The Towers Of the Sunset (33 page)

Megaera looks to the guard captain. Shierra nods slowly. “Feeling afraid is acceptable, but letting it affect your actions is not. That’s one of the reasons the guards are often more effective than men. Men too often conceal their fear in brashness or in unwise attacks. The guards are trained to recognize their fears and set them aside.”

Hyel raises his eyebrows at the comment about male brashness, then takes a long pull from his earthen mug.

At the other tables, both men and women are clapping in time to the driving beat of a marching song.

CRESLIN STANDS up. His fingers still hurt, and his muscles ache. He forces a smile. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

A glance passes between Lydya and Klerris, but Hyel begins to talk.

“… hope you’ll play again for us. That really was a treat, and just about everyone liked it.”

Creslin picks up the guitar case and shrugs his shoulders in an effort to relax them. As he checks the fastenings before lifting the case, the tenderness of his fingers reminds him again of how little he has played recently.

While the Westwind guards and the Montgren troopers are not sitting at the same tables, neither are they glaring at each other and muttering. Creslin hopes that in time some of the consorts and the attached guards will join the singles.

“I do hope you will play again,” seconds Shierra.

“I need to talk to you.” Megaera’s words are low and tired.

“Now?”

“When you get to the house will be fine. I won’t be long.” She remains pallid. Creslin notes her color and cannot help but worry that she is pushing herself too hard.

“Stop it. Please…”

He stops. She starts toward him, but Klerris steps up to her. “A moment, lady?”

“Oh… can it wait until tomorrow?”

“I think not.”

Creslin sighs as he steps away, glad to let Klerris take the brunt of Megaera’s sharp words but feeling guilty all the same. As he makes his way out of the public room and past the two outside lamps, he is conscious of Lydya moving toward him.

“Creslin…”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind if I walked with you for part of the way? There are a few things I think you ought to know.”

He does not like the sound of Lydya’s words, but he shrugs and is reminded of how sore his shoulders are. Farmwork has been even harder than stonework was. “No. Come along. Where else have I failed?”

“Failed?”

“You and Klerris talk to me these days only to point out where I’ve made another mistake.”

“Unless it’s serious, you don’t really take time to listen.” Her voice is half-humorous, half-chiding, as she matches her steps with his and they start up the hill road.

“I guess I deserve that. What now?”

“Megaera,” the healer states. “You really upset her tonight. Again.”

“Again? Everything I do upsets her! If I talk to her, it upsets her. If I don’t, it upsets her.”

“Creslin.”

The soft tone chills him, and he answers warily. “Yes?”

“Megaera is your wife.”

“In name, perhaps. Not in much else.”

“Have you ever really asked why?”

“No, because that’s clearly the way she wants it.”

“Have you ever told her that you love her?”

“Do I?”

Lydya snorts.

“All right. But it’s hopeless. I look at her and I can’t help wanting her. She senses that as soon as I look, and she slices me apart.”

“That’s right. Do you remember how you felt every time you had to walk down the Great Hall at Westwind?”

Creslin swallows.

“Now… you didn’t even know what the guards were feeling. You just heard the words. How would you have felt if you could have known every thought behind those words?”

The healer’s tone is as cold as the northern stars, and as distant, yet as close as a blade in his guts. He can say nothing, for his eyes begin to bum, although his feet do not stumble.

“Your wife, and she is your wife in the unfortunate and old sense of the word because of Ryessa’s meddling, has heard only a few warm words from you. You have never courted her, and you lust after her all the time. That’s going to make her feel close to you? That’s going to show her you love her?”

Creslin winces, but the healer’s words continue, like the ice-winds that he has called before from the Roof of the World.

“… every chance you get, you show yet another skill. Tonight was especially painful. You sang love songs and hate songs, funny songs and war songs, and your soul was out there, open and exposed. You risked your soul for people you scarcely know and owe little enough to. Yet you have never sung to the woman you say you love. How do you think she feels about that?”

“Not very good.”

“You’re right.” Lydya’s voice softens. “What’s worse is that if you come to her in guilt tonight, she’ll take your head off, and you’ll deserve it.”

“What am I supposed to do? Besides think?”

“You’ll listen to every nasty word she says, and you will think about them, and you will not say anything nasty in return. You will not act superior. You will not act guilty, and you will not try to make amends, whatever they may be, tonight. You will tell her, however it seems fitting, that you honestly did not understand all that she felt and that you will try to make up for it by treating her as a friend in the days ahead.”

“I don’t know if I can…”

“If you can’t, you’ll both die before the end of the summer.” Lydya stops. “Good night, Creslin.”

Her retreating steps are so silent that they are lost behind the chirring of the insects in the rocks that line the road combined with the gentle hissing of the waves upon the sand.

He stands there, listening for either Lydya’s footsteps or the oncoming footsteps of a red-haired woman. He hears neither. So he turns back to the south and walks slowly uphill. Since he reaches the black stones of the house first, he lights the lamps, one in his room and, in turn, one in hers.

Then he stands by his window, leaving the door ajar and waiting. The night air is cool, but not so cool as even the warmest of summer nights on the Roof of the World, that simple castle that had seemed so complex while he had dwelt there.

The lamps continue to burn, but Megaera does not appear. Has she decided to spend another night with the Westwind guards? Has he appeared that uncaring?

He walks back to the terrace, letting his senses flow to the winds and through the light sea breeze that flows off the ocean and up the cliffs. How long he floats there, he does not know. He only knows that when he senses her coming, he drops back into himself and crosses the terrace toward the Great Room.

He reaches the door and opens it as her hand reaches for the crude handle. “Good evening. I wanted to make sure you got back safely.”

“Who would trouble me?”

“No one, I suppose. I just needed to say something. We didn’t really talk, and you said you wanted to.”

“It doesn’t matter. You haven’t listened before. Why would you listen now?”

“I’m listening now.” He eases the door shut behind her. The light streaming down the corridor from her room and across the dusty stone floor is enough for him to see by.

“It’s easier to listen, I suppose, after yet another conquest.” Her eyes dart to his right, as if she wants to step around him.

“It wasn’t meant that way.”

“You never mean anything the way it turns out. You just act, and damn how anyone else feels. Or you feel without thinking about how your feelings make other people feel.” Her eyes rest directly on him, cold, yet burning.

“You’re right,” he admits. “I still act before I think things out.”

“I’m supposed to be wed to you, best-betrothed, and I didn’t even know that you can sing love songs that wring women’s hearts. Or marching songs. You never bothered to tell me.”

He swallows instead of pointing out that she has seldom given him enough time to tell her many things. “I suppose I didn’t. Perhaps I was afraid that you would criticize me for that, too.”

“Criticize the great Creslin? Heaven forbid.”

“I didn’t realize that you felt that way. You know what I feel. I don’t know the same about you.”

“Whatever you’ve been doing tonight, you ought to keep doing-for several years.” She starts to step around him.

He holds up a hand, but does not touch her.

She stops. “Well?”

“We can’t keep going like this, Megaera.”

“I’ve only been telling you that since the day after you woke up in cousin dear’s castle.”

“So… I’m slow.”

“I’m tired. It’s been a long day. All my days have been long lately. What do you have in mind? Throwing me into bed and calling it love and thinking it will solve everything?” Her lips quirk angrily.

Creslin lets his breath out slowly. “No. Something… like friendship. Like not finding the crudest possible words whenever we’re angry. Like thinking about how my actions affect you…” She shakes her head. “I just don’t know. Right now you feel that way. But will you feel like that tomorrow? Or the next day?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. But could we try?”

“You try. I’ll see. Good night.”

He let her step around him.

“Good night.”

For a time he stands in the dimness of the unfinished Great Room, the coolness of the sea breeze flowing over him. Then he returns to his room and peels off his clothes, snuffs the lamp, and stretches out on the pallet that is marginally softer than the stone flooring on which it rests.

As he listens to the unseen insects and frogs, as he wonders how he will learn to consider his actions before he acts, his eyes grow heavy.

Good night, Megaera, he thinks.

Does she hear his wish? He turns over on his stomach and tries to ignore the tightness within him. Dead before fall? He squeezes his eyelids together, then tries to relax.

CRESLIN WAKES EARLY, not long after the sun has cleared the swells of the
Eastern
Ocean
. There is time for some stonework before he and Megaera head to the keep to meet with Shierra, Hyel, Klerris, and Lydya.

“The unofficial High Council of Reduce…” he murmurs.

On his feet, he pulls on the old fishing trousers he has scrounged, work boots, and the tattered, short-sleeved green shirt.

In the recently walled room that will some day be the kitchen, he retrieves some stale bread. A fuller repast will have to wait until they reach the keep. He chews the tough crust and walks to the cistern, where he fills a mug with cool water. Although the air is still brisk and damp coming in off the ocean, the cloudless day promises to be hot.

Because Megaera is probably still asleep, he does not work with the mallet and chisel but carries rough stones from the jumble, stacking them by the stone that serves as his trimming block. After having made a dozen trips, he stops and wipes his forehead. The day may be the hottest yet of the early summer, and it is far from even mid-morning.

“You’re up early.” The redhead leans out of the open window. Her hair is tousled, and she wears a faded blue robe.

“I tried to be quiet.”

“I appreciate the thought. Someday, if I can ever wake before you do, I’ll demonstrate a comparison between real quietness and what you call quietness.”

“If you ever make it up that early…”

“Some of us have no desire to greet the sun. Aren’t we supposed to meet with everyone this morning?”

“I’ll get washed up in a moment.” As Megaera’s head disappears back into her room, he puts a stone on the block and raises the heavy hammer.

Clung…

He stops with one stone. As he lifts and fits it so that there is less than a hairline crack between it and the one below, he wishes again that he were better with creative chores, like woodworking and stonemasonry, rather than expert with the ethereal and the deadly, such as music and blades and bows. After removing the stone and setting it down until he is ready to mortar, he picks up the tools and puts them away.

By the time he reaches the washroom, the wash stones are wet and Megaera has already finished. He hurries through a cold and quick shower and-naked and carrying his work clothes-dashes for his room.

His hair is still wet when he joins her on the terrace. “You run more gracefully without clothes,” she tells him.

“What can I say? Do I get to see whether you do?”

“After last night?”

He wonders whether this is the time for an apology but seeing that she still smiles, he decides against seriousness. “I thought I’d ask.”

“At least you’re asking now.”

“It seems like a better idea.”

“We’d better go.”

For the first fifty paces, neither says anything. Creslin just enjoys the sun and the peacefulness. They cross the crest of the hill overlooking the harbor. Only one damaged fishing boat remains in the water.

“It’s too bad this place is nothing but starving fishermen and disgraced courtiers.”

Creslin laughs. “I can’t fish, nor was I ever very good with the polite phrases. Disgraced? I suppose so.”

“You seem… resigned, calmer.” She looks evenly at the man who is scarcely taller than she, although he is becoming ever more solid with maturity and the heavy stonework he does. “As if you decided-What are you going to do?” Her eyes flick from the road out toward the waves of the north of the town below, then to the silver hair above the gray-green eyes.

“I told you last night. Try to work at being your friend.”

“I mean about Reduce.”

“We’ll try to build it into something, at least into a place for people-”

“Like us?”

“That was the general idea.”

“Do you think it’s really possible? Not just a dream?”

“Somehow… yes. In the morning, anyway. By nighttime, it seems a lot harder and more distant.”

She says nothing, withdrawing into herself, and Creslin wonders what touchiness his words have rubbed against. But he walks beside her and they do not argue, nor is there a wall between them. Not this morning, at least.

THE EVENING is warm, purple-clear in the moments after true twilight. Creslin stands behind the completed stone wall that marks the end of the terrace and looks down the thirty cubits or so of hillside leading to the sheer cliff overhanging the white beaches below. While he cannot see the sands, he can sense, through the winds and the scents, their presence.

The swells of the
Eastern
Ocean
are flatter and lower than usual, with the foaming of the breakers on the sands barely audible in the near-silent evening. Behind him, the Black Holding is black; no lamps are lit, for neither Creslin nor Megaera needs them, and no one else is present.

In the near-darkness, he clears his throat and begins to sing softly.

… they’ll cut you and leave you all bleeding and cold, and no one will find you, till the mountains grow old.

The rocks they will splinter, and the snows will fall deep, and the guards of the mountains will hold to their keep…

He stops and turns. Megaera stands at the far end of the terrace. “Go ahead. I want to hear you sing.”

“You sure?”

“I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t.”

Creslin has his doubts, but he buries them, coughs softly, and returns to the song.

… till my songs have been buried in the depths of the night, and none of the young men seek out that cold height; and none of the young men seek out that cold height.

“Do you know any happy songs?” Soft as it is, her husky voice carries across the stones from the side wall where she has seated herself.

“Not many, but I’ll try.”

Pursing his lips, he casts back into his memories, trying to recall a cheerful melody. He runs his left hand through his ragged and short hair, wondering if he should get his guitar. He decides against it, clears his throat once more, softly, before humming a bar or two, trying to touch the right key, the hint of silver that is his to reach. He looks to the south, not quite at Megaera but not exactly away from her either.

… catch a falling fire; hold it to the skies; never let it die away.

For love may come and fill your empty eyes with the light of more than day…

When he finishes, his eyes flicker to his right. Megaera has not moved, nor does she say anything. Creslin hums again and tries to search out another song.

… I would not live without you, like aching souls I know, like older men with hearts of stone, who chose to live alone…

I would not love without you, like empty homes I’ve seen…

“That’s too sad.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Could you sing something happier?”

“I don’t know many happy ones. Let me think.” The stars begin to glitter as the last hints of twilight dissipate in the western horizon. The song frames in his mind, and as trite as the words are, they say what he has wanted to say, what he has avoided saying.

You are the fire of my nights, the light of my days, and the end of my wand’ring ways.

You are… you are… you are the sun in the skies.

When he finishes, he does not sing another song but walks slowly toward where Megaera sits in the darkness. He perches on the flat stones of the wall, leaving several cubits of space between them.

“You sang that like you meant it.” Her voice barely rises above the swishing of the surf below the terrace. The breeze is soft but brisk and cool off the ocean.

“I did.”

“I know, and it hurts.”

“Hurts?”

“Hurts. I can feel the longing there. No one…” She stops, then starts again. “Sometimes you can be so gentle… and I think… it could work out. It really could, and then…” She shakes her head, and her hair sparkles like flame in the darkness.

Creslin notes that faint huskiness in her voice, the slight poised tilt to her head, and holds them within himself.

“You know,” she continues, “you once spoke about seeing songs, or notes, shining silver in the air. For the first time, tonight, when you sang, I saw the words glistening there. They glistened silver.”

“I’ve tried to make the gold; only one person I knew could sing gold.”

“Your father?”

“Werlynn.” In the cooling night, he still prefers not to look directly at her.

“You don’t call either parent mother or father. Why not?”

“I didn’t understand that he was my father until long after he was dead. The
Marshall never treated me like her son, so I didn’t really understand that she was my mother until I was old enough for her to forbid me to call her mother.”

“You don’t think of her as your mother, do you?”

“No.”

“I wish she could have heard you sing. I wish…”

Creslin waits, even though the stone is hard under him.

“Wishes just don’t come true,” Megaera finally goes on. “No matter how hard you wish, life doesn’t work that way. And if you wish someone would do something and they don’t, it spoils everything if you have to tell them what you really want.”

“It does,” he agrees, wishing that Megaera could come to love him, wishing that he could understand why she continually pushes him away, when he knows somehow that she is drawn to him.

“I am drawn to you, but that doesn’t change anything.”

As she answers his feelings, he swallows. So close to her, he has few secrets. “Why not?” he asks, reaching out and touching, barely touching, her hand.

“Because I did not choose you. Because we never had the freedom to decide.”

He looks past her toward the southwest, where the stars glitter coldly above the hills. “Will it always come to this?” he asks.

“Yes.”

His fingers tighten ever so tightly around her hand. “Doesn’t it matter that I love you?” He does not look at her as they sit so close, yet so far apart, and he tries to think of the cold stars in the cold sky.

Yet the stars do burn in the sky, and Megaera burns like a black flame that he cannot, dare not, touch. Instead, he slides a trace closer, continuing to hold her slender fingers. “I don’t think you want to find out whether we might be meant for each other,” he ventures.

“You might be right. But don’t push me.”

Don’t push her? When has he ever pushed her? His feelings are so strong that he has to bite his lips, swallow his words.

“Everything you’ve done pushes me. You got me to marry you when even sister dear couldn’t manage it. You got me to come to the most desolate spot on the earth, and you’ve forced me to give up what little I had that was superior to you.” She withdraws her hand from his, deftly but abruptly. “And now you’re angry because I’m upset about being pushed around.”

He stands, only to find that she has risen simultaneously. “I’m angry, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

“I know you love me. But you’re so practical that you’ll just destroy me without even thinking twice.” She turns and walks toward the seaward end of the terrace. “You’d be sorry afterward, but then it would be rather late.”

“I’m not sure I understand. How could I destroy you? I don’t push you. I let you make your own choices. If you want to learn blade-work from Shierra, that’s fine. Or order-mastery from Lydya-”

“You’re right. You don’t understand! I tried to let you know who and what I was… just once… and all I got was uncontrolled lust. Do you remember that inn in the Westhorns? Both my mind and my soul were blistered by that, and you still don’t even know what you did. That was from hundreds of kays away. After that, I’m supposed to trust you?”

“That was different. I didn’t even know who you were.”

“Wonderful! You raped me in your mind, and it was all right because you didn’t know who I was?”

“That’s not it at all. And you know it’s not.”

He swallows as she runs across the stones toward her doorway.

… never understand…

The fragment of thought, or is it feeling, twists in his thoughts as the surf hisses against the sands below. Standing atone in the star-drenched night, Creslin again recalls the healer’s words: “If you can’t, you’ll both die before the end of the summer.”

Light! How can he be a friend to a woman who invariably attacks him whenever they are close? How can he court a lady who rejects every word that might have a sensual overtone? Why does she hold him responsible for thoughts and reactions that arose from ignorance? Why doesn’t she hear what he means, what he feels?

The stars glitter coldly, and the wind off the
Eastern
Ocean
reminds him once more of Freyja, and of the Westhorns he will never see again. But the winds are warm, and they do not comfort him, and the Black Holding behind him is lightless.

Shhhsss… sssnhhh…

The seas beat on the sands, and the sands throw back the sea.