From the shore, Medoor Babji saw them there, saw their faces, both, seemed to see an effulgency of wings hovering at Pamra’s side, put her hands to her eyes and drew them away again to see only the sun glow and two people silhouetted against it.
Soon the Melancholies would be leaving the Gift to begin the trip to the steppes. It had been disturbing to travel aboard the Gift, disturbing and strange. Now she found herself glad that they would be leaving in a short time. She could not bear the expression on Thrasne’s face.
16
The lady Kesseret, Superior of the Baris Tower, former prisoner in the Accusatory of Highland Lees, now convalescent, her injuries received under the question slowly healing, leaned in the window of the library wing looking out upon an evening of early summer. Beneath the window on a narrow ledge was a flame-bird’s nest, a tidily woven basket of straw and wild-pamet fiber, holding three spherical golden eggs. An additional pile of pamet fiber lay to one side, weighted down by several small stones. In a flash of orange and gold, the flame-bird itself came swooping down the wall to perch on the ledge and move restively between this pile of tinder and the nest, fluttering its wings as though in indecision whether to stay or go.
The window was in the lady’s bedroom, hers at least by guest right. She had occupied this room since the laggard sun had broken winter’s hold upon Highland Lees and let them all come up from the caverns. Cozy though the caverns had been, she preferred this room, windowed to the air. Through the open door she could hear Tharius Don’s flat-harp virtuoso, Martien, as he flicked his hammers over throbbing strings. Behind her on the porcelain stove a kettle sang an antiphon to itself. She was warm, well wrapped in a thick robe and in Tharius Don’s arms, for the moment forgetful of her pain.
“You comfort me,” she said drowsily. “I am wondering why.”
“Because we remember really comforting each other,” he said. “When it was more than this.” For a moment there was something virile and intemperate in his voice, as though for that instant his passion had been more than merely memory. His arms tightened about her, strong arms still, capable of stirring her own recollection so that her mind lusted briefly over old visions while her body laid aside, like some discarded garment.
“It isn’t fair,” she complained. “Why can we still feel pain so very well when all the other feelings are gone?”
“All the other feelings aren’t gone,” he said patiently, knowing she knew, knowing she needed to hear him say it. “Only lust. And lust is gone because the Payment is a Talker gift.” He did not need to explain that. They both understood it. The Talkers died if they bred. Therefore they did not breed or value breeding. They did not lust. They had no experience of passion. Though they perceived it intellectually, their bodies rejected it, and the elixir made of their blood rejected it as well. “We could have refused the elixir, Kessie.”
Refused it. She thought of having refused it, of having grown old with Tharius Don. There were old lovers in Baristown whom she had watched over the years. She had seen them, too, aged past passion, walking hand in hand in the market square. She imagined them snuggled side by side in their beds, complaining to one another like old barnyard fowl, full of clucks and chirrs, grinding the day’s events in their leathery gizzards to make each one reasonable and useful to them. “My, my,” they would say. “Did you see? Did you ever? What’s the world coming to?”
How was it different for them, those old people? Remembering the loves and lusts of youth? Little different, perhaps, except that their twilight was brief, the memories strong enough to last that little time between age and the end, their flavor and fragrance scarcely dimmed by the years, death coming at last while the perfume lingered, making their old lives redolent of youth. They breathed the scents of childhood, a potpourri of their green years. But for Kesseret? And Tharius? What remained? “Dust,” she whimpered. “All our love, dust.” “Not while I hold you,” he told her urgently. “Not while I grieve for your pain.”