Stargate (26 page)

Rilla went quickly out of the Hall and, drawing her cloak around her, descended the road. She had decided not to wait for Yarne, who would linger to chatter with his friends, and she had refused Melfidor's offer of companionship on the walk to her house. It had seemed to her that he had been glad when she said no, and she wondered whether he had pressing business tonight in the palace. The night was fine, though windy, and she paused to look up at the stars and feel the air gust in her face. I don't feel at all tired, she thought. I'll go home and embroider for a while or make some music. Later, perhaps, Yarne will want to eat, and we can talk about Baltor. In another three hundred years I'll be following him through the Gate. I wonder if by that time I will have accomplished much good, and if the people of Shaban will want to feast with me as they just did with him. Ghakazian, following the blown shadow of her cloak, saw her hesitate at a low metal gate and drum her fingers upon it, her smile hidden from him, yet sensed. Then she unlatched it and passed through, the Towers of Peace rearing sharp and brightly lit on her left, and went down the steep steps to the road below. From here she could see her roof, its level a little lower than the tops of the drooping, leafless willows, and the sound of her bells strung under the curling eaves came to her faintly, a tuneless jangle carried by the wind. The tang of the ocean far below came to her nostrils, and one or two tiny yellow lights winked up at her from the bows of fishing boats out after the night shoals.

She came to the beginning of the high wall that surrounded her home, turned in at her gate, then stopped. Someone was perched high in one of her burgeoning fruit trees, and her heart turned over as she saw that he was standing on a branch, his arms folded across his chest. Carefully she pushed the gate closed and left the little winding path, crossing over the brittle grass until she stood directly under the tree, looking up through the lacing of black, sturdy arms. “Who is up there?” she called quietly, afraid to shout for fear of disturbing the intruder's balance. She saw a dark head move and a face peer down at her. For a long time neither stirred, but then with a rustle the climber swung himself onto a lower branch and dropped easily in front of her. “Telami!” she said in amazement, and her neighbor's eldest son grinned at her, embarrassed. “What were you doing in my tree?”

“I don't really know,” he answered. “I was in my room, and I went to close the shutters against the night. Your garden looked so inviting and the tree so … so …” Abashed still, he hunted for a word. “So high above everything. Next thing I knew I was climbing, and when I got to the top, I fancied that I might fly. I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter. You only startled me, that's all. But you had better stay off the roofs!”

He smiled at her a little shamefacedly and then spun on his heel and was gone, running out through the gate and along to his own entrance. Rilla regained the path and walked thoughtfully to her door. Yesterday she had seen a woman sitting on the roof of a house down near the docks. She had greeted Rilla gaily, as though it were the most natural thing imaginable to be cross-legged on the coral-colored slates, but Rilla had been too astonished to do more than raise an arm. Now she acknowledged a faint uneasiness as she shut her door behind her. The murmur of the fountain in the wide hearth room rose to meet her as she crossed through into her workroom. Shaking out her hair, she lit a lamp, then sat and drew the embroidery frame toward her, picking the needle out of the cloth and threading it quickly. One leaf, and then I will rest, she thought. I hope Melfidor remembers that he and I are to sail with Veltim in the morning. The house wrapped her in its friendly embrace. The fountain tinkled on. The shrubs and vines surrounding it creaked and whispered and grew.

When half the leaf was completed, she thought she heard footsteps coming rapidly through from the entry passage, and absently she called, “Yarne, is that you? I'm still up.” No answering shout came. Tucking the needle carefully back in the linen, she got up and glanced into the hearth room, but it was empty. “Yarne?” she called again, crossing to peer along the passage to the door, but nothing moved. The house was full of night silence.

Puzzled, she went back to the little circle of lamplight but did not sit, for a presence had slipped into the room before her, and she felt it as soon as she crossed the threshold. She stood quite still, eyes and mind questing the room, wishing that she could take the four steps that would bring her to the blessed brightness of the lamplight, yet suddenly not daring to. Ridiculous, she told herself, angry at her own cowardice. This is Shol, where nothing can harm me. Taking up her courage, she strode to her chair and sat but was immediately assailed by the feeling that someone now stood behind her. Her spine prickled. Rising, she moved chair and frame so that her back was now to a wall. Regaining her seat, she let her hands rest immobile on the embroidery frame while her eyes slowly scanned the room. Outside the lamp's steady beam was mystery, an ocean of dark unknown. Wind rattled the shutters on the window, thickening the rim of fear around her where the light found its limit. She had wanted to step to the lamp, but now she longed to pick it up and flee the room.

Then, to her horror, she saw it begin to gutter. The flame dipped and jerked and turned from yellow to red to a sullen, starved blue, but Rilla was powerless to lift a hand and turn up the wick. A breath seemed to sigh over her, and the flame danced, flattened, and went out. The rim of darkness rushed in toward her, but after a moment of blindness her eyes became adjusted to the dimness, and she saw night light filtering in pale bands through the shutters and the faint gray glimmer of the tip of her fountain latticed by the copper gate in the next room. Yarne, come home, she begged silently. I don't know what this is. I am afraid to move. Heart pounding, she stayed frozen in her chair. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow stir. Her trembling breath caught in her throat, but she forced herself to turn her head. “Something is there, I know,” she whispered. “What are you?”

Her reluctant acknowledgment of its presence gave the shadow the power to take shape. It left the corner where it had lurked, took on substance, and grew tall, and Rilla saw two black wings suddenly unfurl to brush the ceiling. A man stood before her, a slight, crooked smile on his pale face. Black hair, or simply a denser shadow waved on his forehead and spilled over his shoulders, a blackness that matched his eyes and the towering strength of his wings. His arms were spread wide in a gesture of apology or encompassing, Rilla did not know which, and long slender, naked legs ran down to feet hidden in more shadow, which seemed to roil like a heavy cloud about the floor. He stood high, far higher than she even if she had been on her feet, and Rilla found her fear evaporating under the sudden heat of wonder and a strange gladness. It was as though a thing she had sought beyond all dream and waking, behind every thought and word, had come to her at last. Rilla, her astounded gaze traveling him, was his immediate slave.

No breath of warning disturbed her trust and innocence. Though the being smiling at her was unclothed, the perfect sweep from shoulders to delicate feet in itself a throb of pleasure in the beholder, it was Rilla in her stiff red brocade who rose naked and defenseless.

She took a step toward him and then halted, already aching with love for him. This love went from her without reciprocation, and its very flow engendered pain and a larger outpouring, so that the wound in her grew instead of diminishing. She knew, as he endured her scrutiny, that she was not looking at a man, but still she longed to lay her cheek against him, feel his arms go around her, and stay within his shelter forever.

I am not a what, I am a who, he replied lightly. His mouth did not form words but went on smiling. I am Ghakazian.

“The sun-lord of Ghaka? What do you want of me?”

I came to you because I need you, he answered.

Quickly she protested, “But you are a sun-lord, above all need. You do not eat, drink, or sleep. The life and death of one mortal is like the passing of an hour to you. How can you speak of need?”

It is not true that the sun-lords have no needs, he answered, but they are needs beyond your comprehension. I need my sun, not because I am conscious of needing it but because my life rests on it. I need the Law, not because I must consciously conform to it at every moment but because without the Law the universe could not have been made or sustained. I need you, not because I have any lack that you can fill but because I have set myself a task. He came closer to her, and she wanted to drown in the darkness of his wings. I need to share your body for a time.

“I do not understand.”

You do not need to. Rilla sensed a faint sneer in the words. I will come into you. You would like that, wouldn't you? I will be you, and you will be me. Sometimes I will be myself in your body, and sometimes you will be yourself in your body, and sometimes we will mingle and be someone new. Can any love be closer or more fulfilling? Can the urge that brings mortal men and women together compare with it?

Rilla thought of Melfidor, whom she believed she had loved, and suddenly he seemed small and ugly, and very ordinary. She considered him with distaste, then turned from contemplation of him to the vision of this sun-lord entering her in some marvelous, magical way, filling her body. The yearning for him intensified until she wanted to fall on the floor in front of him.

“No,” she whispered. “Nothing can compare. I do not ask what this task is that you must attempt. I only thank you for coming to me.”

I will not harm you, he said. Perhaps you will not even be aware that I am you. Now close your eyes.

Unwillingly she did so, not wanting to be cut off from the sight of his beautiful face, and as soon as she did, she felt herself become a vast cavity, her veins empty, her stomach, heart, and lungs empty, her head a forlorn hollow waiting for him to fire it with life. Then there was a curious hiatus. She was sure that she had indeed slipped to the floor, though the back of the chair was under her hand, and she felt as though she were being sucked out of herself, her essence held to her body by the thinnest, most elastic of threads. The woman on the roof, she suddenly remembered. Telami in the tree. A gush of panic roared through her essence. It began to struggle, but then she felt it wrapped in something she could not define as hot or cold, it was so definitely either the painful touch of ice or the agonizing blossom of fire. Essence and body fitted together again, but not smoothly, not with the comfortable familiarity of long intimacy, and Rilla felt as heavy as a stone. She opened her eyes. He told me something that was not the truth, she thought dully. It was not ecstasy to be possessed by him, nor the pain of pleasure. It was hurtful and demeaning.

Another voice moved in her mind, a peal of spiteful laughter. Rilla, you are Rilla, it chuckled. At last I am fixed on Shol, and I will know all that you are. She put a hand to her ear, her sore eyes slowly traveling the part of the ceiling where the great wings had spread wide, and suddenly the lamp crackled into life and began to send its little glowing pool of light toward her.

I will do one leaf, she thought, and then I will rest. She sat and pulled out her needle, frowning over the shimmering green thread, but before she had taken three stitches, she heard the door slam, and quick feet tapped along the passage. Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled cool down her spine, and then the fear was gone. “Yarne, is that you?” she called. “I'm still up.”

She heard him pause by the fountain, and when he swept into her workroom, he shook droplets of water in her face. “It is indeed I,” he said cheerily. “What a wonderful dying, eh, Rilla? His life was very rich and full. Are you hungry?”

“Not particularly. Don't shake water over me, it will stain the cloth. Where have you been?”

“In the palace, talking to Veltim and Melfidor.”

“I saw Telami as I came home. He was standing in the fruit tree.”

“I saw him too, looking out his window. Why was he standing in the tree?”

Rilla broke her thread, skewered the needle into the cloth, and licked at the blood oozing slowly from her thumb. It had been many years since she had been clumsy enough to prick herself, but her hands felt stiff and useless tonight. I know why he was in the tree, she thought. I know … But the reason fled even as she grasped it. “Perhaps he was about to command a dream of flying.”

“Flying!” Yarne laughed. “Veltim was saying tonight that he had a strange dream about flying three nights ago. Is Sholia having a little fun with us?”

“I don't know. I think I'll go and rest now. Put out the lamp, will you?”

He picked it up, and together they crossed through the hearth room. In the small front hallway they parted.

“Much dreaming to be done tonight,” he remarked as she kissed him on his cheek. “It has been a busy day.”

“Indeed, it has. I don't think I want to sail tomorrow after all. I'll go early to the palace. I want to talk to Melfidor before he and Veltim go down to the wharf. Rest well, Yarne.”

“You also.”

She lay on her bed, intending to command a dream of Baltor in his youth. She was tired, but not with the weariness of a day's work well done, and she could not clearly order the visions she wanted. Uneasiness and a sense of unreality wrapped her. She heard her brother singing softly to himself as he prepared to rest. He sang every night, but tonight the snatches of melody seemed full of something poignant and far away, the ship calling for safety to an indifferent ocean, the lost calling for time to stand still. Her essence demanded unconsciousness, but all that night she dreamed of black wings flapping frantically against her window, rustling small and soft in her curtains, beating wide and high across a star-strung evening sky, and she came to herself long before the suns rose to greet Sholia with a joyful, playful speed. The dreams had left her cold with dread and an alien, inexplicable yearning for the dizzy, wind-teased cliff tops behind Shaban.