From Callas de Navarre's journal, part fifteen

1/7/1348
Belfast, Ireland

Every victory has its price.

And sometimes, the cost is almost too much bear.

Aru is dead. He died for something he believed in--for the war we are fighting, for the chance of victory for us. And for the love he bore me, and my sister before me.

Last night, when Matthew interrupted me, he was coming to tell me that a drow had arrived, dropped off a girl and a note, and left again. When we arrived in the room he'd indicated, my heart lept into my throat when I saw Gemma, looking so small where she lay sleeping. Tennant had gotten her out, alive and as whole as he could manage. I tried to go to her side to wake her and introduce her to everyone, but Gavião stopped me. He held the note in his hand that Tennant had left. It was from Aru.

And it said that he'd sacrificed himself in battle with Morgan le Fay in order to give Tennant the chance to get my sister out of Versailles. Otherwise, Morgan probably would have killed her as soon as she connected her son's death with Gavião. An sister for a son, or something of that nature.

Something in me broke, some small resistance. And I turned and ran. I found myself in the stables, saddling Dream, and we went into Faerie and just...ran. Everything that's happened in the past few days--Galvin's death and rescue, the death of my father, Aru--all of it just broke over me and overwhelmed me. But by the time that our time in Faerie ran out, we were by the banks of a river and I was a little better in control of myself.

I had a talk with my mother, who explained more about what had gone on, telling me that it really had been the only way. And that this is probably going to happen again--I will lose more people I love before this is all over. And that I am strong enough to do what it necessary and bear the pain of it.

I remain unconvinced. But, at least, Aru did not die alone. He had two goddesses to wait with him until the light faded from his eyes. And he has rejoined Beatrice now. But, oh, for myself I grieve, for the loss of my friend who I fought so hard to save from himself. I miss knowing that he is in the world, somewhere. I miss being able to speculate that someday he and I would be able to work openly together. I never did get to go have tea with him. There wasn't time.

There wasn't time for many things. And there won't be for many more.

So my sister Gemma is with us. At the moment, she spends much of her time sleeping, as she did when she was Morgan's prisoner. It's going to take some doing to convince her that we're not going to hurt her, I think. She has spent her entire life living in fear of people, and most of it in the dream realm where nobody could harm her.

Her physical body is will be hard to heal, but Maria assures me it's possible. The soul...the soul will be more difficult, I think. And at the moment, I cannot look at her without remembering that Aru died to bring her out.

And a very small, quiet part of me wonders if the trade was worth it.

This morning, I received a message from Dushela, inviting us to Aru's funeral. Both Gaius and I were determined to go, which meant that Galvin and Gavião needed to come along. The others attended, I think, mainly out of curiosity.

For the first and probably last time, both sides of this conflict were gathered in the same room without any bloodshed. Aru was well loved, though he may not have realized it. We were met by an honor guard and white dragons in human form, wearing brown robes. Brown is their color of mourning, the color of earth without snow on it. A person who looked like a dragon-winged elf introduced himself as Juri and escorted us into a structure newly created out of snow.

He detoured us out onto a ledge outside before he took us inside. Below us, in the snow, a naked Morgan le Fay was digging in the snow. Evidently, not one person believed her when she claimed that Aru attacked her. I couldn't help the small, cold smile on my face as Juri said that this was the punishment that Sorcha had set her. I said, "Good."

Someone else asked who Sorcha was, and he said that if the council had a leader, she was it. And that she wouldn't be in attendance, as she had other things that would keep her away.

We went inside, and after a few minutes, the service started.

In attendance were Dushela, the previously-noted Juri, a desert dragon named Lady Iona, Tennant, and about a hundred and fifty white dragons. Armand also sat with us. I saw neither Tarn nor Lazlo, and we already knew where Morgan was. Several of the white dragons spoke. Throughout the proceedings, they used the name that he had died with--Aru, rather than Arumaga.

Tennant looked deeply grief-stricken. It had been the first time I'd seen him in person in a long time, and the beard was even more surprising in person than it was in dreams. I wanted to go talk to him, thank him for bringing Gemma back to us, but remembered that officially we've only met him once, and that was in battle.

Dushela sat by herself. She looked very, very alone and, honestly, somewhat lost. She cried quietly as the white dragons talked of Aru's wisdom. In the past week, she's lost Nikodemus, who she's been together with for over three thousand years, the Servant of the Bones, and Aru. I watched the tears running down her cheeks and thought that grief is a great equalizer. Tomorrow, I can go back to wanting Dushela to die for the things she's done, for unleashing an evil on the world that will kill too many people to count. Today, though, we have both lost people we cared for deeply.

I regarded her, wishing there was a way to bring her over to us, get her to help undo the damage she's done. I'm not sure she has a concience, though. I'm not sure that the death of thousands of people really means anything to her. If I could, I would show her, send her dreams of the future. Make what she has done mean something to her.

I admit that I, too, wept, leaning on Galvin. I had thought that perhaps I was all out of tears, having shed a great many of them last night, but it turns out that I wasn't.

I saw Lady Iona lean across the aisle to talk to Riyor. After a brief exchange, she handed him something and went back to watching the service. She'd handed him a cylinder with nine rings around it, each with the letters of the English alphabet on it. Riyor immediately set to playing with it. She said she'd had it for eight hundred years now and had yet to crack the damned thing, and was passing it on. I suspect that the actual reason she handed it to him was because his fidgeting was bothering her, but I didn't mention that.

After the funeral, Gavião was approached by a female white dragon named Maxime. Well, her real name is longer, but everyone calls her Maxime. She is Aru's niece and the new leader of the northern white dragon tribe, and she basically placed herself at Gavião's service. Gavião knighted her then and there, which made me blink a little but figured he knew what he was doing.

We stopped back in Madrid briefly, and then were on our way to St. Petersburg to see if we could pick up a sword for Gavião. Hrunting, Beowulf's sword, was there somewhere, so we decided to see if we could find it. We did, but in the process Riyor and the sword got shrunk down very very tiny. ["Who's a wee little puppet man, then?" -ed.] There were also a number of flasks of wine--ambrosia, as a matter of fact--and nine flasks of something, each of them a different color and marked with a letter. The flasks, once unscrambled, spelled 0 LAST NAME...and we put together that, my speculations about the fact that we'd met pretty much everyone except Merlin out of the Arthurian legends, and the fact that someone--who?--had written the word MERLIN in the snow near the gate we'd come through, to figure that it might be referring to Merlin's last name. After some digging in our collective memories (my father told such wonderful stories of King Arthur. I suspect he was there.) we came up with Merlin's last name--Ambrosius.

And that was the key to opening the cylinder.

The cylinder held a piece of parchment that had a gate address and the words, "The Cave of the Dragon" on it. I remembered from my legends that the Cave of the Dragon is something of a dragon creation myth, the place where all dragons came from, and that Merlin had supposedly been imprisoned there by Morgan eight hundred years ago. That gate, as it turned out, was in Jerusalem, about a mile and a half beneath the city. Off we went to the Cave of the Dragon.

I don't think I've ever been in a place where so much life has been crowded together so closely. There was a ball of very bright light near the ceiling of the mile-high cavern, and everywhere there were trees and animals and other life. The general feeling was one of profound peace, and a very great patience, as if the whole place were waiting for something to happen. Perhaps it is waiting for eternity to end and begin again. I'm not sure.

Aiden ran off, saying something about needing to find an apple. He found the tallest apple tree in the whole place and brought back an apple, which he crunched loudly. After a few moments, he frowned and groused that he didn't *feel* any different. Aiden is a very, very weird drow sometimes. Maybe the drow have stories about this place that we don't.

Rustling through the undergrowth came a large snake, with scales that reflected every color of dragonkind that I know of and some that I don't. The first dragon in the world coiled up, raised itself to our eye level, and asked us what we wanted. We explained that we were looking for a man, and he told us where he was but warned us to be careful of the trap that Merlin was in. We thanked him and went to look for Merlin. After some effort and some help from the first dragon (who seemed to want to get us out of there so he could go back to sleep) we freed and woke Merlin.

We explained the situation and that Morgan was still loose in the world and he said he could do something that would kill her once and then we could kill her again once her resurrection contingency was used up for the day. If we could kill her twice, she would stay dead. That one shot would basically be all he could do, though, and we'd be on our own--but we could probably handle her once, if not twice.

And it was back to Finland, where Morgan was all alone, now clothed, and busy filling in the hole she'd spent all day digging. She seemed very surprised to see Merlin, and that surprise was fatal. She got up after a few seconds, but I have to say that after seeing what she'd done to Gemma and knowing that she'd killed Aru, I wanted a chance to hit her very, very hard. I got that chance.

Unfortunately, Morgan also proved to us why you should always at least ponder strategy before going up against a powerful sorceress. Even if you outnumber her eight to one. Perhaps especially if you outnumber her eight to one. We all except Aiden survived the first spell she cast, Riyor died on the second spell, and the last thing I remember is her screaming a spell, and massive pain. And then, nothing.

I woke up with the taste of the Grail in my mouth, Galvin holding my head, and Arnie holding the Grail to my lips. After remembering how to breathe and then coughing until my throat was sore, I found that our casualties were indeed heavy--Gaius, Riyor, Tamsin, and I had all gone down (and Aiden, but losing his body is usually merely an inconvenience), and only Gavião, Arnie, and Galvin had remained standing. They'd used the Ankh on Tamsin and the Grail on me, but we'd have to wait until tomorrow to raise Riyor and Gaius.

Evidently, someone finally had the bright idea to use the orb we'd acquired earlier that day on her, stopping her from casting spells at us. I'd assumed she had an orb of her own, but I guess not. I have no idea why, unless Sorcha took hers away as part of her punishment.

Which makes me wonder if we were meant to kill Morgan today. If the council thought that being rid of her after she killed Aru was a good idea, but didn't want her blood on their hands...they would have done exactly what they did, stripped her of all her defenses except the ones intrinsic to her and left her out by herself for us to find.

Sorcha was the person who taught Merlin everything he knows. That thought is not a pleasant one, honestly. I need to ask him more about her.

We gated to Belfast, which is where we are now. Tonight, the last of the other Headmasters will arrive, and I will brief all of them on what's going on.

And I will be stepping down as Headmistress, temporarily.

I want to give up the position permanently, but Galvin and Gavião talked me out of it. There is, however, precedent for a Headmaster taking a sabbatical if things in their lives get to the point that they don't feel as if they can serve as a competent Headmaster--usually, things like the birth of a child or the death of a family member are enough for a sabbatical.

And at this point, I cannot be the Headmistress this Order needs. There is so much I have to deal with, so many things I have to do that I cannot both do them and still guide our Temple.

I am exhausted. The fatigue and the cold go bone-deep, and it's getting harder to hide it from the others. The waking dreams, both true and false, distract me, and even sleep brings rest only to my body and not to my mind. And now, this grief, this pain that I must learn how to bear before it destroys me. I need time to grieve, and I have been given none. So tonight, I will put on my black dress, and I will go be Headmistress for the last time for a month.

And I will hope that the month will give me enough time to become strong enough to take up my burden once more.

Aru, I miss you. And I hope you've found peace.

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