Destiny's Lovers (11 page)

* * * * *

The days drew on toward the time of the
double full moons, when Reid would be expected to mate with the
village women who chose him. With each day that passed, Janina’s
heart grew heavier. She understood Tamat’s deep sense of
frustration about the gradual decline in the village population and
her desperate hope that Reid would literally provide Ruthlen with
new life. She accepted Tamat’s reasoning, but still she could not
bear the thought of Reid lending himself to some other woman. She
had no right to think of him as her own, but she did.

When Reid talked with Tamat while she was in
attendance, she tried not to look directly at him, though it was
hard. She always wanted to look at him. Now that he was no longer
so foreign to her, she could see he was not ugly at all, only
different from the people she had known all her life. With his face
healed of its scrapes and bruises, and his beard gone thanks to one
of Osiyar’s razors, she could see how strong and masculine his
features were.

She often caught him looking at her while she
stood behind Tamat’s chair in the small audience chamber off the
central room. She believed Tamat knew they looked at each other -
how could Tamat not know? - but the High Priestess ignored the
glances Reid and Janina cast when each thought the other’s
attention was elsewhere. And from the second time Sidra had caught
them talking in the courtyard, after which she had subjected Janina
to a long and very thorough tongue-lashing and hours of extra work,
Janina had been careful never to speak to Reid when no one else was
with her, nor to remain in private with him for even an instant -
not until the day when Reid followed her into one of the smaller
buildings behind the temple.

“What is this place?” he asked. “Osiyar told
me all the smaller buildings not used for dwellings are storehouses
for grain.”

“They are.” Janina gestured toward the casks
neatly arrayed in rows along the wall, then to the vat in the
center of the room. “You might say this is another way to store
grain, for it keeps indefinitely. It’s batreen.”

“Never heard of it.” Reid suddenly grinned at
her. “But I have a fair idea of what it is just by the smell.”

“The grain is fermented into a rather potent
drink.” Janina picked up a long wooden paddle and began to stir the
contents of the vat. “It is used at the twin moons festivals. This
batch is almost ready.”

She looked down into the vat, unable to meet
Reid’s eyes lest he see in hers her bitter despair over what
awaited him at the next festival. She knew of two women who had
spoken freely of their desire to bed Reid in order to discover if
he was any different from the village men.

“Do all the villagers become inebriated?”
Reid asked. “Do you drink it, too?”

“I don’t like the taste,” Janina answered. “I
only drink one cup, because it is required, but the villagers love
it.”

“All of them?” Reid asked. “Do they all drink
far into the night? The priestesses and Osiyar, too?”

“All of them, except Tamat and me. Because of
her age, Tamat stays only for the ritual and the first part of the
feast. I always retire with her.”

“But the others remain in the feasting area
and drink heartily along with the villagers?” When Janina admitted
this was so, Reid asked, “Don’t they all have sick heads the next
day?”

“For a while,” Janina told him, “but the
discomfort wears off quickly, and the drink has no dangerous
aftereffect. In fact, it is quite nutritious. Why are you so
interested in batreen?”

“I’m only trying to learn all I can about the
life here, since it seems I’m fated to remain either in the temple
or the village.”

“Staying in Ruthlen won’t be as bad as the
alternative.” He looked so unhappy that Janina could not help
herself; she had to put down the wooden paddle and place both her
hands on his arm. She thought he must be missing his friends, and
while she had never had any friends to care about, anything that
made Reid unhappy, made her unhappy. His hand came down on top of
hers and she trembled at the contact of flesh with warm flesh.

“What is the alternative?” he asked. “What
would they do to me if they decided not to let me live here any
more?”

“You would be set adrift.” Her voice was low.
It was too horrible to speak about, so no one ever did. But in his
ignorance, Reid had no qualms.

“Adrift? What do you mean? With no
provisions?”

“Without sail, or oars, or rudder,” she said,
reciting from memory the most terrible punishment decreed by the
Chosen Way. “It is against the law to take a life, because there
are too few of us to waste life. But occasionally, if someone does
something truly unforgivable, that person is set adrift. There are
dreadful creatures in the sea, Reid, huge monsters with tentacles
that capture and crush their victims, then eat them. My parents
died like that.”

“They were set adrift?”

“No.” She had never spoken to anyone about
that terrible day. She had kept the horror locked inside her, but
now she wanted to talk about it, to tell Reid what had happened.
“They left in my father’s littlest boat. It was just for a short
time, to watch the sunset. Days of thick fog had just ended, and
the breaking clouds were so beautiful, with the sky a deep blue. I
can still see the scene when I close my eyes and think about it.
The tide was full; the water came right up to the top of the sea
wall. I stood on the wall waving to them.

“Usually, the sea monsters stay well away
from shore, on the opposite side of the swift current, but perhaps
because of the high tide, this monster had come in near to the
wharf. It rose out of the water and took my parents. There was no
time for them to cry out. They were simply gone. I saw it happen.”
She and her parents had never been close, but that had not made her
loss any less terrible.

Reid said nothing. He just put his arms
around her and held her tenderly. Janina had no tears to shed, but
his concern for her was comforting all the same. Flouting the
restrictions about priestesses avoiding any intimacy with men, not
caring if Sidra might learn what she was doing and punish her,
Janina let her arms slip around Reid’s waist and rested her head on
his shoulder. She felt his hand stroking her hair with a gentleness
she would not have expected from a man so large and strong. After a
while his hand left her hair. He tilted her chin upward; and at the
same time lowered his head.

The kiss began in tenderness, in reassurance
and comfort. It quickly changed into a wondrous heat that ignited
Janina’s very soul. She was stretched along the length of his body
as though fastened to some instrument of exquisite torture. She
wanted that contact; she craved it. She yearned desperately to be
one with Reid, yet they dared not come together. It would mean
certain death for both of them, a dreadful death on the sea. She
could not do that to him, and she could not break her vows. Why
then did she cling ever more closely to him and open her lips so
willingly to take his tongue into the hot depths of her mouth?

Even as she asked herself the question she
knew its answer. She had recognized Reid from the first instant she
had seen his face during her Test. She had fought against her own
feelings, had lied to herself and made excuses about Tamat needing
her so she could spend as much time as possible in the same room
with him and still not feel guilty. But now, in this deep,
passionate embrace, she could no longer hide from self-knowledge.
Reid was her one true love, the mate predestined for her. She
wondered what cruel force had brought them together to suffer this
violent conflict between duty and desire. It would have been better
for both of them if they had never met, if neither had known the
other existed. Still, she did know him, and loved him, and would
never stop loving him. Wrong or not, she could not prevent herself
from returning his kiss and wanting it to go on forever. It was all
she would have of him, and even this much was forbidden.

It was Reid who drew back first.

“This can only hurt you if someone should
discover us,” he said, setting her aside and heading toward the
door.

“And you.” She faced him across the room, her
eyes burning with unshed tears. “Three nights from now, you must
lend yourself to some village woman and give her a child.”

“I wish it could be you,” he whispered
harshly.

“Oh, Reid,” she moaned, then bit off the
reply that would have told him how much she wished the same thing.
For his safety, she had to make him understand that he could never
kiss her, or even be alone with her, again. “I am to take my final
vows nineteen days from now, when both moons have darkened and
become new again. Did you know that? Since first I came to the
temple after my parents died, I have been waiting to be bound into
my final place in the priesthood, though it will be a lesser place
than Tamat wanted for me.” She stopped, choking back a sob, knowing
she had failed all the precepts she had been taught.

“Final vows?” Reid exclaimed. “I thought you
were already a priestess. And what do you mean, bound? I don’t like
the sound of that. Janina, are you absolutely certain you want to
become a priestess?”

“I am a scholar-priestess now, bound by
primary vows, so I have no choice,” she admitted, knowing she no
longer desired what once she had wanted so badly. “It was decided
for me on the day I was born.”

“But do you want it?”

“I can’t change what was decided by my
parents,” she said. “They are dead and can’t change their plans for
me, you see. I have been studying for ten years. Now my period of
training is finished, and it is time for the last steps, my final
profession of willingness, my tattoo, and the golden rope bracelets
that can never be removed.”

“Sidra and Tamat aren’t tattooed,” Reid
objected, thinking about the tattoo on Osiyar’s forehead. Janina’s
reply made it clear to him that she understood what he was
thinking.

“Priests wear their tattoos on their
foreheads,” she informed him. “Priestesses wear theirs over their
hearts.”

“Can you refuse to take the final vow?” he
asked, wincing at the thought of hot needles searing her tender
flesh.

“No.” It seemed to Janina that the space
between them grew wider at the sound of that one small word. She
saw Reid’s expression close, so that she could no longer discern
what he was feeling. His mouth became a hard slash.

“We should not be here together,” he said,
opening the door.

He left the brewery building with fury in his
heart. He and Janina belonged together. He was certain of it. Yet
she was being forced into a barren existence he firmly believed she
no longer wanted, while he would be made to couple with some
unknown woman in the name of genetic improvement. It was cruel and
unfair, and he had to find a way to save them both.

“Reid, must you be so clumsy? You almost
knocked me down.” Sidra watched him from bright, suspicious eyes.
She was so close that her sweet perfume filled his nostrils,
reminding him of the crimson flowers in the sacred grove. “What
were you doing in there? Only priestesses are permitted in the
brewery.”

“Janina was explaining how batreen is made.
Don’t blame her; I blundered into the place and then insisted she
tell me.” Reid had had enough of rules. These people were worse
than the Jurisdiction when it came to trying to force everyone to
conform. He’d be star-blasted if he’d follow their rules! He’d lie
with no woman he hadn’t chosen for himself, and he didn’t care if
Sidra knew everything he was thinking.

Sidra raised her elegant eyebrows at him.
Reid, thinking she might know what was in his mind and expecting to
be accused of corrupting a scholar-priestess, decided to attack
first.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know what I was
doing in the brewery without asking me. I thought you were always
aware of everything that happens in the temple complex.”

“You know perfectly well by now that I cannot
enter anyone’s mind without permission,” Sidra answered calmly,
heading toward the temple and drawing him along with her. “That is
our Chosen Way, Reid, and I will uphold it.”

“Does no one ever break the law?” Reid
wondered.

“I doubt there has ever been a law made that
no one has broken.” Sidra mounted the steps to the temple.

“Tell me, Sidra, is it possible to touch
someone’s thoughts without that person knowing it?”

“Not from telepath to telepath. To
non-telepaths, yes, it is possible, because they don’t understand
how the Gift works. Why do you ask?”

“I knew it when Tamat examined me the first
day I was here,” Reid replied.

“If you knew it, then she meant you to know.”
Sidra smiled, looking right into his eyes, and for just a moment
Reid felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, until Sidra
spoke again. “I believe Osiyar is waiting for you in his
house.”

She pulled open the heavy wooden door and
went into the temple. Reid stared after her, feeling rather than
hearing her mocking laughter and knowing that beautiful, dangerous
Sidra was fully aware of his frustrated passion for Janina. When
the temple door had closed again and the silent laughter had
stopped, Reid turned toward Osiyar’s house, aware that he had
learned two valuable facts that day. He knew about the effects of
batreen, and he knew that despite her profession of respect for the
Chosen Way, Sidra did not obey its laws.

“You will come with us to the shore this
evening, Reid,” Tamat said. “Since you are to spend the rest of
your life with us, you must begin to celebrate our festivals as we
do. You will start by offering yourself, and the seed of new life
that lies within you, to the full twin moons.”