I also was now in a far better way of understanding how the six people-Alessan, Moreta, Capiam, Desdra, Oklina, and B'lerion-had spent that hour preceding my arrival at Ruatha. I had previously assumed that supplies of needlethom had been available, not that these six courageous people had dared to spend a whole day in the future harvesting the thorns on far Ista.
I understood a great deal-yet it was not enough to help Alessan. I knew only that I wondered how he would find the courage to continue after this latest brutal tragedy.
He came back to consciousness, and awareness of this new sorrow, twenty-four hours later.
I had been dozing, and roused at the slight sound his restlessness occasioned. I had to look away from his haunted, almost wild eyes.
"Desdra drugged me?" When I nodded, my own eyes downcast, he cursed her. "It won't help. Nothing will help. Does anyone know what happened?"
So I told him, somehow able to keep my voice level and calm though my throat kept closing up.
The waves of grief that rolled from the man were palpable. He stared at me when I had finished, eyes burning in his drained white face.
"But Leri and Orlith could go together!" His resentment and fury were compressed into that accusation.
"The eggs. Orlith stays until they hatch, Leri with her."
"Brave Leri! Gallant Orlith!" His sarcasm made me flinch, but the agony in his rigid body, his clenched fists, told me that a different struggle was being fought. "Dragons and riders have many advantages denied us! Would that my father had released me on that Search! When I consider how much different my life would have been…" He turned away from me, his face toward the window. Then, because I knew his view included the burial mounds, I knew why he turned back, his shadowed eyes closed in the taut skin of his tormented face.
"So you have watched me while I slept, loyal Rill. And I shall have a new guardian, no doubt, whenever I wake, to keep me living a life I have no wish to live."
My own anguish spoke then, not the sensible, patient, dutiful, plain member of the Fort Hold Horde, but Suriana's friend, Alessan's newest holder, and someone who valued him far more than she should. Any sorrow may be borne. Time will heal the deepest hurt of heart-but time must be won.
"You may not want to live, Lord Holder of Ruatha, but you don't have the right to die!"
"Ruatha is no longer sufficient reason for me to live!" he told me in a bitter, intense, angry voice. "It's tried to kill me once already."
"And you have fought to save it No one else could have done so much, with so much honor and dignity."
"Honor and dignity mean nothing in the grave!" He flung his arm up, toward the window and the graves of so many.
"You still breathe, and you are Ruatha." I spoke sharply, wondering if anything I said could jolt him out of the course he had tacitly announced. Duty and honor and tradition were such cold substitutes for a beautiful woman and her love. "As your holder. Lord Alessan, I require that you have an heir of your Blood to leave behind you." I surprised myself with the vehemence in my voice, and he frowned as he looked up at me. "Unless you want Fort or Tiliek or Crom Blood to hold Ruatha at your defection. Then I'll mix the fellis for you myself and you can quit!"
"A bargain, then." With a quickness I hadn't expected from a man lying abed so wracked and spent with grief, he was upright, extending an implacable hand to me. "When you are with child, Nerilka, I'll drink that cup."
I stared back at him, aghast that my rallying words had evoked such a response from him, stunned that he misconstrued what I had said and applied it personally to me. Then I realized that he knew my name.
"Your parents have always favored an alliance…" His words were derisive, sneering.
"Not me, Alessan, not me,"
"Why not you, Nerilka? You've shown all the qualities of the perfectly trained Lady Holder. Why else are you so fortuitously at Ruatha? Or did you think to revenge those deaths on me?"
"Oh, no! No! I could no longer endure Fort. Tolocamp sunk himself beneath contempt. How could I remain there when he denied the healers medicine and help. Coming here was chance. I was at Bestrum's when M'barak came and asked for help. How can you know who I am?"
"Suriana." Then, more irritably, he said, "You fostered with her. Rill. You know how endlessly she sketched. Your face appeared in many drawings. How could I not know Nerilka when we finally meet? What I didn't know was why you'd come, so I let you have your anonymity." Then he snapped his fingers impatiently. "Come, girl, it is not so bad a bargain, to be undisputed Lady
Holder of Ruatha, and no Lord to abuse you forever. You can't be afraid of me? I never beat Suriana. Surely she told you that I was a good husband to her."
She had told me that, not in so many words, but implying much more than goodness, but the thought of her now dead, and of his so palpable grief for Moreta, made the tears flow down my cheeks again.
"You are kind and good and brave, and do not deserve to be so ill used by circumstance."
"I seem unable to avoid misfortunes, Nerilka." His voice was harsh, his face coldly set. "Spare me your pity. I have no use for it. Give me instead the child to carry on Ruathan Blood? And the cup?"
How I could have agreed to either part of the bizarre bargain I now wonder, but at the time I thought that surely when the worst of his grief had passed, Alessan would reconsider taking the cup even if I could find the courage to mix it. I would have said anything at that moment
"Then let us begin the first now." His hand compelled me to the bed, but I broke his grip, horrified, not entirely by his precipitous behavior.
"No, I will not imitate Anella."
Alessan regarded me with angry incomprehension.
"Tolocamp had Anella in his bed an hour after he knew my mother was dead."
"Our circumstances are vastly different, Nerilka." His expression was terrible, his eyes now burning.
"You loved Moreta."
A muscle in his cheek twitched and his eyes stared coldly at me, glittering with something so akin to hatred that I recoiled.
"Is that what holds you back, Lady Nerilka?
I'd liefer it be maidenly modesty. I never knew a Fortian to go back on his word."
He taunted me and, exerting pressure on my hand, drew me inexorably to him. I tried to put in words any one of the many reasons why I resisted him then, the main of which was that this was such an inauspicious moment for a proceeding that was reputed to delight the participants.
"A man who has tasted death needs loving to remind him of life, Nerilka." Now his voice was persuasive, and I was very close to capitulation when we both heard the scrape of the outer door and quiet footfalls.
"You are reprieved, Nerilka, but not for long," he said in a swift, low, intense tone. "We have made a bargain-Lord and holder-and it will be consummated, the sooner the better. I long for that cup."
Tuero entered quietly, relief on his kind, long face when he saw that Alessan was awake and talking to me. "Were you wanting anything, Alessan?"
"My clothes," Alessan said, holding out his hand for them. I got clean ones from the press, and Tuero handed him his boots. He dressed quickly, then led us from his room.
If his appearance was a surprise to those in the Hall, his manner was even more of a shock. He collected Deefer, sent a fosterling for Dag, wanted to know where Oklina was, and did not question Desdra's continued presence when she and Oklina arrived together. But he turned sharply away when Oklina reached to embrace him, and sharply requested that Tuero and I join the others in his office. Then, in a low, controlled, but uninflected voice, he told us what must now be accomplished as quickly and thoroughly as possible.