The Makers of Light (19 page)

"What should or should not concern me is not yours to determine, High Lord of Qynnsent." Then, with her voice softer. "But at this moment I only choose to be concerned with the fact you can heal a wolf. So I thank you." Then she suddenly stepped closer to them, extending a hand with the metal-carved book in it.

"Take this if you want. It is not the only copy I have. I am afraid it is not a very interesting book, but see if you can find an answer to any of your '
how
' questions in it. Hide it from others. Or don't; it is your choice. My control of all this ends with the decision to give it to you. I am warning you, it might be dangerous if anyone discovered that you had it."

Her hand was trembling as Rianor reached out and took the book, and suddenly Linden's hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. "Will it be dangerous to
you?
"

Merlevine swallowed, then slowly pulled her hand away. "That should not concern you, lady Linden of Qynnsent. But I thank
you
especially. And not only for today."

She was gone then, in that instant manner of Bers, only a gray shadow lingering for a moment where the wolf had been. Blake barked madly.

"We should go. Fast." Rianor grabbed Linden's hand and Blake's collar, inserting the book at the inside of his coat. "I do not know what exactly we just put ourselves into, but we need Qynnsent's walls around us."

Linden

Evening 29 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706

Qynnsent's walls. Her lord seemed to trust their hard, stony, unknown power even now. Beside him on the driving-box, Linden watched him as he drove, fast and aggressive, the carriage jerking every time the wheels met a hole in the road. The wind had grown stronger with the approach of the night, and Rianor glared against it, the shadow of his frown contrasting with the lightness of his eyes.

The carriage jumped again just as a new gust of wind thrust dense snow against Linden's face. Her head snapped back, and she gripped the seat more tightly, barely avoiding hitting her back. She tried to blink the snow away, feeling the carriage jerk to a halt, then tried to press her good hand to her face. The hand would not obey. She had been gripping the seat ever since they had started on their way home; the hand was stiff with this, but Linden realized it only now. She was trembling, too. She was cold. She had just a little fire left, for she had fought fire too much.

The trembling would not stop. Linden closed her eyes, as if that would keep her last draining heat inside. She had fought harsh, unbearable heat earlier, and she had not even screamed except in her mind, a silent scream to make the heat leave, to push it away. Perhaps she had pushed too strongly.

"Go inside the carriage, Linde." Rianor, his voice a mix of concern and command.

"No, my lord." Her cold lips barely formed the words.

"Go, I said."

"No!" She did not shout. This broken road amongst gnarled trees and dark, spread-out buildings was not a place for shouting. It was as if a road from a fairytale had sprung to life, the moons and the last lingering rays of the already gone Sun the only source of light. The white snow, now darkened by shadows, blurred the world; it hid things better left unseen, things that lurked in the night.

Things better left
unseen?
She might have shouted now, at herself, had she the strength to do it. Just how easy was it, even for her, to fall into the ignorance trap? How easy was it to lie huddled in her web of concepts of what the world was supposed to be, while she did not
see
the world? Things would not stop lurking only because you chose to close your eyes.

She tried to open hers, literally, and succeeded after what seemed to be a long time—only to have them filled with the coldness of snow. She blinked, but it took even longer this time. Was such a time and effort worth it? It was so cold. Or, was it? She had thought she was cold, and yet her body did not feel it any longer; cold was naught but a vague memory of what she must feel but did not. She closed her eyes again. It was easier like this. With her eyes closed, she could almost see and feel a bright, distant Sun ...

Then someone was calling her name, someone important. She could almost see his face if she focused, if she narrowed her eyes and made the Sun go away. But weren't her eyes closed? Somehow, she opened them. Someone else was howling—someone hairy, an animal. Other animals were neighing. The howling one pushed her body with its head, then bit her hand. It did not hurt at all, but the Sun faded. She could see Rianor now, his eyes wild, his face contorted. She could smell him, too, for she was pressed against him, his coat wrapped around them both.

"Don't fade." She could even hear him. "Don't you dare fade on me!"

"I am not fading." Was this her voice? Such a strange voice, a voice made for nothing more than uttering thoughts. She tried to shake her head, in the world of Rianor, night, and winter—in the real world. Uttering thoughts? Wasn't this what voices were for? "I am not fading, my lord. But the world is."

She had not felt the dog's sharp teeth before, but now she felt Rianor's lips over hers acutely. She also felt his heartbeat, fast and unstable as he pulled her closer than she had thought possible, and she felt his warmth, real warmth, as he kissed her, for a moment gently and then roughly, with a desperation.

She emitted a small sound, wrapping her arms around his neck, pressing her body against his—and then she gripped his hair and her next sound was not a sound but a silent scream. The Sun was gone. Rianor's touch had kept her here, his warmth fully awakening her in this moonlit, cold, exquisite world of snowflakes and shadowy, winding roads and skies and trees. And somewhere amongst all this she had lost control. She had tried to touch his mind, like she had touched Calia's mind long ago, like she had sometimes, coincidentally or not, brushed the minds of others—and like she had never been able to touch Rianor's mind before.

For a moment now, she succeeded. For a moment, she pushed against his mind's barrier but a barrier there was not, and she seemed to fall, screaming, suffocating in both heat and coldness. She felt him shiver, and his hand gripped her back, and she did not feel it but she knew it left a bruise. He was ... She had no words for it. "
Coldness
" and "
heat
" were not the right ones; no words were right for the millions of thoughts, each one sharper than a dagger, for the mechanisms and worlds of his own making, for the responsibilities—and for the control that kept all this from cutting
through
his mind and into his very quintessence.

It cut through
her
now—because, for a moment, there was no control from him towards her.

In the next few moments all she could do was cling to the man who had cut her and whom she had breached. She was unable to sit straight by herself, unable to think, almost unable to breathe. "I am sorry," she only managed to whisper. He was squeezing her, his own body trembling, his eyes blurred, and good that the horses knew their way home, for he had dropped the reins.

Then the book, too, was dropped, slipping from his coat's inner pocket, clattering beside their feet, almost falling off the carriage and in the snow. Instinctively she reached out to take it, and suddenly Rianor gripped her wrist.

"No, my lady. You shall no longer play with dangerous toys." His eyes were clear and steely again, the usual barrier back there, together with the book and reins in his other hand. "Go inside the carriage now and wrap yourself in blankets. Blake, go warm her."

Had he slapped her, it would have been better than these words.

"You can't tell me this."

"I can." He gripped her, lifting her physically, his voice harsh and the control fickle behind his eyes. "Look at yourself. You are
broken
with Magic, elevators, servants, wolves and what have you. No Magic for you any more. No Science if it means physically lifting fools and touching Bers and wildlands beasts. I almost lost you to all that at least two times in the last few days. Enough is enough! In the end, a woman can't take it all. I want
you,
not elevators and wolves!"

Oh, yes, he wanted her. It was in his eyes and not only there. Her whole being felt it—and it was not only lust. It was something bigger, stronger, hotter, like melting steel, like that bench leg had been. It could burn her, scar her, and then suffocate what was left of her.

Even now she was fighting for air in his arms. She was also fighting a great desire to wrap all her limbs around him, press her mouth to his and let him take everything, both the physical and the deeper.

And then? What would happen
then
?

There won't be a "then" because you will both freeze to death in the meantime—unless the horses take you home by themselves.
It was a mundane, logical thought. Linden could have laughed. Her mind never shut down, even in such a moment—and Master Keitaro might say what he would about thoughts not being enough, but nothing was enough without thoughts.

"You want me, you say?" Linden's face was still close to Rianor's, but she would not kiss him now. "But '
me
' is also elevators and wolves, and you want to deny them to me. Even though it was the elevators—it was my mind—that you wanted once upon a time. Oh, and my wretched Magic, too. What
I
want does not matter to you now, does it, just like it did not matter then. You are used to having everything upon a whim, my High Lord. You are used to simply taking it. Well, you can't take
me.
Even if you rape me, imprison me, throw me out of your House, throw me out of the Science Guild, kill me, you can't take me. I am more than all this. There is a part of me that will always remain out of reach for you, for it can only be given—or shared."

She shook her head. "I am sorry, Rianor. Thank you for being with me this evening, and thank you for warming me and keeping me in this world. However, I intend to continue playing with dangerous toys. And if the only way you can think of me is as yet another dangerous toy, as a mindless thing to be alternatively used or taken care of—if you are going to treat me like naught but a helpless pig or a can opener—then I don't want
you.
"

Now it was Rianor's turn to look like he'd been slapped. "So that is how you think of me? As a mindless brute? Have no worries, I won't rape you or throw you out of anything."

"No, this is not what I meant!" She was fighting tears now. It all sounded different from his mouth. He was so cold now, so distant. "I did not mean to accuse you about the pigs, either. I know that it was a mistake, I know that you would not
mean
to do something like this."

"You know that? Then you know wrongly." His voice was very, very soft. "I meant all of it, and I am taking the responsibility. I won't hide it from you—and what you do with the knowledge is your own choice. We are going now; Star and Beauty are cold. You are cold as well, so you should go inside that carriage. But I won't make you."

The carriage jerked; the horses started on their way. Rianor was staring at the road now, not looking at her at all. She shivered. The wind was colder and harsher without his arms around her, and she bit back silly tears. Master, what had she just done? How could she have said what she just had to him? She did want him, so much.

She opened her mouth and closed it again. She should not talk. She could not think clearly, and anything else she said on that matter would be a mistake, for she had indeed meant her previous words and still did. As for Rianor, he seemed to be putting effort into not doing anything at all. She did not know what he would have done if he were not, but she suddenly knew that this inaction was the hardest thing for him.

"I should not go inside, my lord." She felt she owed him an explanation, now that he was not making her do anything. "I would have offered to drive so that you could go inside yourself, but I don't think this is a good idea, either. We have had too much of being '
inside.
' "
Besides, I want to be here with you.
"Just look around. Look at the world."

She
looked at the world—she needed to focus her attention away from him—and that only helped her better notice the holes in the road, the darkness of the buildings, the gloom that poured from where light and human diligence had been at work before.

All was ... fading. With Magic dying, the very world of humans was slipping away. She knew it now. She knew it in her heart, and it seemed the heart was what mattered, for she had already known it all in her mind. She had known about the dysfunctional Factories, the new coupon system for food and material goods, the hunger and growing unrest—but it had all been so distant, almost unreal to the lady at her refuge at the top of the hill in Qynnsent.

Rianor watched the world around them, too, and she knew him well enough to read on his face that he saw what she saw; that he, too, noticed what both of them had not noticed before. Just how easy was it to not look at the world and not know, even for them who prided themselves on the constant quest for knowledge?

She looked at him again. "Those who seek knowledge are apt to seek it only in certain places—and thus they ignore knowledge that comes from elsewhere, unsought. This is their greatest failure."

A part of her wanted to keep the thought to herself, now with the new tension between them. She did not. She was scared, suddenly; she was almost terrified of the idea that she could not talk to him any more, that she might have lost the friend, the partner of her mind, the only one who truly understood her. He looked at her, and she saw something in his eyes, but it was there for so brief a time that she could not discern what it was, only that it came from behind the steel.

"I do not know about the greatest failure, Linde. There are too many failures, and they do not necessarily form a hierarchy. But a failure it is."

They said nothing else, riding on, Blake snug between the two of them, Star and Beauty's tails swinging like blurred pendants in the falling snow. The horses' hooves sank deeply, the snow having already accumulated halfway to their knees. The carriage moved slowly now, and new snow swept over the tracks it left, obliterating them almost immediately. Caps of snow had piled on the dark buildings, too, and in the moonlit semi-darkness these houses looked like shapeless lumps, houses no more. Some of these buildings might belong to Noble Houses, others to affluent commoners; no one who had property on this road was poor. Now even these people did not have enough fire any more—and signs of human life seemed so easily erased by nature's white force.