At which, right on cue, Zam appeared at the cleft foot, cast one unnecessary glance about, nodded to Karyx, and stood waiting for us, looking quite unapproachable, and I knew, in a perfect agony of self-consciousness.
The Sathellin paused a moment in their work. Karyx’s men watched. My mother, staring avidly, said, “So that’s him.”
I said, “Mama, this is Zam. Zam, this is my mother,” and stood back.
She said with relish, “I’ve heard so much about you,” and stared harder. At which, to my disgust, Zam turned peony-red, muttered something about “welcome” and incontinently fled.
“The poor thing’s shy!” she exclaimed, staring after him, at which my own manners went by the board.
“Shy? Poor? He’s as poor as a thillian-mine lord and as shy as a brass door-plate, and what’s more, he’s an absolute toad!”
“You mouse!” I shouted when I ran him to ground at the very top of the northern pocket wall. “Why did you do that?”
“You didn’t hear what she was thinking!” He was in total rout. “She reckons I’m a well set-up young man and just about the right height for you, she doesn’t see what all the fuss is about, I look quite normal and she thought at the least I’d have fangs or a sinister laugh, she can’t understand what we’ll live on except grubs and lizards but she supposes you’ll manage and she hopes I’ve learnt to handle your temper, but what a good thing that Kastir was disposed of, she really doesn’t think she could have coped with bigamy—”
“Oh, Four above!” I felt myself crimson from brow to nape. “I’ll kill her—I’ll murder her—” and I in turn incontinently fled.
She was quite unrepentant. She was, indeed, amused. “How was I to know he could read thoughts, dear? Quite a good idea, really, I won’t have to talk. When is he coming down again? I really should like to see a little more of him, you know.”
“He’s not coming down and you won’t go up and you won’t see any more of him because if you do I’ll never be able to look him in the face again! And I know very well why you want to see a little more of him, and let me tell you, it is not going to happen—I’ve just got shut of one husband and I wouldn’t saddle myself with another if it was Beryx himself with Assharral thrown in !”
It all led to my spending most of my time in the camp, even sleeping there, since Zam’s sense of propriety and my awareness that it would seem a setback to my mother’s nefarious schemes led to my removal that same night. “I can cook,” he silenced my objections. “And I won’t have debauchery added to my list of crimes. And”—he shuddered—“if you don’t go down there, your mother will come up.”
Even to myself I would not admit how I missed that little pocket of grass among the towers, Hethria spread below me, the small comforts of what had grown to feel like home, everything to hand, in its proper place. I told myself he was probably glad to be rid of me, that I was glad to be with my family, that I belonged down here. Then Karyx came to visit me, not to yarn round the fire and fill in everyone else’s side of the campaign, but as an envoy, calling on solemn matters of state.
“Princess Sellithar,” he said, squatted on his heels, most oddly for a soldier, in the desert way, “we’ve a mind to break camp tomorrow. Can’t eat up all the grass, and the road’s open to the west. And in a week or so Everran’ll be safe for us. The—er—he says we’ll have plenty of backing there. So I’ve come to ask, will you come with us?” He paused, and took a breath. “To Everran? And to take the throne?”
It had come. I had foreseen it, and tried not to see. I should have been proud, glad, joyfully triumphant. But I was not.
“Karyx,” I heard myself say, very far away, “I must think about it. Will tomorrow morning be soon enough to let you know?”
He nodded. Then with a quick bright glance from the corners of his hazel eyes he added softly, “That’s all right, Sellithar. Take all the time you want.”
* * * * * *
I took Fenglis, and went out into the desert, ostensibly to hunt. I farewelled her, for the last time, with a last lick of salt. Then I looked over my own horse and checked the gear so long neglected, thinking how odd it would be to ride with stirrups again. Then I watched a storm trundle by to the north. Then I said, “Oh, fire and water!” and started up the cleft.
By the well I stopped, suddenly feeling an interloper as I had not since the very first time. Then, uncertainly, I called, Zam?
I caught a glimpse of blue robe against the mint. Starting to climb, I thought miserably, It was my fireplace once.
Zam was perched on his heels, watching the kettle come to the steam. He glanced up, and after three days’ absence I thought in shock, His eyes really are beautiful. How will I live without seeing someone whose eyes move like that?
I sat down in my old place. He went on watching the kettle with all his former impassivity.
Rather desperately, I remarked, “The morrethans didn’t flower again.”
“They’re annuals. They only do it once a year.”
“Oh.”
The kettle steamed. He made the tea, his hands quick and deft as they had once been among the morrethans. He doesn’t need me, I thought in unbearable sadness, for anything at all.
“I miss you swearing at me,” he said, eyes on the cups.
“Oh.”
Silence. Driven to it, I blurted, “You know why I came?”
He did not look up. “Karyx wants to break camp.”
“And you know the rest?”
Now he was absolutely expressionless. “Yes.”
I took a sip of tea. “What should I do, do you think?”
At that he looked up, and I could find nothing in his eyes but the aedric motion, still less in his face. It was an illusion. All we had done together might never have been.
“It’s Everran,” he said, “isn’t it? You said once, It belongs to me. And you always wanted it back.”
My lips said, “Yes.” My heart said, No.
He considered his cup. “It’s your home. And your family will be there. And Everran will be—counting on you.”
You’re supposed to say, They can do without you! yelled my heart.
“I’m glad,” he said, “that this at least came out of ‘Project Hethria.’ It’s some sort of recompense for—what you did.” He glanced up fleetingly. “If you did do most of it yourself.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again and then I tried to stop my thoughts as the truth burst out in them at last. How do I say, Everran now means nothing to me?
And my heart answered, inexorably, finally. It’s Hethria I belong to. It’s in Hethria I want to stay.
But how could I tell Zam that?
I twitched my eyes away and tried to empty my mind as well. In the tail of an eye I caught his even-briefer upward glance.
“No one’s likely to beat my head in now. I’ll even have time to cook.”
A cold hand gripped my heart. Whatever I felt, he did not merely think I ought to go. He did not want me to stay.
“You said,” I heard myself answer, “that you’d take me back.”
It was paltry, ignoble, a vain postponement of the inevitable, and I could not help myself. He looked embarrassed.
“Yes, I—but Karyx is there. And your brothers. You’ll be quite safe. And—there’s still a lot to do.”
The cold hand clenched. “Yes,” I said. “There must still be a lot to do.”
Silence. There must not be silence, he would hear me think. “But are you sure,” I demanded, “that this is right?”
“Mm?”
“That I should be queen? I have such a temper, and I make so many mistakes, and the Confederacy—the Estarian migrants—I might get Everran in such trouble—”
He pondered, giving the question its true weight. “I think it will be all right. Everran wants you. And you belong to it.”
I don’t, I don’t! yelled my heart.
“You k
now the—the mechanics of the thing. And”—it came with effort—“you don’t make mistakes—very often. But if there is trouble, you can always call on me.”
I could not resent the patronage, if it was patronage.
“Yes. Thank you.” I must not think, I must keep some rags of pride, not let him know. . . . I said in a hurry, “Will you come down to say good-bye?”
He hesitated. I said, “I’ll keep my mother away.”
Looking relieved, he gave a quick nod.
Now, the dynamics of the scene dictated, it was time to go. I looked about, at the cave, my bough-shed, the fireplace, worn into harmony now with the morrethans’ valiant straggle on Fengthira’s grave, the copper-red towers, the great breadth of Hethria sprawled out below. Sunset had just begun, and suddenly I could not cope with the thought that I would never see it again.
“Zam,” I stumbled over the words, “could you—would you—may I ask a favor?” He nodded instantly. “Can I stay up here till it’s dark—alone? I know it’s your place and I don’t belong here, but—I’d like to see the sunset, one more time. And—and Fengthira—say good-bye.”
There was a shadow in his eyes, darkening their gray; they had stilled, for an instant he might have been in pain. But he rose at once. And then paused.
Then he said abruptly, “It might be better if we say good-bye now. Down there tomorrow—it will be chaos, big camp-strikes always are.”
The cold hand’s sudden constriction was too tight to bear. You must bear it, I told myself. You must.
I stiffened my back, gritted my teeth and faced him, saying, amazed at my voice’s composure, “Yes. That’s a good idea. Well . . . good-bye.”
He was watching me, the attentive, penetrating look of the first night we met, and in sudden panic I shut off my thoughts. His face revealed nothing. He said, “Good-bye, then. And . . . thank you, Sellithar.”
“It was nothing.” Suddenly I wanted to scream, to explode. We could not, we could not be saying good-bye with such a meaningless exchange of platitudes, we could not! I turned away, saying rather wildly, “I won’t be long.”
“Stay as long as you like.”
If only you meant that, said a rogue thought, before I stamped it to death.
“I’ll be down by the well,” he said. Staring at the rock wall I answered, “It’s very good of you.” He said in turn, “It’s nothing.” And I heard him walk away.
Three steps, four, the crunch and rustle and familiar rhythm of his stride in the grass. Don’t think anything, I screamed at myself. Just don’t think!
Five steps, six. A sudden halt. Two, four, five steps, louder, closer, and he said in a harsh, strangled voice I hardly recognized, “Sellithar?”
I turned round. He grabbed my belt with one hand and a fistful of nape hair in the other and began kissing me, wildly, violently, half the kisses gone astray from inexperience’s clumsiness, all of them painful, and I would not have changed them for the touch of the most polished, most accomplished, most elegant lover on earth.
He stopped at last, and stared at me wildly, quite distraught. “Oh, Zam,” I cried, half in laughter, half in tears of relief. “You lovely idiot, not like that!”
The stare cried for him, Not like what?
“Listen.” I disengaged his fingers from my belt buckle. “Put your arms round me.” Obediently he slid both arms round my waist. I tilted his head sideways with a hand on either cheek. “Like this, unless you want to bang your nose. Now. . . .” And then there was no more call for tuition. The flame was between us, the one and only, unmistakable flame.
When the time came to pause I leant back in his arms, thinking openly now. If you’d only said something, you cursed rockface, instead of letting me go on—
Instantly, stumblingly, he began to explain.
“I always get the words wrong—say the wrong thing to you—make you boil over—and when I try to explain I make it worse—you thought so much of Everran—you said, Thank you, when I offered to take you back, I thought—you told your mother you didn’t want any more husbands—and I knew you should go, it was the right thing—I never meant to kiss you but you wouldn’t say anything—so I thought I should say good-bye—get it over—but when it came to going I couldn’t bear it, I know I have no right to—I shouldn’t—but I—I think I must love you, Sellithar.”
My amusement, my very joy vanished in a pang of the deepest remorse. In all our time together we had fought for the vantage as everyone does in every relationship from marriage to war, fought for it bitterly. I had fought to the very end, when it was something I did not want. I had made him admit his feelings, still withholding mine, I had even demanded that the surrender be in words. And without the slightest hesitation he had delivered himself up to me, unarmored, unarmed.
I leant forward against him, my cheek in the hollow of his collarbone, smelling sweat and warmth and desert cloth washed without soap, hearing the wildly agitated thump of his heart. “I don’t have to think,” I said into it. “I do love you, Zam.” And I put both arms around him and pulled him tight.
He gasped as if he had been hit. His back arched and he strained me against him and there was no mistaking the rest of the response.
As he went fiery crimson and pulled back, stuttering, I could not help a smile. “It’s nice,” I said, “to be sure you’re wanted—at last.”
“Wanted!” He choked on a laugh. “I must have wanted you since—since—I think about you all day, I dream about you at night. You even get into Ruanbrarx. I forget where I am, I keep bungling things, I can’t concentrate. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. If I do I wake up wanting you and—oh, ’Thar, it hurts.”
He said it like a child who does not understand what is happening to him, looking at me in bewilderment and despair, so my heart turned over in pity that cut almost deeper than love.
“Enough,” I said. “It’s enough, love.” I tugged the robe over his head. He disentangled his arms, I threw it on the grass and pulled him forward by the belt, and, as his fingers, trembling now, began to struggle with my habit buttons, I said, “It’s over. You needn’t hurt any more.”
We were in an almighty tangle before we finished. I remember the sunset, coming fast, dyeing his skin that was white as milk to the color of liquid gold, catching the uncertainty in his eyes, and as I pulled him down on the robe I was thinking, It’s a good thing one of us has been married before. . . . He gave a snort of shocked, startled laughter and buried his face in my breast. “You think the most damnable things, ’Thar. Very well, then. I love you, and I want you. And I’m ignorant. Show me what to do.”
* * * * * *
It was not dawn, or sunrise, it was full, broad morning when I woke, roused by the light and still more effectively by the heat. I was lying on Zam’s robe amid a garland of discarded clothes on the grass below Fengthira’s grave. My head was on one of Zam’s arms. The other was clipped closely over my waist, and I was curled into the curve of his body as snugly as a hand into a glove. His breath, still slow and regular in the rhythms of sleep, stirred softly in the back of my hair.
For a little while I lay there, to bask in the comfort and closeness of our touch, savor the quiet joy of haven attained at last, of belonging somewhere and being in that place. Then the heat roused me to the small but important fact of where and how I was lying.
As my breath caught I heard Zam’s breathing change too, and knew he was awake. His arm tightened a little. He said in drowsy mindspeech,
Not bothering with any sort of words, I simply projected the image of us lying stark naked where anyone could see us, and probably would with the chances that someone would come in search of me, out on the open grass, in the clear light of day.
My back transmitted the tremor of his silent laugh.
I c
ould not repress a giggle at this calm assumption that all was now well. That woke him fully. We both moved, he rolling on his back while I leant up with an elbow either side his ribs and my chin on my hands. He regarded me contentedly through half-closed lids, and I made a discovery. I’ve never seen you really smile with your eyes before.
I pummeled him with my chin, the only weapon in range. He still smiled, faintly, unconsciously. Then his eyes assumed a purpose. As if a wind had stirred it, my hair rose and drifted out and hung like a nimbus around my head.
You may not be a sorcerer, but you certainly are debauched. Whatever would Fengthira think of this?
My hair collapsed as he chuckled aloud.
The saeveryrs churred, down by the well. Briefly I pondered debauchery, the heat, a move to the shade, and opted for sleep instead. But I had transmitted the thoughts. As my head sank on his chest I felt Zam gather himself together, preparing to move.
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