Keeping It Real (52 page)

you.' He held his hand out
to her.

'Spoken like a true elf.' She stood up easily, unfolding her legs with hydraulic efficiency, keeping her

hands to herself.

'Fuck you, Zirconia.' He picked up the food pack he'd abandoned. He took another mouthful, two,

and then threw it
away.

'Three's the charm!' Lila said. A zip of magic snapped up through the side of her that
was closest
to

him and she saw a grin flicker across his face. 'What
the ... I thought it was gone!'

Zal shrugged. 'What? The Game? Don't be ridiculous. I didn't hear you screaming - no, I did hear that

- but there was no total surrender moment. . .'

'Not me -
youl'

'Me?' His smile was pure innocence.

'You were begging me . . .'

He snorted and smiled to himself. 'Yeah, I was. But that
wasn't
my essential spirit
you heard talking,

only my essential need to get
off. And, though I'll regret
it until I die, I will tell you that
that
need has never been so fully answered.'

Lila was momentarily thrown by what she decided was a compliment. 'Then what. . . ? I felt it. The

wild magic'

'Whatever you felt, it wasn't the Game ending.'

'And then what
about
that
thing at
the end?'

'Strange things happen when you shag your brains out
in Sathanor. Especially with metal that's already

been fused with elemental forces in the most
fiendishly unnatural way.'

'When I healed Dar.'

'When he healed you. He was good at
that.' There was no trace of jealousy in him.

Lila felt
awful. She felt
exultant. Nothing here made sense, the

switch from despair to joy, from anger to grief and back again, with all this beautiful living forest around

them being nothing but surging, fermenting energy realising itself
.

Zal waited. He still held his hand out to her.

She sighed and touched his fingers briefly with her own. 'It
was a nicer morning, before we started

talking, when you were just
chewing the cud.'

He caught her hands in his own and pulled her down to the grass with him. They rested on their knees.

He leant forward and kissed her on both cheeks. 'Lila?'

'What?'

'Play something.'

'What?'

'A tune. With your hands. I want to hear a song. You choose. Play me something.'

She put her hand against his head. As she cued the song she checked his eardrum with a fan of

ultrasound and it
was fine, perfectly mended.

Beyond the ridge somebody was crying and another several people were shouting names, searching for

lost
ones. Their voices were pierc-ing and anguished.

'Louder,' Zal said, closing his eyes. 'Ah ha. Cole Porter. Dar liked his songs, but
then, everybody

does.'

Lila listened to the elf voices through the music. After a while she heard people beginning to separate

into parties, one of which started to move in their direction. She cut
the feed and took Zal's hand.

He stood up easily at
her coaxing, light
and graceful with the trademark antelope-poise. He handed her

Tath's jerkin and she put it on over the shirt, tightening it up as far as it would go.

Lila signed to him about possible pursuit and he nodded and led off, taking a path that lay in a different

direction to the way she had come before. It was only as she followed him at a steady jog, her feet

remoulding themselves into broad, flat shapes to leave less trace that she heard Tath say,
Where did the

dragon go ?

S
t
ill in
t
he lake, as far as I know,
Lila replied. She wondered how long he'd been awake. His

presence was almost
undetectable it was so compact.

I doubt that. Are we returning to Otopia?

I hope so.

Did you hear my sister among those you are fleeing?

Yes.
Tath fell into a relieved, grateful silence, and Lila started to wonder what she was going to do

about him.

She allowed Zal to pace her through the open woodlands of Sathanor's enormous crater and her

thoughts ran with her feet. She hadn't
let
herself consider being bound to Tath for ever in any realistic

way. But
she couldn't
return him to the Daga because of what
he knew about her, and for the same

reason she couldn't let him out into someone else. She certainly couldn't contemplate killing him. She also

had to admit how much their relationship had changed, and continued to change as time went on. She

wasn't sure that Tath couldn't
hear what
she was thinking. He could certainly feel whatever she felt

emotionally and physically, whether he liked it
or not, and when she let
him take control with his aethereal

body then she felt
him likewise. After all they had been through, though she couldn't say she liked him

and had no faith whatsoever either that she knew him or what other motives he may yet have hidden, she

didn't hate him.

They crossed a beck and Zal followed its line for a short distance until the vegetation on the bank grew

too dense. She calculated their path was leading more or less directly towards the crater wall. She would

have volunteered to fly but in Zal was keeping to the shadow of the trees. She turned from watching the

erotic mechanics of Zal running back to the problem of Tath.

Resent him. T
ha
t
she could do. But what the hell was she going to do with him in Otopia? Could she

even tell of his existence in her debriefing - should she? No. The NSA would want him extracted
.
They

would compel it
.
She was certain about that
.
No way could they let a hostile agent
of such unique

experience and peculiar magical affiliation, an agent
who had participated in an enemy action, run around

with a spook like Lila. And how much could she trust
him? She knew next
to nothing about
him, nor his

powers. He'd tricked her before. He could do it
again. Maybe he was in the middle of some unknown

plan of his own serving whoever Arie had served, if such persons existed. Thinking of it all boggled her

mind and defeated her. She knew why she would never be suited to running a spy agency, or a

government - too hard to anticipate all the possibilities, even with an AI. But
one thing she felt
strongly:

she was a fool to conceal him, but
that's what
she was going to do.

Then again, the idea of trying to keep him hidden in the face of interrogation and, potentially, for ever,

made her furious, but what

choice did she have? And it
was pure pie in the sky to imagine Tath settling down like some kind of

internal pet
elf or alternative AI resource, even if he'd wanted to, which he didn't. Besides which, he

was still a whole person, even if he was corporeally challenged. And his death still felt
like her fault.

And Dar's death was both their faults. A grim thought that this was the thing that bound them more

truly than any other . . . she dismissed it.

And maybe he was only waiting for the right
moment
to do some-thing. Elves and their waiting . . ..

Wishing I was Zal?
Tath asked drily, clearly suspecting her thoughts were centred on his

circumstances.

Oh no,
Lila retorted.
I like Zal with his own hands.

I noticed that.

Hr Even though she sensed the edge of desperation in his snide remark Lila wasn't going to let any

precedents get past her. She hoped her nervousness about Tath's true power didn't
show when she said,

Let's get something straight. You don't start acting like my Aunt Madge after too many gin slings,

and I won't let Incon tear your memory to bits Wkbefare they send you straight to the Long Ships.

I'm not spending the rest of my life sniping with you like some old married couple.

I cannot spend the rest of my life like this! In
t
olerable

All ears, buddy. All ears,
Lila assured him, but
Tath slumped into a sulk. If he knew a solution, he

wasn't
about
to share it.

Ahead of her the bright shine of Zal's hair dimmed as he passed into shade and he stopped quite

sharply on the summit of a small rise dominated by three ancient Lyrien beeches, their silvery trunks

each the girth of five men, their elegant
branches spread out
in a single canopy of copper and magenta

leaves. She ran to his side and stopped just behind him to look down. Below the slight
hil lay a circle

of brown, dead grass, as cleanly made as if it had been marked out with compasses. Tiny, almost

invisible green shoots were just beginning to peek out here and there within the ring.

'A Thanatopian gateway,' she said, recognising the style from a field guide in her AI library. 'In or

out?'

Zal half turned towards her, 'Tath, did you know of any Dead agents involved in Arie's plans?'

'He says not,' Lila reported.

Zal flicked his eyebrows up and down in a flash of cynicism. 'Well, there they were, or are, and in

the heart
of Alfheim no less. It's not

more than two days old. I'm guessing they used the distraction of Arie's spell to slip past the defences.'

He straightened up to his full height, listening. He sniffed and Lila felt his
andalune
body sink down and

merge with the earth momentarily. "They're not nearby. Let's go. I don't want to risk casting circles inside

Sathanor. Too much unpredictability, too much power.'

'Where are we going exactly?' Lila said.

'To Frisco,' Zal called back as he ran down the slope. 'Before I lose all my sodding fans.'

They spent the rest
of the day crossing country. Zal picked and ate things on the way; fruit, nuts,

berries. He shared them with Lila though she ate less, able to do all her running on reactor power. By the

time it began to get dark they had reached the base of the crater rim where the gently increasing incline of

the ground became a sudden, near vertical wall.

Zal, chewing the last
of an apple, turned from his lead position and put
his arms around Lila's neck as

she arrived beside him. 'Okay, Rockets. Take us up.'

Lila braced her legs into the jet position and put
her arms around him. His lithe, fit body was hot and

damp from exercise and the way he moved as he panted softly was thrilling to hold. She liked his

salacious grin too, as he pressed gently against
her. She valued nothing more than his thudding heart and

the transmission of his longing and fear into her skin through the contact with his
andalune
self. He was

light
and fragile in her embrace.

'Don't
let go.'

Lila jumped into the air, catching an even closer hold on Zal's body, careful not
to bruise him with the

strength of her grip, They looked up as the machine system lifted them both towards the sky, out of reach

of the trees and their high canopies, along the precipitous face of the cliff. Zal grinned at her suddenly and

she was surprised when he wrapped his legs close and high around her waist. She realised his intention as

he started to lean back and she leaned the other way to keep them balanced.

'You'll burn your hair, you idiot.' She released him slowly, her hands behind his waist, and he opened

backwards with the supple ease of a reed bending until he hung upside down, his head between her

knees, hair trailing. He held his arms in a wide cross.

'To infinity and beyond!' he yelled.

Lila looked down at
him, and tickled the sides of his waist
where the piratical ragged edges of his

stolen shirt
and his waistband parted company
.
He giggled and shook them both so she had to work hard

just to keep them upright. As they rose above the level of the crater rim they could both see the pink,

orange and violet
streaks of the sun setting, and just hear the calls of birds above the hissing power of the

jets. Gentle winds blew into their faces from the heart of Sathanor, bringing the traces of burning and

destruction from the lake shores. Lila's hands stopped tickling and stroked across Zal's naked belly

instead
.
He lay calm in his invert cross as they stood and hung, supported on an invisible column of

superheated air
.

Lila stared at the beautiful sky
.
Their position, peculiar and unex-pected but curiously right for this

instant, had severed the moment from time before and time after. She longed to stay there for ever.

'Don't stop,' he said and brought his arms up and back against his sides. Lila felt his hands take a

confident hold against the back of her thighs
.

She marvelled at the fierce colours, the skim of clouds that caught and shone with the sun's fire. She

caressed the tops of his legs, the curving bones of his pelvis, the length of him where his erection pushed