The area around the lodge had become a tiny village. Hearth light leaked out into the night from shuttered windows and doors left open to the fresh air. He walked past the smaller dwellings where his feeders and some of his warriors lived. The mossy trail down to the water had become a well-trodden path. Where there had been brush and brambles the first day that he and Likari found the lodge, there now was open space under the immense trees. Dry branches and fallen wood had been gathered for the fire long ago, and new paths crisscrossed each other as he made his way down to the stream. Even that was changed. A rough bridge had been built over it. He crossed it and walked on, following the stream downcurrent.
I had no sense of where he was going, and when we came to a place where the stream widened, he sat down on a rock. I thought perhaps he was taking a rest; he had walked farther than he had in some days. For a time, he sat in silence. Around us, the forest evening breathed out its spring breath. The brush willow along the stream’s edge had the beginning of catkins. The water in the stream was running fast and cold from snowmelt in the mountains, gurgling over stones. After he had sat for a time in silence, tiny frogs resumed creaking and cheeping to the night. Soldier’s Boy listened to their chorus.
Abruptly he spoke to me in his mind. “I must go to Lisana. I must see her, touch her, talk to her. I must.”
His words reached me but he still kept his emotions walled off from me. I replied with caution. “But you can’t. Unless I take you to her.”
He looked down, staring at the rocks in the streambed that were blurred by the water’s swift flow. “That’s true. So what is your price?”
I was shocked that he would bargain so baldly, and distrustful of it. “What are you offering?”
“I don’t have time to barter with you over this.” Anger scorched the words. “Name what you want and I’ll likely give it to you. I need to speak with Lisana.”
“I need to speak with Epiny. And Yaril.”
He scratched the back of his scalp. His hair had grown out long over the winter. Olikea had begun to pull it back into plaits for him. The forest folk had few looking glasses, and as Soldier’s Boy was groomed by his feeders, he seldom looked in one. I was grateful. I suspected I looked even more ridiculous than I had.
“Very well,” at last he said tightly. “I don’t see what harm you can do to me by talking with them. Of course, I don’t see what good you can do for yourself, either. But it’s what you’ve asked for. Take me to Lisana. Now. And while I speak to her, I wish to be alone.” Grudgingly, he added, “I will provide you the magic you need to dream-walk to your cousin and sister.” That suited me far better than anything I could have devised. Distracted by Lisana, he would not be able to spy on my conversations. Of course, the reverse was also true, and I was sure he had deliberately chosen to make it so. “Lisana, then,” I agreed readily. “Right now?”
“We cannot go sooner,” he said, and closed his eyes.
I approached closer to him and his magic. Wariness warned me that this might be some trick on his part to destroy me. To use the magic he willingly offered me, I would have to make myself accessible to him in the same way he was open to me. I weighed the risk and suddenly found I didn’t care. If he destroyed me, at least it would be over. I still believed he would not risk losing his link to Lisana by killing me. Briefly I thought of how ruthless he was, and then decided I would have to take the chance. This might be my last opportunity to converse with my cousin and be sure that she had survived our raid on Gettys.
I thought it would be difficult. Instead, it was like reaching out to clasp hands. I knew that Lisana had been waiting for this. She literally pulled me into her, and for a long moment, I lingered in the warm embrace of her mind. It was healing.
For that moment, there was no conversation, no questions or answers, nothing that even resembled thought. All that existed was acceptance and love. It was how I had imagined my mother felt about me when I was a baby, though in retrospect, I had always wondered if she had. That was the most joyous thing about our joining. I could feel what Lisana felt about me; all the doubts that lovers must have were banished in that meeting. No deceptions were possible in that intimacy. She loved me far better than I loved myself. And I reciprocated it.
I think I might have lingered forever in that healing balm, except that Soldier’s Boy suddenly pushed me aside. “Go to what you wish to do and leave me here for a time,” he said brusquely. “My magic will serve you.”
“You are still separated, still not one?” she asked us with dismay.