[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (23 page)

“Just as well. Lanen deserves it,” I said. “And
‘fierce’ is a good quality to have just now. I was so damned helpless, Rella. I
thought I could fight any man or woman in the world, but Berys is pouring out
his own power like water and using demons like a mad general uses
conscripts—throwing them heedlessly into the front of any battle to disrupt the
enemy. Us.”

“We don’t have to go after him, you know,” she
said. “He’s gotten away…”

“Yes, that’s the problem,” I growled. “He’s
just killed who knows how many Magistri, and nearly the whole of the next
generation of young Healers, and he’s gotten away. Again. If I can track him
down, I will, but I’ll need help.”

She grinned. “You know Vilkas was out for his
blood before. This night won’t have soothed his feelings at all. The good news
is, we’ve got some damned fine help on our side. And by the Goddess, we’ve got
the demons’ natural enemies as well—three full by-our-Lady races of them! We’ll
just have to think of a way to work together.”

I held her close again, not speaking. I had
forgotten how much simple human comfort there was in the touch of one you love.
And Rella, who knew me far too well even then, said into my ear, “Lanen’s safe
and well, Jamie, and if it means so much to you, we’ll find that bastard and
make him pay. I swear it by my back.”

I straightened, moved a little away to look at
her. ‘Tour back?”

“It’s the one real, true thing I can count on
in this world,” she said, one side of her mouth raised in a wry smile. “It may
be crooked and it may not work overwell, but when I hear the creaks and feel
the pains from it I never have any illusions about what’s true and what isn’t.”

“I’ve given up my illusions,” I said, holding
her tight.

“Good, my heart,” she whispered. “Truth is
always better.”

I woke late that morning, safe in my husband’s
arms, to sunshine blazing through the windowpanes. I kept my eyes closed
against the light for I knew, somehow I knew deep in my bones that I was right
to treasure the night, and that the day was not my ally. I stirred, holding him
closer, putting my head on his broad shoulder. His arms tightened around me and
he turned to kiss my forehead, and I heard his blessed voice in my mind,
pouring balm on my heart. There were no words. What words could possibly
encompass all that we felt? There was simply love, sung strong as the
mountains, deep as the sea, boundless as the sky, pouring between us tangible
as light.

It was not until he touched my rounded belly
that I began to weep. Gently at first, a few soft tears, then to my own
amazement I was taken with uncontrollable sobs from the gut, shaking my body
violently as I hung on to him for very life. “Beloved, beloved,” he murmured,
holding me in a grip of iron. It was just what I needed, feeling his strong
arms about me, but still I sobbed without knowing why—when of a sudden I was
minded of Jamie, as he spoke of the time my mother Maran bade farewell to her
father.

“I tell you, Lanen, I hope never to see
another such farewell in this world. Both she and her father wept bitter tears
as they embraced. It was their last sight of each other. Somehow they both
knew.”

I gave a cry and drew away from him, rising to
my knees on the bed the better to gaze into his eyes as if I feared to see his
death therein. My newfound vision was with me still, it seemed, for I saw far
more than love and concern in his emerald-green eyes. Death did not haunt him,
blessed be the Winds, but I was shaken from my own sorrow by the depth of grief
that I sensed in him. In that unguarded moment I touched the dark, still lake
of it, deep as my own, heavy and cold, taking unto itself all hope and light. I
reached out gently to my beloved, tracing the line of his brow, his cheek, his
throat.

“Varien, love, what sorrow is this that lies
so deep and cold?” I whispered. He opened his mouth to speak—I saw him swallow
the easy response as he remembered our oaths always to speak truth to one
another. He said nothing, he did not bespeak me, only returned my gaze. I
reached out and took his hands in mine. “Speak to me, love,” I begged,
swallowing against a lump in my throat. “For my heart is shadowed and I cannot
lift it. I know the day is bright and we are safe, and reason tells me to
rejoice that I am with you again, but—oh, love, my fool heart mourns as if you
were struck dead before my eyes.”

“The Winds take your words and make them
false, Lanen!” he cried, rising all in a moment and holding me to him so tight
I felt my bones creak. I did not care.

“Sweet Winds of morning forbid such a
thing—oh, my Lanen—would that I might laugh at you, but my own heart sings that
same song of unreason,” he whispered. We held one another without speaking,
until I could feel his heart beating against my own. That very simple, very
real thing steadied me. I managed to let him go a little. Enough to stop my
muscles from cramping, at any rate.

“Do you know, kadreshi, I believe it is a just
grief,” said Varien quietly.

“How should it be just? How reasonable?” I
objected, moving back a little but still in the circle of his arms. I swear,
sometimes that Kantri calm voice of reason made me furious. And anger was
vastly more comfortable than the desperate grief.

“Beloved, when you were taken from me, I
called to you with all my soul.” He shuddered. “Never will I forget that day,
kneeling on the grass, dead to all else, pouring all that I am into truespeech
as I strained to hear your lightest whisper upon the Winds. There was—nothing.”
He shuddered. “I was—my heart, I have shed barely a single tear since you were
taken. I could not hear you, in mind or heart, anywhere in all the world. I did
not dare to weep lest I could never stop. I feared”—that glorious voice
faltered, and his arms around me trembled—“I feared you were taken entirely
from life, I feared I never would see you again or hold you in my arms, and
with your life mine was come also to its end. Beloved.” He breathed roughly,
drawing me to him once more, his strong body my rock in a swirling sea. “My
heart is full of sorrow deep as time, that I did not dare to speak before, lest
it destroy me and take away all my resolve while still there was something to
be done. Now that you are with me—oh, beloved, now I am grown brave enough to
weep.” And so he did, for I felt his tears raining upon my cheeks even as we
kissed and clung to one another, and my tears fell upon his face, and mingling
they washed away our sorrow for that time.

And suddenly to my own surprise my sobs began
to turn to watery laughter. I had been struck by the foolishness of it all. The
pair of us standing there crying bitterly because we were no longer parted!
Varien gazed upon me, and like the sun emerging from a cloudbank, the great
weight of weary sorrow fell away from us both and we grinned like idiots, even
as the tears dried upon our cheeks.

I could not help being distracted; the late
morning light picked out all the contours of his body, turned bis eyes to
living emerald, and set his long silver hair to gleaming like metal new-forged.
That strange spicy scent that reminded me of the Kantri tickled my nose. My
husband. Impossible, that so splendid a vision was my own heart’s other self.

I wondered if my sight had changed forever, or
if this was the last shred of that strange gift from the Lady held over from
the night before. Watching him, I saw the moment when he looked deeper into my
heart. I had never noticed the difference before. There was so much I had never
noticed before. There was around Varien a shimmering silver aura that I
certainly had never seen. What it might mean I had no idea. It was full of
movement, surely. I wondered for a moment if there might be a tree outside the
window, casting moving shadows, but my eyes widened when I realised that the
bright movement behind him came not from without. It was—sweet Goddess, I was
looking at the moving shadows of the wings he had lost.

I stared and stared, hardly daring to believe
what I saw, until she reached out and touched my face. “I didn’t know you still
had wings, my dearest,” she said softly. “Even thus, even as shadows, they are
glorious.”

“Lanen, what sight is upon you?” I cried, joy
rising in me as I had not dared to dream it ever would again. “You see me—your
eyes—” I stared hard at her, and it was unmistakable. “By my name, Lanen
Kaelar, you have the eyes of the Kantrishakrim!”

Of course she could not let that pass. “Well,
I’m not going to give them back,” she said, grinning at me. “What in the world
do you mean, you daft dragon?”

For answer I leaned close into her and
breathed deep. “By the Winds!” I cried, reeling as wonder took me. “Lanen!”

“Still here,” she said as one corner of her
mouth lifted in half a smile. “What are you on about, love?”

“You are changed in truth!” I laughed. “I
thought Vilkas changed your blood and nothing else, but all is connected—you
cannot change the blood without changing all else as well—Lanen, my heart, you
are become as much a child of the Kantri as I am!”

I could read her truly, more truly than ever
before. I could see all the layers of thought and deep emotion, I could see the
wonder that began to fill her heart, and glory to the Winds and the Lady, when
I glanced down I could see our babes as they grew beneath her heart. They were
as yet no more than a shining in the region of her womb, but already I could
see two separate gleams. I took her by the arms and danced about the room like
a fool, the pair of us stark naked and laughing.

We sealed our joy with loving then,
passionate, joyous, urgent with our need to give and to receive. As we lay in
each others arms afterward, Lanen said calmly, “We’d best enjoy this while we
still can. It’s not going to be so easy when I’m out to here with twins.” She held
her arms an improbable distance from her body and I laughed. “Aye, well, laugh
while you can,” she said, contented, teasing me. “You’ve never seen a pregnant
Gedri, have you? I’m not kidding. It looks completely silly and I’m told it is
awkward in all kinds of ways. And you can’t see your feet.” I laughed as she
continued. “And women near their time all say the same things. T wish the babe
would put its mind to the job and get it over with,’ and ‘I’m never doing this
again,’ and ‘Goddess, but my feet hurt!’”

I was filled with a quiet delight to hear her
so calm and so—so normal about her pregnancy. She had gone through seven Hells
and nearly died with it; I had feared she might resent the babes, but no, not
she, not my Lanen.

By good fortune we were up and dressing by the
time Hygel knocked on the door. Why he bothered I don’t know for he opened it
even as he pounded. “Come quick,” he said urgently. “There’s a riot about to
start and that bloody great dragon is in the middle of it.”

I had forgotten. I haven’t been here, my
father’s home in the East Mountains, for twenty-five years. I’d forgotten the
smell of the place in spring. When we arrived an hour past it washed over me.
There’s always the tang of the evergreens, but this time of year there’s some
shrub that grows low on the foothills that has thousands of little yellow
flowers and smells like—like paradise. Better than lansip. I’d forgotten.

I always thought Berys was a little crazy, but
now I know it. I saw the result of that madness last night, in Verfaren. Before
my eyes, his legions of demons destroyed the most powerful men and women in the
world, the Mages of Verfaren, in moments, and there was precious little they
could do about it. Oh, some of them knew how to shield against the little demons,
but when the big one arrived, that Berys called a Lord of Hell, they could do
nothing. I don’t pretend that I felt much at their passing, those people have
made my life difficult for years, but Berys enjoyed it. Not their deaths, I don’t
think. Before. When they realised that they were going to die. He is even more
depraved than I had thought.

Depraved but powerful. Don’t forget that,
Marik my lad. And he’s only on your side as long as you’re of use to him. I
wonder more and more how long that is likely to be.

I must say, though, I’m impressed at the way
he keeps his head. We walked out of the Great Hall quite calmly, and later,
when—when—when the dragon came I saw my death and could not move, but he had
opened the portal and threw me into it. The next moment we’re here at my
ancestral home, this fortified bastion in the mountains by the shores of Lake
Gand. Across the width of Kolmar. It’s a thousand leagues if it’s a step. He
calls it “travelling the demonlines” and says they take forever to set up and
are only good for one trip. Damn shame. It beats horses hollow.

The pain is back again this morning, worse
this time than it has been for many a moon, and with no hope of relief now that
La-nen has escaped my grasp. I should have insisted that Berys sacrifice her
the moment he captured her, curse him! He was the one who wanted to wait, he
never has thought my constant pain worth bothering about. He is less and less
amenable to reason these days, and I am half mad that say it
.

Damn the girl for escaping. Damn Berys for
letting her. Damn it all to the Hells and back again. I hate being in pain.
These days
I can’t even count on
Berys to relieve it, as temporary as that always is. Of late he often claims
that he is weary and needs to rest. Not now, surely, that he has activated the
Healers.