In Stone's Clasp

by Christie Golden

  “What are you doing?” Mylikki asked.

  Kevla ignored her. She closed her eyes and called the power that dwelt inside her.

  No rushing surge of heat, not this time; she needed the gentle, steady warmth of the ember, not the licking, consuming conflagration of flame. She felt her body grow warmer, felt that warmth penetrate into Altan’s body from his hands on her heart and her hand on his. She tried to see the heat in her mind’s eye, as it moved along his body, into his skin, his blood, his bones.

  “He needs more,” she told Mylikki, thinking even as she spoke: Dragon! We need your help!

  “His clothes are soaked,” Mylikki said, quickly divesting the young huskaa of his outer garments.

  Something flashed through Kevla’s mind. He was in a fragile state, like a wounded man…. “Cut the clothing off,” she cried. “Don’t move him too much.”

  “I don’t have a knife,” Mylikki began, but she was cut off by a crashing sound that made the earth tremble. Dirt and small rocks showered them. Scarcely had they recovered from this than they heard the horrifying, grinding sound of the boulders above them moving. Mylikki screamed and ducked, covering Altan’s body with hers to protect him from the huge rocks that were sure to come crashing down on all three of them.

  Instead, the boulder moved upward, and sunlight streamed in. Kevla looked up and saw the dear face of the Dragon. He had come when she needed him. Her heart surged with love for her friend.

  “Altan’s almost frozen to death,” Kevla said to him. “We need the packs!”

  The Dragon dropped them down and Mylikki dove on them, finding the knife and cutting at Altan’s clothing. The fabric was almost frozen stiff.

  While Mylikki removed Altan’s garments, Kevla fumbled for the blankets. She looked again at the youth. He was moving now, and a soft groan escaped his lips. Kevla rolled him gently to one side and then the other so she could tuck the blankets around him. His skin was almost icy to the touch.

  He was bare to the waist now. Where his flesh was exposed, Kevla covered it with the blanket as best she could. Mylikki was at the boy’s feet, trying to tug off his boots. Kevla went to help her. Once the boots were off Mylikki started to fold the blanket up around Altan’s lower body, but Kevla stayed her hand.

  “The breeches,” she said. “They are soaked through as well.”

  Mylikki nodded. She and Kevla cut away the breeches and Altan lay naked before them. Slender, almost ice-white, with golden hair catching the light at groin and crown, he looked as beautiful and as fragile as a dying liah to Kevla.

  She thought about how Mylikki had described Altan’s voice; strong, beautiful, pure. A voice that Kevla now realized she might never hear. The thought infuriated and grieved her. No! Kevla thought. That voice will not be silenced!

  What was it Gelsan had said? Skin to skin contact, and a gentle steady warming was what was called for when someone was in Altan’s state. Mylikki had confirmed it last night: You should be happy we’re clothed…. When someone has gotten too cold, the best way to warm him is skin to skin. Heedless now of her own modesty or his, knowing only that she needed to warm him with the fire that burned deep inside her heart, Kevla tore off her rhia and lay beside him. She stretched the entire length of her body against his, twining long legs and arms about him. His chest pressed against her breasts, his limp kurjah brushed against her sulim. At another time, it might have been an intimate embrace, but for Kevla, it was devoid of eroticism. Altan hung suspended between life and death.

  “Wrap us tightly!” she cried. Mylikki did so, tucking the blanket snugly around them. Kevla looked up to see the Dragon sitting on his haunches, golden eyes full of concern.

  “Dragon, hold us!”

  Kevla felt herself and the barely conscious Altan being lifted and pressed to the Dragon’s breast. His scales were very warm, almost but not quite hot, and Kevla felt her own body heat up again. Heart to heart they lay in the Dragon’s paws, Kevla-sha-Tahmu and a boy she had never before seen, bodies entangled in life-giving warmth.

  Cling to me, she thought, wrapping her arms more tightly about him. Cling to life, Altan.

  How long she held him, she did not know. At last, she felt his chilled flesh warm, his heartbeat become steadier. Kevla felt him move, felt his arms tighten around her. She did not stop him; he was past knowing what he did and the fact that he was moving at all gladdened her.

  “Put us down, please,” Kevla asked the Dragon. He obeyed, gently lowering them to the earth. Mylikki had not been idle. She had set up a tent, spread blankets on the ground and had started a small fire. She stirred the cauldron and Kevla smelled tea.

  Good, she thought. A hot beverage will warm him once he is able to drink.

  She moved away a little and found herself staring into a pair of large, blue-green eyes. He had a face that was at once both sweet and masculine, heartbreakingly beautiful. No wonder Mylikki had been so charmed. But to her surprise, that face shifted from puzzlement to anger. He craned his neck and peered down, uttering an exclamation of annoyance when he saw Mylikki. She smiled in relief as their eyes met, but his words stilled her expression of pleasure.

  “You again! Curse it, will I never be rid of you?” he snarled.

  His voice was slightly slurred but still musical and entrancing, but the ugly words chilled Kevla. He continued speaking and Kevla was relieved when she realized he was spouting nonsense: “Big hands…too crowded….”

  His eyes closed and he fell unconscious again. Kevla pulled him to her as the Dragon lowered them both, not wanting to see the pain in Mylikki’s blue eyes.

  16

  For the next few hours, Altan was almost like a drunken man. His speech was slurred and full of nonsense and he drifted in and out of sleep. When he was awake, they gave him tea and hot broth; when he slept, Mylikki held him with a fierce possessiveness.

  Kevla knew her actions had saved Altan’s life. She was fire incarnate; the warmth that burned within her could be directed and channeled in a way that the natural heat of Mylikki’s simple human skin could not. Mylikki knew this as well, but there was a wistfulness that told Kevla more strongly than any words that she wished she had been the one to hold Altan. Kevla hoped that the cruel words Altan had spoken to Mylikki were as mad as the rest of his cold-induced ravings, but wondered; after all, he had been cruel to Mylikki before.

  You were the right one to hold Altan, the Dragon thought to her. Mylikki might have wanted to, but you couldn’t risk Altan’s life.

  I wish she had been the one to do it, Kevla thought. She folded her arms across her knees and gazed at the fire. Altan’s touch was pleasant, but his is not the touch I long for.

  Her eyes suddenly blurred with tears and she placed her head on her arms. Her heart contracted with remembered pain and guilt. The touch she longed for, she knew, she ought never have experienced…and would never experience again.

  I miss you so much, Jashemi. And it’s all my fault. If I had been stronger, better able to resist; if everything had unfolded as it was meant to, you would be here with me now. I would give anything to have you here with me, to see your face, hear your laugh…but you are gone from me forever and I have no one but myself to blame.

  Altan still slept and Mylikki held him, her face pressed to his. Her pretty blue eyes were closed and she was singing softly to the unconscious huskaa. It was a poignant image, a private one, and suddenly Kevla wanted to be alone.

  She rose and stalked off. The Dragon said nothing, but let her go. Kevla slogged through the snow, its impersonal resistance to her passage making her angrier and more frustrated and at last she stumbled and fell into the soft white blanket.

  She wept then, realizing how she had taken her feelings and placed them in a little corner because they were inconvenient. Not conducive to learning about Lamal, or finding the Stone Dancer. But the innocent press of Altan’s body against hers had reminded her skin that it had once been caressed by a man she had adored; that her body had once joined
in passionate lovemaking with one who knew her better than she knew herself.

  She wept for him, for herself, for the life she had left behind, for everything she had lost, and when she was done pouring her grief into the snow, she felt a little better. This wave of anguish had come and gone. But she knew an endless river of agony lurked, ready for the next time she was distracted from the task at hand; ready to bite like a sand-snake and pump its venom of shame and guilt into her soul.

  She washed her face with a handful of snow, feeling no stinging bite from its coldness, and took a deep, shuddering breath. There was something she had wanted to do for some time now, and finally, she gave herself permission.

  Kevla gathered a few fallen branches. “Burn,” she said. When the fire was crackling cheerfully, she swallowed hard. In a voice that trembled, she said, “Show me Tahmu.”

  Immediately, the face of her father, the khashim of the Clan of Four Waters, appeared in the flame. He jerked back, no doubt startled at the apparition, then smiled in recognition.

  “Kevla!”

  She smiled back, tremulously. “Hello, Father.” The term felt so strange in her mouth still.

  “It is so good to see you, my daughter.” There was an awkward pause. “Are you well?”

  Kevla nodded. “Well enough. How are you? And Sahlik, and Meli?”

  “We are all very well. We were very busy after you left, though.”

  “What’s happening? Tell me.” She leaned forward, knowing that all she needed to do to physically be with him was step into the fire, too afraid that if she did so she would not have the strength of will to return. Though she had once been treated badly there, Arukan was and always would be her home.

  “Most of the Clans agreed to form a council. We are trying to arrange when to meet and determine how much control it should have.” He smiled again, somewhat wistfully. “I wish you were here to share your wisdom. We still do not agree on everything, and it is much easier to obey the Great Dragon when he is present to make his wishes known.”

  The lump in her throat made it hard to speak. “I am glad to hear that you are making progress, however slow it might be. How are the kulis?”

  “It is a sweet thing, my daughter. You would be moved to see how welcomed they have been,” he said. “It was as if we as a people were waiting for this for years.”

  You were, Kevla thought. So much was waiting to be changed. She wiped at her face.

  “We speak of you often. Have you found what you sought?”

  “Not yet. This is such a strange land, Father. There are wonders and beauty and darkness here. I cannot even begin to speak of it.”

  “I hope one day your travels bring you home,” her father said softly, his dark eyes sad and yet hopeful. “We—we miss you.”

  “I miss you too,” she said, and found to her surprise that it was true. Here in this alien land, she longed for the familiar—the smell and bustle of the kitchens, Sahlik’s brusque kindness….

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Perhaps one day I will return,” she said. “Give my love to Meli.”

  “I will. I once would have said, ‘Dragon go with you,’ but in your case, he did.”

  The comment made Kevla laugh a little. She wiped again at her wet eyes. She still did not truly regard Tahmu-kha-Rakyn as her father; she wondered if she ever would, even though she had taken his name. In a way, she fiercely envied Meli, her little sister. Meli’s first ten years had been difficult beyond Kevla’s imagining, but now the child was in a home where she was welcomed and honored; where their father was free to express his love for her. There was so much Kevla yearned for that could never be hers.

  Kevla wondered how things would have been different had Meli been permitted to spend her first years safely in the House of Four Waters, not only for the girl’s sake, but for her mother’s. Yeshi had been devastated when Meli was taken from her. Would Yeshi have become such a bitter, murderous woman if she had been able to keep her daughter? Somehow, Kevla didn’t think so. Before that awful incident, Yeshi had been vain and shallow, but not evil. Not then.

  “I need to go,” she said thickly.

  “Will we hear from you again?” Tahmu asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ll try to stay in contact. Goodbye, Father.”

  “Goodbye, Kevla. I am so very proud of you.”

  With a wave of her hand, Kevla extinguished the little fire. She sat and stared at the black, burned wood for a long time.

  When at last she returned, Mylikki was alone with Altan. The Dragon was gone. As Kevla slogged up to their campsite, Mylikki regarded her with relief. “I wasn’t sure where you’d gone,” she said.

  There was a rustling in the blankets and Altan Lukkari sat up. He looked nothing like the still, cold figure they had found a few hours ago. His color had returned, and he was alert and smiling. He pulled the blankets around his still-naked frame self-consciously.

  “You must be Kevla,” he said in that lovely voice. “Mylikki has told me all about you. I understand I owe you my life. ‘Thank you’ seems inadequate.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kevla said. “I am glad to see you looking well.” This polite, earnest youth was a world away from the cruel boy who had snarled such unkind words. Kevla set about preparing something hot for them to eat. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Exhausted,” Altan admitted. “And weak.”

  “Sounds like the Ice Maiden nearly got you,” said Kevla, somewhat mischievously.

  As she had hoped, Altan looked annoyed. “I see Mylikki has been talking to you about the legend,” he said. “I keep trying to explain to her that the Ice Maiden got the term because she was unfeeling, not because she—”

  Kevla caught Mylikki’s eye and saw an impish smile spread on the other girl’s face. Both of them started laughing. Altan looked confused, then he joined in.

  “All right, all right,” he said, his voice warm with mirth. “You two have saved my life. I suppose I should let you tease me all you like.”

  “I’d rather ask you some questions, if you feel up to it.”

  Altan shifted in his blanket. “I know why you needed to cut off my wet clothes, and I don’t want you to think me ungrateful,” he said, “but could I trouble you to give me my pack so I can find something to wear?”

  Mylikki sprang to hand him his pack. Both women politely turned their backs while he dressed.

  “Much better,” he said. A sudden, worried expression crossed his face and he clutched at the pack. “My kyndela!” he cried, sounding like he had lost a child.

  “I’ve been keeping it out of the weather for you,” Mylikki said. “Here.” She drew it out of her own pack, where she had wrapped it carefully.

  “Thank you,” he said fervently, reaching for it eagerly. He frowned a little as he examined it. “I could trust you to understand how important it is.” He gave her a radiant smile, and Mylikki seemed to blossom in front of Kevla’s eyes. Mindful of her promise to Mylikki, Kevla watched Altan closely, but the words and the warmth behind them struck her as genuine. Flexing his fingers, Altan plucked at the strings and winced at the sound. “You can hear it protesting,” he joked.

  Kevla stirred the thin soup. Gelsan had been generous in giving them supplies. Still, it was only their second night of traveling, and who knew how long this would last them. She glanced up at the darkening sky. “I assume the Dragon went hunting?”

  “Yes,” Mylikki said. “I’m surprised he hasn’t returned yet.”

  Kevla was, too, but she said nothing. Neither she nor the Dragon had told Mylikki about the strange men that had been lurking in the woods last night, and Kevla was slightly worried for her friends. She told herself that they had flown many leagues and that the Dragon would not have left if he did not feel it was safe to do so.

  Altan shook his golden head. “Dragon,” he said, in a voice of awe. “Never had I thought to see such a marvel. He was gone when I awoke. I am anxious to meet him.” His lips curved in a smile. “What a s
ong I shall make for him.”

  Altan cocked his head and leaned down to hear every note as he continued to tune the instrument. Even these sounds, one note at a time, made Kevla’s skin prickle. She had heard tales of magical instruments; if any instrument was enchanted, then surely it had to be a kyndela.

  “You have seen marvels, though,” Kevla said. “Mylikki tells me you have told her about a man from your village who could do amazing things.”

  He looked up from tuning the instrument. “She told you about Jareth Vasalen?”

  Jareth. Kevla was inordinately pleased. At last, she had a name to put to the Stone Dancer. She nodded.

  “I know him better than any man, I think,” Altan continued. “He helped bring me into this world. He was like a big brother to me.”

  His voice was warm with affection, and Kevla’s own heart warmed hearing it. This, indeed, was a worthy Dancer.

  “He was quite famous, of course, because of his gifts. He called the seasons. He also called animals for food during lean times. He refused to do it during the softer months. He said that wasn’t fair, that we should work for what we needed. But he would never let anyone go hungry.”

  Kevla felt her mouth curling in a smile. She liked Jareth better and better the more she learned about him. He sounded kind and compassionate.

  “Once, when a little girl from another village got lost, he asked the trees and the stones to tell him where she had passed. Her family found her before nightfall.”

  He saves life with his powers—with Earth magic, Kevla thought. Her pleasure abated somewhat, as she recalled what she had done in Arukan with her powers. He saves lives…I take them.

  “But then the winter came, and would not leave,” said Kevla.

  “Yes,” said Altan heavily. “I am ashamed to say how Skalka Valley treated him after that. Many whispered that he was cursed.” Anger flared in those blue-green eyes. He was silent for a time, his hands softly caressing the kyndela as he stared into the flames. “When his family died, I’m sure he did believe he was cursed.”