by Holly Lisle
Alcie clung to Rethen and nodded, and Kait disappeared back into the cabin.
The next sound they heard was the gush of water. "That will be the ballast," Dùghall said.
The back end of the ship started to come down, slowly enough that both Alcie and Dùghall could compensate and keep their positions steady.
Still the feeling of having nearly died didn't leave him when at last his feet touched solid ground again. He was grateful for every breath he took and for every bruise he bore. The narrow escape from the House, the rough flight and harrowing landing, all combined to make the fact that he was a long way from anywhere and uncertain about what his next move should be seem trivial something easily overcome.
He walked through the darkness toward the beach, and suddenly realized he did not walk alone.
"I thought when I was hanging by that aft rope and the ship went tail up that I was dead for sure," a female voice said out of the darkness.
One of the guards, Dùghall realized, and chuckled. "You weren't alone. When the room tipped sideways I nearly pissed myself. I could see all of us being sucked out over the ocean and dropped into the water a thousand leagues from land."
"You hurt much?"
"Some bruises. You?"
"Twisted my right wrist all to hell. That's why I'm not unloading can't carry anything for a bit."
They reached the rocky shore and stood watching the moonlight reflecting on the pounding waves.
"Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" the woman asked him.
"No," he said, and meant it. "I cannot remember when last life tasted so sweet."
A hand slipped into his calloused but small, warm and strong, vibrantly alive and he rubbed his thumb along her palm and felt a thrill he hadn't felt in years. His now-young body suddenly tasted the hungers he had been denying; he turned to her and touched her cheek with his other hand, and felt her lips brush against his fingertips in a soft kiss.
"We're alive. Dance with me," she said with a soft laugh, and he found himself enchanted by the reflection of moonlight in her eyes. The two of them kicked off their boots at the edge of the beach and danced in the coarse, damp sand, arms draped around each other, whirling in circles that grew slower and tighter and closer, until at last they stood, breathing hard, bodies pressed tightly together, and realized the inevitability of that which must come next.
Not speaking, they sought out a flat rock well out of the reach of the spray. It still held the warmth of the day; when Dùghall touched its water-smoothed surface it almost seemed alive. He caught the woman around the waist and lifted her onto it, then climbed up after her. They knelt on the boulder facing each other and slowly began to touch, and then to kiss.
Alive! his body sang. Alive! Escaped! Free!
Her left hand fumbled with the ties of his breeches, and impatient, he undid them himself and pulled them off. How awkward undressing was something he had forgotten in the last many years when sex, when it came at all, came in the careful confines of a bedroom, with clothes made to be removed.
With growing urgency, he and the young guard undressed each other, met, coupled, plunged and thrust in rhythm with the steady roar and hiss of the sea. Wild things, they lost themselves in the intensity of pleasure so great it became almost pain, and consumed themselves in their own reckless abandon. Lust, passion, and over all sheer grateful joy at finding themselves miraculously alive fueled their hunger, so that when they sprawled together, spent, they only lay that way for moments before hunger drove them to seek the comfort of each other's bodies again.
When at last they tired of their sport, they clung together laughing, and sat on the shore watching the first graying of the sky to the east. The guard pulled a flask from her hip bag and twisted the cap from it. She took a short drink and handed it to him. He followed her example, and felt the delightful fire of good Sonderran liqueur burning its way down the back of his throat and warming him with the friendliest of glows.
"Watch," she said. "The sun will come up right there. There's such magic in watching it rise."
They sat on the rock, both partially clothed, arms around each other, and the sky grew purple, then pink, then orange.
Then he saw it. For just an eyeblink, a ray of purest green shot above the horizon. It vanished before he could even motion toward it, swallowed by the brilliance of the sun that followed in its wake, but she'd seen it, too. He heard her gasp and whisper, "Fair fortune follows an emerald sun."
But that flash of green had sent his mind reeling back to the day he'd parted from Ranan and the words of his eldest son's benediction. "Love a woman well before you take back your years," Ranan had said. "Fight once, drink once, dance once... and once, watch the waves on the shore with young eyes, and see the flash of green as the sun rises over the water's edge."
In that moment, that loving benediction seemed almost a curse in a single night he had touched all the points of true living his son had wished for him but one; he could almost think that the only thing which lay between him and imminent doom was the fight he had not yet had.
Chilled, he shivered and broke the spell that he and the guard had spun between them. She turned to him and smiled, but her smile was sad. "A good night," she said softly. "But now the day's work awaits. I should be getting back."
He nodded, and impulsively stole another kiss from her lips. "The best night I can remember in more years than I can count," he whispered. He squeezed her left hand gently and said, "Thank you. Perhaps..." And he thought, Perhaps we could do this again, but he stopped himself before he said it. This moment would never come again bound to the ground, she became a guard again, while he became one of the Family she guarded; no road ran between those two points that could withstand regular travel and not destroy the terrain over which it ran. Within the single span of a night they had been equal survivors on a rocky shore. But daylight brought the world with it.
She smiled sadly and kissed him back. "I'll cherish this night always. Always."
And he nodded and fell back on gallantry. "As shall I, beautiful one."
He did not ask her name. He would learn it in the coming days, and when he did he would hold it close to his heart, but he told himself he would not speak it aloud. They pulled on the rest of their clothes and walked together up the bank, gathering their boots that still lay above the high water mark. They shook out the little blue crabs that had lodged in them overnight, laughing softly as they did, and then they walked slowly back to the airible.
* * *
"I know he isn't here," Ian said, "but this won't wait. Where did he go?"
Kait knew exactly where Dùghall was, and knew as well how he had occupied himself during the hours of darkness. "He'll be back soon enough. What's wrong?"
"Ulwe asked me to take her to the road. What she's discovered bodes poorly for all of us. She's waiting by the road and she's afraid. She said she'll go back to what she's found once, but she doesn't want to have to do it twice."
Kait rose. "I'll go get him," she said, but that proved not necessary. Dùghall joined them at the campsite, a small smile still curving at the corners of his mouth. Kait hated to see it go she saw a wistfulness in his eyes that made her feel sad for him. Still, Ulwe and her news, whatever it might be, should not be kept waiting.
Ian led the two of them to the road, and to the little girl who stood beside it.
"We've come," Dùghall said. "What have you found, child?"
"Trouble comes," she said, "on too many feet to count. The road screams with the pain of the dying, and with mourning for the dead. It brings me stories of suffering and fear and death, but not from sickness. From war."
"From which direction does war approach?" Dùghall asked. Kait saw that his lips had thinned; his face became a mask of calm, but she smelled his sudden fear.
"That way," Ulwe said, and pointed south and west.
Directly back to the mountains above Brelst, to the place where Dùghall's sons waited with the army.
&nb
sp; "What else does the road tell you?" Dùghall asked, and his voice shook, though he tried to hide it. "Can you tell me who lives and who has died?"
Ulwe shook her head. "They are all strangers to me, and too far away. Single voices drown in all the noise." She paused, then said, "I can tell that many live and flee for their lives, that many others pursue. Nothing more, except that they run toward us."
Ian, Dùghall, and Kait exchanged glances. Kait said, "This is the attack you foresaw?"
"I think so," Dùghall said. "My heart says it is. And my gut. Let me spend some time with my zanda. When I've done that, I'll know for sure."
He left, and Kait crouched and hugged Ulwe tightly. "How are you feeling?"
"I want my father to have been someone better," Ulwe said. "I want him to be still alive, and to be someone I can love."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I was looking for some sign of him when I found out about the war that comes to us," Ulwe said softly. "I wanted to find his ghost, to find that he still looked for me." Tears were running down her cheeks, and her voice caught when she spoke, but she kept on. "I wanted to know that he loved me. He did come for me."
Kait said, "You were the best thing he ever had a part in, Ulwe. And he did love you. I have his voice inside of me still; I can touch his memories. The place he made for you in his heart was truly good. You can hold on to that."
Chapter 44
Dùghall took his zanda back to the rock where he and the guard had spent the night. He spread out the black silk on the weathered surface, then settled himself cross-legged in front of it, silver coins in his left hand.
Everything we do in life, we do for a first time and a last time. We usually remember the first, but rarely suspect the latter. Vincalis's introduction to his Book of Agonies. Dùghall couldn't shake that line from his thoughts. The sun felt warm on his face, the rhythm of the surf and the scent of salt water soothed him, the soft cries of the shore birds that raced to the water's edge and then away as if terrified of wetting their feet seemed to him a detail of the moment that was both homely and poignant.
In his young body he was still an old man, with an old man's memories and an old man's fears. Young men could not conceive of doing something for the last time; old men thought of little else. Now the night that had left him behind loomed like a suspected last time.
In his hand, the coins lay heavy and still. He closed his eyes, summoned a calm he did not feel, and let the silver fall to the worn silk surface. And then he sat there a while longer, eyes closed against the morning sunlight, because he did not wish to see what the future held.
In the end, he looked.
Well, this was the unpleasant travel his earlier reading had foretold the journey that he had to take if he hoped to triumph. And that unrecognized enemy that he'd discovered was on the way to meet him. Almost surely the Dragon at the head of the army that pursued his sons, he thought darkly.
The Duty quadrant told him that his payment would be due soon, and he found himself wondering what exactly the gods wanted from him, if he could not be seen to have done his duty yet.
Only the godless man can know true happiness, Vincalis had written in one of his darker moments, for nothing can be asked of him that he must give to preserve his soul. Later in the Book of Agonies he had reversed that, but Dùghall found some comfort in knowing that he'd thought it, anyway.
One part of the reading seemed to him to point directly to Kait and Ry lovers parted by his doing as well as their own who, for the good of all, faced their own destruction... or not.
The most enigmatic part of the reading that lay before him was that every outcome lay in an either-or position. Either those he loved faced utter destruction, or else they didn't. Either the forces that had gathered against Matrin would destroy it, or they wouldn't. Either his health would continue strong and robust and his wealth would expand... or it wouldn't.
He'd never seen such a pointless cast of the coins, he thought. And then he started trying to puzzle out the meaning of the Self coin that lay, obverse and reversed, dead center on the zanda cloth, perfectly inside the circle where all the quadrants intersected.
The obverse of self was selflessness. And not the selflessness of conscious thought, of awareness, which the coin would have indicated if obverse but upright. No. Selflessness that came from the core, that came not from what he thought but from who he was. Unconscious openness, a thing the body knew so well it did not need to ask of the mind in order to choose its actions or follow its path.
That was the thing that lay at the heart of the reading, that touched the outcome of every quadrant equally that was the thing that the gods would ask of him. Soul-deep selflessness.
And he didn't think he knew a more consciously selfish human being in the world than himself.
At some moment in the near future, he would be asked to make a choice. He would have to make it in a situation of great duress, and the choice he had to make was going to hurt. He was going to have to give up something he loved the zanda suggested that strongly, though it did not point to any specific thing. If he chose one path he would be healthy and wealthy, Matrin would prosper, those he loved would survive. If he chose the other path, Matrin would fall to ruins, those he loved would be annihilated, he himself would lose his health and his wealth and probably his life.
Or, he thought grimly, those combinations could change. Nothing on the zanda said one outcome would be all good and the other all bad. It might be that he had to sacrifice his loved ones to save Matrin, or sacrifice his wealth or his health to save his loved ones, or sacrifice the Matrin that he had served his entire life to save the people in it. The sun-touched coins gleamed up at him from the black silk silver possibilities touched by the sun, the eternal golden fire of the universe. And for that moment he sat at the center of those possibilities like a spider at the center of its web. The gods were telling him that they intended to throw the problems of the world in his lap, that they intended to say, Here, you choose, when the choice was one that even a god would dread making.
His fingers shook as he gathered up the coins, wrapped them carefully in the folded silk, stored them in their bag. He sat on the rock a while longer, thinking. Even refusing to choose would be a choice and almost certainly the wrong one. He could run away from the enemies who approached. He could run away from his duty. The gods always left a door open for those who decided running was the best option. If he did, though, he had little doubt but that the worst of what he had seen on the zanda would come to pass.
At last he rose to a standing position and lifted his face to the sun. "I am still your sword, Vodor Imrish," he said. His voice was calm, firm, and sure. "Draw me at will, use me as you must."
Chapter 45
Five days into the voyage, the K'hbeth Rhu'ute sailed through the northern edge of the Thousand Dancers and into Goft's harbor. Ry, still mourning Jaim's death and still stinging from the funeral at sea, was not ready for what he had to do next, but this would be his single best opportunity.
He gave each of those who still bore loyalty to Ian a cautious signal; those who could do so without arousing suspicion would stay aboard the ship with him, while those who could not would meet with Yanth at the Coral Goddess. He and Yanth had gone over both prongs of their planned attack in the dark hours when everyone else slept, committing to memory the acts that they dared not commit to paper. If they could succeed and reach Ian and prove him alive, they would be heroes; if their plan failed, they and all those who followed them would be adjudged mutineers they'd be hanged from the K'hbeth Rhu'ute's mast and would not be afforded even the coarsest of burials at sea; their bodies would simply be dumped over the side like offal from the galley, food for fishes.
When most of the men had departed for their brief shore leave, Rrru-eeth called together all those who remained. She called her first mate, who was loyal to her, her chief concubine, also loyal, her purser, who hid his loyalty for Ian, and Ry.
Outside the
room, two Keshi Scarred guards watched the door. The five of them sat at the table with a sumptuous feast spread before them fried plantains glazed with honey butter; mounds of sugared beans; lightly sweetened cocova molded into the shapes of fanciful fish; platters of steamed dolphin on black rice and kettled tuna and baked tubers stuffed with cheeses, meats, and grapes; fingerling pastries and sour pies and sweetcakes. And to drink, water clear as the air itself, filled from goblet bottom to goblet top with spheres of lemon-flavored ice a treat of such great rarity and such enormous cost that Ry, scion of one of the two greatest Families in the world, had only had it three times before in his life.
"Eat and drink, my dear comrades, my beloved colleagues," Rrru-eeth said, spreading her delicate hands expansively over the repast.
"You feed us as you would feed kings," Ry said.
