Heart Journey (46 page)

Del sipped her wine. “Thanks.”

A resigned look came to his eyes. “People are wary of me because of my prophetic gift; I don’t need to be considered a receiving telepath, too.”

“Guess not,” Del said, munching another cracker.

He glanced at the wine racks and no-time. “Though being cautious of me doesn’t seem to prevent folks from drinking my wine and eating my offerings. I have to restock every couple of weeks now.”

“Really good cheese. Thank you.”

His smile lightened his face, making it more boylike, though she didn’t think he’d been a boy for a while. “You’re welcome. You do excellent work. I think this map needs to be several places in the labyrinth, at the center with T’Ash’s World Tree, and at the rim where the path ends, near the Elder’s new pavilion.”

Del shrugged. “I’ll send the original and holos to the Guildhall—they can distribute as needed—leave one here with the inn people.”

Vinni sat next to her, swallowed cheese and a cracker or two, sipped his wine. They ate in silence as the shade deepened in the arbor and the scent of ripening grapes gently infused the air. She sighed, relaxed, even let her eyes close. “Wonderful cheese.” Cheese didn’t travel well, and she loved it.

“You can always get the best in Druida City.”

Pain. She opened her eyes. “I have Family there, I’ll be back more often.”

“Good.”

“Or did you know that? Something you want to say to me, GreatLord T’Vine?”

He smiled. “Call me Vinni.”

Which made her wonder how close they would become, but she shrugged. “You gonna tell me something, Vinni?”

His eyes had changed color, a slight tinge of red came to his cheeks. “Walk the labyrinth, GrandLady D’Elecampane.”

“Del,” she corrected. “That’s all?”

His gaze was direct. “You don’t want to know your future, do you? And hearing me wouldn’t affect your decisions, would it?”

“Maybe.”

He shook his head. “No. You will do what is right for you and yours. That means a place outside of Druida, but visiting Druida more than you have. Just as you’ve already decided.” He hesitated. “Knowing the future would only distract you. Be careful.”

Del stared at him, but he said nothing more. So she nodded, glanced at her work, thought about finishing touches, double-checking with Shunuk.

As if she’d conjured him with her thoughts, the fox slid into the arbor, sat before Vinni, and smiled ingratiatingly.
Greetyou, Vinni.

“Hello, Shunuk. Thank you again for taking care of that celtaroon nest on my estate.”

Del raised her brows. Shunuk had been ranging farther outside of Druida City proper than she’d known.

Shunuk panted.
You are welcome.
He sniffed.
I love cheese.

Vinni laughed, went to the no-time, and broke off a hunk of cheese, threw it, and laughed again when Shunuk leapt to catch it in his mouth. The fox rumbled happily around the treat. Vinni dipped his hands in a basin Del hadn’t noticed, said a Word to wash and dry them, then looked at the labyrinth path with a pained expression.

People could teleport into the labyrinth, but never out of it.

The boy set his shoulders, looked at Del. “This will be good for me.”

She nodded.

He stepped onto the path and when he looked back at her, his eyes weren’t the usual hazel. “Be careful,” he said again, then began the walk out.

T
he rest of the day she and Shunuk consulted on the shrines, verified
the spaces and each of the objects with the most recently recorded holos and vizes. They used small animal tracks to ascend the crater. Del was careful to keep those dirt paths as tiny and hidden as possible. The Great Labyrinth was a very special place, both historically and for Celtan culture, the meditation path helpful for all.

In the morning she’d walk the path, from the rim down to the center and back. At a slow meditative pace, without stopping, that would take her about three septhours. She decided to allocate a full day, with as many stops as she wanted. She’d use the time on the labyrinth to make her decisions about her life. Then she’d head back to Druida and take care of business.

She was haunted by dreams that night, yearning for Raz, his touch, the loving she’d gotten used to. But she wasn’t going to participate in erotic dream sex if he couldn’t give his whole self. As she would have given her whole self.

She woke up sweaty and unsatisfied, with the edging light of dawn filtering over the horizon. The first hint of autumn to come had kissed the morning with cool breath. Time was passing and it was past time she made decisions for a new life.

After a waterfall she dressed in her favorite, shabbiest leathers, saddled her stridebeast. Shunuk joined her without comment and kept pace.

The Sallow Family, who specialized in animal training, kept a small meadow next to a stream for horses and stridebeasts along with a salt lick and squares of feed. Her mount blew his lips in pleasure when he realized where they were going.

Soon they were at the rim of the crater where the path to and from the Great Labyrinth began and ended, due east.

The sun had risen and Bel’s rays slanted obliquely over the land, touching the green and verdant earth with the gold of summer, barely outlining the lip of the crater opposite her. Del was surprised and a little disappointed to see that she wasn’t the only one here at dawn. An older couple, surely in their eighteenth decade or so, were already treading the path down, the woman in the lead. Small and white-headed, they were still making good time. As Del watched, the woman passed her mate something to eat, a fruit or a bar, and Del understood they’d come well prepared.

Del had decided to leave her sustenance up to the Lady and Lord, which actually meant taking advantage of all the Family offerings. She’d have milk and honeycakes in half a septhour.

A faint crackle came and Del glanced toward the pilgrims who had stopped at a shrine that offered specialty caff no-times. The woman had a piece of papyrus and Del noted it was an old plan of the labyrinth. Del’s smile widened, and a bit of serenity eased her. Soon everyone would be using
Del’s
three-dimensional holo papyrus map. That was something she could be proud of: her work.

So she stepped onto the path of the Great Labyrinth, most of it still in shadow, the branches of the huge ash tree barely visible in the darkness at the center of the crater.

As she walked and regulated her breathing, she thought of her work. Slowly comprehension seeped into her that her great work of traveling Celta and mapping it was over . . . she didn’t want to be away from Doolee that long. There would be no more yearlong trips with no stop in Druida. Even the trip to the Bluegrass Plains that had seemed appealing in the first rush of grief over losing Raz didn’t feel right anymore.

She had finished the detailed survey of the area that had once been the Downwind slums, had recommended changing a few streets and parks to make the neighborhood more like the rest of Druida City.

There had been an interesting energy there, obviously the result of FirstFamily rituals in rehabilitating the land where despair and loneliness and other negative emotions had seeped into the ground for centuries.

That was done, as was the labyrinth chart.

She’d left a legacy of maps that would help later generations and was very proud of that. She had nothing and no one to prove herself to anymore, was considered the premiere cartographer of Celta. That was enough of a contribution.

So what did
she
want to do?

Find a home base.

She stopped at the Hickorys’ shrine that was blessedly equipped to disperse negative energy with chimes that corresponded to different bodily fields. She breathed and sounded the chimes to lower her grief and frustration, then, as the sounds echoed back to her, she took care in placing the notes for the best echo, and that exercise increased her serenity.

As she walked again, Vinni T’Vine’s words came back:
a place out of Druida
. More layers to that phrase than she’d first heard, as if a place outside of Druida would be good for everyone, almost a warning.

When she’d first started on this quest to find her HeartMate, she hadn’t considered his feelings; he’d been a dream lover, not a real man with wants and needs.

She wouldn’t move to Verde Valley until she could share it with him, have
him
put his mark on it as much as she. She’d stop the renovation of the theater until he was with her.

Sometime within the next few decades he would be with her. Her laugh was choked and garbled. That should have been a balm, that HeartMates were forever, long-range planning was good. But she wanted him
now
, had no patience to wait. Too greedy for that part of her life to begin, for loving.

She hadn’t comprehended how lonely she’d been, wasn’t as self-sufficient as she’d thought.

A good thing.

The meditation path worked on her. Occasionally she’d stop for snacks, watch others move ahead of her, kept an eye out for the older couple who progressed to the center. They’d be the first to T’Ash’s tree, not that the labyrinth was a race.

Del let her mind rest, having faith that when she finished the walk to the center and back to the rim, she’d have answers.

When she crossed from the darkness where the morning sun hadn’t touched, into the area that had been warmed by it, her chest finally loosened and the tears of grief rose and washed her cheeks.

She wept silently until her body began to shake and groans came. As she wiped the tears away she saw the path to D’Sea’s hidden arbor and the spring. Not coincidence. The labyrinth working on her, her knowledge of every shrine.

Stumbling along the blue flagstones to the pool, she stripped and fell into warm, scented water. There was a slight rushing of an intake spout and she moved to it, used the noise to hide the sobs that ripped out of her.

This was good, this weeping. It meant she cared. She
loved
. She’d lost her HeartMate.

She didn’t let herself howl or wail, but gave in to the tears, under the downspout, letting herself go, then taking wrenching breaths and dipping her face, her head, her whole self into the water.

Better.

She was not a careless, emotionless stick of a woman. Not the woman she would have become if she’d had no HeartMate and no Doolee and no Shunuk and continued mapping Celta.

She was a woman who had a glory of emotions. A better woman, a wholer woman, a woman who could experience great grief . . . and someday when Raz came to her, great joy.

She wept until she was empty and the horrible tearing pain inside her was gone and she was filled with soft sadness. Other sensations sifted back into her. The gentle lap of the water, the footsteps and cheerful voices of people passing the hidden spring. People she actually felt connected to.

They, too, walked the labyrinth today and that was enough commonality for her to appreciate them.

She was not alone and a loner. She was a woman who was valued by Doolee, and Straif and Mitchella, and others. Her skill was appreciated. It was enough. She’d never be completely without emotional ties again. She
liked
the emotional connections she had.

Birds chirped and rustled, a woman with a trained voice sang as she walked the labyrinth.

Enough indeed. She washed her face one more time in the water, then rose, her toes and fingers wrinkled from long submersion.

But Del was calm and had a future to plan. She dressed and the fine linen of her underwear felt good and her soft leathers slid across her body. She was alive and life was an interesting trail before her.

Shunuk moved into the bright sunlight of late morning and sat.
You are better.

Yes.
Again her throat hurt and she didn’t want to speak.
The past is done. We must craft a future. Are there any towns you’d like to live in? Not Druida, not Gael City.

Raz . . .
It hurt to even think of his name in her head, to see him in her mind’s eye. She started over.
Raz must help restore that place for it to be a true home.
She hesitated.
What of Steep Springs?

Shunuk’s gaze slid away, he shifted on his bottom.
I don’t like Steep Springs.

Amusement welled in her and she appreciated it. Shunuk probably wouldn’t be welcome in Steep Springs. More cluckers or rabbits missing, she supposed.

Toono Town,
he said.

Del blinked. Another town, more in the hills than the mountains. A very arty community of brightly painted houses.

Once she would have rejected the notion, shuddered at the thought of living among such folk. She nodded. “Deal.”

She wended her way down the rest of the crater to the World Tree, passing folk and being passed, everyone at different places on their lives’ journeys. The older couple nodded as she stood aside in a shrine and watched them walk upward to the rim. She understood that the woman recognized the recent puffiness of tearful eyes, yet she said nothing, raised her hand in blessing.