“Nothing! All right! Just leave me alone!” Rega glanced up into the dark and twisted trees, clasped her arms around her and shivered. “This isn’t the most romantic spot, you know,” she said in a low voice.
“C’mom, Sis.” Roland grinned. “You’d make love to a man in a pigsty if he paid you well enough.”
Rega slapped him. The blow was hard, well aimed. Roland, his hand to his aching jaw, stared at her in amazement.
“What’d you do that for? I meant it as a compliment!” Rega turned on her heel and stalked out of the clearing. At the edge, she half-turned again and tossed something toward the elf. “Here, rub that on the sores.”
You’re right, she told herself, hurrying into the jungle where she could have her cry out in private. I’ll leave things just the way they are. We’ll deliver the weapons, he’ll leave, and that’ll be an end of it. I’ll smile and tease him and never let him see he meant anything more to me than just a good time. Paithan, taken by surprise, just barely caught the thrown bottle before it smashed on the ground. He watched Rega plunge into the brush, he could hear her crashing through the undergrowth.
“Women,” said Roland, rubbing his bruised cheek and shaking hifr head. He took the waterskin over to the elf and dropped it at his feet. “Must be her time of season.”
Paithan flushed a deep red and gave Roland a disgusted look. The human winked. “What’s the matter, Quin, I say something to embarrass you?”
“In my land, men don’t talk about such things,” Paithan rebuked.
“Yeah?” Roland glanced back toward where Rega had disappeared, then looked over at the elf and his grin widened. “I guess in your land men don’t do a lot of things.”
Paithan’s flush of anger deepened to guilt. Did Roland see Rega and me together? Is this his way of letting me know, warning me to keep my hands off?
Paithan was forced, for Rega’s sake, to swallow the insult. Sitting down on the ground, he began to spread the salve on his skinned and bloody palms, wincing as the brown-colored gunk bit into raw flesh and exposed nerves. He welcomed the pain. At least it was better than the one biting at his heart. Paithan had enjoyed Rega’s mild flirtations the first cycle or two on their journey until it had suddenly occurred to him that he was enjoying them too much. He found himself watching intently the play of the smooth muscles in her shapely legs, the warm glow of the firelight in her brown eyes, the trick she had of running her tongue across her berry-stained lips when she was deep in thought.
The second night on the trail, when she and Roland had taken their blanket to the other side of the glade and laid down next to each other in the shadowed sunlight of rain’s hour, Paithan had thought his insides would twist out of him in jealousy. No matter that he never saw the two kissing or even touching affectionately. Indeed, they treated each other with a casual familiarity he found quite astonishing, even in husband and wife. He had decided, by the fourth cycle on the trail, that Roland—though a good enough fellow as humans go—didn’t appreciate the treasure he had for a wife.
Paithan felt comforted by this knowledge, it gave him an excuse to let his feelings for the human woman grow and blossom, when he knew very well he should have ripped them up by the roots. Now the plant was in full bloom, the vine twining around his heart. He realized now, too late, the harm that had been done … to them both.
Rega loved him. He knew, he’d felt it in her trembling body, he’d seen it in that one, brief look she’d given him. His heart should have been singing with joy. It was dumb with sick despair. What folly! What mad folly! Oh, sure, he could have his moments of pleasure. He’d done that with countless human women. Love them, then leave them. They expected nothing more, they wanted nothing more. And neither had he. Until now. Yet, what did he want? A relationship that would cut them both adrift from their lives? A relationship looked upon with abhorrence by both worlds? A relationship that would give them nothing, not even children? A relationship he would have to watch come at last and inevitably to a bitter end?
No, nothing good can come of it. I’ll leave, he thought. Go back home. I’ll give them the tyros. Callie’ll be mad at me anyway. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat, as the saying goes. I’ll leave now. This very moment. But he continued sitting in the clearing, absently spreading salve on his palms. He thought he could hear, far away, the sound of someone weeping. He tried to ignore it, but eventually he could stand it no longer.
“I think I hear your wife crying,” he said to Roland. “Maybe something’s wrong.”
“Rega?” Roland glanced up from feeding the tyros. He appeared amused. “Crying?
Naw, must be a bird you’re hearing. Rega never cries, not even the time when she got stabbed in the raztar fight. Did you ever notice the scar? It’s on her left thigh, about here …”
Paithan rose to his feet and stalked off into the jungle, moving in a direction opposite to that which Rega had taken.
Roland watched the elf leave out of the corner of his eye and hummed a bawdy song currently making the rounds of the taverns.
“He’s fallen for her like a rotten tree limb in a storm,” he told the tyros.
“Rega’s playing it cooler than usual, but I guess she knows what she’s doing. He’s an elf, after all. Still, sex is sex. Little elves come from somewhere and I don’t think it’s heaven.
“But, ugh! Elven women! Skinny and bony—you might as well take a stick to bed. No wonder poor old Quin’s following Rega around with his tongue hanging out. Ifs only a matter of time. I’ll catch him with his pants down in a cycle or two, and then we’ll fix him! Too bad, though.” Roland reflected. Tossing the waterskin on the ground, he leaned wearily back against a tree and stretched, easing the stiffness from his limbs. “I’m beginning to kind of like the guy.”
15
Fond of darkness and of delving and tunneling, the dwarves of Pryan did not build their cities in the treetops, as did the elves, or on the moss plains, as did the humans. The dwarves carved their way downward through the dark vegetation, seeking the dirt and stone that was their heritage, though that heritage was little more than a dim memory of an ancient past in another world.
The kingdom of Thurn was a vast cavern of vegetation. The dwarves dwelt and worked in homes and shops that had been bored deep and straight into the boles of gigantic chimney trees, so called because the wood did not burn easily and the smoke of dwarven fires was able to rise up through natural shafts in the tree’s center. Branches and plant roots formed walkways and streets lit by flickering torchlight. The elves and humans lived in perpetual day. The dwarves lived in endless night—a night they loved and found blessed, but a night that Drugar feared was about to become permanent.
He received the message from his king during the dinner hour. It was a mark of the message’s importance that it was delivered to him at mealtime, a time when one’s full and complete attention is to be devoted to food and the all-important digestive process afterward. Talking is forbidden during the eating of the food and only pleasant subjects are discussed during the time following, to prevent the stomach’s juices from turning rancid and causing gastric upset.
The king’s messenger was profuse in his apologies for taking Drugar from his dinner but added that the matter was quite urgent. Drugar bolted from his chair, scattering crockery, causing his old manservant to grumble and predict dire things occurring in the young dwarf’s stomach. Drugar, who had a dark feeling he knew the purport of the message, almost told the old servant that they’d be fortunate indeed if all the dwarves had to worry about was indigestion. But he kept silent. Among the dwarves, the elderly were treated with respect.
His father’s bore-hole house was located next to his and Drugar didn’t have far to go. He ran this distance, but then stopped when he reached the door, suddenly reluctant to enter, reluctant to hear what he knew he must. Standing in the darkness, fingering the rune-stone he wore around his neck, he asked for courage of the One Dwarf. Drawing a deep breath, he opened the door and entered the room.