The Bronze of Eddarta Page 6

  “Rassa is with you?” he said in surprise. “But I thought surely …” I took the first step down, and he hurriedly opened the door. “No matter, Yoman, it’s none of my affair. But—I do mean this, my friend—I am glad you’ve come to your senses. All we heard were rumors, remember.” He ducked out the door.

  I wonder what he meant by that? I thought, as I turned back to Tarani—just in time to see her start to fall.

  “Tarani!” I whispered, as I caught her under her arms and tried, clumsily, to disentangle her from the backpack. She was limp against my chest, a dead weight that was almost too much for me to handle.

  The illusions did it, I told myself. On top of all that physical exertion, the psychic strain was too much. Why the hell didn’t she tell me? Damn it, if she’s pushed herself too far …

  I finally freed the backpack and dropped it to the floor. She had slipped down until she was nearly on her knees, and I was badly off balance. I was beginning to worry that I’d topple over backward and drag us both down the stairs, when she moved a little and clutched at my waist. I helped her as she pulled herself to her feet.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, still half-dazed. “I’ll be all right soon—”

  “A good night’s sleep won’t hurt you any,” I said gruffly, as I lifted her in my arms. “Let’s see if we can find Rassa’s bedroom.”

  Cradled against my chest, Tarani’s weight was manageable. It was relief, not fear of dropping her, that made my arms hold her so tightly.

  I knelt down and laid her on the fluffy pallet in the smaller of the two bedrooms.

  She propped herself on one elbow as I sat down beside her. There were two windows in this room, open to the night. The faint starlight, and stray beams from street lamps, gave us enough light to see each other. Her face, always delicate, looked fragile in the gray light.

  “Why didn’t you warn me that the illusions of Yoman and Rassa would cost you so dearly?”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried to sustain an illusion for such a long period of time.”

  “Or for someone else?” I asked.

  “Yes, that was a factor, too.”

  “You could have told me, when you felt the strain,” I said, trying not to sound like I was accusing her.

  “In Dyskornis, you said we had to be able to depend on one another, Rikardon. I had said I could hold the illusion; I had to see it through.”

  She only did what I’d have done, myself, I admitted. Except that I couldn’t have done it at all. Which is why she’s here, isn’t it? She’s right—I can’t preach teamwork and then tell one of the players not to do her part.

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said, and started to get up. Her free hand caught my arm and I paused, kneeling very close to her.

  “Rikardon, your caring … it touches me deeply.”

  I felt the world shifting and changing around me.

  The image of Tarani and Thymas together had burned itself in my memory, and I saw it again now, but with a different perspective. Then, and on the following nights, the remembered scene had seemed confirmation of Tarani’s continuing affection for Thymas, and I had kept myself a scrupulous distance from the girl, especially in my thoughts as we rode together.

  But there was no mistaking the invitation in her voice and posture, and another scene rose vividly in memory—the evening we had talked in Dyskornis and, in the most cautious of language, admitted the attraction we felt for one another. The scene in Stomestad was driven out of my memory. Tarani was with me, here and now, and emotions too powerful to be called “affection” were at work in both of us.

  I leaned across the few inches which separated us, and kissed her. I meant it as a message of reassurance and of closeness. But in the next moment we were clinging tightly to one another, swept up in passion and physical need. The abruptness and intensity of those feelings disturbed me, and I pulled myself away from her.

  She didn’t say anything, but her dark eyes were glowing in that reflective way that sometimes had, and her chest rose and fell in quick, sharp breaths.

  “It’s been a rough trip,” I said, taking deep, deliberate breaths, “and we both need some rest. Sleep well, Tarani.”

  I saw her thinking about it, wondering whether to press the issue. To my relief, she let it pass. She opened the light, woven blanket and shook it out over herself. As she lay back, she said, in a soft, carefully neutral voice: “Goodnight, Rikardon.”

  7

  I was tired, too. By rights, I should have snuggled into Yoman’s bed and slept the night through. Instead, I escaped into the streets of Eddarta.

  Here, again, I had a reasonable excuse. I knew little about Eddartan customs, and there’s no better way to get information than to buy a few rounds of drinks in a friendly bar. I had planned to go out for a while, anyway, if only to make some discreet inquiries about Gharlas, and his standing among the Lords. I figured to be safe with my own face. It was my sword which identified me to the rogueworld, and Rika was safe with Thymas. In any case, Eddarta’s rogueworld was pretty tame—the organized thieves lived on the hill.

  But the true reason I left was because of Tarani.

  In Gandalara, where there was no venereal disease, and birth control was a matter of a woman saying no when her inner awareness warned her she was fertile, intimacy between a consenting couple was considered to be their own business.

  If Tarani had been an ordinary Ganadalaran woman, I wouldn’t have hesitated. If I had just met her, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

  But I knew Tarani’s extraordinary history, and our relationship had an uncertain history of its own.

  We had met in Thagorn, when Tarani identified me as the target for a pair of killers traveling with her show. I had felt, and she had later admitted, a sense of recognition in that first meeting. In light of our later adventures, I attributed it to a sort of premonition of our joining forces against Gharlas.

  Tarani’s involvement in the assassination attempt had come through her association with Molik, the leader of Chizan’s rogueworld. At sixteen, still a virgin, she had offered him a deal—her body, and her illusions, in exchange for the capital to create her traveling show.

  At eighteen, free of Molik’s attentions but not of his memory, she had taken refuge from his unwholesome need of her—a need she felt she had created—in Thymas’s devotion.

  At twenty, only a few weeks ago, she had finally found peace. Given the opportunity to destroy Molik, she had learned that only her guilt tied her to him. When her anger turned to pity, she was truly free.

  But that was the only thing she had gained, these past few weeks. She had given up the show she had gone through hell to get. She had relinquished the security of her promised marriage to Thymas. She had found her “uncle,” only to watch him die, and then discover that he was the father she had never known.

  I had seen Tarani regal and strong, the very air around her throbbing with power. I had seen her young and helpless, suffering from my own thoughtless words. She had endured grueling physical demands with the stoic acceptance of a trained soldier. She had survived an emotional crisis that no twenty-year-old girl should be expected to face, and she had come through it sane, hurt but healing. I felt such admiration for her, such tenderness. Her strength of character awed me. Her vulnerability was a warm glow that nestled, trusting, in my thoughts and feelings.

  Markasset, with the overriding passion of the young, saw Tarani’s response as an indication of her need for emotional comfort. Ricardo, a man still subject to physical need but with a lifetime of wisdom to control it, wanted to give us both time to understand the source and destiny of those intense feelings.

  I went from bar to bar, pretending to drink a lot of faen. Even while part of my mind was analyzing the information I gleaned from conversation and eavesdropping, I felt my thoughts circling profitlessly around the problem of Tarani.

  I weighed responsibility against desire. I tried to decide whether her need was for me
, or for anyone—for intimacy, or for assurance that there was more of value in Tarani than her beauty and admitted sexual experience.

  In the end, only one thought came to me clearly, as I finished off what would be my final mug of faen:

  I’m in love with Tarani. God help us both. I don’t want to hurt her.

  It was nearly midnight when I returned to Yoman’s shop. The door creaked, the stairs groaned. I paused beside Rassa’s bedroom door and listened, hoping with one last desperate, pass-the-buck impulse that I hadn’t wakened Tarani.

  And hoping that I had.

  “I’m awake,” her voice seemed to answer my thought.

  I opened the door and stepped into the room. In the dim light, two things stood out. First, she was sitting up, with her back against the wall and the blanket tucked up under her bare arms. Second, her clothes were folded neatly on the ledge beneath the windowsill.

  I wasn’t aware of any conscious decision. But in less than a second I was across the room, kneeling beside her, taking her in my arms.

  Nothing had ever felt so good, not in two lifetimes. She rose to meet me, and the blanket fell aside unheeded. I scrambled out of my tunic, barely aware of her hands helping me. I pulled her close again, holding her carefully, like the treasure she was, and I felt the steady muscles of her dancer’s body tremble with eagerness. The touch of her skin on mine made me dizzy with need. Her tongue caressed my tusks as we kissed, sending tendrils of pleasure down my spine.

  I felt such joy that I couldn’t contain it, couldn’t express it. I was transported by the wonder of her body, consenting to be separated from it only for the sake of learning it, by sight and by touch. When I was free of the rest of my clothing, I lay beside her and held her again, wanting to pull her inside my skin, to be entirely and completely one with her.

  It was a time of peace, a pause, a lingering. A time of stretched sensitivity, of slow ecstasy. We kissed gently, silent acknowledgment that what we felt for one another was more than bodily need. But the kiss caught fire, and left us breathless and urgent. Tarani lay back, and I rose above her. Her eyes closed in anticipation …

  “Oh, Ricardo,” she whispered.

  It was a word Tarani had never heard, couldn’t know, would be unable to guess.

  The world seemed to freeze around me.

  She opened her eyes when she felt the tension thrum through my body. Her hands, caressing my back, grew still.

  “What—what did you say, just then?” I panted.

  “Say? I only said your name.”

  “Say it again,” I urged.

  Doubt flickered in her eyes, and the warm space of air between our bodies seemed to cool. She did what I asked, and said: “Rikardon.”

  And we both knew it was over.

  I drew away from her, and she slid backward to sit up again. She pulled the blanket across her body with a self-consciousness that hurt me like a slap in the face. “It’s Molik, isn’t it?” she said. Her voice was deadly calm. “You can’t bear to be with me because of what I—”

  “No!” I nearly shouted the word, appalled that she could put such an interpretation on what had happened. “No, Tarani.” More gently.

  I took her hand; it lay unresisting, unresponsive, across my fingers.

  “Thymas, then?” she said, bitterness creeping in, stinging me.

  “Tarani, you have to believe what I’m about to say.” She was silent, looking somewhere off to my left. “My … failure is in no way your fault. Thymas and Molik have no place in what you and I share. I feel—and you must know it, too—that what we wanted tonight will happen someday. But not tonight. I’m not sure I understand why, myself. I only know—”

  I stopped, lost in misery.

  She looked at me then, and I almost wished she would turn away again. The dim light from the window fell across her face. Deep lines etched the smooth skin on her forehead and cheeks.

  “I’m frightened, Rikardon,” she said, hurriedly, as though she were speaking a dangerous secret.

  “Of me?” I asked, surprised and horrified.

  “Of whatever is telling you that we cannot … that it is not yet time. Of whatever has brought us together, but will not let us be together.

  “What we are doing, fighting Gharlas, I know it is right, Rikardon. But I do not know how it will end. You seem to see things more clearly. Can you tell me that we will get the Ra’ira back? That we will both live through what we must do? Can you tell me that there will be a ‘someday’ for us?”

  “No, I don’t have those answers, Tarani.”

  Her eyes blazed. “Then defy that ‘whatever’ for once! There may not be another chance for us, Rikardon. Give us this moment, at least.”

  I looked at her. Loving her. Wanting her. And I said: “I can’t, Tarani. I’m sorry.”

  The lines in her face vanished, leaving her skin as pale and smooth as marble. “Please go now,” she whispered.

  I gathered up my clothes and walked to the door, feeling naked and foolish and miserable, and for the second time in one night, I escaped.

  This time my refuge was Yoman’s bedroom. When the Gandalaran dawn spread its glowing colors across the cloud-covered sky, I was still sitting and staring, thinking and wondering.

  Things that had never made sense fell into place during that watchful night. The mutual recognition Tarani and I had felt, on meeting for the first time. The unusual sophistication of a sixteen-year-old virgin. The abrupt onset of confusion and restlessness that had drawn Tarani from her Recorder training.

  The last time I had heard the word Tarani had spoken tonight, I had been Ricardo Carillo, engaged in a harmless and delightful flirtation with Antonia Alderuccio on the deck of a ship, in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean. The Italian girl had noticed the increasing brightness of a “star”, and I had not had time to tell her that I believed it was a meteor. I recall feeling a sense of injustice, as I lost consciousness, that someone as young and beautiful as Antonia had to die so uselessly.

  Like me, Antonia had been reborn in Gandalara.

  Unlike me, she had been delivered into a host body with a living, vital personality.

  I had speculated that, if Markasset had been alive, his familiarity with his body and his surroundings would have given his personality natural control. The period of confusion Tarani had suffered may have been a struggle for control between Tarani and Antonia.

  They both won, I thought, watching the early folk moving through the streets of Eddarta. Tarani is usually in control—and she doesn’t seem to have any conscious awareness of Antonia. But grown-up, adult Antonia, accustomed to wealth and wise in the ways of the wealthy, used Tarant’s power to handle Molik.

  I remembered Antonia. The way she had laughed. The way she had looked at an old man and seen, not his age, but his experience, the depth and the value of it.

  She couldn’t have meant the girl harm, I decided. She was probably only trying to help her get the money she wanted. And she couldn’t have been closely integrated into Tarant’s personality, or she’d have seen the girl’s naiveté, and backed off.

  But there’s no doubt she’s there, I thought, and because of her, Tarani’s been through the wringer. That horror may be part of whatever is going on here, part of our “destiny.” I slammed my fist on my leg, taking a savage pleasure in the pain it caused. But it’s a hell of a rotten thing to do to a sixteen-year-old girl!

  I heard Tarani stirring in Rassa’s room, and I remembered the coldness that had crept over me when I heard Antonia speak through Tarani. It hadn’t been fear, or even surprise. How often had I thought that Tarani seemed always to be two different women, one powerful, one helpless?

  No, what I had felt in that moment was indecision.

  I loved … Tarani?

  Or Antonia?

  8

  By the time Tarani had dressed, I had gone out and returned with breakfast. I found her leafing through a series of parchment pages tied at one edge with twine.

&nbs
p; “Yoman’s ledger,” she explained, setting it aside to accept the fruit and bread.

  There was a moment of hesitation as her fingers brushed mine, but that was the only sign of what had happened the night before.

  Apparently, she’s decided on a “business as usual” attitude. Good idea, I approved. For one thing, we’re running short of time.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked.

  “He seemed to do a thriving business, even if most of the profit went to Pylomel.”

  “Pylomel? The High Lord is Yoman’s landpatron?”

  “It surprised me, too,” she said. “Why did Yoman not tell us? He knew we wanted information about the High Lord.”

  “I don’t know, but it just adds to the funny feeling I’ve had all along about Yoman—he was running from something. I feel sure of it.”

  “Well, it was not poor business, and from the way that fool last night acted, Yoman still has every right to run this shop. But he did not run it alone,” she said. “He purchased the fabric and made men’s clothes, but Rassa had established herself as a seamstress and designer of women’s clothes. I found several commissions for her—from Zefra.”

  So that’s why she’s not upset with me this morning, I thought, feeling strangely disappointed. Finding a way to see her mother is so important that she’s forgotten …

  You idiot! I scolded myself. Give the girl what happiness you can, while there’s time. And keep your mind on business, OK?

  “Before we go any further with that, Tarani, let me go over what I found out during my drinking tour last night. I think I have a better picture of how Eddarta works, now. Yoman—well, maybe we just didn’t know the right questions to ask when we talked to him.”

  It took me a long time to get back around to Zefra, but Tarani listened patiently, knowing that the more we understood about Eddarta in general, the better our chances of accomplishing both things we had come for.