And he did, flooding Carse’s mind with the voice of thought, raging like a storm wind trapped in a narrow vault, desperate, pleading.
“ If you’ll trust me, Carse, I could still save Khondor. Lend me your body, let me use it— ”
“I’m not far gone enough for that, even now.”
“ Gods above!” Rhiannon’s thought raged. “ And there’s so little time— ”
Carse could sense how he fought to master his fury and when the thought-voice came again it was controlled and quiet with a terrible sincerity.
“ I told you the truth in the grotto. You were in my Tomb, Carse. How long do you think I could lie there alone in the dreadful darkness outside space and time and not be changed? I’m no god! Whatever you may call us now we Quiru were never gods—only a race of men who came before the other men.
“ They call me evil, the Cursed One—but I was not! Vain and proud, yes, and a fool, but not wicked in intent. I taught the Serpent Folk because they were clever and flattered me—and when they used my teaching to work evil I tried to stop them and failed because they had learned defenses from me and even my power could not reach them in Caer Dhu.
“ Therefore my brother Quiru judged me. They condemned me to remain imprisoned beyond space and time, in the place which they prepared, as long as the fruits of my sin endured on this world. Then they left me.
“ We were the last of our race. There was nothing to hold them here, nothing they could do. They wanted only peace and learning. So they went along the path they had chosen. And I waited. Can you think what that waiting must have been?”
“I think you deserved it,” Carse said thickly. He was suddenly tense. The shadow, the beginning of a hope…