Beneath the Thirteen Moons (23 page)

And as her boat passed their ranks, they each bowed to Mahri, with most elaborate sweeps of respect, like the ripple of a brown wave.

The waterways around the Seer’s Tree were clogged with boats of all sizes and descriptions. Robed Masters walked along the root banks and through the mass of people, trying to bring some semblance of order. Mahri stared in open-mouthed wonder, not until this moment actually believing it. Water-rats to be trained as Masters! Those of non-Royal blood with high root tolerance no longer to be hunted down like criminals, but to be taught in the Tree of Learning!

“Do you suppose we’ll have to live on the boat?” wondered Caria.

Wald shrugged. “Seems like there’s a lot more people here than the king expected. We’ll make do.”

Sh’ra clapped her hands. “Ooh, we’ll sleep on the water just like Auntie.”

Mahri smiled down at her niece. All of her family had so readily accepted these changes—ach, all of Sea
Forest, it looked like. But her own head still spun with the changes Korl had wrought as king. Perhaps because she’d felt the disdain of the Royals when she’d lived in the palace, could she really understand the enormity of what had happened.

“Now then, who have we here?” rasped a voice from the bank. A hood covered the head of a Master, his face lowered over a bone tablet that he scribbled furiously on. “I’ll be Seeing into you, to study your pathways, see what level of root-tolerance—”

He had looked up, his gaze alighting on Mahri’s stunned face. “Your Majesty!”

“Master R’in!”

The old man bowed to her with such an elaborate swoop that her family turned and stared at her, as if just now realizing that she was some kind of Presence.

“Stop that, R’in,” snapped Mahri.

The old man looked up with a grin on his face. “You’ll have to get used to it, Wilding.”

“No, I don’t.”

R’in ignored her. “The king will be overjoyed that you’re back, and to think that I will be the one to escort you to him! Where did you go, Your Majesty? And why did you stay gone so long? The rumors that have buzzed through the palace…”

“Would you stop calling me that?”

“What?”

“Your Majesty! I’m not your anything—ach, never mind. I’ve not decided if I’m returning and would ask for your word that you’ll not reveal my presence to anyone.”

The wrinkles on his face sunk into even deeper grooves. “I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t you return?
Isn’t the reason you didn’t stay because you could never be accepted as an equal? Has not my king decreed that you will be treated as such?” His voice lowered into incredulity. “By-the-Power, could it be that you don’t realize he’s done all of this for you?”

“Has he?” Mahri’s voice sounded very small.

Master R’in frowned in annoyance. Caria and Wald stared from her to the old man with the most astonishing looks on their faces that Sh’ra giggled at the sight of them.

Mahri shrugged. She wished everyone would stop staring at her, for even those that anchored next to their craft had stopped and turned to gape. “There’s more to this, Master R’in, than the equality of my people.”

“You do not feel welcome at the palace.” He scratched through the scraggly bush of his white beard. “You must know, Your Majesty, that many would welcome your return, including this old man. For the story of the attempt on Prince Korl’s mind by his sister and that dark Master has circulated throughout the courtiers, and now that he has become king, well. It might be considered treasonous not to accept the woman that had saved the life of our king.”

Mahri sighed. All the walls between her and Korl kept tumbling down. Except the one she most feared.

“My thanks, Master R’in, for your support and words of welcome.” Already she sounded so formal, unlike herself, as if being Royalty was a cloak one could don. “But I would still ask you not to reveal my presence. Can you do so?”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“If I… command it?”

The old man sketched another brief bow. “As Your Majesty wishes.”

Mahri looked around. More people were staring, the chatter and noise that had surrounded them reduced to an almost eerie silence. “And don’t call me that,” she whispered, ducking her head.

Master R’in cleared his throat and turned to Wald and Caria. “May I have the honor of testing your family for tolerance?” They nodded their heads, looking bemused. “Depending on your affinity, we’ll be sending you to the Healer’s, Artist’s, Merchant’s or Warrior’s Trees. Should you have the potential for Mastery, you’ll come with me to the Seer’s Tree. Is that agreeable?” His eyes turned to Mahri seeking permission and she nodded.

At least the people surrounding them had gone back to whatever they were doing before R’in had made such a fuss. Although they still whispered and glanced in her direction, the old man honored her wishes and appeared to act as if he were going about his normal duties. At the end of his testing, he bade them follow him to the Seer’s Tree.

“It seems to run in the family,” he said, indicating Sh’ra. Mahri smiled at her niece, knowing Caria and Wald were excited to be going to the Seer’s Tree.

“You know,” continued Master R’in in a whisper as the family packed their belongings to carry with them, “the king would banish me to the root farms if he knew I saw you and allowed you to go. But you won’t be coming with us, will you?”

“Not now.”

He sighed. “At first I thought him mad, when he brought home a Wilding. But look at the changes you’ve
wrought.” The sleeves of his robe flapped as he waved his arms around at the myriad boats clogging the channel. “Never in my lifetime would I have thought that the Royal line would risk their control of Sea Forest. And do you know the very best thing?”

Mahri shook her head.

“Some of these water-rats want to learn of the First Records!” Those faded eyes sparkled with more than zabba as he reached out and surreptitiously kissed her hand. “Thank you, Your Majesty. And… come back to us.”

Then he straightened, old bones popping, and waved at a group of guards to come help her family with the rest of their belongings. Mahri kept her head lowered in case she’d be recognized, although she didn’t think any of the king’s personal guard would be among that number.

“What will you do?” asked Caria amid the hugs of parting.

“I’m not sure. Can I borrow your boat?”

“Of course.”

And so they left, little Sh’ra waving goodbye until they disappeared behind a forked branch, and Mahri maneuvered the craft away from the congestion, occasionally tripping over the scattered seashells that had fallen out of Caria’s bundles.

What would she do?

Mahri had no idea and fought a ridiculous feeling of abandonment by the one family she could lay claim to. She’d always left them, before. This was the first time they’d left her. Surely therein lay her sense of loss.

A huge raft drifted up ahead, surrounded by small one-person boats and canoes, a building erected in the
middle which spewed forth sounds of revelry. She anchored her boat to a post and hopped aboard, smiling at the sign that flapped over the doorway of this floating tavern. Jaja rode on her shoulder and clapped his hands in anticipation.

Mahri opened the door and felt as if she’d been sucked right into the midst of the celebration. A shell of quas-juice appeared in her hand and Jaja chattered a demand for a sip. She held it up to him while she surveyed the small room, standing on her tiptoes to see over the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

A husky voice warmed her ear. “I knew ya’ would escape.”

Mahri leaned back into the warm body plastered behind her. “Did you now?”

“Ach, no one could keep my gal imprisoned for long.”

She laughed, looked over her shoulder into the glittering black eyes of Vissa. He licked full lips as he stared at her mouth, his hands already roaming the contours of her body. “So the conquering heroine returns to me, eh?”

Mahri tried to move out from underneath those searching fingers but too many bodies hemmed her in, sealing them in a web of privacy. “What do you mean—heroine?”

“Darling, everyone knows the king made free of the zabba for the Wilding he took for lifemate. And after that fight in my place—and how was I supposed to know it was the prince I pounded, I ask ya’? Anyway, yer a heroine to the swamp-rats, don’t ya’ know?”

A shiver of something went up her spine. If they only knew that events had come about because of her fear of
the prince, maybe the water-rats wouldn’t be so eager to call her a heroine. She ignored that ridiculous title, just as she ignored the other that R’in had labeled her with.

“Seems to me that you caught the bad end of that fight, Vissa.”

He threw back his head and laughed, the sound booming over the rest of the noise. “A good thing, too. Else I’d not be here now to welcome ya’ to my new place. Come on, let me show ya’ around.”

Mahri allowed him to grab her arm and pull her through the crowd, releasing her hold on the shell of juice to Jaja, who slurped in greedy pleasure. The place looked to be nothing more than a shack on a raft, but it did sport a bar in the far corner and Vissa brought her around to the back of it.

“This is only the first one, mind. And I’ve still got the tavern on the docks. But my new plan, see, is to build floating taverns all over Sea Forest, to bring my happy-brew to those poor unfortunates that can’t make it to my permanent place. What think ya’?”

Mahri shrugged. “Sounds good, but why bother?”

“Ach, girl, ya’ don’t know how ya’ have turned the world around now, do ya’? Zabba’s legal now, darling, and profits will go down cause of it. But there’s other ways to earn a bone.” She nodded and he grinned lazily, played with the ties of her vest before running a finger across the swell of her chest. “I can take good care of ya’, girl. If ya’ have a mind to stick around.”

Mahri studied that handsome face and saw to her surprise that he meant what he said. He lifted her up and set her on the back of the bar, planting himself between her thighs and cradling her with those large, muscular arms.
Jaja jumped from her shoulder and scampered down the bar, sampling drinks as he went. The crowd was in such good cheer they allowed the little moocher to do it.

Vissa lowered his voice. “Are ya’ going back to him, then?”

Mahri shook her head no.

“Then stay with me.”

She shook it again. His hands on her body told her one important thing. It wasn’t just any man she desired, for only Korl’s touch could make her shiver with lust.

He kissed her nose. “I told them, it was only the swamps for ya’.”

“Told who?”

Those black brows rose almost to his hairline. “Don’t ya’ know the entire forest’s waiting to see if ya’ go back to him? And I told all who’d listen that my girl’s too independent to shackle herself to a man. Although, if ya’ chose a king over me, I’d find it in my heart to forgive ya’.”

Mahri grinned. “Would you now?”

“Aya. I also told them that the woman I knew wouldn’t give up her freedom for nothing. That she’d never let herself fall in love again, especially to no Royal. No matter that they’d changed their ways now, they still can’t bring back the dead. ‘Why,’ I said, ‘she’s making them pay now, ain’t she?’”

The grin had frozen on Mahri’s face. Is that what Vissa truly thought, that she was making Korl pay for the death of her former lifemate and child?

“I have to hand it to ya’, girl. Ya’ sure have made a fool out of that prince. Why, it wouldn’t surprise me none that that’s why us here swamp-rat’s really think yer a hero—”

Mahri slapped him. One minute she sat stock-still, and the next she looked at the red brand of her hand appearing on that handsome face.

Jaja
, she called.

Her pet wove through shells of quas-juice and tried to hop on her shoulder while she and Vissa continued to stare at each other in horrified fascination. The monk-fish wobbled and tried to hop again, gave up with a drunken shrug of scaled shoulders and crawled to his perch, his tail anchoring him as he swayed.

Mahri stormed out of the shack and Vissa let her go, a smile of pure satisfaction across his handsome, albeit thoroughly slapped, face.

M
AHRI’S TOES CURLED AGAINST THE WOODEN DECK OF
the boat while she waited for nightfall, the water current threatening to push her through the screen of bamba fronds that she’d anchored behind across from the Healer’s Tree.

While she waited, she considered that if the Royals wanted to eliminate all those with a tolerance for zabba, this would be the perfect plan. Bring them out of hiding and then… Only her belief in Korl dismissed those awful thoughts from her mind. He wouldn’t do such a thing—and then Mahri laughed at herself. What a long way she’d come, that she believed in the honor of a Royal!

She frowned, knees bent with the ebb and flow of the water, eyes intent on one particular window in the Healer’s Tree. Had she changed so much, then? When she’d first developed this new ability to Hear with the Power it had terrified her, so much so that Jaja had built that black wall around her mind to protect her. Yet, first she’d allowed a crack in it to speak with Jaja, and she must’ve developed some control, for the life-thoughts of Sea Forest had not overwhelmed her when she’d done so. And then it had widened to allow her to Hear the narwhal, and when she realized that her thoughts also lay open to that great one, she’d actually accepted it.

She’d also shattered the mind-barrier to save Korl,
even after knowing the terror she’d felt the first time she’d allowed their minds to merge, in that brief connection when Bonding. And later, when the overdose had thrust her into a world of nightmare… but that had been more than thought-sharing.

Their souls had joined.

Mahri shivered and absentmindedly popped a tuber of zabba into her mouth. Yes, she’d changed. But would it be enough?

Dusk darkened the sky and she watched that window with even more intensity. Perhaps Korl had grown tired of setting that beacon for her, had found another woman to love, one more willing to give him all that he demanded. Perhaps his love had turned to hatred, if he knew his subjects called him fool because of her.

Mahri clenched her fists. Korl was many things— many wonderful, warm things—but never a fool. She couldn’t allow anyone to think that of him.

The light that burst from the window near blinded her, and when Jaja leapt for her with jabbers of excitement he knocked her off-balance and they both ended up sprawled in the bottom of the craft. To lose her footing on any boat, even one not her own, was a first, and she could feel the shockwaves from Jaja’s mind as he stared at his mistress with tiny mouth agog.

With the joy that sprang from the thought that he still wanted her also came a frisson of fear. For a moment she felt that she’d rather face a white water channel of skulkers—even that many-tongued monster—than pole across that stretch of water to the window.

I’m a coward
, she thought.

Jaja slapped her upside the head.
No, no spirit-friend.
Seen you fear many times. But coward’s only one who runs away.

And that’s exactly what Mahri felt like doing. She scowled at the monk-fish.
Ach, you’re a clever little thing.

Jaja batted wide, innocent eyes at her.

Mahri snorted, then stood and flicked her wrist, her staff lengthening with a soft whoosh of sound that mingled with the slap of the water and the swish of the fronds. She poled across to the underneath of the balcony where that beacon of light called, weighed anchor and pulled the grapnel from her pack. When she threw the hook upward, she remembered the first time she’d done this, and smiled.

The zabba in her system gave her the strength to near fly up the rope and over the railing, and she crouched for a moment, checking for any guards. Odd, that none patrolled about to challenge her. She’d think that after the last time they wouldn’t be so lax in guarding the prince’s—no, the king’s, room.

And then another thought struck her. What if the guards had orders to keep clear of this area, in the event that their… queen might return? Mahri swallowed. How could she, an ignorant water-rat, even think of herself as a queen? She’d be an imposter, a pretender on the throne. Korl could change many things, except for what she was.

And what he was. For if she entered that room, there would be no holding back. Fear again tingled its way up her spine. She’d left him once and knew she couldn’t do it again. If she walked through that door there would be no turning back, and she knew, no holding back. He wouldn’t accept any compromises. He’d want all of her and nothing less.

Mahri lifted her chin. Yet he hadn’t asked for anything that he hadn’t been willing to give himself. Korl had changed their world for her, making them equals in the eyes of Sea Forest. She swayed in indecision. All… or nothing?

Jaja grunted and leapt toward the light, right through the open window.

Mahri leaned forward and still couldn’t make her body move, but her thoughts swirled like the tide. Every time Korl had her in his web he’d let her go—hadn’t he proven that he wouldn’t take away her freedom? She’d been so concerned with making everything fit so that they could be together… yet when she wasn’t with him nothing else seemed to matter. Not the laws of Sea Forest or the well-intentioned motives of fur-scaled aliens.

She smiled when she realized that she’d had it all backwards.

They just needed to be together and make everything else fit
them
.

Mahri didn’t bother with the door either. She cursed softly and followed her pet, one leg after another over that sill, then stood and stared in astonishment.

It hadn’t been a dream, or some death-induced hallucination, as she’d half-suspected. Mahri had been in this room with Korl, for it still lay covered in flowers, as she’d last seen it. But then only her spirit had been here and she couldn’t smell the perfume, nor appreciate the myriad brilliant colors of the blossoms.

She stepped toward the bed, her hands reaching out of their own will, gathering an armful of the spent petals that covered the mattress, burying her face in the shades of white, inhaling their sweet scent. For although pots held
scarlet, indigo, pale-lavender flowers, the petals on the bed were only from white blooms; the tiny curls of shi, the thin cups of the tea plant, the palm-sized spray of the cho-vine. All of them caressed her with their velvet down.

Fresh! she thought. The petals were fresh, as if they’d just been plucked this morning. She dropped her armload in awe. Korl had hundreds of flowers harvested for this bed every single day? In the hopes she might, possibly, return and share it with him?

Had any man ever wanted a woman this much?

And then the inner door opened, Jaja squealed with glee and jumped into the arms of the man standing there, and for the first time in a very long while Mahri looked on the face of her lifemate and thought: had any woman ever wanted a man this much?

The beacon of light that surrounded the windowsill flared for a moment before fading away, as if its purpose was now complete, leaving only the twinkling glow of the miniature light-globes that lay scattered around the room like so many stars, to combine their radiance in a diffused glow. But in that brief flare Mahri had taken notice of every detail of his features. From the waves of pale-golden hair that strayed over his forehead—lines of worry etched there which she didn’t recall—to the white scars that lined his cheek, making her fingers itch to trace them. And the curl of his lips, the tilt of his nose, the warm fullness of his mouth.

Mahri’s legs turned to water and she went down. Fortunately the bed was close enough so that she sat instead of fell, while errant thoughts continued in a stream of fire. The broad shoulders of his naked chest, the silk leggings that outlined long, muscular legs. The
glow of light gold skin and the texture of his silky chest hair that created a dark line between his ribs that wandered down to where it spread to nest that which made her throb with the mere thought of its promise…

Ach, how she’d missed the sight of him!

Korl petted and scratched Jaja as if he couldn’t believe the cool-scaled bundle lay in his arms, and the small monk-fish closed his lids and purred with delight. The man’s voice, when he spoke, took Mahri’s breath away. How could she have forgotten how the low deep timbre of it made her insides melt?

“Down the hall, to your left, old friend, is a pink table laid out just for you. With what I could remember of your favorite delicacies.”

Jaja opened one brown eye and fixed it on Mahri.
His head’s like a block of wood. Ask him, spirit-friend, if it’s the same pink table?

Mahri opened her mouth, shut it, then stammered, embarrassed by her shyness. “I… I don’t know why it matters, but Jaja wants to know if it’s the pink table that was in… our apartments.”

Korl didn’t look at her, hadn’t since he’d walked into the room. Instead, he continued to smile down at Jaja. “The very same.”

With a chirrup of delight Jaja sprang to the floor and disappeared down the hall. Korl stepped all the way into the room and shut the door behind him. “So, you’ve learned to talk to Jaja?”

Mahri shrugged. She didn’t know what to say, and neither, obviously, did he. Or did he really care that she’d cracked that mind-barrier? Hoping that she’d let him in as well. She filled her lungs, wishing it were
courage instead of air. “I can talk to other wildlife now, too. And of course the natives.”

He took a step toward the bed and she inadvertently drew back. He reminded her of a treecat on the prowl.

“Humans too?”

Mahri shook her head. “Only you, because of our Bond.”

And then he stood before her, she could feel the heat of him radiate like a small sun. Strong fingers cupped her chin and lifted her head to finally meet her eyes with his own.

“I always knew you were special,” he said.

Mahri blinked, the feelings she read in his look twisting something inside of her, slamming that unnamable reaction into her stomach. “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” was all she could think of to say.

“I knew you’d come back,” he replied with a husky sigh, a hint of arrogance, a trace of anger. “I’m just annoyed that it took you so long.”

As always, his eyes were her downfall. She couldn’t look away, couldn’t move or breathe against the chemistry that flared between them. And although it hurt with the intensity of it, at the same time a soaring excitement ripped through her that made her weak from its passing.

The king went down on one knee before her, his large hand cradling the back of her head, pulling her toward his mouth. But she still couldn’t look away from those eyes, the lights in the room reflected there with the pattern of a star-lit sky, because he hadn’t released their hold on her yet, hadn’t tasted enough of her soul.

“You’ve always been mine,” he murmured. “You’ll be happy, now that you know it in your heart.”

“Will I?” she sighed, his lips so close to her own she could feel the breath of his words.

He moved his mouth atop hers, a gentle questioning at first, as if time had made him somehow unfamiliar with her. But then his fingers twisted in her hair and his kiss became demanding, hungry, as if that same stretch of time had also taken his body beyond the limit of endurance and now the need was a wild frenzied thing that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, control.

Mahri’s body mirrored his, caught the fire of his passion and made of it a raging inferno when it combined with the flame of her own desire. She caught a handful of his hair and pushed his head closer to her own, plunging her tongue into his mouth, trying to crawl inside of him with a fierce need that would’ve frightened her if she’d still had the ability to think.

When Korl ripped the ties of her vest she felt the scales dig into her skin with a scrape before tearing free and she laughed at the small pain of it. When her leggings came off in the same impatient way, Mahri responded in a like manner with his own silk pants, the thin stuff of it shredding in her grip.

The sight of his need for her, the throbbing, hard length of it, made her swallow a scream, for she didn’t want everyone in the Tree to know she’d returned—at least, not to announce it in quite that way.

Korl, watching her look at him, growled.

And Mahri again compared him to a treecat, wondering how he could make that spine-tingling sound. Then there were no more thoughts, no more words, nothing but the feel of Korl’s smooth skin beneath her fingers, the liquid silk of his hair against her breasts while he
tried to devour them, the hot palms of his hands as they branded every one of her curves. He pushed her down among that bed of white petals, the crushing releasing a wave of fresh scent that Mahri was dimly aware of, for his own musky aroma already filled her nostrils, wove a heady path through her lungs, making her dizzy with the sheer potency of it.

He surrounded her, weighted her with the force of his lips and his thighs pressed against her own, that hardness of him sweeping across the nub of her own center in a hot, wet promise of fulfillment. And Mahri wanted more, scraping her nails across his back and the tense mounds of his bottom, demanding to be a part of him, thrusting her tongue inside his mouth in a parody of what she craved.

With mindless rapture Korl drove into her, pulled out by necessity and snarled at the need for it, before plunging into her again and again until they both reached that peak of timeless suspension that begged to be shattered into waves of ecstatic pleasure.

Mahri trembled at the apex of fulfillment, knowing the brilliance that followed, relishing in the anticipation as much as the actual experience itself.

But she hadn’t been aware of the Power that throbbed through her pathways, so overwhelmed by the physical magic between her and Korl. Yet she felt it now, shivering through her, more than could be accounted for in the small amount of zabba she’d chewed. She realized that Korl had been feeding her Power, that he’d Seen into those green pathways and had waited patiently at where they forked and then spread into her mind.

Waiting for this moment.

Mahri had known that he’d ask this of her, to be one in all ways, yet still she balked at his entrance. Even now, with her body tensed like a bow for release, she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t give up her inner mind-self to him.