by Joy Nash
“I won’t forget,” he said softly. “And you shouldn’t, either.”
She shook her head, then pulled him into her arms and hugged him tight. He absorbed her comfort for only a brief instant before grasping her arms and pushing her gently away. She retreated to the lean-to. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arm around her legs, all the while watching him with dark eyes.
Derrin sat for a long while feeding twigs into the fire. Finally, he built up the flames and joined her in the shelter. It was a dangerous move. He should have slept by the fire, but he could no more stay away from Gina than he could command the moon to halt its journey across the sky. Stretched out by her side, not touching her, he felt her every breath as if it were his own.
Her whisper reached out to him. “You may doubt yourself, Derrin, but I see deep goodness in who you are.”
He turned to her in the darkness. “As I do in you, Gina.”
Chapter Ten
Ariek wrapped himself in the cloak of his shadow crystal and pressed his back against the wall. The door to the workroom hung ajar, allowing a sliver of light to advance a few paces into the gloom of Balek’s sleeping chamber. He shifted, seeking a more comfortable position. Long minutes passed.
He could barely credit the fact he had placed himself as a spy. Ariek was unsure what he hoped to learn by adopting Derrin’s underhanded method of research, but he was certain of one thing. His friend had been gone much too long. Could Derrin’s wild accusations be true? If Balek had caused the Blight and the Madness, then…
Then what? He rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. He could take his suspicions to the High Council. High Wizard Rannac’s bleary eyes would blink and his hand would shake on his staff. The others would shout at Ariek in outrage, or worse, laugh. Unless Ariek brought solid proof, he would be censured for slander, if not expelled from the Hierarchy.
He rubbed a cramp in his thigh, straining to hear a hint of Balek’s approach. Nothing.
Last night he’d been with Danat. His body tightened, remembering her pink-tipped breasts, her soft sighs of pleasure and the musky-slick scent of her arousal. She had filled his senses like the finest wine, and he craved her as he had from the first moment he’d seen her.
She had bewitched him that day. Even so, he hadn’t dreamed he would fall in love with her.
His first visits to her attic room were infrequent, weeks apart. He hadn’t so much as touched her. Despite her role as the Bride, a fragile innocence clung to her, one he was loath to destroy. Like the petals of his mother’s sea roses, he feared she would bruise, then fade, under his touch.
They talked instead, and Danat’s innocent company seduced him much more thoroughly than the attentions of a skilled whore or a lusty widow ever had. He told her of his work with the Hierarchy. She listened, wide-eyed, then spoke in halting tones of Loetahl and her family. When her green eyes clouded with pain, his heart twisted. He fought an urge to bury his fingers in her red curls and pull her close, not knowing if she would welcome him.
His desire grew with every meeting, but he held himself in check. She didn’t need the burden of his lust.
Then one day, as they sat talking on her narrow pallet, Ariek became aware of a coolness in Danat’s manner. Afraid he’d offended her, he asked what was wrong.
She answered without meeting his gaze. “Ariek, why do you come here?”
“What do you mean?”
“There is only one thing I can give you, much sought after. Yet you do not ask for it.”
He nearly choked. “I would never shame you that way.”
She raised her head and he saw the haunting sadness in her eyes. “Is it pity, then, that brings you here?”
He stared at her. Was it possible she didn’t know? “I come because I love you.”
Her eyes widened.
“But I don’t want to burden you with it, Danat. I know how hard it is for you to endure the Inner Sanctuary.”
“The men who come there—they are not men at all, but beasts.” Her voice trembled. “You are so different from them.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. One slender arm entwined his neck. “Show me, Ariek. Show me how a man loves a woman.”
His cock went instantly hard. Her words were the fulfillment of his every dream, yet still he hesitated, fearful of touching her, afraid she would break apart in his hands. He kissed her gently, reverently, framing her sweet face with his hands. He brushed kisses across her brow, her nose, her jaw. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her fragile scent.
She responded hesitantly, like a virgin, following where he led. She touched her lips to the hollow of his throat and he felt them tremble against the pulse that beat there. Easing away, he stripped off his tunic. Danat spread her palms on his chest.
Her hands were shaking.
He covered them with his own. “Are you afraid?”
She looked away. “Yes.”
He bent and kissed the single tear that escaped her eye. “You do not need to do this thing. Not for me.”
“For myself, then. I love you, Ariek. I want to give myself to you, but…” Her voice faltered.
He tipped up her chin with one finger. “Tell me.”
“I…I fear a man’s weight,” she said. “When I am…when I’m in the sanctuary I feel trapped. Smothered.”
The image sickened him. Anger churned, but when Danat’s tears fell, he put it aside. Anger would not help her in this moment. Only love would do that.
“We can wait,” he told her.
“No.”
He caught her gaze. “Then you need not suffer my weight. There are other ways to mate.”
“Truly?”
He nodded and kissed her. Easing back on her thin pallet, he drew her down atop him. He guided her hand to the arousal straining against the ties of his breeches. When she stroked him, he couldn’t suppress a groan of satisfaction.
She raised her brows, her lips curving into the hint of a smile. “Do I affect you so?” Her fingers moved on him again.
This time he moaned aloud. “Wench. You know that you do.”
Her smile widened, and he met it with his own. She looked so beautiful sprawled above him, her russet curls tumbling over one shoulder, her robe gaping open at the neckline.
“Do what you wish with me,” he told her, lacing his fingers behind his head. “I’m at your mercy.”
She laughed at that, tugging at his breeches. He lifted his hips to accommodate her as she pulled them down his legs. When he lay naked beneath her, she loosened the tie on her robe. The silky white fabric slid over her slender shoulders.
His smile faded into awe. Danat was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen. He marveled at her fine, ivory skin, her firm, rounded breasts, the gentle swell of her belly. He longed to thread his fingers through the thatch of blazing curls between her thighs. With an effort, he resisted the urge. This encounter was in Danat’s control. He couldn’t erase the pain of her past, but he could give her that, at least.
She lifted her hips, guiding him into her body. He hardly felt her weight, only her softness and joy as she sank down on his hard flesh, surrounded him with her slick heat…
A door opened, then slammed. Ariek started, coming back to the present with a sickening jolt. Footsteps sounded in the room beyond the door.
“What have you found out about the woman?” Balek demanded.
“I am sure Derrin abducted her,” answered Maator. “I’ve verified the whereabouts of every other wizard.”
“Derrin.” Balek spat out the name. “Mongrel scum. Crazy old Niirtor should have been expelled for taking him as apprentice. Tarol’s blood! He must have been watching without my knowledge.” He paused. “Even now, I cannot penetrate his shadow.” He swore a second time. “I wouldn’t have thought the insolent pup capable of it.”
“Derrin confides in Ariek. I believe Ariek knows where the woman is.”
“Find out.”
Another pause
, then Maator asked, “Master, why not call another woman across the web?”
“Another would be useless,” Balek’s tone carried an unmistakable note of menace. “I need that woman. Find her. Once she is mine, I will see to Derrin.”
Balek’s footsteps advanced toward the sleeping chamber door. Ariek pushed away from the wall and slipped out the rear entrance, shaken. The situation was far worse than he had imagined.
He swore. Where in Tarol’s Inferno was Derrin?
Chapter Eleven
The village of the Fire Clan lay nestled in a sun-washed clearing at the valley’s edge. Tall grass and wildflowers, heavy with bees and tiny birds, swayed in the wide sweep of open land. The thatched roofs of the clan’s dwellings rode low on the landscape, barely visible above the fronds of greenery.
As Gina drew closer, she saw that each hut had been sunk partway into the ground. A walled forecourt with an open hearth fronted each doorway. In a larger mirror of this arrangement, the cluster of dwellings faced an open area ringed with stones. An enormous firepit occupied the center of the community.
The village hummed with activity. At the far end of the clearing a small group of men butchered a mountain deer while women carried the meat to their cooking fires. Small children darted between their legs, laughing.
A young woman broke away from a knot of villagers and hurried toward Gina and Derrin, a smile on her lips. A toddler hovered about her knees and an infant peeked over her shoulder. Her headdress bore the talisman.
Her dark eyes sparkled as her arm arched in the Baha’Na gesture of greeting. Gina swept an arm over her head in reply.
“Welcome, volah, my sister, the face of the Goddess shines on your coming. I am Zera. I have been waiting for you.” Gina struggled to keep pace with the woman’s rapid flow of words. The Na’lara’s mind surrounded her like breeze. This time, Gina didn’t pull back. She responded with a mental touch of her own and felt the woman’s fleeting embrace.
Zera’s smile widened. She clasped both Gina’s hands in her own. “I am pleased to have you in my home, sister.” Catching her breath, she turned her attention to Derrin.
He gave her a flash of a smile, his expression a mixture of amusement and tenderness.
“Derrin.” Zera embraced him. “It is good to see you, vohar, brother. You are still as handsome as I remember. Those eyes,” she added in a confidential tone to Gina. “No woman can resist.”
Derrin threw back his head and laughed. “Zera, you haven’t changed.”
“No, I have not.” Zera tilted her head and regarded Derrin expectantly, as if waiting for a question she knew would come.
It did. His smile faded. “How is…?”
“Rahza waits for you,” she replied. Her expression softened. “Derrin, you need not be ashamed of what happened at the time of your Seeking.”
With a start, Gina remembered Derrin once meant to marry a girl from the Fire Clan. He was asking for her, then. An odd sensation uncoiled in the pit of her stomach. She pushed it away, not wanting to examine it too closely.
Her feelings about Derrin were hopelessly confused. His wrenching confession about the Na’tahar had in some ways drawn them together and in others driven them apart. On one hand, their minds and emotions had become even more entangled—sometimes Gina could hardly distinguish between his feelings and her own, and she suspected he experienced the same unsettling sensations. On the other hand, Derrin wouldn’t acknowledge their strengthening bond. He spoke to her very little, and then only on safe topics.
“Rahza is well?” Derrin asked Zera.
“Well enough. She has two strong sons, but her partner was called to the Goddess during the Moon of the Deep Snows. An avalanche came without warning when the weather turned suddenly warm. Go to her, Derrin. She is at the spring. It will do her good to see you.”
A painful mixture of emotions flared in Derrin’s eyes. He nodded and set out across the clearing toward the forest’s edge. The sinking feeling in Gina’s stomach intensified.
She dragged her gaze from Derrin’s retreating form to find Zera watching her with a thoughtful expression, one that seemed to understand more than Gina was willing to admit. She smiled. “Come with me, my sister.”
The Baha’Na woman moved among the huts, guiding the little boy at her legs with one hand. She waved the other toward a group of women.
“Shayla, please take little Mirris—he clings to me so, I cannot walk.”
A girl of about thirteen sprang to her feet. Her long braids swung into her face as she took the boy in her arms. Mirris giggled and grabbed at them.
Zera kissed her son’s head and gave Shayla a few words of instruction before leading Gina to a dwelling in the center of the village. Inside the hut, three alcoves surrounded a small firepit. A framework of bent wood supported the roof.
The baby slung on Zera’s back whimpered. “Oh, Lanya, my precious baby girl, do not worry—Mama has not forgotten you.”
Zera adjusted the sling, bringing the baby into her arms, and lowered herself onto a woven grass mat. With a practiced motion, she loosened the neckline of her dress with one hand. Lanya rooted hungrily, then clamped her mouth on Zera’s nipple.
Gina looked around the hut. A shaft of light angled through the smoke hole, painting a bright circle on the dirt floor. A rough stone wall rose waist-high behind the sleeping alcoves. Above it, hide wall-coverings stretched over a wooden frame. The scent of the place recalled the tang of woodsmoke and the glow of dawn.
A high, narrow shelf circled the dwelling, supporting an assortment of wooden containers, utensils, and other personal items. Larger tools and weapons hung just below, and from hooks set into the beams of the roof structure. Gina was inspecting a three-pronged stick reinforced with cording, wondering at its use, when Zera spoke.
“You seek a path to your world. At least that is what you tell yourself.”
Gina moved to Zera’s side and sat down on the pallet beside her. “What do you mean? Of course I want to go home. I just don’t understand how this journey will get me across the web.”
“Ah, the web. Tell me of it, Gina.”
“The web is beautiful, but the passage across it was terrifying. Can you open it? Can you send me home?”
Zera shook her head. “The web has been closed to the Baha’Na since before my birth. The Circle is empty.”
“The Circle?”
“The ring of power that draws the glittering threads.”
“Derrin says a Na’lara can see the web. Have you?”
“Yes. Sometimes at a difficult birth or a painful death. And once…” Her eyes clouded. “When Derrin left us.” She smoothed her hand over the fuzzy head of her infant.
“Tell me.”
Zera looked at a point above Gina’s right shoulder, as if she were watching the scene replay in the dim light of her home. “Derrin meant to join with my sister, but he never came to claim her. When Zahta told us he had left the People, Rahza pleaded with me to go after him. I followed a trail heavy with his grief and caught up to him the next day. I begged him to return, but he would not.”
She sighed and shifted Lanya to her other breast. “My tears flowed. Derrin turned from me, but not before I saw that his own eyes shone with his sorrow. As he walked away, the web shimmered around him, though he took no notice of it.”
Zera caught her baby’s wandering hand in her own and met Gina’s gaze. “I knew then the Goddess had not abandoned Derrin, but had set him on this path for a purpose I could not fathom. Now, after so many winters, he has returned with you—a woman who has crossed the web, yet knows nothing of the Goddess.” Her dark eyes regarded Gina steadily. “You will find the answers you seek, my sister. You need only desire, nothing more. It is a simple thing.”
The infant gave a soft sigh and closed her eyes. Zera eased the sleeping child onto the ground and retied the laces of her dress. “The face of the Goddess shines on you, little one.” She nestled the baby in a hanging cradle of rawhide and furs
and set her rocking.
“Would you watch her for me, Gina?” Before Gina could answer, she was gone.
After a moment, Gina pulled aside the hide door covering and stepped into the forecourt. Not far beyond the low stone wall, a pair of village woman worked a deerskin stretched on a frame. Zera stood to one side, speaking in low tones.
Gina’s gaze roamed further until it came to a tall figure at the edge of the forest. She tensed, then berated herself. She’d been looking for him all along.
Derrin stood at the edge of the forest talking with a slender wisp of a woman. He gestured earnestly, then gripped her shoulders. The woman raised her hand and touched his cheek. Gina willed herself to turn away, but she couldn’t tear her attention from the intimate scene.
At that moment, four boys crashed like a storm into the forecourt. They rolled within inches of Gina and fell to the dirt in a grappling, shouting heap. Inside the hut, Lanya let out a wail.
Gina stepped around the melee and hurried to the infant. The little girl howled and kicked in her cradle. Gina lifted the squirming bundle to her shoulder and murmured what she hoped were soothing sounds. The cries subsided to whimpering.
She stalked back to the forecourt, where the good-natured brawl continued in full swing.
“Quiet!”
The boys froze. Four pairs of dark eyes stared. Gina’s mouth twitched at their sudden attack of calm.
The largest boy scrambled to his feet. “Uh… I am sorry. I did not know my sister slept.” As an afterthought, he added, “Welcome to the dwelling of my parents. My name is Natis.”
He gestured toward the others, who came to stand beside him. “This is Lorrin, my brother, and my cousins Maran and Geris.”
“I’m Gina. I’m staying here for a few days.”
A woman’s voice sounded behind her. “Maran… Geris…”