Something in their expressions spoke to her. She said impatiently, “Yes, yes, I know you have your places in the sixteenth century and don’t feel competent here. Well, you must learn to feel otherwise. The Cretan base has all it can do. They can’t spare us anyone until reorganisation is well under way. If we stop to squeal for help, we give the enemy too much chance to discover what is happening.”
The eighth Warden lifted his hand. “Yes, Hu?” Storm said.
“Are we not to inform our own era, brilliance?” the man asked deferentially.
“Of course. That news can go from Crete.” The jade eyes narrowed. She laid fingers to chin and spoke softly. “You yourself will go home by a different route—with Malcolm.”
“Huh?” Lockridge exclaimed.
“Don’t you remember?” Mareth said. His lips writhed. “We have it recorded that he told you. You came and betrayed her to him.”
“I—I—” Lockridge’s mind whirred.
Storm moved near. He rose. She laid a hand on his shoulder and said: “Perhaps I’ve no right to demand this. But the fact cannot be evaded. One way or another, you will seek Brann in his own land and tell him whither I fled. And thus you will begin the chain of events that leads to his defeat. Be proud. It is not granted many to be destiny.”
“But I don’t know—I’m only a savage, next to him—or you—”
“One link in the chain is myself, bound in blindness,” Storm whispered. “The scars will never leave my soul. Do you think I would not wish otherwise? But we have only the one road and walk it we must. This is the last tiling I ask of you, Malcolm, and the greatest. Afterward you may go to your own country. And I shall always remember you.”
He clenched his fists. “Okay, Storm,” he got out in English. “On your account.”
Her smile, gentle and the least bit sad, was more thanks than he felt he deserved.
“Go out to the revels,” she said. “Be happy while you can.”
He bowed and stumbled away.
The sun dazzled him. He didn’t want to join the fun, there was too much that had to be faced down. Instead he wandered off along the shore. Presently a hill was between him and the village. He stood alone and stared across the bay. Wavelets lapped the turf, gulls skimmed white across blueness, a thrush whistled from the oak tree at his back.
“Lynx.”
He turned. Auri walked toward him. Again she wore the garb of her people, bast skirt, foxskin purse, necklace of amber. Thereto had been added in honour the copper bracelet which was Echegon the headman’s, wound tight to fit her wrist; and a dandelion garland made gold across the blowing sun-whitened hair. But her mouth was unsteady and tears blurred the sky-coloured eyes.
“Why, what’s the matter, little one? Why aren’t you at the feast?”
She stopped beside him. Her head drooped. “I wanted to find you.”
“I was around, except for when I was talking to The Storm. But you—” Now that he thought back, Lockridge realised that Auri had not danced or sung or gone with anyone to the greenwood. Instead, she hung about the fringes like a small disconsolate shadow. “What’s wrong? I told everyone the curse was off you. Don’t they believe me?”
“They do,” she sighed. “After what has happened, they find me blessed. I didn’t know a blessing could be so heavy.”
Perhaps only because he didn’t want to dwell on his own troubles, Lockridge sat down and let her cry on his breast. The story came out in broken words. Quite simply, her journey through the underworld had filled her with mana. She had become a vessel of unknown Powers. The Goddess must have singled her out for who could tell what. So who dared meddle with her? She wasn’t shunned, or any such thing. Rather, she was reverenced. They would do whatever she asked, on the spot, except treat her like one of themselves.
“It. . . isn’t . . . that they won’t . . . love me. I could wait . . . for you . . . or someone else, if you really won’t. But . . . when they see me . . . they stop laughing!”
“Poor kid,” Lockridge murmured in the language of his mother. “Poor tyke. What a hell of a reward you got.”
“Are you afraid of me, Lynx?”
“No, of course not. We’ve been through too much together.” Auri hugged him close. Face buried on his shoulder, she stammered, “If I were yours, they, they, they would know that was right. They would know this was the Goddess’ will which had been fulfilled. I would have a place among them again. Would I not?”
He dared not confess she was entirely correct. She would always have a special standing. But once her now unguessable destiny was no longer potential but actual, for the whole world to see, awe would be lost in ordinariness and she be granted plain, easy friendship.
“I don’t think any other man will ever dare touch me,” Auri said. “But that’s best. I don’t want anyone but you.”
Damnation, you idiot! Lockridge raged at himself. Forget her age. She’s no American highschooler. She’s seen birth and love and death her whole life, she’s run free in woods where there are wolves and paddled skin boats through storms, she’s ground grain with stones and dressed skins with her teeth, she’s outlived sickness, North Sea winters, a war, a trip that’d have had most grown men gibberin’. Girls younger than she is—and she’s older than Shakespeare’s Juliet—are already mothers. Can’t you set aside your stupid inhibitions and do her this one kindness?
No. That day in the skiff, he had come very close to surrender. Now he faced dreadfulness. He could only hold to his course by keeping his mind filled with Storm. If he came back alive, he would demand as his payment that she let him forsake all else and follow her. He knew she was indifferent to what he might do with any chance-met female. But he no longer was. He couldn’t be.
“Ami,” he said, cursing his own gaucherie, “my work is not done. I must depart soon, on Her business, and I don’t know if I will ever return.”
She gasped, clutched herself to him and wept until both their bodies shook. “Take me with you! Take me with you!”
A shadow fell across them. Lockridge looked up. Storm stood watching. She carried the Wise Woman’s staff, wreathed with hawthorn; she must have gone forth to bless the people now hers. Dark hair, dress of ocean, cloak of rain, fluttered in a sudden gust, around the tall form.
Her smile was unreadable, but not like the one she had bestowed on him in the Long House. “I think,” she said with an edge to her tone, “I shall grant the child her wish.”
14
Hu the Warden did not expect trouble on his way home. Lockridge was certain to reach Brann, during the interval between Storm’s departure for the twentieth century and her enemy’s devastating counterblow. That fact was in the structure of the universe.
However, details were unknown. (Like the aftermath, Lockridge thought bleakly. Did he or did he not get back alive? The margin of error in a gate made it unfeasible to check that in advance.) If nothing else, Ranger agents who observed Hu’s party might deduce too much. He proceeded with caution.
Even by daylight, unpursued, in the company of a hero and a god, Auri was terrified of the tomb entrance to the corridor. Lockridge saw how forlornly she stiffened her back and said, “Be brave this one more time, as you were before.”