“I love you,” Llinolae whispered in welcome.
“And I—” The pause grew so long, Gwyn lying so quiet that if Llinolae had not held the Sight, she might have thought Gwyn slept again. But the sweet amarin around them told Llinolae she held her lover close with dreams and memories. And then Gwyn’s quiet voice came again, “Discover….”
Llinolae watched her curiously.
Gwyn breathed in the warm scent of their loving once more. Then with eyes unopening she began in a murmur…
“Across the breezes of the night
the scent — the brush… solely new…
comes velvet touch to linger.
Spoiling dreams of fantasy
in sultry tease of waking…”
Copper-hued eyes opened to Llinolae…
“To eyes of star-reflected light
to fond curved bow of welcome —
to kiss and pledge abandon…
Then leap! In fire — stunned. Eclipsed!”
Gwyn’s gaze locked to Llinolae’s own —
”Intoxicating blue descends,
claims and fully takes me whole.
Yet heed — ! More than all I’ve won.”
The words drifted into the night. The thrashing waterfall claiming them first, then the Forest’s great amarin absorbing each, until again Llinolae felt their pulse of richness beat against her harmon. Amazement made her blink, shaking her head a little.
Gwyn smiled up at her, simply loving her with that gaze. “You… are a poet?” Llinolae’s words seemed inane to even herself as she spoke. But she could not help the surprise… nor the growing delight.
“Sometimes poems, sometimes lyrics — when I am not carving my flutes. Or did you fear…” a sword-callused hand lifted half curled, stroking Llinolae’s cheek with the softer skin of a finger’s back, “that I only wrestle with ruffians and outwit schemers?”
“No,” Llinolae caught Gwyn’s hand and placed a kiss to her wrist. “I harbor no fear of who you might be, merely pleasure at discovering….” Her sentence went unfinished as pain crowded close, unbidden. “I fear there is so much of you I may never uncover as our duties tug to separate us.”
Fingers pressed her words silent. Gwyn shook her head, lips pursed in a reassuring hush. “There are paths around such dilemma, my Love. I know you’ve worried. As Dracoon you’re bound to District and service, and I know it will have to be my own life that adapts, if we are to be together.”
Llinolae’s brow knit. “I can’t bind you here, Gwyn. I… I couldn’t ask that of you — to trade Valley Bay for Khirlan. I could never ask that of you.”
“Then let me ask something else,” Gwyn amended, both hands rising to take Llinolae’s face. “I love you, Min Llinolae, Dracoon of Khirlan. With heart filled and past seasons discarded, I freely offer to join you in your Ramains’ District. Will you… do you… welcome me?”
The gasp caught in Llinolae’s throat not once, but twice. She felt herself begin to tremble and could barely comprehend it. Gwyn’s gaze grew tender as her own blurred in tears. Then the sob broke, and she collapsed into the strength of those waiting arms.
“Love… Soroi,” Gwyn held her, soothing her, protecting her… loving her undaunted. “Ti Mau coraen Kau….”
A weak laugh took Gwyn as she felt the tears wet her breast and the shudders run through her lover. She only gathered Llinolae nearer, teasing gently, “My dearest Blue Sight — how could you not expect this of me? I love you. You can See that, can’t you?”
Something of a nod answered the pause, and Gwyn drew back far enough to raise Llinolae’s gaze to meet hers. She searched her lover’s stricken expression for some way to reassure her. “I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m offering.”
The tears stopped. Llinolae felt her heart ache within her ribs. But she couldn’t deny, “I know you do.”
Gwyn stared at her hard, for a long, silent time. Llinolae almost flinched from what she knew Gwyn must see. She was ashamed of her own lack of courage in this, yet needing to share even that… she did not turn away.
“You’re afraid,” Gwyn voiced finally, her tone soft and unaccusing though it hinted of her surprise. “Of what we share — of what we could share? Much as you want it, you are afraid of this.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re thinking I’m not.”
Llinolae blinked, distracted by the very thought. Her blue eyes squeezed shut and her lips pressed tight as she struggled with common sense. Then she looked at Gwyn again and tried a smile, “Forgive me… you overwhelm me with… I’ve never imagined… or rather, barely imagined… anyone… like you….”
“I know.” Tenderness and understanding were shared as Gwyn nodded, “You are the same — for me.”
Llinolae felt that truth. She smiled again. “We’d be fools not to be afraid, wouldn’t we?”
“We’d be greater fools to deny our heartbond.”
“Aye. So yes, sae. Be welcomed in Khirla, my Love.”
“I come with a family.”
“I’ve always known that.” Llinolae gently took her turn in reassuring now. “With both Ril and Ty — I’d welcome all of you. If you’re certain this is what you want.”
“I’m certain.”
“And Valley Bay?”
A crooked smile granted much would be missed. “I’ll go for a visit now and again.”
“Your Oath of Duty?”
“I’ll wander when called. But the Wars are done. They’ll be looking to post Marshals on a more permanent basis. There’s no reason I can’t request assignment to Khirla’s Court. And the Royal Family has no policies against emotional liaisons.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
“Would you want me to offer, if I hadn’t?”
“No.”
“Well then—”
“Heartbound?”
“Sae?” Gwyn’s breath caught as joy sparked warm trust in the blue, blue depths of her lover’s eyes.
“Heartbound,” Llinolae accepted. Her lips turned up at the corners then as she watched the paleness of Gwyn’s skin begin to brown. Her pulse raced a little faster, desire rising to match her Amazon’s own. Eyes fused by their sheer wanting. The tension between them grew exquisite in the waiting, and Llinolae felt fire singe the remains of doubts to ash, leaving her bolder. “Heartbound, Soroi … have you a special rite to seal the contract?”
Llinolae’s tongue drew a line across her own lips, and Gwyn’s gaze flickered to her mouth — caught in fascination.
“Have you, Soroi?”
“Several,” Gwyn breathed, feeling her insides melt. Llinolae’s fingertips came to lie so lightly atop Gwyn’s heart — Gwyn’s body spasmed then froze, the very breath in her stopping. Slowly those long fingers stretched outward as palm pressed flat, softness warming hot.
“Something like this, perhaps?” Llinolae hovered so very close that their lips brushed with each syllable. Her touch drifted, cupping, yet not quite claiming the fullness of Gwyn’s breast.
Gwyn nearly laughed as patience snapped, and she arched into Llinolae’s palm, covering Llinolae’s hand with her own — laughter transcended into moan.
“Sae.” Llinolae approved. Her kiss found the delicious line of Gwyn’s collar bone. Her thigh slipped between Gwyn’s, and arms drew her nearer.
◊ ◊ ◊
Chapter Twelve
Abruptly a prickly shiver ran up along Llinolae’s back. She spun on her heel to thrust the canvas flap aside. The Great Forest cried — the amarin were today’s.
She searched for a clear sense of the alarm. Overhead, the thick static air of the imminent storm was still blowing east, though more sluggishly than last night. The winds rippled through the honeywoods above the canyon walls. The stream tumbled by. But of creatures — pripper or bird — there were no sounds.
Her Sight prodded again. A whisper of alarm, then the touch of a friend, seemed to dance along the amarin.
“Ty?” Confusion creased a li
ne between Llinolae’s brows, and she stepped cautiously from the shelter of the tent.
Undeniably, it was Ty she Saw coming, from somewhere downstream and moving quickly, with urgency.
Why?
An image — the harmon of a wolf imposed upon a woman of height — leapt across her mind. Llinolae gasped, the strength of the picture striking hard. The imprint hit again. And in truth, it was a wolf she Saw. It was an animal like no sandwolf of her world, with a finely furred face and markings of amber-edged black upon white-gray. Yet within the ghost of that harmon was a tall woman of fiery bronze hair, though her features were obscured almost to vagueness by the power of the wolf image. The features of animal vied with those of human. Stature, structure — contradictions of four-footed in two seemed irrelevant, suddenly seeming to hold no contradictions at all!
Gwyn?
Llinolae choked, coughing and fighting for air with a hand to her stomach as she wrenched herself free from that emotional intensity. Then stumbling, she turned to re-enter the tent, seeking short bow and bolts along with the medicine purse. Because she finally understood. She was Seeing Gwyn as her bondmates could. And Gwyn needed Ty to bring help!
Waterskins, a long knife, and a pouch of trail rations hung from her belt as well as the medicine purse when Ty arrived. The sandwolf loped in amidst the waters of the stream, moving too fast to hide her tracks otherwise. But she barely paused at the camp’s edge as Llinolae donned a cloak over the bolt quiver and grabbed the bow, already running.
Ty rounded and was off. Boots splashed undaunted to follow her close.
◊ ◊ ◊
Llinolae crouched behind the thicket of stone-moss, sandwiched between a rocky little crevice and an overshadowing tree root. Ahead in the twilight she Saw the disturbance of Clan scouts. Two on horseback, at least. They were apart and circling in different directions, though both had been near within the late afternoon. Somewhere about the male one, she felt the more familiar amarin of Ril and Cinder as the sandwolf led the mare in diverting tracks. But Llinolae could tell neither from track signs nor amarin if the scouts were working together, or if the male was the apprentice and the other some more experienced patrol member searching for him. Of Brit and Sparrow she felt no presence at all. So if this was the apprentice, he had certainly proved more wily than any of them had anticipated. And if it was not him, then the two were somehow working in tandem and might expect the rest of the patrol to rendezvous soon.
When it came right down to it, Llinolae simply didn’t like the fact that they were Clan folk. Anything else at the moment she considered trivial.
Twilight had come. The early moon was already up and bright despite the cloaking canopy of clouds and trees. Darkfall was not going to get much darker today.
She glanced at Ty who lay down beside her, still panting in exhaustion. The sandwolf cocked her head, tongue lolling, then snapped her mouth shut and managed one of those sneeze-like nods briefly. She panted again, and Llinolae sank her fingers deep into the curly ruff with a squeeze of reassurance. Ty was right, the rest was left to her.
Bow in hand, she crept out of their nest while bending the amarin around her in that uncomfortably familiar guise of ‘hide.’ She glanced about cautiously and ventured to stand. She wished she had a better sense of exactly where those scouts were. Knowing they were too far to See easily yet near enough to continue to disturb the amarin was not her idea of safe distance. They could be a single tree beyond her clear Sight or a half-league. If only a single tree beyond, then they could — with skill — target her on the scopes of those fire weapons with barely a notice from her Sight. The prospect of tree climbing right now did not make her happy; dividing her attention between ‘hiding’ and anything else was always a risky venture.
But tree climbing? Hah! She eyed the burly giant across the way. It was going to be more like cliff scaling from the look of that Ancient honeywood. By the Mother’s hand, how had Gwyn ever managed to scale that thing?
Llinolae approached the aged honeywood, feeling the steady ebb and flow of its amarin. It had a richness and depth to it that few others of this behemoth’s kind could equal. Age… seasons… she placed a palm gently against the smooth ridges of the ruddy bark. So, so old — the cork-flake texture of its bark had completely been lost. With time and weather, with fires, and, yes, even winters — this one had been little more than a sprout when it had first seen snow. Llinolae stroked the stone-armor, respect slipping to awe. She had never known that snow could fall below the altitude of the Clan’s Plateau. To her knowledge, Khirlan proper had never boasted a true winter — at least not since the Council’s Seers had shifted the amarin to create a place for the Clan to house their starcraft.
The amarin of the Ancient shimmered in affirmation; its seasons numbered much greater than even that.
A shiver ran through her. Fingers curled about deep ridges that were palm-wide and more. The satin feel of polished stone was somehow cool to the touch, yet it seemed so very warm with life. She gazed up along the rising lines that marked the scars and eons of survival, walking slowly along the base. She needed to go only a few steps before stopping. The shape and slope of its trunk became clearer to her Sight as she focused inward, and she found its roots were sunk deep. The tree grew virtually straight out from the ground with a diameter that could easily eclipse the width of Khirlan greatest city gates. It’s smooth, hardened wood, nearly petrified by elements and time, offered little for the inexperienced hand and foot to use in climbing. Limbs as wide as silver-pine tree trunks stretched broad overhead. They were far, far overhead but of no aid to her here below. Yet the currents of this great one cradled Gwyn’s own amarin. Llinolae stepped away, squinting upwards in concentration. The glimmering filaments of the Ancient’s harmon grew more distinct to her — like starlight emerging from the twilight — and gradually Llinolae was drawn to a pattern of pinpricks. She drew back a bit more and Saw the zigzagging pattern of ascent up the trunk to a crevice that sidled around the corner of the lowest tree bough.
Lightning had once struck and split there, Llinolae realized. Though the growth had eventually mended, the rift further above and the haymoss played shadowy tricks that hid the place from normal sight, it was an excellent hideaway. No doubt Gwyn’s initial thoughts had been to take refuge on the tree limb itself, high enough above the forest floor to be out of casual view on a branch that seemed inaccessible yet was wide enough to mask her from searching eyes. The Mother had been guiding her choice however, and the shelter within the tree’s great trunk had become obvious when Gwyn had gotten above.
Yet how Gwyn had managed it? Baffled, Llinolae shook her head until suddenly she Saw that the zigging amarin trail was some sort of tree wounding. But they were small, insignificant insect nips to this Ancient and wouldn’t have struck its amarin with such tell-tale signs, unless the tree was intending her to note them. So, not wounds. She tried to measure perspective by a more personal standard and grasped that they were narrow yet deep, thin as a finger… maybe twice a hand’s depth? Made by a stiletto-styled, steel blade! And not merely one knife, but two!
Gwyn’s vambraces! Those leathers on her forearms sheathed just such knives!
“Mae n’Pour!” Llinolae breathed and eyed the height of that long climb again. She knew the Amazons of old were strong, but to pull one’s self up, hand over hand by knife strikes? “In truth you are Niachero, ti Soroi.”
The tenor of the amarin shifted within the Ancient, and Llinolae felt a pulse of urgency reach to her. The bright print of Gwyn’s knife-trail glittered like set gems while the rest dulled. She extended a soul-deep thanks to the Ancient. She thanked the Amazons as well for their practice of using metal arrows, because it was the only way she was going to reach those upper heights Unlike her beloved Niachero, Llinolae did not have the sheer and powerful upper body strength necessary to pull herself up this Great Tree using only knives! Which was a moot point anyway, since she didn’t wear vambraces with hidden stilettos! She shrugge
d her cape aside, reaching into her quiver which she had filled from Gwyn’s stock.
Blue eyes narrowed. She pulled and Sighted. Harmons pulsed and steadied, amarin shaping daughter, tree, and arrow to one purpose. Fingers opened — released!
With soundless harmony the strong, metal shafted arrow took flight and the first rung of Llinolae’s ladder was planted in the lowest of the stiletto marks. She set the next arrow, and the next, sliding into an efficient rhythm of set-pull-release that needed no pause even as she stepped away to gain proper angles for her higher arches.
A nudge of praise brushed her as Llinolae finished, and she smiled over her shoulder in Ty’s direction. It had been a task well done, she admitted. She slung her bow over her shoulder and secured it, then took to climbing. She had taken care to sink the arrows deep enough to hold, yet leave her room to step without damaging the fletching. Though she still had a half dozen in the quiver, she would rather not sacrifice the fourteen unless she absolutely had to, and she intended to retrieve as many of these as she possible could. Those Clan scouts were still too close.
Arms and once bruised muscles were beginning to shake towards the end, but she made it to that broad based limb soon enough. She sat a moment to catch her breath and wiped the sleeve across her flushed brow, feet dangling. A sense from Ty flickered across her mind’s eye, and she learned Ril had begun to circle Cinder wide, to take her back to camp.
That was good, Llinolae nodded unconsciously. It meant that by the midnight moon’s rise, Ril would be standing sentry along with Ty. She glanced around herself to get her bearings in the gathering shadows. The wind was chillier, yet it carried more of the Forest’s voices up here — yes, quite a ways up. She glanced between her feet again, judging the climb must have been six or seven times her own height. Shaking her head again at Gwyn’s sheer strength, she got to her feet. She touched the haymoss, glancing upwards. The crevice started slightly below the limb here, but there was still a head’s height or two to go before the rift opened properly. She turned to check for the scouts first and walked out for a better view.
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