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down and the candle guttered in its socket. The moon rose and cast a modest
light through the garden doors glass windows. Zanja tasted salt.
She lifted a hand to Kariss face and found her gasping with surprise, awash
in
astonished tears. Zanja straddled Karis on her knees and the river took them
again and the moonlight faded away. Karis stood up and carried Zanja to the
bed.
Zanjas exquisite restraints snapped, and in a matter of moments she ruined
both
their shirts.
Theyd have nothing to wear in the morning. But between now and then lay an
infinity of time.
Though Karis floundered in an agitated ocean of sensation, Zanjas hands
anchored her within her skin. Fragmented flesh knitted itself together,
shocking
her with each new joining: another recognition, another homecoming. Zanjas
sculptured face moved across her breast: perspiring, ecstatic, entangling
them
both in a mess of unbound hair, moaning sometimes like the lion upon her
hill.
Whod have thought those knife-scarred hands could be so appallingly gentle,
or
that a woman of such iron will could suddenly turn so soft? With one touch
Karis
could collapse her. She tried it, stroking the soft inside of a lean thigh,
and
Zanja fell prostrate and incoherent, as helpless as Karis had ever seen her.
For
a moment, Karis didnt know what to do. And then she did know.
A strange, irresistible time followed. With Zanja shouting and sobbing and
flailing under her touch, Karis felt the shock of her lovers ravishment
right
through skin and muscle and bone. And then Zanja lay shuddering, gasping for
breath in Kariss arms, and beginning to shake with dizzy laughter. Oh gods
of
the sky, she said in abject gratitude, and laughed and cried, and Karis held
her more closely than she had ever held anything, and could not imagine
letting
go.
Then Zanja tied her hair up in a knot and said, Now I will follow the fire.
Zanja lay across her, and Karis saw the callused bottoms of her well-traveled
feet. She took one in her hand. It was warm, and rough. The tendons tightened
and the ball of Zanjas foot pressed gently against her palm. Karis felt
Zanjas
hands, and her tongue unhurried, coaxing. Under that touch, her thighs gave
way, and the rest of her gave way as well. Oh, it was fire, but it was also
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earth: a monolithic presence, waiting, wounded, for healing. Shaftal. She
could
not refuse.
The earth claimed her.
In the dead of night, Zanja awoke to find herself alone, with the blankets
tucked carefully around her and the garden doors standing ajar. She walked
out
into a chilly breeze, and saw frost sparkle in the starlight. A year ago she
had
never thought shed see stars again. Now the cold night felt huge around her,
cupped within the folded hollow of the hills, but expanding out into the
bright
universe. The garden lay breathless and silent, the accuser bugs silenced at
last, the frog song long since ended. It would be a sudden winter.
Karis lay naked on her back in a bed of thyme, staring up at the stars. Zanja
paused. She knew there had been a mystery at the end of their lovemaking,
when
with the moment of consummation upon her, it was not to Zanja, but to the
land
itself that Karis cried out. Perhaps Karis had not slept at all since then,
and
all their lovemaking had been for her the opening of another door. Perhaps
everything they did would ripple outward in the vast future: every breath,
every
word.
Now you are afraid, Karis said from the thyme bed. Her voice was hushed.
I should be afraid.
Yes, Karis said peacefully. Anyone should fear to possess such powers as
we
possess. Then: Do you remember when I healed you?
Ill never forget that day. Zanja knelt down in the thyme. You restored me
to
myself.
Karis said, Now youve done the same to me. So it was the land that sent me
forth, to make whole the one who would make me whole. Ill never again
question
the logic of my life.
Chapter Twenty-eight
At mid-autumn, when the ground began to freeze, South Hill Company disbanded.
The malaise that had affected the Sainnites seemed also to have affected the
Paladins, like a plague jumping across the battle lines. By then, half the
people of the company had no homes to go to, and only food delivered from
outside would keep the people of the region, including the Sainnites, alive
until spring. Even Willis had succumbed to the bitterness of that year. He
was
gone from South Hill; no one knew where. One of Emils friends had gotten a
brief and inexplicable letter: I am released. I wish you the same. Though she
shook her head in pity that so fine a commander had fallen victim to the
silliness of middle age, she lay awake that night, thinking of the ways that
her
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