Chains of Gold (25 page)

I skirted Briony's soddy, passed it a day's journey away, for I wanted no sight of it or of him. At the last homesteads before the Forever Forest I stopped, trading links of gold for food, and the folk spoke of a strange shining youth who had passed that way some few days before, spoke of him with awe though they could scarcely describe him. I pressed on all the more quickly. When I reached the forest, the great trees loomed ablaze in red and orange leaf, bright as flame.

Passion's flame, I said to myself, and my heart ached for Arlen.

Thinking of flame and passion, I knew what to do about Lonn. I wanted to confront him—for reasons of my own, without hope of gain—and I felt that he should be nearby, but how to find him amidst the thickets and vines of the wilderness? The ancient, crowding trees closed off all sight within a furlong of the seeker. But that way lay home, so I sent Bucca into the shadows under those huge boles, the ivy twining them as red as blood above the green of moss. And when I camped that night, I gathered a great mound of wood and made a fire, and not just to ward off the autumn chill or the oak elves, either. I built it far larger than I customarily would have, and I sat beside it late into the night.

Lonn did not come to me that night, or the next, or the next. I traveled a week more without a sign of him, and I had long since decided I was mistaken. I built my fires each night out of habit and to cook the meat that the wolves, the bears, the goddess gave me. But on a night when I estimated I must soon reach the northern limit of the forest and come out again within sight of the mountains, my home, on a night when the moon shone full and golden, I heard a small stirring as of golden leaves and looked up, and there beyond the fire he stood.

Lonn. Lord of all lords, but he was magnificent! The glow could not have been only moonlight or firelight—all the glory of his last living day lay on him yet, glory given by the goddess, serpent power. His hair moved and shone like the flames, as if he were crowned with fire. And the splendor of his broad glistening brow, his broad bare shoulders—for bare they were, as if he were a slave or a felon, but I did not think of it so at the time, but saw only how they rippled and shone, how the light played upon him, golden hair of his bare chest, even his breathing visible and full of a mystic energy—and his eyes, holding me with their shadowed gaze, dark and full of meaning. I could have fallen in love with him for the mere gaze of those eyes. Everything I had in mind to say to him left me, vanished, and I sat wordless and openmouthed, staring at him in hunger for his beauty … and then I hated myself. For all that Arlen might be but a memory—

“Rae,” Lonn murmured, the word vibrant with meaning, and he came around the fire to me. He sat by me and reached toward me to touch me, and I drew back, still shamed by my own weakness, that I should have been for a moment so ensnared by his glamour. Battle, victory, they were to be with self, it seemed, as much as anything. And still I found nothing to say to him.

“You have wanted me to come to you,” he declared. “I know you have. Why else these great fires …?”

Eyes the color of wood violets, of some nameless gem bluer than amethyst, darker than sapphire, eyes fixed on me ardently, nearly glowing—duskier now than violets, in firelight, the color of purple oak leaves in autumn.

“But you are lovely,” he said softly, “so lovely, in your cloak of red with the black hair all in a torrent down your back, a cataract—”

“All in a tangle,” I said sourly, the first words I had spoken to him.

“A falling flow, like the black water. And your face, your hands, brown as earth but fairer than rosewood against that white silk. And gown of green—you look like a queen of the earth maidens sitting there so darkly. Nay, more: like spirit of summer night, fecund. Like the goddess herself.”

“Speak more kindly of the goddess,” I said sharply.

“She has done nothing for me.” He shrugged, the movement setting his glorious hair a-shimmer. “But you might.…”

I saw that there was going to be no sleep for me that night.

“Love me, Rae,” he whispered.

“I love Arlen,” I told him, nearly as softly.

“But Arlen is not here; I am here! Rae, lady, I want your love, I long for it, and I know you have felt that pang; love me too.”

“And never again look on my beloved without guilt? Thank you, but no.”

“You need never look at him again,” said Lonn eagerly, far too eagerly. “Come away with me. We shall travel together; I will show you places you have scarcely dreamed of. The strand where the blue glain lies, and the burning sea where the sun goes down, and the white castles of ice beyond the snow mountains—”

I thought of my own small home with sudden fierce longing, my humble stone house in the mountains. “No,” I said.

“Love me,” he begged.

He went on in this way for some time, declaring to me his eternal devotion, asking me to cleave to him, or at the very least to lie with him that night. Oddly, the longer he pleaded the less his entreaties moved me. That he desired me I could not doubt, but that he loved me—I wondered. That passion in him, that energy; not love, forsooth. Love would not so urge me toward a tearing injury, a sundering of self.

I sat stolidly. “No,” I told him for the hundredth time.

“Rae,” he said, a darker tone to his voice, a hint of threat, “I will have you.”

So. It was a matter of possession, then. Passion for possession. I was a prize to him, a trophy, little more, as I had once been but a possession to a man called Rahv.

“Yield to me. I can take you, you know, perforce and forthwith. Immense power is in me.”

“I do not doubt it,” I flared at him, feeling the hot rush of an old anger, very old. “But do not call me Rae then, if you think to force me. A good, gentle man gave me that name.”

The allusion to Arlen infuriated him. “Proud piece,” he breathed. I heard rage in his voice to answer my own, and I looked at him, intending to stare him down—and he had no eyes.

Horrible, empty sockets with the blood oozing—startled beyond screaming, I gave a dry gasp and scrambled up from where I had been sitting.

“So,” he said grimly, “at last I have moved you.” And he stood up as well, to face me. “You would not have me fair,” he said, “so you shall have me foul.”

Whip weals sprang up across the flesh of his shoulders, raw red lines with trickles of blood starting down. More of them came upon more of them by the moment, until all I saw was cruel red of blood, and I winced and looked away. Lonn brought his hands up to his waist, loosened the ties of his trousers.

“Yield to me,” he said, “or you will see what you could not bear to watch the first time.”

Run from him,
I thought.
If he is blind, he will be hard put to pursue me.
But something stubborn in me would not run from him, wanted only to face him down.

“It was your pain I could not bear to watch!” I cried at him. “But there's no pain in you any longer, only anger.”

Indeed, his face was so contorted in anger that even his eyeless stare did not look very much amiss in it. He pulled off his breeches with a jerk, tearing them, and the wound beneath—a horrible wound, a ragged, empty place, bereft. I felt faint at the sight of it. But the wound was not as ugly as the look of his face.

“Yield,” he warned.

“Stay that way, and you'll take small pleasure in forcing me,” I retorted. My voice shook, and tears were running down my face. I was glad he could not see them.

“Yield to me, or there will be more than weeping.”

The sorcerer, he could see me well enough! His wounds were all illusion, no agony; I could have choked with anger. But just as suddenly anger faded. It did not matter. I knew what his pain had been the first time, the true time that had bought my happiness. Better truth lay beyond anger.

“I pity you,” I told him, weeping aloud; let him hear and see. “You have suffered, and suffering has bested you, and I pity you terribly.”

Pity was not what he wanted of me. Terror would have been more to his liking. With a wordless roar he strode toward me, and he was all red, entirely horrible, the flayed man. I gasped, and for the first time I hid my face.

“Yield!” he shouted at me.

“No.” I did not shout; I am not even sure he heard me. “Take your head off,” I mumbled, “take your bones apart, turn yourself into meat and stew it. I don't care.”

He grasped my wrists and shook my hands loose of my face, and I opened my eyes to look at him, there, so close to me, knowing that my nightmares would all be bested. But he was himself again in his fairest form, winterking come to bed his bride, sheen of glamour on him.

“You are still ugly,” I told him.

It was true. That golden glow shone red as blood to me, baleful, hair a living fire that would hurt me, eyes no better than knives—

He hit me, hard, on the side of my face.

There was truly no use in fighting him. That alone would not have stopped me—I had fought Eachan at the esker when all hope was gone. But Lonn was not Eachan, not my enemy; he had been a friend, the friend beyond friendship, giver of a supreme gift.…

He struck me again, with his fist. For a moment I could not see. But I stood as firmly as I was able, not resisting him, not yielding to him either, and I met the fury in his eyes with love in my own—a friend's love, not the sort he wanted.

“You will be mine!” he cried.

“Never,” I told him, softly, warmly. “Never, not really, do to my body what you will.”

He hit me a third time, knocking me sideways; I would have fallen if it were not that he still grasped my wrists.
He will push me down now,
I thought. But he pulled me upright and stood glaring wildly at me, and I stood gazing back at him, not afraid, not hoping, no longer angry, meeting his stare with no hatred in my own, thinking,
I have changed, I will never be afraid again.
No shrewdness, no bravado, only truth—and his eyes closed in anguish and he gave a terrible cry, a cry of agony such as his torture and death had never wrung from him, and he released me and flung himself away from me, flung himself face down on the earth by the embers of the fire.

I did not move, could not move. I only stood looking at him by moonlight and faint firelight, looked at his shoulders, taut and shuddering with the spasms of pain that had hold of him, and when he turned to face me I was sure. It was Lonn who lay there, no winterking but, beyond all expectation, the true Lonn, he the hero and supreme friend, he of the brown hair, the gentle rugged face, the gentle eyes. Misery in them. He winced, facing me, reached for the huddled mound that was his trousers.

“Rae—” He stopped, his voice breaking. “Cerilla, my lady, I will never trouble you again.” Sobs shook him. “I—give you—my most solemn promise.…”

And with scrambling quickness he was gone, off at the run into the shadows of the forest. Numb as I was, I had not even spoken to stop him.

My baby!

Panic stirred me out of my stupor. Bucca stood browsing just beyond the fire, and I ran to him, undid his tether with fumbling haste, scrambled onto him. Without saddle or bridle, my skirts above my knees, I straddled the horse and with a kick and a yell I sent him springing into the darkness beneath the giant trees.

I guided him by a yank at the crest of his mane, by the pressure of my hands against his neck, by the pressure of my heels in his sides. It was an awkward business, and dangerous. If Lonn had been thinking, I am sure he could have escaped us quickly, for there were thickets and shadows aplenty to hide in. But he was too stricken for thinking. He ran at random, blindly, crashing through bracken, and I soon found him by his noise and by moonlight. Then it was but a matter of following him at trot and easy canter. Even so, he could have eluded us, for there were places Bucca could not pass, giant boles we had to circle around, fallen trunks so immense they could not be leaped, boggy places and tangles of every kind. It was far from easy for me to follow him in the dark and on horseback with branches striking my bruised face—often I lost him. But I found him again each time, for his pace had slowed; he was panting, and it seemed he could not stop sobbing.

“Cerilla, let me be!” he cried at me once, desperate words flung over his shoulder. But of course I could not let him be. He had something of mine.

He turned at bay finally in a marshy clearing where the tall grass grew in yellow hummocks, sank down amidst the tussocks and pleaded with me.

“My lady, I beg you, do not come near me. By the great goddess, mother of us both, I want only to leave and never look on you again. I cannot face you, I cannot bear it. All powers help me, what have I done, what have I become? Any beast is better. To beat a woman, betray a friend—”

I sat on Bucca at a small distance, letting Lonn rant. I could see him by more than aureate moonlight, I realized. Dawn was breaking.

“—crawl into a hole somewhere, like the worm that I am. How have I become so debased? I wish I were dead.” He was not looking at me, but he choked and shuddered at that. Death had not been peaceful for him. “If I have to find a cave in the snow mountains and chain myself inside.… Lady, I have given you my promise. Why are you following me? What do you want of me?”

“My baby,” I said, and though I had meant them to be firm and quiet, the words came out with a quaver.

“What?” He looked at me then, his tumult for the moment stilled. “But—you cast it away.”

My face must have changed when he said that, for his changed piteously; he bit his lip. “I—I am sorry,” he stammered.

“I cast you away,” I said, meaning no hurt by the words; it was simple truth. “My baby I never cast away—” I could say no more; pain of longing filled me as if it had been but yesterday, that baneful day on the Island of Passages. I lowered my head, and Lonn stood up and took a few steps closer, staring at me.