But then, something unexpected happened. From understanding why Thesius was desirable to Wara, she progressed until she became attracted to him.
Then she found him more than merely attractive. Of course she concealed her feeling, knowing it to be illicit. But it tormented her at night, in much the way her longing for Ware had, before she had finally capitulated.
The week passed, and still Ware and Faro did not return.
A week and a day. The attraction was stronger than ever. She found herself watching him covertly, thinking about that dancer’s body. Wondering if he was as skilled in using that body as Ware was. She caught herself getting careless when it was her turn to wash, taking longer than she should, so that he might return on schedule and catch an accidental glimpse of her torso. Would she impress him as much as Wara had? She condemned herself, for she had never been a tease, but in the boredom her fancy ran rampant.
She found herself facing another question: what if Ware and Faro had been captured or killed? What if she and Thesius were on their own?
As the days stretched on, coming nearer to two weeks than one, she finally voiced that fear.
And Thesius was forced to admit that he, too, had been thinking of just that, and suffering shameful feelings. And she caught him watching her, covertly, with speculation in his eyes.
What had been a long, anxiety filled day became worse. Just about sunset, the weather turned. A high, cold wind came up, bringing with it clouds and rain. By the time the last light had left the sky, the rain had turned to sleet-and their clothing and few blankets were totally inadequate.
They layered on item after item, and still the cold penetrated to make them shiver. The wind kept stealing the heat from the fire, blowing straight into the cave and carrying the heat away through the vent that had been taking the smoke. They sat across from one another, shivering miserably, as the bitter cold penetrated into their bones.
She wanted to conjure warm blankets, but Thesius was clearly terrified that this would pinpoint their location to the enemy. “They always watch near the border,” he said. “Always.” So she shivered until she began to feel sick.
Finally Thesius looked across the fire into her eyes, and gestured. “There is no point in this,” he said. “If we are together, we may as well share these blankets and the heat of our bodies, such as it is.”
That made perfect sense, and at that moment, all she could think of was the prospect of getting warm. The very memory of warmth felt years away. She made her way around the fire, and joined him, adding her coverings to his, and clasping her body against his.
The difference was immediate. Warmth pooled between them; she relaxed and closed her eyes, feeling it ease the aches and tension from the cold.
For a long, long time, all she was aware of was the warmth, the blessed, blessed warmth. But then Thesius’s arms tightened involuntarily around her, and she was aware of a different kind of warmth entirely. They were clothed, but that could so readily change. They were already so close, and there was such heat between them.
Her eyes flew open, and met his. There was no mistaking the need, and the passion, in his face.
It would be so easy … so very easy. They shared so much, had so much in common-
“Maybe-just one kiss,” she whispered. “That couldn’t do any harm,” he agreed huskily. Their faces slowly came together. They were so similar, in their backgrounds and their passion.
And they were both human. Ware would not even be able to protest, for Ware would be no more….
It was that which brought her to her senses, and she saw that he must have remembered the same thing at the same moment. Their lips, almost touching, halted. She shook her head, gently, and he nodded. They both knew that if the kiss did not destroy the demon, what would surely follow it would.
They remained chastely cradled in each others arms for the rest of the night, sharing no more than physical warmth. Finally, after a long, long, time, the wind died, and they slept.
Xylina dreamed she was Wara, clasping Thesius and exciting him to such a pitch of excitement that all of his willpower was crushed by his need. But even in her dream she had caution, and she woke-to find him waking similarly. “I thought you were-” he said, agonized, shuddering.
“I know.” She turned her face away and pretended to ignore the desire she knew he suffered. Only in that manner could she suppress her own.
In the morning neither of them spoke about their near-catastrophe, but it was on Xylina’s mind and she knew it must be on Thesius’s. The air was still brisk and chill, but Xylina generated her warmth with exercise. That exercise also took some of the edge off her desire, although it did not remove it. Only the knowledge of how nearly they had murdered Ware did that.
While she was hauling in more firewood, she heard a hail, and looked up to see Ware and Faro-at last!- approaching up the trail to their cave. They looked tired, but satisfied.
Thesius was nowhere in sight, and Xylina did not want to wait for him. She dropped her firewood and ran, as fast as she could, all the way down the trail to the two returning explorers.
Ware dismounted, giving his horse’s reins to Faro, and met her embrace with one of his own, caressing her comfortingly, as if he understood all her conflicting emotions. She did not weep, but she was very near tears.
“Come,” he said gently, after a long, long time. “We were not gone all that long-”
“Oh, Ware,” Xylina cried, half in laughter, and half in hysteria, “you will never know how glad I am to see you! It has been-the fear, the cold-”
She could not continue, but he seemed to understand everything she could not say.
“But you were true to me, both of you,” he whispered comfortingly in her ear, “because otherwise I would not be here.”
She could not tell him that this was exactly what she meant, but when she finally pulled away a little and looked into his eyes, she saw that he already knew.
He had known the risk he was taking, and he had trusted them both: trusted their honor, and their strength of spirit. Trusted them more than they had trusted themselves.
Chapter 17
That night, the three of them shared a sleeping-place, with Ware between the two humans. And oddly, now that the temptation had been weathered, Xylina found that she no longer desired Thesius-and when he glanced at her, she no longer saw that mirroring desire in his face. He felt, instead, like the brother he resembled, and for the first time in her life, she felt complete-for now she had everything, a friend in Faro, a brother in Thesius, and a beloved in the form of Ware.
For the first time, she made love to Ware with Thesius lying naked beside them. When she finished, she lay without jealousy as Wara made love to Thesius. She had accepted the new reality, though it was alien to anything she could have believed before this excursion. She didn’t even feel guilty. This was love of a different kind, but nevertheless love, all the greater for the understanding it required.
Her contentment was short-lived, but only because there was still a task ahead for all of them.
The next morning they saddled all four horses and moved out, leaving everything they no longer needed in the cave. With luck, they would be back for it, but if not, there was nothing there that they could not do without, and the less burden the horses carried the more speed they could make.
Ware had discovered an additional entrance to the shard-cave that the guardians did not consider to be as important as the main entrance. It was above the main entrance in the valley, in an area covered with goat-tracks. It led to a place where water had eaten a way down into the main cavern; a place that actually caused the lower caverns to flood on occasion. Granted, it was a verysmall entrance, and one that the average Mazonite could never squeeze through-but Xylina was small enough thatshe could get in. For once in her life, her small size was going to prove an advantage!
By the time they reached the cave and its guarded environs, their plan was as solid as any plan could be, considering how many variables
were involved.
Xylina, Thesius, and Ware lay hidden just outside the valley of the cave. They were near enough to the entrance so that they could reach it quickly, but just outside the guards’ usual perimeter. False dawn was just beginning, and the guards were at their most relaxed. No one truly expected an attempt on the shard in broad daylight, so the guards on the day-watch were not particularly alert. In fact, they often played at games of chance to wile away the hours-and that figured very largely in the plan.
Faro returned just as the sun crept above the horizon, a bundle of fabric under his arm. He passed it silently to Ware, who quickly donned it. It was one of the crystal-guards’ uniforms; Xylina did not ask Faro how he had obtained one, and from whom. She was just grateful that there was no blood on it.
Even though Xylina would be entering the cave by a different route, someone would need to distract the guards at the main entrance, in case they heard a noise in the cave and became alarmed. Since Ware could not be harmed by any weapon, he was the logical choice for the role of “distraction.” He would pretend to be a new guard, and would introduce the other guards to an entirely new game of chance, a very noisy one, and one that was both exciting and required a great deal of concentration. Faro had learned this game from the Pacha, and he had tutored the demon in it at every possible halt until Ware was as expert as any non-Pacha could be. To give him an initial stake for the game-and to whet the guards’ appetite for it-Xylina had taken the risk of conjuring a small pouch of silver and gold nuggets. Ware would soon lose many of those; greed would make the guards want them all.
Ware fastened up the uniform tunic and tied the pouch to his belt. With a wink, he strode boldly up the valley to the entrance. Now it was time to wait again.
Finally, at mid-morning, excited shouts and cheers echoed up the valley toward their hiding-place. Ware had succeeded in his distraction, and it was time to go.
They slipped up the valley, then climbed the cliff above the main entrance to find the secondary way in. The ascent was not difficult-in fact, there was even a path there. The problem was not access, but the three guards that waited at the tiny slit in the cliff-face that led down to the main cave.
She needed a second distraction, but this one was easier to come by. Faro took one handful of gold nuggets-this time, though, they were dirty, loaded with quartz, and in general, looked very much as if they had just broken off of a larger mass. Xylina took a handful, and Thesius took the third handful. They climbed above the trail to the second entrance, and located the three little goat-tracks Faro and Ware had found. They scattered their nuggets all along these paths, until they reached the point where all three trails met. There, Xylina worked a little more conjuration, creating a false front to the cliff-face of quartz ribboned with veins of gold. It would take men with proper tools several days to chip the gold free- and those men below had no such thing. But she had no doubt they would try.
Then they returned down the goat-trails and concealed themselves in three separate places near and above where the guards would pass.
Xylina waited, as the others were waiting, and as the guard passed below her position, dropped the last of her nuggets so that it bounced down the side of the mountain and onto the trail just in front of the man, as if it had been naturally dislodged at just that moment.
The gold caught the light perfectly, and the guard leaned over to see what it was.
She could not see his face from here, but his whole form stiffened. He snatched up the nugget, and looked around furtively, then looked up.
She could easily see him, but he could not see her through the screening of the gorse bushes. She waited, and shortly she heard him ascending the goat-trail, on a furtive, silent hunt for more nuggets. With luck, the other two would be doing the same. If Faro and Thesius got the opportunity, they would knock the guards out, but only Faro had the skill and strength to carry such a move off without one of them calling a warning. Her plan called for Faro to dispose of his own guard; the other two would then presumably meet at the cliff face, and either quarrel over the gold, or reach some kind of conclusion, and each would greedily try and remove more than his fellow. In either case, there would be no further interference from the guards.
She dropped down to the trail and sought out the entrance to the upper cave.
It was less of an entrance than an exaggerated slit in the rock. Only the fact that Ware had been here before and that it was guarded left her inclined to trust that it led to the lower caves. She squeezed herself inside-literally-with no more space between her face and the rock-face than the thickness of a piece of paper, and rock pressing into her back.
Of all the things she had needed to do, this was the worst. It was dark, darker than the blackest, overcast night. She barely had room to take a breath-in fact, in order to make any progress at all, she had to exhale, inch forward, then stop to take another breath. She was very glad that her tunic was of leather, or she would have been leaving skin behind on the rock-face by now.
Several times she had to stop and fight back panic, telling herself that Ware had already been here, and that the passage did get wider eventually. All she had to do was to go a little further-just a little further-
Suddenly, she broke free of the rocky embrace, and tumbled into a larger chamber. She landed on her hands and knees, and quickly sat down to take several lung-filling, free breaths.
Now she took a chance and conjured a glowstone to light her way. The chamber in which she sat was a small one, but quite spacious compared with the passage.
At the end of the chamber opposite the passageway was a large hole in the floor of the cave. This, Ware had told her, led down to the guard-chamber just outside the one holding the crystal shard itself. It resembled a steep rabbit-hole, but it was large enough to take several people her size, slanting downward when she crawled over to it to look. Ware said that it looked to him as if had been made by the passage of a great deal of water down that hole over the course of many centuries, water that had since found another outlet. But there were marks in this upper chamber that indicated more recent flooding, and he had learned that from time to time a sudden storm might send water into that passage even these days. That would flood the lower cavern, and the guards would retreat to the valley, waiting for the full day it took the caverns to drain. She saw nothing down below, not even a light; the slanting passage and the distance it had to cross in order to reach the guard-chamber made certain of that. But if she listened, carefully, she could hear the guards talking.
She would have to risk one more conjuration, and hope that no one detected it. So far, no one had; Ware had thought that the shard itself might mask such magic-workings. She hoped he was right. Because this was going to be something more than a few nuggets of gold or silver.
She conjured water.
Floods of it, torrents of it. She sent it rushing down the passageway to the guard-chamber, filling the entire passageway with her conjured flood, creating a river of water that she sent pouring down on the heads of the unsuspecting guards. Who would, of course, assume that the upper chamber had flooded again, and abandon their posts for the length of time it usually took for the water to drain.
When she thought she had conjured enough water to fill the lower chamber completely, she stopped. Then, steeling herself, she took the glowstone in one hand and edged over to the passageway, sat down on the edge, and pushed off.
She slid, as if the sides had been greased. This was as exciting as the trip through the outer passage had been harrowing. The smooth walls of the water-tunnel slid by her; as Ware had instructed, she put out her feet now and again to brake her speed, but for the most part, she simply thrilled in the feeling of near-flight. As a small child she had slid down mud-slick banks on the family estate; this was to that feeling as her first primitive conjurations were to what she could do now!
Finally, and without warning, the slide ended. She had just enough time to gulp in a breath, before she plunged feet-first into
her own conjured water. In a single heartbeat, she was several feet under the surface, glowstone in one hand, the other flailing away at nothing.
In the next moment, she had banished it, and she stood, completely dry, in the midst of the guard-chamber. She was alone.
Now there remained only the crystal.
She was almost disappointed when she spied it. The thing looked just like a piece of glass. But of course that was what it was: a glassy fragment of a much larger crystal. A shard.The shard. It was set into a holder in the wall, and she wondered why. But then it occurred to her that the guards would want to see it to know it was still there; if it had been locked into a box, it could have been stolen and no one would know until some later routine check.
Her immediate inclination was to take the crystal from its setting, and flee. But that would set off traps. Surely these people had traps. If she had been guarding this stone,she would have set traps!
She did not think that she would be able to conjure a copy of the crystal, either-at least not in time to get it into the holder without setting off the traps. Without a doubt, these people had planned for a Mazonite conjuror to attempt to take the shard, and would have acted accordingly.
Ware had not been able to give her any advice here. He had not been able to get near enough the chamber holding the crystal to see how it was held. The attempt would have caused him harm.
Xylina came close to the wall and stared at the holder, taking a good look at it. How could she remove the shard without setting off traps and alarms? As transparent as the shard was, it was fairly easy to see the rods set into the holder, pressed against the crystal itself. And it was easy to see how the slightest movement of the shard would move the rods. No, these people had planned very carefully for a Mazonite conjuror-
But suddenly she saw her solution, and smiled. For they had planned for the kind of conjuror that Adria was: one who concentrated on major effects. Adria would have either snatched the crystal and attempted to insert a duplicate, or smashed the holder.
If I Pay Thee Not in Gold Page 38