Heart of Light (35 page)

“I know,” she said.

His eyes widened in surprise, and his lips half parted.

“I know,” she spoke quickly, to forestall his words. “I saw you coming back from the jungle that night.”

“Oh,” Nigel said. He looked startled. “Oh. I didn't . . . know—” He turned very red, a high color suffusing his cheeks. “I—I thought you and Peter—”He shook his head. “It was unmanly of me, Emily. I should never have gone back on my word that way and forgotten my duty to my parents and all my ancestors. But, you see, Nassira came after me, she saved me. She was—” He gave the native girl a confused look. “She is like no other woman. She quite reminds me of a heroine, out of history. You know, when the Bible says blessed is he who marries the perfect woman? It all seemed nonsense to me until now. Finally I understand how a woman can materially contribute to make a man happy or fortunate or prosperous or even . . .” He smiled a pale, fugitive smile. “To keep him alive.”

Emily's heart felt as though it had started cracking, as though it would at any moment fall into shards. And if it did, it would never be put together again. Never again. “It's fine, Nigel,” she said, quickly. “Everything is fine. You are forgiven. We all make mistakes.”

She put her hand out to try to silence him, then stood hastily. “I don't think I was . . . or that we were ever meant to be . . .” She didn't finish the sentence, letting it drop into silence. She didn't know how to finish it, at any rate. To be
together
would do, or to be
in love,
or perhaps even
to be married.
But to say those words would sound too stark and defined in her own ears.

Nigel stood up quickly and reached for her hand. “Emily,” he said. “I'm sure I never deserved you. But I thank you. I thank you for your forgiveness, your kindness, your . . .” He blushed. “Your care. I don't know what to do about all this, but when we return, I will find a way to make it right.”

Before Emily could quite pull her hand away, he had hold of it, was kissing it. His lips felt hot, fevered, like that night on the train when they'd both thought they were going to die. They seemed to burn into her skin like scalding wax.

She pulled her hand away. “Mr. Oldhall. Nigel. Not now. Not now.”

“Of course,” he said, and bowed a little. “Of course not.” He looked around.

He feared that his lover had seen him with his wife! Oh, it would be enough to make Emily laugh, if only she didn't feel so much like crying. She pulled her hand to her, suddenly chilled, and walked away from Nigel. He remained sitting by the fire, doubtless waiting till the encampment was quiet so he could go to his lover. Well, tonight Emily would not cry alone into her pillow. She'd determined to never again let anyone control her that way. Tonight, she'd become mistress of her own fate.

In her tent, where the carriers had put warmed water in a basin, she washed as best she could and put on her nightgown—the good one that she'd packed for her first night of marriage. This would be her first night of marriage now—a true union, despite its not being sanctioned by English law. She shook it out and put it on, relishing the clean, crisp feeling of the cotton upon her skin. She felt hot. Too hot. The cotton was a welcome, familiar relief.

She let her hair down and brushed it, waiting for the noise in the camp to go down, till only two sentinels were left by the fire. Those two were always drinking, or playing some strange game with knuckle-bones by the fire. They'd never notice her going into Peter's tent. And besides, what did they know of the relationships between the British? Nothing at all. They probably would not even notice that she was with a man not her husband.

When things quieted outside, she opened her tent flap. The two guards were sitting on the other side of the fire, where they wouldn't be able to see her for the glare.

She walked out of her tent. Just outside, she paused and seemed to hear her father's voice tell her that bestowing her favors on someone besides Nigel would be the betrayal of her soul, the shredding of her reputation. After that, she would be worse than dead. But Emily's father had handed her to Nigel, and Nigel had proven unworthy. Her father had never told her what to do when Nigel refused to be her true husband.

She walked on, to Peter's tent. At the entrance, she considered calling out, but she didn't want to call attention to herself. Instead, she reached for the tent flap. All her senses heightened, she felt the roughness of the canvas cloth against her palm. She heard the incomprehensible words of the guards who talked by the fire, smelled the alien vegetation growing, fecund, around her.

Her heart pounded. Her lips felt dry. Her breathing sounded too loud. The touch of the warm air against her skin, her neck, was almost more than she could bear.

She lifted the tent flap. And stopped.

There was a weird light within—neither magelight nor light from the fire, nor any other kind of illumination that Emily could understand. It was a soft blue glow, alien and unearthly.

Peter stood naked in the middle of his tent. In the strange blue radiance, he looked tall, muscular, golden, softly glowing as if he had been poured of molten metal. He stood without moving and in his standing there was the suggestion of great strength under control, of force, contained and about to spring. His muscles were obvious without being overdone and he had almost no body hair at all. Light glimmered from the even smoothness of his golden skin, making him look like the statue of an ancient idol. Thus had Apollo looked when he appeared to maidens in the olden days. Emily blinked.

Yet something at the back of her mind shied away, horrified. He looked as wonderfully masculine as she'd expected, but something was very wrong. She'd never expected him to be naked. What did he think of her, to act thus? Did he expect her to be so easy, so lost to all civility? Was he so sure of her? Had she so betrayed herself? She wasn't aware of making any sound, but she must have, because he turned half around, and his eyes widened in shocked surprise, as if she were the last person he expected to see there.

“For G—For heaven's sake—” he started, but his eyes widened again, and his face contorted into an expression of unbearable pain. Sweat poured down his forehead and his knees buckled. Reaching for the edge of his camp table, he held it as if it were his only grip on reality.

“Mrs.—” he said, but he could speak no more.

His body twisted, contorted, as though under great pain. He turned away. He coughed.

It was a cough like none other that Emily had ever heard—a body-twisting, nerve-wracking cough, the sounds of a soul coming unmoored from a suffering body.

“Mr. Farewell.” He was ill. He was in pain. Emily rushed forward. But he was naked. She stopped, steps away from him. “Peter . . . What is wrong?”

He coughed again, worse than before, a horrible series of spasms. From amid that, his voice came like a high shriek, the scream of a damned soul in the torments of hell. “For God's sake, Mrs. Oldhall—”

“What is it? What do you need? What can I do for you?” She rushed forward and put her hand on his shoulder. A thousand unlikely things went through her head. That Nigel had poisoned Peter. That Peter suffered from some horrible hereditary illness. Was there some disturbing malady he'd come to Africa to hide?

“How may I help you?”

Peter wrenched away from her hand, all the while shaking his head no so violently that it looked as though it might break from his neck and roll away. “For God's sake, leave,” he said, his voice low, strangled. “Get away from me. Get away
now
.”

Emily froze. What had she done? She'd misinterpreted something. Peter Farewell didn't want her. He never had.

She stood very still and felt as if she were freezing from the neck on down. She'd allowed her desire for him to lead her into thinking— The enormity, the horror of her mistake drove all other thought from her mind.

Peter's gaze fixed itself above and past her left shoulder. He started coughing again. As he coughed, it seemed to Emily that his body contorted in a way that didn't look human. It twisted like the shadow of a flame played upon by the wind, his limbs changing shape, extending. His face growing a muzzle, his oceanic eyes—

Emily opened her mouth in shock as she recognized that face, that muzzle, those glimmering teeth.

Someone pushed Emily from behind. A native ran in carrying a lance. Kitwana. He'd lost his English clothing somehow and wore a short, elaborate, leather apron, which made him look more like a prince than ever. His body glimmered, muscular, powerful.

He ran past Emily and leveled his lance at Peter.

At the dragon.

FACING THE DRAGON

It had taken Kitwana a long time to hear from Shenta.
Shenta had weighed the evidence, and—he said—talked to other members of the organization. Kitwana wasn't sure there were any other members, but Shenta had talked to someone.

This Kitwana knew, because all of a sudden Shenta was full of information. The type of magical pattern they'd sensed, the creature with the Englishman, was a dragon. The way the animals avoided Peter Farewell was the sign of the dragon in human form. Shenta said there were rumors and stories about him—that he'd come from Europe with a band of magic-haters before. That even his own people abandoned him when they learned he was a dragon.

Shenta had ordered Kitwana to kill Peter Farewell. It did not matter if the dragon was also an Englishman. He was a beast.

Yet Kitwana had seen Emily Oldhall look at the creature. He'd noticed that she preferred Peter Farewell's company, and spent more time with him than even with her own husband. For some reason this hurt him—he couldn't say why. She was, after all, an Englishwoman. She'd never think twice about him, much less think of him as an eligible man. But her eyes were the blue of the sky above Zululand, and when she walked, she moved with the gracefulness of a bird in flight.

And there had been something in the last few days—the tilt of her head, the defiant expression in her eyes—that made Kitwana suspect she was infatuated with the were-dragon. She might very well seek the creature's company, perhaps as early as tonight. It could be disastrous.

Kitwana must kill the dragon tonight. He'd gotten clear orders from Shenta. It was essential for the safety of the Hyena Men that this threat be eliminated as soon as possible. Shenta had said clearly that this was the spirit-beast that had killed the other Hyena Men. And now it must be waiting to finish them off.

So after they'd set up the encampment and before dinner, Kitwana had bespelled a lance with the strongest magic he could command. Dragons could not be killed by mundane weapons, but magic could kill them. And Kitwana was trying hard not to think that the dragon was also a man.

He had a splitting headache, and at the back of his mind, his father harangued and preached about human life and hereditary maladies one could not help. Only, Peter Farewell's hereditary illness was potentially lethal for others. Involuntary or not, it must be stopped.

In the dark of night, as he was skirting around the shadows beyond the light of the campfire, Kitwana stopped. He could see Emily Oldhall's shadow within her tent. She was undressing, and Kitwana's thoughts, even his worry about killing a man, fled.

He doubted she knew it, but he could see her body, starkly delineated against the white canvas fabric, as she changed clothes and brushed her hair. Amazing how familiar she looked like that, divested of the voluminous disguise of English clothes. She looked like a maiden of his tribe, strong and without artifice. He could imagine her skin darker, her hair a tight curl—and seeing her like this was like seeing through to her soul and as one like himself. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with her color, either. Her skin shone like burnished bronze and her black hair, with its soft curl, made him wonder if it would feel like lamb's wool upon the palm of his hand.

Kitwana was so confused by the cascading emotions evoked by Emily's image that he stood frozen on the warm, rocky ground. He'd felt attracted to her before, but he knew in his heart that any relationship would be impossible. Yet how impossible could it be? She was a woman. And he was a man.