22 Nights

by WINSTEAD JONES, LINDA

  He pointed, and Bela followed his direction. The next carving depicted them inside a crumbling cave, and from there the string of images went crooked; it drifted high and low and it curled. At first glance it looked as if they had three choices, and each choice would bring them to a different end.

  LEYLA wanted, very badly, to lay Savyn upon the blankets which had become their bed and make love to him. She wanted to comfort him the only way she knew how, with her body, but to do so would undo all that she had sacrificed for him. She wanted Savyn to have a good life, free of his commitment to her, and for that to happen, she had to be willing to walk away, to let him go.

  Most of all, she wanted him to see. She wanted him to smile again, to laugh, to look at her with eyes that smoldered.

  Instead, she led him to the bed and told him to sit while she put together a crude and tasteless breakfast from what she’d found in Trinity’s saddlebags. Hard biscuits, dried meat. The apples were already gone.

  “I thought today I’d explore a bit and see if I can find some wild berries,” she said, trying to inject a carefree tone in her voice. “It is the right season for redberries, and soon there should be blue, as well. It will be nice to have something to eat besides hard, dried food.” All of it taken from an assassin’s possessions. She did not add that point aloud, but the thought crossed her mind, and she imagined it crossed Savyn’s as well.

  “You said you were going to town to make some purchases when we found ourselves low on supplies.” Savyn leaned against the wall and drew one long leg in, making himself as comfortable as possible in the small hut.

  Leyla hesitated. She could not tell him that she wasn’t ready to leave him alone or that she didn’t think she could manage getting him to town. He had become comfortable enough in this small place, but to be out in the open, to travel, to be among strangers in his condition, would be confusing and frightening.

  “I don’t feel like going to the village today,” Leyla said. “Maybe tomorrow, or the next day. There is no hurry.”

  “Are you afraid?” Savyn asked, his voice soft and kind.

  “No,” she said truthfully. She was not afraid for herself, at least.

  “What if he’s there? What if Trinity comes back for you? For us.” It was evident in Savyn’s voice that his concern was not for himself.

  “He won’t. Trinity is far from this place by now, I guarantee. And if by some chance he were to see me . . . he would not dare to harm me.” In fact, he would likely run from her in terror.

  If she’d known what the assassin had done to Savyn, she might’ve killed him on the road. She might’ve instructed him to take his own life. But she had not known, and perhaps that was just as well. A quick death was too good for one such as Trinity.

  She sat beside Savyn, took his hand, and placed a bit of biscuit upon it. “Eat this first.” The hard biscuit was followed by water from the dented tin cup he had been given by a farmer’s wife so many days ago, then by dried meat and more water. She made him feed himself, this time she even made him lead the cup to his lips. There were a few missteps along the way, but eventually he did well. She hated the way his eyes remained dull and unfocused. She hated that he did not, could not, look at her.

  Even after he was finished, Leyla remained sitting beside him, the plate and empty tin cup in her lap. Savyn breathed deeply once, then reached out and very accurately found and gripped her wrist. One sun-bronzed finger rocked against her pale skin, and she wondered if he could feel the increase in her pulse.

  “The blow to my head did more than take my sight,” he said, agony in his voice. “In my head I see things I should not see. Scents, sensations, visions—and they seem so real, even though they could not be. There were moments before I was hurt, I will admit, when I had thoughts I should not have had, but they were not like this. Those thoughts were not so real, so vivid. I think I must be going mad, Leyla. I think . . .” He dropped her wrist and withdrew, as much as was possible in the small space. “Never mind. My head aches all the time and I’m not thinking clearly. I’m confused and angry and reaching for something which could not possibly be real.”

  Leyla held her breath. He could not remember them! It was impossible. “What makes you say such a thing?” she asked, needing more information in order to know what he was seeing and sensing in his mind.

  “It is unimportant. Berries,” he said, the tone of his voice taking a sharp and oddly happy turn. “I would love to have a handful of redberries, if you can find some.”

  MERIN walked near the wall as he studied the carvings there. Thanks to the light given off by the crystals which filled the cavern, he could see the details well enough. More than well enough.

  Had a powerful seer long ago seen the choices he and Bela would make, or had their choices been made for them? Had they been led to this point, or was this simply destiny?

  No, not entirely destiny, not according to the stories on the cavern walls.

  At least three outcomes were possible, from what he’d seen so far. One: He and Bela would die here. They’d confront one another in anger, sever the rope that bound them, and never find their way out of this mountain. Two: Still joined, they’d find their way out, following the river, and once they were back in the village, he’d cut the rope and ride away. Bela would remain behind. She would be taken by a man he assumed must be Nobel, though it was difficult to tell for sure. That man would take Kitty from Bela and kill her with her own sword.

  The third scenario was more complex, more detailed. This was obviously where the artist who’d done this work had intended for them to go. The images were more detailed, and the string of depictions was longer than the other two sadly presented possibilities—which might be warnings as much as predictions, he decided.

  Merin occasionally reached out to touch the images, wondering if they would disappear. He had seen much in his lifetime, so he should not be surprised by this turn of events. There were gaps, passages of time in the story where there was no clue as to what would happen, but the basics were clear, easy to read.

  If they survived the challenges set for them, he and Bela would make a baby, and it was that child who would wield Kitty. It was that child, that daughter, for whom Kitty had been made. He had been right all along. The crystal grip had been fashioned for a woman. That woman was not Bela.

  The story ended with the image of that girl, that woman, standing on a mountain with Kitty raised above her head. She was much like Bela in shape and size, but possessed a head of curling hair much like Merin’s. The depiction was unsophisticated, but she was drawn as a strong woman, a warrior . . . a woman headed into battle.

  Merin turned to Bela in anger. “You knew.”

  “I did not!”

  “You’ve had Kitty in your possession for more than two years. Are you telling me she never told you that she was intended for your daughter? Our daughter?” The words tried to stick in his throat.

  “Yes, I’m telling you exactly that,” she said. “Really, Merin, do you think I want a daughter who’s destined for battle? Do you think I want to make a child who will need Kitty? That means war, and war means suffering, and no mother wants that for her child, especially not a girl.”

  Merin narrowed his eyes. Bela would love to be a warrior, if the opportunity presented itself. She turned her back on all traditional female roles and embraced manly things. Would she not want the same for her daughter? “Do not lie to me.”

  “I’m not!”

  He wanted to believe her, he wished to believe her, but their past history interfered. She had deceived him once before to get what she wanted. “Are you already with child? Is that why you seduced me last night and this morning, to make sure you caught the child before I saw all this?”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “I seduced you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, if I did, it was an incredibly easy seduction,” she said sharply. “It’s not as though you were not willing.”

  “I never s
aid I was not willing.”

  “But you did say . . .”

  They were playing out the most deadly scene on the cavern wall. “We cannot argue,” Merin interrupted, taking the warning to heart. “Not now.”

  “You started it,” Bela said sullenly.

  “I apologize.” Once they were out of here, they would finish the discussion. “Right now we need to concentrate on finding our way out of here. According to the drawing on the wall, we need to follow the river.”

  “How do you know the drawing is correct?” Bela sounded a bit panicked. “Do you truly believe our future is written in stone?”

  Merin gave a wave of his hand. “Apparently so.”

  Bela pursed her lips and barely glanced at the cavern drawings.

  “It will be all right,” Merin said, not feeling the comforting words to the pit of his soul, as he should’ve. “Perhaps what’s depicted on the wall has been right so far, to a point, but there are three possible futures awaiting us. Every choice we make changes what’s to come, for better or for worse. We make our own future, Bela.”

  She looked him in the eye, and he saw fear and strength, determination and uncertainty. “I do love you,” she said. “I believe what I feel is real, not . . . not magically thrust upon me so I can give birth to a little girl who will grow up to be a warrior.” She shuddered. “But how can I know? How can either of us know that we’ve not been manipulated?”

  “By Kitty?” Merin asked.

  “By whatever makes Kitty live, yes,” Bela said. “She speaks to us, she reads our minds. What if she also influences our thoughts and emotions in order to get what she wants? Our child?”

  We need you both.

  The declaration was for both of them, for Merin and for Bela, and both reacted to it strongly.

  “Oh,” Bela said flatly.

  “What?” Merin asked.

  “All this time, Kitty has been telling me that we need you. I thought that we included me, but I think all along she must’ve meant her and our daughter. They are the we.”

  “I once heard something similar from Kitty,” Merin confessed, “and I suffered the same misinterpretation.” When Bela had almost fallen to her death, Kitty had been frantic. We need her. The world needs her, Kitty had said. Apparently the world needed Bela so she could give birth to a warrior who would one day take Kitty into battle.

  He almost snorted as he studied the vast, beautiful, and potentially deadly cavern. “We have been led here. Every step, every seemingly random decision, they have all brought us here.” Merin instinctively pulled Bela into his arms, as the crystals around them pulsed and whispered. They emitted not words, but instead gave off a harmonious, rhythmic chant that seemed to be in time with his heartbeat.

  “We can change our destiny, Bela,” he said with conviction. “We do not have to be led any longer. We can search inside ourselves for what’s real and what’s not.”

  “How?” she asked, sounding heartbroken and uncertain. “After seeing all this, after knowing what they want from us, how do we make our own future?”

  Merin took a deep breath. “To start, we leave Kitty here.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  SAVYN stood in the doorway and listened as Leyla crossed the road and stepped into the woods to search for berries. He used all his functioning senses to determine which way she was walking, and how fast. He heard her stop once, and surmised that she had turned to look at him before she stepped so deep into the forest that she could no longer see him. Just in case she was watching, he lifted his hand and waved, assuring her that he would be fine alone.

  Even when he could no longer hear her movements, he continued to stand in the doorway for a while longer, listening to the sounds of the day: to the flutter and caw of birds, the buzz of insects, the chirping and rustling of small critters which scurried in the forest. The sun warmed his face, and Savyn was glad that he could feel something to remind him that it was daytime, that the sun shone and the world moved on.

  When he was certain Leyla no longer watched, Savyn patted the biscuits he’d slipped into his pocket earlier and he stepped outside, taking care with the first uneven step. He hadn’t taken four steps away from the hut before he fell, stumbling over his own two feet, and landed facedown in the dirt. Since the stormy night when he’d been hurt, Leyla had always assisted him when he’d left the shelter, but he could not rely on her to lead him forever. Could not and would not.

  The mishap made him angry, but he’d been angry with himself a lot in the past few days. Angry for not dying, angry for not seeing, angry most of all for having ridiculous fantasies about a woman he could never possess.

  If he wasn’t near Leyla, if he could not smell her scent and hear her voice, maybe the fantasies would stop. The imagining became more vivid with every passing day, and the dreams . . . the dreams were remarkable and torturous. In his dreams he could see. Most wonderfully of all, he could see her. The dreams were so blasted real, and he could not shake them as long as he lived in her presence, as long as he could smell and hear and touch her.

  Besides, Leyla would not move on as she should while she was burdened with a blind man. She needed to leave this godforsaken hut, she needed to change her name and start again in a place where no one knew her, where no one wanted to hurt her. Where he could not find her, if he ever suffered the foolish notion to try.

  Eventually Savyn found his way to the road. He stumbled a time or two but did not fall again. With every step the trek became a bit less strenuous. He did not turn toward town, but made a sharp right so that he was backtracking, heading back the way he and Leyla had come. He did not remember every small detail of their journey along this road, but he knew that the thick growth of ancient trees to his left continued for quite a distance, and if he heard anyone coming, he could hide there.

  Savyn shuffled his feet along the road for a while, afraid of falling again even though he was finding his stride and balance. By the slant of the warmth on his face he knew where the sun was, and he oriented himself toward it. When he drifted too far to one side, as he occasionally did, he could tell by the change in the texture beneath his feet and quickly righted himself, sometimes holding his hand out to feel the feathery tops of the tall grass.

  It wasn’t long before he questioned his decision to run. He’d never felt so isolated in his life, and there had been times when he’d known he’d had no one but himself to rely on in this harsh world. He was twenty-five years old, and yet except for his fanciful infatuation with Leyla, he could not recall ever being in love. That was not normal, he was quite sure. There were many pretty, unattached women in Childers, and several of them had made themselves all but available to him. For some reason they paled in his memory, as they had paled when they’d approached him. They did not have much appeal for him, and he could not understand why.

  For Savyn, sex was a subject of fantasy, not a reality. He had not lain with any of those women, not even the boldest among them. And yet in his dreams of Leyla, in his fantasies, he could well imagine every sensation, every joy, as if it were real, as if he had somehow known those pleasures in reality.

  He sometimes imagined himself in love with Lady Leyla, when he allowed his mind free rein. She was perfect, in his eyes—in his mind. What woman could compare to her? None, he was sure, but what good did that do him? Fantasies were all he was allowed. Fantasies should not be enough for any man.

  Frightened as he was, uncertain as he was, he did not once seriously think of turning back. He did not know how he would live, or even if he would live, but he was certain to the pit of his soul that he had to leave Leyla behind. For her sake and for his.

  BELA was certain Kitty would put up a fuss at Merin’s suggestion, but that did not happen. The enchanted sword remained oddly silent as Merin proposed that she be left here in the cavern as they made their escape. Of course, Bela had seen what Kitty could do, and for all she knew, the magical weapon was capable of making her way out of this cavern and down the moun
tain on her own, just as she had made her way from Clyn’s house to Bela’s bedchamber.

  But if that was the case, why hadn’t the sword appeared at Bela’s side years ago? Why had it been necessary for Clyn to find the weapon and carry it down the mountain before Bela heard the crystal voice which had become so familiar to her? Her fingers wrapped possessively around Kitty’s crystal grip.

  My power comes not just from the stone and metal which form the substance of me, but from the one who possesses me. I was impatient. Perhaps I should’ve waited, but as you can see from the story on the walls, it was not meant for me to wait.

  “You’re right. It’s best that we leave Kitty here,” Bela agreed with a shiver.

  She will find me, when the time comes. Until then, I will be content to wait. I will be patient.

  The sword yanked itself forcefully from Bela’s hand. Kitty spun away, she whipped up and around, her blade moving so fast a whirring sound filled the cavern and her steel and crystal became nothing more than a blur. Her grip glowed, and in response the crystal in the walls all around them shone brighter. The glow became so bright Bela had to close her eyes. Merin took Bela into his arms and held her close, shielding her as much as he could. Bela hid her face against his shoulder, glad for his presence and his protection, even if that protection was nothing more than his strong arms around her. If Kitty came near them, if she was truly unhappy at the prospect of being left behind, they could die here, cut to ribbons in an instant. There could be no defense against an angry Kitty.

  Bela had never before thought to be afraid of Kitty. Never. Were her instincts so wrong? She had always felt only good from the sword she so proudly called her own, she had never been frightened by what the sword could do.

  Perhaps her instincts were not wrong at all. Kitty did not come near. Bela didn’t fool herself into thinking loyalty or fondness had anything to do with that fact. The sword still needed her, and needed Merin, too. The weapon which was more than a weapon wanted her warrior.