18

From his place on the rooftop, Rasalom heard the silent blast and raised his arms toward the vault of the sky, not in supplication, but in triumph.

Done.

She was gone. He could sense her absence. The Fhinntmanchca had done its job. Opus Omega had finally yielded fruit, though not in the originally intended manner. All those millennia of flogging generation after generation of the Septimus Order to keep setting those pillars, only to learn that they could not complete it. The Orsa had been the fail-safe, and that was why it had had to be secured no matter what the risks.

He had thought the Lady dead once before, when that little would-be usurper of his name had set the chew wasps on her. No one had been more surprised than he—except perhaps the Lady herself—when it appeared she had succeeded. The petty pretender had had no idea what she was doing, and only a unique alliance of circumstances had allowed her the means.

But she had merely appeared to succeed, for the Lady had reappeared elsewhere, wounded but alive.

Not this time.

The Fhinntmanchca existed solely for this task, and it had succeeded.

Now the Enemy will see this world as non-sentient and thus without value. It will turn away and devote its attentions to other worlds.

Your time has just ended, Glaeken, and mine is about to begin.

He wondered at his subdued feelings. Where was the exuberance, the joy, the ecstasy of victory after such a prolonged conflict?

Well, that would come.

He began planning his next moves. The first was a minor matter: dispose of that noisome girl and her unborn child. The child might have proved useful had the Fhinntmanchca failed. But now that the Lady was gone, he had no use for it; it might even prove a liability. Eliminating liabilities had been his credo since the First Age. It had served him well through the millennia. No sense in changing tactics now.

Dispose of her, then go to the mountain to initiate the Change. But first, the power.

He waited for the surge as the Enemy vacated—power to begin the Change—in himself and in the world around him.

But he felt nothing.

No . . . that was not right. He did feel something, a growing sensation in the back of his mind, slowly spreading across it. Strangely familiar.

It couldn’t be . . . no . . . no . . .

“NO!”