Mouse and Dragon

by Sharon

  Daav winced at the sound of claws piercing silk. “Perhaps the news has not yet reached you. The clan’s fortunes are by no means assured. I may need to wear that cloak for some while.”

  Relchin continued to knead.

  Chapter Two

  IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The Learning Module utilizes intense, direct-brain stimulation to impart preprogrammed information. Direct-brain stimulation is painful, even dangerous, to some individuals. Always run a compatibility test before logging into a full Learning session.

  In no case should a Learner undertake more than one six-hour session of moderate intensity within one twenty-eight-hour period. Cerebral vesication may result from overuse of a Learning Module.

  —From the manual for Learning Module No. X5783

  When Aelliana woke again, she was alone. Content within the comforting embrace of the blankets, she lay, considering the sense of absolute wellness that infused her. She could scarcely recall a time when she had not been frightened upon waking, heart pounding and mouth dry before ever she opened her eyes. When her grandmother was delm, perhaps then she had woken knowing herself well—but failing to understand what a gift that knowledge was.

  She stretched, luxuriating in the sweet working of limb and muscle. Truly, she was well, strong, and whole. Now, it lay with her to remain so.

  Another stretch, and a lazy smile. Surely, she had her whole life to plan, but first—she wanted a shower.

  Tossing the blankets aside, she slipped out of bed, finding a rug, warm beneath bare feet. She never dared to sleep naked at home, not when Ran Eld might come into her room at any hour. Not quite incurious, she glanced down at herself. Her skin was smooth and golden, free, as the Healer had promised, of any bruise or contusion, but—she frowned slightly at prominent ribs and hip bones. Was she truly so thin? No wonder Scouts felt compelled to feed her!

  She smiled at that, and glanced about her. The room was furnished in pinks, yellows, and blues. Light washed in through tall, open windows, which also admitted a small, sweet-smelling breeze. This, Aelliana thought, must be what it was like to stand inside a flower.

  Her bed sat next to the wall, a low table at its foot. Thrown over the table, as if she had negligently dropped it there just before retiring, was a leaf-green robe. Aelliana stepped forward and picked it up, sighing in pleasure as it silked over her skin. She owned nothing so fine; surely it had been provided by the kindness of the Healers, and she was glad of it. Later, after her shower, she would try to find what had happened to her own clothes.

  Her own clothes, what remained of them, lay next to a box atop the new-made bed when she emerged from the ‘fresher. It was plain that the House had attempted to do its duty to the guest, and no blame to the Healers if her orange shirt—already frail—had come apart in the washer. Or, she thought, raising what was left of that venerable garment and frowning at the pattern of tears, perhaps it had not been the wash, but its treatment beforehand that had destroyed it. Her overlarge trousers were scarcely in better shape, stained and ragged as they were. Even her bold blue jacket showed the worse for its recent adventures, though she ought, Aelliana thought, to be able to wear it out into the street.

  Her boots, sitting neatly on the floor next to the bed, gleamed, entirely without blemish.

  Aelliana laughed. “Only see the pilot, clad in boots and jacket, desiring the House to call a cab!”

  Abruptly, her laughter stopped, and she turned away from the bed, to the window. Below her stretched a pleasant prospect: rows of flowers tumbling in the breeze, birds darting among the shrubberies, and the play of a fountain, somewhere out of sight.

  That cab …

  “Where, precisely,” she asked herself, staring down into the gentle riot of color, “will you go?”

  Certainly, not to Mizel’s clanhouse. Her clan had failed to protect her for the last time. It was the pilot’s duty to protect her ship—a duty she could not carry out if she were injured or captive.

  So, then, she thought decisively, she would go to her ship, which would protect her as much as she protected it. As it was urgently necessary to put herself beyond the reach of her nadelm, and therefore, the clan, she would need to lift—

  “Immediately,” she whispered, distress nibbling at her peace.

  To leave Liad immediately—that had not been the plan. The plan had given her a full Standard Year to prepare. She was ignorant of Outworld customs, had scarcely begun her study of Terran. Despite her first class card, she had the most glancing acquaintance with the protocols of her own ship. Such deficiencies might easily kill her.

  And, to leave immediately, with Daav in ignorance, and her comrades in danger of Ran Eld’s despite—that she would not do.

  She bit her lip.

  Now that Ran Eld knew she owned a ship, he would not rest until he had wrested it from her. She had already refused once to sign it over to him, which had been the cause of their coming to blows.

  “He will steal nothing else from me!” she told the garden fiercely—and gasped, raising her hands.

  The antique silver puzzle ring that was her death-gift from her grandmother was still on her finger. But the other—her gift from Jon dea’Cort, the Jump pilot’s ring that had for generations been in the care of a binjali pilot—

  Aelliana spun back to the bed. She shook her tattered clothing; turning out every pocket. She found a cantra piece in an outside jacket pocket, and the precious piloting license tucked into an inner. But of the ring, there was no sign. Snatching the lid off the box—she froze, assaulted by the scent of leather, and stared down at the jacket folded neatly within.

  A Jump pilot’s jacket, its supple black finish as yet unmarred by such small adventures as might befall a pilot on a strange port.

  It looked as if it might fit her.

  Hands shaking, she set it aside, for there were other things in the box: a plain white shirt; a high-necked black sweater; a pair of tough trousers in dark blue, and another, in dusky green; underthings—everything, to look at it, near or at her size. She put it all aside, lifted the pretty paper lining the bottom of the box—but Jon’s ring was not there.

  Ran Eld! she thought. It had caught his eye, and easy enough to have it off her hand, once she was unconscious.

  “He will not have it!” she snapped, and turned back to the window.

  Overlooking the flowers, she tried to make a plan.

  It seemed she would be returning to Mizel’s clanhouse again, after all.

  *

  The doorkeeper showed him to a private parlor, served him wine and left him alone, murmuring that the Master would be with him soon.

  The wine was sweet and sat ill on a stomach roiled with fear. He put it aside after a single sip and paced the length of the room, unable to sit decently and await his host.

  Behind him, the door opened, and he spun, too quickly. Master Healer Kestra paused on the threshold and showed her hands, palms up and empty, eyebrows lifted ironically.

  Ignoring irony, Daav bowed greeting, counting time as he had not done since he was a halfling, throttling pilot speed down to normality, though his nerves screamed for haste.

  The Healer returned his bow with an inclination of her head and walked over to the clustered chairs. She arranged herself comfortably in one and looked up at him, face neutral.

  “Well, Korval.”

  He drifted a few paces forward. “Truly, Master Kestra?”

  She waved impatiently at the chair opposite her. “I will not be stalked, sir! Sit, sit! And be still, for love of the gods! You’re loud enough to give an old woman a headache—and to no purpose. She’s fine.”

  His knees gave way and, perforce, he sat. “Fine.”

  “Oh, a little burn—nothing worrisome, I assure you! For the most part, the Learner never touched her. She knew her danger quickly and crafted her protection well. She created herself an obsession: an entire star system, which required her constant and total concentration—I should say, calculation!—to remain vi
able.”

  She smiled, fondly, so it seemed to Daav. “Brilliant! The Learning Module will not disturb rational cognition.”

  She moved her shoulders. “Tom Sen and I removed the obsession, and placed the sleep upon her. We did not consider, under the circumstances, that it was wise to entirely erase painful memory, though we did put—say, we caused those memories to feel distant to her. Thus she remains wary, yet unimpeded by immediate fear.” Another ripple of her shoulders. “For the rest, she passed a few moments in the ‘doc for the cuts and bruises. I spoke with her not an hour ago and I am well satisfied with our work.”

  Daav closed his eyes. She was well. He was trembling, he noted distantly, and his chest burned.

  “Korval?”

  He cleared his throat, opened his eyes and inclined his head. “Accept my thanks,” he said, voice steady in the formal phrasing.

  “Certainly,” Kestra murmured, and paused, the line of a frown between her brows.

  “You should be informed,” she said, abruptly, and Daav felt a chill run his spine.

  “Informed?” he repeated, when several seconds had passed and the Healer had said no more. “Is she then not—entirely—well, Master Kestra?”

  She moved a hand—half-negation. “Of this most recent injury, you need have no further concern. However, there was another matter—a trauma left untended. Scar tissue, you would say.”

  “Yes,” he murmured, recalling. “She had said she thought it—too late—to seek a Healer.”

  “In some ways, she was correct,” Kestra admitted. “Much of the damage has been integrated into the personality grid. On the whole, good use has been made of a bad start—she’s strong, never doubt it. I did what I could, where the scars hindered growth.” She sighed lightly and sat back in her chair.

  “The reason I mention the matter to you is that I find—an anomaly—within Scholar Caylon’s pattern.”

  Daav frowned. “Anomaly?”

  The Healer sighed. “Call it a—seed pattern. It’s set off in a—oh, a cul-de-sac—by itself and it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the remainder of her pattern. Although I have seen a pattern remarkably like it, elsewhere.”

  “Have you?” Daav looked at her. “Where?”

  Master Healer Kestra smiled wearily, raised a finger and pointed at the vacant air just above his head.

  “There.”

  It took a moment to assimilate, wracked as he was. “You say,” he said slowly, “that Aelliana and I are—true lifemates.”

  Kestra sighed. “Now, of that, there is some doubt. The seed pattern was found in the area of densest scarring.” She looked at him closely, her eyes grave.

  “You understand, the damage in that area of her pattern was—enormous. Had a Healer been summoned at the time of trauma—however, we shall not weep over spilt wine! I have … pruned away what I could of the scar tissue. At the least, she will be easier for it, more open to joy. That the seed will grow now, after these years without nurture—I cannot say that it will happen.”

  He stared at her, seeing pity in her eyes. His mind would not quite hold the information—Aelliana. She was his destined lifemate—the other half of a wizard’s match. He was to have shared with Aelliana what Er Thom shared with his Anne … She had been hurt—several times hurt—grievously hurt and no one called to tend her, may Clan Mizel dwindle to dust in his lifetime!

  He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, reached through the anger and the anguish, found the method he required and spun it into place.

  He was standing in a circle of pure and utter peace, safe within that secret soul-place where anger never came, and sorrow shifted away like sand.

  “And who,” Kestra demanded, “taught you that?”

  He opened his eyes, hand rising to touch his earring. “The grandmother of a tribe of hunter-gatherers, on a world whose name I may not give you.” He peered through the bright still peace; located another scrap of information: “She said that I was always busy—and so she taught me to—be still.”

  “All honor to her,” Kestra murmured.

  “All honor to her,” Daav agreed and rose on legs that trembled very little, really. “May I see Aelliana now?”

  Chapter Three

  On average, contract marriages last eighteen Standard Months, and are negotiated between clan officials who decide, after painstaking perusal of gene maps, personality charts and intelligence grids, which of several possible nuptial arrangements are most advantageous to both clans.

  In contrast, lifemating is a far more serious matter, encompassing the length of the partners’ lives, even if one should die. One of the pair must leave his or her clan of origin and join the clan of the lifemate. At that time the adoptive clan pays a “life-price” based on the individual’s profession, age and internal value to the former clan.

  Tradition has it that lifemates share a “bond of heart and mind.” In view of Liaden cultural acceptance of “wizards,” some scholars have interpreted this to mean that lifemates are “psychically” connected. Or, alternatively, that the only true lifematings occur between wizards.

  There is little to support this theory. True, lifematings among Liadens are rare. But so are lifelong marriages among Terrans.

  —From “Marriage Customs of Liad”

  He paused on the landing to compose himself. It would not do for Aelliana to see his anger at her clan, nor yet his most ardent desires. Whatever choices resided within the circumstances they shared, those choices belonged wholly to her. That she was drawn to him was plain. That he was likewise drawn to her … might not be so apparent to Aelliana as it was to himself, who had some hours past shouted his desire to stand as her lifemate into the branches of Korval’s meddlesome damned tree.

  That she and he were the two halves of a wizard’s match—but, no. Master Kestra had been careful to say only that they had been intended to be thus. Before Aelliana’s clan chose to see her come to harm, and having done so, denied her even the courtesy extended to any stranger that might have fallen, in need, among them.

  He shook his head, baffled anew at how little her kin cared for her whom Scout and pilotkind revered: Honored Scholar of Sub-rational Mathematics Aelliana Caylon, reviser of the ven’Tura Tables, who had therefore saved, and would save, hundreds of pilot lives.

  It was seldom enough that he willingly took up the melant’i of Delm Korval; at this moment, however, he could scarce restrain himself. Korval Himself would make short work indeed of Mizel—but that choice, too, was Aelliana’s.

  For all he knew, she was fond of her mother, her sisters. It had seemed to him that at least one sister—the halfling with the speaking brown eyes—held Aelliana in genuine regard.

  There on the landing, Daav closed his eyes and ran the Scout’s Rainbow, stabilizing thought and emotion. Much calmed, he sighed, opened his eyes, and went up the last flight to the third floor, and the second door on the left. Her room.

  He put his palm against the plate, expecting a chime to announce his presence. Instead, the door swung soundlessly open under his hand. Startled, he went one silent step into a fragrant and sun-filled room.

  She stood in the open window, looking out on the rows of flowers—a slender woman in a long green robe, her tawny hair caught back with a plain-silver hair ring.

  Silent though he was, she turned of a sudden, as if she had heard, a smile on her thin face, and her eyes gloriously green.

  “Daav,” she said, and walked into his arms.

  He held her lightly—lightly, so he told himself, and so he did, despite his more urgent wishes. Her cheek lay against his shoulder, her arms about his waist; her body was sweet and pliant against his.

  Lightly, he told himself again, though his blood was warming rapidly. Aelliana moved against him, her arms tightening. Carefully, he lay his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes, breathing in the scent of her, and, gods pity him, he was on fire and she was his!

  Aelliana stiffened slightly, certainly less so than he. And
it was not meet—it was far from meet, and if anything like what he wished for went forth in the Hall, be sure that Hall Master would see to it that he could not function for a relumma—or longer. So, say, it was desperation—or self preservation—that made him reach again for the old Scout trick and spin the Rainbow, reaping calm from the flow of its colors …

  “That was pretty,” Aelliana murmured against his shoulder. She stirred slightly. “Daav?”

  “Yes, van’chela.”

  “I wonder—how long will you be wed? Because, you know, I—I don’t quite understand why it hadn’t occurred to me—I can come back for you … “

  Gods. He took a breath, deliberately calming.

  “I—shall not be wed,” he told her.

  Unexpectedly, she laughed, straightening away from him. He let her go and stood staring down into brilliant green eyes.

  “Certainly, you shall not wed,” she said, freely ironic. “I suppose you have informed your delm of this circumstance?”

  “The delm requires—” he began, and stopped. She was his natural lifemate, whether she ever knew it or not, and his pilot. In either face she deserved nothing other from him than the truth. And it was, he thought bitterly, long past time for her to have this truth.

  “Aelliana—I am my delm,” he said, and raised his hand to show her the ring.

  She stared at the Tree-and-Dragon for a long moment, then sighed, very softly.

  “Korval.” She looked up into his face. “You might have said.”

  “Ought to have said, certainly,” he answered, bitterness tinging his voice. He spun away from her, stalking over to the window to glare down at the blameless and pretty little garden.

  “Why did you not call me?” he asked, which was badly done of him, but he had to know … if she did not trust him, after all, to hold her interests before his …

  “Because I would not place my friend and my copilot in harm’s way,” she said with more sharpness than he was accustomed to hearing from Aelliana. “My brother is—capable of extremes of mischief. Even now, he may be designing a Balance against Jon and Binjali’s—” Her voice was rising, horror evident. Daav spun away from the window and caught her arms.