Tyr carried the girl to her jet plane that had been hidden among the rocks. He lifted her into it and swung up, both hands on the smooth plasticine handles. The door clicked behind him.
Katha dropped into a red leather seat before an intricate control-board. Her white fingers touched pins. The ship rumbled and shuddered. Slowly it trundled forward, gathering momentum. From the port window, Tyr watched the white dome of the Barrow falling away below. He turned his eyes to the front, seeing her lift the plane over a fringe of hibithus-trees to arrow into the cloudless sky.
"Katha, I am homeless."
Homeless and a wanderer, without a people. The Trylla had been his people, if a god ever had people. Now they had turned against him, broken with him, even tried to kill him. There was bitterness on his tongue and in his heart. A bitterness that burned and galled.
From the depths of his anguish, he cried, "I want to be a part of something, Katha! I am neither Tryllan nor ardth. What am I?"
The woman caught his hand and pressed it to her lips. She whispered softly, "To me you are always a god, Tyr. I love you. You love me."
"I have you. Yes, that makes up for everything else."
He sighed, "But I keep telling myself that I have failed. That I have not done all I could to free the Trylla."
"What of the tower, Tyr? You said it had strange things in it. Perhaps it is a laboratory, of sorts. I might make tests there, of you, seek to know your purposes, your abilities."
"Yes, the tower. I'd forgotten that. It could be a home to us. An ardth-woman and a—an unknown!"