"That may be," Gwen admitted.
But she stumbled again as they were leaving the castle, stumbled only on the single step down from the drawbridge, and this time Rod had to catch her, not steady her, and she couldn't make her legs bear her. He held her in his arms while footmen ran for a coach.
" 'Tis only weariness," she told Rod.
"You mean exhaustion," he said, "and you're right—total exhaustion. A few weeks' rest will restore you."
But it didn't.
One
ALEA CAME INTO THE LOUNGE AND FOUND IT empty. Impatiently, she looked around, irritation growing, then put the feeling into words and smiled with amusement that was tinged with self-mockery. She was feeling, How dare Magnus not be here when I'm wanting company? as though his only purpose in life were to amuse her!
Well, of course it wasn't. He was there to provide her this wonderful spaceship with its luxurious furnishings and gourmet food and drink, and to guard her back in battle. What else was a man for?
Loving, something in her seemed to say, but she shied away from that. The parents she had loved had died and left her alone and defenseless; the neighbors she had thought her friends had turned against her to gain her inheritance. The boy who had proclaimed his undying love for her and seduced her had then mocked her and spurned her. What need had she for love? Much better to have a shield-companion like Magnus, a true friend who was unwavering in his devotion, even though that devotion was so much less than a lover's—and what did she want with love anyway? There hadn't been any pleasure in it, only pain. Oh, there had been pleasure in knowing she was making her lad happy, there had been pleasure in his passion, in the intensity of his longing for her, his need for her—but no pleasure for her body.
Magnus, though, with the sensitivity under his impassive shell, with the leashed fire of the emotions that he focused only on The People, whatever people they might be at the moment… if he were in her bed, might not love-making become…
She shut the thought off with anger. The bards lied, the poets lied, there was no pleasure in love! Besides, why jeopardize the solidity of their friendship for a romance that might turn sour?
Or might grow to greater heights all their lives …
Poetic falsehoods, she told herself angrily, and went to look for Magnus, already angry with him for leaving her the victim of her thoughts and feelings. Of course, she could ask Herkimer, the ship's computer, but somehow she thought she knew. If Magnus wasn't in his stateroom and wasn't in the lounge, he would probably be on the bridge. What need to ask?
So she strode down the companionway, a tall slender woman wearing loose shipboard coveralls to hide the curves beneath, long-faced with eyes too large and a mouth too wide, with a nose too small for the chiselled planes of a warrior's face, a latter-day Valkyrie born to a mortal man and woman rather than to the gods, in token of which her long yellow hair was coiled atop her head in two long braids, as though to cushion a helmet.
Up the spiral stairs she came, into the hush of the bridge. It was dark, of course, with only pools of light at the never-used consoles, to let the projected stars show in the dome overhead, that the pilot might see toward which star he coursed. She looked up herself, caught in the majesty and grandeur of the galaxy. She gazed for minutes, longer than she had intended, before she lowered her gaze to the solitary figure silhouetted against the powder-trail of the Dragon.
She gazed at him for a few minutes, marvelling that his seven-foot form with all its bulk of muscles should seem small against that starry grandeur, then looked more closely, feeling his unaccountable sadness, letting it soak into herself until she shared it, wondering.
Wondering? Why? How should it be unaccountable? For as badly as love had treated her, it had treated Magnus far worse. She didn't know the details, honored his privacy too much to try to read the depths of his mind, but from a careless word dropped here and there, she gathered that some young she-wolf had tortured his heart, whipsawing his emotions from love to utter humiliation not once, but again and again, for the sheer pleasure of abasing him. At least her lad had done it only once, and then more to taste the pleasures of her body than of her grief, and when he had spurned her, it was to make sure he wasn't burdened with a great lumbering lass, not for the purpose of tasting her pain.
Though he had seemed to enjoy that, too …
She shook off the memory of him angrily, concentrating fiercely on the great hulk in the acceleration chair, head back, eyes fixed on the stars. What need had she of the memory of a traitor when she had the reality of a friend who cared for her far more than any but her parents ever had? And what right had he to be gazing at the stars and wallowing in his misery when she was here, lively and vital, to distract him? She stepped forward, angry words rising to her lips to rouse him from his lethargy, to jolt him back to the life they shared—but as she came close, she saw the unutterable grief in his eyes. She slowed, letting her gentler emotions well up, sympathy and concern, and asked, very softly, "What hurts you, Magnus?"
His head tilted, gaze coming down, seeming to wander over the fittings of the bridge until it found her face, then rested a minute before he said, "My little brother."
Words of anger leaped to her tongue again, anger at the younger man who would hurt his own brother so, but she contained them, pushed them down, knowing that the younger d'Armand, the titanic telepath so distant on their home world, would scarcely spend the vast amount of energy necessary for his thoughts to reach Magnus over so many light-years unless there were good reason. "What news could a brother have to so sadden one of his own blood?" she asked softly.
"News of our mother," Magnus answered. "She is dying."
ALEA SPOKE BUT little in the days that followed but was never far from Magnus, trying to reassure and comfort him by her mere presence. She remembered well the death-watch as her mother lay dying, remembered the greater pain of her father's last days, greater because there was no one with whom to share it, no one whose pain dwarfed her own.
She never thought that it was unfair that Magnus should have the comfort of a friend when she had not—she was only glad that he did not have to face this long journey home alone.
In moments of honesty, she had to admit that she was also glad he finally needed her in a way neither of them could deny.
So she sat by and waited, watching his profile against the stars or watching him sitting in the lounge in the cone of light from the hidden lamp, saw him looking up now and then, startled to see her sitting and reading across from him, remembering his manners enough to ask how she fared, trying to engage in conversation, and she tried to be reassuring and positive then, smiling and talking of inconsequentialities, but ones in which she knew he had an interest—art and literature and science—though before long, his attention would fade, his gaze would wander, and she would let her own conversation lapse and return to her reading.
Reading! She hadn't even known how, when he met her on the road, on her home planet of Midgard, where only the nobles were literate. She hadn't known how to fight when she had run away from slavery, had survived a night or two alone and friendless in a world torn by war and hatred, in a forest filled with wolves and bears. Magnus had—well, not taken her in, though it felt like that. She was sure he hadn't thought of it that way, either, though she suspected he knew he was giving her protection. He hadn't said so, though, only that he was glad of a travelling companion. So he had walked the roads with her, teaching her how to fight and how to use the talent for telepathy that had been buried inside her all her life, and that she had never known. Together they had braved the perils of her world and set in train a course of events that would prevent her own people from their continual attempts to tyrannize the other peoples of Midgard.
Then, done with the task he had come to do, he had called down his starship, and she had stood rigid, knowing she would be deserted again—but Magnus had taken her aboard, given her a new life when her old one had collapsed, taken her to strange and amazing w
orlds where people labored in need as great as her own. They had fought off wild beasts and wilder people, guarded one another's backs, labored to save the weak and the oppressed, come to know each other's needs in battle, then in daily life—and never once had he put out a hand to try to touch her or uttered a honeyed word to try to coax her into his bed.
It was almost an insult, really, except that she knew now he had known it would violate the fragile bridge of trust growing between them—that, and that he didn't really seem to have much interest in her as a woman, or in any kind of intimacy, for that matter. Now, though, the trust had grown, become solid in spite of her tantrums and insults, and she found herself wishing now and again that he would put out a hand to her—but when she caught herself thinking that, she was aghast. She'd had enough of that sort of thing with the one young man who had used her and spurned her! The friendship she had with Magnus was far better than that!
Though perhaps it could be even richer…
This was not the time to think of it, though, with Magnus so sunken in gloom, so afraid he might not reach home in time—so she sat and read, or cleaned and oiled her leathers, then sharpened her blades, or read, fetching a cup of tea for him when she brewed one for herself, accepted the cups he absentmindedly brought her in return, chivied him gently into eating, and didn't let him see how frightened she became when he lost his appetite.
In fact, she did all that a good travelling companion should, all that a battle-mate could, and gradually, little by little, he began to talk, first a phrase or two, then in sentences, and finally in long rambling monologues about his childhood, his early travels, his parents, his brothers and sister—but he always cut short when he realized he was beginning to talk about that last adventure, about the woman who had hurt him, about the reasons he had left home.
"I couldn't be my father's son, you see." He stared straight into her eyes then, as he rarely did anymore. "I couldn't be an extension of him. I had to be myself, my own man, and I could never be that at home unless I turned against him, fought against him—so I left instead."
And Alea listened and nodded, eyes glowing, drinking up all the information about Magnus the boy, Magnus the wounded lover setting off on his travels, Magnus the son and brother—Magnus the person, the human being, as she had yearned to know him for three years and never had.
In return, when he asked her what it had been like growing up as the tallest girl in a Midgard village, one far too tall in every way, she couldn't very well refuse to answer, no matter how sharp the hurts the memories brought—but telling him, she discovered that the pain had dimmed, that she could cope with it now, that she could look at her memories and treasure the good ones and resolve the bad ones. Oh, they were still pain-filled, but they no longer had the power to cripple. She knew she could stand against them now, against any one of the people who had hurt her, could stand against the whole village with Magnus beside her—and knew he would always be there, even without the lure of sex to keep him, that she had come to matter to him as deeply as that—and paradoxically, it made her yearning for his touch grow so sharp that it was almost unbearable, even though she knew that sex hurt, that the feelings that went with it gave pain far sharper—but the conviction grew that with Magnus, it would not be so. She told herself that she only wanted to share his bed so that she could be sure of him, and that wasn't necessary at all, for she could be far more sure of him as a battle-companion, that their steadily-deepening friendship was far surer and more meaningful than romantic love could ever be, that she didn't need the baring of souls that went with it, that the intimacy they were sharing now was far more meaningful than the confidences of lovers, that she could be closer to him as a true friend, now when worry and grief made him more vulnerable than he had ever been.
But something deep inside her refused to believe it, any of it. So the starship shot onward through eternal night, bearing two people who were finally coming to know one another as they never had.
A SCREAM RANG through the castle's hall, and Rod started up, then looked back at Gwen's pale face on her pillow, framed by the long flows of red hair streaked with white. She opened her eyes, reading his anxiety and smiling. "Go to her, worried father. I shall still live when you return."
"I know. I still don't want to leave you unless I have to." Rod sat back onto her bed, cradling her hand in his. "But it's hard having you ill while our daughter's giving birth."
"I shall linger awhile, I assure you," Gwen said with a smile that suddenly blazed through her illness. "However, this is women's work, and it is better if you leave it to Cordelia and her midwife."
"Yes, I guess so." Rod managed a smile. "I had to live through you giving birth four times and face the fact that I couldn't do anything to lessen your pain. You think I'd be used to it by now."
"It has been many years," Gwen conceded. "Then too, 'tis different with a daughter than with a wife." For the first time, her own worry showed in her face. "Finally I too must face that helplessness. At least I can share her pain and give her some strength."
"You haven't any to spare!" Rod caught her hand in a panic. "Don't tax yourself!"
"My body may have weakened," Gwen told him, "but my mind is yet strong."
Another scream tore through the hall.
Rod looked up with a shudder, but Gwen said quietly, " 'Tis the last such. The babe is born."
Rod's head snapped around to stare at her. "You mean…"
"Wait." Gwen's hand tightened on his. "We shall see soon enough."
Nonetheless, it seemed an hour before the midwife appeared at the door, holding a blanket-wrapped bundle that emitted a gurgle.
Gwen held up her arms, suddenly vital again. "Give me!"
The midwife came and laid the blanket in her arms. Gwen cradled it and beamed down, her whole face lighting up with an intensity of pleasure and wonder that almost scared Rod. Tentatively, he reached out to open the blanket in the crook of her elbow a little wider—and looked down himself at the dark-haired, wrinkled, pink-and-red little face with the eyes solemnly shut. He marvelled at the wise, even profound expression and wondered all over again what wisdom souls forsake in order to be born, in that bright world from which new souls come.
Then he looked up at his wife and was awed all over again by the look of near-adoration and exaltation that suffused her face. Could it be that the baby alone would keep her alive?
"Now I have lived most truly and completely," Gwen said softly. "What greater joy could life hold for me than this?"
Rod hoped it was his imagination that gave the words a very final ring.
FINALLY A DOT of light in the dome of the bridge grew brighter than all the others, finally it swelled into a little circle, and Alea knew they were coming home—at least, to Magnus's home; she doubted it could ever be hers, or would need to be. As the disk swelled, Magnus grew even more tense; he began to snap at her if she said the wrong thing. She managed to stifle the retorts that rose to her lips, telling herself that he would be able to relax when the trauma of his homecoming was over, that he would be sorry for the things he had said. She throttled her anger at his not even seeming to notice her, so preoccupied was he with meeting the family he had left ten years before, and though she adamantly resisted the temptation to read his mind, she could tell his thoughts anyway: How would they have changed, the family he had deserted? How betrayed had they felt by his leaving? Was there still any welcome there for him, any love? He had told her many times that "You can't go home again," and she had believed him—so what must it be like for him now, coming back when he knew that the home he remembered was lost in the mists of the past?
Then, in the perpetual evening gloom of the lounge, Magnus looked up at her, his eyes suddenly focusing on her, and warned, "Gregory says we're clear to land—on the night side, of course, so that we won't frighten the peasants."
"Our usual approach." Alea dared to try a smile.
Magnus stared at her a moment, then smiled in return with a warmt
h that surprised her and reached out to catch her hand, and something melted within her.
Then he let go and turned his eyes forward to the viewscreen where the huge cloud-streaked disk floated, and advised her, "Better web in."
The arm of the lounge chair popped open, the anchor rod rising up. Alea pulled it across her body and pressed it against the back, where it fastened and clung with a grip that couldn't be shaken even if the ship were smashed to filings. She could feel the pressure of descent, feel that pressure lift as Herkimer countered it with artificial gravity, felt the tug-of-war of natural forces against synthetic ones, as the huge disk on the screen expanded past its edges and was somehow no longer in front of them, but below, rivers and mountain chains streaking past, the night rolling across to engulf them, then only the glint of moonlight reflected off clouds until daylight rolled in to dispel darkness. Now as they raced across the surface of the planet, she could make out the patchwork of fields and relaxed into the familiar feeling of approach on a medieval planet, forgetting for the moment the tension that would come on their landing, of meeting people Magnus knew, but who might have grown and changed into strangers.
Night rolled across the screen again, but this time there were lights here and there from towns, lights that disappeared as night deepened, and when daylight came back, she could make out roads threading from one cluster of roofs to another. They drifted across the screen much more slowly as the starship shed its speed, slowing till it might land without churning up a whole forest. When night came a third time, she could see individual houses very clearly, barns, and even the dots that were cattle in the fields. A dark blot on the screen became treetops silvered by moonlight that drifted so slowly they scarcely seemed to move, then suddenly swelled and went racing by, the speed seeming greater as the ship swooped lower, and Alea's heart rose into her throat, as it always did, the primitive peasant within her unable to believe that they would not fall out of the sky and slam into the earth, to be squashed like flies. Her whole body tensed, pushing against the webbing as though she could slow the ship by her own strength, even as she scolded herself for a foolish barbarian.
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