When she went into the tent, she did not see him at first. He was lying down with his back in the darkness turned towards the wall.
"Hello," she said.
"Hello" he said, quietly.
"What is going on, O my Betrothed?" she said, sitting down beside him, touching his shoulder.
He sighed. "She was so beautiful, Annette. She used to run the hills like some flashing deer, like the embodiment of the wind, like --"
"What is going on?"
"She is dying." He turned over. "Her doctors give her two or three weeks to live. I should have known when I saw her in the chair. What is Princess Tashalan doing being carried down the mountains, she who laughed at mountains? She cannot walk anymore, she is so weak. And she is not alone. Her people are dying, over there, on the other side of the Mountain in all directions. Many have died already. We talked about her illness, about their illnesses. It resembles what happened to Marie Curie, you remember, but different somehow. She has come to Prince Monotek, to the Valley, as her last hope."
Annette said quietly: "Do you think he is killing her too?"
Curioso sat up, and held her. "I think there is an imbalance here. Perhaps there is only so much life to go around. Perhaps there is some law being warped, broken. Perhaps immortality can only come at the expense of others' mortality. Suppose that one day we learn how to exchange vital organs, the way one might change an engine part? Will the rich not kill or pay the poor for their body parts, so the rich can survive over the bodies of the poor? Perhaps that is what is happening here. This protected space, with its beauty and its wealth and its long-lived people, seems to be sucking the life out of its not-so-fortunate neighbours. Was it always this way? Perhaps not."
"When did this start happening?"
"Seven years ago. Around when "Prince Monotek" arrived in the Valley."
"And she is here --?"
"To submit, to be cured in the Valley, to live again."
"Under his shadow."
"Under his shadow. Whatever he wants."
They sat there in the dark.
Finally he spoke, hoarsely:"You were right, chere. We had to come back. But it is terrible."
Annette said: "I will go and see her in the morning. I know something about radium sickness."
Curioso said: "I asked her to let you come and see her, but she refused. She has her pride."
Annette looked out of the tent towards the pavilion in the near distance. "Tell me about her, then."
And Curioso told her all he could remember about the Princess Tashalan, how they had met in her father's court when he was invited for a visit as an exotic specimen from distant lands, her chilhood, her blossoming into a woman, and her ascent to power in her realm, and about the dance of the Victory Banner in Llhasa where she had taken the final turn, and the great story of the battle of Drinphal, where she had held firm when all others had fled, and many other stories, until dawn entered the tent.