[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (35 page)

“Oh, Hells, Vil, I’m sorry,” she said,
instantly contrite. “I know. I can’t bear to think about it, not in detail.” To
my astonishment she snorted. “But Stone Mik, of all people, to get out in one
piece!”

I had to laugh. “Aye. Chalmik, indeed! Never
heard his formal name. Poor bastard.”

Aral grinned. “That and all. Can you believe
it? And everybody who didn’t call him Mik called him Stoneface. Some folk just
can’t enjoy themselves. I always thought he had a terrible time dealing with
real people. I have to admit, I was amazed this morning. He handled that poor
woman so well.”

We fell silent again, just for a moment, then
Aral piped up, “Did you see that town at the bend in the Kai? It was a long way
down, but it looked huge! Was it Kaibar, do you think?”

“Must have been. It certainly looked like
there was another river joining just there, and the Arlen meets the Kai at
Kaibar, doesn’t it?”

We spoke frantically about our trip, about
flying—anything that would keep us from dwelling on the thought of our friends
and colleagues, dead at the demons hands—but we could not sustain it for long.
Silence fell again, and for a while neither of us could think of a way to lift
it. Trust Aral, though, when she spoke she found a subject that would get me as
rattled as she was.

“So, Great Mage Vilkas,” she said, lightly
mocking, “what are you going to do when the moment comes?”

‘What moment?” I asked, because that was one
of the chief things I didn’t want to think about.

“Vil, I know they’re following that bloody
great black thing, but the truth is that these dragons are taking us as fast as
they can fly towards Berys. He’s a demon-master. Hells, he’s probably the next
best thing to the Demonlord himself, now. Whom he seems to have summoned, Goddess
help us all, in the form of a Black Dragon, and don’t you want to know how he
did that.”

“Not really, no,” I replied sharply.

“Vil, you know what I mean,” she said gently. “I
know you fear demons…”

“I don’t damn well fear them,” I snarled. Unfeigned
this time.

“Eh?” she said, astounded. “But you can’t
fight them. I know you can’t. I thought you said …”

“I don’t fear them, Aral. I hate them,” I
replied fervently, rising swiftly to my feet. “Being anywhere near any of them
makes my skin crawl and my eyes itch.” I was breathing hard, and my heart
hammered in my chest as I spoke out the real truth at last. “I told you I
feared them because the truth is so much worse. I hate them so hard it makes my
gorge rise up and my throat close. I want to kill them all, Aral,” I purred
evilly, kneeling right beside her and dropping my voice to whisper the dark
truth, finally, to her startled face. “Every one of them. Slowly. Squeezing,
choking, crushing, making sure it suffers agonies before I grant it the mercy
of death.”

Aral used a word I didn’t know she knew and
stared up at me wide-eyed. “Damnation, Vilkas,” she said at last, her voice
shaking. “That’s sick.”

“I know,” I snarled, rising and turning away. “Why
do you think I hold back? If I kill one I’d feel the need to kill them all, and
by Shia’s toenails, I probably could.”

Goddess. My own words were making my stomach
chum.

“That doesn’t change the fact that we’re going
to be facing them soon,” she said flatly, getting to her feet and brushing off
her clothes. “Day after tomorrow, if Shikrar is right.”

“Damn it, Aral, don’t you think I know that!”
I shouted at the top of my voice.

“And what are you going to do when Berys
summons a Lord of Hell, or we have to deal with the Demonlord?” she asked, her
voice now harsh and unrelenting. “I don’t care how loud you yell, Vilkas
ta-Geryn. It’s not going to go away. Tomorrow or the day after we’re going to
have to deal with Berys, and he’s going to have emptied half the Hells to
protect his precious skin. We need to think what to do. You need to think what
to do.”

I started to shake and swiftly crossed my arms
to hide it.

She must have been weary, rattled, for she saw
me tremble and against all sense she reached out to me as if to take me in her
arms for comfort. I shrank from her proffered embrace as from hot iron. At that
moment it would have been as welcome.

She closed arms and heart and mind and all, in
the instant, for which I was profoundly grateful. “Just remember, Vil,” she
said, her voice calm and reassuringly normal. “Dreams are just dreams, no
matter how powerful. They’re not predictions.”

I did not reply. I could not, I was still
shaking, and it would have shown in my voice.

She reached up and laid a hand on my arm. That
was bearable, though revealing. I could feel her shaking too. “I know you. I’ve
watched you for two years, I’ve worked with you at a depth even you are hardly
aware of.” I looked at her then, and saw in the dim firelight that she was
smiling, albeit rather crookedly. “Sweet Shia, I’ve opened my spirit-self to
you more times than I can count. I know you can be trusted.” In a moment of
wild daring, in spite of the rejection I had thrown at her only moments before,
she raised her fingertips swiftly to her lips, kissed them, and touched my
cheek softly as a butterfly. “Maybe it’s time you learned to trust yourself.”

I could hear her voice shaking with emotion. I
had told her long ago that I didn’t like to be touched casually. Even putting
her hand on my arm was greatly daring. Planting a once-removed kiss on my cheek
was practically an invitation to share her bed.

I knew perfectly well that now would be a good
time to take her in my arms for comfort’s sake, to give her what she needed
because I knew she needed it. We might both be dead soon, and dear Goddess, who
was I to refuse her?

She didn’t give me the chance. She felt me
flinch from her hand on my face and turned away, to put a few more sticks on
the fire and sit close to it, her arms about her knees. No matter what her
heart was shouting at her, she was too good a friend to blame me for her own
feelings. She had offered what I could not accept, and she knew it, and she
closed in once again.

In the silence we could still hear the soft
murmur of the voices by the river. Jamie and Maran.

“Damnation,” sighed Aral from the heart,
resting her head on her knees. “Idai, Lady, be quick, I beg you. I’m bloody
starving and bloody exhausted and those two are breaking my heart.”

I’d just started filling my waterskin at the
river’s edge when I heard someone on the shore behind me. Old habits die hard,
don’t they? I had my belt knife ready to throw when she spoke.

“It’s just me, Jamie.”

I put the knife away, but to be honest I wasn’t
any the less shaken. Worse, if anything. I knew what to do with a foe.

“Maran,” I said, by way of greeting.

It was getting dark, but I could see her grin.
“Aye, well, at least you remember my name.”

I said nothing, and she sighed. “I see. You
remember other things as well. So do I.” When I didn’t reply, she sighed again.
“Ay me, here we go. Yes, it was my fault. No, I never sent word to you or to
Lanen. And I never—” She stopped herself, and after a moment went on, more
gently, “By all the leaves of spring, Jamie, did you ever in all your days
think we’d meet again like this?”

“I never thought we’d meet again at all,” I
said. I hadn’t meant my voice to be that harsh. I’d forgotten that rogue vein
of poetry in her. It came out at the damnedest times, and it summoned our past
together as nothing else could have done.

I heard the faintest grunt, as though she were
in pain. “Aye, well, that’s fair. Neither did I,” she said. “I’ve had the
easier part. I’ve been able to watch you both over the years. I wish the damned
thing had sound as well as sight, I’d have given a lot to have heard some of
those arguments,” she said, a hint of lightness in her voice. It went warm and
gentle again when she added, “I saw you teach her to use a sword, Jamie, in the
middle of the night when Hadron couldn’t see. I watched you when you held her
as she cried. I saw the look in her eyes when she was learning how to ride and
went over her first jump—and it wasn’t Hadron she looked to with all the pride
of her soul, it was you.”

“She is not the child of my body,” I growled.
My heart was aching as though someone held it in their fist and was squeezing.
If it had been daylight, perhaps I could have kept up my guard, but in the
starlit darkness there was only Maran and me, and twenty years of pain.

“I only knew for certain when I saw Marik
capture her on the Dragon Isle,” she replied quietly. “She must be his
firstborn. And mine.” Her voice caught. “I swear, Jamie, I thought she was
yours,” she said. “I begged the Lady—”

“She is mine!” I cried, throwing down the
waterskin. “Damn it, Maran! You think a few weeks’ dalliance makes a difference
to who her father is? Never!” I paced away from her, and swiftly back to stand
before her. “He may have made her with you, the heartless bastard, but I’m her
father!”

“I know,” she said, her voice steady. The
distant firelight gleamed on the tracks down her cheeks. “And never a day
passes but I thank the Goddess that she had such a father as you.”

“She needed a mother as well,” I snarled. “You
should have been there, Maran. What in the Hells is wrong with you? Why didn’t
you come back?” I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “She needed you, damn
it!”

I needed you, damn it!

She just stood there, gazing down at me. I
couldn’t bear it, I turned and walked away before I was tempted to violence. I 
 didn’t get far, though. Her voice stopped me.

“Jamie. Jamie,” she called softiy, as a lover
calls her beloved, all her heart in her voice. “I know. My soul to Mother Shia,
I know. I needed her too, and I needed you. Dear Lady. I needed you as a
drowning man needs air.” And she was starting to gasp a little, for air, to
keep her voice under control. She stopped and just breathed—when she spoke
again her voice was calm and steady and as inexorable as the water flowing down
beside us, and my heart pounded to every word. “I thought the Farseer attracted
demons, Jamie. The first ones came for me, and I fought them off, but then one
hurt Lanen”—her voice faltered for an instant—“I couldn’t take the chance.”

“You never told me,” I said, turning to her,
shaken. “Maran, you never said there were demons come after you.”

“I must admit, I wasn’t exactly thinking
clearly,” she said. “I didn’t know how to hold off demons then. I’m better at
it now. But I swore that if the things were going to take whoever stood near
that damned Farseer—then by the Lady, they weren’t going to get either of you.”
Her voice grew thicker as she spoke, now, and her pauses for breath stopped my
very heart within me. Her throat was so closed it seemed near to choking her. “I
married
Hadron so that… that if
they took my husband they wouldn’t take you. When I left and for sixteen years
after, I feared I would draw down death upon us all, Jamie, so I stayed … I
stayed as far away from you … as I could.”

Every part of me longed to go to her, to take
her in my arms, the idiot, to make all our pain go away, to make those years
disappear and make her mine again—but I stood where I was, and I knew it was
right.

“You are the best man I have ever known,
Jamie,” she said, her voice forcing its way through her tight throat. “I know—I
know you and Rella are together now, and I’m glad of it. She’s a fine woman,
and a good friend.” She coughed, and turned it into a tortured laugh. “But if
she ever loses her mind and tells you she’s done with you, I’ll be by your side
in your next breath, and by every star that ever shone, I swear I’ll never
leave you again.”

My head was swimming, my body shaking with a
hundred memories. I could bear it no more, all my best intentions melted into
air, I swear I could hear her heart beating with mine. “Maran—” I began, moving
towards her.

“No!” she cried, and swiftly backed away. Her
voice was shaking now, along with the rest of her, I guessed. “Goddess, no—”
Her voice dropped to a whisper in the darkness. “If you touch me I am lost.
Please, I beg you. I am holding true by a thread as it is.”

“Come, Maran,” I said, trying to speak
lightly. “Do you tell me the men in Beskin are all blind? I cannot believe it.
Surely you have someone to walk beside you, to keep you company in the long
nights of the northern winter?”

There was a moment’s silence, and she
answered, “I have never loved another man, Jamie. Ever. In all my life, apart
from that madness with Marik. By my life I swear it. And there is only one in
all the world I love more than you, and she lies asleep by that fire yonder.”

“Goddess, Maran—” I croaked, my heart wrung.
All those years alone beat upon me worse than fists. I at least had known the
love of my heart’s daughter. She had had nothing.

“So now you know how I feel, and I won’t say
anything else about it again,” she said, her voice growing stronger. The
firelight was dying a little, I could see nothing but her shape in the
starlight. “Let us meet only as friends, Jamie, working together with these
others to finish Berys. Goddess knows, it’s time the world was rid of him. I
have done so many stupid things in my life,” she said quietly. “Together let us
do this one good thing. For Lanen. For you and Rella.”