Destiny's Lovers (15 page)

“The day after that festival,” Tamat said,
“as the newborn crescent moons begin their ascent into the evening
sky, Sidra and I will perform the most difficult task for any
telepaths. During the Sacred Mind-Linking, I will transfer to her
all of my memory. Everything I received from the previous High
Priestess’s memory, back to the time before Ruthlen was founded,
and all that I have learned during my own lifetime, will become
Sidra’s memories also, to use as she wishes. The act of
transference will kill me.”

“No,” Reid said, taking her hands, thinking
this had to be the time to reveal the truth about Sidra.
“Tamat—”

“Do not tell me I will live for many years
yet,” Tamat instructed, opening her eyes at last and looking into
Reid’s face. “I know how much strength I have left, my friend. It
will be just enough for the Mind-Linking. Oh, my body may breathe,
or even eat and appear to be awake for a few days afterward, but my
mind will be broken beyond repair. I have left the task until too
late you see, because I always secretly hoped Janina would be
capable of following me. But it will be Sidra. There is no one
else.”

Reid dismissed any thought of revealing
Sidra’s perfidy to this valiant old woman who already had a deep
sorrow to bear. He squeezed her hands, wishing he knew how to lend
her his strength. Tamat smiled at him, and for an instant he
wondered if she knew his thoughts.

“I lay a command on you, Reid,” she said. “I
have tried to assure Janina’s continued well-being by allowing her
to become a lesser priestess even though she lacks the Gift. Once
her wrists are bound with the golden ropes, she should be safe from
harm by anyone in Ruthlen. Before the Sacred Mind-Linking, Sidra
must make a vow to care for and protect all the priestesses. But of
late I have begun to doubt Sidra’s good will. Her desire for
complete power, her lack of compassion for those weaker than
herself -” Tamat stopped, swallowing hard. Reid thought he did not
need to tell her about Sidra. In the blue eyes that never left his
face he saw a despair too deep for words, and he was convinced that
Tamat knew all about Sidra.

“There is no one else,” Tamat whispered
again, so softly that he had to bend nearer to hear her. Then,
after a moment’s pause, she spoke once more. “Reid, I command you
to use all means necessary to protect Janina after she is bound as
a priestess. I might have asked Osiyar, but he is weak in certain
ways. You are the one I trust. You are strong and clever.” The
wrinkled eyelids closed again in exhaustion.

“I promise,” Reid said, “that from the moment
you bind the golden ropes on Janina’s wrists, I will protect her
from any harm whatsoever, even at the cost of my own life. Am I to
witness the ceremony, Tamat?”

“It is for priestesses only,” came Tamat’s
thread of a voice. “Until the binding, and the Mind-Linking, you
both remain under my rule, Reid.”

He said nothing to that, and after a moment
more she relinquished her grip on his hands.

“Leave me now,” she said in a stronger voice.
“Send Philian to me. Don’t speak of this conversation to
anyone.”

“I understand.” Reid returned to the temple
courtyard, to stand in the silver dimness of moonset, considering
all that Tamat had said. She must know how he felt about Janina. By
extracting that promise from him, she had secured his good behavior
toward the girl. But she had worded her command so oddly. He was to
protect Janina, not from the instant he made his promise, but from
the moment she actually became a priestess.

Reid believed Tamat when she said that the
strain of the Mind-Linking with Sidra would kill her. After the
time he had spent in Ruthlen, he also believed that Tamat would
never willingly break any of the laws the telepaths had laid down
for themselves.

But those who were not telepaths were not
obliged to obey the telepaths’ Chosen Way. And it was universally
understood that prisoners were not required to obey the laws of
their keepers. Tamat knew all of that as well as Reid did. Reid
began to think the High Priestess, too scrupulous to enter his mind
after he had repeatedly forbidden it, had been giving him a
dangerous message in the only way she could, without actually
speaking the words. It was up to him to interpret and act on that
message.

* * * * *

Time passed rapidly until it was the day
before the dark moons festival. Tamat insisted that she was
completely well again and would be able to preside at the ritual
which would bind Janina into her final vows, and at the feast
afterward.

Reid was called to the central room of the
temple, where he found Sidra and Osiyar.

“Eat well today,” Osiyar instructed. “Retire
to bed early tonight.”

“Drink no batreen at the feast tomorrow,”
Sidra ordered, “for when night comes you will be required to lend
yourself to as many women as you possibly can, and we do not want
you incapacitated by drink. Tamat is deeply disappointed that
neither Anniellia nor Senastria has conceived. You must do better
this time. You owe us that.”

Reid said nothing, and carefully thought
nothing, trying to keep Sidra from reading his thoughts. But once
his interview with her was over and he was sure she would be
completely occupied with Osiyar, he admitted his anger to
himself.

He’d be star-blasted into atoms before he’d
go through another night like the last festival! He had spent the
past sixteen days as the unwilling subject of innumerable stories
about the rivalry between Senastria and Anniellia, and their plans
for him during the night of the dark moons.

On his daily walks into the village with
Osiyar and the scholar-priests, he had borne the cold stares of the
men and the knowing smiles of the women. He did not trust any of
them. They had gone too quickly from the urge to stone him because
he was unknown and different from anyone they had seen before, to a
suspicious eagerness to allow him to father a large part of their
next generation. He found it hard to believe they were as
subservient to Tamat’s wishes in that matter as they appeared to
be. He felt more and more certain that the length of his life would
be decided by the length of Tamat’s life, which gave him two to
four days more at best.

He was determined to get away from Ruthlen,
and he had decided he would take Janina with him. She had become so
precious to him that he wanted no other woman, and he would rather
die than leave her behind to deal with the power-hungry Sidra. The
more he thought about how to do it, the more convinced he became
that it was what Tamat wanted, too. He believed that was the
message she had tried to convey to him when she was so sick.

He thought almost constantly about ways in
which he and Janina might reach freedom. He had heard enough about
the horrors of the sea to know there could be no escape that way.
The difficulties of procuring and provisioning a boat were further
reasons to avoid the sea route, along with the obvious objection
Janina had once voiced, that on the open water there was no place
for a boat to hide after they were missed and the alarm was
raised.

But there were hiding places on land. One of
those places would never be searched by villagers looking for him.
Even Osiyar could not go there. Only priestesses were allowed in
the sacred grove.

Reid took himself to the kitchen building,
knowing he would find there the young priestess Philian, who was
close to Tamat and who seemed to be a sensible person. When he told
her he was hungry, she cheerfully gave him half a loaf of fresh
bread and a cup of the hot, brewed herbs called dhia. While he ate,
Reid fell into easy conversation with her, hoping to learn from her
the timing of the next day’s events, and pretending complete
ignorance of them.

“I know nothing of the ritual planned for
Janina tomorrow,” he said between bites of crusty bread. “What will
be done with her? Some kind of purification first, I should
think.”

“At dawn tomorrow, wearing a plain white
robe, Janina will go alone to the sacred grove to fetch the Water
for her purification bath,” Philian informed him. “When she
returns, she will be greeted by all the other priestesses and
conducted into the central room of the temple. There she will be
stripped and bathed with the Water she has brought. Tamat and Sidra
will then examine her to be certain she is pure enough to be a
priestess.”

“Does the examination involve mind-linking?”
Reid asked, wondering how Sidra could hide her falseness during
such a linkage. “Is the tattooing done afterward?”

“You know too much about our rituals already,
Reid,” Philian said gently. “I cannot tell you more.”

“I understand. Forgive me if my questions
were rude. It is only that I’m interested, since Tamat says I’ll be
here for the rest of my life.”

But he had learned what he wanted to know.
Janina would go alone to the grove the next morning. Reid planned
to be there waiting for her. Somehow he would convince her that
they had to leave Ruthlen before she was irrevocably bound as a
priestess.

They could climb down the cliff into the
ravine, the way he had come. They would stay in the ravine, follow
it to its southern end, find land that was more open, and then try
to make their way back to Tank’s headquarters. It would take many
days of walking, and he knew they might not survive to find Tank
and the others. Still, it would be better than being forced to
service all the women in the village while Janina was nearby and
knew what he was doing, yet was kept from him by vows he felt
certain she no longer wanted to take.

“Don’t waken me tomorrow morning,” Reid said
that night to the two scholar-priests in Osiyar’s house. “All that
ritual with the priestesses is nothing to me, and I need to rest
for the coming night, when I probably won’t sleep at all. I have
been ordered by Tamat to lend myself to as many women as I can.” He
spoke with appropriate seriousness, and the young men gravely
agreed that he must follow Tamat’s bidding in all things.

Shortly before dawn, while it was still dark
enough to provide some cover, yet light enough for him to find his
way, Reid slipped out of the temple complex. He believed no one was
awake, though he stopped several times to hide in the shadows when
he thought he heard footsteps behind him, and once or twice he had
the eerie feeling that someone was watching him.

He skirted the village on the landward side,
keeping well away from the houses, until he came to the road
leading toward the sacred grove. It did not take long to reach the
steps which would take him to the opening in the mountain. He
paused to look around, to make certain once more that no one was
following him.

By now it was much lighter, and Reid could
see a few farmers in their fields gathering the last of the
harvest. Rather than chance being seen using the steps, he went up
the hillside by scrambling among the bushes and briars that grew
wild there. Glancing behind his shoulder one last time to be sure
no one had noticed or followed him, he moved onto the wide stone
terrace on his hands and knees, then ran for the cover of the
tunnel entrance. It was as black as deep outer space, and he
tripped repeatedly on the carved stone steps before he came out
into the deeply shadowed early morning light of the little
grove.

* * * * *

Janina came unwillingly to the grove, with
her heart in torment. In just a little while she would stand in the
temple naked and cleansed, awaiting examination. Tamat and Sidra
would join their minds to hers and both would learn how impure she
was, how undeserving of the tattoo and the golden bonds of a
priestess. They would know how unfit she was for a life of purity
and service, and how reluctantly she took her vows. She had failed
Tamat yet again, for while her body remained unchanged by her
desire for Reid, her mind and heart belonged to him alone.

Would Tamat understand how determined she was
to be a worthy priestess, to fight her feelings for Reid, to do
battle with them and win? She knew Sidra would not.

The grove was lighter than it should have
been. Janina knew she had dawdled too long on her way, and the sun
had risen too high. Unless she hurried, she would be late for her
own purification. She washed her hands and rinsed the water jar in
the separate spring where the tunnel opened into the grove, then
went quickly to the pool to fill the jar.

Every time she came here she remembered the
first time she had met Reid. This morning, a day when she ought not
to think of him at all, he filled the sacred grove with his strong
yet gentle spirit. Telling herself to shut him out of her mind, she
lowered the clean jar into the pool and began to fill it.

“Janina.”

At the sound of Reid’s voice, she almost
dropped the jar into the deep pool.

“Go away!” she cried, lifting the filled jar
to stand it carefully on the moss before she stood to face him with
heart-broken defiance. “You should not be here. You know that.
Tamat told you never to come here again. You will be severely
punished if anyone discovers where you have been.”

“It won’t make any difference,” he said,
catching her hands and then her shoulders, pulling her to him with
rough tenderness. “I’m not going back to the village, and neither
are you.”

Janina was so surprised by his unexpected
appearance in the grove and by his sudden action that she made no
protest, nor did she struggle when he lowered his mouth to hers. He
was all she wanted, all she could think of, and it did not matter
if he had lent himself to every woman in the village. She cared
only that he was here now, holding her, setting her afire with a
passion that did not abate when he lifted his head to look into her
eyes with an intensity that almost frightened her. And she knew,
all her lifelong training told her just how wicked her feelings for
him were.