Fires of Aggar (33 page)

She scowled gloomily, the slender arches of her dark brows straightening, folding a crease between. It was an awkwardness — not truly a mistrustful sort of feeling. But still, some gnawing sense of… exposure… was lingering.

Whatever it was, Llinolae didn’t like it.

As they broke into the damp moss and dirt of a more open track, Llinolae found her brooding stare had focused onto the back of that ruddy red vest. The easy swing of the sword at Gwyn’s hip, the confident square of those shoulders, the quiet assurance of a Marshal’s authority all should have countered this nagging doubt.

Should have, yet didn’t — like the amarin’s intricate shadows of duplicity and secrets in the Palace! Llinolae fumed.

And then suddenly Llinolae could put her finger on it. “I’ve spent most of my lifetime hoarding secrets!”

“What did you say?” Gwyn called back quickly.

“Nothing of any consequence,” Llinolae grinned ruefully. “I’m just muttering to myself like a surly old infantry veteran.”

Gwyn’s laughter rippled back and left Llinolae only more mindful of the difference this Marshal was introducing to her. Save for the rare visits her harmon made to dey Sorormin’s home world, she’d never had the luxury of a Sister’s freedom.

Until now. And Llinolae found, it was unsettling. Gwyn acted as if they were equals — as if they were simply Marshal and Dracoon… as if Gwyn herself was privy to all Llinolae’s secrets and completely non-judgmental about what such knowledge entailed.

The seeming arrogance of such unconditional acceptance was beyond Llinolae’s sensibilities. Life with court baskers and military schemers had taught her much more caution. Need for that caution tugged at her, challenged her appraisal of Gwyn — devalued the woman’s character. That in itself fired an equally unwieldy conflict within Llinolae because she found she wanted to respect this woman. She wanted to like Gwyn! And that equally puzzling prejudice only made Llinolae frown all the more as they trudged along.

“Mind the footing, Ril!” Gwyn called ahead as they neared the gorge floor. Yet she too felt that insistent pull of excitement. She could almost hear the low throated whine of Ty’s impatience below.

The track returned to firmer stuff, and this time Gwyn did not call out to slow Ril. Ty was so near — so very near! The packbond between the three of them fairly thrummed with their anticipation. If Gwyn had stopped to think about it, she would have been proud of her bondmate’s patience in waiting below on the gorge floor, because this trail certainly offered no safe place for a rambunctious reunion. But after two-and-a-half days of separation, she was as caught in the excitement of re-unifying the pack just as completely as Ril and Ty were.

Almost from habit, or perhaps from wanting to share such uncontainable joy, Gwyn glanced over her shoulder to Llinolae. Copper and blue gazes met, and the Dracoon gasped, startled into an abrupt halt as her hand instinctively reached to the earthen wall beside her for support. Gwyn paused expectantly but unconcerned. Her skin flushed the deep, deep brown of rich topaz; her eyes brightened, sparkling with flecks of gold like sunlight.

“It’s our packmate, Ty! Just feel how close she is!” Gwyn reached back to Llinolae, vaguely thinking the long downward trek had begun to exhaust the other. But her hand was waved aside before they’d even touched; Llinolae’s own skin tones darkened from a weary caramel to a sultry cocoa in a swift rush.

The lightest of frowns began to mar the beauty of Gwyn’s flushed face. She took a hesitant step towards Llinolae only to have a hand wave her assistance aside before they touched again.

“I’m fine. I just need a short rest.” The Dracoon pointed down the trail. “Go ahead. Go greet your friend.”

Hesitation held Gwyn motionless until Llinolae nodded her on with a brighter smile and firm, “Go!”

The Amazon turned, almost darting off with the released excitement. As she disappeared around the bend of the trail, Llinolae sagged into the rough dirt wall of the trail’s side. Her knees felt like honey butter. Her heart was racing as madly as if she’d run the horse course ’round Khirla on foot.

Nothing — nothing! — had prepared her for the utter, incredible beauty in that woman’s sheer joy. Gwyn’s smile alone had taken the breath from Llinolae’s throat, the voice from her tongue… frozen her very wits. In that single shared glance, the ground beneath her feet had hummed with the vibrancy of spring and her entire being had been fused — suspended, cradled — in perfect harmony between the wondrous rapture of one joyous woman and the answering choir of rejoicing life cycles.

“Mother!” With a jolt, Llinolae realized, “I’m in love!”

There was nothing else that could explain that sense of… of sweet, utter wholeness joining her to both Gwyn and Aggar. Nothing save her blue sighted sensitivity could have called that beauty of spring from the surrounding forest’s amarin in an answering chord to Gwyn’s unguarded rapture.

She shook her head a little bit to clear it, a hand absently reaching to that banded kerchief about her brow. Her fingers jerked back as if burnt, and she stared at that hand with widening eyes of disbelief.

Unlike the clean tunic Gwyn had loaned her, this kerchief had been worn recently — in fact, it was the same the Amazon had used to mask her face against the smoke during the rescue the other night. It still carried a very strong imprint of the Amazon’s personal amarin, and it had been that lingering essence of the Amazon that had been drawing Llinolae’s touch.

“Amazon?” Llinolae muttered, amazement numbing her again. Had she ever even called this woman by her true name? Her ice blue eyes looked blankly down the trail. “Amazon… Marshal… Gwyn….” She paused and looked at that hand before her again. Slowly, the ancient-learned words of her Blue Sight Mistress and her n’Athena mentor rose in a frightened whisper, “Soroe n’ti Mau… Soroi… Soroi n’Athena. Ti mae n’Gwyn n’Athena? ”

And then something clenched hard in her stomach, and Llinolae finally registered the words Gwyn had used in turning to her with that wondrous smile. The icy, frozen feeling descended again, and both hands grasped the gorge’s rocky soil as she sank to the trail. Stunned, she heard those words again and again — there was nothing but a single, clear, unhidden meaning of amarin carried within them.

“… our packmate — Ty! Just feel how near she is!”

Gwyn knew of her Blue Sight.

Llinolae felt winter sweep in with her deepest fears.

Gwyn knew. She wasn’t merely making some assumption because of the color of Llinolae’s eyes. All the old feigns that it was simply an anomaly of her mixed blood, all the care she had practiced to keep her Sight unnoticed all these tenmoons by the Court, the guards, even the Steward! — all she had done to avoid discovery by the Council of Ten. Only two days with her, and she knew? But no, Gwyn had never been fooled! The restless, uneasy feeling that had plagued Llinolae — that she felt somehow exposed before this woman — was because her secret was, in truth, exposed.

And Gwyn was a Royal Marshal, duty bound to report this. Then in Churv the Crowned Heir, too, would be required to inform the Council of Ten — who would claim her for their Keep. It wouldn’t matter after that. They might train her for someone’s Shadow, give her the choice of becoming some mindless Seer or perhaps, if the Mother’s Hand held her very, very near she would only need to become a Seer’s Apprentice. But her life would not be her own anymore — not ever again.

“Yet Dearest Mother, I love her.” Eyes closed in a sigh of weary resignation and dejection as her head leant back against the gorge wall. “By Your Hand, Mother, I do.”

A cool-nosed, leathery-skinned muzzle nudged Llinolae’s hands where they dangled over her knees. For a long moment, there was no movement from the woman. Her legs were drawn up, head bowed against her knees, but Ril was patient and did not hurry that slow return from the amarin of Aggar. She had known the Dracoon was long aware of her approach just as the woman had known of the sandwolf’s vigilant guard since mid-afternoon, even though Ril had kept a respectful distance down trail until now. If there had been a danger threatening during any of that silent time, Ril also knew the Blue Gift would have sensed it equally as clearly, and Llinolae would have brought herself out of this weary trance-like state quite abruptly.

A hand moved a bit.

Ril’s ears perked forward attentively, her head cocked a little to one side. The sandwolf’s empathic understanding of strangers did have its limits. In some ways she was more sensitive to this woman’s character because of their shared awareness of amarin and sentient emotions. But Ril had been raised among the Blue Sights of Valley Bay and had been trained among the Council’s Seers. She knew no Blue Sights such as this woman.

Not only had Ril met few with the Sight whose innate talents were more powerful than Ring Binder Bryana’s, but Ril had never remembered anyone quite like this woman in style; Llinolae was very different in her use of the Blue Gift. It felt to Ril something like Gwyn once felt when they’d suddenly come face-to-face with a traveler who hadn’t spoken any language Gwyn knew — it was bemusing and sometimes frustrating. Ril had the disconcerted feeling, however, that Llinolae was rapidly learning to understand this sandwolf more quickly than Ril was learning of Llinolae.

A slow, deep breath was drawn. Eyes still closed, the woman lifted her head in a stretching arch until she rested straight-backed against the gorge wall.

That was another thing of difference Ril had noticed. This Blue Sight Llinolae reached into her harmon-self center, before extending downward into the outer amarin beneath her. Then Llinolae literally took her harmon — the part of her amarin that made her life essence uniquely hers — and she literally flung her harmon outward into Aggar’s life cycles to meet and weave herself through the threads of amarin.

As Ril understood things, this was impressively different from the Council’s Seers. Those Blue Sighted Seers drowned in the sweet amarin of Aggar to lose all sense of themselves, and eventually they were eclipsed, their personal sense of identity forgotten or lost amid the intertwining patterns and weaves. This allowed the Seers to read and describe the patterns of the amarin when the Council Masters questioned them, or to reweave the physical patterns around them when prompted. The result of the Council and Seers’ work was admirable enough — they’d nearly done away with things such as earthquakes and droughts.

She was different in respect to Seeing as well. Ril knew Blue Sighted Shadows or Valley Bay Sisters kept somewhat anchored to their self-identity. Some of them were quite powerful; through skill and out-of-time Seeing, some could reach the Amazons’ home world or reach back into the history of Aggar. Then there were those with an affinity for understanding animals as if they were bloodkin, or for deciphering human loyalties — their talents depended on their training and individual strengths. But Llinolae did not ‘look’ at the tree or star or neighboring companion when she used her Sight. The Blue Sights of Ril’s acquaintance had always ‘looked’ outward. They literally needed to see the amarin — eyes open. Ril knew they couldn’t do anything, when blind-folded. In some way, they visually had to ‘See.’

The sandwolf’s head tipped aside once more, peering closely at the woman. But Llinolae’s eyes were closed. This was certainly not what the Sisters of Valley Bay managed.

Apparently Llinolae’s harmon truly did co-exist with the amarin of Aggar’s life cycles. Through air or soil, emotion or sound, sight or smell, she could fling her harmon into the amarin through all of them.

What fascinated the sandwolf even more was that when Llinolae did this, it was a meeting of amarin — a meeting of life cycles and self — a meeting of essence to essence with an equality that Ril had never seen any other of the Sight display. It meant that Llinolae’s awareness of her personal amarin was exchanged with a Primal Awareness of Life’s Quintessence. That was a daunting concept — an individual calmly meeting some vast, omniscient consciousness and returning with her sanity still in place.

It was a difficult for Ril to grasp what that might do to a human’s harmon. How could any individual simply bond to something as all-encompassing, as completely different in thought, mood and perspective, as the naked energies of Life?

Then again, the sandwolf pondered, perhaps it was a matter of simplicity and acceptance not prideful recognition. Packmates could be combinations of sandwolf, human and eitteh. All three were sentient beings, yet all very different. Communication was sometimes difficult because of those differences, but that was why the bonding was undertaken as a lifetime commitment to the chosen pack — it was why packbonds honored affectionate respect and trust above all else.

For the pack to thrive, the packmates had to value an intimate understanding of one another. Without the entire pack’s commitment to mutual understanding, communication disintegrated because of individual differences. And so the bonding had evolved within the sandwolves to an instinctive imprinting at an early age, to provide an even finer sense of communion and projection of meanings to the ‘others’ within the pack.

The inherent respect for differences, the patience to learn new communication skills without rushing trusts — Ril’s own empathetic senses told her that Llinolae cherished these things dearly. That was the basis for many strong relationships, and sandwolves accepted it without question — which raised another interesting observation: Llinolae’s attraction to Gwyn.

The woman stirred again.

Returning abruptly to practicalities, Ril eyed the damp trail somewhat disgustedly. The Terran fabric of those short trousers was tightly woven, but it wasn’t waterproof. Llinolae was going to feel very cold soon.

The Dracoon’s legs unfolded stiffly. Her hands dropped to press flat against the ground.

The touch of Llinolae’s amarin withdrew from Ril’s empathic senses and Ril’s attention shifted again. Perplexed, the sandwolf’s brow wrinkled. She stared harder at the ground, but found no lingering traces of Llinolae’s amarin within the Great Forest’s own.