The Age of Light (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 1) (19 page)

“Is something wrong?” she asked. She had rather been
enjoying herself, liking his touch.

“Wrong? No,” he said, a little too quickly, his
voice low and husky silver. He bent forward and his hands slid down her belly
under the water. At that she moved up the side of the tub, then sat forward,
bracing her hands on the edges. Painfully she pushed herself forward till she
balanced on the balls of her feet, her injured ankle throbbing. She turned,
leaned heavily in his shoulder, and levered herself up to stand facing him. It
was another habit, part of a well-practiced ritual that she and her bathers
went through. But this time she observed him carefully with her other senses, conscious
of his reactions.

She felt his eyes on her, staring at her face. The
weight of his eyes were a question.

“To make it easier,” she explained, shrugging, her
legs trembling with the effort of holding her weight.

He made no comment. His breathing changed as he
re-soaped the cloth, and she raised her leg in anticipation of his hands. One
of his strong arms curled around her waist, steadying her, almost to the point
of lifting her off the floor of the tub. His other hand, after a long moment,
attacked her hips with firm, languid strokes. They moved lower, sliding between
her thighs, slow and attentive. She fought the urge to sigh and to keep her
hand from flexing on his shoulder. She listened to his quickened breath and
felt his accelerated pulse, realized that she was slowly becoming attuned to
him again. Grimly Jeliya battled revulsion at the thought, the implied
violation. His reactions to bathing her were something new and unexpected, and
intriguing. She could smell the thin sheen of sweat that now covered him, feel
it as if it sheened her own skin. She felt his tail swish in agitation and one
hoof scrape against the floor as his hand moved over her buttock. A flicker of
uneasy arousal flittered through the bottom of her thoughts from him and an
uncomfortable swelling caused him to shift and she fought not to shift with
him, or show her own signs of his - titillation. He was becoming excited and it
bothered him.

He swallowed in her dry throat, and his suddenly
loud, harsh breath rasped in her ears.

Intrigued, caught up in the intense sharing of
sensations, she tracked his shoulder up to his neck, reached out carefully to
where his face should be. His fingers caught hers, guided her palm to his
cheek. It was bristled with about five turns of beard growth. She stroked his
cheek lightly, her fingers trailing down to the sharp angle of his jaw. It led
to a somewhat stubborn chin. She brushed his brow, felt the silky, quicksilver
mane she had glimpsed before curl almost like a living thing over her hand. Then
she encountered the digit-and-a-half long horn, traced its spirals. She
marveled at it.

Jeliya let her fingers drop to his eyebrows,
fluttered them over his lids, studied his nose. Then they settled to his lips,
glided along each. His arousal grew, and he kissed each fingertip. She found
his pointed ears, the thick cords of muscle in his neck. His fingers slid over
her own wet cheek, could have been the wind. She cupped his face, could not
resist the chance to bait him, his lack of control. She leaned close, her lips
close to his ear. He was tangible anticipation, his hands flexing on her hips.
His lips practically tingled with the feel of hers on them. The want of the
feel of hers. “If it bothers you,” she breathed into the tense moment, “you
don’t have to watch.”

He flicked his ear in irritation, grunted. But she
could feel the heat rising all the way up to his roots, the broil of vexation
in his mind. She leaned back, her voice full of laughter. “You could close your
eyes - and feel your way along!”

“Point to you,” he said gruffly, shifting his grip
to lower her back into the cooling water, his ardor also considerably cooled.
The link of Jur’Av’chi weakened as he unconsciously closed her out, the sharing
ebbing away, leaving her feeling oddly empty. She began to regret her words,
then remembered how he had teased her, and pushed the regret away. She did not
even want the contact with him. Right?

Without a word he rose and his footsteps went away
and came back. He pulled the stopper and drained the tub, rinsed the sides and
bottom quickly, then helped her to her feet again and had her put her arms
around his neck. He swept her long, loose braids out of the way and began
pouring water over her. It was warm, and felt nice over her slightly chilled
skin. She lay her cheek against the rippling mass of his chest, the ruff
tickling her belly and legs.

He turned her, held her with one arm; grunted and
leaned back. Water splashed down her front. She cupped her hands, carefully
washed the soap off her face.

He lifted her out and set her on what was almost a
full sized desi on the bed. She felt about for the edge, pulled it up around
her and wondered what he was doing...

The image coalesced in her mind. He was drying
himself off and gathering various clay pots together on a small, high table
near the head of the bed. The connection was back, twice as strong in half the
time. She shut out the image with a shudder, then realized that she was not
touching him anymore, yet still she was sharing senses with him. It was much
more deeply and subtly rooted than last time, like background noise. She found,
as she gingerly, irresistibly, probed the connection, that she could call up
any of his senses or any of his responses, or even some of his emotions, at
will. She waited as his hands enfolded her, then called to his hearing - heard
faint bird calls clearly, heard her own gasp of startlement-

“Is something wrong?” he asked as he dried her. She
shook her head as he urged her to lie down. He dipped his fingers into one of
the pots, came up with a rich yellow cream that he started spreading on her
skin. She recognized the smell of cocoa butter, mixed with aloe. He rubbed her
down quickly and efficiently. It was over much too quickly.

“You take very good care of your patients,” she commented
as he went to work on her hair. She could feel the silken springiness of it
beneath his hands.

“I do my best.” Something spilled over the link,
something like embarrassment, as he said, “Actually, I - enjoy taking care of
you. I’ve been alone for so very long -” his voice dropped almost to a whisper.
“-It is a welcome change.”

Jeliya thought that over as he sorted her braids.
She suddenly, unwillingly, shared in his loneliness, one that was so vast and
deep that it was almost a living thing, with a weight and presence all its own.
She blocked it out quickly before it overwhelmed her.

“What are you doing?” she asked to distract herself
from the memory of that consuming loneliness.

“I’m oiling and arranging your hair,” he replied,
his voice giving no hint of the empty aloneness he felt.

“You know how to do that?” she asked, genuinely
surprised.

“I learned. In your delirium you expressed great
concern for your hair and its maintenance.” His fingers moved expertly over her
scalp, moisturizing it and oiling each braid in turn.

“What else did I say?” she asked as casually as she
could, wondering if perhaps her safeguard had not been as secure as she had
thought.

“That you liked the way my hands felt,” he said.

Jeliya felt her face grow hot, got a whiff of smug
satisfaction from him, changed the subject. “How did you learn to care for my
hair?”

“I asked it,” he said, giving no more information
than necessary.

Jeliya realized that they were doing a very slow,
verbal dance, each seeking to outmaneuver the other. He was hiding something.

“You said you’ve been alone for a long time,” she
said, picking up on what he had said earlier. “Why is that? Are there no more
of your kind?”

A long silence stretched out after her question. A
dark desolation.

“No,” came the quiet reply then. “No, there are no
others like me.” The pain in his voice pierced her heart, but she pressed on;
she had risked so much to find him, and now that she had him talking, she could
not back down.

“Where are they?” she asked, feigning naiveté.

“Where are who?” He did not break rhythm, turning
her head.

“Others like you. Where are they?”

He did not answer, as if too busy as he arranged her
hair in a simple style. The Joining between them again snapped almost
completely closed. “There,” he said, wiping his hands. He picked her up again
and moved her to the head of the bed.

“Gavaron, aren’t you one of the Katari? A rare
subspecies? For truthfully, I’ve never heard of anything quite like you.”

He set her down, pulled a fresh desi up around her.
Barely a sensation trickled through their link. He had become like a blank face
of stone.

“I think you ought to get some rest. You are still a
long way from full recovery.”

And with that he left without answering any of her
questions. With him went the feeling of connection; it faded like the dusk.

Jeliya lay back and mused over what he had said, and
more important, what he had not. He had not answered any of her probing
questions, but his non-answers spoke nearly as loudly as words would have. A
rough idea began to form.

the dreams of the dark turned, gave way
to light...

The
drums drove the wild turning of the dark.

Rilantu
dreamed, dreamt of wild turnings to dark drums, dreamt of the savannas on Lor’s
eve, of dark shapes turning to a driving rhythm that pounded into his every
pore. The rhythm drew him to the dim, gyrating figures, where the stomp of
hooves upon the earth made the air sing and the soil dance. Controlled by some
external agent, he was thrust into the middle of the dancing ones, in the
middle of the circle of leaping fires and flickering bodies that never quite
came clear, but were not wuman, clearly. He squinted vainly at the shadow
shapes until the force gripping him turned him around to face...

Her.
She rose from the ground with a grace only flowing water could claim, moved
with a beauty only the playful wind on star-swept plains could describe. She
was Katari, but not, for her form was fully wuman except for the fur-skin, the
very long neck, and the eyes. The eyes had not changed. She danced for him.

Her
dance described beauty and sexual desire, the promise of pleasures beyond count
and children beyond measure. It called hot, passion-filled fantasies to be
fulfilled and warm, silken whispers of delectable flesh upon flesh, mouth upon
mouth, veil after sheer veil shed away to reveal the luscious naked heart
beneath. Her dance enticed him, drew him in...

Till
he was dancing too, dancing to that wild beat, dancing out his male desire and
the vow of his gently ravishing mouth upon her body, dancing out the hard,
vital piling of his will meeting hers, the long, sensual drinking of her he
would partake, the total engulfing of her he would claim. He danced and danced,
and she danced, the tempo reaching a fever pitch, so that the dance would
surely destroy him...

And
then it stopped, dead stillness, dead silence. And she looked at him with those
depthless, whiteless eyes. And she spoke a single word.

:Come.:

Rilantu woke, sweating in the cool, early dawn of
Av. His heart raced, as if he had run hard, or danced hard. His pulse echoed an
ancient, driving beat that he could not quite remember, but had surely danced
to. Faint impressions of womanly pleasures and soft whisperings of things
without number were all that remained of the dream that shredded away like mist
on the jagged light of
Av
.

Shaking
still with fatigue and excitement, he buried his face in his hands, a fine
sheen of sweat coating his body. He breathed deep, sighed it away, and stood,
going to his large windows that faced the pale brilliance of the rising Este.

He was used to these dreams. He had had them all his
life.

They were dreams of her, a woman that he would meet,
one turn. The dreams had begun when he was a child. In the beginning she had
been a child, too, a beautiful girl-child
Katari
that smiled at him and beckoned and always seemed beyond his reach, fading with
the coming of
Av
. Though he could never touch her in
the dream and they could not hear each other’s words, and he could never quite
remember the next morn, still they shared things, things that sometimes not
even his own brother knew. She had always been with him, and he was sure that
she had grown as he grew, going from child to adolescent to young adulthood
with him. Before she had merely existed for him, as he surely did for her, and
now and again he was certain that she smiled deeply into him, especially at
times when he was most troubled. And now, she danced for him.

Rilantu lay back down in the pre-dawn of morn,
sleepless. Since the beginning of the cycle the dreams had been growing, both
in clarity and meaning. The dreams were more frequent now, more real, more
enticing. But it was always the same afterward - things he could not remember,
implications of desire, promises without words.

Except there was a word this time, a single, ringing
word that sang over and over in his head. Come.

Yes he would do that, soon, would finally see and
greet his dream lover-to-be, finally hold her and turn those promises to
actions, those burning desires to words. For he was sure that the dreams
indicated a Goddess-blessed bond, and he was rapidly moving toward that place
and time when those dreams would be fulfilled; yes, he would come. He would do
that and more.

Come.

the
light, filled with world, turned...

Audola knelt in her
av’an
,
her private, sacred place of contemplation in which she performed the Rite of
Solu
.
The isolated
lain
was a four by four meter
dodecahedron that tapered at the top and bottom, like a crystal shard balanced
upon the sharply peaked spire beneath it. The bottom fourth had been hewn from
a single vast boulder, a twenty-sided, inverted cone. Five concentric steps in
the bottom plane of the cone flowed up. The rest of the
lain
was constructed of a metal frame that held twenty rectangular windows. These
windows could be opened to admit the early morning breeze. The peaked roof was
the mirror-image of the base, twenty panels of the finest crystalline quartz
all meeting at a point. They shattered the morn light and scattered it to all
parts of the arboretum.

A miniature rainforest had been reconstructed in
this room of light, dominating the first three levels of the base. A layer of
rich soil had been laid down on these steps, covering all but four cleared
paths where the High Queen might walk. Water bubbled out of the third step from
either side of these untouched paths to form twin waterfalls, cascading down to
disappear into special conduits a third of a meter before they reached the
windows. Meter tall trees stood in thick clusters along the banks of these tiny
rivers, their buttress and hanging roots dipped into the water. Away from the
rivers the foliage thinned out, and the intervening space held stunted grasses
from the savannas and a few precious two-meter
boabi
trees to which libations could be made. Delicate insects with stained glass
wings moved among the flowering trees, giants in the down-sized ecology. The
fourth level was covered by mosaic tiles showing the device of the High Family
- the stylized golden circle of Av in gold metal with purple and blue
emanations radiating outward. The mosaic continued up the fifth and highest
level for a quarter of a meter inward. The tile ended at the edge of a thick,
quilted satin cushion, but the pattern of the High Crest continued, embroidered
upon the smooth material. Here the High Queen sat.

The
lain
was located
upon the highest spire of the Palace so that it could admit the light of the
morn-star
Av
and its companion at any time of the turn from light to dark and from any
position in the sky. The newly risen Av shed soft radiance upon the High Queen,
and the panels were oriented so that they were concentrating it and focusing it
on her.
Av’an’i
dominated the top of the Palace, crowning it like a coronet of diamonds, that
of the High Queen being above all others. The vast, gleaming crown city spread
out below her, a swirled marvel done in lavender and azure and cream marble,
spreading for
yori
’turns in every direction.

In the middle of her lofty sanctum, the High Queen
prepared to perform the Rite of
Solu
.

She let the natural rhythm of the diminutive
ecosystem lull her, letting her body fall into synch with the life around her.
Her fingers gently drummed out a seemingly random beat on her jeweled
tum’tyn
,
emulating the combined life flow. It slowly evolved into a complex structure
that eventually became her
pay’ta
, a rhythm
that had been read for her the moment she was born, composed of her own body
rhythms. In it was her name in the ancient drum language, sang over and over,
intimately entwined with the name of the Supreme One, and the plea for the
blessing of
Av
.

“In
You there is Light,

In
You there is Peace.

Your
love fills us.

Your
breath heals us.

In
You, all are one.”

The complexity of the rhythm surrounding her
pay’ta
grew. It took over, now dominant over all other rhythms, controlling her every
pattern of life, from her breathing to her heartbeat to the impulses in her
brain and nerves. She floated free on the wave of rhythmic awareness, her
senses ranging out, riding on crests of patterned cadence. She became aware of
the saturation of
Av
all around her,
permeating everything, from the plants in her
av’an
to the stone beneath, and even the very air held its sweetness. The rhythms
spread her awareness farther and farther out, and the great circle of
Av
called to her.

She answered, the rhythms shaping her voice to the
Rite that was uniquely hers. She sang her praises to
Av
,
and then the blessing of
Av’s
Rite poured
into her, absorbing and overwhelming her senses with waves of euphoria that
cascaded through her body and soul as she gazed into the blinding depths of
Av
.

Filled, rejuvenated, the rhythm and the Rite let her
go, and she spiraled down to herself on the melding patterns that became once
more the simple cadence of life that she had begun with. Her fingers moved to
the end of the Rite and the rhythm trailed into randomness. She opened her eyes
and breathed in a sparkling sigh, pervaded with the tranquility that the Rite
afforded. The plants around her seemed greener, bursting with vitality. The air
seemed fresh and clean, and the crystal windows sang with the echo of her
rhythm that seemed reluctant to die.

Audola luxuriated in the afterglow of the Rite for a
while longer. For the first time in many cycles she did not have some pressing
issue or other demanding her immediate attention, save finding her daughter.
After the
Bolorn’toyo
and the
Salaka
there was always a turn of rest, in which all could recuperate and either
celebrate or mourn privately, depending on the nature of the
Bolorn
.
This turn, called the
Tures
, was a time
of relaxation and reflection for everyone, including the High Queen. Audola was
grateful for this turn, and facetiously wished she could call
Bolorns
more often. For an ordinary holiday enjoyed by others was just another turn of
ruling for the High Queen. Hers was a life of never-ending duty and
responsibility, and on those turns when others rested and played, she still
worked to keep her Realm running as smoothly as possible. The only other turn
of true rest for the High Queen was the last turn of the Harvest, on which all
gave thanks to
Imantu
, the female/male aspect of the
Supreme One.

She rose languidly, stood on the top level of the
round steps, but did not descend. She was still reluctant to give up the
tranquility of her communion chamber. In ten cycle’s time she would come to
this
lain
and never leave. Instead she would invoke the full Rite of
Shalgo
Imantu Solu, wh
ich would transform her into a transcendent being
and
av’tun
her to the
Av’rujo’s
suite, where she would ever
after be one with the
Av’ru
.

She looked to that turn with apprehension,
anticipation, and just a little fear; on that turn she would give up the
responsibilities and duties of High Queen to assume a higher task, as her
mother had before her. Only fifteen out of fifty-five generations of High
Queens had been required to ascend to the position of
Av’rujo
.
And though her becoming the sixteenth was an indication of the peril her Realm
was in, still, it was a distinction for which every High Queen before her had
wished. To be one with the
Av’ru
was to be one
with
Av’Ma
,
one with nature - and it was a release from the lifelong obligation of ruling
the Realm as High Queen, the only other of which was death. For the High Queen
could not abdicate in favor of the Heir, unless she was terminally ill or
mentally unstable. That had happened perhaps four times in recorded herstory.