Þe quene þat by þe stod, of loue teres heo weop a flod

Nareth had been standing in the open entryway to the Hospital when Severus and I had found her alone and looking out into the street with a disoriented frown. “I’ve only been gone an hour,” she said over and over again. “It wasn’t snowing….” She began questioning me as though she’d seen me scarce moments before. My shock at seeing her alive, as it were, made little impression in the swirl of confusion that surrounded her.

She’d wanted to return to the Library. Severus and I had walked with her, matching each long stride as her boots crunched through the ice in the frozen streets. She didn’t seem to know Severus. She didn’t seem to know about the changes in the City. And as we walked, she shivered. Nareth was… cold. “Impossible,” I thought to myself, “The undead don’t feel the sting of winter…. “

As we made our way the Library Nareth hesitated, surprised by the large Christmas wreath hanging on the Library’s door. After a moment, she entered and headed directly to the drawing room hearth. She fell straightaway into the armchair to the right of the fire. The myriad conversations surrounding us fell silent, as one by one eyes turned to Nareth, not believing what they were seeing. She was trembling. I’d never seen her tremble; she seemed almost vulnerable. But this couldn’t be, I kept telling myself.

“I was going to the Pit. I didn't go to the Pit.”

“You summoned Labyrinth, Nareth. You went.

“No….”

But she had gone, had been destroyed there, carved into pieces by Pontifex and fed to the Shadows by Lorne in her bid to summon Labyrinth. She didn’t believe it or wouldn’t. And frankly, I didn’t know what to make of this Nareth who was confounded, shaking and near tears. She wasn’t the brutal Nareth I’d known, nor was she the Golem or the small, Vietnamese thief tossed by the sea upon the City’s shore during a late-night torrential downpour.

Nareth murmured, “Something has gone very wrong, I think.”

“Yes, very wrong,” Pontifex replied. “What if the others come back too? We both went to the pit, only I came back.... “

An icy voice. “What is the meaning of this?”

And the Lady had been shocked. Angered. Then…if not accepting… somehow resolved. Lorne had prompted, “Look into her soul, Omega. If she still has it within her, that is one thing, and the nature of a soul to show what it is quite another.” The Lady couldn’t look. But Grrbrool could.

“Realmwalker,” he said, “Not tha Huntress.”

She went to the Pit; she didn’t go. She died there; she lived.

Nareth; not Nareth.

I just don’t know.



Nareth Returns