Wess wrapped her arms around herself, trying to ease the ache in her ribs.
Suddenly Quartz was beside her.
"You"re hurt - why didn"t you tell me?"
Wess shook her head, unable to answer. And then she fainted.
She woke up at midaftemoon, lying in the shade of a tall tree in a circle of her friends. The horses grazed nearby, and Aristarchus sat on a stone beside the stream, combing the tangles from his fur. Wess got up and went to sit beside him.
"Did you call my name?"
"No," he said.
"I thought I heard -" She shrugged. "Never mind."
"How are you feeling?"
"Better." Her ribs were bandaged tight. "Quartz is a good healer."
"No one is following. Aerie looked, a little while ago."
"That"s good. May I comb your back for you?"
"That would be a great kindness."
In silence, she combed him, but she was paying very little attention. The third time the comb caught on a knot, Aristarchu" protested quietly.
"Sister, please, that fur you"re plucking is attached to my skin."
"Oh, Aristarchus, I"m sorry..."
"What"s wrong?"
"I don"t know," she said. "I feel -1 want -1..." She handed him the comb and stood. "I"m going to walk up the trail a little way. I won"t be gone long."
In the silence of the forest she felt easier, but there was something pulling her, something calling to her that she could not hear.
And then she did hear something, a rustling of leaves. She faded back off the trail, hiding herself, and waited.
Lythande walked slowly, tiredly, along the trail. Wess was so surprised that she did not speak as the wizard pa.s.sed her, but a few paces on, Lythande stopped and looked around, frowning.
"Westerly?"
Wess stepped into sight. "How did you know I was there?*
"I felt you near ... How did you find me?"
"I thought I heard someone call me. Was that a spell?"
"No. Just a hope."
"You look so tired, Lythande."
Lythande nodded. "I received a challenge. I answered it."
"And you won -"
"Yes." Lythande smiled bitterly. "I still walk the earth and wait for the days of Chaos. If that is winning, then I won."
"Come back to camp and rest and eat with us,"
"Thank you, little sister. I will rest with you. But your friend -you found him?"
"Yes. He"s free."
"You all escaped unhurt?"
Wess shrugged, and was immediately sorry for it. "I did crack my ribs this time." She did not want to talk about the deeper hurts.
"And now - are you going home?"
"Yes."
Lythande smiled. "I might have known you would find the Forgotten Pa.s.s."
They walked together back towards camp. A little scared by her own presumption, Wess reached out and took the wizard"s hand in hers. Lythande did not draw away, but squeezed her fingers gently.
"Westerly -" Lythande looked at her straight on, and Wess stopped. "Westerly, would you go back to Sanctuary?"
Stunned and horrified, Wess said, "Why?"
"It isn"t as bad as it seems at first. You could learn many things..."
"About being a wizard?"
Lythande hesitated. "It would be difficult, but - it might be possible. It is true that your talents should not be wasted."
"You don"t understand," Wess said. "I don"t want to be a wizard. I wouldn"t go back to Sanctuary if that were the reason."
Lythande said, finally, "That isn"t the only reason."
Wess took Lythande"s hand between her own, drew it to her lips, and kissed the palm. Lythande reached up and caressed Wess"s cheek. Wess shivered at the touch.
"Lythande, I can"t go back to Sanctuary. You would be the only reason I was there - and it would change me. It did change me. I don"t know if I can go back to being the person I was before I came here, but I"m going to try. Most of what I did learn there I would rather never have known. You must understand me!"
"Yes," Lythande said. "It was not fair of me to ask."
"It isn"t that I wouldn"t love you," Wess said, and Lythande looked at her sharply. Wess took as deep a breath as she could, and continued. "But what I feel for you would change, too, as I changed. It wouldn"t be love anymore. It would be ... need, and demand, and envy."
Lythande sat on a tree root, shoulders slumped, and stared at the ground. Wess knelt beside her and smoothed her hair back from her forehead.
"Lythande..."
"Yes, little sister," the magician whispered, as if she were too tired to speak aloud.
"You must have important work here." How could she bear it otherwise? Wess thought. She is going to laugh at you for what you ask her, and explain how foolish it is, and how impossible. "And Kaimas, my home... you would find it dull -" She stopped, surprised at herself for her hesitation and her fear. "You come with me, Lythande," she said abruptly. "You come home with me."
Lythande stared at her, her expression unreadable. "Did you mean what you said "
"It"s so beautiful, Lythande. And peaceful. You"ve met half my family already.
You"d like the rest of them, too! You said you had things to leam from us."
"- about loving me?"
Wess caught her breath. She leaned forward and kissed Lythande quickly, then, a second time, slowly, as she had wanted to since the moment she saw her.
She drew back a little.
"Yes,"she said."Sanctuary made me lie, but I"m not in Sanctuary now. With any luck I"ll never see it again, and never have to lie anymore."
"If I had to go-"
Wess grinned. "I might try to persuade you to stay." She touched Lythande"s hair. "But I wouldn"t try to hold you. As long as you wanted to stay, and whenever you wanted to come back, you"d have a place in Kaimas."
"It isn"t your resolve I doubt, little sister, it"s my own. And my own strength.
I think I would not want to leave your home, once I"d been there for a while."
"I can"t see the future," Wess said. Then she laughed at herself, for what she was saying to a wizard. "Perhaps you can."
Lythande made no reply.
"All I know," Wess said, "is that anything anyone does might cause pain. To oneself, to a friend. But you cannot do nothing." She stood up. "Come. Come sleep, with me and my friends. And then we"ll go home."
Lythande stood up too. "There"s so much you don"t know about me, little sister.
So much of it could hurt you."
Wess closed her eyes, wishing, like a child at twilight seeking out a star. She opened her eyes again.
Lythande smiled. "I will come with you. If only for a while."
They walked together, hand in hand, to join the others.
ISCHADE.
C. J. Cherryh
1.
Shadows slipped along the cobbles in this deepest sink of the Maze, in that small light of the moon which wended its way among the overhangs and glistened wetly off noisome moistures. A well-dressed woman had no place here, even shadow-clad in black, robed and hooded - but she went deliberately, weaving only from the course of the foulest and widest streams, stepping over most.
And a ruffler, a bravo, a sometime thief- Sjekso by name-he took to the alleys as a matter of course.
Sjekso belonged here, had been whelped here, wove in his steps too, but not from fastidiousness, as he came from the opposite direction down the web of dark ways. A handsome fellow was Sjekso Kinzan, a blond youth with curling locks, a short and carefully kept beard, his shirt and jerkin open from the recent heat of the common room of the Vulgar Unicorn - from the heat, and, truth be told, from a certain vanity. He radiated s.e.x, wine vapours, and a certain peevishness: was out of pocket from the dice, had lost even Minsy"s purchasable favours to a bad throw ... his absolute nadir of discomfort. Minsy was off with that wh.o.r.eson Hanse, while he- He staggered his hazed way back towards his lodgings and his own doorway off the Serpentine. He snuffed and faltered and lamented his misfortune with himself. He hated Hanse, at least for the evening, and plotted elaborate and public revenge...
And blinking in the vapours up from the harbour and in the Uncertain focus of his eyes, he found his way intersected with a woman"s in the alleyway. No ordinary doxy, this: a courtesan of quality strayed from some rendezvous, an opportunity some fickle G.o.d had tossed into his path or him into hers.
"Well," he said, and flung wide his arms, leaned from one side of the way to the other to block her attempt to walk around him ... a little fun, he reckoned. And again, owlishly: "Well."-but she made a quick move to go past him and he seized her in that swift pa.s.s, grabbed and grasped and felt female roundnesses in delightful proportions. His prey writhed and pushed and kneed at him, and he gripped her hair through the hood, drew her head back and kissed her with fair aim and rising pa.s.sion.
She struggled, which motion only felt the better in his hands, and she gave out m.u.f.fled cries, which were far from loud, his mouth covering hers the while. He held her tight and sought with his eyes for some more convenient alcove among the broken amphorae and barrels, a place where they might not be disturbed.
All at once another sound penetrated the fog of sense and sound, the scuff of another foot near him. Sjekso started to spin himself and his victim about, went the least bit over to that foot and had a hand clamped on to his own chin, his head jerked back, and a deadly keen blade at his throat in the same instant.
"Let the lady go," a male whisper suggested, and he carefully, trading in all his remaining advantage, relaxed his hands and let them fall, wondering wildly all the while whether his only chance might be in some wild try at escape. The woman in the edge of his vision stepped back, brushed at her robes, adjusted her hood. The knife rode razor-edged at his throat and the hand which held his chin gave him nothing.
Mradhon Vis kept his grip and held the ruffian just off his balance, looked in a moment"s distraction at the lady in question ... at a severe and dusky face in the faint light of the alleyway. She was beautiful. His romantical soul was touched - that seldom-afforded self which launched itself mostly in the wake of more profitable motives. "Be off," he told Sjekso, and flung the villain a good several body lengths down the alley; and Sjekso scrambled up and set to his heels without stopping to see anything.
"Wait!" the woman called after Sjekso. The would-be rapist spun about with his back to a wall, ducking an imagined blow from behind. Mradhon Vis, dagger still in hand, stood facing him, utterly confounded.
"The boy and I are old friends," she said - and to Sjekso: "Isn"t it so?"
Sjekso straightened with his back against the wall and managed a bow, if a wobbling one ... managed a sneer, his braggadocio recovered in the face of a man he, after all, knew from the dice table that night - and Mradhon Vis took a tighter and furious grip on his dagger, knowing this vermin at least from the tables at the Unicorn.
But feminine fingers touched very lightly on his bare arm. "A misunderstanding,"
the woman said, very soft and low. "But thank you for stepping in, all the same.
You have some skill, don"t you? Out of the army, maybe - I ask you, sir ... I have need to find someone ... with that skill. To guard me. I have to come and go hereabouts. I could pay, if you could find me someone like yourself, a friend maybe - who might serve..."
"At your service," Sjekso said, with a second grander flourish. "I know my way around."
But the woman never turned to see. Her eyes were all for Mradhon, dark and glittering in the night. "He"s one, in fact, I might sometimes want protection/row. - Do you know someone who might be interested?"
Mradhon straightened his back and took a superior stance. "I"ve served as bodyguard now and again. And as it happens, I"m at liberty."
"Ah," she said, a hand to her robed breast, which outlined female curves in the shadow. And she turned at once to the confused villain, who had taken advantage of the moment to slip towards the shadows and the corner. "No, no, wait. I did promise you this evening. I had no right to put you off; and I want to talk with you. Be patient." - A glance then back, her hand bringing a purse from beneath her robes. She loosed the strings and took out a gold coin that caught Mradhon"s whole attention, the more so when she dropped the heavy purse into his hand. Only the one coin she held, it winking colourless bright in the moonlight, and she held that up like an icon for Sjekso"s eyes - another look at Mradhon: "I lodge seventh down from this corner, the first steps you"ll come to that have a newel on the rail: on your right as you go. Go there. Learn the place so you can find it tomorrow morning, and be waiting there for me at midmorning. I"ll be there. And the purse is yours."
He considered the weight in his palm, heavy as with gold. "I"ll find it," he said, and, less than confident of the situation at hand: "Are you sure you don"t want me to stay about?"
Black brows drew together, a frown uncommonly grim. "I have no doubts to my safety. - Ah, your name, sir. When I pay, I like to know that."