The Fall of Neskaya (70 page)

As for Coryn himself, he could not complain he was adrift. Five seasons flew by, filled with rewarding work. The skills he had absorbed along with his mother’s milk, the management of an estate, supervision of staff and smallholder, training and care of livestock, all these things now came into daily use. He was as much Taniquel’s paxman as he was her consort.

He sensed her presence on the stairs behind him, although she moved soundlessly. He did not know, dared not hope, that this meant some portion of his
laran
had returned. Perhaps that was why he ran his fingers over the physical scar, testing that faint return of sensation as proof that healing could occur.

With a rustle of skirts and the kiss of breath on his skin, Taniquel slipped her arms around his waist. Lips brushed against the base of his neck, where the neckline of unlaced summer shirt lay open. The tension lacing his nerves softened, as it always did in her presence.

“Bad dreams?” she murmured.

“Rumail again.”

She turned him to face her. Her eyes shone like polished steel. “He is dead, love. I saw his shade in the Overworld, remember? They are all dead. And the dead cannot harm us, not a single one of that whole nest of scorpion-ants.”

He wondered, not for the first time, if she were right, if that disquieting sense of Rumail’s presence were no more than lingering memory. It was natural to have such fears, the healers had told him, as the mind accepted what had happened, made order of tragedy and prepared to move on. But the image and the gut-wrenching reaction had seemed so real . . . He shook his head as if to clear it, and his hand went unconsciously to the invisible wound over his belly.

“We have won, truly won,” she went on, her voice a shade strident now. “You can see that every day in the eyes of our people. Deslucido’s terrible secrets died with him, and that is the end to it. Darkover is safe, thanks to all of us. Now we have the future ahead of us. We are together, which I never dreamed possible. Isn’t that enough?”

Coryn lifted his arms and she came into them. When she talked like this, his life seemed an unfolding miracle. Even the loss of his talent could not negate the soaring joy he felt every time she enfolded him in her sweetness. The nightmares would fade, he told himself.

Taniquel pressed against him. Her belly and breasts had rounded these past few tendays and her skin felt hot, almost velvety, with early pregnancy. Sometimes he thought he felt—or perhaps only remembered—the golden glow deep inside her.

Our daughter,
he thought.
Our future.
They’d decided to name her Felicia, as a token of their own happiness.

A
ragged man rode into a small town along the Kadarin River, a town where no one inquired of any business past the color of a man’s money. His mule limped, ribs staring out of a dull, dust-choked coat. The man himself was wild-haired and taciturn, his face seamed like worn leather. Even these rough folk who lived on the edge of bandit country looked away quickly, not wanting to meet his eyes.

The man shuffled into the single inn, hunched down at a table, and ordered hot food. It came, a bowl of steaming gray stew with a fist-sized lump of soda bread. He bent over it, staring into its opaque depths as if to read some secret there. The stew, though bland and greasy, warmed his belly. He would live, he repeated to himself. He might be too old to carry out his revenge during his own lifetime, but he was not beyond fathering sons to carry on. And someday, he swore to himself yet again, the Hastur bitch and her issue would pay for what they had done.