Mentu was stamping out the fire. Someone else lit another lamp. Filek was beside the Emperor, who had struggled up to a sitting position and had produced a dagger from somewhere.
Simona was sobbing, kneeling down beside Nuza, who lay still.
Thru gave an inarticulate cry of horror and knelt beside her.
"I don't know what happened," wept Simona.
Thru felt for a pulse. He heard a loud gasp behind him. "Nuza!" cried the Emperor in sudden despair. "Not Nuza, no!"
"It is all right, Thru Gillo, let me examine her." Thru heard the voice in his ear, but he had gone numb. The world seemed to have receded into fog. The enemy was finally destroyed, but had he slain Nuza in the end?
Filek Biswas knelt beside Nuza and took her wrist in his hand.
Aeswiren, ignoring the pain of his wound, pulled himself across the litter until he could rest a hand on Thru's shoulder, but Thru felt it not. Thru was lost in a world without shape or form, where despair mocked him from a bleak grey sky.
Then a hand pounded on his back with excitement. "She lives! Her pulse is strong!" Filek Biswas was shouting.
Thru looked down, and the fog stripped from his brain. As he reached for her, he saw Nuza's eyes open, and she started up toward him.
Four years later, Thru Gillo stood back from an almost completed mat and heard Nuza on the steps to his workroom. She was coming quickly, which meant she was excited. He looked out the window to check the position of the sun in the sky. It was early for Nuza to be coming home.
"What is it?" he said as she burst in. Then behind her he saw other forms and jumped up with a glad cry.
"Mentu!" Their hands met. "Juf! You're back."
"The only mot who ever went twice to Shasht!" said Juf proudly.
"You'll become a byword, my friend, if you keep this up."
"And this!" Mentu was staring at the large mat that Thru was weaving.
"It's new. What do you think?"
Mentu studied it and burst into a rich laugh. "What a splendid joke!"
Thru was smiling. "There's always hope. Maybe it will come true."
Little Kima, their oldest child, came running in and leaped into Nuza's arms. Thru ruffled his daughter's hair and took another look at the work on the loom.
"What do you call it?" asked Juf.
"'Men at Prayer,'" said Thru with a grin.
Juf laughed. "And how was 'Mots at War' received?"
"There was some resistance, but I have woven it twice now. Not as popular as the old styles."
"Nothing ever will be. And you must do another 'Chooks and Beetles' soon."
"I'm getting too old to do 'Chooks and Beetles' anymore."
"There is tea on the boil downstairs," said Nuza. "Unless you want to stay up here and talk weaving."
"No, no, we would love some tea," Mentu answered.
"And you must tell us all that has happened."
"Well, the war is over. Aeswiren is Emperor once again. The priests are beaten for good."
"And the pyramid?"
"They have begun to dismantle it. Aeswiren has ordered the stone to be used for new temples to their old gods, to Canilass and the rest."
"But that isn't the biggest news," said Juf.
"Oh?"
"Aeswiren has wed Simona. She is the new Empress of Shasht."