“Why, to be sure!” said Maya. “And a great deal of bother, too, there has been made this morning over nothing, as if I did not already have quite enough to bother me!”
And with that, she summoned from among her enchanted geldings the handsomer of the pair who formerly had been emperors.
“For a child of mine must go in proper state,” said Maya.
Then Gerald said: “No. An imperial steed is well enough, but a divine steed is better. Let him take Kalki!”
“Now, really, Gerald, your unreasonableness sometimes surprises even me! For you know perfectly well that Kalki is your own horse, and that you will be needing him yourself when you ride down to the appointed kingdom you are always talking your stuff and nonsense about.”
Gerald looked at her for some while. He was conscious of a hushed great exultation that in a world wherein all else seemed doubtful and unstable he had, somehow, through blind luck, won to his Maya and her snappishness and her unswerving and whole-hearted and quite unscrupulous love for him. She was not pretty, she was not brilliant, she was not even easy to live with. But Gerald knew now that he and this woman were one person; and that any living without Maya would be a maimed business; and that there could be nothing in Antan which could conceivably content him for the loss of this dear, ever-wrangling, dull-witted woman.
Then Gerald said: “But it is prophesied that the power of Antan shall pass to the rider upon Kalki. No harm can befall the rider upon Kalki. So we will let—we will let our son take Kalki. For in this way we will secure his protection, and we will remove the one chance of my ever leaving you, who are worth all the kingdoms that have ever been.”
Maya said, “But—”
Gerald, smiling, replied, “Nevertheless!”
Then the illusion called Theodorick Quentin Musgrave was lifted up by Gerald to the back of Kalki, and it was Gerald who adjusted the stirrups for his successor upon the divine steed. And the seeming of a child rode down toward the goal of all the gods, a rather quaintly pathetic little figure perched up there so high upon the back of the huge shining stallion.