AWARM NIGHT, THE FRAGRANCE OF FLOWERS. MOONLIGHT orees, on the pale stones of the garden wall, on the woman standing in the high window.
Devin hears a sound to his left and quickly turns. Rovigo running up, to stid with shock as his gaze follows Alessans upward. Behind him now es Sah Alais.
"Help me!" the Duke orders harshly, dropping to the cobblestones beside Devin. His expression is wild, distraught, he has a knife in his hand.
"What?" Devin gasps, unprehending. "What do you . . . ?」
"My fingers! Now! Cut them! I he power!" And Sandre dAstibar slaps the hilt of the knife hard into Devins palm and curls his ow hand around a loose slab of stone ireet. Only his third and fourth fingers are extehe wizards fingers, of binding to the Palm.
"Sandre . . ." Devin begins, stammering.
"No words! Cut me, Devin!」
Devin does as he is told. Wing, gritting his teeth against pain against grief, he poises the sharp slim blade and brings it down on Sandres exposed fingers, cleaving through. He hears someone cry out.
Alais, not the Duke.
But in the moment the ks through flesh to grind against stohere is a swift and dazzling flash. Sandres darkened face is illuminated by a a of white light that flares like a star about his head and dies away, leaving them blinded for a moment ier-image of its glow.
Alais is on the Dukes other side, kneeling to quickly a square of cloth about his bleeding hand.
Sandre lifts that hand, with an effort, silent in the face of pain. Without a word spoken, Alais helps him, her fingers supp his arm.
From high above they hear a sharp, distant crash, the sound of men shouting. Silhouetted iall window, Catriana bees suddenly taut. She screams something. They are too far away to make out the words. Too terribly far. They see her turn though, to the darkness, to the night.
"Oh, my dear, no. Not this!" Alessans voice is a ragged whisper scoured up from his heart.
Too late. Far, far too late.
On his knees in the dusty road, Devin sees her fall.
Not wheeling or tumbling to death, but graceful as she has always been, a diver cleaving the night downward. Sahrusts forward his maimed wizards hand, straining upward. He speaks rapid words Devin ot uand. There is a sudden weirdly dist blur in the night, a shimmer as of unnatural heat in the air. Sandres hand is aimed straight at the falling woman. Devi stops for a moment, seizing at this wild, impossible hope.
Then it starts beating again, heavy as age, as death. Whatever Sandre has tried, it is not enough. He is too far, it is too hard a spell, he is too o this power. Any of these, all, none. Catriana falls. Unstayed, unchecked, beautiful as a moonlit fantasy of a woman who fly. Down to a broken, crumpled ending behind the garden wall.
Alais bursts into desperate sobs. Sandre covers his eyes with his good hand, his body rog bad forth. Devin hardly see for the tears in his eyes. High above them, in the window where she had stood, the blurred forms of men appear, looking downward into the darkness of the garden.
"We have to move away!" Rovigo croaks, the words scarcely intelligible. "They will be searg.」
It is true. Devin knows it is. And if there is any gift, anything at all they offer back to Catriana now, to where she might be watg with Morian, it is that her dying should not have been meaningless
or in vain.
Devin forces himself up from his knees, he h