Many townsfolk had gathered to stare at the distinctively clothed gypsies. He saw Keira and Aradma. Kaldor was most likely back at the Academy, assisting the instructors with the apprentice wizards.
Aradma immediately headed towards one of the brightly colored seelie. Rajamin wanted to hear this. He moved close, coming up slightly behind her but not interjecting himself. A ring of seelie gathered around the druid, and then one of the covered wagons opened.
A black-skinned seelie with silver hair emerged. He was like Tiberan had been—no colorful whorls touched his body. His eyes glowed yellow from sparkling flecks embedded in their ruby-red irises. The other seelie eyes, Rajamin noted for the first time, were all devoid of their normal light.
The man made brief eye contact with the ratling priest. In that moment, a powerful dread overtook the reverend, and his chest went into a spasm, leaving him unable to breathe for a second. It seemed as if the sky grew dark in his vision, and then all was normal once more.
This is the one, Rajamin thought. This is the one who will keep Aradma from her destiny!
“Lady Aradma,” the elven man said gaily. “It is good to see you again.”
“Have we met?”
“I am Athaym. We met briefly in Artalon, nine years ago.”
“You were the one who left,” she recalled. “You wanted to find your way on your own—some seelie went with you. You look different now.”
“We should have stayed with you,” Athaym confessed. “We shouldn’t have been so proud. You offered us balance, but we had to go off on our own.”
“What happened?” Aradma asked.
“Most of us achieved balance on our own,” he admitted. “But some…” he gestured to the colored seelie, with skins of blues, greens, purples, and reds, surrounding them. One of the women was lemon yellow. “They lost themselves to the Fae within. Now they are unseelie, ruled by the strongest of the Fae personalities, although sometimes others come forward.”
“That’s horrible!” Aradma gasped.
“I have made it my purpose to find them wherever I may and care for them so that they are not alone. Their elven minds are dead, but they are still living people.”
“That is… noble of you,” Aradma said softly.
What was wrong with her? She was usually so good at sensing people’s natures! Why could she not see the evil he brought?
He is of Yamosh.
Rajamin froze. He had never heard a god’s voice so distinctly in his mind. Yamosh moves in and around us. The Covenant is his. This man is his. Rajamin shuddered at the intensity of Athra’s voice. Do not let Yamosh block my entry into the world. Whatever spoke was gone, for again he heard the conversation around him.
“When the vampire contagion spread, the gypsies took us in,” Athaym was explaining. “The tea protected us.”
“Why didn’t we learn about this before?”
“They are a closed people,” Athaym sighed. “At first, they didn’t care what happened to the city folk. They have always been outcasts. I finally convinced them to share their knowledge, that the world would be so grateful they would never be persecuted again.”
“Indeed,” Aradma said thoughtfully. “We are grateful. You will be remembered. I’m sure we will see more of each other.”
He nodded and gave a slight bow as Aradma walked away. Rajamin hurried after her.
“Did you not see it?” he challenged her. “Did you not see him?”
Aradma looked down at the ratling. “No,” Aradma said. “And that worries me. I sense nothing from him. He has no music in his soul. Don’t worry, Reverend. I will watch him closely.”
Rajamin felt some relief. If she was already suspicious, then this destroyer was failing in his mission. Perhaps the gods’ fears had already been allayed when she accepted the mark of priesthood.
33 - Lovers’ Night
With gypsy music filling the nighttime countryside, and more importantly, the nights having become safe enough to enjoy music, excitement grew in anticipation of Lovers’ Night, the feast that ushered in the month of May.
Oriand was up early in the morning, as she always was. She missed the Vemnai cloister, but she knew she could never go back. She had been exiled for her zeal and the cost in troll blood her crusade against Kallanista had exacted. Couraime was now Matriarch, and she took a more gentle approach to the faith. She allowed women to love their husbands. Oriand had abandoned her extreme view, but even if Couraime were to pardon her and the sisters forgive her, Oriand still could not return.
The former Matriarch had not simply moderated her beliefs; she rejected them outright. The gods weren’t gods, and she doubted true gods existed at all. She didn’t know what to believe, for the gods seemed real enough. They had visible power in the world, and their servants acted to manifest their will. She was skeptical now of any claims to divine authority or knowledge, and she learned that the simple task of understanding the world around her required continual self-examination of her own biases and expectations. She was learning to really see, and distinguish what she saw from what she interpreted. She also learned to respect the opinions of those who continued to prove true over those of others. Kaldor and Aradma were two such people.
Suleima, understandably enough, had wanted little to do with her former Matriarch. Oriand had technically pardoned her lover, but Oriand’s people had killed him anyway… an honor killing for the crime of betraying his wife with Suleima and, even worse, the crime of knowing Suleima took pleasure in his physical touch.
She found Keira outside in Aradma’s garden, sleeping in the grass in wolven form. The furry woman was curled up with Ghost, who had also moved outside after Fernwalker had fallen asleep. Keira lifted her head and sniffed when Oriand approached. Her lupine eyes, unusually blue, glimmered in the dim light of dawn.
Keira shifted into her human form and stood, stretching. Her dress swayed in the breeze, pressing against her lithe body. For a brief moment, Oriand felt a great desire to touch and know that body. She turned her eyes away to the lightening morning sky. Like everyone else she had met—everyone save the paladin and sorceress still asleep in the house—she was sure Keira was typical, having eyes only for men.
“Good morning, Oriand!” Keira yawned.
“What are you doing here, Keira?” Oriand asked. “Shouldn’t you be in the city?”
“I don’t really have a home,” Keira said. “I can sleep outside in my wolven form. The fur keeps me warm enough. Besides, when I was young, Ghost and I went everywhere together.”
“Like with Fernwalker.”
“Yes.”
Oriand regarded the tiger for a moment. “Ghost and I are from the same land,” she remarked. A reminder of home.
Pots clanged angrily inside.
Oriand glanced through the window. Arda lit the stove and then came out the front door with a bucket. She glanced at Oriand.
“What’s wrong?” Keira asked.
“I’m going to make some damned tea,” Arda muttered. “Oh, good morning, Keira. Stay for breakfast. Aradma and Kaldor won’t be up for a bit but we’re awake.”
“Will Anuit join us?”
“Anuit doesn’t know what she wants,” Arda snapped. “Damned woman can’t make up her mind.”
She stalked outside the front garden gate to the nearby stream and dipped in the bucket, drawing up the cold mountain water.
As she stalked back in the house past them, she muttered, “Why the hell didn’t Attaris ever install pipes to bring water into his house?”
“What got her up on the wrong side of bed?” Keira wondered.
“Because the woman in bed with her keeps letting her demons talk her out of loving her.”
Anuit stormed out of the house. “If she doesn’t want me here, I’m going out for a bit. I won’t be back until later today. Tell her she can damned well eat alone.”
Anuit seemed to be picking up Arda’s colorful language, Oriand noticed. They were together. She just needed to accept
that. No wonder Arda was upset. They were starting to have lover’s quarrels without actually being lovers.
Anuit took the flying carpet and sailed off.
“I don’t understand,” Keira said.
“They’re in love.”
“Oh. Wait. You mean—? Eww.”
Well, there went that idea.
* * *
Anuit sat at the edge of one of the wooden piers in Lakeburrough, legs dangling over the side. The sun warmed her back, but the air remained crisp and cool. Winter was long gone, but its remnants still glittered at the borders of the duchy on the ice-laden caps of the mountain ring that surrounded it.
Anuit looked up at the sound of footsteps clattering over the wooden planks. Oriand sat down beside her.
“Hello, Oriand,” Anuit said. Her heart went out to the troll woman. Her entire people had been seduced by a goddess’s lies, and she had lost everything for it.
“By what fate do you think,” Oriand asked, “that, of all the places in Ahmbren, I find myself finally at the home of Aradma?”
Anuit had no answer for that.
“I once swore I would kill her,” Oriand said. “I hated her, and I hated the Archdragons. I knew what she was. I burned in anger for four years, losing myself to hate. I had no plan, and life became pure survival. Circumstance brought me to Surafel. By the time Kaldor had found me, I was too tired to go on hating. I don’t know how I knew who he was—I think the goddess whispered it to me. My hate returned, and I made it my purpose to kill him, if I couldn’t find Aradma.”
“What stopped you?”
“I don’t know. He came to me and showed me compassion. He seemed to guess my intent and asked me for the chance to prove my goddess wrong.”
Anuit remained silent.
“And he did,” Oriand acknowledged. “He found Athra’s Jewel. But I don’t think I found peace until I met Aradma again.” There was a tremor of emotion in Oriand’s voice when she mentioned the seelie’s name.
Anuit regarded the woman. “Do you love Aradma?”
Oriand smiled sadly. “I never stopped loving her, even when I hated her. But we don’t always get to be with the ones we love.”
“That’s a very sad thing to say,” Anuit remarked softly.
“That’s why I’m glad I found you here,” Oriand replied. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“Are you in love with Arda?”
Now it was Anuit’s turn to become a little choked up. “Yes,” she said. “By all the gods, yes.” She sniffled. “It’s not that simple, though.”
“Isn’t it?” Oriand asked. “Kaldor told me of your struggle. You told him back in Surafel you were worried that your love for her was demonic because it was unnatural. It took me a long time to understand what Aradma was trying to teach me back in Vemnai. I was trapped by my own mind, and I couldn’t hear her. I lived for all my life in the belief that women were meant for each other. We held all desire for men to be evil, and I never understood the depth of attraction my sisters felt for their husbands—because, I am like you. I love women. But that’s not the natural way for most of us.
“Aradma tried to tell me once that just because something is unusual doesn’t make it unnatural. It was unnatural for me—for our religion, and the line of Matriarchs before me—to force women to be with women. But it would also be unnatural for either of us to give ourselves to a man. It would be the same crime against ourselves.
“But we bear a burden. I cannot help how I was born and neither can you. This is what fate has given us. Dwarven society would exile us outright, or force us to live against our natures—in some ways, no different from the Vemnai in the end. I’ve learned in my exile that most people are uncomfortable with those such as us, even when it is not expressly forbidden. Even in the most accepting of societies, however, finding love will always be difficult for those like us. We face the burden that most of the people we fall in love with won’t even be aware of our feelings. They will take our friendship, and then their hearts will swoon over some fool of a man. They won’t know the silent suffering in our hearts, as time and again we fall to love that cannot be returned.
“When we are lucky, we find one like us. But, just as not every man loves every woman, and not every woman every man, when you find a woman whose body craves a woman’s touch, you may find you don’t love her. We have to find someone whose nature is like ours, and even then we still may not fall in love.
“Attraction for each other is the drive for life. It cannot be denied, or contained, for this is nature. Aradma tried to tell me this, and now I understand it. The full force of this attraction, this natural desire, lives within you and me, but it drives us differently. Natural—for we were born this way—but exceptional.”
Anuit listened intently. Oriand’s words held a confidence she had not yet seen in this woman. She felt nothing but joy in the troll’s presence at that moment. The demons in her squirmed uncomfortably at the joy, and somehow Anuit knew this meant Oriand’s words were some of the truest she had ever heard spoken.
A smile conquered her face. "Yes," she agreed. "We are exceptional!"
“There’s more,” Oriand continued. “You found Arda. She may have had men as lovers in the past, but her attraction moves towards women as well. For her, having a lover and being in love are different. She is a paladin. She does not give away her love lightly, and when she loves, she loves powerfully, with all her being. I have seen it in her eyes and in the way she talks. She is a paladin, and you are a sorceress, and yet she did not look on you with revulsion in Valkrage’s Vault when the demon came out of you. I only saw compassion in her eyes. She has given her heart to you, Anuit, but she won’t wait forever. Don’t miss this chance for love! Don’t let your demons ruin you the way my goddess did me! Don’t live in fear! Go to her. Find her now, and be with her.”
* * *
Arda watched the dancing around the Lovers’ Night bonfire. Windbowlians of all races twirled together, with musicians playing bodhran drums, fiddles, whistles, flutes, mandolins, and other traditional folk instruments. The human gypsies joined in the music and dance, accompanied by their colorful Fae-possessed unseelie. Aradma and Kaldor held each other at the edge of the dance, swaying to the music while they ignored everyone else around them.
Before the music had started, the queen had announced that she had joined Kaldor and Aradma in marriage. Cheering then erupted and music started, and now they had been dancing, feasting, and drinking for two hours. It didn’t look like it would let up anytime soon, which was appropriate for Lovers’ Night.
It’s been so long since we’ve celebrated like this, Arda thought.
People made an effort to cut in to the married couple’s dance. Suleima had learned Windbowl’s folk dances in the nine years she had lived there, and she was the first to break in, stealing Kaldor away from Aradma. Attaris was the first to dance with Aradma, and Arda was glad to see their friendship continued.
Attaris sat down beside her after the next man took his place. He had a large mug of beer in his hand and handed her a second mug with a frothy head. “Somehow, I don’t feel like dancing anymore,” he said.
“Nor do I,” Arda agreed. She wanted to dance, but the one she wanted to dance with wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen Anuit since the sorceress had stormed out before breakfast.
“Why not?” Attaris said. “There are plenty of young men out there who would love to dance with you.” Then he thought about it. “Well, let’s not discriminate. Old men, too.”
He looked up from his mug for a moment, beer froth popping on his mustache. “You really do seem glum,” he remarked. “Why don’t you go find a young man and teach him a thing or two? It’s Lovers’ Night, for Modhrin’s sake. You’re no stranger to the bedroom.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “I’m in love with someone,” she finally said.
He sputtered. “Arda! How could you not tell me thi
s before? We’ve been friends since you were a wee lass. I know your values aren’t dwarven in such matters, but sleeping with someone is one thing. Being in love is another. I’ve never known you to fall in love before.”
“Attaris, dear friend,” she said. “There are things about me you don’t know.”
“Hmph.” He took another drink of beer. “Do I know him?”
“Not well, but yes.”
“Well, who is he? Is he here in Windbowl, or do you moon here because he is far away?”
“She is here, but she seems so far away,” Arda replied calmly. She sighed. There it was. She had told him.
There was a long period of silence.
“She,” Attaris finally said.
“Yes.”
Another long period of silence.
“That one time in Galadheim,” Attaris recalled.
“Yes.”
“You stayed so long because of the farmer’s daughter, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “I always suspected, and I know why you didn’t tell me,” he said. “I don’t like it, but I’ve never had a truer friend than you. I knew when I left the kelds that I would see strange and foreign ways. Human ways are not our ways, but I daresay, this is odd even in human realms.”
“It is,” Arda agreed. “But I love her.”
He sighed again. “I lost my Hylda,” he said. “You shouldn’t deny your heart when you have a chance to be with someone. Well, then, why don’t you find her?”
“I don’t know where she is,” Arda replied. “She left this morning because I was angry with her.”
“Why?”
“Because I keep waiting for her to figure herself out.”
“Well, why isn’t she here?” Attaris complained.
“Because I’m a fool,” Anuit said, stepping out from the shadows behind them. She was wearing one of the red gypsy outfits they had been selling in Wine Village. The skirt was loose and flowing but slit high to the hips on either side. Her belly was exposed, and the red top wrapped around her breasts and under her arms, but kept her shoulders bare. The night air may have been chill, but the bonfire heat drove it away.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 76
