by Glenda Larke
She stepped into his arms. ‘It seems so long ago that I came to take you to Tyr in chains. Gods, we have both been so lucky, Tem. I have regretted much—but never have I regretted knowing you.’
He bowed his head into her hair. ‘Save him, Sarana. Kardiastan needs him. He is our future. Both of them are.’
By the time they had reached the second wayhouse, it was close to midnight. Neither of them had spoken for several hours. Arrant didn’t need to feel Samia’s pain to know it existed, even though she must have been healing herself as they rode. No longer used to spending long days in the saddle, he was sore all over and his misery was exacerbated by any lack of contact with Tarran. Whenever he reached out to him there was no reply, not a whisper. His brother was gone as if he’d never existed as anything but a figment of his imagination.
In his place, terror swirled. And endless, unanswerable questions. He couldn’t understand how he could make a difference to the Ravage. Not even with Tarran in his mind.
When they saw the lamp on the gate of the wayhouse ahead of them, he said, with a relief that he felt all the way to his sandalled feet, ‘We’ll stay here for the rest of the night.’
Her reaction was unexpected. She halted her shleth and he heard her gasp. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but he felt her raw consternation. ‘Oh, sweet hells, you can’t feel him, can you?’
‘Who?’
‘Firgan! He’s there—in the wayhouse.’
They exchanged a look, even though there was little to see in the gloom. He should have thought of that. By travelling so far in one day, they had caught up with the man. ‘Vortexdamn him to Hades,’ he said. ‘We can’t just ride on. We have to change mounts. And I am so confoundedly tired I’m going to fall off the shleth any moment.’
‘If I were to dismount, I don’t think I could get back on again,’ she admitted. ‘But Arrant, this is Firgan. He mustn’t find out you are on this road without guards. If he knows you are here, he will kill you. Maybe not in the wayhouse, but what about in an ambush along the way tomorrow? We are at a disadvantage, too. You can’t feel him coming and I’m no warrior.’
‘He’s probably sound asleep right now. In which case he wouldn’t sense either of us. Not even if we rode down there and took a room for the night.’
‘True—but he’d know in the morning.’
He thought about that. ‘Would he? I mean, most Magor don’t bother to do a scan of the area around themselves on a continual basis. Why should they, unless they’re expecting attack? What if we stay in our rooms until after he has left…or if we leave earlier than he does? Would he ever know we were there?’
‘And then what? We’ll end up being together at the next wayhouse tomorrow night.’
‘Confound it, Sam, do you have to think of everything?’
‘I’m a woman,’ she said.
‘Another time I shall argue the logic of that, but not now. I am too tired. We are going to ride down to the wayhouse. We are going to take a room. One room. We will barricade ourselves in. And we’ll worry about the consequences tomorrow. Right now, you know what? I don’t care.’
‘I am quite sure that tomorrow I will think a pallet for the night is an awful reason to risk dying,’ she said, ‘but right now—I don’t care either. Let’s go.’
They continued on to the wayhouse and woke the gatekeeper to let them in, then roused the stableboy to take care of their mounts and the wayhousekeeper to give them a room. The latter eyed them sympathetically and promised them hot baths in the morning. Arrant told him who he was, and the man couldn’t quite hide a smirk when he asked for only one room. ‘Remember,’ he said sternly, ‘that the baths are segregated. This is a respectable house.’
The nightmares came in all their wretched vividness: he woke once thinking the skin was hanging from his face in bloodied strips. He lay on the pallet, shrunken with fear, bedcovers wet with sweat, still feeling the raking talons of Ravage beasts tearing the flesh of his cheeks, hearing their inhuman laughter…knowing that for Tarran such horror was reality.
His thoughts spiralled in tortured questioning, without finding answers. Mirageless soul, he’d once thought he hadn’t wanted to live in a world without Tarran; well, it looked as if he wouldn’t. They’d both be dead. And so, perhaps, would everyone else. The scope of the disaster was beyond imagining.
Eventually he drifted off to sleep again.
When he woke in the morning, it seemed far too soon. He raised himself up on one elbow. The night before, Samia had said—as she collapsed fully dressed on the pallet, ‘I have never ached so much in all my life.’ Now, when he looked across at her, she was still lying on top of the covers, with her head under the pillow.
He groaned as his own body registered its protest at being made to ride so long and hard, covering a normal two days’ ride in one. At least he was still alive. Firgan had not run a Magoroth sword through his insides during the course of the night. He had pushed his pallet platform against the door of the room before collapsing, and as far as he knew, no one had tried to enter.
He sat upright, wincing. ‘Sam,’ he hissed. ‘Wake up.’
She stirred, opened an eye—and moaned.
‘I need to know where Firgan is.’
There was a long silence. And then, ‘He’s gone. At least, he’s not in the building.’
‘Let’s hope he never sensed our presence. I’ll go and see what the wayhousekeeper says.’
‘Ask him about those hot baths.’
The news was good. Firgan had ridden off about an hour earlier—and the baths were ready. ‘He said he would bring our breakfast into the baths,’ Arrant told Samia. ‘I asked him if Firgan had spoken to him about us, and he said no. We may have been lucky…’
As he lay in the hot water a little later, watching a servant deposit a tray of still-warm bread and goat’s cheese for his breakfast, he felt deeply grateful that not only had the Tyranians brought the idea of baths and piped water to the wayhouses of Kardiastan, but that the Kardis had learned to value them. He began to feel the ache of over-used muscles subside.
When he returned to the room, Samia was already there, brushing her damp hair. ‘I feel human once more,’ she said. ‘So what do we do now? If we head off up the paveway, we’ll only meet Firgan again, at the next wayhouse.’
‘I have to go on,’ he said. ‘No matter what. I shall leave at midday, arrive late—and hope that he is asleep again. I can’t let my fear of that man stop me from getting to Tarran.’
‘Then we will leave together,’ she said. She sounded matter-of-fact. ‘Would you like me to do a bit of healing on those muscles of yours?’
He knew enough about healing to be aware that muscle aches were normally treated by applying healing hands close to the point of trouble—and where his muscles ached most were in his thighs and buttocks. ‘Er, no,’ he said.
‘I’m a healer, Arrant. I’ve seen everything there is to see.’
‘Not on me, you haven’t.’
‘Oh yes, I have,’ she said. ‘You just weren’t conscious.’
‘Samia, I don’t think it would be a good idea.’ He could feel the flush that started on his neck spread to his face.
She put her head to one side and regarded him with serious eyes. ‘Have you ever loved a woman, Arrant? Physically, I mean.’
He felt as if all the important bits of him were suddenly too large for his skin. His answer, a strangled no, didn’t sound as insouciant as he’d hoped.
She said, ‘Neither have I. Loved a man, I mean.’
‘Skies, you’ve only just turned eighteen. Loads of time yet.’ He knew he must sound ridiculously hearty, like an uncle trying to give advice to a favourite niece.
‘Well that’s just it, isn’t it? We might not have loads of time. We might not have any time at all.’
She was looking straight at him, and his heart wouldn’t stop thundering. He searched for the right words and ended up sounding as though he thought he’d been i
nsulted. ‘You want to bed me just to find out what it’s like in case you might get killed soon?’
She uttered an exasperated grunt through gritted teeth. ‘You are such a shlethhead. No, you dolt, I’m asking because I want to. In fact, right at this moment, with you standing there with your hair still wet, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than have you kiss me. If you want to.’
‘If you knew how much—’ He cleared his throat. ‘And it has nothing to do with maybe dying sometime this month.’
‘Then what in all of the wide blue skies are you waiting for?’
‘Um, I’m not sure. For me to decide whether I can believe my luck? For you to change your mind?’
She started laughing and took his hand. ‘Idiot. Are you so shleth-brained you don’t know how I feel about you?’
‘Ah—yes, I guess so. You’ll have to explain it. In detail.’
She raised her lips to his, and started her explanation without saying a word.
He might have known he would make an utter muck of things. He tried too hard, it all happened much too fast, and in the end his cabochon didn’t oblige at the crucial moment either. It sputtered like a guttering candle and gave off a few ineffectual sparks that were just plain silly and did nothing for either of them. Under all those circumstances, it was hardly any wonder that Samia’s cabochon remained entirely quiescent.
After it was all over, she separated herself from him, lay quietly for a moment and then asked in a puzzled fashion, without any suggestion of blame or criticism, ‘That can’t be all there is to it, can it?’
He said involuntarily, ‘Vortex, I hope not!’
They looked at each other, simultaneously started to giggle and then fell back into each other’s arms, their laughter full-throated and contagious.
A little later they tried again. This time, more relaxed, everything seemed to come right. And—for once—his cabochon did all the right things as well.
Afterwards, she nibbled at his earlobe. ‘Now that was more like it.’
‘Ah, Tarran,’ he thought, ‘you would approve of the way I feel…’
They held each other and talked, lovers’ nonsense to keep the world at bay for a little longer, and after a while, both fell asleep.
The next thing Arrant knew there was a knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’ Samia asked sleepily.
Whoever it was took that for an invitation, opened the door and stepped in. They both sat up, clutching desperately for the covers. Belatedly, Arrant grabbed for his sword as well. Sarana’s lessons in survival could never be quite forgotten, even in the most embarrassing of situations, even as he was cursing his stupidity for having forgotten to bar the door in the first place, and Samia was stuttering her awareness of the intruders.
‘P—Papa?’
‘Oh gods,’ Arrant moaned, ‘Mother.’
Sarana stared at them both from the doorway, Garis at her shoulder, and for once both of them were nonplussed. ‘I think,’ Sarana said at last, ‘we had better come back once they are dressed.’ As she turned to go, she added, still speaking to Garis, ‘You really do make a habit of this kind of thing, don’t you?’
‘It’s all your fault,’ Garis said as they left.
Samia and Arrant exchanged a glance as the door closed once more. ‘I think,’ Arrant said, ‘that the best part of today is definitely behind us.’
‘He’s always liked you, you know.’
‘I wonder if he still does?’ He stood up and began to search through the bedding for his clothes. ‘I know I’ve always liked him. I owe him more than I can say.’
She handed him his trousers. ‘Arrant, I’ll be very angry with you if you’re not still alive at the end of all this, you know. I want to know how this relationship of ours is going to develop.’
He grinned and kissed her. She kissed him back and the idea that she seemed to like it still managed to amaze him. He wished he could let her feel the way he felt through his cabochon, but even though she had sealed the crack again, it wasn’t being obliging.
‘It’s strange,’ she said as she dressed. ‘We could all be dead in a few days’ time, but Papa is worrying about the two of us. I felt his concern. He thinks you’re going to walk away, going to have to walk away from me because I’m only an Illuser. He thinks that I—that we’ll both be hurt if we go on.’
‘Samia, unless Tarran is with me, I’m not a Magoroth, not really. And if I’m not a Magoroth, I can’t be Mirager, and if I’m not Mirager, nobody’s really going to care who I…take to my pallet. Or who I love. Or marry. Quite apart from that, I’m going to make my own damn choice anyway. So if I ever walk away, it will be for our reasons—yours and mine—not other people’s.’
She smiled, trying to cover her sadness, knowing they were talking about a future that they would probably never have. ‘That’s good enough for me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A quarter of an hour later they met in the atrium. As was usual in that part of Kardiastan, the daylight hours were searingly hot; only the vines grown across the open space of the courtyard and the cool splash of the central fountain made the noonday temperature bearable. Hidden somewhere in the thick foliage a mellowbird called monotonously. ‘We could be back in Tyrans,’ Arrant thought. There was still not much about wayhouses in Kardiastan that was Kardi.
He felt an intense embarrassment. If there was one thing worse than your mother walking in on your first experience with a girl, it had to be to find her accompanied by the girl’s father. As he and Samia walked up to join them, he held her hand tightly. He had no idea what he was going to say.
His mother pre-empted him. ‘We owe you both an apology. We were worried, and the wayhousekeeper had just told us that Firgan had been here—we didn’t know what we would find when we opened that door.’
‘And that’s all the apology you two are going to get,’ Garis growled. ‘What on earth were you thinking of, racing off like that when we are in the middle of a crisis?’
‘Irrelevant, Garis, at the moment,’ Sarana said. She was using her quiet, firm voice of authority. Arrant knew it well; when she spoke like that, discussion tended to die an immediate death.
Garis threw up his hands, but he subsided.
‘I have already sent a messenger back to your father,’ Sarana continued, speaking to Arrant, ‘to tell him you are both fine. Now, have you managed to talk to Tarran?’
He shook his head. ‘He still doesn’t answer. He did warn me that he wouldn’t hear.’
‘Then you will ride on to the Barrens with me tomorrow. You still need to ask Tarran those questions. Garis can take Samia back to Tyr. I will mend your cabochon when needed.’
‘No,’ Samia said.
Sarana raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t used to being so baldly contradicted.
‘Arrant and I don’t want to be parted,’ Samia explained. ‘Not now. Not the way things are with the Ravage.’
Sarana tilted her head, considering. ‘Your problem, Garis,’ she said at last. ‘Your daughter. Good luck.’
‘Samia,’ Garis said, ‘you aren’t a warrior.’
‘No. I’m a healer. Now tell me I am not needed.’
Father and daughter glared at each other. Arrant thought of intervening, and then decided that Samia was quite capable of arguing her own future. In those two sentences, she had summed up the essence of her purpose. She was needed. And yes, it would be dangerous for her. Arrant knew that none of them could stop her. Or, in fact, should. Garis turned away, and the look on his face was one Arrant hoped never to see again. Intense fear, tearing grief, pride—strong emotions in a painful blend.
Sarana evidently felt his capitulation because she said, ‘Garis and I aren’t in any state to ride on today. We will wait for dawn tomorrow. Right now, I am going to take a bath and bless the Tyranian plumbing. Show me where the baths are, Arrant.’ She laid a hand on his arm and as she guided him away, she bent her head to say in his ear, ‘Father–daughter talk is in o
rder, I think, and we are unwanted.’ As he led her through the atrium to the baths, she added, ‘You made a good choice there, Arrant.’
He smiled faintly and said, ‘And she probably made a poor one.’
She wrenched him around to face her, suddenly fierce. ‘No, she didn’t. I am so proud of you. And so is your father. He’s as angry as a bee in a bottle, of course, over this mad trip of yours, but admiring nonetheless.’
‘It’s moondaft, even I know that. But I had to do it anyway. If I am going to die, then it’s going to be searching for the chance to win. As for Samia, well, I made her a promise that we’d be together, no matter what. I’m glad you came, though. I was worried that Firgan would stop us before we ever reached the Mirage. Mother, do you think we could try to reach the Three Wells Wayhouse tomorrow? Two days’ ride in one again? Even if it does mean catching up with Firgan.’
She sent him a speaking look, and rubbed her backside. ‘Well, I’m not worried about Firgan. My comfort, however, is another thing…’
Late in the evening of the next day, they rode—sore, tired and dusty—into the wayhouse, to find Firgan in the common hall. He wasn’t alone; he was drinking with a group of fifty or so Magor who were on their way back to Madrinya after their period of duty at Raker’s Camp on the Fifth Rake. Sarana eyed him with a wistful rapacity, wondering if she dared kill him without Temellin’s permission.
‘Just what we needed,’ Garis muttered under his breath. Aloud, he said heartily, ‘Why, Firgan, such a pleasant surprise. I would have thought you would have retired to your pallet by now. However, I am glad to see you have stayed up to welcome the Miragerin.’
Firgan’s face darkened. ‘She’s no—’ Under the threat of four pairs of eyes, all reflecting an intolerance of insult, he changed what he had been going to say and said smoothly, ‘Of course. Although I cannot imagine what you are all doing here, arriving so late, too. Are you all going to fight the Ravage? Even young Arrant here?’