Thomas looked at Lirenna, who was looking back at him, and Shaun saw them looking into each other’s eyes as if trying to fix the sight in their memories. But I'll be able to stay with Diana, the woodsman thought, staring across at his sister. I have to! I have to know that she's safe.

     “What about the rest of us?” he asked, and he was surprised to hear an almost desperate tone entering his voice. “My brother and I left home in the first place because we wanted to be with Diana, to look after her. If possible I’d like the three of us to stay together. It’s what our parents would want.”

     His heart pounded madly as he waited for the Colonel to reply. What would he do if they tried to separate them? he wondered. In his mind, images appeared of unclothed female bodies, used and murdered. The legacy of the Runeblade, still as strong as ever. He would grab his sister and run, he decided. Get away to somewhere safe. Somewhere they would never be found where they could live the rest of their lives. Somewhere he could perpetually watch over his sister, making sure she was safe.

     Madness, he knew. They would never be able to escape, and even if they did he would be executed as a deserter if they were ever found. And Diana would probably refuse to leave in any case. She would say it was her duty to help fight the evil of the Shadowarmies. He would have to make her come with him, he thought. Carry her off by force...

     By the Gods, he thought. What am I thinking? Would I really carry my own sister away against her will? Of course not! I would never do that! But I have to be with her, to know that she's safe. I have to!

     “Of course,” said Rustin at last, and Shaun sagged with relief. “We like to preserve a successful team if at all possible. The three of you will form the core of a new Wolfpack team, along with one of your wizard friends and a couple of new members. Probably humanoids, to give you a good mix of talents.” He turned his attention back to the wizards. “I’m sure the other two of you will get on well with your new teammates.”

     “There’s just one more thing I want to impress upon you before you go,” said the third officer, a younger, much less friendly looking man. The badge on his breastplate identified him as belonging to the intelligence corps. The spy brigade as they were informally known. There was a cold gleam in his eye as he fixed his gaze on each of them in turn. “You are not to discuss anything you know about Kronos to any other person. The whole thing is top secret. Absolutely top secret. That includes not only the observatory but the mines, the city, the moon trogs, everything. Any mention of any of these things to anyone, anyone at all, will be regarded as treason. Is that understood?”

     They all said they understood. “What about the inhabitants of Kronosia who will be wanting to return to Tharia soon?" asked Diana. "Any of them could spread word about what’s up there.”

     “No they won’t,” said the intelligence officer, though. “No inhabitant of Kronosia will be allowed to return to Tharia until the end of the war.”

     “What!” exclaimed the cleric in outrage. “You’re holding them all prisoner?”

     “We don’t like it any more then you do,” replied Rustin, “but we simply can’t take the chance of the enemy finding out about the observatory. The tactical advantage it’ll give us is simply too great to risk. We have so few advantages over the Shads as it is.”

     “But they’ve done nothing wrong!” cried Diana angrily. “It is immoral to...”

     “The matter is not a subject for discussion!” snapped the intelligence officer sharply. “Beware lest we consider you also a threat to security.”

     That shut them up, but Diana continued to glower angrily and fingered her new caroli flower meaningfully as she fearlessly met the young officer’s gaze. It wasn’t common for Caroli to refuse to heal someone, considering the patient unworthy to receive the divine boon, but it happened sometimes and the officer glowered at the implied threat. Shaun wasn't so sure he was wrong, though. They were engaged in a war of racial survival, after all. If they lost the war, it wasn't just occupation and slavery they had to look forward to but the extinction of the species. Under those circumstances, they might be justified in temporarily setting aside some of the normal moral standards they were sworn to uphold.

     That ended the meeting, and the officers stood as the six youngsters left the room. Once outside the door, though, the questers simply stood in the corridor for a while, feeling lost and afraid. Almost in shock.

     "Well, I don't know about the rest of you," said Jerry at last, "but I need a stiff drink."

     "A lot of drinks," Matthew confirmed. "I think I saw some kind of common room back that way. You think they'd lower their standards enough to let us in?"

     "Let's go find out," the tiny nome replied.

☆☆☆

     It turned out to be an enlisted men's mess room. The occupants looked up as the questers entered, resenting their intrusion, but they were allowed to buy drinks for themselves so long as they drank them in a side room normally used for private parties, the room being currently empty. Unusually, they all ordered strong alcoholic spirits for themselves, even Diana, although she mixed hers with an equal amount of orange juice.

     They sat in silence around the small round table as they thought about their coming separation. It seemed incredible that they'd only known each other for just over a year. They seemed to have been travelling together all their lives. The years before they'd met were now hazy with distance in their memories, as if they were a previous incarnation, the lives lived by a distant ancestor. They'd grown so accustomed to each other that the thought of being separated, of trusted friends being replaced by strangers of unknown temperament and reliability, caused them real apprehension. It worried them more, in fact, than the prospect of future battles with Shadowsoldiers.

     Thomas and Lirenna stayed with the others for a couple of hours, each of them knowing that they might soon be one of the two wizards to be alone among strangers, with no familiar faces to make them feel safe. They wanted to enjoy the company of their friends for as long as possible, but they also wanted some time together as a couple, just the two of them together, and so after a while they made their excuses and left. The others held out their hands to them, and they brushed fingers with each of them in turn before walking away.

     The two of them stuck close together all the rest of the day, just talking, holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. “It’ll be strange not being with you,” said Thomas when they reached his room and sat side by side on his cot. “I can hardly imagine what it’ll be like.”

     “Me too,” agreed the demi shae, “but we’ll be seeing each other now and then, and one day the war’ll be over. We’ll be together again.”

     “But when? It might be years! Look how long the last Shadowwar lasted.”

     Lirenna didn’t reply. She sat in silence for a while, and Thomas sensed that she wanted to say something but didn’t quite dare, or perhaps was searching for the right words. He waited for her to speak, but she looked away, looked at the wall, and the human wizard realised that she was gathering her courage, that she was afraid. “Lenny?” he said, giving her hand a squeeze. “You okay?”

     “Let’s take the first oath!” she suddenly blurted out. “Right now!”

     She stared at him as if afraid of how he’d react and for a moment Thomas could only stare. She'd told him a lot about shayen culture during the time they'd known each other and it had included the first and second oaths but he suddenly found himself wondering whether he'd misunderstood.

     “The first oath?” he said at last. “What, you mean get engaged?”

     He’d been thinking exactly the same thing but hadn’t dared say anything. The shae folk were a long lived race, often living for several centuries, and the demi shae had told him, somewhere along their journeyings, that shayen courtship was a long, drawn out affair, often lasting decades. He’d longed to propose engagement for a long time now, but he’d been afraid to broach the subject in case she was offended by his unseemly haste. But he was only human! He didn’t have decades to woo her. He only had decades to live, full stop. He’d been afraid that anything serious between them was doomed by the sheer difference in their life expectancies, but now she’d made the suggestion! Prompted by their imminent separation, of course, but even so. This was something he hadn’t dared hope for.

     “You, you want to get engaged? To me?”

     Lirenna stared at him, suddenly terrified. She jumped to her feet and made to run for the door, tears in her eyes but Thomas grabbed her arm and held her fast.

     “What is it? What’s wrong? Yes! Yes, I think it’s a great idea! Let’s get engaged!”

     She stared at him in desperate hope. “You love me? You want to marry me?”

     “I love you and I want to marry you. I can’t imagine life without you. But I’m only human, I’ll only live a few years, and I’ll grow old and frail while you’re still young and beautiful. Are you sure you really want to marry a human?”

     She stared at him. “Yes I’m sure!” she cried, “but we probably won’t have any children. Are you sure you want to marry someone who very probably can’t give you any children?”

     “I just want to be with you. If we have a child that’ll be wonderful, but if we don’t that’s okay too. I just want to be with you for the rest of my life, if you can stand the thought that I’ll be a doddering wreck in what’ll seem a very short time to you.”

     “I love you,” she replied. “Neither of us knows how long we’ve got. Chances are we’ll both be killed before this war is over, but I want to be your oathkin until then.”

     “Oathkin,” said Thomas, smiling. “I like that word. I like the thought of that word describing us.”

     “So let’s do it! Pledge ourselves to each other! So that we’ll be together in each other’s hearts no matter how far apart we are.”

     Thomas began to grin with excitement. “But we’d need to exchange rings. I haven’t got one to give you.”

     "We've already exchanged rings," pointed out Lirenna, grinning with relief as she held up her hand, her golden Ring of ESP glimmering in the morning sunlight. "You gave me this when we escaped into the caverns, and when we got all our things back I gave you my Autumnleaf ring in exchange for it."

     She pointed to it, shining on Thomas’s finger, and he chuckled as he looked at it. "You're right," he agreed, "and it's appropriate for wizards to exchange magic rings. Let's do it properly, though." He removed his ring and indicated for her to do the same, and they handed them across to each other. "Shall we use the human ceremony or the shayen one? On second thoughts, let's make up our own ceremony. We both know what we want to say, don’t we?”

     “Yes!” agreed the demi shae, her eyes shining with excitement. “Our very own ceremony. Shall I start or will you?”

     “I’ll start,” said Thomas, taking her hand in his. “Lirenna Daliris, my true love. My first love, my only love. Please accept this ring as a token of my eternal, undying love for you. I swear to you that, no matter how far apart we are or how long we are separated, I will think of no other woman until the day we are together again.” He slipped the ring onto her finger.

     “And I swear that I will think of no other man until we’re together again,” said Lirenna, tears in her eyes as she took Thomas’s hand. “Thomas Gown, I love you! I think I began to love you the very first time I saw you. I love you and I, I...”

     Her voice choked off with emotion and her hands began shaking. It was all she could do to slip the ring onto his finger without dropping it. They looked at each other, they leaned slowly towards each other and they kissed long and slow.

     “Now we’ve taken the first oath,” said Thomas several minutes later, his vision also becoming blurry as his eyes filled with tears of deep emotion. They looked at each other again, and burst into happy, joyous laughter. They fell into each other’s arms, hugging each other tightly. Thomas ran his fingers through her long, unbelievably soft, silky dark hair, and Lirenna pressed her face against his chest, breathing in the musky smell of his body that she loved so much.

     “I’ve never been happier in my life,” said Thomas as they broke apart to look at each other again. “Come on, let’s go tell the others!”

     “No, not yet,” replied Lirenna however, reaching up and pulling his face back down to hers.