For a while longer. Without the Library, of course, his ageing would resume as normal, and he would die. Possibly soon. That thought saddened her immeasurably. So much of his potential had been wasted in the futile guardianship of his beloved “old girl”; now he would spend his remaining life alone on this isolated rock, his mind gone.
But it was his choice. And somehow she felt sure that he knew exactly what he’d chosen, and welcomed it. He was, after all, a very strange man.
She spent an hour or two resting and talking over the recent events with Tren, Ori and Llandry. Weariness deadened them all, and their speech was desultory and reluctant. She longed for nothing so much as her bed, at home in her own house in Glour. With hot bricks under the blankets, and Rikbeek hiding in the curtai
