Winds Of Fate v(mw-1 Page 25

  I thought so," she said, and laughed. "I figured, knowing you, that as long as you were here you'd probably decide to soak him out of your thoughts. I've been checking every pool between here and Rainlance's ekele."

  "I'm glad you found me," he said softly.

  She sat on the rim, slid out of the chemise, and into his arms. "So T " -I,- -his-red and buried her hands in his damp hair, her lips and tongue devouring him, teasing him, doing things no woman had ever done to him before.

  His hands slid down her back, to cup her buttocks and hold her against him. She strained into the embrace, as if she wanted to reach past his skin, to merge with him. Her kiss took on a fiercer quality, and she worked her mouth around to his neck, biting him softly just beneath his ear, while he ran his hands over every inch of her, re-exploring what had become new again, and making her shiver despite the heat of the pool. He gasped as she nuzzled the soft skin behind his ear, then worked her way back to the hollow of his throat, and gasped again when she untangled her fingers from his hair, and slid them down his chest, slowly-teasingly.

  "Not in here-" he managed to whisper, as he grew a little lightheaded from the combined heat of the water and his blood.

  She laughed, low and throatily. "All right." She began to back up, one tiny step at a time, rewarding him for following her with her clever fingers, which were now hard at work well below the waterline and threatening to make his knees go to jelly at any moment.

  They reached the edge of the pool, right beside the waterfall, where some kind soul had left a pile of waterproof cushions and mats. She turned away from him to hoist herself up on the rim.

  He caught her by the waist, lifted her up, and held her there, nibbling his way up the inside of her thighs until it was her turn to gasp.

  She buried her hands in his wet hair and her fingers flexed in time with her breathing.

  Then she clutched two fistfuls of hair, pulled him away, and swore at him, half laughing. "Get up here, you oaf" she hissed, "Or I'll get back in the water and do the same to you! You just might drown!"

  "We can't have that," he chuckled, and joined her; tumbling her into the cushions, nibbling and touching, making her squeal with laughter and surprise.

  He only had the upper hand for a moment. Then she somehow squirmed out from beneath him, and pulled a wrestler's trick on him.

  Then she had him on his back, bestriding him, a wicked smile on her face as she lowered herself down, a teasing hair's breadth at a time.

  He arched to meet her, his hands full of her breasts, catching her unawares.

  She cried out and arched her back, driving herself down onto him.

  Their minds met as their bodies met, and the shared pleasures enhanced their own, as she felt his passion and he experienced every touch of his fingers on her flesh.

  She roused him almost to the climax, again and again, building the passion higher and higher, until he thought he would not be able to bear another heartbeat-Then she loosed the jesses, and they soared together.

  "Dear-gods," he whispered, as they lay together in a trembling symmetry of arms and legs.

  She giggled. "The reward of virtue."

  "I think I shall strive to be virtuous," he mumbled, then exhaustion took him down into sleep before he could hear her reply. If she even made one. Verbally.

  When he woke, she had moved away from him to lie in a careless sprawl an arm's length away. He'd expected as much; he'd learned over the past few months that she was a restless sleeper-after more than once finding himself crowded onto a tiny sliver of sleeping pad. The moon was just retreating behind the rock of the waterfall. He slipped into the pool for a moment, to rinse himself off after his exertions, warm up his muscles, and to cross to the other side without rustling the undergrowth. that would surely wake her, as the sound of someone swimming would not.

  On the other side of the pool, he used his shirt to dry himself and pulled on the rest of his clothing. He hated to leave her like that.

  But she is as curious as two cats, and I am not certain I want to answer all the questions she is likely to have when she wakes.

  She ~ ask about the rescue, and she would also want to know about the changechild. And when she found out that Nyara was female am not ready to fend off-fits of jealousy, he thought, wearily. Father's accusation are bad enough. Hers would be worse. And their is no reason for Yet. Not that he hadn't entertained a fantasy or two.

  But they are only fantasies and will Y~tn so, he told his conscience firmly. still, they are things I would rather she did not know about. She is not old enough to accept them calmly, for the simple daydreams that they are. Hmmer saffiffing.

  Or accept that sometimes the fantasy can be as fulfilling as the reality.

  He moved quickly and quietly along the Pahs of the Vale, pausing now and then to take his bearings.

  Once outside, he went on alert. Although this was where the scouts had their ekeles, they did not equip them with removable ladders for nothing.

  But the night lay over the forest as quietly as a blanket on a sleeping babe.

  Only twice did he pause at an unusual sight or sound. The first time, it was a pair of bondbirds, huge, snow-winged owls, chasing each other playfully. He recognized them as K'Tathi and Corwith, and relaxed a little. If they were up, it meant the u2U was under watch. The second time he stopped was to hail his older half brother, Wintermoon, the bondmate of those owls, who knelt beside the trail, dressing out a young buck deer.

  Wintermoon, one of two children of Starblade's contracted liaison with a mage of k'treva, had none of either parent's Mage-Talents, and only enough Of mind-magic to enable him to speak with his bondbird. The other child, a girl, had apparently inherited it all, but she was with k'treva and out of Starblade's reach. The Adept had never forgiven his eldest son for his lack of magery, and Wintermoon had responded by putting as much distance between ~ himself and his father as Clan and Vale would permit. He had no wish to leave k'sheyna; he had an amazing number of friends and lovers for so taciturn and elusive an individual-it was simply that he also had no wish to deal with a father who had nothing but scorn for him.

  "Good hunting," Darkwind said with admiration, eyeing the size of the buck's rack. "Wish I could do that well in the daylight!" He had no fear that Wintermoon had taken anything other than a bachelor; his brother was too wise in the stewardship of the forest to make a stupid mistake in his choice of prey.

  Wintermoon laughed; part of his attempt to put distance between himself and Starblade had been to bond exclusively to owls. He had become completely nocturnal, and was one of the night-hunters and night-scouts, and encountered his father perhaps twice in a moon, if that often. "It becomes easier as time goes on. And K'Tathi there lends me his eyes; that's most of it.~

  "How does-" Darkwind began, puzzled.

  Wintermoon followed the thought with quicksilver logic. "He perches above my head. I simply have to adjust my aim to match. Practice enough against trees, and it's not so bad. So, little brother, do you want any of this?" Darkwind shook his head. "No, I'm fine for the next few days. Dawnfire could use some, though. She was telling me her larder was a little bare." lhw should make up for my k~ her like that.

  "I'll see she gets it. All's clear the way back to your place. Fair skies-"

  That was a clear dismissal-and really, about as social as Wintermoon ever got outside of the walls of his ekele. "Wind to thy wings," Darkwind responded, and continued up the trail. He didn't entirely release his hold on caution, but he did relax it a little. Wintermoon was completely reliable; if he said it was clear, he didn't mean just the trail, he meant for furlongs on either side.

  Once at his ekele, he woke Vree up to let down the ladder-strap for him. There was still enough moon for the gyre to see, though he complained every heartbeat, and went back to sleep immediately, without waiting for Darkwind to climb up.

  Even though he was relaxed and utterly weary, he couldn't help thinking about Nyara, as he drifted off to sleep. H
e found himself thinking of her suspiciously, the way his father would.

  Or Wintermoon, for that matter. He's more like Father than he knows. Or will admit.

  He wished he'd been able to persuade the Elders to allow her closer.

  And not just for her protection. No, it would have been much easier to keep a watchful eye on her, if she'd been, say, in one of the dead scouts' abandoned ekeles.

  Of course, Starblade would have opposed that out of its sheer symbolism.

  Still, she was within reach. The hertasi were clever and conscientious.

  There were the gryphons, three or four tervardi, several dyheli herds, and Dawnfire between here and the Vale, and her only other escape routes lay across the border, into the Outlands.

  I can't see her going back that way, he yawned, finally giving in to sleep.

  She was running away. Why in the name of the gods would she ever run back?

  *Chapter Thirteen INTERLUDE

  Nyara huddled before her father, abject terror warring with another emotion entirely.

  Pure, wanton desire.

  She hated it, that need, that fire that drove her to want him-and even as she hated him, she hated herself for feeling it.

  Even though she could not control that need, even though she knew it was built into her; as he had sculpted her flesh to suit him, he had also sculpted her mind and her deepest instincts.

  It didn't matter; none of it mattered. Half the time she suspected he had inserted that same self-hatred into her, purely for amusement.

  And when he had called her this night, she had obeyed the call. that was built into her, too, for all that she had run away from him, for all that she had deluded herself, telling herself that she could, would resist him. She could not, and had not, and now she groveled here at his feet, longing for his touch, hating and fearing it. Despising herself for thinking that she could escape him so easily.

  It had been no trouble to deceive the little hertasi who guarded her; they were not creatures of the night, and a simple illusion of her slumbering form in the darkness of the little cave they had given her was enough to satisfy them.

  She had not lied. Until tonight, she had thought she could escape his reach. She had not purposefully misled the hertasi Healer, either-her weakness and pain were not feigned, nor were her injuries. But what the Healer did not know, was the extent to which she could ignore pain and fight past weakness when she had to.

  That was how she had found the strength to counter her father's magic and free the dyheli herd. That was how he had forced her to come to him when he called, overriding the pain with his own commands.

  And, as usual, he said nothing at first; merely smiled and waited until she had abased herself sufficiently to drive home how helpless she was, how much of her life lay within his power.

  If she resembled a cat, Mornelithe Falconsbane was a feline; one that stood upon two legs, and walked, and talked, but there his connection with humanity ended. Long silky hair poured uncut down his back, the color a tawny gold that he maintained magically, else he would have been as bleached-silver as any Tayledras Adept. Long, silky hair grew on most of his face, carefully groomed and tended by a made-servant whose only role was to brush her master whenever he called. His slit-pupiled eyes were a golden-green, like watery beryls; his canines sharper and more pronounced than hers. His pointed ears were tufted at the tips, and the silky hair continued down his spine in a luxurious crest, ending at the clefts of the buttocks. For the rest, he was as perfectly formed and conditioned as a human could be, with a body any sculptor would have wept to see.

  As Nyara knew, intimately. since he had emerged from his stronghold to call her to the border of k'sheyna and the beginnings of his domain, he had chosen to dress for the occasion in soft, buckskin leather that perfectly matched his hair. Darkwind's disparaging comments to the contrary, Mornelithe seldom wore elaborate costumes; in fact, within his own quarters, he went nude as often as not.

  Which Nyara also knew, intimately.

  She knelt before him until her legs ached from the stones and bits of branch beneath them-which he would not permit her to clear away. He lounged on a blanket of fur spread over a fallen tree trunk by a servant, making him an impromptu throne. The golden mage-light above his head glistened on his hair, the tips of the fur, and on the bat-wings of his two giant guardian-beasts, half wolf, half something she could not even name, creatures whose heads loomed even with his when he stood.

  Some of her scars had come from the teeth of those beasts, lessonings in her proper place in the scheme of things, and the proper demeanor to display. Thus she had learned not to move until told, or speak until spoken to.

  "Well," he said at last, his voice deep, calm, smooth and soothing.

  There was a wealth of warm amusement in his voice, which meant he was pleased. She soon discovered why.

  "You took my invitation to flee to the Birdfools as if you had thought of it yourself, dear daughter," he chuckled. "I am proud of you." She burned with humiliation. So it had all been his idea, from the inattentive guards, to the captive dyheli herd. Without a doubt, he had planned everything, knowing how she would react to anything he presented in her path. She should have known..."You followed my plan to the letter, my child," he said with approval. "I am very pleased with you. I assume that they invoked a Truth-Spell upon you?"

  "Of a kind," she whispered, shivering with shamed pleasure as his approval warmed and excited her. "The Birdkin do not trust me, yet.

  They keep me in a dwelling of sorts at the border, with hertasi and one Birdkin scout to watch."

  "One scout only?" Mornelithe threw back his head and laughed, and the guardian-beasts hung out their tongues in frightening parodies of a canine grin. "They trust you more than you think, little daughter, if they set only one to watch you. Are there no other watchers on you?" She could not help herself; she was compelled to answer truthfully.

  But she could make him force it out of her a word at a time, and perhaps he would grow tired before he learned all the truth. Let him think it was fear that tied her tongue. "Two," she whispered.

  "Hertasi?" She shook her head. He frowned, and she trembled. "Tervardi, then?" She shook her head again, hope growing thin that he would lose interest.

  Surely not dyheli? No?" His frown deepened, and she lost any hope of hiding her friends' identities. "What are they? Speak!" He reached out a tendril of power to curl about her. A hand of pain tightened around her mind, though not so much that she could not speak.

  Her body convulsed. "Gryphons," she whimpered, through tears of agony and anger. "Gryphons." The pain ceased, and she slumped over her knees, head hanging, hands clasped together tightly. she fought to control her tears so that he would not know how she had come to like the pair, and so have yet another weapon to hold over her.

  "Gryphons." His voice deepened, and the guardian-beasts growled.

  Gryphons, here. This requires-thought.

  I will have more of these gryphons out of you, my child. But later."

  She looked up, cheeks still wet with tears. He was looking past her, into the dark forest, his mind elsewhere than on her. Then he took visible hold of himself, and gazed down on her, sniffing when he saw her tears. He leaned down, and lifted a single drop on a long, talon-tipped finger, and licked it off, slowly, eyes narrowed as he watched her closely.

  She shook with a desire she could not control, and that only he could command. He smiled with satisfaction.

  "This Birdfool," he said, leaning back into his fur. "His name."

  "Darkwind," she told him.

  His eyes lit up from within, and again he laughed, long and heartily, and this time the beasts laughed with him in gravelly growls.

  "Darkwind! The son of my dear friend Starblade! What delicious irony. Has Starblade seen you, my dearest?"

  She shook her head, baffled by his words.

  "What a pity; he'd have been certain to recognize you, as you would recognize him if you saw him." He l
aughed again, and she dared a question. Starblade??

  "I have seen him, this Starblade?"

  "Of course you have, my precious pet. He was my guest here for many days." Mornelithe's smile deepened, and he licked his lips. "Many, many days. You dined upon his pet bird, do you not recall? And I gave him the crow to replace it, once he learned his place beneath me.

  Nyara's eyes widened, as she remembered the Tayledras Mornelithe had captured and broken; how she had been so jealous of the new captive, who had taken her place, however briefly, in Mornelithe's attentions.

  How she had so amused Mornelithe with her jealousy that he had chained her in the corner of his bedroom, like a pet dog, so that she was forced to watch him break the new captive to his will.

  And he, the former captive, without a doubt would remember her.