“A different question?”
“Yes,” Shasa said as he, too, gazed off across the harbor. “Perhaps you should ask yourself what you want. Do you want to be the Drakis of the prophecy. . or do you want something else?”
Drakis stared at the balding man sitting next to him for a moment.
“Because if you’re looking for something else. . then you might consider looking down that upper path around the western hill,” Shasa said casually. “I believe I saw Mala following that same path toward the Lace Pools not ten minutes ago.”
Drakis smiled and stood up at once. “Thank you, Elder Shasa!”
“Write your own destiny, Drakis,” Shasa called after the warrior as he sprinted down the path.
Drakis could hear the cascade of the Lace Falls before he saw it, a gentle, quiet roar of water tripping down a rock face. The warrior in him knew that it masked the sound of his approach, and almost without thought he softened his footfalls and stepped more gingerly down the beaten path that wound between the dense undergrowth and the tree canopy above. The stream ran down the slope next to him, its clear, cool water rushing down toward Nothree far below. Before him, the forest was brightening as he neared the clear area around the pool.
He stopped just short of the water’s edge, holding his breath.
Mala.
She stood in the pool beneath the falls, the cascade of white water splashing around her shoulders and masking her body in tantalizing sheets. He could just make out the sweeping curve of her back above the surface of the pool, a hint of her breasts and the profile of her elegant neck as her face turned up into the tumbling water.
Mala turned toward the pool and dove, the momentary sight of her shoulders, waist, hips and legs shining in the morning sun taking his breath once more before the lacy foam on the surface that gave the pool its name hid her from him.
Her head surfaced near the center of the pool. She reached up out of the water with her glistening arms, and pushed the water back from her short hair.
“Hello,” he called gently across the water.
Mala turned suddenly toward him, but her startled, angry stare softened at once. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” she said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. “I claimed this pool, and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else-no matter how badly they need bathing-and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”
“I didn’t know you could swim,” Drakis said, moving to the shore of the pool and sitting down.
Mala took in a luxurious breath. “Neither did I, but I must have learned at some point. It feels so right. . and I’ve probably left so much of the road in this pool that it will probably foul the stream for several months. Oh, but it’s good to be clean again! What do you think of my hair?”
Mala turned around. Her red hair was wet, but he could already tell it was shaped differently than he remembered. “That’s a new look for you. When did that happen?”
Mala smiled and turned her head. “Several of the women from Nothree took it upon themselves to trim my ragged mop into this more pleasing form. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” Drakis said as he reached down and removed his sandals, “I like it a great deal.”
“Now, you can stop right there,” Mala said, though there was a smile still playing at the edges of her pout. “I said this is my pool, and brutal warriors are not allowed to share it.”
“I just want to put my feet in,” Drakis complained. “Surely you cannot deny me the opportunity to wash these travel-weary feet?”
“You? Travel weary?” Mala said. “You’ve done nothing but travel, Drakis-and dragged us all along with you.” She affected a serious look on her face, lowering her voice. “We go north! Keep going north! Don’t know where it is. . but it’s north!”
“Fine, have your laugh,” Drakis said, though he was chuckling as well. He slipped his feet into the water. “But it got us here, Mala. . and here is not a bad place to be.”
“No,” she said softly. “Here is a good place.”
Drakis paused for a moment and then, reaching up over his shoulders with both arms, grabbed the back of his tunic and pulled it off over his head.
“You can just stop right there, warrior-boy,” Mala said sternly.
“It’s a mess!” Drakis replied holding out the rumpled cloth. “Look at it! Hasn’t been washed in weeks. . I’ll bet it would move on its own if I left it standing. People won’t talk to me, Mala, for the stench of it. This shirt needs a cleaning. . it’s just a courtesy.”
Mala giggled. “Those are the worst excuses I have ever heard! Can’t you come up with something more creative?”
“ ‘Warrior-boy?’ ” Drakis smirked.
“Very well, that wasn’t my best either, but you have me at a disadvantage.”
“So you need clothes to think?”
Mala smiled through her pout once more. “I don’t seem to be thinking very clearly without them.”
Drakis laughed again, plunging his shirt deep into the pool. Then he drew the wet cloth up, wrung it out and then stopped, just holding it.
“What is it, Draki?” Mala asked, her lithe arms making eddies in the surface of the pool.
He stopped. “It’s good to hear you call me that again.”
“So what is it?” she urged.
“I am weary of the road, Mala,” he said in a voice that barely carried over the rushing sound of the waterfall. “I’ve been fighting all my life for things that meant nothing to me. . for masters who thought of me as property and who didn’t care if I lived or died. Now with all this ‘prophecy’ nonsense. . it feels as though everyone wants me to be something or somebody for them again. I’m tired of living my life for everyone else’s expectations. . everyone else’s life.”
“What do you want, Draki?” Mala said quietly.
“I want. .”
Drakis struggled for a moment. It was a new thought for him and he was having trouble even putting it into words.
“I want. . something of my own.”
“Something of your own?”
“Yes,” Drakis said, his words forming with more conviction around the idea. “I want a place like this, a life that has nothing to do with the Iblisi or the Imperium, or mad dwarves, or prophecies, or this damn song that keeps calling me to a destiny I never asked for and certainly do not want. I want. . I want this place, a small home in the village, cool water to drink, food to eat. I want children to raise and a life that is my own to share and. .”
“And?” Mala asked, pushing backward through the water.
“And. . and I want to know how to swim,” he finished.
Mala laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“The great big warrior afraid of the water!”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“Draki. .”
“Yes, Mala?”
“You shouldn’t be afraid,” she said softly. “I’m standing on the bottom. It’s not that deep.”
Invisible to them both, Ethis the chimerian stood watching Drakis and Mala from the shore of the pool. His skin blended so perfectly with the foliage that had they known he was there, they would not have been able to see him even were they looking directly at the spot where he stood.
All they might have discerned was the movement of the cloth as he fingered Mala’s gown where she had draped it over a bush.
But they would have had to look quickly. . for in the next moment, he was gone.
CHAPTER 40
Belag crouched down in the lodge of the Elders, peering intently at the pictographs on the walls.