VirtualDesire (9 page)

“You are tied to a woman, not a place!”

Kered nodded. “And the need I have for my new family. The
place doesn’t matter, as long as I’m with Maggie, and I know she’s safe.” He
shook his head. “I can’t explain it.”

“Then give me the jeweled dagger, and I will leave you to
your chosen life.” Every muscle in Vad’s neck ached. He wanted to lash out, to
howl with the pain of finding his friend, but losing him at the same time.

Kered frowned. “So be it. I’ll search for the dagger. I’m
sure Maggie must have it. I just sent her home this morning because her
grandmother has broken her hip, and Maggie wanted to help care for her. I know
she would want me to take you out there to see her.”

But Vad shook his head. He looked out at the sea. How far
could he go and not be lost completely?

“Vad, I’ll find the dagger; I promise. But you must make a
promise, too.”

“What promise do you desire of me?” Vad asked. How many
promises had been made and broken in the name of friendship?

“If you won’t come with me, stay here until I find the
dagger. That’s all.”

Vad nodded. How long would he have to wait? Long enough to
be seduced by the women, the strange food, the hypnotizing music, to want to
remain? “Do what you must to find the blade. It is all I have to prove my
innocence.”

Gwen pressed her face to the window. Both men were as rigid
as soldiers at attention.

“I’m going out there.” She jerked the door open and was
nearly blown off her feet. Vad was at her side in an instant, shoving the door
closed for her. “You’re soaking wet—both of you. Vad’s been ill. He shouldn’t
be out here.” She had to shout over the wind and a low rumble of thunder.

“I am not returning to the festivities,” Vad said. Something
in his tone told her he meant it.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll all go back to my place, then.” She
pointed to the gleam of light that was her apartment, a couple of blocks away.

Kered shook his head. “I can’t stay. I have to tell Maggie
Vad’s here and have her look for something…at home.”

“Really? Maggie’s not here?” Gwen braced herself for Maggie
to leap out of the shadows and yell “Surprise!”

“That’s right. Vad can fill you in. Now I have to go and
secure something Vad needs for his quest.”

With a sudden turnabout, she smiled and clapped. “You guys
are really good. Superb. Do you do amateur theater back home?”

“We’re not acting,” Kered said.

“Oh, sure. And he’s really Vad.” She swallowed a laugh.

“Yes. He is Vad,” Kered said. “But he’s Nicholas Sandav,
too.”

Gwen tossed and turned and knotted herself in her sheets.
The fact that the most beautiful man on the East Coast was sleeping on her sofa
bed shouldn’t be keeping her awake, but it was. Her mind kept returning to that
moment when the shower had washed him clean.

“Oh, brother, whoever spiked that punch should be ashamed of
himself. I’m really going to feel it tomorrow.” She threw off the covers, got
out of bed, and turned on a small desk lamp so she could look for a book to
read that would put Sleeping Beauty out of her mind. Far out of her mind. How
she wished Maggie had not gone home. Maggie could be persuaded to tell the
truth.

When would Vad admit he was just a guy playing a role and
not a man tragically pulled into the
Tolemac Wars
game when he was a
child, as Kered so adamantly claimed? A child thought lost forever. A child
named Nicholas Sandav, whose parents died before learning the truth that their son
had survived—in another world. What incredible imaginations!

Vad’s name also disturbed her sleep. Not as much as his
body, but almost as much. Where had she heard that name before?
Nicholas
Sandav…

To be honest, she could not imagine calling him Nick. Vad he
looked like, and Vad he was.

Her fingers danced along a row of books and settled on one
R. Walter had given her the first—and only—Christmas they’d spent together.
After that, he’d spent them all with her sister Pam.
Jingle all the way.

The notation inside brought a lump to her throat.
For
Gwen, as legendary as any heroine.
Oh, sure, she thought. Until he met Pam,
anyway, and broke her heart—a heart that had not healed until she’d met Bob.
She looked at her bare finger. Each night she took off her wedding ring and
placed it in her jewelry box. Each morning she put it back on. Bob would have
laughed at her sentimentality. He was one man who did not believe in dwelling
on the past.

She settled at the desk and thumbed through the book,
flipping here and there at random. The book was beautifully illustrated with
examples of Celtic art. She lost herself in the familiar legends that had
colored her world, inspired her fabric designs, and added so much romantic
mystery to her college years. With delight she pulled the light close,
examining the intricate lines and forms that decorated shields and caldrons,
much like the designs engraved on Vad’s knife. And his ring.

Then she gasped and jumped to her feet, dropping the book.

Sandav
.

She sat down hard on the chair. Why hadn’t she realized
immediately where the name had come from? Hadn’t her love of Arthurian legend
led her to take that fateful class where she’d met R. Walter? Hadn’t a love of
legend brought them together?

Bending over, she reached for the book. It lay open to the
pages on King Arthur’s final—and mortal—battle.
Sandav
. The knight had
survived, one of the few to do so, because he was so beautiful men would not
fight him, just in case he was a messenger of God, an angel from heaven.

Vad fit that description. He was beautiful in a masculine,
hard-edged way. His bones were those of a man whose genes had been bred to
perfection. His cheekbones were meant to be carved in marble or on a wooden
figurehead at the prow of a ship. Or was that always a woman? Her mind was
muzzy.

She shot from her bedroom and stood over him before she
could stop herself, the book clutched to her chest. The light from her bedroom
painted a single golden stripe across his bare shoulder. For a moment she just
stared in sheer appreciation.

Outside, thunder rumbled, and for a brief moment the room
flashed white as lightning split the sky and broke the spell.

“Vad.” She touched his shoulder. He came awake in an
instant. The long knife appeared in his hand.

“It’s me,” she whispered, sitting at his side. “You can stop
pretending now.” She pushed the knife away. “I know who you’re not.”

Wow, she thought as he shook his hair from his eyes; he gave
new meaning to the term
pillow head
.

Vad slipped the knife back in its sheath. Then his hand clamped
about her wrist. “Woman, you had only to ask if you wished to share my bed.”

“Huh,” she said, distracted by the way the sheet pooled
across his hips.

“Now hear me. Clearly,” he said, his voice low and rough
from sleep. “You are quite small and, I doubt not, would take up little space
to disturb my rest, but I do not want you in my bed.”

The furnace heat of his body chilled to ice cold as he rose
from the bed. The light from her bedroom gleamed on his naked flanks as he
pulled on his leather breeches, jerking the lacing closed over a flat stomach
furred with golden hair.

When he straightened, his hair loose about his shoulders,
his ring-adorned arms folded on his chest, she almost swallowed her tongue. The
cheekbones she’d just been musing on were hard slashes of anger.

“If I want a woman, I ask her. I did not ask you.”

“How dare you!” she screeched, leaping to her feet on the
sofa bed. She flapped the book at him, rocking on the thin mattress. “I was not
trying to jump your bones. I found your name, stupid. You can stop pretending.”

“My name? Stupid? Pretending?” He raked his hair back,
dragging the braids behind his ear. His face was harsh, every line intensified
by the deep shadows. “I am not pretending.”

“Sure.” She turned the book and thumped her finger on the
decorated page. “It’s all here. Your name—Sandav—that was really a stupid pick.
Sandav is famous. It took me a minute to remember because of…well…the spiked
punch, I guess, but I remember now. It’s all right here.” She tapped the page
again. “So now you can tell me who you really are. Come on. Is it really Nick?
Or Nicky? Nicky what? Come on. Confess.”

Nausea crawled through his belly.
Nicky. Nicky
. The
name twisted in his mind. He heard a voice, a faraway voice—a woman’s. The dark
mist spun from the corners of the room, rose behind Gwen like the waves behind
her Music Pier. He swallowed to contain the sickness burning up his throat.

“Vad, what’s wrong?” She jumped off the bed and extended her
hand.

He avoided it and hurried to the bathing chamber. There he
stood at the tub, confused, looking for the water spigot. Impatiently he jerked
on the silvery handles. Water thundered into the tub. He splashed it on his
face and gulped great handfuls of the icy water.

When she placed her hand on his back, it was like an iron
brand laid on his skin to sear and scar. “Nilrem’s throat,” he swore, twisting
from her touch. “Have you some evil power that you can burn with your
fingertips?”

“It’s you. You’re burning up.” She placed a palm on his
cheek. “Are you sick?”

Incongruously, her hand, which a moment ago had scalded,
felt cool and soothing on his skin.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “I could have sworn…”

“What is it you could have sworn? That I was a liar?” How
could a woman be so sweet-faced, so alluring one moment, so infuriating the
next?

“Look. I just read through my legends, and Sandav is there.
Vad is part of Sandav —backward. What did your family—”

“My name is Vad. I have no family.” Her touch was light, a
dance on his forearm.

“I know. Kered said they were dead, years ago. I’m sorry.
When I lost Bob, I thought I’d never get over it. Now where are you really
from?”

“I am from Tolemac. I crossed the ice fields.” Anger and
amusement warred on her face.

“Sure. Stick to that story. I almost believed you guys. You
were so sincere—the way you greeted each other, your intensity. But I’m not in
a ball gown, under the influence of too much Tolemac punch. You can drop the
act. It’s stupid and childish.”

Her words were small hammers smiting his honor. “I am stupid
and childish?”

“Never mind.” She ruffled her hair with her hands, causing
it to stand up like a cock’s comb. “I didn’t mean it. Wait here.”

She dashed away in a twirl of her white gown. He heard the
door bang shut.

As unsteady as he felt, he went into the room to the strange
bed she’d pulled from the padded bench. He’d wasted several long moments under
it, examining the way it worked. Now he just wanted to sink onto its lumpy
surface and sleep this nightmare away.

The mist no longer swirled through the room. He was dressed
and sheathing his blades when she burst through the door again, her hand
extended before her.

He froze. The blood in his veins felt as cold as the ice
fields. In her hand was the jeweled dagger. “Where did you find it?” He could
barely say the words. Men were willing to ruin a warrior’s life for this blade.

“Here. Take it. Isn’t this what you were on a quest to find?
Well, here it is.” She shoved it into his hands.

“Where did you find it?” he repeated. The blade was smaller
than he remembered. The gold handle was studded with gems of poor quality. He
turned it over and over in his hands.

“I didn’t find it. My friend Maggie gave it to me, and I’ve
been using it to open letters down in my office.”

“And why did you not tell me you had it when I told you I
sought it?”
I have been betrayed
, he thought bleakly,
betrayed by my
friend’s woman
. Maggie had given the blade to Gwen—given away the key to
his future.

“To be honest, I thought you were a bit wacky.”

“What is wacky?” He grasped the knife’s handle and pulled.
Nothing happened.

“Oh, not wrapped too tight. Mad. And why am I explaining
myself to you? You’re the one who’s playing games.”

“I do not play games—or not here. You are like so many other
women I have known—unworthy of trust.”

“I am not. This isn’t about trust.”

He silenced her with a look. “It is to me.” Finally the
handle shifted, then turned a mere hairsbreadth. “This blade means everything
to me. It holds my future.”

The handle suddenly turned, slid, pulled from the blade.
Whatever the future might hold, he would know it now. He went to where a lamp
gleamed in her bedchamber.

He avoided the strange lamp on her table and stood at the
foot of her lush bed to shake the blade handle. A small, rolled piece of paper
dropped onto her blanket.

He was gratified that his hands did not shake as he unrolled
the paper. His vision blurred. It was not a map of a route through the ice
fields.

“Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s a map, isn’t it?”

Gwen stood so close to examine the map, he could feel her
breath on his hands. To distract himself, he studied the map. His gaze scanned
the territory from the Sleeping Mountain known as Gog to the Ford of Ravens.
Places far from the ice fields.

A crash of thunder outside made her jump. He felt as if the
thunder outside was loose in his chest.

“Aye,” he said. “‘Tis a map—showing the way to Nilrem’s
eight treasures.”

Gwen could not change his mind about returning to Tolemac.
Not that he could get there from here… He must still be taking his role
seriously—or the practical joke wasn’t over. And at this exact moment, she was
darned tired of it.

After turning the game on, she trotted at his heels as he
walked determinedly to the game booth. “Look,” she said, still playing along.
“I know you think this map means the council tricked you, but maybe they were
just wrong about what was in the knife.”

“I will explain this one more time,” he said. With great
deliberation, he folded his cloak on the floor by the control platform in the
game booth. “I was brought before the council and accused with Kered, who had
been my commander, of traitorous acts against Tolemac. Kered was believed to
have left Tolemac with his slave woman and the knife. ‘Twas claimed that Kered
knew the knife’s handle contained a map of the way through the ice fields.”

“And why would they want to get past the ice fields?” She
propped her elbow on the platform railing. Her head pounded from too little
sleep and too much punch.

“For what men have always craved—weapons. The best weapons.
And the legends describe weapons of destruction beyond our imaginations—here,
beyond the ice fields.” He lifted the game gun. “This is such a weapon. I have
seen its like—once. And know of what it is capable.”

With a look of contempt, he put the gun back on the control
panel.

“The last thing Tolemac or the Selaw need is a weapon of
such potency. But my honor demanded I regain the dagger with the map. It was
Samoht’s charge to me. The reward? My name restored to honor.”

“Samoht’s the high councilor of Tolemac, isn’t he?” She
rearranged the gun, next to the headset.

Vad nodded. “He has a streak of evil…but he is not what
matters here.”

“So if you did what this Samoht asked and found your way
here, why do they need a map?”

“Many have set out on the journey to cross the ice fields;
none have returned. A map would allow a legion to make the trek. And if the
dagger had contained the route through the ice fields, then all they accused us
of would have been true. They said Kered’s adoptive father, Leoh, was once
enamored of a Selaw woman. It was through her Leoh obtained the map. He kept it
hidden through the years in the knife’s handle. The council, and Samoht,
claimed Leoh died before he could make use of the map. And Kered was said to
know of its existence. Now I know it was all lies, lies to conceal the
council’s real goal—the treasures. A lie to conceal simple greed.”

“I have a headache.” With a yawn, she plopped down on his
fur coat. Playing this game was getting tedious. Tomorrow Mr. Warrior God was
out on his tight buns if he didn’t own up to who he really was. “So go on. The
council’s greedy. What difference does it make which map you found?”

A very convincing hauteur entered his voice. “Warriors do
not seek treasure. The very idea is dishonorable. I was sent to bring back
Kered and the dagger and prove our loyalty. It seems I was really sent to
obtain a treasure map. If I had died doing so, they had lost only a man with a
traitor’s name.” His voice dropped; his hand turned the dagger over and over.
“They knew what it was they sought—something far more valuable than mere
weapons. They lied to me.”