Shadowkill

Epilog

Digby wore a white linen suit imported out of the mists of memory and sat in an elaborate wicker chair with a soft white hat on his knee and the shimmer-glimmer of his bubble around him.

Rohant and Miralys came in; she was quieter than usual and dressed in mourning white, a long robe, cream colored velvet that complimented the fading bronze of her fur and moved elegantly with the vigorous shifts of her lean body. She looked around. Her ears twitched. “This is… different.”

He’d changed the decor of his meeting room to a deliberately exotic simplicity, recreating a room in a house where a family had lived for generations, perhaps a farm house, comfortable, but far from rich. The furniture had the feel of age and hard use, the fabrics were faded and frayed, the colors muted. There was a fireplace with logs burning in it and oil lamps spread their flickering amber glow in patches that left the corners dim where paintings and shelves of trinkets sprang into jewel clarity one moment and sank into shadows the next.

Digby smiled. “Nostalgia lives,” he said. “Hello, Rohant. It’s been a long time.”

“Digby.” Rohant bowed his head, then settled himself in a chair close to the fire and sat gazing into the flames. His robe was crisp and starched, snow white, cold white. He was withdrawn, physically present, mentally absent. The Dyslaer way of grieving was to sink into the minutia of mundane life as Miralys had, to grow excessively busy, exhausting themselves with work and planning. The Dyslaeror way was to create stillness within and without, to withdraw from the world and contemplate meanings-the meaning of particular deaths and generic DEATH, of particular lives and generic LIFE. Voallts Korlach had an estate in the Sarinim, a patch of gentle wilderness they kept to soothe their spirits when urban life became unbearably abrasive; Rohant was leaving tomorrow to spend his Mourning Year in a shrine Miralys had built there. His mind was already in retreat.

Miralys wandered restlessly about the room Digby had created for her, lifting objects, setting them down again. Over her shoulder, she said, “Who all’s coming?”

“Shadith, Kikun, Autumn Rose. They’ll be here any minute now.”

“Ah.”