. Death, oblivion, annihilation—the surcease of purest nothingness.
Estarion could not hold. It was too far, the dark too deep. The weight of flesh dragged at him. If he could but cast it off, he would be free. He could fight untrammeled.
There was the answer to every riddle, the key to every door. Cast off the flesh; be pure light. Be magic bare, untainted by mortal substance. Become the light, and so embrace the dark, and swallow it as it had swallowed light.
The flesh disliked that thought intensely. Foolish flesh.
“Great-grandfather.” Merian was in his thoughts as he was in hers, interwoven with them. “I’m in the center. Your heir behind me, my heir before me—I’m unnecessary. I stand in the heart of the dark world. If I let go—if I loose the fire—all of it will end.”
“And you,” he said. “You will end, too.”
“I don’t matter. I’ll be in the light.”
“No,” said Estarion. The truth unfolded in him, in glory and splendor. What he was; what he was meant for. Why the gods had brought him to the land of the river and set him on the far side of the dark. He understood at last why he had been moved to surrender the key of his life to Seti-re. If he had not so divided his soul, the flesh would have bound him too tightly; he could not have escaped, whole and free. That surrender, that bit of folly, would save them all.
He was not afraid. There was a strange, aching joy in it. Tanit—Menes—
If he did not do this thing, there would be no world for them to live in, no sun to warm them, no life to live to its fulfillment. The dark would rule. The worlds would crumble into ash.
Merian was still rebelling, still insistent, and Daruya beyond her, for once remembering her headlong youth. “Empress,” he said to them, “and empress who will be. Rule well. Remember me.”
They babbled in protest. He took no notice. The dark gaped to swallow them all.
Someone stood at the gate of it, a lone still figure, eyes full of darkness
but heart blooming suddenly with light. Daros had lit the spark. Estarion fanned it into flame.
The young fool tried to thrust him aside; to take the glory for himself. But Estarion was too strong for that. He eased the boy gently out of the gate. The fire was in him now, consuming him. The pain of it was exquisite. It seared away the flesh; let go the constraints of living existence.
Great blazing wings unfurled. He was a bird of flame, soaring up into the darkness. Song poured out of him: the morning hymn to the Sun that every priest in his empire sang at the coming of every morning; that he had sung to his son in the land of the river, and so consecrated him to the god his forefather.
It was pure adoration; pure light. Pure joy. Freedom beyond imagining—glory, splendor. Beauty unveiled.
Dawn broke over the dark world: true dawn, the rising of the sun above the king’s citadel. The last slaves of the darkness burned and died. The armies of the Sun stood blinking in the light, bloodied, battered, but victorious.