The mob lessened once they were inside the building, but a few stayed with them until they had reached their destination, a small room on the upper floor. Jemeryl was shaking and disorientated. Her legs managed to get her to a low bench before they gave out. While Tevi cleared everyone else from the room, she looked around, trying to drag her head together.
The townsfolk had clearly given the hero the best that they could offer, although this did not amount to much more than the solid rough-cut bench, a table and two chairs. A heap of fur rugs strewn in a corner was presumably Tevi’s bed. Weapons were stacked in another corner. Bottles and an oil lantern stood on the table, and heat came from a glowing iron brazier.
Tevi slid onto the bench and hugged her. “Waiting here for you has been awful.”
Jemeryl gave a tight nod.
“Are you all right, Jem?”
“I will be, I...” Jemeryl buried her face in Tevi’s shoulder. More than anything, she needed to feel her lover’s physical presence.
After a few minutes, Tevi pulled back and studied her face. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look pale.”
“I’m just tired. I haven’t been sleeping well. I thought you were...” Jemeryl closed her eyes. She could not finish the sentence. “What happened to you? How did you get here?”
Tevi launched into her story, but Jemeryl found it hard to follow. Nothing could get past the mind-numbing realisation that Tevi was sitting beside her, alive. She found herself focusing on Tevi’s lips, watching how they moved, but the words would not hang together in her head.
Tevi broke off her account. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“You look like you’re about to pass out. We need to make plans, but it can wait until tomorrow. Come on. It’s late. You’ll be better after a sleep.”
Jemeryl nodded in acquiescence rather than agreement. She was beyond making decisions.
When she made no attempt to stand, Tevi pulled her to her feet, led her to the pile of furs in the corner, and helped her free of her clothes. Jemeryl stretched out on her back beneath the warm covers and tried to relax. She watched Tevi blow out the lantern and strip off her own clothes. And then Tevi was beside her in the bed, moulding to the contours of her body. Jemeryl grabbed hold of her hand.
“Is anything wrong?” Tevi’s voice sounded unsure.
“No. You’re here with me. What could be wrong?”
The backlog of emotion was sloshing around at the edges of Jemeryl’s mind. But she did not want to think about it, did not want to deal with it. She wanted to forget everything about the previous seven days. Tevi was there with her. That was all she needed to think about.
Jemeryl rolled onto her side. One arm snaked around Tevi’s back, pulling her in close. Her lips sought out Tevi’s and their mouths joined together in tender combat. Jemeryl pushed her leg between Tevi’s thighs and hooked it around the back of Tevi’s knee, locking their hips together. She wriggled the arm that was squashed between them upwards until the backs of her fingers encountered the softness of Tevi’s breast.
Tevi’s response was slow, hesitant. She broke off their kiss. “Jem? What’s up?”
“I want you.”
“I thought you were tired.”
“I missed you when we were apart. I need you.”
Tevi stroked Jemeryl’s hair and stared into eyes. “And that’s all?”
Jemeryl twisted her head and began nuzzling Tevi’s ear. “That’s all.”
Tevi chuckled softly. “Then I won’t try to talk you out of it.”
Tevi’s hands began their own exploration, gently stroking the back of Jemeryl’s neck and then brushing down her spine to the cleft of her buttocks. The effect of the touch shot through Jemeryl, familiar and wanted, and crashed into the knowledge that she had thought never to experience it again.
The breath caught in her lungs, but not from passion. Unexpected tears stung her eyes. Jemeryl tried to force the pain away. Tevi was here, in her arms. Nothing else mattered; nothing could be wrong.
She raised herself slightly, pushing Tevi onto her back, and lowered her mouth to Tevi’s throat. The taste and the texture were so well known to her and so uniquely Tevi. With a conscious effort, Jemeryl summoned her desire to let it wash the memory of grief from her.
Jemeryl shifted her weight, so that her thigh pressed down harder between Tevi’s legs. The gasp this drew from Tevi skipped across Jemeryl’s memory, like a stone across a pond, bouncing off recollections of a hundred other times. It was the sound Tevi made. Jemeryl had thought that she would never hear that gasp again. The body beneath her was so very precious.
Tevi’s breathing was becoming ragged. Jemeryl looked at her lover in the soft red light from the brazier, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open. No sight in the world was more wonderful, or more vital to her. Living without Tevi was impossible, yet for seven days she had carried on a pretence at life. The nightmare was over. She could forget it. She wanted to. She needed to. All Jemeryl had to do was force away the memory of pain with the sensation of the present.
Jemeryl shifted down, so she could take Tevi’s breast in her mouth. But the anguish was too raw, and the wave of emotion could be held back no longer. A sob broke through. Tears dropped onto Tevi’s skin.
“Jem?”
Her tongue worked against the hardness of Tevi’s nipple, trying to force passion into her actions. But her nose was blocked and her breathing was out of control. Jemeryl had to raise her mouth to draw breath.
Tevi’s hands gripped her shoulders, pulling her up. “Jem. What’s wrong?”
Jemeryl met Tevi’s eyes. “I thought you were dead. I thought you—”
The words shattered the last shred of Jemeryl’s self-control. The pain ripped through her, welling up from her gut, contorting her face and choking in her throat. Her body convulsed with hysterical crying. “I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, my love. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
Tevi rolled Jemeryl onto her side and then wrapped her in a tight hug, holding her close and murmuring repeated nonsense words into her ear. Jemeryl could not speak. She clung to Tevi like an injured child while the agony of the previous seven days came out in a storm of tears. The process was unstoppable, working its way through her and leaving her drained. And all the while, Tevi held her secure, stroking her hair and kissing her gently.
At last Jemeryl fell asleep, worn out, with her head on Tevi’s shoulder.
Chapter Fourteen—Cause and Effect
The midday sky over Uzhenek was a rich unbroken blue. The clouds had gone and might not return until the autumn. In a good year, three or four cycles of rain fell during spring. In a bad year, none came at all, and by summer, the vegetation would be sparse and desiccated, the rivers reduced to a trickle, and the bodies of deer and wild cattle would be littering the grasslands.
Tevi sat with one leg hitched up on the balustrade that ran around the flat roof of the house. Uzhenek was definitely best viewed from above, and in sunny weather. The mottled thatched roofs looked quaint in the sunlight and hid the shoddy hovels underneath. The stench of decaying filth was more diffuse than it would be down in the mud-filled streets, although it was still stronger than Tevi liked.
However, the smell was not what was currently worrying her. Her gaze left the panoramic view of Uzhenek and returned to Jemeryl, who was sitting beside her. Although the night’s sleep had wrought a considerable improvement, Tevi had never seen her lover so emotionally weakened. The tears had gone and in their place was a solemn calm. Maybe to others it would have given the impression of typical sorcerer’s detachment, but not to Tevi, and she noticed how Jemeryl continually maintained physical contact between them. Even now, their knees were touching.
Once again, Tevi tried to imagine what it would have been like, had she spent seven days thinking that Jemeryl was dead. Her frown deepened. The mental acrobatics were not something that could deliver unequivocal
answers, but she was left with the gut feeling that there was more that Jemeryl needed to tell her. While they sat on the roof, Jemeryl’s eyes kept drifting northwards, and an expression of distress would cross her face. But whatever the issue, Tevi was willing for Jemeryl to speak when she was ready.
So far, their conversation had covered Bykoda’s murder and the incidents at the guard post rendezvous up to the conversation with Anid when Jemeryl had got news of Shard’s attack on the troops. Thereafter, Jemeryl’s narrative had become more vague, skipping through the days. Was it simply that she was too upset to recount the details? Or had something else happened?
For her part, Tevi had just finished telling the full story of her dealings with Shard, including the effect of her dramatic arrival on the town’s inhabitants.
“So what game do you think Shard was playing?” Tevi said in conclusion.
A half smile crossed Jemeryl’s face. “There is a saying among sorcerers, ‘Never try to second-guess a dragon.’”
“I know they aren’t something you want to take chances with. Shard could have totally destroyed this place.”
“There’s more to it than that. Dragons don’t perceive time in the same way that we do. For them time exists in two dimensions.”
“Isn’t it the same for sorcerers?”
“Not to the same degree. And not without going a bit mad if they have the gift too strongly. Humans don’t have the mental equipment to deal with the viewpoint.”
“And dragons do?”
“For them, it’s the only way that they can imagine being.”
Tevi’s forehead knotted as she tried to remember everything Jemeryl had told her about two-dimensional time. “Does that mean that dragons can predict the future?”
“Sort of...except they don’t see it like that.” Jemeryl paused. “The best analogy I can give is that humans view their lives like a book, with one page following the next. It’s one-dimensional and linear. Dragons view their lives like a painting, in two dimensions. It means that a dragon always knows everything that it is ever going to know, but there’s no point asking it about anything else. They are aware of their entire life simultaneously, except that simultaneous is a temporal concept that doesn’t make sense from their viewpoint.”
“Mmmm...” Tevi pursed her lips, frowning.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m trying to work out if my conversation with Shard would have made any more sense if I’d taken it backwards.”
The first genuine laugh of the morning burst from Jemeryl. “I don’t think it works like that. But if it’s any consolation, you are now a member of a very small and exclusive group of people who have spoken with a dragon and lived to tell of it.”
“Have you?”
“Oh no. I’ve never even seen one.”
“I guess Shard was quite impressive to look at. But you haven’t missed much in the way of talking. And even when Shard did make sense, it could be...” Tevi shook her head. “I guess evil is the word, except it didn’t feel like that.”
“Amoral?” Jemeryl suggested.
“Yes.”
“I was taught that the dragon’s time sense is incompatible with our ideas of good and evil. If you think about it, our concept of guilt is based on causality. If you do something knowing that it will result in evil, then you’ve done wrong. A bad act is one that has bad consequences. But to a dragon, effect does not follow cause. To them, everything is part of an inevitable pattern. If a human kills someone, you see it as terminating their linear story. If a dragon kills someone, nothing has changed. For them, in two-dimensional time, the person is still living, not yet born, and already dead.”
“It was her time to die.”
“Pardon?”
“It was the reason Shard gave for killing someone.”
Jemeryl nodded. “And they are just as philosophical about their own deaths. It’s part of the pattern of their life. They know when they are going to die, and they can’t conceive of trying to change it. Fatalistic doesn’t begin to go far enough in describing their outlook. For them, the thought of changing their destiny is terrifying. They don’t—” Jemeryl broke off sharply. “Oh...of course, the talisman.”
Tevi met Jemeryl’s eyes in understanding. “I told you that I thought Shard was frightened.”
“The talisman must scare the dragons witless. Just as humans don’t have the mental capabilities to cope with two-dimensional time, dragons don’t have the ability to handle the unknown. It’s not something that they ever encounter.”
“They can’t bear having a surprise?”
“No. The effect of the talisman would be like suddenly discovering that someone has rubbed out part of their life painting and replaced it with something new.”
“The first thing Shard said to me was, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen.’” Tevi frowned. “Except it knew that you were coming here.”
“Perhaps it was just making a best guess. Or maybe all of the temporal options inherent in the talisman had me getting to Uzhenek.”
Tevi chewed her lip, trying to remember everything that Shard had said. “Maybe Uzhenek was far enough away from the talisman for Shard to still be able to see the future.” She immediately shook her head. “No. Surely distance wouldn’t matter. If the future changes, it isn’t dependant on where you are.”
“It might. Time and space are far more interlinked from a dragon’s viewpoint. Why do you think that distance might be involved?”
“Partly because Shard panicked at the idea when I suggested picking you up and flying us both over the Barrodens. And partly because, when flying here, Shard took an enormous detour that would make sense if it was avoiding the spot where you and the talisman were at the time.”
Jemeryl looked thoughtful. Her hand moved to the front of her shirt, as if to feel the talisman through the material. “And Anid said that dragons had inhabited the northern Empire many years ago, but they hadn’t been around for decades. Which might tie in with the time that Bykoda made the talisman.” She grinned. “So not only was Bykoda the first sorcerer to successfully create a device to change time, she was also the first sorcerer to make a really effective dragon ward. No one has had much luck with them in the past.”
“And Shard needs us to make sure that nobody uses the talisman, because it can’t get close enough to protect the thing itself?”
“That’s one possible interpretation of what we know.”
Tevi turned to look out over the town. On the open hilltop below, the inhabitants were going about their business. No one was paying any attention to the roof of the house. This was thanks to Jemeryl’s magic, which had hidden them from the eyes and ears of the ungifted. Otherwise, it was a safe bet that a horde of excited sightseers would be gawking up at them. After all the fuss that had surrounded her for the previous few days, being ignored was a very welcome change. However, the thought reminded Tevi of the effort Shard had made to install her as the Dragon Slayer. Something did not tie in.
“I don’t see why Shard brought me here to Uzhenek. I mean, I’m grateful that it did, but you were heading back to the Protectorate anyway. Shard didn’t need to get involved.”
“Except Mavek had you prisoner and was taking you north. If Shard hadn’t rescued you first, I’d have gone after you.”
“Would it have made any difference in the long run?”
“It might. And it makes sense if Shard didn’t want me to bring the talisman any nearer to its lair.”
“But Shard could have killed me in reality. Which would have been just as effective in stopping you chasing after me, and would have saved it the trouble of flying me here and staging the battle. I don’t see what setting me up as the Dragon Slayer achieved.”
“If Shard had truly killed you, I’d have—” Jemeryl broke off and looked down.
From the guilt-ridden expression on her face, Tevi was sure that Jemeryl’s reaction was due to more than remembered grief. The sorcerer was rubbing the
palm of one hand, as if trying massage away stiffness. Her mouth worked, but no words came. Maybe one of the issues that Jemeryl needed to discuss was about to come up. Tevi shifted a little closer and put her arm around Jemeryl’s shoulder, but left her to speak in her own time.
“I was going to use the talisman.”
“When? And wouldn’t it have...” Tevi was confused.
Jemeryl’s face twisted in torment. “Um...yes. The talisman would have ruptured. And I’d have caused the deaths of tens of thousands...maybe laid waste to the entire region. But I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t care. I wanted you back. I couldn’t...”
“Jem? You... After all you’ve said? Surely you wouldn’t really have done it?”
“I would. At the very moment that the news of the Dragon Slayer reached me, I was about to try changing the past...to change things so that you hadn’t gone on that last mission. I guess that’s why Shard wanted to make you famous, knowing the story would spread. The idea that you might be the unknown hero was the only thing that stopped me from completing my attempt to use the talisman and killing everyone.”
Jemeryl laid her head on Tevi’s shoulder. “I know we have to take the talisman to Lyremouth. Even when I was about to use it, I knew that it was wrong of me and that I should take the talisman to be unmade. But I didn’t care. And now, when I think of Mavek, I feel so hypocritical. I’m going to take the talisman away from him so that he can’t do the very thing that I was going to do.”
“But you didn’t use it.”
“Only because I got news that made me think maybe you weren’t really dead. Mavek is never going to get the news that he wants. I have no right to judge him. I don’t feel as if I even have the right to stand in his way.”
“But we have to stop him. We have no option.”
“True. But it doesn’t make me feel any better about myself. And I’ve treated him so badly.”
“No worse than he’s treated—” Tevi felt Jemeryl flinch so violently that it was as if she had been slapped. “Jem? What is it?”
The Empress and the Acolyte Page 27