“Yes,” he said with an almost imperceptible quiver in his voice. “Have I not had a great, if not a guilty, share in bringing this curse upon the world, and is it not fitting that I should give my last days to the task, however hopeless, of bringing back peace on earth so that men may die sane and not mad?”
“But, Alan, is that a higher duty than you owe to your family and your people? You know that in you centre all their hopes for the future, if there is to be one. With you would die the name of Arnold, and the direct line of Natas and Natasha.”
“And with me they would die even if I went with the Children of Deliverance into the caverns of Mount Austral and survived the ruin of the world. How can you mock me like that, Alma? Have I not suffered enough for my weakness and my folly that you would condemn me to wander an exile in the wilderness that the world will be when it has passed through its baptism of fire?
“What is the swift death of battle or the short agony of the conflagration of the world compared with the long death-in-life that I should drag out alone in the new world that may arise from the ruins of this one?”
“And why alone, Alan?”
“Why alone? Can you ask me that, Alma? Surely you are mocking me now. Can you ask why I should be alone if I survived with the remnant of our people? Do you not even yet know why I choose the certainty of death rather than the chance of life?”
“But, Alan, what if I were to tell you that you would not go alone to the caverns, and that if the chosen few survive you will not wander alone on the wilderness of the new world?”
“I should tell you, Alma, that you meant to sacrifice yourself to save me, and that I would not accept the sacrifice even at your hands.”
“Sacrifice! No, Alan, I would not outlive the world, even with you, on those terms. A woman of Aeria does not sell herself even for sentiment. This is no time for secrets or false shame, and I tell you frankly that if you had accepted the order of the Council, you should have lived and I would have died.
“But your rebellion proved to me that Isma was right when she rebuked my false pride by saying that the man who has fallen and risen again is better and stronger than he who has never suffered”—