Giliahna sipped her wine, “What sort of plans, Brother Bili?”
Bili cracked his big knuckles all at once. “I’m sure he’ll confide them to you when arrive he does. But I don’t know any details, nor do I wish to know them, lest I forget my duty to my overlord, Prince Zenos, who is Mehleena’s cousin.”
Geros had told him where to find her. In the wide corridor outside that room which, long ago, had so often been their place of love, he enjoined Sergeant Rai. “Draw you up that chair, old friend. Allow no one to pass into these chambers without my leave.”
In the sitting room, he surprised a small, delicate-looking Zahrtohgan girl brewing a spicy tea, the exciting fragrance of which filled the chamber. “My lord,” she began, “my lady is not yet arisen and she…” Then a tiny, brown-skinned hand flew to her dark lips and her soft brown eyes widened perceptibly. Smiling secretively, she shyly inquired, “You, then… my lord is my lady’s brother? The Duke Tim?”
At his nod, the girl’s smile widened, despite the tears coursing copiously down her dusky cheeks. “Oh… oh, my lord, oh, oh, my lady… so very happy she will be…”
Giliahna half-heard the chamber door open and half-knew that she should at least sit up and greet the sweet, faithful Widahd, but the other half of her was lost in erotically pleasant reveries of lying here, upon this very bed with Tim… so very long ago. Almost could she still feel his sweet lips pressing upon her own, almost feel his hands upon her shoulders, almost… The lips had withdrawn, but there was still a warm hand upon her shoulder, and so reluctantly, she opened her eyes.
Chapter IX
“Mother, dear?” Ahl’s voice contained a larger than usual note of mockery and he fixed his blind eyes directly upon his stepmother.
Mehleena squirmed inwardly and her rage rose in proportion. She could not bear it when Ahl skewered her with those sightless eyes that seemed to be staring directly into her very soul. But before her rage could burst out in words, he had continued.
“Mother, dear, it were best that you have one of the carpenters reinforce another chair if you intend to dine with the rest of the family in future. In their present condition, I fear, any one of the less massive chairs would splinter under your lard-sow weight.” The blind man smiled broadly and Lady ‘ Mairee chuckled throatily, adding unneeded fuel to stoke the fires of Mehleena’s boiling anger.
But such was the fat woman’s ire that no words would come, only screams, hisses and stuttering. Ahl and Lady Mairee observed her briefly, then the tall man arose, extending his arm to the tiny young woman. “My lady, it is time we departed. This will be a very full day, I feel it.”
To his sorrow, Myron, too, arose at that moment. With all the force of her rage, Mehleena spun on her broad rump and sank her fist into his midsection, the pointy little knuckles penetrating the vee below the ribs, driving the air from his lungs and his just-eaten breakfast up into his throat.
While the unhappy young man gasped and choked, dribbling gobbets of chewed food and turning purple, Ahl never lost his sardonic smile. Shaking his head slowly, he said, “My, such fierce maternal affection. Wind be thanked that our dear mother does not treat me to her love taps. Little bumboy, you had best whack your lover on the back a few times, he appears to be strangling.” Then, both of them chuckling, he and his lady made their slow, stately way down the length of the dining chamber and out of sight, leaving Ahl’s stepbrother in his suffering and Ahl’s stepmother still hissing and spluttering in her impotent rage.
The White Hawk coverlet had long since been kicked off the foot of the bed onto the floor, but not because of the fire on the hearth. The heat of two long-suppressed passions, finally commingled, had rendered the room hot as a smithy for a while. Now the evaporation of their love sweat was cooling them and Giliahna had straightened a wadded linen sheet enough to cover their wet bodies.
Raising herself on one elbow, she looked down upon the face of Tim, her brother, her first lover, now once more returned to her. “I never stopped loving him,” she thought. “Yes, I loved Djylz, too, but… but it was a different kind of love; Djylz was my husband, my dearest friend, my companion, but he was never”—her brow wrinkled in concentration—”was never part of me, was never and could never have been what Tim is to me. It is as if all those long years something was gone, something was missing, I was but a shell of myself. And now, Tim has refilled that shell, has made me again complete. Oh, Tim, Tim, my dear dear brother; Sun and Wind, how I love you!”
“And I you, my sister.” Thinking him sleeping, her thought had been unshielded and then, suddenly, Tim’s mind was there within hers, but not as intruder… never as intruder.
“You have changed, Giliahna. The body I cherished in my memory those ten long years was that of a slender, tender, nubile young girl.”
“Ob, Tim, Tim…” She pictured herself as she was reflected in the long mirror of her robing room—the flat muscles of shoulders, arms and legs well developed from years of riding, hunting, archery and, more recently, from fierce bouts of mock swordplay with her princely stepson, Gy; the flare of her hips beneath the narrowness of her waist, the waist, itself, made to seem smaller than truth by the flared hips and by the breasts above; no, her breasts were most certainly no longer those of a young girl, being full and firm and proudly out-thrusting, the dark-blue lines of veins meandering under the fair skin, the nipples small but prominent in their shade of fiery red-pink. “Do I? Does this body of mine, then, so displease you?”
His warm, sweet mind embraced her more fully than mere arms ever could. “Displease me, my sister? How ever could you displease me, you, who are a part of me? Ten years have passed and I am a man; for nine of those years—until word reached me of the death of the prince, your husband—I thought you lost to me forever, thought that I must then live out the rest of my years in the knowledge that the most important part of me was missing. Yes, I took other maids and women, even kept and maintained several for varying lengths of time, for I am a man with hungers that mere soul-sickness cannot erase.”
Her mindspeak was gentle, hesitant. “Did you… love any of these, your women, Tim?”
“I suppose that I did… in a way. At least, I felt some emotion for a few, some attachment that I thought was love. But I never did, nor could I ever, feel for another as for you. As mere children, we forged together a truly singular relationship. It has passed through fires of hate and fires of war and been bathed in oceans of tears—yours, mine, and poor, used, victimized father’s—but still its temper rings true.”
A day’s ride to the east, in Morguhn Hall, Ahrkeethoheeks Bili lay, fully clothed, upon his big, wide bed. His eyes were closed, but his unusual, highly trained and disciplined mental faculties were fully awake… and in contact with another of the few minds similar to his.
“It is only suspicion, Aldora. No, less than that, say, intuition. I have received a few unconfirmed rumors from the north, but then, you and I both know that warfare is always abrim with rumors, warriors being as gossipy as old women. I knew them both, of course, as children and they both seemed possessed of the uncommonly good mindspeak that runs in the bloodline, but Ahl’s talents eclipsed theirs, especially after he lost his eyes. Then, too, they both were gone for ten years.”
There was intense excitement boiling, bubbling in the faraway mind. “Bili, there are latent abilities, powers, in your mind that none of us was ever able to even recognize or categorize, much less probe and hone. So don’t call your feeling about these minds ‘only’ anything—no doubt a sense of perception you don’t even know you have is alerting you.
“I’ll be in Morguhn as fast as horseflesh can bring me. But first I must contact Milo. Damn his short-range farspeak, anyway! I’ll have to send a galloper… no, I’ll go as far as Theesispolis myself, and send a galloper from there. He’s on campaign, as usual, leaving me and Mara and Drehkos to rule the Confederation. Oh, Sun and Wind, if only you are right, Bili.”
“Steel grant that I am,” beamed the ahrkeethoheeks, with fervor. “For I fear me that they both bide in deadly danger at Vawn Hall, Aldora. That Ehleen sow that Zenos’ uncle persuaded poor old Hwahltuh to marry is intent on her dung-wallowing son, Myron, being confirmed thoheeks and chief. I’ve always been dead certain that she was responsible for Ahl’s blinding and for the death of my youngest half brother, Behrl, as well.