The Gandalara Cycle I (64 page)

And hoping that I had.

"I'm awake," her voice seemed to answer my thought.

I opened the door and stepped into the room. In the dim light, two things stood out. First, she was sitting up, with her back against the wall and the blanket tucked up under her bare arms. Second, her clothes were folded neatly on the ledge beneath the windowsill.

I wasn't aware of any conscious decision. But in less than a second I was across the room, kneeling beside her, taking her in my arms.

Nothing had ever felt so good, not in two lifetimes. She rose to meet me, and the blanket fell aside unheeded. I scrambled out of my tunic, barely aware of her hands helping me. I pulled her close again, holding her carefully, like the treasure she was, and I felt the steady muscles of her dancer's body tremble with eagerness. The touch of her skin on mine made me dizzy with need. Her tongue caressed my tusks as we kissed, sending tendrils of pleasure down my spine.

I felt such joy that I couldn't contain it, couldn't express it. I was transported by the wonder of her body, consenting to be separated from it only for the sake of learning it, by sight and by touch. When I was free of the rest of my clothing, I lay beside her and held her again, wanting to pull her inside my skin, to be entirely and completely one with her.

It was a time of peace, a pause, a lingering. A time of stretched sensitivity, of slow ecstasy. We kissed gently, silent acknowledgment that what we felt for one another was more than bodily need. But the kiss caught fire, and left us breathless and urgent. Tarani lay back, and I rose above her. Her eyes closed in anticipation....

"Oh, Ricardo,"
she whispered.

It was a word Tarani had never heard, couldn't know, and would be unable to guess.

The world seemed to freeze around me.

She opened her eyes when she felt the tension thrum through my body. Her hands, caressing my back, grew still. "What - what did you say, just then?" I panted.

"Say? I only said your name."

"Say it again," I urged.

Doubt flickered in her eyes, and the warm space of air between our bodies seemed to cool. She did what I asked, and said: "Rikardon."

And we both knew it was over.

I drew away from her, and she slid backward to sit up again. She pulled the blanket across her body with a self- consciousness that hurt me like a slap in the face. "It's Molik, isn't it?" she said. Her voice was deadly calm. "You can't bear to be with me because of what I -"

"No!" I nearly shouted the word, appalled that she could put such an interpretation on what had happened. "No, Tarani." More gently.

I took her hand; it lay unresisting, unresponsive, across my fingers.

"Thymas, then?" she said, bitterness creeping in, stinging me.

"Tarani, you have to believe what I'm about to say." She was silent, looking somewhere off to my left. "My . . . failure is in no way your fault. Thymas and Molik have no place in what you and I share. I feel - and you
must
know it, too - that what we wanted tonight
will
happen someday. But not tonight. I'm not sure I understand why, myself. I only know -"

I stopped, lost in misery.

She looked at me then, and I almost wished she would turn away again. The dim light from the window fell across her face. Deep lines etched the smooth skin on her forehead and cheeks.

"I'm frightened, Rikardon," she said, hurriedly, as though she were speaking a dangerous secret.

"Of me?" I asked, surprised and horrified.

"Of whatever is telling you that we cannot ... that it is not yet time. Of whatever brought us together, but will not let us
be
together

"What we are doing, fighting Gharlas, I know it is
right
Rikardon. But I do not know how it will end. You seem to see things more clearly. Can you tell me that we will
get
the Ra'ira back? That we will both live through what we must do? Can you tell me that there will
be
a ‘someday’ for us?”

“No, I don’t have those answers, Tarani.”

Her eyes blazed. ‘The
defy
that ‘whatever’ for once! There may not
be
another chance for us, Rikardon. Give us this moment. At least”

I looked at her. Loving her. Wanting her. And I said, “I can't, Tarani. I'm sorry.”

The lines in her face vanished, leaving her skin as pale and smooth as marble. "Please go now," she whispered

I gathered up my clothes and walked to the door, feeling naked and foolish and miserable, and for the second time in one night, I escaped.

This time my refuge was Yoman's bedroom. When the Gandalaran dawn spread its glowing colors across the cloud-covered sky, I was still sitting and staring, thinking and wondering.

Things that had never made sense fell into place during that watchful night. The mutual recognition Tarani and I had felt, on meeting for the first time. The unusual sophistication of a sixteen-year-old virgin. The abrupt onset of confusion and restlessness that had drawn Tarani from her Recorder training.

The last time I had heard the word Tarani had spoken tonight, I had been Ricardo Carillo, engaged in a harmless and delightful flirtation with Antonia Alderuccio on the deck of a ship, in the middle of the Mediterranean Ocean. The Italian girl had noticed the increasing brightness of a "star", and I had not had time to tell her that I believed it was a meteor. I recall feeling a sense of injustice, as I lost consciousness, that someone as young and beautiful as Antonia had to die so uselessly.

Like me, Antonia had been reborn in Gandalara.

Unlike me, she had been delivered into a host body with a living, vital personality.

I had speculated that, if Markasset had been alive, his familiarity with his body and his surroundings would have given his personality natural control. The period of confusion Tarani had suffered may have been a struggle for control between Tarani and Antonia.

They both won,
I thought, watching the early folk moving through the streets of Eddarta.
Tarani is usually in control - and she doesn't seem to have any conscious awareness of Antonia. But grown-up, adult Antonia, accustomed to wealth and wise in the ways of the wealthy, used Tarani's power to handle Molik.

I remembered Antonia. The way she had laughed. The way she had looked at an old man and seen, not his age, but his experience, the depth and the value of it.

She couldn't have meant the girl harm,
I decided.
She was probably only trying to help her get the money she wanted. And she couldn't have been closely integrated into Tarani's personality, or she'd have seen the girl's naiveté, and backed off.

But there's no doubt she's there
, I thought,
and because of her, Tarani's been through the wringer. That horror may be part of whatever is going on here, part of our "destiny."
I slammed my fist on my leg, taking a savage pleasure in the pain it caused.
But it's a hell of a rotten thing to do to a sixteen-year-old girl!

I heard Tarani stirring in Rassa's room, and I remembered the coldness that had crept over me when I heard Antonia speak through Tarani. It hadn't been fear, or even surprise. How often had I thought that Tarani seemed always to be two different women, one powerful, one helpless?

No, what I had felt in that moment was indecision. I loved . . . Tarani?

Or Antonia?

By the time Tarani had dressed I had gone out and returned with breakfast. I found her leafing through a series of parchment pages tied at one edge with twine.

"Yoman's ledger," she explained, setting it aside to accept the fruit and a moment

There was a moment of hesitation her fingers brushed mine, but that was the only sign of what had happened the night before

Apparently she’s decided on a "business as usual" attitude. Good idea,
I approved.
For one thing, we're running short of time

“
Anything interesting?" I asked.

"He seemed to do a thriving business, even if most of the profit went to Pylomel."

“Pylomel? The
High Lord
is Yoman's landpatron?"

"It surprised me, too," she said. “Why did Yoman not tell us? He knew we wanted information about the High Lord."

"I don't know, but it just adds to the funny feeling I've had all along about Yoman - he was running from something. I feel sure of it."

"Well, it was not poor business, and from the way that fool last night acted, Yoman still has every right to run this shop. But he did not run it alone," she said. "He purchased the fabric and made men's clothes, but Rassa had established herself as a seamstress and designer of women's clothes. I found several commissions for her - from Zefra."

So that's why she's not upset with me this morning,
I thought,
feeling strangely disappointed. Finding a way to see her mother is so important that she's forgotten....

You idiot!
I scolded myself.
Give the girl what happiness you can, while there's time. And keep your mind on business, OK?

"Before we go any further with that, Tarani, let me go over what I found out during my drinking tour last night. I think I have a better picture of how Eddarta works, now. Yoman - well, maybe we just didn't know the right questions to ask when we talked to him."

It took me a long time to get back around to Zefra, but Tarani listened patiently, knowing that the more we understood about Eddarta in general, the better our chances of accomplishing
both
things we had come for.

There was no kitchen in Yoman's house, not even shelves where fruit, bread, or Gandalaran liquor, faen or barut, could be kept on hand, because Yoman was not a cook or baker. Everyone in Eddarta had a specific trade, and since the Lords took a share of everyone's trade, everyone's trade had to be necessary.

Farmers grew grain, therefore, but could not grind or cook it. Herders sold their glith to slaughterhouses, gave a portion of their profit to the landpatron, then bought table meat from the meat vendor - who passed along a share of his profit to his landpatron. Tradesmen like Yoman could occasionally benefit directly from their own services - he and Rassa could make their own clothes, for instance - but he had to consider the fabric as wasted inventory.

When the landpatron system had first been, mentioned, I had thought of the feudal system of medieval Europe in Ricardo's world. It was a reasonable comparison, since the Lords of Eddarta did own virtually all the land in a huge region in and around the city.

Harthim and six noble families had arrived in Eddarta after their flight from Kä with the greatest, least resistible power - the treasury of the Kingdom. The Eddartans had enjoyed an easy life, with water plentiful and the general level of wealth higher here than anywhere else in Gandalara. The last King had brought an example of an even higher standard of luxury and had taught the Eddartans to crave it, and one by one they had sold their independence for it. When the self-styled Lords had owned Eddarta, they had begun taxing it, winning a hundred-fold return on their initial investments.

The descendent of these seven families lived on in the upper city, called Lord City by the Eddartans. The eldest of each family usually became its Lord. The High Lord, as Gharlas had informed us, was chosen from the descendents of Harthim - his
legitimate
descendents, which left Gharlas hanging loose on the wrong side of the blanket - and was the individual who displayed the strongest mind-power in some sort of test.

I hadn't been able to find an exact date for the building of Lord City, but I suspected that it had been built Harthim’s arrival, to protect the Ka refugees from those Eddartans who were discontented with the transition those free enterprise to thinly disguised monopoly. I did learn that each of the seven families had an area of its own inside those massive walls, and that all those areas were linked through what Ricardo would have called a palace. It was a government building called Lord Hall, and it contained meeting rooms, an audience hall, a Council Chamber which had extra-special official significance and, according to the eager gossip of my drinking companions, the hidden entryway to the fabled treasure vaults

“Gharlas it well known here in the lower city," I told Tarani. "Apparently, he's played up his hatred for Pylomel to the point where he's sort of a 'regular guy' to the common folk. Word is that Pylomel isn't fond of him, either, but family rules require that he give Gharlas a place to stay when he's in town.

"Then Gharlas lives in Pylomel's home?"

“If you could call it that. The family areas inside Lord City are huge, with a lot of separate dwellings. Pylomel has probably given Gharlas the cheapest quarters he could manage."

Tarani worried one tusk with her tongue. "Do you remember what Gharlas said about Pylomel's treasure?"

"You mean the secret way he's found into the vault?"

"If we could find the vault, we could reach Gharlas secretly," Tarani said. "Perhaps,” she suggested, "if Zefra knows how to enter the vault . . .”

I laughed. Tarani's face darkened and I touched her arm in apology.

"That's the hard way," I said. "At least, I think it is. Our first step has to be to find Zefra and get the two of you together. We can't do much until we know for sure whether she can - or will - help us against Gharlas."

"She will help if she can," Tarani said.

Take this part easy
, I warned myself.

"Tarani, please remember that you don't
know
Zefra yet. The woman who wrote that letter to Volitar lived twenty years ago. This Zefra may not be the same person. For one thing, she's been married to the High Lord all this time."

"You are saying that we should not trust her," Tarani said. I "Then why bother to seek her out?"

Her bitterness hurt me. I wanted to put my arms around her, but the scene of the night before told me I had no right to offer her comfort now.