Somehow they got there, him carrying her part of the way, till she lost a shoe
and he stopped for it; and she pulled him up the steps by the hand, damning the
shoe and the laces and all, which he started undoing at the top of the stairs.
She shed ribbons all the way to the bedroom, and they fell down together in a
cloud of silk sheets and her petticoats, which he made shift to shove out of
their way, layer after layer.
He got the last laces of her bodice and the damned corset finally, and she lay
there with her ribs heaving in the sheer sensuous pleasure of clear breaths and
the feel of his hands on her bare skin.
She knew, when the sense had gotten back to her along with her wind, that she
was the most utter fool. But it had all gone too far for more thinking than
that.
“I love you,” he said, “Moria.”
He had to, of course. She knew that, the way that the air thrummed and whispered
and the blood ran in her veins with that kind of magic Haught had put into her.
Am I a witch myself? What’s happening to me?
She stared into Tasfalen’s face, that of a man bewitched.
Or what is he? 0 gods, save him! Shalpa, save me!
“He’s quiet again,” Randal said. Randal’s foolish face was beaded with sweat and
white under its freckles, and his hair hung down in sweat-damp points; and
Tempus stared bleakly at the mage, his hand curled round a cup that sat on a
polished table, there amongst his maps and his charts. Behind the mage in the
doorway Kama stood, looking frayed herself.
Kama. Gods alone remembered how many others gone to bones and dust. She was