“It would have been hard enough to hide from a mage, but it’s impossible to conceal yourself from your bonded mate. For mated we are, Isabel. Accept it.”
He spun her around so that her back was to him and began deftly unlacing her gown. With a swiftness truly magical he unbound her rigid leather corset, then cupped her breasts with his warm great hands.
As she gasped with distracted pleasure, his levity dropped away. “I love you, Isabel,” he said softly. “Accept the fact that we are joined for life, and quite possibly eternity as well. Will marriage be so very bad? We’ve been granted a rare gift of passion and closeness, my love.”
She pulled away and turned to face him. It wasn’t possible to read his thoughts—the white heat that had joined them when they conjured the tempest was only a distant pulse, though it would always be there when summoned. But they were still in resonance with each other, and with dawning wonder she realized that she was no longer alone.
In his eyes, she saw the reflection of her own soul and the mad glory of his desire. Even, to her surprise, a fear that she would continue to resist him.
She had always had faith in her magical abilities, but for the first time, a pleasing sense of feminine power began to flow through her. Despite Macrae’s bluster, he was well-aware that a mage of her power couldn’t be brought unwilling to the altar. This great brash Scot was humbling himself. Humility was not one of his gifts, which was why he was doing it so badly.
Secure in her power as both sorceress and woman, she asked, “So you have demanded me as a reward from my queen, invaded my home, and terrorized our servants because you want to marry me even though I am neither Scottish nor a Guardian?”
He smiled wryly. “Aye. It doesn’t matter that you are English and not of Guardian blood. You are Isabel—the most powerful sorceress in Britain and my bonded mate, and my family will rejoice when I bring you home. Must I terrorize anyone else to gain your consent?”
“My dear, foolish rogue.” With a swift cascade of joy, she linked her arms around his neck. She didn’t need her scrying glass to know that they would share passion and battles and unshakable love. Macrae was hers as she was his, bonded for eternity in an alchemical marriage. “All you had to do was ask!”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The defeat of the Spanish Armada is one of those historical high points that just about everyone remembers from high school history classes. It was a watershed that established England’s ascendancy as a great sea power and was also a signifier of Spain’s decline. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain certainly contributed to that decline. It’s ironic that the word marrano, which meant swine and was highly insulting, became Marranos, the term by which the exiles are now known.
John Dee is a historical figure, famous as the queen’s conjuror. A metaphysical scholar, alchemist, writer, and astrologer, he cast a chart to pick the best time for Elizabeth’s coronation. Given the success of her reign, he was obviously good at his work! It was said that he put a hex on the Spanish Armada, which is why the weather was unusually bad that summer and the English triumphed. The running battles in the English Channel did only average damage—it was the storms when the Armada tried to sail north around Britain that destroyed most of the Spanish fleet.
Dee was also a founder of the Rosicrucian Order, a Protestant response to the Jesuits. A devout Christian, he was both praised and vilified in his lifetime. It is said that he was the model for Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest. His library of more than four thousand volumes was the largest in England.
The Guardians are my own invention. Their descendants will appear in some of my future historical romances, starting with A Kiss of Fate, coming from Ballantine Books in summer 2004.
Stained Glass Heart
by Catherine Asaro
1
THE GOLDEN SUNS
Vyrl slipped outside the castle, making sure no one saw him escape. Beyond the village, the Dalvador Plains spread out like a silver-green sea of reeds rippling with the breezes. He took off in a loping run, and the grasses rustled around his legs.
Reveling in his freedom, he soon left the village behind. He ran for the joy of being healthy, strong, and full of life. Out here he could be himself, rather than Prince Havyrl Torcellei Valdoria.
In his more introspective moods, Vyrl realized he lived in an idyll, his life marked by golden days. His parents had set it up that way, to shield their children from the harsh life of the Imperial Court in an interstellar empire. The colonists who had settled the world Lyshriol lived a simpler life, one close to the land. They cared more about a good harvest festival than long titles or dynastic lineages. So Vyrl and his many siblings tended crops, pulled weeds, and looked after livestock just like anyone else.
Reed-grasses rippled around him, the translucent tubes sparkling like glass but bending easily, supple and soft. Iridescent spheres no larger than his thumb topped many of the stalks and floated off their moorings when he brushed by. The drifting bubbles marked his path through the plains.
Running hard, throwing his arms wide, he relished the strength of his muscles and broadening shoulders. After a year of gawkiness, when he had seemed to grow visible amounts every day, he had finally stopped feeling gangly and awkward. He was more comfortable now with his new height and strength.
He tilted his head up, letting sunlight bathe his face. Two gold suns hung in a lavender sky, side by side right now, shaped more like eggs than spheres, and speckled with dark spots. The double star destabilized the terraformed planet, but Vyrl earnestly believed that by the time that difficulty threatened this world, well into the future, his people would have figured out how to fix the problem.
Vyrl ignominiously tripped over a rock. Laughing, he staggered through the grass, flailing his arms until he recovered his balance.
Eventually his pent-up energy spent itself and he slowed to a walk. He glanced back at the village. The distant cluster of white buildings and colorful turreted roofs barely showed above the waving grasses. He could just see the topmost level of his home. His family lived in a castle, a small but lovely one, with towers at the corners, each capped by a blue turreted roof. Spires topped the roofs and pennants snapped on them, violet with gold ribbing.
Vyrl let out a contented sigh. Then he flopped on his back in the grass, breathing deeply, his heart beating hard. Swaying stalks bent over him, releasing bubbles that glistened against the sky. Ah, what a day! He grinned, relieved to have escaped his math homework.
A girl giggled.
Vyrl’s sense of peace fled. He sat up fast. “Who is that?”
Silence.
Scrambling to his feet, he glared over the plains. The breezes blew his red-gold curls in his face, and he pushed them out of his eyes.
He saw no one. Although a person could easily hide in the grass, she should have left a trail of bubbles floating over whatever path she took here.
Vyrl peered back the way he had come. He had left more than a trail; his wild race had stirred clouds of glimmering spheres. If someone was following him, she could have disguised her approach by keeping to his path. He should have noticed someone skulking after him, but then, he hadn’t been paying much attention. None, in fact.
“Who is here?” he called, trying to sound forceful. The words came out more startled than commanding, but at least his voice wasn’t breaking anymore. It had finally finished changing and settled into a deep baritone, which pleased him just fine.
No answer came to his question, however. The girl was playing a trick on him. Hah! He wouldn’t let her rattle him. He saw no trampled grass nearby, but the reed-grass always sprang back fast. He had flattened a great deal of it when he lay down and already it was rising back into place.
Vyrl continued his search but found no trace of the intruder. He began to feel a bit foolish. Perhaps he had imagined that giggle. Finally he lay down again, stretching out on his back with his hands behind his head.
Another giggle floated on the air like a b
ubble.
“Who is that?” He had heard her. Glowering, he jumped to his feet and stalked around the area, stomping at the grass. “Who’s there?”
Two bubbles detached from a nearby stalk and bobbed off over the plain. There! He strode forward, grasses whipping around his legs.
A trill of laughter rippled in the wind. Then a girl jumped out of the grasses, all red-gold curls and blue skirts. With a laughing glance in his direction, she took off and raced away.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Lily, you come back here!”
Instead of running after her, though, he hesitated. Lily was the daughter of a local farmer. She and Vyrl had been friends practically since they had been born, but lately he had avoided her, unable to do more than stutter banalities in her presence. Lily didn’t look like Lily anymore. She had changed, become all curves and mystery.
She ran through the grasses, sending sprays of bubbles into the air. Her blue skirt swirled around her legs and parted the high grass, showing glimpses of her thighs, then hiding them again. The top of her dress fit snug around her torso, adorned by a maze of confusing laces. Vyrl had never figured out why girls needed so many ties on their clothes. She made a beautiful sight, though, her waist-length curls flying in the wind, streaming around her, shiny and red-bronze, touched with gold sun-streaks.
Hah! He wouldn’t let her get away with spying on him. He took off in a sprint. In the village, he would have held back, not wanting people to see them playing like children, but out here he felt less constrained. Chasing Lily, making her shriek and laugh, had always entertained him. Now the thought of catching her made his pulse quicken in a way that had never happened when they were younger.
Lily glanced over her shoulder, her gaze flashing with mischief, her large eyes taunting him with an audacious gleam. Her teasing laugh sparkled across the plains. That laugh had been the bane of his existence for as long as he could remember.
With his long legs, Vyrl easily gained on her. Coming alongside her, he grabbed her around the waist with a gleeful shout. They went into a spin, their momentum whirling them around. He almost regained his balance by swinging her in a dance step he didn’t usually let anyone know he had learned, given that men weren’t supposed to dance. Then they toppled into the grasses in a tangle of limbs and clothes.
“Got you!” Vyrl flipped her onto her back. Still panting from his run, he pinned her upper arms to the ground. “Say ‘Give,’” he demanded. “Come on, Lily! I win.”
In years past, she would have yanked up a clod of tube-reeds and thrown it at him, then escaped while he yelled and wiped his eyes clear of the sparkling dirt that clung to bulbs on the grass.
Today, though, she wasn’t laughing. She stared up at him, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling, her violet eyes huge. Most everyone in the Dalvador province had violet eyes, including Vyrl himself, but until this moment he had never realized the beauty of the color. Her lashes glimmered gold, a thick fringe against her milky skin. The rosy blush of her cheeks made his pulse race. He felt hot, then nervous, lying here, half on top of her, gazing at her face, which was so familiar and so new at the same time.
Her emotions washed over his empath’s mind: confusion, surprise, and an uncertain anticipation, sweet and intense. It all mixed with another emotion harder to define, a warmth that spread through her and made him even more aware of her curves. Vyrl flushed, unsettled by his heightened awareness of her. Usually he shared emotions only with members of his family, who were the only empaths in Dalvador. Even then, they had to be near one another to pick up moods, and they had learned to guard their minds, to give one another privacy. Yet with Lily, his mental defenses were drifting away as if they were no more than ephemeral bubbles that floated on the wind.
They lay staring at each other, Vyrl with no idea what to say. Lily’s mouth parted slightly, her lips full and soft. So soft. Plump. How would they feel if he touched them?
Then she dimpled like an imp and grabbed a handful of reeds. “You must let me up, O clumsy sir, or I will be forced to shower your head with sod.” Although she spoke as always, full of play, she sounded different today—breathless, a little scared.
In the past, Vyrl would have wrestled her for the grass. Today he murmured, “You must first pay a fine for spying on me.”
She gave a mock gasp of dismay, her heart-shaped face as expressive as ever. “And what terrible fine would you wrest, you heartless beast, from a poor girl such as myself?”
“Not so terrible,” he said softly. Then he bent his head and kissed her.
As often as Vyrl had imagined this moment, his daydreams were nothing compared to the real thing. A jolt went through him as their lips touched. She tasted sweet and felt soft, her breasts against his chest, her body round beneath his. His heart thudded hard, as if he were still running.
Lifting his head, he whispered, “Lily.” Then he kissed her again, moving his hands up her sides, caressing, feeling where her hips curved in to her waist.
Her emotions had become a confusing tumult. Ah, no, she wasn’t responding. Mortification swept over him. Had he made a fool of himself? If she pushed him away or laughed at him, he was going to die, utterly die.
Instead she slid her arms around his waist, her embrace tentative, as if she wasn’t sure where to put her hands. Her mouth parted under his and she nibbled shyly at his lower lip.
Vyrl sighed, almost giddy with relief. He wanted to untie her laces and pull up her skirts, touch her everywhere, but he held back, afraid he would scare her.
Her emotions flooded past the natural barriers in her mind, the protections all people raised without realizing it. Then he knew; this was her first kiss, as it was his. Despite his good intentions, his hands roamed. Still kissing her, he stroked her sides, down and up, his touch urgent. He folded his palms around her breasts, filling his grip with them—if only this cloth would disappear! He fumbled with the laces on her bodice, baffled by their complexity. Frustrated, he pulled harder, straining to undo them. Pushing up her skirt with his other hand, he reached for her thigh—
“Vyrl, no. Slow down.” Lily pushed his hand away from her leg. She was breathing hard now, but she had tensed, no longer pliant under him.
He groaned softly, one hand on her breast, the other intertwined with hers at his side. With her mental barriers fading, he could feel her shy desire, but also her fear.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re just so soft and pretty.” He brushed his lips across her nose. “I could kiss you all day.”
Her blush deepened, as pink as a sunrise. He had always thought Lily was lovely, even in their early childhood when crueler children had called her a “fat little sprout.” Now the plump little girl had vanished, replaced by this curvaceous beauty. Warmth washed out from her mind and he closed his eyes, letting it flow over him. She felt so very, very right, as if he had always known he would someday hold her like this.
“You’ve been working on your father’s farm a lot,” she said. “I’ve seen you doing your chores.”
Vyrl opened his eyes. “They don’t seem like chores.” He longed to kiss her more, but he held back, not wanting to ruin this moment by pushing too hard. He shifted onto his side next to her, their bodies fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The grass waved above and bubbles shimmered in the air. One popped, scattering glitter over them. Vyrl laughed, then flicked the powder off Lily’s nose.
“I like to work in the fields,” he said. He would far rather plow a field than study the physics his tutors persisted in trying to teach him.
Her mouth curved upward, half shy, half teasing. “You look very fine out in those fields with your shirt off.”
He flushed. “You watched me like that?”
“You know, Vyrl, you used to be skinny, like a stalk of too-tall-weed.”
Hai! He never had liked it when people called him that, even if it had been true these past years, when he shot up like the too-tall-weeds that grew over houses, seeking light from the
suns.
“So what weed do I look like now?” He tried to make light of it, though he would really rather not be called a plant.
Her face gentled. “You don’t.” Touching his cheek, she spoke in her lilting voice. “You look like a man now, so strong and tall.”
An emotion swelled in him, one he wasn’t sure how to define. He knew only that he was where he belonged. With a tenderness he hadn’t known he possessed, he brushed back a curl that had blown in her face. Then he kissed her again, barely able to believe he had her in his arms. He wanted to feel her skin against his, to make love to her out here under the golden suns, just as he had so often loved her in his dreams. But he held back and did no more than kiss her, taking it as slowly as she needed.
When the larger sun touched the horizon and shadows stretched across the plains, Vyrl and Lily headed back to the village of Dalvador, walking hand in hand, smiling and shy with each other. Vyrl was in no hurry. Now that he and Lily had made clear what had always been unspoken between them, they had plenty of time—their entire lives—to explore what they had begun today.
The Hearth Room was empty. The fireplace at the far end of the long hall slumbered, its coals dark, no flames licking its blue stones. No one sat in the armchairs there, and the standing lamps with their rose-glass shades remained unlit.
Lost in daydreams, Vyrl walked across the other end of the long hall, far from the hearth, in the shadows. As he passed the great stone staircase that curved up to the second floor, he glanced around to make sure he was alone. Then he turned in a circle, pretending to dance with Lily. With a flourish, he snapped his foot to his knee and spun fast, three times. He came out of the turn in a leap, jumping high off the ground. Then he landed on bent knees and stopped, checking to make sure no one had seen him. Laughing softly at himself, he resumed his staid walk.
“You’re late,” a voice said.
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