“What happened?” the young Master whispered into their thoughts.
“Welcome to the aftermath,” Useless said. “You missed all the excitement.” He seated himself with meticulous care and pulled his light closer. “Alissa tells me you successfully pickabacked your consciousness upon hers.”
Connen-Neute gave Alissa a worried glance, and she shrugged.
“Who,” Useless growled, “sanctioned that?”
“Redal-Stan,” she offered meekly.
“Harrumph,” he grumbled. “That was very ill-advised. You did so again, I gather, in order to hear our most worthy piper’s music through Alissa’s thoughts?”
Alissa gasped in outrage, and Connen-Neute flushed.
“Unasked, apparently?” Useless added as he put a restraining hand upon her shoulder.
“Pickaback?” Strell looked defensive and confused. “What’s that?”
Silently, Alissa fumed. How had he managed that without her knowing? It was almost as if something had been shielding his awareness from hers. Alissa’s thoughts went still. “Beast?”
“I wanted someone to play tag with,” she complained privately.
Horrified at what Beast had done, Alissa covered her mouth. Undoubtedly thinking it was from embarrassment, Useless gave Connen-Neute a severe look. “It would be my guess,” he said, “that your mental linkage was so tight, your consciousness was pulled along with hers when she tripped the lines.”
Strell touched her shoulder. “What’s pickaback?”
“Like when we practiced line tripping with Redal-Stan?” Connen-Neute guessed.
“He was teaching you to trip the lines?” Useless shouted. Talon startled into flight and flew into the dark. “I was almost three hundred before he—” Useless bit his exclamation short, scowling darkly. “Yes. Exactly. Your recent experience of line tripping, combined with a precedent of pickabacking your consciousness upon Alissa’s, is what’s to blame for this.”
“See?” Beast simpered so that only Alissa could hear. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“Shut up, Beast. It was, and you know it.”
Strell sat down next to Alissa. “What’s pickabacking?” he asked again, sounding tired.
Useless nodded sharply. “It’s a dangerously tight mental connection. It allowed Alissa to carry his consciousness from the past to the now, leaving him feral in the then.” Useless visibly swallowed. “No wonder I couldn’t catch you.”
A shudder ran through Connen-Neute. “I don’t recall being feral.” Then his long face went frightened, and he surged to his feet. “I’ll go feral! I have no reference points!” he shouted frantically, and Alissa winced at the force of his mental cry.
“What’s going on?” Strell whispered, having not heard all the conversation.
“He thinks he might go feral again, as I was,” Alissa said.
“You went feral again?” Strell’s voice was a horrified shout.
“Well, er, not exactly,” she began.
“I’m going to go feral!” Connen-Neute exclaimed, terrified.
“Everyone be still!” bellowed Useless. “No one is going feral—I think.”
Connen-Neute danced from foot to foot, his smooth, narrow features pinched. He wasn’t much older than Alissa in raku years, and he looked scared to death.
Useless sighed heavily as he stood up and leaned against the flat rock. “Finding reference points is something our unconscious does. Your feral self, the baser, more perceptive side, was here all along. You already have your reference points. You never lost them.”
Still unsure, Connen-Neute looked a little sick.
“Look,” Useless said, clearly exasperated. “If you were going to go feral, it would have happened by now.”
“Alissa didn’t,” he pointed out, and Useless glared until he dropped his eyes.
“Bone and Ash,” Alissa heard Useless mutter under his breath. “Now I have two babies to raise by myself.” He straightened. “So!” he cried, clapping his hands to make Alissa and Connen-Neute jump. “Now that we are all sane and conscious, shall we return to the Hold?”
No one said anything, and Alissa looked up from the black field. They were waiting for her. “H-m-m? Oh!” Her eyes returned to the grass undulating in the wind. It was from the east, as it should be. “Go on.” She pulled her blanket tighter. “I need to—um—I’ll catch you up.”
Strell settled himself, clearly thinking to stay with her. His eyes narrowed as Connen-Neute pulled him to his feet. He became more angry when the young Master whispered, “Lodesh.” Useless, too, was frowning, looking as if he would insist on helping her find him.
Alissa’s lips pursed. “I said I’ll catch you up.”
Useless planted his feet and adjusted his vest, becoming nearly immovable.
“It’s her right to confront him first,” came Connen-Neute’s soft thought.
Useless’s eyes grew dark. He snatched his light and spun about to stomp towards the Hold. Connen-Neute took Strell’s arm and began leading him forward. “Wait a moment . . .” Strell protested, stumbling into motion.
“She has just traversed three hundred eighty-nine years, Piper!” Useless shouted over his shoulder, his light bobbing in his tight grip. “She can find her way home from here.”
“Alissa?” Strell cried.
“I’ll see you soon,” she whispered into his thoughts, “my love.” And though she heard no response, a wash of love came back to her, multiplied threefold. Her eyes closed to keep the tears away. She stood basking in the warmth of his thoughts in the cold of an autumn night. When her eyes opened, Useless’s light was gone.
The wind sent her blanket flapping about her ankles. She tensed as she spotted a pair of slippers. She recognized them as having been made by Lodesh. Jaw clenched, she nevertheless put them on and cast about for him. The grove, of course. She extinguished her light and stumbled forward, not wanting him to know she was coming and perhaps slip away.
The moon came out as the cloud cover tore apart in the stiffening wind. It was going to be a cold night. The ground was damp from yesterday’s rain, and soon her feet were heavy and slippery with mud. By the time she found the grove, she was decidedly out of sorts.
Her fingers gripping her blanket were stiff with cold as she slipped under the black branches of the trees. Their leaves rattled, not yet willing to part from the tree. Her brow furrowed when she realized only two trees—instead of three—stretched their length upon the ground. It seemed unfair that she could change something as useless at that, and she wondered if she might have made Ren and Kally’s future any better.
Alissa slipped on the moss and nearly went down. She caught herself with a hastily outstretched hand, cursing quietly when it found a sharp stick and not the soft moss.
“I’m over here, Alissa.”
She spun about at Lodesh’s voice. Brushing her hand free of the dirt and pain, she stomped over. By her hastily constructed light, she saw him sitting ramrod straight atop one of the fallen mirth trees. There was a pack beside him.
“You’re leaving, then?” she said sharply, and he nodded once. “Where will you go?” Her voice was frighteningly level, betraying her sudden surge of emotion.
“Somewhere else.” It was cold and flat.
Alissa was silent, trying to sort out her chaotic feelings and not doing very well. Her hand went up, fingers wiggling, and Lodesh leaned to help her up onto his perch. Not wanting to see the face that went with that distant voice, she let her light go out. The moon hid itself again behind the wind-torn clouds. “You were going to leave without saying good-bye?” she said.
“You did,” he accused softly, and she flushed.
Frustration, hurt, and anger ran together until she didn’t know what she was feeling. She turned to the easiest emotion, anger. “Why didn’t you tell Strell how I could get home right away?”
Lodesh said nothing.
“I was going feral!” she shouted. “Can you imagine what that’s like? Watching y
ourself slowly lose control as the one taking over apologizes profusely!”
Still he sat as if made of stone, a picture of elegance and refinement. “I should hate you for what you put me through,” she whispered, and she thought she saw a twitch of an eye. She bit her lip, feeling it go bloodless. “Curse you. Couldn’t you see my misery, how I wanted to go home, how much I missed . . .” She faltered, clutching her arms about herself in heartache.
“Yes.” A tinge of bitterness stained his perfect control. “I was there, remember? And I already am cursed.”
“Damn you then!” she shouted. “You didn’t even know if I would make it back!”
“No. I didn’t.” His voice was empty, distant.
“Then why?” she cried, needing an answer, a reaction, something.
Lodesh took a shaky breath. “I thought you would return to me,” he said, the hurt soaking into his words like a red stain. “I thought if you saw Ese’Nawoer and the Hold when they were full of life, you would come back. I hoped if you knew how cold and empty this place is and saw me without the shadow of Strell, you might return,” he paused, “in time.”
Her anger wheeled, violently shifting. “All you did,” she said miserably, “was show me what I don’t . . . what I can’t have.” Her throat tightened, and her eyes stung. “The Hold is empty. The city is dead. Curse you three times over,” she whispered, determined not to wipe her eyes as the tears slipped down to make cold trails. “I’m home, Lodesh, but look at me.”
He turned away.
“Look at me!” she demanded. “I’ve come home, but in the doing I have lost Ren, and Kally, and Mavoureen, and Redal-Stan, and . . .” Alissa’s breath caught. “And an entire Hold of people. They’re dead to me now, Lodesh. All dead in a single shift.”
Something that might have been dismay flashed across him.
“You made me go there,” she accused, “to see them, to know them, and when I had learned enough to feel their loss, you let me come home!” Crying, she sat stiffly as the tears ran. “Well, damn you, Lodesh!” she shouted, “if you think I’ll let you walk away. I won’t lose you, too, the only one who remembers the way Mavoureen beats her dough into submission, the roar of Ese’Nawoer assembled on the field, the fun of running away from Breve.” She wiped her eyes. “And the scent of the mirth trees on an autumn night,” she whispered, “as the drums and feet beat out the dance.”
Lodesh’s eyes were wide in dismay, as if never realizing how deep his betrayal went.
“You’re the only one who understands what I’ve lost,” she said, feeling beaten, “and you won’t walk away from me.
“Ashes,” she swore miserably, turning away. “I’m going to miss Redal-Stan. What . . .” She hesitated, wondering if she wanted to know. “What happened to Kally?”
Lodesh shrank into himself. “Ren came back about a year after Mav died. He stole Kally out from behind the Hold. No one knows how. The doors were locked for the night.”
Alissa went cold, glad it was dark enough to hide her guilt.
“Her note said they were going to the plains,” he continued, his voice gray and emotionless again. “She came back during—”
“I know the rest,” she interrupted. Sick at heart, Alissa pulled her blanket tight. Ren never would have returned if she had let him go to the plains in the first place. Visions of Ren hammering at the gate of Ese’Nawoer rose black and sick from her memory, making her ill.
“How could you not warn me, Alissa?”
She jerked her attention up at the icy control of Lodesh’s voice. He was nearly screaming at her in a voice barely above a whisper. “My city shamed and dishonored, its people cursed for nearly four centuries of guilt and humiliation. Why didn’t you warn me?”
Alissa stared in alarm. Lodesh was always in control. Suddenly she was afraid. He might do anything. But then his wild eyes dropped, and when he raised them again, the rage was gone, replaced with a haunted abandonment. And she had caused it.
“Why?” he whispered, his misery magnified by the sudden moonlight. “Why didn’t you come back to me? At least when it was over and safe? Why did you leave me with no one?”
Alissa felt a stab of anguish. “You told me it wasn’t wrong to love another when the first was out of reach,” she said, her voice cracking and harsh.
Lodesh took a shaky breath. “I thought you would return.” His hand went out to touch her cheek, and he smoothed the damp away. “You never said good-bye. I waited my entire life for you.” He turned away with a small moan. “The Wolves of the Navigator should hunt me. I waited four hundred years for you!”
“I was coming back to you,” she said, reaching to touch him.
His hand flashed forward, catching her wrist. “Tell that to a twenty-two-year-old in love,” he said bitterly and released her. “I lived my entire life with the question of a mirth flower between us, and I died with it haunting my thoughts.”
She rubbed at her wrist. His grip seemed to be on her still.
He gave a short bark of laughter. “It wasn’t until you woke me, until your voice intruded into my silent grove that I knew you were back,” his head dropped, “with another beside you.”
She thought she saw a shimmer on his cheeks.
“Poor Lodesh,” he mocked bitterly. “His timing is perfect—except where it counts.”
Alissa reached out again. He stiffened as she touched him, and her hand dropped, leaving her ashamed. A small spark of anger flickered. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have been trying to get back to more than just Strell?” she said tightly.
Lodesh’s head came up. In his green eyes glowed a frightening need and desire, but then it died. “You were pining to feralness over his absence,” he said. “Not mine.”
“You were next to me!” Alissa exclaimed. “You were keeping me sane!”
“You ran to Strell,” he countered. “Not me.”
“He was the one trying to get me back!”
His eyes darkened. “And I wasn’t,” he said flatly.
“No,” she agreed. “You weren’t.”
The moon came out to shift the shadows of the mirth trees. Their black limbs seemed to reach for the wind, to catch it, failing as their leaves succumbed and were torn away.
“Here.” Lodesh twisted to his pack. “I was going to leave these where you would find them.” The smooth finish of a wooden box filled her hands. “You forgot them—again.”
Silently she set her thoughts to make the barest of lights and opened the box. Inside was Redal-Stan’s watch, a white seed the size of a pebble, and a single mirth flower. Alissa’s heart sank, leaving her empty. It was all she had left.
“We have all been patiently waiting for you.” Lodesh stared stoically into the night.
Setting the box aside, she lifted out the flower. The scent of apples and pine pooled about her, bringing with it memories of the dance, of Lodesh and her, and a night filled with music and desire. Her eyes closed, unable to bear the memory. She loved Strell, she reminded herself as her throat tightened and the tears slipped from her. She couldn’t give her heart to two men. She couldn’t allow herself to love Lodesh.
He took the flower from her numb fingers and considered it. “I have given this particular flower to you twice now. I don’t think I’ll attempt to give it to you again.” His fingers tightened, threatening to crush it.
“Lodesh!” she cried, setting her hand atop his. He gasped, and his fingers sprang open. “This is mine,” she said as she took it back. “You gave it to me, as you say, twice.”
His face grew dismayed, panicked. “That’s cruel, Alissa.”
“So is showing me a beautiful world I can’t have,” she said, anger seeping into her voice.
“You could have stayed,” he shot back.
“You gave me no choice!”
Lodesh sat stiffly, his jaw clenched. “You had all the choice you needed. It was all your choice, never mine.” His eyes grew fierce. “What if I had willingly helped Strell?
You would have left that much sooner.”
Her chin rose. “Maybe.” Her eyes dropped. “Probably.” Guilt prompted her to add, “All right. I would have.”
“I would lose either way, so I chose,” he hammered the word into submission, “to keep our time together intact. I feared it was going to be my only time with you,” he whispered. “No one was going to take that from me. I loved you first. I did.”
And with that, Alissa allowed herself to forgive him. “Lodesh,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”
He trembled, barely visible in the dark. “So that’s it then.” His voice was again emotionless, drained. “Give me my flower back and tell me you don’t love me.”
She felt her face go pale and her mouth become dry. “I can’t do that,” she whispered.
“Burn you to ash, Alissa,” he seethed. “I’ve waited three lifetimes for you, and you won’t even tell me you don’t love me?”
Her face twisted, and she turned away in shame. Because she might, she thought silently to herself. Because when she was with him, she couldn’t help but forget . . .
But he heard her thoughts, the Wolves help her, she thought he heard, for he gasped and pulled away. “I can’t, Alissa,” he said hoarsely, grief etched in the lines in his face. “I can’t go back to the Hold, to everyone.” He gestured weakly. “I broke Talo-Toecan’s respect, Strell’s friendship, and my honor to win your heart. Now that I have it, I’m not worthy of it.”
Her hands went out, and she took his in them. They were cold for the first time. “Please?” she said. “I’ve lost almost everyone else.”
Lodesh sat for a long moment, not looking at her, his face empty. Without a word, he stood and tossed his pack to the ground. He followed it so quickly that they almost hit together. Holding up his hand, he took her box of memories before helping her down. He stared at her, and she felt herself go cold at what she was requesting him to endure.
“What you ask of me is inhuman,” he finally said. He picked up his pack and settled it on his shoulder to hide his city’s emblem. “Perhaps it’s a fitting punishment.”
There was a whirl of wings, and Alissa jumped as Talon landed upon her shoulder. The kestrel had been in the trees all this time. “I don’t want you to be alone,” she protested weakly.