Overwhelmed by the intensity of the sorceress' gaze, Larson closed his eyes. Tears pooled on his lashes, and he spoke around his sobs with gritted teeth. "I'm sorry. Let me pull myself together first." For a brief moment, he hated this woman who was callous enough to stare at a broken man. But when he raised his lids, the sincerity of her pained expression moved him to pity. He let the tears fall where they might and began to relate his dream.
Larson told Silme and Gaelinar of the forest and its strange conformation. He described the eleven streams and their source and was surprised to find he remembered their names. His narrative slowed as he recalled tossing the sword into the burbling spring and the relief inspired by its sacrifice. Even as Larson detailed the final sequence, memory battered against his sanity. He held his gaze on Silme, aware a single glimpse of Gaelinar's slanted eyes would snap his control over the flashbacks.
"There's more." Silme would allow no denial. "Something frightened you."
The tears slackened to a trickle. Larson shook his head with an intensity that whipped his face with hair. "The dream ends there. The rest is:" he sneaked a look at Gaelinar, then closed his eyes tight against dizziness, ": just recollections of horrors I've seen."
Silme pounced on his words without mercy. "For some reason, your mind relates them to this dream. Tell me:"
"No!" The word came out more like a whine than a command. Larson sagged forward on his bedding. His tears discolored the furs in a pool. How can I tell Silme about a world where technology makes equals of the foolish and the skilled? How can I describe a place where there are no heroes or villains, where the lines between good and evil blur to interpretation, where men rape and torture innocents in the name of justice. Larson slumped to one elbow, unable to face his new companions. How can I expect her to understand the feelings of virility and power behind a loaded gun or the camaraderie which makes dismembering the dead seem noble?
Enshrouded in a self-erected tomb of guilt and shame, Larson lay utterly still. He curled into a fetal position as a stream of tears wound uncontrollable lines around his cheeks. The voices he heard sounded dulled by distance.
":close enough to Forste -Mar. We'll take him to the dream-reader."
"We'll talk later. Can you do something for him?"
Leaves crunched beside him as Silme approached and laid her palms gently on his shoulders. Larson raised his head. His tear-blurred vision distorted her beauty to shapelessness. She whispered seemingly meaningless syllables, and the scattered shards of Larson's rationality fused together as her spell blanketed him with peace. As he opened his mouth to speak, he fell into dreamless bliss.
Larson awoke to a dull mental ache, like an old scar in cold weather. Sunlight was already slanting through the branches. He had overslept. He leaped to his feet and bit off an expletive as Silme rose to meet him.
"Here." She pushed a fist-sized strip of jerked venison into his hands. "We'd best be off if we're to reach town by midday."
"Town?" Rubbing his swollen eyes, Larson glanced toward Gaelinar, who was examining the sharpened edge of his katana with approval.
The Kensei pocketed the whetstone and sheathed his sword. " Forste -Mar. It's Silme's hometown." He pointed vaguely northward.
Larson followed the gesture mechanically as he mulled over all the incredible things that had happened to him recently. More accustomed to his new surroundings, now he began to consider details which earlier had been blurred by the necessity for self-preservation. He became aware of the language he spoke as fluently as his companions, a melodious singsong which he supposed was Old Norse. He could not guess why the cold slap of wind did not chill him after the suffocating jungle heat, nor why he remained clean-shaven after two days without a razor.
Larson idly chewed mouthfuls of meat as their journey through the evergreen forest resumed. The clustered trees restricted undergrowth yet remained sparse enough for clear vision and passage. Yearning for a new identity, he paid little attention to their trail. Al Larson died in Vietnam. Let him keep his memories of atrocity and evil. I am Allerum, an elf without a past on a quest sanctioned by gods.
Despite the veracity of the sentiment, Larson's conscience resisted. Ugly recollections fought for control, bloody scenes witnessed by the man he had just denounced; but in the sanctity of the forest, Larson held such thoughts in check. His eyes followed Silme, and he surrendered to a thrill of desire. She moved soundlessly, like a woodland being. For all the effort it cost her, the forest might have adapted to suit her rather than she to it.
Gaelinar pushed past Larson and caught the hand in which Silme held her sapphire-tipped staff. The gesture drew Larson from his struggle with self-identity. Until that moment, he'd never considered there might be more to his companions' relationship than mere friendship. The idea drove him to a sadness which flared to fury. He glared as Silme answered Gaelinar's whispered words with a laugh, and the Kensei took the lead of the party.
He must be twice her age, Larson reminded himself in a rage. Yet jealousy did not blind him to an important fact. He had no way to judge Silme's years. Surely a powerful sorceress could warp time's ravishings with illusion. His stomach lurched at the notion. Beauty by magic seemed deceitful. Yet, Larson thought as reason dispersed anger, why should Silme not take advantage of her craft? Recognition of his own shallowness made Larson flush. There was more to Silme than comeliness. She demonstrated poise, empathy, generosity, pride, and a confidence he sorely missed in himself.
Ruffled by his ponderings, Larson turned his attention back to their surroundings. The terrain grew more hilly, swarming with foxgrape and low, twisted bushes. Passage grew easier as brush gave way to discernible trails beaten to mud by feet, hooves, and wagon wheels. The woods broke suddenly to fields of wind-bowed grain, and the weed-grown path became an obvious road with branches and byways.
Larson hesitated, accustomed to the waist-high, leech-infested swamps of the rice paddies. Gaelinar and Silme continued down the roadway between wheat fields without any apparent worry. But as they turned simultaneously to urge Larson forward, he recognized a solemnity which had escaped him during the journey. He trotted to Silme's side, stared into her eyes, and demanded stridently, "What's the matter?"
She lowered her head until billows of golden hair obscured her face. Her knuckles whitened about her dragonstaff, and she spoke in a dry, quavering whisper. "After your dream I sought Vidarr's guidance. He didn't respond." She raised water-glazed eyes to Larson's curious stare.
A reply seemed necessary, but Larson could think of none. He tried to keep a patronizing tone from his question.
"Does he usually answer you?"
"With images at least." Silme threw back her locks to reveal a face drawn with concern. "I'm his favored attendant. Something terrible has happened."
Unfamiliar with the dealings between gods and men, Larson could offer no real reassurance. He reached for Silme, but Kensei Gaelinar caught his forearm with a tortured cry. "Look there!"
Larson followed the old man's stare. White smoke funneled toward the sky from beyond the next rise. Gaelinar broke into a run, and his companions followed. Larson stubbed a toe in his haste, and his soft, doeskin moccasins did little to dull the impact. Cursing and limping, he caught up with Gaelinar at the hilltop, and the scene below made him forget his pain. Flames danced around an overturned wagon. Beside it, two men pinned a struggling figure to the ground while a third swayed, locked to the wild lurches of the prisoner.
High-pitched, panicked screams drowned Larson's own attempts at breath and cut him to the heart.
Every man draws his limit at an atrocity no amount of coercion could force him to commit. Larson's was rape. More than once, he had turned away while peers in uniform shamed and killed daughters before their helpless fathers. Too moral to join in, at the same time he was unable to risk provoking men on whom his life depended. So he had remained silent, seared by the guilt of a tacit condemnation which might have been approval for all it served the victim or his own conscience. All these thoughts condensed to a boil of emotion.