by Tara Janzen
“What isn’t simple?” the boy demanded, clearly not mollified. “The seeing her, or the having her in your bed?”
“Nay.” Morgan shook his head. “She’ll have me, aright. It’s the leaving of her I can’t see my way clear to do.”
A moment of stunned silence met his announcement, then the boy swore. “Sweet gods. Don’t go telling me you’ve gone and fallen in love with a woman who trapped you with a friggin’ bounty bracelet?”
’Twas a question without an answer. So Morgan gave what answer he could, knowing the boy should know where they stood. If the situation started to change fast, he didn’t want Aja making his lightning-quick decisions without all the facts.
“She wants me to go through the time weir with her, Aja, to go back from where I came, to Wales. ’Tis her destiny, and also, she says, mine.”
The boy’s face paled, the vinegar going out of him of a sudden, making him seem years younger.
“You wouldn’t do such a thing... would you?” That it was a question in the boy’s mind spoke of his fears.
“Not by choice.” Morgan’s gaze strayed again to the tent on the hill.
“Then we leave tonight,” Aja said crisply, rallying back to his plan. “Let her find another time-rider for her destiny. We can leave the rover here. Take a couple of the masutes and ride south, out of the line of battle. We can slip back around into the Old Dominion and pick up our stuff in Pan-shei, then—” The boy broke off with a virulent curse.
Morgan understood. With more grim news piling on the last at every turn, `twas hard to remember just how much the world had changed in a day, that Pan-shei was gone.
Aja brought a hand up to cover his face and swore again. “Gods, Morgan. What about Klary... and the others?”
Morgan shook his head. The question had plagued him as well. He didn’t know what had happened to their other friends in Pan-shei, and he for certes didn’t want to think about Klary and her brood.
“She scored on me before the Warmonger arrived in Pan-shei,” he told the boy. “She wouldn’t have stayed in the Northern Quarter, but gone home with her money and her booty. Chances are she was well out of it.” ’Twas a balm spoken for Aja’s sake, though the odds on it being true were no worse than even.
“We should leave,” the boy said, lowering his hand and lifting troubled green eyes to meet Morgan’s. “No good can come of this. We’ve always worked alone and done right well by ourselves. As for this other...” His voice trailed off.
“As for this other.” Morgan grasped the boy’s shoulder with one hand. “Fate may not be a matter of choice, but the time weir is in Claerwen, the northern temple of the Priestesses of the Bones, and we are off to the west to the White Palace.” A faint smile curved his lips. “Home to fierce and wondrous dragons, if the rumors flying around camp are to be believed, and also to this Lost Forest. I’ve heard ye speak of the place, in your cups and out of ‘em. About how there are trees growing out there in the sand that haven’t been seen on Earth for thousands of years. Greenwood trees, you called them. Like what we’ve seen through the wine.”
“I’d not lose you just to see a bunch of friggin’ trees, Morgan.” The words were heartfelt, gruffly spoken.
“Milord!” They were hailed by one of the older wild boys making his way through the masute herd.
Morgan tightened his grip on Aja’s shoulder. “I’ll not leave ye, unless the choice is taken from me.” He spoke as honestly as he could. “And if it is, you’ll know before I go.” ’Twas more than Morgan had been willing to admit to himself, that there was even the remotest possibility of his returning to the weir. Christe, it made his blood run cold even to think of it.
“Milord.” The wild boy halted in front of them. “Commander Avallyn requests your presence in her tent.”
Aja’s expression became grim again, but for all the risks involved, Morgan could only be heartened at the invitation. Picking up his munitions belt, he nodded his assent to the messenger, then slipped his carbine and Scyld over his shoulder.
Aja watched until Morgan disappeared inside the sand-colored tent, all the while forcing himself not to follow. He and Morgan had saved each other’s lives more often than he could count. ’Twas part and parcel of their work, and a measure of their skills that they’d gone unscathed as long as they had, but he could not protect Morgan from a woman. Especially not Avallyn Le Severn, for he’d known she was a threat beyond reckoning even before Morgan had revealed her views on destiny.
While the two of them had been in Rabin-19, Aja had cast his mother’s bones in the sands of the Medain beneath the noonday sun. He’d seen his lord’s path crossed with wicked terrible danger, a danger that could only have been brought down on his head by the princess. A Princess of the White Palace was not to be fooled with, nor was a Priestess of the Bones, and Avallyn Le Severn was both. For certes they’d been running for their lives since she’d captured Morgan in Racht Square.
Aja had been sworn through his sept to the priestesses of Claerwen, but the vow would be broken if the cost was Morgan’s life. For even more than Claerwen, he’d sworn himself to the lost prince of the Cymry.
Mayhaps ’twas the journey through the time weir he’d seen in the bones. Aja knew what destruction the time weir had wrought on his lord. A second journey might well kill him.
Or mayhaps ’twas not the time weir at all, but something else that threatened. Aja looked up to the surrounding ridge of rock, his gaze scanning the cliffs, his senses twitching. The time weir was hundreds of miles to the north, and the danger he’d seen in the bones had felt much closer, more imminent, and far more personal than a cosmic force.
Aye, ’twas the intimate quality of the casting that had set him on edge. The coming danger Morgan faced was for him alone, and Aja feared there was naught he could do to stop it.
~ ~ ~
The scent of lavender and oranges surrounded Morgan as he entered the tent, the heady fragrance steaming up from a pot set over a brazier of hot coals. Soft light fell from lanterns hung from the tent poles, and the perfumed air and quiet ambience eased a measure of his tension. The only thing missing was Avallyn.
“My Lord.” The Night Watcher who had led him in gestured to another opening farther back in the tent.
The same scent and soft light emanated from the far room, and Morgan approached it with growing anticipation. She would be waiting for him inside.
And indeed she was.
He stiffened on the threshold, his anticipation turning to wariness. Avallyn sat on a thick-piled rug next to another brazier brewing the same heady mixture of lavender and oranges, but she was not the desert-bedraggled princess he’d last seen. Priestess garb robed her from head to foot in swaths of calcimine white, the color of Claerwen, the color of sun-bleached bones. A medallion hung from a silken cord around her neck, a silver disk incised with a square rimmed in gold and inset with a triangle of carnelian—a symbol of the alchemist’s quest, a design he’d seen long ago on the walls of Dain Lavrans’s Hart Tower.
“Come in,” she said, her voice a study in solemn authority. “Be seated.” She lifted her hand to indicate a place for him across from her on the rug. Flamelike shadows shifted in a sinuous dance across her face, playing with the light from the brazier’s fire and casting her in mystery. ’Twas witch’s glamour and well within the White Ladies’ arts, and for certes he found it disconcerting for her to be using such on him.
“Milady,” he said, not without a trace of irony in his voice. That she was playing the priestess again could bode no good.
Her nicked eyebrow lifted slightly at his formality, and he allowed himself an inward smile. They had kissed, and what he’d learned of her in those moments could not be cast aside like Aja’s worn tunic. She was Avallyn, and she was his for the taking if he was willing to pay the price.
For the first time he found the thought steadying, one sure thing in a quickly changing world. Thus reassured, he again started forward.
Avally
n watched him finish crossing the inner sanctum she’d created inside the pavilion, his strides long and imbued with the easy grace he’d used so effectively to get them out of Racht. Barely a trace of his limp remained since he’d taken her father’s potion. ’Twas a temporary surcease, she was sure, but she was glad even for a brief easing of his affliction, and she hoped he would not hold against her what was to come. Being deep-scented was not unpleasant, provided the subject did not find the mere act of being searched in such a manner offensive—and Morgan was unlikely not to notice. For that reason, she’d decided to tell him beforehand.
“My mother is a formidable woman,” she began, ladling a cup of lavender-orange tea out of the pot on the brazier.
When he’d seated himself on the rug in front of her, cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees, his sword and carbine angled across his back, she handed him the cup and dared for a moment to meet his eyes. To her surprise, he was watching her with an intensity not too far removed from the level she was about to turn on him, his darkly indigo gaze seeming to look beyond the facade of calm she’d so carefully built in preparation for what she must do.
She glanced away, busying herself with ladling another cup of tea.
“But within the bounds of her priestess vows, my mother would not cause you harm,” she continued, then paused for a telling second. “The same cannot be said for my father. Tamisk is not bound by any creed other than knowledge, and he employs a vast array of methods for gaining his precious truths, some of them decidedly unpleasant.”
“Has he used those methods on you?” ’Twas not a casual question, but one spoken with a subtle edge of threat.
He was her protector, she thought, carefully sipping her tea from a clay cup. Whether he claimed it or not.
She hazarded his gaze again.
“No,” she said, and saw him visibly relax at her answer. “Nor would he, so long as my mother draws breath. It is for you that I fear.”
His only reaction to her warning was to take a sip of tea, which made her wonder if he understood the potential difficulties awaiting him in the White Palace.
“My father is an Ilmarryn mage, a Magia Lord adept of the Books of Lore,” she said succinctly. “Even the Queen of Deseillign bends her knee to him on occasion, and though by rights of the Fata Ranc Le you fall under the patronage of the Claerwen priestesses, Tamisk also has a stake in your fate. I fear with this change in our course, he will bring undue pressures to bear on the situation.”
Pausing in the act of taking his second drink, he lifted his head. “Undue pressures?”
“Magic.” ’Twas an inadequate word to describe the complex dimensions of Tamisk’s skills, but Avallyn knew none better. Magic, by its very nature, defied definition or explanation—except in the hands of her father, who knew quite well what he was about.
Magic, Morgan repeated in his mind, feeling his heart sink to the vicinity of his stomach. Having been subjected to unpleasant inquiries by life-forms with no stake in his future, he hadn’t been overly concerned about her father’s interrogation—not when the man needed him, and not when he’d already decided that they needed Tamisk to hold off the Warmonger.
But magic. He remembered all his brushes with the stuff, what little good and what great harm it had brought him.
“Magic,” he said flatly. “Against me.”
“Aye, milord.”
’Twas only fitting, he thought with disgust, that at this great juncture in his life he should find himself in danger not only from the Warmonger and universe-devouring black plagues, but from friggin’ magic as well.
“No sleight of hand, smoke, or mirrors?” he asked, keeping any trace of hope out of his voice. He’d not have her know that magic unnerved him. When he’d found none in the future, he’d been disappointed—he had desperately hoped to find an explanation for what had happened to him—but he’d also been relieved.
“Nay,” she answered. “Tamisk is no Pan-shei juggler or Pathian illusionist. When he makes something disappear, it is truly gone, its atoms dispersed into the cosmic fold.”
“And you fear he might disperse me?”
“He would not dare,” she said quickly. “But that could well be the only constraint he puts upon your meeting.”
Well, hell, Morgan thought, his mood sinking even lower.
“I can help you, though, milord.”
Of course she could. For a price, he was sure. Probably his soul or some other equally pertinent part of his existence. It seemed the only tender that held her interest.
“How?” he asked, setting his cup aside.
“By discerning your weaknesses for myself beforehand, mayhaps I can ameliorate any problems that may arise.”
He wasn’t fooled by her wording. There was a cost to him somewhere in her amelioration, and he wondered if there would ever be a time when things between them were simple.
“What kind of weaknesses?” The list was nearly endless as far as he could tell, and she may well have been getting in over her head trying to sort them out.
“I could not say, milord, not without looking first.”
Quite diplomatic, he thought, for someone who had seen him in the midst of a Carillion wine fever.
“And your method of discernment?”
“Scenting, milord. Deep-scenting.”
“Deep-scenting?” He’d never heard of it.
“A highly refined use of the olfactory sense,” she explained.
“You can smell my weaknesses?” he asked skeptically.
“What I can actually smell is your past. It’s locked into your cells in a complex pattern of minute chemical deviations, and these historical deviations ofttimes reveal a person’s predilections and weaknesses.”
And if that wasn’t enough to put him off the idea, Morgan didn’t know what was. Having his weaknesses exposed through his chemical deviations on a cellular level would hardly put him in a bearable light. In truth, the mere thought of it made him want to hightail it back to the rover and lock the hatch door behind him. Sweet Jesu, and she thought her father was a magician.
But he didn’t jump up.
And he didn’t run.
In truth, he made no movement other than to breathe and consider his options—and it didn’t take him long to wonder if she hadn’t already done some of her deep-scenting on him. They’d surely been close enough, and more than once.
“All you have to do is smell me to find out my predilections?” He hated repeating the word ”weaknesses” out loud in connection with himself.
“Deep-scenting is a way of using the olfactory system with specific guided intent,” she said. “It can quickly, almost instantaneously, go beyond what would normally be considered a person’s smell into subtler dimensions.”
“And then the person you’re deep-scenting is pretty much an open book for you to read?”
He watched her hesitate before the truth won out. “Aye,” she admitted, then clarified her answer. “Providing there are no complications.”
“Such as?”
“No one can read the past through a muddle of cells soaked in Carillion wine,” she said bluntly.
His mood lightened somewhat at that. “Then you’ve only had today.”
“And there’s been no time,” she said, answering his unasked question.
“When we kissed?”
A blush bloomed on her cheeks, staining them the palest pink, but she didn’t look away.
“I... I was too distracted, milord.”
Satisfaction filled him at her answer, satisfaction and a longing made even sweeter by her confession.
“And now?” He leaned close and cupped her chin in his hand.
Her blush deepened, and her golden brown lashes swept down to fan across her cheeks, enchanting him. He wanted to kiss her ears, run his fingers through her hair, and lose himself in the lovely scent that was hers alone.
“If I kiss you, it will be as before,” she said softly, “and we’ll be no safer for my hav
ing failed to search your mind.”
Gods. Even the cost of a kiss had grown steep, if she felt her safety was the price. On the other hand, he felt exactly the same way, that her kisses would probably be the death of him.
Releasing her, he leaned back and consigned himself to the inevitable.
“So you must look,” he said, “and I must endure, and we both must live with what you find.”
“Aye.” Dove gray eyes peered up at him from beneath her lashes, their expression unreadable.
He offered his own warning. “I fear it will not be a pretty sight, what you see in my mind. And I doubt if it will do anything to make you feel safe. Quite the contrary.”
And this was where he lost her, he thought. He knew his past better than most men, having relived it countless times through the wine, and there was little enough there to give a person heart—unless, like him, she went beyond the brief past of his future into the deep past of another age. He’d been a good man then, even a hero to some. But God knew he’d had weaknesses then too, and for certes there had been nothing in his old life to indicate he was capable of saving the world from a terror like Dharkkum. At his lowest point, in the deserts of Palestine, he hadn’t even been able to save himself. That job had been left to Dain Lavrans.
He nearly smiled. The fears of his past paled considerably compared to the trials he’d faced in the future, but he had no doubt that Dain could have met the challenges of the weir and the Waste with the same cool competence that he’d used to establish himself as a mage of renown in ancient Wales. The man had been reforged in the heat of the desert, and naught had ever touched him afterward, until Ceridwen.
“Tell me about your sword,” Avallyn said, the sound of her voice bringing him back to the present, her words making him wonder if she could read his thoughts. The sword had been Dain’s.
“ ’Tis called Scyld, after the first king of the Danes,” he said, unsheathing the sword and lifting it over his shoulder, laying it across his lap, “and is mine only by an accident of fate.”
She reached out and ran her hand down the sword’s hilt. “Fate makes few mistakes and tolerates even fewer accidents. If this weapon came through the weir with you, more likely than not ’twas meant to be yours.” Her hand slid over the curved cross-guard to the blade, and she looked up, her brows knitted together. “Who wielded this blade before you?”
