“Or perhaps he misses his mate.”
“Then let him go court another one and leave me alone.”
“I believe Dilam is right. Why else would Danor keep the herd nearby? And he watches you all the time.”
“Maybe he is looking for an opportunity to smash me into the marsh.” He grimaced. “Though I could not be much worse off. I’ve been mud from head to toe for the last three days.”
“So have we all.” Jane wearily wiped her brow as she gazed at the workers trying to keep their balance in the slippery mud beside the track. “Another mile and we’ll be out of it.” Her gaze wistfully shifted to the river a half-mile distant. “It will be good to wash the muck off this evening.”
“That’s five hours away.” Li Sung turned and moved cautiously along the side of the rails, measuring the width of the track. “Let’s hope we are out of this marsh by—what the—”
He lost his footing, his feet slid out from under him, and he fell to the ground. The next moment he was sliding helplessly down the slippery incline to splash into a mud-filled ditch.
He came to the surface, floundering, spitting a mixture of Chinese and English curses, completely encased in grainy yellow mud from head to toe.
“Are you hurt?” Jane called. The ground was soft, and she doubted if he had come to any harm. Dear heaven, she mustn’t laugh. Li Sung would kill her if she laughed.
She couldn’t help it. Heavens, he looked funny.
“Stop that snickering.” Li Sung glared at her, his black eyes shining from his mud-coated face. He gazed at the Cinnidan laborers who had stopped working to grin at his dilemma. “And you too. It is not—no! Get him away from me!”
Danor had suddenly appeared and was lumbering down the slippery incline toward Li Sung.
Jane’s amusement vanished. “Good God, what on earth is he doing?”
Danor wrapped his trunk around Li Sung and heaved him out of the ditch.
“Let me go, you armor-plated baboon,” Li Sung spat out, struggling futilely in the elephant’s grasp. He shouted. “Dilam!”
“I am here.” Dilam beamed at him as she trotted down the track toward them.
“But you’re not doing anything. You’re supposed to know about elephants. Make him—”
“He will not hurt you.” She frowned. “I do not think.”
Danor turned and trotted up the embankment and off across the flat marsh, moving so quickly his heavy bulk did not have a chance to sink into the soft muddy ground.
“Jane!” Li Sung shouted. “Are you going to shoot this beast or not?”
Jane found herself laughing helplessly again. “He’s not hurting you, is he? Surely you wouldn’t want me to kill him for stinging your pride?”
“The hell I wouldn’t.” The words drifted back to her as Danor picked up speed. “Put me down!”
Jane could see where Danor was headed now, and she started after them at a run, her boots sinking into the muddy earth with every step. “Don’t worry. I think he’ll drop you soon.”
“And then step on my head.”
She was breathless with laughter as well as running. “No, I don’t believe you’ll have to worry about that.”
Danor stopped at the bank of the river—and tossed Li Sung into the water.
Li Sung came up sputtering and cursing. Danor lumbered into the water, filled his trunk, and sprayed Li Sung in the face.
“He is trying to drown me.”
“No.” Jane gasped, tears pouring down her face. “I think he’s trying to give you a bath.”
“Stupid beast!” Li Sung hit the water with his hand, sending a spray at the elephant.
Danor promptly squirted him again.
“This is …” Li Sung looked at Jane and then at the elephant and suddenly his anger ebbed and his lips began to twitch. “Completely unfair.” The smile became a chuckle. “I do not have a monstrous nose with which to gather water.”
Danor’s trunk wound around Li Sung’s shoulders, moving gently up and down his body. It was almost a loving caress, Jane thought, like the way the elephant had touched his baby that night in the jungle.
Li Sung’s expression became oddly arrested. He stood quite still, his head tilted as if listening to something. “All right, I forgive you,” Li Sung said grudgingly. “But only because I needed the bath.” He grimaced ruefully. “And the laughter. I feel better now.” He turned and waded back to shore.
“So do I.” Jane reached out a hand to help him up the bank. “It doesn’t seem nearly so long until sundown now.”
Li Sung looked back at the elephant, but Danor was now ignoring them, siphoning and spraying water on himself. “Selfish beast. Look at him enjoy himself. He does not have to labor from sunrise to sundown.”
In spite of the content of the words, Jane noticed a lack of antagonism that was usually present in Li Sung’s tone when he spoke of Danor. It was as if that moment in the lake had washed away more than the mud encasing her friend.
Li Sung frowned when he looked at Jane. “What are you smiling about now?”
She started across the marsh toward the track where Dilam stood waiting, a broad grin on her face. “Was I smiling?”
Danor was there again, standing in the shadows of the trees across the clearing.
Li Sung turned over on his side and pulled his blankets up to his neck, deliberately ignoring the elephant.
The stupid beast could stay there all night, as he had for the past three nights. He would pay no attention to him. He needed his sleep.
The elephant was still watching him.
Li Sung muttered a curse and tossed aside his blanket. He moved past the sleeping workers as he stalked toward Danor. “Go away.”
The elephant took a step closer to Li Sung.
“Have you nothing better to do than torment me? Go take care of your baby or something.”
The elephant made a soft, rumbling sound deep in his throat.
“I do not want you. What use do I have for an elephant?”
Danor’s trunk reached out and gently, tentatively, touched his cheek.
“Stop it!” Li Sung stepped back.
Danor stepped forward, his trunk moving caressingly down Li Sung’s body.
Togetherness. Affection. Serenity. Li Sung closed his eyes as the same emotions he had experienced that moment in the river surged through him.
“I do not want—” He stopped with a sigh of resignation. “But you do not care what I want, do you? Perhaps you do not want it either. Maybe you do miss your mate. We will have to see if we can’t find you another.” He touched Danor’s trunk. It was rough and leathery, yet oddly comforting, like touching the bark of a tree grown in a beloved childhood garden. “All right, we will try to be friends. It is not impossible we may find a common-no!”
He was lifted high and the next moment deposited on the elephant’s back. “This is too much. I did not want you to—”
Togetherness, bonding, and something else …
Power.
He had never felt so strong or so complete.
Danor began to walk slowly across the glade toward the herd, his gait smooth, almost rolling. He felt no pain as he did when mounted on a horse or mule, Li Sung realized with amazement. His bad leg was lifted and held at an angle that was without strain. He felt whole again, as he had as a boy before he had become a cripple.
A wild sense of exhilaration flowed through him. He lifted his face and felt the wind touch his cheeks and something else touch his soul. makhol? It did not seem such a bizarre idea now. He didn’t know what bond there was between them, but he knew he had never been more content or alive than at that moment.
“Jane! Wake up!”
Li Sung’s voice, Jane realized sleepily, but there was something strange …
“Jane!”
She came fully awake and the next moment she was off her cot and at the tent entrance. “What’s wrong? Is there—”
Li Sung sat on Danor’s back just a few yards fro
m her tent. “Li Sung!” she whispered.
“I wanted to share it with you,” he said simply.
She didn’t have to ask what he had chosen to share. It was all there in his expression—joy, exhilaration, exultation.
“How did it happen?”
“Danor.” He patted the elephant’s head. “He has great determination.”
“I noticed that. You look very comfortable up there.”
“It’s like nothing …” He trailed off. “I can’t explain.”
“You don’t have to.” She smiled. “makhol.”
A brilliant smile lit his face, and he suddenly looked younger than the boy who had come to Frenchie’s that day so long ago. “makhol.” He touched Danor’s left ear, and the elephant turned away from Jane’s tent. “We are learning to accommodate each other, but I may have to stay up here all night.” He made a face. “I still have not figured out how to tell him I want down….”
His words trailed off as Danor moved back across the clearing toward the herd.
Jane gazed after him for a long time before she let the tent flap fall and turned back to her cot. Tomorrow would be another exhausting day, and she must get some sleep. She was happy for Li Sung. How could she not be happy when he had found something that made him look like that? Nothing had really changed. He had come to share his happiness with her as a good friend would.
She was foolish to feel this aching sense of something lost forever.
“You cannot do it,” Pachtal said positively.
“But of course I can.” Abdar smiled. “I’m the maharajah.”
“You have not been crowned yet. It will be another month before you’re free to go to Cinnidar.”
“I cannot wait. Your informant said the line is close to completion. Am I to wait until MacClaren has the means to fortify against me?” Abdar turned and gazed at the masks mounted on his wall and murmured, “I must tell Benares to pack up those masks.”
“You’re taking them with you?” Pachtal asked. “All of them?”
“Of course, and Benares must also come in case I find anyone worthy of Kali on Cinnidar. I will need power to defeat MacClaren.”
“You will need an army.”
Abdar frowned. “Do you question Kali’s power?”
“I do not question,” Pachtal said quickly. “I only suggest that Kali might triumph sooner with assistance.”
“I agree.” Abdar’s frown disappeared. “We shall have an army.”
“Not until you ascend the throne.”
“Why do you argue with me? Do you think I’m not aware of the difficulties? I have thought of a way to solve the problem.” Abdar smiled. “Can you not see I am devastated by grief over my father’s death? My physician has become so concerned that he insists I must leave the city and seek a change of scene.”
Pachtal waited.
“We will announce to my father’s mourning subjects that I’m going to Narinth to the summer palace to recover my health.”
“And the army?”
“I’ll need a large escort to protect me on my journey. Everyone knows that the British colonel would like nothing better than to find a way to oust me from power. If we catch MacClaren by surprise, I will not need more than a few troops. You will arrange to have a ship ready downriver.”
“But will these troops follow your orders when they learn you are breaking the mourning and going to Cinnidar instead of Narinth?”
“Oh, I believe they will. Once you point out that when we return from Cinnidar, a month will have passed and I will be eligible to ascend the throne.” He paused. “And punish all who displease me.”
“It could succeed,” Pachtal said slowly.
“It will succeed. The plan was given to me by the divine Kali and she cannot fail.”
“And what if Pickering suspects your plan? He is no fool.”
“I cannot attend to everything. I will have to rely on Kali to take care of Pickering.” He smiled at Pachtal. “Kali … and my friend, Pachtal.”
“You are joking,” he said, startled. “I cannot kill an Englishman.”
“Not death. Merely a temporary stomach disorder that will make him too ill to care what I am doing for a few weeks. Is that not possible?”
Pachtal smiled. “Entirely possible.”
“Why so quiet?” Ruel filled Jane’s coffee cup and his own before sitting down beside her before the fire.
“I don’t have anything to say.” She sipped the coffee, gazing down into the flames. She was aware of the usual friendly hum of talk around the candmar but felt oddly remote from it. “Do I have to talk all the time?”
“Not all the time. Just when something’s wrong. I hate like hell knowing there’s something bothering you and not knowing how to fix it. Is it me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The hell you don’t,” he said roughly. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his own. The warm, hard touch of his flesh against her own made her gaze fly to his face.
“That’s better,” he said curtly. “You’re looking at me. Now talk to me. You’ve been working yourself into the ground for my sake trying to get this damn track laid and yet for the past three days you’ve never even smiled at me.”
“I didn’t realize smiling was required.”
“It’s not required. I just miss it.” He turned her hand over and began tracing patterns on her palm with his index finger. “It … warms me.”
She looked at him, startled. “Ruel …”
“I thought it was getting better. Do I have to go out and find another baby elephant to pull around just to get you to smile at me?”
The motion of his finger on her palm was causing little ripples of sensation to tingle up her wrist and arm. He had touched her like this when he had sat beside her on the veranda in Kasanpore, she remembered. He had stroked her palm and talked of Cinnidar … and the painting in the maharajah’s car.
She felt a flush heat her cheeks. Like the woman in the painting, she had knelt for him in the summerhouse. She had felt him inside her, his hands caressing her while he rode her as if they were two mating animals unable to get enough of each other. The erotic memory was suddenly there like another presence beside them in the firelight. She could almost feel his hands cupping her breasts as he plunged—
She tried to pull her hand away, but his hand closed on her own.
“No.” He met her gaze. “Let me touch you. I have to get near you some way.”
He was getting too near, she thought breathlessly. For the past days he had been companion and ally, damping down any hint of physical sexuality, but now the sensuality that was so much a part of him was there before her.
“I wouldn’t do this if there were any other way,” he said thickly. “It’s not what I want for us.” He laughed desperately. “Correction. I want it like hell. It’s just not all I want and I’m afraid I’ll scare you off if I reach out and grab.” His fingers moved up and stroked the thin skin of her wrist.
A hot shiver went through her. “Let me go, Ruel.”
“Why?” He glanced at the crowd of laborers around the campfire as his fingers continued to feather the sensitive skin at her wrist. “No one is paying any attention. The Cinnidans are always touching each other in affection.”
She knew that was true and Ruel’s caress was probably not even visible to most of them, half hidden as it was between their bodies. The knowledge did nothing to rid her of this feeling of excruciating intimacy.
“Besides, you like it. You want it. Let me come to your tent tonight,” he murmured. “I’ll make you—”
Li Sung sat down next to them. “I have something to talk to you about.”
Jane drew a quivering breath of relief as Ruel’s hand dropped away from her wrist.
Ruel shot her a look that was composed equally of frustration and ruefulness. He picked up his coffee cup and turned his gaze to Li Sung
. “Talk.”
Li Sung said, “I believe I know a way to make the construction go faster.”
“How?”
“By using the elephants,” Li Sung said. “Our slowdown right now is because of the clearing problem. In Kasanpore, elephants were sometimes used for clearing.”
“Wild elephants?”
“No, elephants that had been trained for years by their handlers, their mahouts. But I have talked to Dilam about this and, if I can get Danor to clear the trees I want him to clear, she thinks the other elephants will follow him. Since they have to consume such vast quantities of leaves anyway, we might as well guide them in the way that’s most useful to us.”
Ruel turned to Jane. “Do you think it will work?”
“I’ll have to think about it. This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Li Sung didn’t mention the plan to me.”
“I forgot,” Li Sung said absently, and then went on. “If you and Jane combine crews, Dilam and I will be freed to take the elephants and go on ahead to clear the terrain along the track route from here to the canyon wall.”
“Just the two of you?”
“I’ll need three Cinnidan elephant handlers to help me besides Dilam. It would be dangerous to have too many people in the area with that many uncontrolled elephants milling around.”
Ruel turned to Jane. “Well?”
“We could try it,” she said slowly. “If we can get the Cinnidan High Council to provide these mahouts.”
“They will.” Li Sung smiled confidently. “I visited Dilam’s village last night and spoke to them. The handlers will be here tomorrow.”
“I’m surprised they gave in so easily,” Ruel said. “They’re very careful of the safety of their people.”
Li Sung smiled. “I took the precaution of making a splendid entrance into the village on Danor’s back. They were very impressed.”
“Well, you seem to have everything under control.” Jane smiled with an effort. “It’s a fine idea. We’ll have to see if it works.”
“It will work.” Li Sung stood up. “I’ll go tell Dilam you approve.”
“Yes, do that.” Ruel smiled as he watched Li Sung walk away. He added in a lower voice to Jane, “Not that it matters. I have an idea he would have gone ahead and done it anyway. Our Li Sung is changing. You won’t find him in your shadow these days.”
The Tiger Prince Page 43