VirtualDesire (10 page)

“Maybe they didn’t know what was in the dagger either.” She
might as well go along with him for a few more hours. It was almost dawn.
Another yawn overcame her.

He stepped off the platform and went down on one knee before
her. “Gwen, I have allowed my anger to spill over on you a number of times. For
that I am truly sorry. It is not my nature to be ill-mannered.”

When he closed his fingers around hers, his heavy gold ring
heated, and a tingle went down her spine. She pulled her hand away.

“You said I arrived here by magic. How does this magic
work?” He gestured to the platform and the keyboard.

The ring on his outstretched hand was deeply incised with
Celtic knotwork. She remembered seeing the pattern on one of the caldrons in
her book of myths. The pattern had a name, but it eluded her. “The game should
have warmed up by now. Hit the green button and then put on the headset. It’s
automatic,” she murmured, trying to dredge the name from her memory.

He tucked the headset under one arm and rested his long
fingers on the keyboard. The familiar hum of the game filled the room.

His expression was impassive, his voice filled with emotion.
“You called me stupid. You were right.”

“Vad, I didn’t mean it that way.” When was he going to give
up this charade? “It’s just an expression.”

“But still, ‘twas stupidity to think the council trusted me.
Or that Kered would return.” A crooked smile twisted his mouth, pulling his
wound, painting his face with pain.

He put out his hand.

Automatically she took it. His fingers tightened on hers;
his ring bit into her hand. Heat whipped up her arm, across her shoulder, and
down into her breast.

A whisper of thunder rumbled outside.

Flames of pain hammered her hand, her arm, her chest.

“Vad,” she said in a gasp as he disappeared in a blinding
white light.

The dream was wonderful. A fresh breeze kissed her cheeks,
and the scent of damp earth filled her nostrils. A few wispy clouds scudded
across the lavender sky.

Lavender?

Gwen groaned and sat up. She felt the full punishment of the
spiked punch. Vad stood ten feet away, hands on hips, contemplating the
landscape.

Or lack of it.

As far as Gwen could see, the world dropped off at his
feet—a purple world. She rose to her knees and scrabbled backward. Her stomach
lurched.

Vad whipped around. “Ah, you are awake.” He strode to where
she knelt, hooked a hand beneath her elbow, and hauled her upright.

“No,” she cried and jerked back. The world did drop off.
They stood on a cliff.

“Be still,” Vad ordered.

“No, I am not going to be still,” she said slowly and
distinctly. “I am getting as far from here as possible.”

She went nowhere. Vad’s grip could hold a tractor in place.

“And where would you go?”

The question confused her for a moment. She looked about.
Behind her rose a steep mountain meadow, carpeted in emerald green and capped
with fir trees. It could be any mountain in Pennsylvania or New York, but in
front of her lay a vista as foreign as the moon. She knew it well, saw it every
day when she or a customer played
Tolemac Wars II.

The rocky red ground before her was the same color as the
huge red sun overhead. The barren landscape stretched for miles, and seemed
miles below them. In the distance, their tops obscured by low white clouds,
rose craggy mountains as forbidding as the highest Rockies.

Yes, she recognized it all from the game; only when playing
the game, she didn’t really have to cope with it.

“How did this happen?” she asked, changing her mind about
running away. She tucked herself against Vad’s warm side instead. He smelled
like home—caramel popcorn and dryer sheets. “I won’t believe we’re where we
are. I won’t. I’m dreaming. I’ll wake up soon. I drank too much punch—”

“Enough.” The word was a command, but it was kindly spoken.
He hugged her against his side and swept a hand out to the land before them.
“We are home.”

Gwen squeezed her eyes closed. “I’m not. I’m in a dream. My
sky is blue. My cliffs are out west. Ocean City is flat. I like flat. I’ll wake
up and be lying in my bed, hoping Liz did a huge layout on my ball for her
magazine.”

“We must go.”

“It’s a cliff. I’m not going anywhere.” The sky darkened
from lavender to nearly black; an angry buzz filled her ears. Her knees
buckled.

Vad scooped her into his arms. He hurried from the
precipice’s edge to a patch of mountain meadow. Carefully he laid her on the
long grass. Her face was as white as her gown, as white as the tiny star-shaped
flowers that clustered about her like errant flakes of snow.

He swallowed and shook off the temptation to kiss her awake.
Kisses led to more problems, not fewer. He had kissed many a woman, but unlike
those many kisses, the kiss Gwen had given him at the ball still remained on
his lips. The sensations that had coursed through his body surged back if he
let himself dwell too long on the feel of her in his arms. He would not think
about how he’d stood like one of the beams holding up the Music Pier while she
had taken control of his every sense.

No woman should control a man. He never lost control to a
woman. They were easily acquired and easily forgotten. At least until this
little one.

He went down on one knee and picked up her hand instead of
kissing her. “Gwen. Wake up.” He chafed her wrist.

In the next moment, she rolled over and emptied her stomach
into the grass.

“You are not very feminine,” he said. He withdrew to allow
her privacy for her suffering. Perhaps if he could make her angry, she would
forget her discomfort. Anger chased other emotions away, according to his awareness
master.

He had but a small ache behind his eyes from the strange
journey, and whatever else he felt, the overwhelming feeling was exhilaration.
He was home, in a place where all was familiar, where all made sense. Here—and
nowhere else—he could reclaim his honor, his reason for being.

Before him stretched the Scorched Plain, and his life would
be as the land was, parched, useless, deadly, were he no longer a warrior. If
he returned with the dagger and map, he would at least prove to the council and
Samoht that he had obeyed their commands. Should they reward him with the
return of his sword, his good name, all he had suffered would be as nothing.

“I need a drink of water,” she called out to him.

He turned around. She was sitting cross-legged, her gown
tucked about her knees. Her face was almost its usual color. Wind riffled the
short golden strands of hair on her forehead. She looked childlike and yet
womanly at the same time.

“Come.” He offered her his hand. She stared at it warily,
then took it. He helped her rise, then steered her away from the cliff and up
the mountain. “The wise man will have water, and perhaps a potion for your
belly.”

She trembled as she wiped her mouth with the back of her
hand. “I’m feeling better, but my mouth tastes like I ate your fur coat.”

He smiled. Her humor was returning. She would survive. Then
he thought of his coat and the fortune stitched inside, lost because he had
forgotten it—forgotten it because he wanted one last contact with her and, in
truth, did not believe standing in the black room would send him anywhere.

All the legends would need rewriting.

She stumbled. He tightened his hold on her and looked down.
Her tiny feet were bare.

He lifted her into his arms.

“What are you doing? I can walk. The grass is nice and
soft.”

“You may be able to walk, but your pace will slow me down.”

“And here I thought you liked me,” she said.

When she wrapped her arms about his neck, he grinned. How
well she fit in his arms. Then he lost his smile. It was liking her that
complicated everything…liking the taste of her mouth…

“I like all women.” Her arms loosened their grip. “Your
presence is a complication I can do without. Nilrem will see to your care and
perhaps figure out a way to send you home.”

Her body tensed in his arms. “You’re going to leave me here?
What’s the point in that?”

“I did not ask you to come.”

She arched and twisted in his arms, breaking his hold. He
almost dropped her. She shrieked and pushed. He let her go.

“Are you mad, woman?” He rubbed his neck where her sculpted
nails had scratched him.

“Yes. I am mad. How dare you blame me for this? I didn’t
want to come with you. You held my hand. It’s your fault I’m here.”

Vad stared at her for a moment. He expelled a long breath.
Like it or not, he was responsible for her safety.

“We will not argue who is at fault. You should have stayed
in your chamber; I should have pushed you away. Now let us proceed.” He held
out his arms.

“I’ll walk.” With her little nose pointed into the air, she
stalked off through the meadow. “And I’m not staying with anyone named Nilrem,”
she said over her shoul­der. “Nilrem!” She halted. “Oh, no.” She turned in a
whirl of skirts that displayed an enticing amount of leg. “Vad, hurry up; catch
up.”

How like the ice woman she appeared in her flowing white
gown, which fluttered in the rising wind. Was his vision of her on the ice
fields a prophecy of this moment? And just as she had that time on the ice, she
lifted her hand and beckoned to him.

Unable to resist, he went to her. “What is wrong? Are you
going to be ill again?”

“No.” She trotted along at his side when he reached her.
“Don’t you see? Your name, Vad, comes from Sandav. Nilrem is Merlin backward.
He was a famous magical person of legend.”

Vad heard the echo of his laugh across the hillside.
“Magical? Nilrem may be wise, he may even be a bit backward, but he has no
pretensions to magic.”

“Okay,” she bit out, and it amused him to see the becoming
flush tint her skin. “Forget I suggested it, but treasures like the Seat of
Wishes sound pretty magical to me.”

“As you wish; the magic insult is forgotten.”

“Grrrr.” She stalked away, her arms straight and swinging.
The funny little noise she made in her throat told him her anger was at a fever
pitch. At least she would forget her discomfort.

Within moments they had cleared the mountain meadow and
entered the trees. Vad imagined her feet suffered for her pride, but he did not
offer again to carry her.

The trees opened into a small clearing. Before them stood
Nilrem’s hut, but the sight made him frown—no smoke curled from the smoke hole.

“It doesn’t look like he’s home,” she said. “Should we
knock?”

“Why? Do you think there is some magical knock we can use to
conjure him up?” Her frown became a scowl, and he grinned at her as he pushed
open the door to the wise man’s home. He inspected the hut and finally returned
to where Gwen stood on the threshold.

“The hearth is cold and the ashes swept away. There is no
food on the shelf. He is gone, possibly for a long time, as his stick is gone
as well.”

“Stick? Is he really old? And maybe he just went out for
more food.”

“No one knows how old Nilrem is—ancient, some would say—but
not magically so,” he hastened to add before she could interrupt him. “As for
food, Nilrem wants for nothing. Many bring him offerings in payment for his
help and his prophecies. I fear that if there is no food, it must be generally
known he will be gone for a long time.”

“What does that mean for us?”

“For me, it means I will have no ancient wisdom to read the
signs and portents before I make my decisions. For you…”

“Oh, no, you’re not leaving me here. Not by myself. How
would I eat? What if someone came?” She backed a few steps to the door.

Vad forced himself to remain impassive. The last thing he
had expected was Nilrem’s wandering off. “There is another place I can look for
him. He often goes to a sacred cave for silent contemplation.”

“You meant we, didn’t you?
We
can go look for him.
I’m not staying here alone.”

Vad opened his mouth and then closed it. “You are ill
equipped to sustain yourself. Even the smallest child of Tolemac can snare
food, choose the proper herbs, catch—”

She held up her hand. “Enough. I get it. I’m incompetent to
survive in the wilderness. So take me with you.”

“We must deal with your feet before you can make even the
shortest of journeys.” He retreated into the hut and went to a pile of blankets
on a low frame. He rummaged beneath it.

Gwen came closer and sidestepped the flurry of objects he
tossed her way.

“Ohhh.” She picked up a silvery trinket. It was a chain of
large links that was too long to be necklace and might instead be a woman’s
belt. Every other link contained what appeared to be a cabochon ruby. “This
looks like it belongs in a museum—in the ancient-stuff collection. It’s
beautiful.”

Vad looked over his shoulder and shrugged. “Many are
grateful to Nilrem for the wisdom he offers.”

She stirred the growing pile of tributes with her toe. “Some
payment. What’s he do? Cure disease?”

“Only the gods can cure disease.” Dusting his hands on his
thighs, he rose. “Try some.”

An assortment of shoes and boots lay tangled in jewelry,
leather belts, daggers, and cooking utensils. The items ranged from humble
wooden bowls to objects as magnificent as the silver belt.

A few moments later, he fitted her on the sword side with a
silvery painted-leather slipper that might have been made specially for the
long gown in which she’d appeared the night before, and for her shield side, a
low boot that was down-at-the-heel.

“Nothing matches,” she said, but he was glad she did not
concern herself with the trifles of fashion. “Where do you think the other
shoes are?”

“Who can guess at the needs of a wise man?” Vad touched her
shoulder. “How does your belly feel? I am sorry there is no water or food to
offer you.”

“What are we going to do? Aren’t you hungry? How am I going
to get back to Ocean City? All I wanted to do was apologize. I felt really bad
about calling you stupid. I was unkind. And now…” She paused and licked her
full lips. “I see that all you said was true. This place does exist. I’m so, so
sorry, and—”

“Enough. I do not need your apologies.” She looked
pathetically small and out of place. She was out of place, he reminded himself,
as out of place as he had felt in Ocean City.

He shoved the remaining shoes and objects back under
Nilrem’s bed. “I am leaving.”

Without a backward glance, he turned and went through the
door.

“Wait for me,” she called, stumbling in the mismatched shoes
as she followed him. “Where are we going?”

“First, to find you water. Second, we will seek Nilrem’s
cave.”

“I’m not very fond of caves.”

Vad shrugged. “I, too, do not care much for caves. They are
dark, wet, and oft-times inhabited by creatures.”

She glanced about her and limped along. He imagined she
could feel every pebble and twig on the sloping terrain. They walked quickly
down the mountainside and into a row of trees.

“When you say creatures, just what do you mean?”

“Within the cave or without?”

“Oh, let’s start on the outside.” She had to hurry to keep
pace with him, as his stride was almost twice hers. Low brush caught at her
hem, hampering her movement, but he did not pause to accommodate her. She must
toughen herself or she would suffer all the more.

“The white hart and hind graze Nilrem’s Hart Fell,” he
began, to distract her from her feet. “They are sacred and never hunted, except
by the Gulap.”

“Gulap? I forgot all about them. Gulap means claw, doesn’t
it?”