PRINCE OF FIRE AND ASHES by Fantasy Novelist Katya Reimann

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Prince of Fire and Ashes

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Chapter Two

The crossing bridged the narrowest point between hard granite banks. As they neared, the reason for the gathered crowd became obvious. The bridge was narrow and much-repaired, so overgrown with vines that it was difficult even to see the age-whitened boards from which it had been constructed. The center of its three short spans sagged dangerously. The bridgekeeper, a stout, dark-haired man with an enormous belly, collected two-penny tolls and directing the marketgoers into ragged lines on both the banks, ensuring that the bridge never bore the weight of more than a handful of travelers and their livestock, or the mass of a single cart or wagon.
From a distance, Gaultry conceived a fanciful impression that the entire structure was held together only by the unusual wealth of ivy that swarmed up over its sides and supports. Coming closer, she was appalled to discover imagined whimsy was actual fact. A spindly, vine-covered arch had been erected on the bridge where it went onto the first piling. As she approached, she saw that it was marked with the hex-signature of an Emiera Priestess who had grafted the vines to the bridge to keep it from collapsing. From the hex-signature, she read that the work was dated for new attention—as of three years prior.
"This is Tielmark's High Road!" Gaultry said, shocked. "Who would allow this bridge to get to this state?"
Martin loosed his reins and rubbed his neck. "Who do you think? The late Chancellor of Tielmark was also the Master of its High Road and bridges."
The late Chancellor of Tielmark had been a Bissanty loyalist. Gaultry, who had been personally responsible for his death, paled with shock as her poor understanding of the far-reaching consequences of a disloyal chancellor came freshly home to her. "How could Tielmark trust something so important to a man up to his elbows in paper and court protocol? Even if he wasn't a Bissanty snake? And why send a Priestess instead of a builder to fix it?"
"Benet has been a long time coming into his power." Martin sounded tired. He slid out of his saddle, pulling his reins over his horse's head so he could better control the animal in the crowd. "Years of regency after his father died, then a traitor chancellor. He's actually held the throne of Tielmark for almost eight years now—yet with the regency and the ill-counsel of his chancellor considered, his marriage this spring can be counted his first entirely self-ruled act as Tielmark's ruler. Do you wonder that his bridges are rotten?"
Gaultry stared, first at the bridge, then at the marketgoers who waited, patient but increasingly surly, on both riverbanks. "This bridge has been collapsing for more than eight years," she observed. "Was Benet's father ineffective too?" Martin was old enough to remember, even if Gaultry was not.
Martin shrugged. "Ginvers was a soldier, like his brother Roualt before him. You'd have to go back to Corinne for a ruler who took the time to care about her roads. Besides, the lands that border the High Road are a patchwork of small estates, each owing allegiance to different power-holders. There must be some local dispute."
Following Martin's example, Gaultry and the others dismounted, leading their horses to the back of the queue that twined round on their side of the bank.
Gaultry was dismayed at the numbers—and the volume of the produce—that lay ahead of them. "We'll be here hours. Maybe it would have been faster to find a place to wade."
Tullier smirked.
"Not necessarily." Martin, catching Tullier's expression, eyed him with a look of serious displeasure. "I'll not argue with every pig farmer, but this—obviously we can't waste the rest of the day standing here." He slapped his reins into Gaultry's hand and pushed through the crowd to speak with the bridgekeeper.
"Talk about choosing one's battles unwisely!" Gaultry said between her teeth. "Just watch. This will prove worse than me with the pig-woman. Tielmaran farmers won't stand for queue-jumping."
Sure enough, as Martin finished speaking to the bridgekeeper and beckoned them to the front, calls of complaint rose from both banks. The monkey and the tamarin particularly drew the crowd's ire—as if the creatures were proof that the travelers were performers or players, greedy for a chance to set up a stall early.
"Get back in line!" one man behind them shrieked. To judge by his dress, he and his companions actually were actors or minstrels. "We'll all reach Soiscroix in good time, if no one pushes forward unfairly!"
"Quiet! Quiet! They're on the Prince's business," the bridgekeeper protested, his breathy, soft-toned voice scarcely audible above the tumult. "Their business gives them right of passage—"
No one listened. Martin, ignoring the catcalls, stepped onto the bridge and beckoned. Gaultry tossed her reins to the Sharif and hurried up to him. "Martin—this isn't a good idea."
"Hurry up. There's going to be a surge if we don't make this quick." He manhandled Gaultry past him. "Come along you two!" he called to the Sharif and Tullier. "Prince's business!"
Gaultry, reluctant, took two paces along the bridge. A man at the bridge's far end stared back across the heads of the people who would be the last to cross before them, a furious expression on his face. "Who are you to push ahead?" he yelled. "Elianté's Spear! Wait your turn!"
Gaultry set her face and stepped forward. Whether Martin was wise to have leapt the queue or not, he wasn't in the wrong to have done it. Ahead of her, the angry man's eyes bulged with affront.
Then she realized the reaction was more than simple offense. Something was happening in the crowd behind him: There was a sharp spike in the crowd's movement, and the man fell, or was dragged, out of sight.
A short, slope-shouldered man took his place. At his back, another; then a third man and a fourth. At first Gaultry did not recognize what she was seeing.
Tullier grabbed at her sleeve. "Bissanty-men! What are they doing in Tielmark?"
The man in front swung his sword clear from his belt. "For Llara!" he called. "For Llara's Heart-on-Earth!" Sword upheld, he loped forward to close with them. Marketgoers scattered to either side, clearing a path.
"Stop them!" Gaultry shouted. "They'll kill us!"
But the crowd thought the men were only giving them a fright for their audacity—they seemed deaf to the invocation of the Bissanty goddess, the imperial title. Some even cheered the swordsmen forward. For a crucial moment, Gaultry, half taking her cue from the crowd's reaction, could not decide whether she should press forward or turn back, unable believe the attack was really happening. She darted a quick look at the bridgekeeper, and saw him standing to one side, obviously wanting to be out of it. Martin was still behind her.
"I am Gaultry Blas!" she shouted, as the swordsmen almost came up on her. "Glamour-witch, and protector of this realm!" But of course the men must already know who she was, if they were Bissanty and attacking! Still—she could bluff—"Don't test me, if you choose to live!" As the man kept coming, she remembered at last that she did not have to bluff. Touching the vine that encircled the rail at her side, she opened a channel toward the signature of the priestess who had bound it to the bridge, calling on the strength left dormant there. As she touched it, her own power surged up. "Know my power!" For a moment, her heart leapt with hope: She would turn the spell, and use the magicked vine to trap the attackers before they reached her. All it needed was a little extra call of power—
An unfamiliar countersurge slapped against her as she reached the signature board. The first sweet shock of her own power staggered, lurched and dropped, with an angry recoil that was as painful as it was unexpected. Some other witch, unnamed, had left her mark on the boarded archway, along with a fresh, aggressive spell. Gaultry jerked her hand back from the vine, swearing, not sure what had gone wrong, and turned with angry fear to face the descending sword.
But as she turned, the vines all along the bridge made a violent, flexing motion. Beneath her feet, the bridge ties shifted and shrieked in protest, and awareness pierced her of the nasty drop from the bridge to the swift-running, rock-strewn waters that ran beneath it. The panicked marketgoers still remaining on the bridge, ignoring even the men with the swords, scrambled for the safety of solid ground. The sallow-skinned face of the first of the Bissanty attackers paled. "Llara on me—" he cried, lurching as the bridge shifted beneath him.
The vine unfurled from the spot where Gaultry had touched it and reared back away from the bridge, twisting like a serpent, made all from leaves. And not just in that place. All along the bridge, fronds of ivy writhed like a many-armed creature waking from sleep, breaking up parts of the bridge as it tore itself free.
"What have you done?" Tullier shouted. He was the closest of her companions.
"It's not me!" Gaultry shouted back. "I swear by Elianté, Huntress-god, it wasn't me! Jump clear!"
Instead he snatched at her hand.
The flailing, many-armed mass of ivy arched over the bridge behind them, blocking retreat.
A frighteningly strong frond grabbed at her arm, then ripped Tullier's hand away. A plank shifted and fell away from beneath her. When she tried to make a dash for stable ground, a mantle of green swept over her head, a living robe of leaf and vine that blocked her sight as it engulfed her. As she drew her knife a vine-tendril looped three times around her arm, then contracted, hard enough to tear her skin. She screeched with pain, but clung to the knife, knowing she would never be able to retrieve it if it dropped.
She heard Tullier call out again, his voice pitched high with anger, but she could not distinguish his words. The vines extended and coiled like leafed snakes, lashing her knife arm against her chest. She threw herself against the bridge's rail, trying to break free. "Martin!" she called. "Anyone! Help!"
The bridge rocked sharply. With a harsh chorus of cracking and splintering, it began to come apart. A board dropped out right beneath her feet, and then, as she struggled to hold the rail, another still was wrenched away. Gaultry fell, clutched at a broken piece of rail to brake herself, and knocked her chin against something hard. She fell again, a terrible slipping fall, twice and more again the height of a standing man, punctuated with a bruising crash against what remained of one of the bridge supports.
Then she was in the water, forced by the current against the edge of a half-submerged rock.
The vine loosened as she dropped, deprived either of its purchase or of the magic that grounded it. Gaultry got a confused partial view, through whipping snakes of vine, of the remnants of the bridge above her. Martin was still aloft, facing at least one Bissanty man. Tullier—she could not see Tullier. He had to be down with her in the water. And the Sharif—the Sharif had been holding the horses—
The Sharif was in the water not far from her, pressed against one of the bridge's pilings, strung between two of their mounts. The chestnut that Martin had been riding lunged furiously, striking with all its strength against a closing noose of vine. Gaultry's horse had broken bones in the fall. Shrieking in pain, it plunged wildly, trying to right itself. The Sharif was strung between the two panicked animals, bound in a tangled snarl of bridle straps and vine.
Let them go! Gaultry called, not understanding at first how seriously the woman was entangled.
Oh yes. And then the river takes me and I drown, the woman shot back.
The exchange between the women roused the vine. It moved sluggishly in the water, fronds extending, slow to regroup. Snaky masses of leaf noosed once more around Gaultry's chest, tentative at first, then gaining strength enough to constrict her breathing. Somehow she had managed to keep hold of the knife. She was torn between trying to make use of it and continuing to paddle and keep her head above water.
At last the vine had power and purchase enough to make the decision for her. It wrenched her away from the protection of the half-submerged rock and dashed her into the current. A rush of white foam blinded Gaultry briefly, disorienting her as she twirled into the main stream. Water forced its way up her nose and into her foolishly open mouth. It was only when the vine whipped her against another ridge of stone that she was able—just for a moment—to orient herself. She thrashed out, trying to reach a stone that jutted up from the water a bare yard from her head, and cracked her foot against a hidden ledge of stone in the water beneath her.
Gaining a precarious life-hold on that unexpected ledge, she tried to take a normal breath and gather for a counterattack. Touching a cluster of leaves, she probed outward with her magic, this time covertly, trying to determine what had set the plant in action against her. Her Bissanty-attacker had appeared shocked when the vine had come to life—but Gaultry had been running from enemies for too long to believe that simultaneous attacks could be coincidental.
The source, when she found it, was a palpable, angry thing. It hated with a vitriolic personal strength that Gaultry could feel like a physical force, even just thrusting a thread of power toward it. Rather than risk testing it further, she settled back into the water. If that magic sensed she had found her feet, she guessed it would sweep her back into the depths.
She forced herself to concentrate, to push her fear aside. She stared at the vine, trying to understand its violent animation. It was not the old priestess's spell that had bound the vine to the bridge in the first place. She could sense that woman's touch, still in the vine, gently binding the vines to the worn-out boards. This was something new. Something opportunistic. Dimly, she became aware of a green nimbus where the new magic had bound itself over the old. As she focused, the nimbus deepened in color to a green so dark as to be almost black. Angry green, hate-spawned and curdling black. Recognition of a sort tore her: Goddess Elianté wore that color, when she tore through the forest in her aspect as Huntress-avenger.
Gaultry had no breath to cry out at the betrayal: her own goddess, called to power against her. What was it that she had done, that this violence had come crashing down upon her? What could she have done, to draw this hate?
Pushing these thoughts away, she focused on the vine itself, searching for weakness, then almost crying in relief when she found it: as the black-green magic used the vine to mete destruction, it consumed it, withering the leaves and breaking the bark.
Above, on the bridge, a man cried out. A body with a fluttering grey cloak dropped into the water. A Bissanty body. Martin, she thought with a stab of relief. Making quick work of their attackers. She wrenched around, fighting the vines, trying to see what else was happening. Then she saw Tullier.
He was struggling in a cluster of greenery overhead, hanging more than a man's body length above the water, like a fly caught in a web. Moving toward him on the remains of the bridge's framework were two of the men who had first accosted them.
"Tullier!" she screamed. He turned to her, even bound amid the entrapping vine, just as the first man reached him. "Tullier!" she screamed again. The first man's sword flashed and caught the sun as it descended. Crimson stained the vine that sheathed both Tullier and his attacker.
Her rage erupted in a flood of strength and heat. With it, her Glamour-magic leapt to power. Like golden heart-fire, it burst forth, driving in gleaming channels through the wrathful green of the magic that engulfed her. The dark-green magic was potent, but unnamed. Whoever had cast the spell had not been a master-planter, so the spell had not become a part of the vines, using some part of the plant's inherent nature to enact itself.
Which was lucky for Gaultry, because the vines, already weakened, became vegetively inanimate and fell away, just as soon as the spell was diverted into direct engagement with Gaultry's power. She hardly noticed, she was so riveted on Tullier's fate.
The river coursed back from her body, repulsed by the force streaming from her body, and left her standing on a naked slab of stone as the current rushed breast-level in dark walls past her. She screamed out, throwing the channels of her power wider, and drank in the rank green magic, letting it distend the channels of her power with the volume of its sick, potent might. The vines that had wrapped her chest, still in the grip of the river's current but freed now of the spell, were whipped away by the water's force. Above her, she was vaguely aware as the ivy mass on Tullier's body abruptly unraveled, plunging his limp form into the merciless current.
Black-green power fought against gold. Gaultry braced herself on the bare rock, walls of water hissing past her, her body buckling as she scrambled to overwhelm the spell. Beyond those walls, under the bridge, she sensed rather than saw Tullier's body turn in the current and strike a rock. The sickening sound of meat striking stone carried to her over the rushing sound of the water.
That sound gave her the will to shatter the green magic. She screamed, triumphant, and it exploded from her in a cloud of infinitely small speckles of light, singing vitriol to the air.
Then—then it was just gone.
The river walls collapsed. Gaultry, taken by surprise, bobbed to the surface and began to paddle wildly, clutching at the jutting stone. She stared down the river, searching for Tullier. His dog, trapped somewhere up on the bridge, howled in despair.
Gautri. The Sharif's voice pierced her, the slur of her foreign pronunciation unusually enhanced. Gautri, I need you.
The young woman unwillingly broke her search for Tullier and turned back toward the Sharif. What she saw made her gasp in horror, newly appalled. As the spell had broken, the vines entrapping Martin's chestnut horse had dropped away. Panicked, it plunged for the shore. The Sharif, still tangled in the reins of both horses, the first broken-legged and half-insane with pain, the other lunging, determined to regain dry land, was pinned between them against one of the bridge pilings. The tendons of the war-leader's arms were stretched in agonized cords down across her chest.
Not long. Somehow, even in the face of the water, the woman had regained her nerve. Not long now. Her words held an eerie calm. Sun-god, Andion-King, if ever you loved me—
From the corner of her eye, Gaultry spotted the black crown of Tullier's head, down river now and moving swiftly away. She looked at the horses, at the Sharif, unable to come to a decision. The Sharif, for certain, needed help right now, but Tullier—
"Go for the boy!" Martin, his sword a red slash of gore, appeared atop the bridge's wreckage. Even as he spoke, he threw himself recklessly across the broken gap, sloshing down crazily amidst the torn hulks of wood and vine. One of the horses reared in terror. The Sharif howled, her arms were newly wrenched. But at least Martin was there—
Gaultry flung herself loose into the stream, heading toward the point where she had last seen Tullier's head.
Rocks and debris snarled the river's course. At its present midsummer volume, the current was not swollen to the top of its strength, but it was powerful enough to be frightening. Under good conditions, Gaultry could swim like an otter, but she was badly winded and her desperation to reach Tullier served against her. Her position, low in the water, had her terrified that she would lose him in a swirling eddy, or in the lee of a half-submerged log or stone.
She crested a mossy ridge of rock, tearing her knuckles against it, and, wallowing for a moment against that edge, once more caught sight of him. Somehow he had managed to escape the main current and pull himself over to the edge of a shallow, bankside pool.
"Tullier!" Gaultry screamed. "Tullier!"
Above him stood a man with sloping shoulders and sallow skin. One of the bridge attackers. He had escaped the wreckage of vine and wood and run along the bank to intercept them. As Gaultry watched, he raised his sword.
Tullier was too weak to protect himself. He stared up, his ice-green eyes steady, ready for what was about to happen.
The man hesitated. Something in Tullier's expression slowed him. Looking down at the boy, his lips moved. Gaultry was not close enough to hear the words, but Tullier made no effort to answer. She scrambled forward in a frenzy, desperate to reach the bank before the sword descended.
The man, seemingly unaware of her approach, cast the god-sign for Llara, a jerking lightning bolt slash at the air, and touched his hand to the edge of his blade. He was the fast man, the one who had clambered across the chaotic tangle of collapsing bridge and vine to reach Tullier. His fingers caressed his blade's edge—the blade that was still slick with the boy's blood. As Gaultry watched, he deliberately sliced the honed edge into his palm, then clenched his fist. Blood started from between his fingers, mingling with Tullier's. The Bissanty man stiffened.
"Llara-born!" he said softly. This time Gaultry was near enough to hear. The man stared at Tullier with fascinated horror. "I have struck the Llara-born." Eyes widening in agony, the man drew his blade up.
Tullier, hunkering down just a little beneath him, shut his eyes.
The man let out an indescribable cry. His blade flashed down, unerring.
Gaultry screamed again, this time in pity.
The Bissanty-man was a soldier of Great Llara, and he was very quick. His cry cut short as the force of his own blow disemboweled him, and his body struck the water, the sword falling from his dying hand. A wave washed past Gaultry's body, and she felt a horrible cooling around her in the water. Icy certainty pierced her: As punishment for striking a boy who was his own goddess's kin, the man's soul had died with his body.
Gaultry, stumbling out of the water at Tullier's side, pulled him up by his shoulder, dazed by what she had witnessed. She had not understood this implication of the boy's Imperial god-blood, had not understood the threat Tullier posed to the Emperor's will that his own sons should succeed him. From what she had just witnessed, so long as Goddess Llara reigned as Bissanty's patron, no citizen of all the Imperial lands could draw a drop of the boy's blood and hope to claim the Grey Goddess's blessing—and what man could live, knowing the punishment his Goddess would wreak upon him?
This power of death over life, this was the prize the Emperors of Bissanty fought so jealously to possess.
Tullier's shirt was dark with blood. He rolled listlessly onto his side as she lugged him out of the water, revealing a deep, water-leached gut wound.
Frantic, she pulled him against her own body, trying to warm him. He was conscious enough to cling to her, throwing his arms around her neck and pressing his head against her as she stumbled up the bank. She tried to lay him down on a bed of moss, but he refused to let her go.
"It doesn't hurt," he said, his voice faint. "But this leaving you—"
"Tullier." She would not let him slip away like this. "It's not your time yet."
"I had a month of living," the boy gasped. "That was better than never being alive."
His uncharacteristic passivity frightened her. Wadding up the tail of her tunic, she pressed it against his wound, desperate to stanch the flowing blood.
"Gaultry," he pleaded. "Let me go."
"Shut up, Tullier," she said harshly. "We'll get a healer for you and you'll be fine. I won't let you die. Mervion—" Tullier held half her sister's Glamour-soul, and Mervion was a great healer. Perhaps if she could reach out to that part of her sister in him—
He clutched at her reflexively, a shudder of disappointment running through him. "Of course," he said. "If I die, I'll take part of Mervion. Just take it," he groaned. "Take it and let me die—"
"Shut up, Tullier," she said. "That's not my point." Though as she spoke, the possibility that he might really die—and take half Mervion's Glamour-soul with him—was like a dagger in her heart. She could not let that happen, any more than she could let Tullier die, here, while he was under her protection. "Elianté's Spear! What I mean is that I'll try reaching to Mervion's power in you to help you. Mervion's the healer, not me. If you relax, I'll try to reach out to her soul in you and buy us some time."
"Yes!" he croaked, suddenly eager. "Do it!"
She stared at him, doubtful. What had she suggested that made him so suddenly change his mind?
"Open yourself to me." She stroked his cheek, trying to calm him. "Relax. Let my magic move through you." His water-softened hair felt cold under her fingers. "Remember how it was when we were together in Bissanty. Purple and gold—our magic twined together. Goddess-Twins! That alone should be strength enough to keep you here."
"I want you—" Tullier started to say, then coughed, and did not finish. His grip tightened around her fingers with surprising strength. "Just do it," he finally managed, his voice weak.
She held him tightly against her. His flesh was river-cold, as though the stream had taken his warmth as well as his blood. For a moment, she was afraid that he was too far gone, his soul already retreated to the house of the Gods, past recalling. The overloaded channels of her power felt weak and shrunken, depleted by the effort it had taken to disperse the wrathful black-green magic, but she ignored that, and once again reached out.
Just as she was sure she could attempt her push no longer, waves of imperial purple swept across her vision. She redoubled her efforts, recognizing the great mass of power and soul that was Tullier's god-blood. Veined with bloodred streaks and pulsing like a heart's beat, it curdled backward, drawing her inward to a plane where the senses beyond vision slipped away. Distantly, Gaultry felt Tullier's body spasm against her, his nails digging into her skin as he clutched at her neck, an almost sexual embrace. But none of those things felt real. Only the edge of his wound was real, the edge of the wound and the blood that still flowed from it.
The shroud of purple dallied, ripe like grapes ready for harvest. Gaultry's urgency had not communicated itself. The golden edges of her Glamour touched the Blood-Imperial and it responded languorously, cleaving a supple fold in its center to form a cradle for her. Warmth flushed through her at the contact, and Gaultry's sense of pain fell away.
"Death wish," Gaultry muttered, wishing Tullier would concentrate harder on saving himself. If she allowed him to keep the pace so slow, surely she would lose him—and with him, perhaps, herself. This in mind, she fought with renewed vigor against the rising lassitude, her rising sense of comfort, and forced herself to focus on the horror of Tullier's wound.
She did not know how long she remained there, fixed in contemplation, but suddenly, shining like a beacon, Mervion's golden half-soul rose up above her, radiating soothing balm. Gaultry felt pure closeness with her sister—the beloved twin whom power had parted from her.
Abruptly, that moment passed. Mervion's power shrank. Gaultry saw suddenly how it could be used as a tool to cauterize and close the big breached vessel in Tullier's gut. She reached out, confident now, halfway between the spirit plane and the riverbank where the boy's bleeding body lay. In this place, she could twist Mervion's power into place, almost like a bandage, as purple waves of strength caressed her, interfusing her with fresh strength. It was heady, this sense of Tullier's god-blood, intermixing with her own Glamour.
With a last twist of strength, she finished binding the wound and withdrew. The riverbank came coldly back into focus. For a moment her body trembled, as if a fever had taken her.
Tullier's head had rolled back, exposing his throat. Gaultry tilted his face to a more natural angle. Though he was deeply unconscious, his lips were twisted in a disturbing smile, as though he was very far from his earlier pain.
"How is he?" Martin stumbled down the bank, Tullier's dog at his heels.
"He'll live." Gaultry, covering the boy's face with her palm, hiding his expression from Martin, and shakily laid him on the ground. The edges of his wound bulged with inheld blood, but she knew he would not die. Not this time. The dog whined and pressed its body against Tullier's legs. "Who did this?" she asked angrily. "Who set those men on us?"
"I don't know," Martin said. "But every man of them was Bissanty born."
"The spell on the bridge was Tielmaran magic," Gaultry told him. "Why Bissanty men if it was Tielmaran magic?"
"I don't know," Martin said. "But the Bissanties at least were waiting for us. It wasn't chance that launched that attack—they knew you and me both. That from a man before I had to kill him."
"Elianté in me!" Gaultry invoked the Huntress and made her sign, peevish and frightened together. "I thought we were supposed to be safe now we were home in Tielmark." She was crying now, delayed reaction from all the danger. "You don't know what I had to do to keep Tullier alive. They almost killed him. I had to raise my Glamour, and he the Goddess-blood!" Martin, disconcerted, yanked Gaultry up and away from the boy's unconscious form. "This can't go on," he said angrily, shielding her for a moment against the warmth of his body. "You must stop sharing your power with him. You're forgetting what he is, and who you are. His fate lies in Bissanty—yours is here in Tielmark."
Gaultry struggled free of him, feeling obscurely guilty. "Don't you think I know that? What would you have me do? He would have died without me."
"A habit he seems unwilling to break," Martin replied hotly. "For all it brings you close to him."
"He's just a boy!"
Martin raised his hand to the smooth curve of her cheek. "With this magic, he has trespassed too far inside you. Gaultry—consider what you have shared with him already."
She thrust his hand away. "Don't touch me. Not right now."
The expression on Martin's face shifted from anger to ice. He withdrew, and gave her a mock salute. "As my lady pleases. As I myself have trespassed, I am sorry. But my rudeness doesn't change what I've said. You must stop sharing your power with him. For Tielmark's sake, if not for mine."
"I don't know what you mean." She sounded childish now—she knew it, and he knew it too.
"You got your swim," he said, derisive, as he stood away from her. "I hope getting your way makes you happy."

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Last Modified: February 22, 2002