A Record of the Delfinian War

Books Seventeen and Eighteen: In the Distant Flow of Time


Shera and Ru sneak into the castle where Lee and the knights are being held prisoner. Shera unfortunately bumps into Letitia. Ru buys him time to escape, but gets stabbed himself, dying within moments. Letty cuts off a lock of his hair and, with that in his hand, finds he is able to wield Ru's sword. Ru's body is sent out to be buried, where Shera rescues it from having the hair plucked to make a wig.

Just as Shera is about to bury him in the woods, Ru comes back to life. His race is vitually immortal. He offers to grant Shera immortality, yet the boy refuses on the grounds that he wants to meet Vantser in the afterlife. Lee had been adopted into the Rah Clan but had also refused immortality for a similar reason.

The aborted mission had one benefit: Lee could feel Ru being injured and concern for him roused her from her drugged state. Though weak, she manages to escape Najeck's attempt to rape her, making it to the top of the castle tower, where she is trapped by enemy soldiers. Ru, still recovering from being dead, sends the silver ring with Woll to help her. Once she gets the ring, Ru telepathically tells her to destroy the castle. She brings the whole thing down, even filling in the two moats so Shera can lead the captive knights out to safety. More incredible than the destructive force of her magic is that, amid all the chaos, she doesn't harm a single person.

After the Tanga forces flee, Lee has a joyful reunion with her partner. It turns out that time runs differently in the two dimensions. Though six years have passed for Lee, Ru only experienced ten days of waiting. He had assumed that the king married a thirteen-year-old Lee. <Reunion> He is also amazed that the Sun, Moon, and Darkness are together in the same place.

While Lee spends several rough days going through withdrawal from the drug used on her, Baluro leads the rest of the king's army to meet up with them. Ru, who now has a grudge against Zoratus for trying to get his son to rape Lee, is determined to kill the enemy king. Ru was born with the ability to seduce practically anyone, male or female. When Zoratus comes to attack, Ru poses as a bard and gets invited into Zoratus' tent. He wounds the king so that he will be in pain when Lee leads a surprise attack on the enemy camp, enabling her to catch up to him and take his head.

Woll leads his army to lay siege to Tanga's capital, where Najeck has been crowned as the next king. After Lee taunts him into leaving the safety of the castle, it's all over. Lee kills him, and the Delfinian forces pour into the castle. Najeck's younger brother, a boy about Shera's age, is crowned king at Woll's request. The boy recognizes that the Delfinian king only did what he had to, and he hopes he can be Woll's friend.

The army returns briefly to Coral, where Lee says her farewells to her friends. She has made up her mind to return to her home dimension as soon as the war with Pallast is over. They march to the aid of the soldiers laying siege to Fort Bilguna. Once Shera incapacitates the enemy with food poisoning, the Delfinian army storms through Pallast, forcing Orlon into a corner.

Woll doesn't want Lee to go, but her decision is firm. She doesn't want to keep living as a woman, since she can't show affection for her male friends without causing a scandal. Ru can turn her back into a boy, but Woll can't keep such a powerful male friend by his side because it would wind up causing a civil war as the people grew to favor one over the other.

Ru explains the legend of the Sun, Moon, and Darkness--each of them inherited a bit of an ancient triad of powerful gods, which makes them different from others of their races. <Legend> Lee is biologically human; Ru sensed her before she was born, her power drawing him. She had originally been female, but for some inexplicable reason she was born male. Ru took him from his human parents, who would probably have rejected him as a changeling, and gave him to the werewolf Amarock to raise. Ru speculates that falling through the dimensional portal made Lee revert to her original female body.

The young Eddie had fallen in love with a female wolf when he was four years old. The two became a mated couple, though only in the emotional sense. After humans murdered her, Eddie had wanted to kill himself, and only Ru gave him a reason to live. Ru had never intended for Eddie to hate his own kind. He is incredibly grateful to Woll for helping Lee care about and befriend humans.

The night before she will leave, Lee teleports Woll to Soosha, where he had been raised. She invites him to make love to her once before she goes. Woll senses that she is attempting to use the act as a way to burn all her bridges, so she won't be able to face him anymore and thus won't want to return to Delfinia even if she could. He turns her down, insisting that he believes they will meet again someday, so he won't say a final goodbye. Nearly in tears, she promises that if she ever falls in love with someone again, she'll tell the person up front that she has a husband.

Lee gets turned back into a boy the next morning and prepares to leave. Shera wants to go along, which will throw the Rah Clan into a tizzy to see the Sun, Moon, and Darkness incarnations together. Suddenly Letitia attacks Lee using Ru's sword. Lee is at a disadvantage, not being accustomed to the new male body. At the crucial moment during their duel, however, Letty's nerve condition acts up, allowing Lee to strike a mortal blow.

Still feeling fond of him, Lee offers to take his soul with her. He agrees, on the condition that he can be with Moira and the young Farott girl ghost. The two spirits readily accept, entering Shera's body to be carried along. It would have overloaded a normal human, but as the Moon, Shera has no trouble--aside from being creeped out.

Lee sends an illusion of "Queen Grinda, Goddess of Victory" to Woll on the battlefield. Once Orlon surrenders, the illusion announces her work is done and she must return to the realm of the gods. She leaves Woll with a goodbye kiss. Ru, Lee, and Shera go through the dimensional gate.

Woll is remembered ever after as the hero who married a goddess and brought peace to the land.