The Lone Warrior (41 page)

“Do you know where we are?” she asked. Stupid question.

The silvery light of the Sister caressed his high cheekbones, shadowing his eyes. An errant breeze flirted with his hair, falling in a long tail down his back. He gazed down to the place where the valley floor forked, another line of rocky hills joining the first, as stubborn and timeless as the bones of some gargantuan prehistoric creature poking up out of the subsoil.

Cool and remote, he said, “There’s water to the east, not far. Would you like to bathe?”

Mehcredi laughed. “You have to ask? Gods, I can smell myself.”

But all he said was, “Come then.” Without another word, he mounted and turned east, into the hills.

An hour later, they had to dismount and lead the ponies into a rocky defile that grew progressively narrower until their shoulders brushed the walls and the animals whickered with nerves.

“Where are we?” For some reason, she felt she had to whisper.

“Nearly there.”

Abruptly, he turned left, reaching back to grasp her wrist. “Careful.” “Walker, what—?”

“We’re on a ledge above a long drop.”

Mehcredi stared to her right. All she could see was the silhouette of rocky ramparts, sharp-toothed against the starry sky and beneath them a pool of inky darkness, but instinctively, she knew that below lay nothing but empty air. All the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Scrounge pressed right up against her calf, trembling.

“Not much farther. I’ve got you.”

She peered at his dim outline, listening with her whole body. There was a suppressed note in his voice, full of tension and . . . excitement.

“It opens up here. Stand still a minute.”

The reins were taken from her hands and the ponies led away. A few moments later, Walker reappeared at her side and drew her about another fifteen feet along the trail.

“Here will do,” he said.

With one hand, Mehcredi patted the reassuring bulk of stone at her back. She heard rustling, as if a whole field of feathergrass thrashed in the wind. After a moment, Walker said, “Sit down and lean back. You’re safe.”

With a sigh of relief, she sank onto a soft mat of feathergrass. “Gods, you’re useful.”

“I live to serve,” he said, very dry, and she chuckled.

“What are we doing here?” she asked as he lowered himself beside her.

“Waiting.”

“Oh.” Mehcredi wrapped her arms around herself. It was plain wrong that a place so hot during the day should be so bloody cold at night. “What for?”

“Dawn,” he said repressively.

“But why—?”

“Mehcredi.” He turned his head to look into her face and she wondered if his night vision was keener than hers. She wouldn’t be surprised. “Shut up and wait for the surprise, all right?”

Walker said, ��You’re shaking. Are you scared?”

“Just cold.” Mehcredi set her jaw. “I lived through the Lonefell winters.” She edged a little closer. “Must be out of practice.”

A short pause and he drew her under his arm, into all that wonderful heat, spiced with healthy male sweat and something that was uniquely Walker.

Bliss.

Gingerly, she snuggled closer and laid her head on his shoulder.

“Better?”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled into the folds of his robe.

Callused fingers nudged her chin around, toward the unseen void before them. “You have to look out there,” he said, “or you’ll miss it.”

“Mmm.”

Mehcredi blinked sleepily as the Sister sank gracefully behind the ramparts, followed by the martial red crescent of the Brother. Muscle by muscle, she relaxed into Walker’s firm body, conforming her shape to his, soft where he was hard. One star at a time, the night sky faded to a pale gray.

Peace. This was peace.

The place where she fitted, a puzzle piece finally come home. Oh, it was transitory, she knew that. Walker didn’t want her, not truly. But now she knew what it was, she could strive for it again. Because life went on, a day at a time. Regardless of misery, you went on living, breathing, eating, sleeping.
Yearning
.

When it was all over, she’d still have this—the shining knowledge of what was possible, if she was incredibly, extraordinarily lucky. Carefully, she took a fold of his robe between her fingers, watching the gray cliffs flush with color—rose and lavender and yellow. Light spooled out, banishing wells and stripes of shadow, slithering down the cliffs.

A mist rose gently out of the valley below, gossamer streamers twisting and spiraling in the light, only to dissipate in the upper atmosphere. Mehcredi caught her breath, staring. Almost shyly, dawn revealed a jeweled cup, an oval basin bisected by a silver stream that poured out of the cliff in an arching frothy stream of sparkling joy, only to disappear beneath a forbidding dome of rock on the farther side. It was bordered so densely by stands of cedderwoods and widow’s hair trees that only enticing glimpses of the water could be seen, winking between the leaves. The valley was carpeted with a type of grass she hadn’t seen before, about knee-high and topped with silvery purple tassels that danced in an unseen breeze.

Mehcredi licked dry lips. “What is it?”

“The Spring of Shiloh. Sacred to the Shar.”

Slowly, she sat up. “It’s . . . it’s beautiful.”

“Yes.”

The swordmaster gazed out over the valley, his jaw set. “We are the first to see it since . . . since . . .” He swallowed, blinking hard.

She could have sworn she heard the snap as her heart broke for him. She lifted her fingers to brush his cheekbone. “Don’t be sad,” she said. “Please, don’t.”

With a dismissive shrug, he stilled her hand in his, but after a moment, he slipped an arm around her waist to pull her close. “They are worthy of grief.”

She managed a shaky smile. “Yes, I know.”

Scrounge barked, shattering the silence. He stood at the head of a narrow path, prancing with impatience, tail waving.

Walker stood and pulled Mehcredi to her feet. “Let’s go.”

Smelling the water, the ponies were eager enough, but the track had their eyes rolling. Barely wide enough for a single person, it switchbacked down the slope, made difficult with rocks and tree roots. At one point, it passed so close to the waterfall, the air was full of moisture and thunder, every surface slippery and treacherous.

Pausing to catch her breath, Mehcredi’s attention was caught by a flash of green. She had to go up on her tiptoes and reach up over her head, but she snagged the trailing stem and drew it down for a closer inspection. Bedewed with the river’s mist, velvety petals of the palest pink shone almost luminescent in the shadow of the cliff.

Her belly clenched, heat rushed to her cheeks.

When she raised the bloom to her nose and inhaled, she smelled liquid honey, musky and intoxicating. She dabbled a finger into the rosy heart, licked at the nectar like a cat. Delicious. Gods, it did look like—Her flush intensified.

“Mehcredi, are you all right?”

Up ahead, Walker had turned. He stood at the head of his pony, looking back over his shoulder. His dark gaze flicked from her mouth to the flower and back again, stopped and clung. He might as well have reached out and touched her. Laid his lips against hers.

The wave of heat was instantaneous, roaring over her as if she’d been dipped in flames. Only a second or two, but she was left leaning against the damp stone at her back for support, seared to the bones.

Walker’s face shuttered. Without another word, he swung around and continued down the trail.

But she’d seen it—heat, passion,
want
.

Turning her face to the spray, she laughed aloud for sheer joy—not only because of what she’d seen, though that was enough to set her blood bubbling, but—oh, sweet Sister of mercy—she’d
recognized
it! She’d read his expression and got it right, she was as certain of it as her next breath.

Lifting the orchid to her face, she breathed, “Thank you,” into its sweet-smelling heart, dropped the lightest of kisses on a cool satiny petal and replaced the stem where she’d found it.

“C’mon,” she said to Scrounge, who was watching with one ear up and the other down. “I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”

Her feet lighter than air, she danced down the precipitous path, the pony clip-clopping gingerly behind. A cold nose nudged her cheek and a warm tongue swiped her skin. “Stop that.” But instead of pushing the dog away, she hugged him closer.

She was getting better at it, she was!

Striving for calm, she set herself to think rationally, to remember. Start with the steward. She’d caught the flavor of the man’s fear at once, trapped between the wrath of two equally terrifying men—Walker in the here and now, his dreadful master in the future. Everything he felt had been blatantly obvious, but still . . .

The horse trader had been a greedy, mean-spirited man, the sort who’d knife a friend in a dark alley for the price of a thin beer. Now how had she known that? The lip-smacking glee with which he’d described the wounds left by the djinns, something about his small dark eyes, the way he’d rubbed his hands together—they’d all been clues she’d processed without realizing what she did.

And gods, these were strangers, while Walker was the person she knew best in the whole world. She’d seen the swordmaster’s soul stripped bare, seen him in the grip of almost every human emotion, coldly furious, borne down by grief and guilt, consumed by lust—and yet he could be so tender he made her heart ache. Godsdammit, how many people had seen the swordmaster smile, let alone laugh? But she had,
she
, Mehcredi of Lonefell, failed assassin and passable swordswoman, owner of a scruffy mongrel and . . . companion to the most fascinating man on Palimpsest.

Her heart soaring, she tightened her grip on Scrounge’s sturdy ribcage until he whined in protest.

As the path began to widen, she reached for the old sense of separateness, the crystal walls that closed her off from so-called normal people.

Oh, still there.

Crossly, Mehcredi rolled her shoulders. Godsdammit, Abad the waggoner had liked Meck, hadn’t he? She’d managed a perfectly ordinary conversation with no problem at all. With the Trinitarian lord in Trimegrace, she’d missed the sexual lures because she’d been so focused on the interesting things he said, not what he did.

Her jaw set in a stubborn line. All right then. Actions, not words.

And paying attention.

The rump of Walker’s pony vanished around a corner and automatically, she followed, brow furrowed. She stopped. Spread out before her, basking green in the sun, the impact of the hidden valley was so visceral, it was like running into a wall. After days in the rocky desert, it stole the breath, pouring over the spirit like a soothing balm.

Walker stared. His chest rose and fell with the force of his respiration, color high in his face.

“Gods, it’s gorgeous.” For some reason, she had to whisper. Stooping, she tipped the dog out of her arms. With a joyous yip, he disappeared into the long grass, his passage marked by wildly waving tassels.

“I’d forgotten,” Walker murmured, almost as if he spoke to himself. “How could I have forgotten?” Dropping the reins, he took a few steps forward and sank to his knees in the grass. He sank the fingers of one hand into the dirt, his head bowed. “The
ch’qui
is so strong here.”

“The chi what? You’ve said that before. What is it?”

Slowly, he rose, tilting his palm to let a stream of dark soil trickle down. “It’s what makes me a shaman,” he said at last.

“You get your Magick out of the dirt?”

His lips twitched. “A gross simplification. The
ch’qui
is the soul of the world, its life force, if you will.”

Mehcredi released her pony to wander down to the pool at the base of the falls. Its fellow was already there, nose buried in the foaming water.

She thought about the chi thing for a moment. “That’s why you love your garden.”

“Yes.” Walking up to a magnificent widow’s hair tree, he reached up to run his fingers over a dangling twig verdant with green. The tree swayed in the breeze, bending over him. Another twig swayed down to brush his cheek as gently as a lover. His throat moved as he closed his eyes.

“It’s why your garden loves you,” she said, her pulse thudding with another flash of insight. “It’s what you use to grow soft beds out of ordinary feathergrass. Gods what else can you do?”

His black gaze dropped to her breasts. Immediately, the Mark flared to life, not burning, but tingling soft as the brush of orchid petals. She moistened her lips. “Apart from that.”

“You sure you want to know?” He moved away, the grass swishing around his knees. From somewhere deeper in the trees, a bird chorus started up, shrill and scolding. Walker smiled. “Ganglebirds. I haven’t heard that call in years.”