- “Will he?” Paithan looked at her, a look so strange and piercing that it was Rega who now fell back a step before him. “Will he be gone a long, long time?”
“I don’t—” Rega faltered.
Paithan lunged at her, grabbed the woman by the shoulders and kissed her, hard, his teeth cutting her soft lips. He tasted berry-juice and blood, Rega struggled, squirming in his grasp. Of course, she’d have to put up a token resistance.
“Don’t fight it!” he whispered. “I love you! I can’t live without you!” He expected her to melt, to moan, to cover him with kisses. And then Roland would come along, shocked, horrified, hurt. Only money would ease the pain of betrayal.
And I’ll laugh! I’ll laugh at both of them! And I’ll tell them where to stick their money …
One arm around her back, the elf pressed the woman’s half-naked body up against his. His other hand sought soft flesh.
A violent kick to the groin sent a flash of pain through Paithan. The elf doubled over. Strong hands hit him on the collar bone, knocking him backward, sending him crashing into the underbrush.
Face flushed, eyes flaring, Rega stood over him. “Don’t you ever touch me again! Don’t come near me! Don’t even talk to me!”
Her dark hair rose, ruffled like the fur of a scared cat. She turned on her heel and stalked off.
Paithan, rolling on the ground in agony, had to admit he was now extremely confused.
Returning from his search for a more suitable way down onto the trail below, Roland crept back stealthily over the moss, hoping—once again—to catch Rega and her “lover” in a compromising position. He reached the place on the trail where he’d left his sister and the elf, drew in a breath to yell the outrage of an offended husband, and peeped out from the cover of a gigantic shadowcove plant. He exhaled in disappointment and exasperation.
Rega was sitting on the edge of the moss bank, huddled up in a ball very much like a bristle-back squirrel, her back hunched, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs. He could see her face from the side and, by her dark and stormy expression, could almost imagine the quills standing up all over her. His sister’s “lover” stood as far from her as possible, on the other edge of the bank’s lip. The elf was leaning at rather an odd angle, Roland noticed, almost as if favoring some tender part of himself.
“Strangest damn way to conduct a love affair I ever saw!” Roland muttered.
“What do I have to do for that elf—draw him a picture? Maybe baby elves are slipped under the cracks of the doors at night! Or maybe that’s what he thinks. We’re going to have to have a little man to man talk, looks like.
“Hey,” he called aloud, making a great deal of noise plunging out of the jungle, “I found a place, a ways down, where there’s what looks like a rock ledge that sticks out of the moss. We can lower the baskets onto that, then drop ’em down the rest of the way. What happened to you?” he added, looking at Paithan, who was walking hunched over and moving gingerly. “He fell,” said Rega.
“He did?” Roland—who had felt much the same way once after an encounter with an unfriendly barmaid—glanced at his sister in some suspicion. Rega hadn’t exactly refused to go ahead with the plan to seduce the elf. But, the more Roland thought about it, he recalled that she hadn’t exactly said she would, either. He didn’t dare say anything more, however. Rega’s face might have been frozen by a basilisk, and the look she cast him might have turned her brother to stone, as well.
“I fell,” agreed Paithan, voice carefully expressionless. “I—uh—straddled a tree limb coming down.”
“Ouch!” Roland winced in sympathy.
“Yeah, ouch,” repeated the elf. He didn’t look at Rega. Rega wasn’t looking at Paithan. Faces set, jaws rigid, both stared straight at Roland. Neither actually saw him.
Roland was completely at a loss. He didn’t believe their story and he would have liked very much to question his sister and worm the truth out of her. But he couldn’t very well drag Rega off for a chat without making the elf suspicious.
And then, when Rega was like this, Roland wasn’t certain he wanted to be alone with her anyway. Rega’s father had been the town butcher. Roland’s father had been the town baker. (Their mother, for all her faults, had always seen to it that the family was well fed-) There were times when Rega bore an uncanny resemblance to her father. One of those times was now. He could almost see her standing over a freshly butchered carcass, a bloodthirsty gleam in her eye. Roland stammered and waved his hand vaguely. “The … uh , . . spot I found is in that direction, a few hundred feet. Can you make it that far?”
“Yes!” Paithan grit his teeth.
“I’ll go see to the tyros,” stated Rega.
“Quin, here, can help—”
“I don’t need any help!” Rega snapped.
“She doesn’t need any help!” Paithan muttered.
Rega went one way, the elf went the opposite, neither looking at the other. Roland stood in the middle of the empty clearing, rubbing his stubbly brownish blond growth of beard.
“You know, I think I was mistaken. She really doesn’t like him. And I think her hate’s beginning to rub off on the elf! Things between them were going so well, too. I wonder what went wrong? It’s no good talking to Rega, not when she’s in this mood. There must be something I can do.” He could hear his sister pleading, flattering, trying to get the reluctant tyros to move. Paithan, hobbling along the edge of the moss bank, cast a disgusted glance in Rega’s direction.
“There’s only one thing I can think of to do,” Roland mused. “Just keep throwing them together. Sooner or later, something’s bound to happen.”
17
“Are you sure that’s rock?” Paithan asked. Peering down into the gloom at a patch of grayish white beneath them, barely visible through a tangle of vines and leaves.
“Sure, I’m sure,” answered Roland. “Remember, we’ve traveled this route before.”
“It’s just that I’ve never heard of rock formations this far up in the jungle.”
“We’re not exactly that far up anymore, remember? We’ve dropped quite a ways down.”
“Well, we’re not getting anywhere standing here staring at it!” put in Rega, hands on her hips. “We’re cycles late with the delivery as it is. And you mark my words, Blackbeard’ll try to shave off the price. I’ll go down, if you’re afraid, elf!”
“I’ll go,” countered Paithan. “I don’t weigh as much as you do and if the outcrop is unstable, I’ll—”
“Weigh as much! Are you saying that I’m fa—”
“You both go,” interrupted Roland in soothing tones. “I’ll lower you and Rega down there, Quin, then you lower Rega on down to the bottom. I’ll send the packs to you and you can pass Stem on down to my sis—er—my wife.”
“Look, Roland, I think the elf should lower you and I down—”
“Yes, Redleaf, that does, indeed, seem to me to be a much better solution—”
“Nonsense!” Roland interrupted, pleased with his own de-VlBUsness, further plots fomenting in his mind. “I’m the strongest and from here down to that outcrop is the longest haul. Any arguments there?”
Paithan glanced at the human male—with his square-jawed handsome face and his rippling biceps—and clamped his mouth shut. Rega didn’t look at her brother at all. Biting her lip, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared down into the shadowy gloom of the jungle below.
Paithan fixed a rope around a tree limb, cinched it tight around himself and hopped over the edge of the moss bank almost before Roland was there to steady him. He rappeled himself easily off the steep sides of the bank, Roland holding the line to keep the elf steady.
The line suddenly went slack.
“All right!” came a shout from below. “I’m here!” There was a moment’s silence, then the elf’s voice echoed upward, filled with disgust. “This isn’t rock! It’s a damn fungus!”