Once A Hero

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Chapter 10:

  The Magick Of Love

  Late Summer

  Reign of the Red Tiger Year 1

  Five Centuries Ago

  My Thirty-fifth Year

  ***

  THE FIRST THINGS I saw were her eyes. Larissa met my stare openly, yet not defiantly nor haughtily. She appeared as surprised at our meeting as I was. In that first unguarded moment I saw something flash through her hazel eyes, a light I expected to be covered quickly by a superior disdain or a frightened withdrawal.

  The light blossomed in her large eyes to accompany the smile growing on her face. While her features were unmistakably and sharply Sylvan, from the pointed tips of ears jutting up from thick golden hair to her eyes, cheekbones, and jaw, the smile softened them. It made her more a vixen than a distant and cold sylvanesti. It would have been easy to read in her eyes and smile an invitation—an invitation I desperately wanted to see but knew she would not offer and one I could never presume to accept.

  My mind echoed with the words Aarundel spoke in Aurium concerning how I would know I had met my True Love. My heart pounded in my chest with the force of a giant's footfalls. My stomach did not so much clench as it felt as if Shijef had bitten half of it away. I wanted to speak, but words would not come to my mind, and breath stayed dead in my lungs. I wanted to turn away, to stop staring, but my muscles would not obey me. I could do nothing.

  Nothing but return her smile.

  She had stopped, Larissa had, a dozen feet in front of me. As tall as I am, she looked as lithe and slender as Marta, but she was to Marta as a woman is to a bare slip of a girl. While Marta had certainly been beautiful to look upon, there was something about Larissa that made me want to study her and memorize her. I wanted to possess her, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally and spiritually as well.

  This realization collided directly with all the instruction I had been given in Elven custom. It collided with my memories of the Eldsaga. Part of me wanted to dismiss this longing as nothing more than lust. Though the blue-grey homespun gown she wore was meant for riding and woods-walking, it nonetheless flattered her. Broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and flat stomach. Her hips curved into long tegs, and as the breeze molded the skirts to her legs, I could see by her muscles that she was no soft palace creature.

  Another part of me screamed that any thoughts, any wild fantasies I might construct around us, were sheer insanity. Though she appeared to be ten years my Junior in age, she had to be centuries older than I was. I could be of no more interest to her than a child is to me. The fact that I was her brother's friend meant she noticed me. To expect anything beyond that, to dare interpret any sign as something significant, would lead to my death and her disgrace.

  All the while these thoughts battled back and forth through my brain, my smile grew. I knew two things as absolute truths that I accepted as easily as I accepted the certainty of the dawn or of my bleeding when cut. The first was that I had met my vitamoresti and that I was doomed by our meeting. The second was that the only thing that could save me would be her turning away and rejecting me.

  If she did that, I knew I would go mad, but madness I could handle.

  Her smile grew in counterpart to mine, and I knew I was lost.

  Aarundel slapped me on the shoulder. "Despite his lack of elocution, Larissa, Neal is a very intelligent and entertaining man. And a warrior without human equal."

  "So I would expect of a warrior who succeeded in defeating death and wresting Divisator from Jammaq." She bowed her head respectfully, breaking eye contact for the first time. "I am honored to meet you, Custos Sylvanii."

  Her looking down released me from whatever spell had paralyzed my brain, body, and tongue—and I marked her strength at having been able to look away. "The honor is mine, Doma Larissa," I clipped my words off as I killed the urge to step forward to take her hand and raise it to my lips. I wanted to say something else, to compliment her, but our races stood so far apart that even the most innocent comment, offered lightly as a jest, could be taken as a mortal insult.

  While my restraint pleased me, it was made all that more difficult by the realization that Larissa had unconsciously freed her right hand from the basket she carried to permit me the common courtesy of kissing her hand. She shifted the half-filled basket from her left hand to right forearm and refused to look up at me. Instead she shifted her gaze to the side, then up and back to look at Aarundel.

  "Our kith and kin await you at Woodspire, my brother." She smiled at him and nodded toward Marta. "Go, the two of you. Take my horse so you both may ride. I will conduct Neal to the city."

  For all the caution Aarundel had shown in speaking to me of the consequences of contact with a sylvanesti, he abandoned his sister to me without a second thought, I could not blame him, for Marta's presence distracted him greatly. Moreover, he saw Larissa as his sister, making the mistake of placing her in a gender other than female. I had seen that problem with all manner of males, and I dearly wished Aarundel would not fall prey to it, because I was not certain I was worthy of the trust he was showing in me.

  As Aarundel and Marta mounted up and rode off down the road leading deeper into the woods of Cygestolia, I turned to watch them depart. "Your brother is very fortunate. He has a beautiful fiancee and a kind, considerate sister."

  "Considerate?" She laughed lightly, likewise turning to watch them ride away from us. "You draw conclusions from very little evidence, Custos Sylvanii."

  My eyes sharpened as I looked down. "I don't believe so, Lady Larissa. You spoke to your brother in Mantongue, even adopting words that are not derived from the Sylvan language, to send him off. You referred to your family home as Woodspire, when I know it is more properly rendered Conussilva. And you refer to me as Elfward, even though the title your brother conferred upon me has not been ratified by the Consilliarii."

  "You are easily as intelligent as my brother has reported." Again she laughed throatily. "And as intelligent as Finndali has often complained you are."

  "Not really intelligence, my Lady, just animal cunning." I smiled, not daring to face her. "If you wish, I will carry the basket for you on our walk."

  "That is a kind offer."

  She started to extend it toward me, but I shook my head. "It will be a pleasure to serve you, but I have been well warned about my conduct. Perhaps if you set the basket down and step away from it, I can save both of us difficulties."

  Larissa did as I requested, moving away from the basket with a fluid elegance that threatened to birth fantasies about the two of us moving together so effortlessly. I reached down, scooped the woven basket up by its wooden handle, and smiled. "I'll try not to touch any of the plants you have gathered lest I make them unclean."

  "Your grasp of our traditions is admirable."

  I laughed. "Some things were made admirably clear to me on the journey here."

  "Excellent." She paced beside me, easily matching her strides to mine. "Then you have a full understanding of why we, you and I, are doomed beyond any hope of redemption."

  Her statement, made so conversationally as to have been a remark about the sunny day, took my breath away. I stopped dead in my tracks and shook my head. I doubted that I had heard her words, deathly afraid that whatever she had actually said had been translated into what I had wanted to hear in my head. "I beg your pardon."

  She walked on past me, then looked back over her shoulder. "When were you born, Neal Roclawzi?"

  I blinked and started after her. "Thirty-five years ago."

  "The date, what was the day?"

  I shivered. "Midsummer's Eve, beneath the Triangle." At my birth all three moons had been full and arranged so the smallest stood midway between, and above, the other two. That omen, which occurred only once in every two and a half centuries, had been taken for ill or good depending upon which soothsayer had spoken last. Many, Aarundel included, had used it as a sign that I was marked for greatness, but I generally considered it a f
ell sign.

  Larissa nodded slightly, sunlight riding the waves in her golden hair. "We share that, then, though my nativity came two hundred and fifty years before your own."

  I arched an eyebrow at her back. "Is that why . . . ?"

  She shrugged and waited for me. "It could well be the reason we are doomed, but I doubt it is the reason we have been brought together." Larissa smiled carefully, thoughtfully, and clasped her hands together over her stomach. "What you felt, Neal, when you saw me was but an echo of what I felt when I saw you."

  "How? How is it possible?" I gestured wildly with my arms, spilling half the basket's contents. I squatted immediately and started to gather things up, and Larissa did the same. "I am a Man and you are sylvanesti! This cannot be."

  She shook her head. "Even the Eldsaga tells of unions between Elf and Man."

  "Rape and lust have nothing to do with love."

  "True, but if those can exist, why not love?" She caught me with her eyes again, and I could not muster a counter to her argument. "And if love can exist, why not the greatest of love, why not vitamor?"

  I broke away from her stare, then found myself watching her delicate, long-fingered hands plucking leaves and flowers from the road dust. I longed to reach out, to hold her hands in mine. Inside I found myself willing to die for that pleasure, but utterly unwilling to destroy her with my selfishness.

  And in that I found the proof that she was absolutely correct in her reasoning.

  "No, no, this cannot be happening." I stood, my fists clenched in frustration and disbelief. "You cannot feel anything for me. I am Man. I am Roclawzi!"

  "Why can you, a Roclawzi, feel something for me, and not the reverse?" Larissa rose as well, leaving the basket on the ground between us. "My people rode yours down. You should hate me."

  "You did not ride with them; you were not yet born at the time of the Eldsaga." I shook my head. "I have no reason to hate you."

  She smiled triumphantly. "If you have no reason to hate me, then I have no reason to hate you." She raked her hair back and across, away from her face. "In you I find the greatest love."

  Conflicting emotions raced back and forth through me. I felt the buoyant euphoria that comes with love, and part of me wanted to sweep her up in my arms regardless of the consequences. I realized I had begun to cycle through the same desire from which I had broken free moments before, so I ruthlessly overrode it. Even so, as when all the water is scooped from a muddy hole, bright and cheerful emotions slowly started filtering back into me. Before I filled again, I possessed a clarity of mind that I determined to employ immediately, before it was lost to me.

  "Lady Larissa," I began slowly as I bent to retrieve the basket, "you must see how impossible this is. Even if I allow that what I feel is not some residue of the remarkable journey I have taken, and even if I allow that you feel what I do, that we, together, feel what your brother and Marta feel for each other, our situation is hopeless."

  She nodded in agreement quite emotionlessly. "This I do see, Neal of the Roclaws. I also see I cannot deny what has passed between us."

  I shook my head. Somehow we both moved into the eye of the emotional storm surrounding us. As we walked through the forest toward Cygestolia, the world around us melted away. I found myself aware of nothing save her words, her face, the rustle of her gown as she walked along. Even as those things enchanted me, I stripped away all but the cold logic of our conversation, and I wrestled with it as if grappling with some abstraction of Dreel fury.

  "I want to know you, Larissa, learn about you. I want everything promised by your smile and the fire in your eyes. I want to know what makes you laugh and cry. I want to know how you can view this with such calm, and I want to know how your strength can keep me from going mad." I laughed briefly, forcing tension from me and into the sound. "I want the knowledge of you that I have of myself, and while the thought of succeeding in my quest to gain it pleases me, I dread that success."

  "Because of the consequences imposed by Sylvan law?"

  "No." I felt a chill run down my spine. "No, because I am afraid I would lose myself in you and our cultures would destroy us."

  Larissa reached out and caught the handle of the basket. "Then you know my fear. And you know my hopes."

  Though mere inches separated our hands, and our fingers could have touched without effort, almost by accident, neither one of us made that accident happen. I realized in that instant that what we were talking about was more than sexual. It was more than just lust or emotional hunger. Without knowing how I knew it, I recognized in Larissa another part of me. She was my complement. It felt as if the gods had torn us apart eons ago. They cast her into a sylvanesti body born beneath the Midsummer's Eve Triangle, and then, as an afterthought, they planted me in a Rociawzi body born under the same sign centuries later. Whether by malice to ensure our destruction, or by compassion, thinking we would never meet, they had kept us apart.

  And now, united by chance, yet other things conspired to keep us apart.

  The realization that I wanted more than mere physical union with her set aside carnal desires. I wanted all that she was, which meant that physical concerns amounted to only a small portion of what I meant to explore. Once I knew her emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, then the other would and could be important. Indulging sexual urges would have parted us once again, and I determined, at that moment, that nothing and no one would ever do that while I had breath in my lungs and blood in my veins.

  I glanced over at her and smiled. "I'm thinking we are in serious trouble."

  "More so than you know." She returned my smile, and my heart felt ready to burst. "Until this day I have been sleepwalking through my life. Now I am awake and alive."

  Nervous, giddy laughter exploded from me. "Exactly."

  Her smile shrank a bit into a satisfied smirk, then she bowed her head and extended her left hand forward. "It is my pleasure, Neal Roclawzi, to present to you the city of Cygestolia."

  I have no doubt, given the way my heart beat in my chest and my smile peaked up near my eyes, that anything she had shown me would have been magnificent. The Sylvan metropolis exceeded that by a league or three. As ugly and forbidding as was Jammaq, so did Cygestolia feel sacred enough to have been the womb of the world itself.

  The city stretched down and out through a wooded, serpentine valley. Flashing like a quicksilver ribbon, a crystalline stream bisected the valley north and south, yet pooled into an azure lake in the center. Islands studded the lake and provided enough ground to support huge, ancient trees. While I did see stones of all sizes, shapes, and hues throughout the landscape, none had been used as building material. They were decoration, and rare was the rock that was not home to moss or a flowering plant growing from a crevasse or recess.

  In the coastal jungles of Najinda I had seen villages built on stilts and others constructed high in the jungle bowers. Until I saw Cygestolia, I had thought of the Najindese as living in the trees. I immediately realized I had been far too generous in my thoughts, for the Najindese lived among the trees.

  The Elves lived in the trees and with the trees. A dark-green canopy covered entirely the city precincts on either wall of the valley. The canopy broke over the stream and around the lake, allowing for enough sunlight to strike the lake shore and promote some agriculture. The island-based trees all grew together to form a green mushroom structure over the center of the lake. Long branches on the central trees grew out like spokes from the island hub and joined with similar branches from the trees on the valley walls.

  From where I stood everything seemed normally proportioned; then I noticed people walking along the branches, passing high above the lake's mirror surface, from the island outward and vice versa. At that point I realized I had misjudged the whole city, for it was much larger and more titanic than I had first imagined. Whereas among the Najindese a tree would house a single family, the entire population of Aurium could have taken refuge in just one of the Cygestolian gi
ants.

  Larissa gestured toward the city casually, as if dismissing the vision, though I caught the way pride in it lifted her chin. "It may look a thicket to you, Neal, but it is simple to navigate. Trees, as you can see, are grouped in districts, as befits good growth, and are named after their most prominent feature. Conussilva, for example, is located in the Seven Pines district."

  "Pinusseptem. Aarundel told me." I smiled. "The city is gorgeous."

  I followed one branch as it led back into the trunk. Side branches provided a screen of foliage, but I saw where an Elf entered through a hole in the bark. Above and below that level I saw other openings and spied Elves moving through the trees like a line of ants. If each tree housed only a dozen Elves, there had to be hundreds of thousands of them, and that seemed all the more remarkable because they all gathered in this one spot instead of, as Men and the Reithrese had done, spreading out over the face of the world.

  Larissa tugged on the basket. "We should go on to Woodspire. Your arrival was not expected, but it was not unanticipated. We have lodging for you and even for the Dreel."

  I looked around to see if Shijef had been following us, but I did not see him. As I turned back to face the city, a half-dozen hooded Sylvan warriors slipped from the brush before us. Larissa did not seem concerned and did not release the basket, so I let it go. The Elves bore longbows and two had arrows nocked. One of the Elves stepped forward as the others spread out in a semicircle behind him. His face hidden by the hood, the leader said something in Elven, and I recognized it as a challenge from the tone, though the words meant nothing to me.

  Larissa laughed and let the basket swing innocently in her right hand as she approached the leader. "Who am I? I would have thought the answer to that question would be obvious to you."