Destiny's Lovers (16 page)

“You know you don’t want what they will make
you do today,” he said urgently, his words echoing her own
early-morning thoughts. “You aren’t meant to be a priestess. You
aren’t even a telepath. You can be of little use to them.”

“I have no choice. It was decided long ago.
Please, I can’t bear this,” she cried, tears rising in her eyes.
“Reid, leave me alone. Go away. Don’t cause me any more pain than
I’m already feeling. The things I’ve done with you before this day
were a violation of my primary vows. I’m unfit, impure. When her
thoughts touch mine, Sidra will challenge my bonding. Why can’t you
understand what you are doing to me?” she shouted at him in
anguish.

“You do have a choice. I’m giving you one.”
In her emotionally tormented state she heard his words as a
temptation beckoning her away from the path of duty. “Come with me,
Janina.” When she would have continued her protests, he took her
mouth again, silencing her desperate words with his lips.

“Reid, Reid.” She moaned his name between
hungry kisses. Beside herself with fear and longing and
unpardonable guilt, she clutched helplessly at his shoulders and
threw her head back to let his mouth sear her throat with yet more
kisses.

“Tamat won’t live much longer. Anyone can see
she’s growing weaker every day,” Reid murmured, his voice muffled
against her soft skin. “Sidra and Osiyar have been doing obscene,
disgusting things together. The temple is no place for you now, if
it ever was. Come with me, Janina. We’ll go back to headquarters by
the same way I came. We’ll find my friends. We can be free. Free.
Don’t you realize what that means?”

“I cannot,” she cried. “I can never desert
Tamat, and I can’t abandon the Chosen Way. I know nothing else, no
other way to live. Reid, please stop kissing me and tell me you
understand.”

“Listen to me,” he said, lifting her off her
feet and then sinking to the ground with her locked in his arms. “I
promised Tamat I would protect you with my life.” He broke off his
explanation to kiss her again.

Janina knew she should tell him that the best
way to protect her would be for him to stay away from her. It was
sacrilege for him to embrace her on this special day, when she
should be thinking only of the vows she would soon profess. But the
place where he had laid her down was next to a khata bush covered
with flowers. The sweet fragrance released by those crimson
blossoms made her dizzy. She put her arms around his neck and
pressed her cheek to his so he would not see how close she was to
breaking into helpless tears.

“Janina, come with me,” he murmured into her
ear. “If we stay in Ruthlen, Sidra will destroy us both as soon as
she is High Priestess. I know we can escape through the ravine, but
I won’t do it without you.”

She had her mouth open to tell him she could
not, must not even dream of escape, but before she could say the
words his lips were on hers again. His tongue filled her, and she
felt his hands on her breasts as he pressed her back against the
soft, golden-green moss.

She thought with sudden wry humor that if he
wanted to escape he was wasting precious time, but the scarlet
khata flowers spread their perfumed magic through the air and all
rational thought fled from her mind. Reid’s hands burned on her
breasts.

“Reid.” She could say nothing but his name,
over and over again. Suddenly she was beyond argument or
resistance. Reid was all she wanted or could think about. He was
the world. He was her heart.

Quickly, he removed her robe and sandals,
then his own clothing. She moaned and called his name again when
she felt the hard length of him against her, but she made no
further effort to fight him. How could she resist something she
wanted so badly? His large hands caressed her trembling body with
surprisingly gentle strokes, moving from shoulders to breasts to
hips to thighs and then upward across her abdomen to capture her
breasts again. His mouth and tongue followed the trail warmed by
his hands. Janina awakened into passionate awareness at his touch,
knowing without conscious thought that Reid was her destiny.

She was pure feeling now, wild, passionate
sensation and need, with no room for concern about consequences. So
skilled was Reid, so attuned to each other were they, that when he
began to push against her she quivered into deep, rapturous
pleasure. She accepted his body with intense joy. There was no
pain, there were no regrets. She and Reid were one being, as they
had always been meant to be, as they would be throughout all
eternity. And eternity was this moment, this instant of glorious,
total union.

“Separate them!”

Before the angry words had fully penetrated a
consciousness directed solely toward Reid, he was torn from her
arms. Janina cried out in loss, reaching for him, to pull him back
to her.

Someone caught her hands, jerking her to her
feet to stare uncomprehendingly into Philian’s shocked face. She
saw Reid standing next to Adana, and she knew by his blank
expression that Sidra was using her mind to hold him
immobilized.

“What are we to tell Tamat?” Sidra demanded
of Janina. “When Osiyar found Reid gone, I knew he would be with
you, you disgusting creature. You and he were planning to escape,
weren’t you? But first you had to desecrate the grove and the
sacred pool with your filthy lust. See what you have done! You have
so angered the presence who lives here that the very Water boils in
outrage.”

Janina saw to her horror that the pool was
bubbling and steaming, while miniature waves splashed onto the moss
at its edge. At first she thought Sidra was somehow controlling the
Water, until she realized that Sidra, too, was frightened by what
was happening.

“Empty the jar into the pool,” Sidra said to
Adana.

“No,” Janina cried. “I just took it out for
my—”

“For your purification ritual?” mocked Sidra.
“You can never be purified now, Janina. You are no longer even a
scholar-priestess. Pour out the Water, Adana.”

At Sidra’s command, the young woman picked up
the jar and dumped its contents back into the pool. The Water
continued to bubble.

“We must return to the temple at once,” Sidra
said with obvious unease. “Tamat and Osiyar should know about
this.”

Philian picked up Janina’s white robe and
would have handed it to her.

“Put that down,” Sidra commanded. “She may
not wear it now.”

“But Sidra,” Philian protested, “she can’t
walk naked through the village. Everyone will stare at her.”

“Let them stare,” Sidra said. “Reid will go
naked, too.”

“No,” Janina begged. “Sidra, have pity. Let
Reid at least put on his trousers.”

“Why?” asked Sidra. “Don’t you want the
village women to gaze upon what should have been theirs to use,
which you have unlawfully taken for yourself? There is blood on
your thighs, Janina. There will be no doubt what you two have
done.”

“Release Reid,” Janina pleaded. “He will go
away. He’ll go back to the forest the way he came and cause no
trouble for the village or the temple. I’ll take the punishment on
myself. Let him go, Sidra. Please.”

“Let him go?” Sidra’s mocking laughter
stabbed through Janina’s shame to make her tremble in sudden terror
for herself and for Reid. “He would never leave you, Janina.
Indeed, he cannot. You and he are bound together forever. I know
that, if you do not. You will therefore die together.”

“Then if you will not let him go,” Janina
begged in desperation, “release him from your control. Let him walk
back to the temple under his own will, like a man.”

“He is too dangerous for that,” Sidra
insisted. Then, with a last worried glance at the still-boiling
pool, she headed for the tunnel, calling over her shoulder in a
falsely sweet voice, “Come along, Reid, follow me. And don’t trip
on the steps.”

Never in her life had Janina known such
humiliation as she felt during that walk from the sacred grove to
the village and thence to the temple. When the villagers had seen
Sidra earlier heading for the grove flanked by Adana and Philian,
they must have known something was amiss. Now they lined the
streets to watch the fallen scholar-priestess and her lover being
marched back to the temple in unclothed shame.

Because it was a festival day, there were
more people than usual who were free to stare. The fisherfolk had
not put out to sea, and many of the farmers had come into town with
their families for the festivities. All were in their brightest
holiday clothing. Every house in the village had been decorated
with sheaves of grain and late-season flowers. Through this
cheerful, sunlit scene Janina walked in despair.

Certain that Sidra would stop the procession
in the middle of the village in order to publicly subject her to
scathing verbal abuse if she demonstrated the least hesitation or
failure of dignity, Janina tried to keep her chin up and her eyes
straight ahead. For the same reason she held her arms stiffly down
at her sides, instead of using her hands to cover her nakedness as
she so desperately wanted to do. She knew this parade through
Ruthlen was Sidra’s cruel revenge against her for all the years
during which Tamat had protected her when Sidra would have seen her
banished from the temple, and she wanted to give Sidra no
opportunity to enlarge upon that revenge.

Behind her set face and stiff yet steady
forward motion, Janina’s every instinct cried out in rebellion
against Sidra’s callous disregard for common modesty. Reid had held
and touched her unclothed body. It should not now be revealed to
all these uncaring people. She tried to remember how it had felt to
be loved by Reid, to become one with him, but all she could feel
was horror at the way they had been found, with Reid still deep
inside her and no doubt at all as to what they were doing, no
possibility of excuse or explanation. And now she would have to
face Tamat.

“Were you jealous of me?” From the roadside
Senastria’s familiar voice broke into Janina’s thoughts. Senastria
yelled again. “You heard me boast how wonderful he was, so you had
to try him for yourself, was that it? You fool, now you’ve spoiled
it for all of us.” She threw a rock, which grazed Janina’s right
cheek.

More stones followed. Several hit Reid. Being
still under Sidra’s control, he gave no sign that he felt or heard
anything, but walked through the village like someone already dead.
Yet Janina knew he was fully aware of everything that was happening
to them.

The onlookers began to follow Sidra and her
little group, enlarging the procession with crowding, taunting
people who loudly declared their outrage and their determination to
see justice done to the false would-be priestess who was no
telepath as every priestess should be, and equal justice meted out
to her monstrous alien lover.

Eventually they came to the decorated tables
being prepared in anticipation of the feast that was scheduled to
take place after Janina’s binding, the feast at which she was to
have been guest of honor. Those who had been working on the tables
gave up what they were doing to follow the crowd to the wall
surrounding the temple complex. As the group led by Sidra
approached the entrance, Janina realized with a stab at her heart
that she could never again walk through the opening in that
wall.

The noisy, shoving procession stopped between
the feasting area and the temple wall. Sidra sent Adana to the
temple with a message. After a while Tamat appeared, supported by
Adana and flanked by Osiyar and his two scholar-priests. Janina
could see by Tamat’s drained expression and Osiyar’s scowling face
that Adana had informed all of them of what had happened.

When she first saw Janina naked between Sidra
and Philian, Tamat reeled backward. Osiyar caught her, holding her
upright until she recovered from the shock. Janina wanted to run to
her, to throw her arms around Tamat and comfort her, and be
comforted in turn. But there was no comfort any longer, not for
Tamat or herself, and worse than the punishment she was certain
awaited her was the pain of what she had done to Tamat.

“I found them locked together beside the
pool, beneath the khata flowers, which they were shamelessly using
to enhance their sensations during lovemaking,” Sidra proclaimed
loudly, so all who had followed them from the village would know
the full extent of Janina’s crime. “Even now the Water in the pool
boils in protest at the desecration.”

This announcement brought a murmur of fear
from the onlookers.

“As the pool boils, so the mountains smoke.”
Osiyar added his verbal blow to Sidra’s account. He lifted an arm,
pointing to where two of the mountains behind the village were
belching much more steam than usual. Again the villagers whispered
and muttered their fearful concern.

Janina felt the familiar prickling of Tamat’s
mind touching hers. She did not resist. She wanted Tamat to
understand how she felt about Reid. And she filled her thoughts
with all the love and respect she felt for Tamat, the gratitude for
Tamat’s care of her. All of this she combined with a regretful
farewell. She knew she would have no other opportunity. When
Tamat’s touch withdrew, Janina felt like weeping. She had sensed no
understanding from Tamat. She did not know if that was because of
her own lack of telepathic ability, or if Tamat was so angry at
having her plans for Janina thwarted that she could not forgive
what Reid and Janina had done. Very likely there was no forgiveness
possible. Janina pressed her trembling lips together and
waited.

“Sidra,” Tamat said, “release Reid.”

“He is dangerous,” Sidra objected. “He might
try to hurt you.”

“Reid will not harm me,” Tamat replied.
“Release him.”

Janina saw fear on Sidra’s beautiful face, an
emotion quickly smoothed away, but it puzzled Janina, even in her
own fear and shame. Why should Sidra be afraid of Reid?