He expected to find Lew resting, but the old man was working in the garden, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and humming as he plied his hoe between rows of tomatoes, marrow squashes, and salad greens. Bees buzzed through the companion-planted strawflowers. The smells of honey, pollen, and moist earth tinged the air.
Lew looked up as Domenic approached, and Domenic thought he had never seen his grandfather so content. The lines of suffering that marked his face had eased, and a new brightness lit his eyes.
They sat on the bench to talk. Domenic poured out his concerns about Garin’s fever being a delayed-onset Terran weapon.
“No, I don’t think so, not after so long a time.” Lew wiped his brow with a scrap of cloth.
Domenic’s worry eased, for his grandfather was no stranger to off-world technology. He must have seen the Federation at its worst when he served as Darkovan Senator.
“As I understand it,” Lew went on, “this poor fellow and his family have been on the road, and last winter had been harsh on all his folk. Perhaps his strength held out only long enough to get his people to safety in Nevarsin.”
“I fear he is approaching a crisis point,” Domenic said.
“Then you should not linger here, but take word to Illona and the others at the Tower. If anyone can bring him safely through, they will.”
Domenic said nothing, for the thought was in his mind that Garin would likely die. This was not an isolated case, he remembered. The woman and child who had come to Nevarsin with Garin had died also. How many more would follow?
Domenic found Fiona still awake and told her of Garin’s deteriorating condition. “I will go to him immediately,” the young monitor said. “You must eat now and rest, or you risk endangering your own health. Laran work, particularly when you are not accustomed to it, is exhausting.”
Bone-deep weariness swept through Domenic. He knew she was right, but he had grown up with parents who demanded much of themselves, who would not rest while there was urgent work to be done.
“First, I must speak with Illona,” he insisted.
“Be brief, then. I do not want another patient on my hands, particularly one who brought his misfortune upon himself from an overinflated sense of responsibility!”
Fiona directed Domenic to the archives, a small room high in the tower. Bookshelves and cabinets fitted with slots for scrolls lined every available wall. A small desk occupied the center, and here Illona sat, paging through a book. Age discolored the parchment pages. Dust motes glimmered in the light pouring through the windows.
Illona was so absorbed in her reading that she did not notice Domenic’s presence at first. She wore a loose smock, faded and patched, and had tied her hair back under an equally worn scarf. A few unruly tendrils had escaped, tumbling like copper lace over her shoulders.
She glanced up, her color deepening, and he saw in her eyes a simple acceptance of the state between them. There could be few secrets between telepaths, certainly not something as intense as his feelings for her.
Illona closed the book, went to Domenic, and took his hands in hers. Catalyzed through the physical touch, the heady sweetness of her laran rushed through him. The edges of his vision turned iridescent. His breath caught in his throat. He wanted the moment to go on forever, that edge of exquisite agony.
You are my dearest childhood friend, she said mentally, and his heart plummeted.
No, she went on, I am not about to tell you that we are only friends. The boy who changed my life forever has grown into a man, a man with the most amazing gifts—- and here, he felt the trained discipline of her Keeper’s mind and knew her assessment was no mere flattery —a man I have come to love in a very different way.
For a long moment, he could not trust that he had understood her.
“Nico,” she said, her voice softly resonant. “What happened between us on the mountain meant as much to me as it did to you. We were created for one another, I think, and no matter where we go, our hearts will always be calling, each to each, drawing us back again.”
He drew her close, and her arms went around him as if they had always belonged there. He dropped his laran barriers; his mind was open to hers as hers was to him.
Without warning, Domenic’s heart pounded like a caged bird against his ribs. His head whirled with a renewed surge of weakness. The next instant, he felt Illona’s strong hands upon him, guiding him to a chair. It was still warm from her own body. A mental touch like a rippling melody played across the back of his mind. Cool energy surged through him.
“Domenic, my dear, I am sorry I did not realize you were in such a state! You are drained from your laran work.”
She knelt before him, still grasping his arms, her eyes liquid with concern. Her breath on his face was like honey. He drank it in, drew strength from her closeness. She lent him her own energy through their linked minds. It would not last long, but it was enough so that he could follow her downstairs with reasonable steadiness.
A short time later, Domenic watched Illona bustle about the kitchen, a tidy, scrupulously clean room with an old-fashioned brick oven for baking, a huge stone sink, and bins for storing spices, nuts, and flour. A small cauldron of some kind of soup, fragrant with herbs and green onions, hung just above the banked embers.
Quietly competent, Illona prepared a plate of fruit-studded spiral buns, sticky candy, and sugared nuts. She set the meal in front of him, along with a mug of jaco from the kettle on the hearth, and sat facing him across the battered work table. The smell of the food turned his stomach, but he forced himself to eat. After the first few bites, he finished the rest ravenously, yielding to his body’s craving for fuel.
In between mouthfuls and gulps of jaco, Domenic told Illona about Garin and his own fears of some Terran-born disease, a weapon gone astray.
“I have heard of such things,” Illona said with an expression of disgust. “I think Lew is right. Surely too much time has gone by for one of the World Wreckers plagues to now come to life. On the other hand, there is a possibility—and it is only a remote one, with very little evidence to support it—that this may be the recurrence of an indigenous Darkovan disease.”
“Then why did the monastery infirmarian not recognize it?” Domenic asked.
“Because none of us have seen trailmen’s fever for a generation.”
“Trailmen’s fever?” Domenic searched his memory. Some time after the destruction of Caer Donn, Regis Hastur had led an expedition into trailmen territory to discover a cure. It was one of the first cooperative ventures between Comyn and Terranan. “Wasn’t that eradicated over forty years ago?”
“That’s what the records say,” Illona said. “The fever was, and I suppose still is, endemic among the trailmen, but in that species, it’s very mild. It used to spread to human populations living near their territory every forty-eight years or so. People superstitiously attributed it to the conjunction of the four moons. According to my research, it starts with a few cases in the mountains, the next month a hundred or so, more widely spread. Then—and this seems to be the defining characteristic—exactly three months later, there are thousands of cases.”
Her eyes darkened, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun. She drew in a breath. “And three months after that…”
“But we don’t have any evidence that Garin’s illness is indeed trailmen’s fever and not something else.”
Illona shook her head. “No, I’m probably conjuring dragons with smoke and mirrors, the way we used to do in the Travelers’ shows. Besides, this isn’t trailmen’s territory. Their home forests lie some distance toward the Kadarin, although no one’s reported seeing them in years.”
“Too often, our fears drive us to imagine the worst,” he said.
She smiled, and the sun shone once more behind her eyes. “Yes, that must be it. We will send word to Neskaya, and if there are no more cases anywhere in the Hellers, that will be the end of my theory. Now, if you are finished stuffing yourself, I will see if Fiona ne
eds my help.”
She got to her feet, and so did Domenic. His muscles no longer quivered on the edge of exhaustion, but he would soon have to surrender to sleep.
“Will you come to my bed tonight?” she asked.
Longing flooded him, sudden heat pulsing through his groin. He imagined the silken strength of her body, her skin bare against his, her cries of pleasure. His heart thundered in his ears.
“I have forgotten my manners,” she said, blushing a little. “Should I have waited for you to ask me?”
He sobered. Tower manners and morals were far different from those of the Comyn court. He could make love with her and take away the memory, folded into his heart like a secret treasure. She would never demand anything more.
“Is it safe?” he asked, thinking of Alanna.
“I know my limits,” she answered seriously. “We no longer live in the days when Keepers were kept virgin for the Sight. Sometimes the work itself enforces celibacy, but I would not suggest taking you to bed if I could not safeguard both of us. I risk neither harm nor an unplanned pregnancy.”
Alanna would never know. To her, it would be as if the night had never happened.
But not to him. Gazing at Illona, with his heart in his eyes, seeing her shrouded in the iridescent glory of their joined laran, he knew that once they had consummated their love, he could never walk away from her. Heart and body and mind, he would be hers forever.
The light in her eyes shifted, and he knew she understood. Perfectly, wordlessly, with that same simplicity of acceptance.
You nourish my soul, he thought.
As you do mine. We have already given ourselves to one another, as much as this sad world will permit. Do not sorrow, dearest heart, for my love will be yours always.
She closed the distance between them, brushed his lips with a butterfly kiss, and was gone.
Domenic stood in the kitchen while his pulse slowed and the echoes of her presence died. Within the spiraled chambers of his mind, she was moving toward him.
She would always be moving toward him, her eyes glowing as if lit from within, lips parted in eagerness and delight.
Always, his heart would be rising, reaching for her.
Always.
Domenic rolled over in his bed, unable to sleep. His body craved rest, but all the fleas on Durraman’s donkey seemed to have taken up residence in his skull. His thoughts leaped from one worry to another.
Illona…Alanna…that poor man, Garin…Grandfather Lew falling ill from the fever…returning to Thendara…what Francisco Ridenow might be up to next…Alanna’s visions of a dead city…
He untangled himself from the covers, stretched out, and tried to quiet his mind by remembering the golden moments earlier in the day. His taut muscles softened. Longing, bittersweet, hovered at the edge of his senses.
Illona…
“Yes, beloved. I am here.”
Domenic jerked upright as the door swung noiselessly open. He had not deliberately called out to her, and yet she stood on the threshold, bathed in a globe of pale blue light from her upraised hand. Her feet were bare, and she wore only a loose, gauzy shift.
“I didn’t—” he began.
“Shhh.” She extinguished the light and closed the door behind her. “We have no need for words.”
In the near darkness, she shimmered with her own inner light, or so it seemed, for he looked upon her with laran as well as eyes. If she touched him, if she so much as breathed upon him, his resistance would shatter.
He tried to summon up all the reasons why he should send her away, all the demands of promises and duty. They withered in the stark light of truth.
He needed her…as he needed breath or sleep or the rising of the sun.
She moved toward him. He felt the heat of her body on his face, the whisper of her breath before her lips met his. He felt himself growing hard.
He closed his eyes, drawing her to him, and wrapped them both in the same blanket. She was shivering, but so was he, and neither of them from cold.
They lay holding each other for what seemed like a long time, speaking with kisses, breathing in each other’s nearness. He touched her cheek and neck. She shifted so that the curved muscles of her thigh pressed against his. Heat shook him, the rising arousal of his own body fueling hers.
Joined in rapport, her sensations flooded into his. He could not tell where her passion ended and his own began. Every touch, every kiss, every shift of arm or leg, wove themselves into a mysterious, intoxicating dance. He ached with ever-mounting yearning, until the tension became unbearable.
He came to a climax the first time with her on top, her hands on his shoulders, her body bent over so that he could feel her breasts and the silken fall of her hair over his heart.
For an instant, he felt himself apart from her. Then she gasped, driving with her pelvis, clenching her inner muscles. Waves of melting sweetness surged up through his belly. He had never felt anything like the pulsing ecstasy that seized him, each wave carrying him higher. She opened to him, as he did to her. He felt as if he were flying and drowning, all at once.
The second time was less urgent, yet delirious, riotous, like a headlong gallop down a steep incline in blinding rain. They had rolled over so that she lay beneath him now. His muscles flexed and released, as powerful as those of a racing horse. Surrounding him, holding him, Illona turned hard and melting, all at once. She wrapped him in her long, gloriously curved legs and lifted her hips to meet each thrust. Her desire surged through him, reached beyond them both. Then, suddenly, every place they touched ignited, incandescent as fire, as lightning, as molten silver.
As for the third time, his mind was joined so deeply to hers, they seemed to be one person caught up in the same delirious abandon. He felt her hovering, himself hovering, on the very edge of orgasm. The slightest movement would catapult them into release. Something held them there, gazing into each other’s eyes, sharing one breath, one heart beat. One of them—he could not tell who—gasped and closed his eyes, her eyes, and as one, they surrendered, tumbling down a cascade of ecstasy.
Afterward, they lay in a tangle of blankets. She rested her head on his shoulder, one thigh stretched across his. He sighed, wishing the moment could go on forever.
“Preciosa,” he said at last, “I wish more than anything I were free to marry you.”
She shifted on his chest. “Why drag politics into it?”
“But—I thought—you feel the way I do, I know you do—you would want to be with me, as I want to be with you.”
“Of course, I do! I should very much like to make love with you again.” Her laughter was like a mountain stream. “However, I have no desire to marry you or anyone else. I am a leronis, not some uneducated country woman who must depend upon a man for her living.”
“I would never insult you by suggesting you become my barragana,” Domenic replied, stung. “I would offer you all the honor due to my lawful wife.”
Illona propped herself up on one elbow. “Domenic, be reasonable. You will be the next Regent of the Comyn; you cannot possibly take a freemate or marry someone who is, to put it bluntly, an unacknowledged bastard. As for the old ceremony, marrying di catenas, that is out of the question. It would amount to becoming your property.”
Pain shot through him. Miserable, unable to see any way out of their quarrel, Domenic said, “It is all beside the point. Oh, gods, I should have told you before! I am betrothed to Alanna Alar. We made the promise in secrecy, before I knew what love was. I had no idea what I was doing, but I cannot break my word to her. Not even…”
Not even if it means spending the rest of my life with my heart in one place and my duty in another.
“She cried so hard when I left,” he said, remembering the protective, helpless feeling as he’d tried to dry Alanna’s tears.
“Cario mio.” Illona touched his face with her fingertips. “Do you think I begrudge you doing what you must? Or wish you to be anything less than you are? How could I
be jealous, after what we have shared?”
If those words had been spoken by any other woman, Domenic would not have believed them. Only from Illona.
Let us treasure this moment together, her thought sang through his mind. And every other moment, until fate and death separate us.
The next day, Garin sank into a coma, and three days later he died. The monks at St. Valentine’s arranged for his burial in the village plot.
Amid the preparations to return to Thendara, Domenic and Illona shared a bed as often as time and her duties allowed. As they got to know each other’s needs and rhythms, their lovemaking became even richer. Sometimes Illona would be too drained by her work as under-Keeper for sex to be safe. She needed rest to replenish her psychic energy and keep her laran channels clear. Domenic, acutely aware of how little time they had, lay awake, cradling her in his arms, reveling in the warmth of her bare skin against his, inhaling her scent, or propped up on one elbow, watching her in the pastel light of the moons. He tried to memorize every line of her sleeping face, every exhilarating curve of her body, every strand of her hair.
Soon, he would not have even this much of her. Soon, they would be gone from this sanctuary. Alanna would be waiting for him, expecting him to announce their betrothal…
Other times, when his body still tingled with the lingering echoes of pleasure, Domenic wondered how he could endure making love with any other woman, or never doing it again. Yet, when he kept his promise to Alanna, as honor dictated he must, when they were man and wife, they might never be able to consummate their marriage. Certainly, when he left her, Alanna was incapable of any sexual feeling. He might not love her as he did Illona, but he cared too much for her to risk her life again.
Perhaps with time and patience, Alanna’s sexuality might return naturally. Perhaps she might consent to return to Arilinn, where the temporary safeguards might be removed and normal functioning restored. He told himself these were foolish, impossible notions, that it was useless to torture himself with hope.