The Spell-Bound Scholar (37 page)

"It may be a wave in the air, but if there is no ear for it to strike, is it truly sound?"

They rode on, companionably (and safely) wrangling about philosophy. The discussion produced no concrete results, of course, but it served Allouette remarkably well that evening as an aid to meditation.

She needed it. She had begun to imagine Gregory in bed holding her in his arms and had need to banish the vision.

Gregory managed to keep the conversation philosophical the next day, but Allouette gave it frequent tangents, goading him into talking about the arts and the social sciences. She listened with rapt attention. When she knew something he didn't— the anarchists had given her a firm but biased grounding in history—she told it to him. They compared notes on different versions of the same events with hilarious results.

That evening, as they cleaned their bowls, Gregory remarked, "You seem to be completely recovered from the ordeal of your healing—at least, in being rested and restored to full energy."

"In that respect, perhaps," Allouette said, frowning, "though in others, I doubt that I ever will."

"Surely you will recover from the healing." Gregory reached out to touch her hand.

His touch was light, ever so light, but it sent a thrill through her whole body. She shivered but forced her hand to hold its

place. ' 'Recover from the healing, yes—but will I ever truly be healed?"

"
You shall," Gregory said with full conviction. "You have only to believe in your own inborn goodness and your own worth." His hand opened to cover hers and his eyes seemed to expand, filling her vision. "
I
believe in it," he said softly. "I believe you are a woman of immense talents and intelligence, born good and loving and generous. That goodness cannot be eradicated, only covered up, hidden even from yourself—but it is still there and is the true source of your beauty."

She shivered again, but the thrill had centered within her and begun to glow. "Surely you do not mean that you would fail to see beauty in me if I were wicked!"

"I mean exactly that," Gregory said, and his hand caressed hers. "Never before have I failed to shake off the effect of a woman's loveliness. Only you are so outstanding, so vibrant and brilliant, yet so warm and tender that I cannot resist your allure."

She could not stop trembling, so her voice turned harsh. "What a heap of nonsense! If you so believed that, sir, you would have attempted to ravish me even as I woke!"

"Never," Gregory said, with total sincerity. "Never could I seek to hurt you, and such would be hurt."

Allouette shrugged impatiently, as though the word itself made no difference. "Seduce, then. You would have sought to seduce me any of these past few nights if you truly could not resist my charms."

"It is your mind I cannot resist, not your body. Then, too, I have been reared to respect women and would never seek to force upon you attentions you might not want—fully and freely, of your own will."

"What good is it to me if you love only my mind?" she challenged, then spoke from a surge of anger. "These past days you have spoken a lover's words, sir, flirting shamelessly but never following your words with actions. I tire of such teasing. Make love to me here and now or be done with your blandishments and honeyed words."

Alarm shadowed Gregory's eyes. "Do you challenge me? Surely love cannot come thus!"

"Surely it can—if you have the courage for it. I think you fear the act itself, sirrah. You are willing to speak of it all day, to versify and make poetry of it, but poets only sing about the things they cannot do. If you mean what you say, give me proof in a kiss!" She leaned forward, eyelids growing heavy, lips moist and parting just a little.

Gregory hesitated, then seemed to hear Geoffrey's voice inside his head commanding, Take the cash and let the credit go! Suddenly he understood Allouette's misgivings and leaned forward, brushing her lips with his own.

What began as a brushing deepened most amazingly and most quickly. She gasped, then responded with ardor equal to his own, and in minutes he was lost in the wonder of her kiss.

After ten minutes of this, with only quick gasps of air, though, Allouette grew impatient. Would he never reach out to caress?

It seemed he would not. She reached out instead, finding his hand by touch and guiding it to the curve of her breast. He froze, then thawed and drew his fingers lightly over the swelling, and Allouette gasped with surprise at the exquisite sensations his touch evoked. Never since Orly's first caress had she felt such. How could this be?

Still, he seemed quite content to tickle and caress the cloth that covered her. She reached out for his hand again and, step by step and with a few whispered directions, guided him into deeper and deeper intimacies. She was amazed at his skill, for though he was undoubtedly completely new to the game, he seemed to know exactly where to touch, where to tickle, and how to use his lips to best effect; he was the strangest combination of virgin and experienced lover that she had ever discovered. Any presence of mind, or notions she might have had of planning, vanished into a jumble of sheer sensation as he touched here, caressed there, matching her thrill for thrill until they lay naked on a bed of fragrant bracken, touching and marvelling at the sensations they evoked in one another, sensations that spiralled upward and farther upward until their

minds mingled in ecstasy and the world went away, stripping their souls bare and leaving them joined for a timeless moment as the essence that was the innate Allouette regained the ecstasy she had known with Orly and went past it, so far past that they seemed to reach the sun coupled, a sun that filled them and surrounded them, then burst into fragments that fell and faded, leaving them separate but paired again, and Allouette knew in her heart that she had regained herself, that her cure was complete.

Then they lay in one another's arms, gasping in amazement and, yes, even a little in fright, quivering and holding each to the other for dear life as their pulses slowed and the world began to come back. They lay embracing, catching their breaths, and began to become aware of tiny thoughts, sharp thoughts, larger and rapacious thoughts all around them, as though the whole world had fallen to copulating with them.

At last Allouette looked up at the stunned, disbelieving, and awed face that hovered over hers and whispered, "You had better intend to stay near me for a long time, sir, for I shall want many more such moments!"

"I shall stay," Gregory whispered, then smiled as his voice turned to a purr. "Oh, be sure I shall stay, most lovely of women, for as long as you will have me!"

She eyed him askance, her cynicism returning. "You should be careful what you promise, sir."

"Promise?" asked Gregory. "I thought it was a demand."

Then he kissed her again, and it was a while before she thought coherently.

They celebrated the sunrise in much the same manner, then dressed and breakfasted, their gazes locked so completely it was amazing their hands found their mouths. Then Gregory sighed with regret that he must tear his gaze away from her and went to bring the horses.

They rode for some while in silence, only looking into one another's eyes now and then and smiling. At last Gregory said, "Does it not seem to you that the whole world must be in love today?"

"It seems so indeed," Allouette said with a tender smile.

Then her eyes widened in shock and she stiffened. "It seems so in cold fact! Listen a moment and see! Every living creature near us has copulated last night and this morning, even though most of them were far from their seasons!"

Gregory lost his smile. He gazed off into space a few moments, listening to deer and foxes and even earthworms. Then, with a feeling of dread, he reached farther and listened to the thoughts of the people in the nearest village, only now going out and about their daily rounds though the sun had been up for an hour and more, and the plowman should have been in the fields long since. He turned to Allouette, words of dismay on his lips—and saw her smiling at him with a dreamy, lazy, satiated look. 'It would seem, sir, that we must forfend, or the birth rate of the whole kingdom will soar as the overflow of our lovemaking stimulates all living creatures around us."

"We shall have to find some way to block our unwitting projections, then," Gregory said, "for I do not mean to deny myself your desires, whenever and wherever they may occur!"

Allouette gave a low, exulting cry and leaned forward from her saddle to kiss him.

All around them, birds began to bill and coo.

Allouette broke the kiss with a laugh of delight. "You see, sir? Even our kisses are infectious!"

"May the world catch a plague of love, then," Gregory said fervently and reached out for her.

She held him off with a teasing smile. "We must be careful, sir, or folk who are not in love will copulate with whomever is near, simply because the one they love is not." Then Allouette's eyes brightened with inspiration. "Your house! What great good luck that you have begun to build walls that absorb telepathic energy!"

"What great good fortune indeed!" Gregory said fervently and reined his horse up against hers, catching her about the waist and holding her tightly against him. "I cannot wait to finish it! Come!"

There was a strange double booming and a moment of dizziness; then Allouette looked around to see the clearing

with Gregory's wall of pale blocks at its center. "So that is what it is like to teleport," she said in a shaky voice. "I think I shall prefer to fly in the future, sir, if it is all the same to you."

"Only if I may share your broomstick."

Allouette turned to give him a smile and a kiss, then slid off her horse, calling, "Come! For we must have four walls about us ere nightfall!"

"Even at that, it will be hard to wait." But Gregory slid from his horse and glared at the underbrush, which began to form itself into rectangular blocks.

Allouette watched him craft the first block, then float it into place, face twisted with the effort. Having learned the process, she pitched in herself, forming the blocks with her mind, matching the molecular structure he had fashioned, then floating them into place by telekinesis. Gregory watched her with more than agreeable surprise; in fact, she turned from placing the first block to see him gazing raptly at her with an expression that should have been censored. ' 'I had known you learned quickly, but not as quickly as that—and from observation alone! How did you know the structure of the molecules?"

"Why, I probed into it with my mind, foolish man, and felt out which atom had bonded to which!" But the tone she had meant to be scornful turned teasing and she couldn't help a smile. ' 'If so minor a feat as that is apt to kindle desire in you, I shall never dare learn anything."

"Then school is out." Gregory caught her hand.

She gave it a squeeze as she gave him a look that was half promise and half feigned irritation. "Finish your walls first, scholar. Then mayhap I shall give you another lesson in life."

Gregory spun away, calling, "A hundred blocks, quickly!"

Allouette laughed, but inside her triumph was mixed with a rejoicing that she had thought she would never regain— indeed, that she had unknowingly come to think wrong.

They worked all that day and the underbrush in the vicinity disappeared, transmogrified into the blocks that fitted into a wall that grew amazingly. When the outline of the building was clear, though, her old ambitions for grandeur and luxury

reawakened. "If you intend for me to dwell here with you, male, you shall have to make me a building such as I have ever dreamed of holding—not simply a cottage or even a small manor, but a tower!"

"Why, a tower let it be, then," Gregory said, and the blocks all lifted into the air, sorted themselves out, and came down in a circle sixty feet across.

"Why do you stare so?" Gregory asked softly. "Do you not know that love lends a man the strength of ten?''

"I had thought that came from a pure heart." Inwardly, Allouette both trembled and rejoiced, for he had said the word "love." Oh, he was scarcely the first to have spoken thus— but he was the only one since Orly whom she had not purposely compelled by her projections, and the first since Orly whose love she had wanted for her own sake, not as a means to an assigned end.

By evening, the ground was clear for a hundred feet around and the wall was ten feet high. Gregory turned to her, weary but hopeful. "Have I crafted enough of my dwelling to prove my earnestness?"

"You have." Allouette stepped close to him, and closer still as she said, "There are walls enough to protect the countryside from the effects of our delight. It lacks a roof, of course, but it will cause little trouble if the songbirds couple like turtledoves."

Gregory made a cooing noise. She laughed and pressed against him to stop the cooing with her lips. When they broke apart, she gave a little shriek as he swung her into his arms, then clung to his neck laughing as he carried her through the empty doorway and into the ring of blocks.

She had spoken truly—any birds who did fly over them that evening behaved most outrageously, even allowing for the fact that it was early summer. So, for that matter, did the bats, and the insects had a reprieve that evening. It was just as well, for they were behaving insanely, too.