Destiny's Lovers (4 page)

They would be telepaths. Reid found that idea
intriguing. Centuries ago, the Jurisdiction had banished all
telepaths, which was why a colony of them had settled on this
planet in the Empty Sector, so far away from Jurisdiction
territory. Reid had never met a telepath, but he saw no reason why
normal humans could not exist on friendly terms with them. It was
just such dangerous open-mindedness which had earned him a place in
Tank’s expedition to this world.

Reid heard a sound behind his back. He
turned, instantly on guard. Footsteps. He had not noticed the stone
path on the opposite side of the pavilion. It curved away through
the trees, toward the gold-brown wall of the mountain. Someone was
coming along the pathway. He hesitated only a moment, and only
because he was completely unarmed, before he realized that if this
was a telepath coming, there was little he could do to defend
himself. He stood up, moved to the center of the pavilion, and
waited.

Janina was always glad when it was her turn
to fetch the Water for the priestess’s rituals, and particularly so
today. She wanted to get away from the temple complex, to be alone
for a while without the responsibility for her usual duties. She
would use this precious time to convince herself to accept as
gracefully as possible the terrible fact of her failure the day
before, and her inevitable fate as a lesser priestess under the
rule of Sidra and Osiyar. She did not mind the hot, dusty walk from
the village, nor the climb up the pathway which only a priestess
might use, to the entrance into the mountainside. She loved the
cool, shady quiet of the sacred grove. It was so different from the
brilliant sunlight of the village and the ever-present glare from
the sea. It seldom rained in Ruthlen. Fog was not unknown in the
time each year just before cold weather arrived, but the usual
condition was sunshine tempered by dry land breezes. Water was
supplied by streams flowing from the mountains behind the village.
The soil between mountains and sea was fertile and responded well
to irrigation; the sea gave up fish and edible vegetation. Famine
was unknown.

A few farmers gathering the early harvest
glanced up as Janina passed them, the water jar strapped to her
back. No one spoke to her. She did not expect it. She was used to
being ignored. No one threw stones at her any more, not since Tamat
had taken her into the temple, and that was all that mattered to
her in her relations with folk who were not priestesses.

Janina went on her way so deep in thought
that she scarcely noticed when she finally emerged into the grove
inside the mountain. She had taken only two steps along the stone
path before she was jolted out of her concentration by the sense
that something was different. She felt the man’s presence before
she saw him. She knew at once who it was.

“You have come,” she breathed. “Just as I
foresaw.”

He was huge and dark and ugly, yet she felt
no fear of him at all. He was dear to her; in some strange way he
was part of her, though they had never met before except in her
brief prophetic trance and in her dream. As she drew nearer, she
saw that he was younger than she had imagined. He could not be more
than a few years older than she was.

He stood in the exact center of the little
pavilion, watching her. He wore a suit the color of the blazing
orange-gold sun and he was so magnificent it hurt her eyes to look
at him, until she noticed that his suit was torn and dirty. Beneath
the stubble of a dark beard his face was scraped raw on one cheek
and swollen here and there where insects had bitten him. The hands
he held out to her were torn and bleeding and very dirty. And his
eyes, which she had not seen clearly before, were a dark and stormy
grey, set deep beneath thick black brows.

“Please,” he said, “I’m lost. I need to
contact headquarters. There are two others, friends of mine, back
there somewhere in the forest.” He made a gesture, vaguely
indicating the area behind him.

“You are not a god,” she said, her heart
swelling with joy at his presence. “A god would not be dirty and
tired.”

“It was you.”

Her accent was strange. She spoke in a
centuries-old dialect of the standard Jurisdiction language, yet
Reid had no trouble understanding her or recognizing her voice.
Tense grey eyes met gentle silver-blue ones, met and held while
between them passed a spark of recognition beyond any ordinary
meeting.

“You spoke to me before,” he mused, half to
himself. “It was your voice I heard. You called me ‘beloved.’ You
saved my life. I - whoever you are, thank you.” In that moment he
knew deep gratitude combined with wonder and a sense of delight
that he had been spared to meet her.

“I knew you would come,” she said, then,
“Reid. Your name is Reid. How odd that I only know it now, not
before. Perhaps I had to see you to know it.”

Reid hadn’t the faintest idea what she was
talking about, but it didn’t matter. She was the most exquisite
creature he had ever seen. She was small and slender, her figure
perfectly proportioned. Straight, silver-gold hair flowed across
her shoulders and down her back to below her waist. Her silver-blue
eyes were the shade of the morning mist over the sea, touched here
and there with flecks of pale, delicate purple. Her nose was
straight and short, her skin had a faint golden sheen to it as
though it was flushed by the sun, and her soft mouth was like a
sweet, rosy flower.

Reid felt like an alien brute beside her. His
tall, hard-muscled figure loomed over her shorter form. He thought
sadly that one so delicately made, so clean and fresh, must find
him repulsive. He ran a hand across his face, trying to remember
the last time he had taken a pill to keep his beard from growing,
or the date of his last bath. He winced when he reached the scrape
on his right cheek.

“You are injured,” the lovely apparition
said. “If you will sit down so I can reach your face, I’ll clean
your cheek and put a salve on it. Over there, on the moss, away
from the pavilion.”

Reid thought his legs probably wouldn’t hold
him up much longer anyway. He went where she told him to go. He
stood swaying awkwardly, watching as she lifted one of the stones
in the floor of the pavilion and took out a box.

“Sit down, please,” she ordered again,
opening the box to remove something from it. He dropped to the moss
a few feet away from the edge of the pool.

She was on her knees beside him, her slender,
rosy-tipped fingers anointing his injured cheek with a creamy
ointment she scooped out of a translucent blue container. She
smelled wonderful, like all the flowers of the universe mingled
into one perfume. Her skin was flawless, her hair like liquid
silver. The soft pink tip of her tongue protruded just a little,
caught between white teeth while she concentrated on what she was
doing. She appeared to be totally unaware of the effect she was
having on him.

Reid felt a wave of warmth suffuse his tired
body, re-energizing him. It was not lust, nor even lust’s sweeter,
gentler cousin, desire, but something more, something richer and
deeper. There was an eternal quality pervading his feelings toward
the young woman kneeling next to him, though he did not know how he
could react in such a way toward a complete stranger. And yet, she
was no stranger to him at all. He felt as if he had always known
her.

She finished with his cheek. She looked into
his eyes, smiling, and Reid was lost, body and soul, heart and
mind.

“If you will remove your clothing,” she said
softly, with just the faintest blush beginning to stain her
delicate features, “I will put more of this salve on that wound at
your waist. It has bled onto your garment.”

“I hadn’t noticed.” He paused with one hand
on the pressure-sensitive opening of his treksuit, the strangeness
of his situation threatening to overwhelm him. He sensed again that
there was a mysterious, more-than-human presence in the hidden
garden. For all he knew, his lovely companion might be that
presence. With an effort, he rejected the idea. He desperately
wanted the silver-haired woman to be as human as he was. Attempting
to reduce an unexplainable experience to what he could see or hear
or touch, he decided that the best way to deal with circumstances
he could not understand was by concentrating on practical matters.
That included physical comfort. “What I really need, before any
more medical treatment, is a bath. Is it permitted to use the
pool?”

“No. The pool is sacred.” She solved his
problem quickly, however, and the crease that had appeared between
her brows smoothed away. “There is another spring, near the
entrance to the grove, which we use to cleanse ourselves and the
water jars before taking the Water from the pool. I can bring you
some of that. Have you touched the Water in the pool?”

The frown was back, just for an instant, but
it disappeared at his honest answer.

“I only arrived here a few moments before you
appeared. I did not touch the pool. All I did was walk across the
moss and sit on the pavilion steps. I hope that’s not
forbidden?”

“It can be forgiven, as can your presence
here, since you were in obvious need of help.” There was a twinkle
in the depths of her soft, pale eyes. “I often sit on the steps
myself. It’s a good place to think. How did you find the
grove?”

As he explained, he kept his eyes on her,
partly because he feared she would vanish if he looked away, partly
because looking at her gave him such pleasure.

“How brave you are,” she whispered, then
added, “I have always been told there is no one living in the world
on the other side of the ravine.”

“That is no longer true,” he told her. “There
are ten of us. Or, rather, there were ten of us. I’m not sure Alla
and Herne are still alive.” He stopped, thinking about the
possibility of Alla’s death, and of Herne’s. He hoped it wasn’t so.
He hoped they had been found and rescued by now. As for
himself…

“Where are so many strangers living?” she
asked in amazement, interrupting his thoughts.

“Except for the two who were with me, my
friends are at least a quarter of this world away from here,” Reid
replied.

“How fortunate you are to have friends.”

Reid gazed at her lovely face, thinking that
those she lived with had no judgment at all if she were
friendless.

“We never go across the ravine,” she told
him. “We only go into it occasionally to gather special plants to
use for medicines. Like this.” She indicated the blue salve
container she still held, then set it into the box beside other
containers in several shapes and colors.

“I will get your bath water while you
undress.” She picked up the water jar and walked away down the
curving stone path, leaving Reid to strip off his boots and
treksuit in privacy.

When she returned he stood barefoot on the
moss, wearing only his skimpy, skin-tight lower undergarment. She
set down the full water jar and pulled a clean cloth and a square
green container out of the box that held the ointment.

“Use this,” she said. “I must pour out the
water for you, to make certain it flows away from the pool and not
into it. We may not contaminate the pool.”

The green container, made of polished stone
with a hinged lid, held a semi-liquid cleansing agent, and the
water from the jar was warm. Reid decided he didn’t care if she was
watching him or not; he wanted and needed a bath.

“Are there hot springs here?” he asked,
lathering his shoulders and arms.

“Yes,” she replied, busying herself with
rearranging the contents of the box and not looking at his nearly
naked body. “Sometimes the mountains smoke. Tamat says it is all
part of the same system, which gives us fertile land and clear
streams with all the water we want. Only this mountain does not
smoke. Its heart is open to us, and the sacred pool is here.”

“Volcanoes,” Reid said, scrubbing his legs.
“This one probably blew out its core centuries ago.” He paused to
look at her again, wondering why they were carrying on this
geological discussion when he wanted to know everything about
her.

“I do not understand ‘volcanoes,’” she told
him. “I only know what our High Priestess Tamat has told me - that
once, long ago, the mountains spread fire and destruction across
Ruthlen, but they have slept for many years now. Never in living
memory have they caused devastation. They are the guardians of our
good fortune. So long as we live in harmony with them, the
mountains will not fail us.”

Reid nodded, only half listening to this
retelling of what he assumed was a local legend. Most of his
attention was on the young woman’s beautiful face.

“If you will kneel once more,” she said, “I
will wash your back. There are pieces of leaves and other more
unpleasant things stuck on it, and it is scratched in places.”

Reid went down on his knees. She took the
cloth and the cleanser from him and began to rub at his back,
resting one hand on his shoulder as she leaned forward. He caught
another whiff of the heavenly perfume she wore. He wanted to kiss
the hand on his shoulder. He wanted to draw her around to face him
and hold her in his arms and lie with her on the thick, springy
moss.

Suddenly he remembered that she must be a
telepath. She probably knew what he was thinking. She had known his
name. But she had asked questions of him as though she was unaware
of anything outside her own small portion of Dulan’s Planet. If she
were a telepath she should have known without asking - unless she
was trying to trick him for some purpose of her own. Reid thought
about that while she finished with his back, then washed his neck
and ears and lathered his hair.

“How dark you are,” she murmured. “How large
and strong.”