Heart Quest

by Robin D. Owens

  Trif compressed her lips, then forced them into a wry smile. “He must come to me.”

  “I agree.”

  “Oh, I got you a present, Trif,” Straif said. “Catch!” With his Flair, he shot a crystal sphere straight at her chest.

  She stopped it several inches away from her. Set it spinning. It was an orb of white quartz with striations that she knew would perfectly hold tunes for several generations.

  Straif grinned. “That was a test. Your Flair is fully under your control. Congratulations, Trif. I think your last Passage will be quick and easy.”

  Trif just blinked, still trembling with surprise. She closed unsteady fingers over the sphere. Instead of being cool, it was warm. “I suppose I should thank you.”

  Waving a hand, Straif said, “Think nothing of it.” Then he bent to kiss his wife again, and Trif just couldn’t take being anywhere but home anymore. She went upstairs to get her bag and panpipes—which had been taken with her by the cult, and returned to her in the HealingHall.

  The past days had been outrageously shocking to her nerves. She wanted home. She wanted music.

  She wanted Ilex. She ached with the need to play her flute. If she felt the cool silver in her hands, she’d know everything would turn out fine.

  Straif T’Blackthorn caught her sneaking out one of the side doors. He smiled genially, rocking back on his heels and shaking his head. “You can’t creep out of a Residence, or escape a tracker’s notice.”

  Thirty-one

  Ilex returned to his rooms to bathe and don his dress uniform. He wanted to look his best when he proposed to Trif.

  He’d also decided to drop by Trif ’s apartment before he went to her. He knew her. Despite all warnings, she would want to return to her home, and he intended to ensure it was safe and as shielded with strong spells as he could make it.

  After a short stint under the waterfall, and dressed in clean clothes that didn’t stink of incense, he felt much better.

  He picked up the HeartGift and went to check Trif ’s place. The spell on the HeartGift was wearing off. Heated lust radiated from the zen garden, tempting him to think of Trif and bed.

  Opening her door, he walked into the apartment to set the zen garden onto the table next to Trif ’s scrybowl. Here he could renew the protective spells. He didn’t want to present the HeartGift to her and have them both rolling on the floor, mating, in a parlor of the T’Blackthorn Residence.

  Everything happened at once.

  Fun sandbox! shrieked someone inside his head. Greyku? Where had she come from?

  NO! roared Vertic.

  Both animals whirled toward him, he jerked aside. There was a clang, a crash, and droplets of cold water hit him. Huge, spinning monstrous red eyes made him reel.

  Greyku screeched again. Vertic barked loudly.

  “How amusing,” Zinga Turmeric said, entering the apartment and closing the door. She smiled, and her beautiful features twisted until she was ugly.

  In her hand she held a blazer. She sent a stream toward the animals, then ordered, “Halt!” Her spell was as strong as his own. The Fams fell to the ground.

  Even with Flair, Ilex couldn’t unsheathe his sword or blazer fast enough to save himself. He no longer wore the Flaired body armor.

  “Why don’t we wait. That child-bride of yours will be along soon, I’m sure. Then I’ll take care of you both and be on my way to bigger and better rituals in one of the smaller cities.” She smiled, showing teeth that appeared to be bloody—an illusion of his own Flair, showing that she’d eaten human hearts.

  “No. I won’t let you.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  She sounded like an evil cat. He glanced down at Greyku, who was frozen in a pitiful huddle between him and Zinga. Vertic was sprawled near Zinga’s side.

  Vertic can you hear me? whispered Ilex mentally.

  Yes.

  I think I can release you. When I do, attack!

  Yes.

  Ilex had nothing to lose. He cursed himself for delaying too long. He should have gone directly to T’Blackthorn’s and given Trif his HeartGift, filthy, sweaty, and all.

  “Sit down.” Zinga gestured with the blazer. It wobbled a little in her hand and Ilex realized it was too large for her—and she wasn’t used to it.

  Now he smiled. “No.”

  Surprise flashed in her eyes.

  “You can’t understand,” he said. “You want power and great Flair. You steal life from others because you’re afraid to die. I’ve lived with visions of my death all my life.” Now! He flung all his Flair to Vertic, formed it into a whirlwind shooting across room.

  He lunged at her, but she pulled the trigger of the blazer, and the ray caught him in the left shoulder and he jerked backward. Pain seared him and he smelled the burning of his own flesh. He fumbled for his own blazer, couldn’t reach it. His sword seemed to heavy for his hands.

  Vertic attacked, biting into her calf. She screeched high and long and fell toward him, fire from the blazer flashing again and again.

  Ilex dodged to miss the streams. She was within reach. He grabbed her blazer, twisted it, and sent the ray pulsing into her body, emptying the charge.

  Her eyes went wide. She flinched, shuddered several times, then fell against him.

  He staggered, slipped on the spilled scrybowl water, twisted, but his head cracked hard against the corner of the scrytable. The last thing he saw was a curve of brass—a new scrybowl—that had haunted his visions for so long.

  Trif was shakier on her feet than she’d anticipated, though ’porting from T’Blackthorn’s to MidClass Lodge had been easy. Straif had given her the courtesy of letting her ’port them.

  She knew Ilex was here in the Lodge. Her steps dragged as she walked down the hall to her door.

  They were halfway down the hallway when she heard screaming and barking and smashing sounds. A fearful mental shout from Greyku blew into Trif ’s mind.

  Evil one here! FamMan hurt! Come, come, come NOW!

  Trif and Straif sped down the hallway.

  Hideous pain snapped her head back. “Ilex!”

  Straif jostled her aside and flung the door open with Flair, rushing in. Trif followed.

  Zinga Turmeric lay on the floor, twitching in death throes, a blazer on her chest. Straif went to her.

  Trif scanned the room for Ilex. He lay still, the side of his head was bloody—as was the corner of the iron scry table.

  Her heart gave one great leap, then settled in her throat.

  She ran to him, fell to her knees. The faint pulse in his throat fluttered and stopped.

  “No!” she screamed. Leaning down, she hooked an arm around his waist, then grabbed her protective amulet. “Primary HealingHall!” She yanked at it and the chain cut the back of her neck, but they teleported.

  And lit on the soft permamoss of Emergency Intake. “Lark!” Trif screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Healers surrounded her. “His body has died. His soul is almost gone.”

  “No!” Trif cried. Grabbing Ilex’s hand, she reached mentally for him. Ilex don’t leave me. Stay. I love you! We’re HEARTMATES!

  GreatLord T’Heather himself, the best Healer in Celta, placed his hands around Ilex’s skull. “Keep calling to him, Trif. Keep him here.”

  Ilex, beloved, stay. Stay, stay, stay. It became a chant, from her lips and her heart. She barely noticed when Lark came and put her hands on Ilex’s chest.

  Trif could barely sense his essence. She closed her eyes and followed the thinning thread of their link. For the first time, she realized that it had strengthened in the last hour or two; otherwise he would have been gone.

  HeartMate, she called into blackness to the twinkling light of him, and she didn’t know if they were inside his mind or out in the vastness of space or on the way to reincarnation on the Wheel of Stars.

  Stretching her limits, she brushed him, but still he sped away. Stay! But he wasn’t listening to her mind-voice. She had to
pull him back with something stronger. With HeartMate Flair.

  With music.

  Forcing back fear, she sought the melody that had once drawn him, the echoing, calling song that she’d first sent at the Maypole, and had since refined. The HeartMate call formed in her mind and she broadcast it far with her thoughts, and hummed it under her breath.

  The whirling rainbow of sparkles that was Ilex paused in his flight away from her. She boosted the volume, more, she lured him with her own love, her own need of him. She recalled all the times she’d pushed the HeartBond at him, and instead of sending, she summoned, lured, tempted. She offered the HeartBond, a shining rope of pure gold issuing from the heart of her etheric body. Come to me, bond with me. She let her melody encompass her, draw him.

  He too was shadowy, more the remembrance of a body than an actual form, but transparent gray fingers touched the HeartBond.

  Trif quivered and all her love for him poured forth.

  HeartMate. It was the merest mental whisper. Trif.

  Yes! BLACK ILEX WINTERBERRY!

  His love merged with hers, his strong emotion roared through her. MINE! His fingers gripped hers.

  Then others were with her, adding their Flair to hold him tight, bond them all together, kitten and fox and woman and man. Love cycled through them in unbreakable links.

  “Trif, it’s all right. He’s alive and will Heal.” The patient voice repeated the words over and over until Trif opened her eyes to find Lark beside her, wiping tears from her face with a softleaf. Trif found she was rocking and the melody she’d thought she’d been singing was a low, harsh moaning.

  Lark smiled at her. “Ssshh. He’ll be fine. But it would be best if we could move him now.”

  Clearing her throat, Trif sniffed. “Yes, of course.”

  “We’ll put him in a private room. T’Holly insisted.”

  Trif wet her lips. “Ilex is Healing?”

  “Yes. The head wound was bad, I won’t deny it.”

  “Fatal.” Trif gulped back more tears.

  “Yes. But you got him here within minutes after he ‘died,’ and both T’Heather and I were here and able to Heal him—T’Heather his skull and I restarted his heart and kept it pumping. The blazer injury in his shoulder has been mended too.” She stood and offered a hand to Trif, nodding to where she’d intertwined her fingers with Ilex’s. “And you called his soul back.” Lark smiled. “Good teamwork by all three of us.”

  Trif really didn’t want to let go of Ilex’s hand.

  “He’ll be fine,” Lark assured her. “You’re HeartBonded and you both have enough Flair and strength and energy to keep each other grounded here in the physical world. Now he only needs to sleep through the rest of the day and the night.”

  “I won’t release his hand. He’s mine.”

  Lark rolled her eyes, then gestured to several people surrounding the large permamoss sponge. “Lift that and Trif Winterberry will accompany her HeartMate.”

  “Thank you.” Smile watery, Trif matched standing and moving with the others as they used Flair to float the pad from the floor and down a hallway. “Trif Winterberry,” she whispered, half to herself.

  “It’s pretty evident you are.” Lark’s tones were back to businesslike. She gestured to a red-plumed tail in the corridor in front of them. “Follow the fox.”

  “I want to stay with Ilex.”

  “Of course you do.”

  They reached a huge room and the pad Ilex rested on was settled on an equally large bed. “Patient NobleRoom One,” Lark said drily. The luxurious room was the equal of any in a FirstFamily Residence.

  Not letting go of Ilex’s hand, Trif pulled a chair next to the stacked bedsponges. When everyone else had left, she crawled onto the bed and drew an exquisite llamawoolweave cover over them. Then she threw an arm around him, clutched a handful of softleaves, and wept into the pillows.

  Greyku jumped onto the bed. Very tired. Much work to get him back and keep him safe.

  Vertic grunted and settled himself on Ilex’s other side.

  Late that evening, she woke to gentle fingers stroking her hair back from her face and met Ilex’s gray-blue eyes. His expression was one of wonder.

  “You called me back. I heard you playing and I came back.” He touched between her breasts. “We’re HeartBonded.”

  “Yes.” Her insides quivered. It was a big step, one she hadn’t carefully considered. She’d always thrown him the HeartBond during sex, then offered it when he was dying.

  His jaw firmed. “And my vision was true.”

  “In general,” she said. “I didn’t fall down dead. I came running to save you.”

  “If we’d been HeartBonded then…”

  She put her hands over his lips and gazed at him fiercely. “I’d have done the same. But that’s past. Whatever our lives may bring, now we are together.”

  Vertic barked. And me.

  And Me! said Greyku.

  Ilex rolled onto his back. “A happy Family.” He looked at Trif. “Did you like it?”

  “Like what?”

  “My HeartGift.”

  She blinked rapidly. “What HeartGift?”

  “You didn’t see it? That’s why I was there.” His smile turned rueful; he gestured like a fencer conceding a match. “You won our bout of hearts. I was delivering my HeartGift. Once you accepted that….”

  “I’d be legally bound to you. Not just having an affair with my HeartMate, but essentially your wife.”

  He picked up her hand and kissed her fingers. The bond between them flowed with tender emotion. “My HeartMate. I couldn’t deny it. I was ready to accept the HeartBond.”

  “You did accept the HeartBond.” She studied him. “How do you feel?”

  With his free hand, he probed his temple. “Fine. I hit my head on the corner of that iron scrytable of yours.”

  “You’ll have a scar there, something that looks like a white starburst.”

  “That seems appropriate for the time I spent in the space between life and death and rebirth.” He sat up. “I was dodging racing animals. My Fam chased yours away from my HeartGift.”

  Greyku stared at them with huge, innocent eyes. Just looking.

  “Hell you were,” Ilex said. “You were going to rearrange it.”

  The kitten huddled to make herself appear even smaller and more helpless.

  Vertic barked. Meddling cat.

  “Yes, a happy Family,” Ilex repeated. “I take it Zinga Turmeric is out of our lives.”

  “Yes. She died.”

  “I would have wished she’d suffered more.”

  Trif remembered the twitching body, the scent of the woman who’d soiled herself. But Ilex’s expression was hard and cold—the fighter, the guardsman, the man—all aspects of him had wanted punishment for Zinga. Had yearned to destroy the one who’d hurt his HeartMate. That Trif knew from their bond.

  But she wanted to change the subject, and curiosity burned. “What is it?”

  “What?”

  “My HeartGift, what is it?”

  Ilex raised his brows. “Perhaps we should go and see.” He gestured to papyrus resting on a table. “Lark was here and dismissed me. I was only waiting for you to wake.” He sighed. “The Fams have been noisy.”

  Greyku sniffed.

  He slid from bed, and tugged on her hand. “I’ve had enough of HealingHalls lately.”

  “It’s a nice place,” she said, finally noticing the expensive and exquisite furnishings.

  “It’s not our place.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “We will never live apart again, thank the Lady and Lord.”

  She cleared her throat. “I had hoped that we could live in my house in Clover Compound.”

  “Yes.”

  Some inner tension she didn’t know she carried relaxed.

  Greyku and Vertic sat waiting for them on the landing pad. Ilex pulled her against him and it was like the first time they’d kissed.

  He was aroused and ready.
<
br />   Her heart pounded in her ears.

  “Why don’t you take us hom—back to your rooms at Mid-Class Lodge.” His voice was husky, she felt his lips brush her hair.

  “One,” her voice shook with yearning. “Two.”

  His arms caught her tight.

  “Three!”

  Overwhelming passion inundated her, loosened her muscles, sent warmth flooding into her core, preparing her for his penetration.

  “HeartGift Flair,” he rasped. His arms dropped from her and he lurched to the table, found a scrap of papyrus, and stuck it on a small tray. “This must have come off.”

  Stiffening her buckling knees, Trif caught her breath. The place had been cleansed—very soon after the events, she sensed, and by several GreatLords and Ladies. Nothing of evil or death remained.

  The HeartGift was shielded so the atmosphere was no longer hot and heavy, pulsing with desire—though Ilex made no attempt to hide his erection. He stood next to the table in a soldierly stance. Her gaze went to the tray she’d noticed years before—yesterday—and she walked to the table to study it.

  “Ohhh.” Her breath went out on a long sigh.

  “Oh?” He tensed.

  “It’s lovely.” She touched a fingertip to a irregularly shaped red sandstone rock, looked up at him. “It’s a—a special garden. I don’t know what they’re called.” She glanced aside.

  He touched her cheek, gently persuading her to meet his gaze. “We’re HeartMates now. There is and never will be any reason for you to think you are less than perfect for me—that you are—”

  “—stupid and gauche?”

  “No! You are fresh and delightful.”

  She wrapped her arms around him. “And you are sophisticated and fascinating.” She heard a little thump and saw a small paw reach toward the patterned sand in the box. “Don’t you do that!”

  “What?” Ilex raised a brow.

  “Behind you.”

  He turned and took her with him and they stared at Greyku, who was licking a forepaw. He chuckled. “Ah, a temptation for the kitten.” His gaze laughed down at Trif. “Young ones have problems resisting temptation.”

  She snuggled against him and liked how his breath caught. “And it’s a good thing I do, isn’t it, HeartMate.”