Burel looked about. "The women of Ilsitt were always talking together-especially when their blood came upon them… or not-and often when I came near they would stop."
Egil sighed. "Women's secrets, I suppose."
"Heh," barked Alos. "Females. A bunch of cackling hens, if you ask me."
"Have you been around many females, Alos?" asked Burel.
The old man looked at the big man, Alos's white eye glaring. "Me? Of course not. I've other interests."
Now Burel looked at Egil. The Fjordlander shrugged and replied, "Some. Though I think when it comes to these matters, Delon has the most experience of us all."
"Let's go see," rumbled Burel. "I have a question to ask."
Together, Burel and Egil urged their camels ahead, but Alos did not ride forward with them.
"How will I know I am in love, Dara?"
The Dylvana looked at Ferret and smiled. "Thou shall know, for every idle thought thou hast will be filled with pleasant visions of him. Thou wilt admire his strengths, see his goodness, but not be blind to his failings. And thou wilt desire intimacy-"
"Intimacy?"
"Not merely lust, Ferai, but a sharing of feelings, of heart and mind and soul as well as a physical sharing."
Aiko let out a long sighing breath. "What you name physical sharing, Dara, seems like surrender to me."
Arin looked at Aiko in surprise.
"Surrender?"
"Yes, Burel, it is somewhat like surrender. You are, um, invading her being."
Burel sighed. "I don't believe that Lady Aiko has ever surrendered to anything in her life. She is a warrior beyond compare."
Delon nodded, then said, "But she is also a woman and you are a man. You must woo her, and if she desires you, she will make it known."
Burel blew out a breath. "I have no experience in wooing. The women of Ilsitt came to me, rather than I seeking them out."
Delon laughed. "It must have seemed as if you had found Paradise, eh?"
"They seemed to enjoy it, as did I, physically. But something was ever missing," replied Burel. "There always seemed to be a fulfillment lacking, as if there were no true sharing."
"A sharing?"
"Yes, Aiko, a sharing." Arin glanced far ahead to where Egil rode. "When I am with Egil I do not feel as if I 'surrender,' but as if I share instead. Each of us cares for the other's need-physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually-and we are both fulfilled." Arin rode a moment in silence, then said, "Do not take me wrong: one need not be in love to crave a physical sharing-honest lust will drive one to the heights of desire, and slaking that desire most wonderful. But without love there is no lasting contentment… pleasure, yes; tranquility, no. Lust without love is that way: full of fire and passion, but empty of serenity when quenched."
Ferret shook her head. "As to the physical part, in my long experience there was no pleasure, no caring involved… only force and brutality, only violence." She gritted her teeth in memory.
Arin looked at her in dismay. "A man did this to you?"
Ferret nodded.
"Does he yet live?" growled Aiko.
"No," replied Ferret, her voice grim.
"For the first time in my life," said Delon, sighing, "I believe I am truly in love. Yet Ferai seems to withdraw whenever we begin to get close."
"Adon," said Egil, "that's not the case between Arin and me."
Burel looked at Delon. "Perhaps it is something in Ferret's past which pushes her away."
Arin sighed. "Ferai, thou must try to accept the past for what it truly was: the man who forced thee was an uncaring, savage animal interested only in its own immediate gratification. There was no love involved, not even sharing. There are many like him in the world. Yet, there are uncounted more who are gentle and caring. Egil is one such. So, too, I deem, are Burel and Delon.
"And thou, Aiko, thou shouldst set aside this notion of surrender. When thou dost finally take a man into thine embrace or unto thy bed, it will be thou who wilt choose, thou who wilt say yea or nay, and should he be an uncaring beast-"
"He will not survive," growled Aiko.
Arin smiled. "Ah, yes. But should he be gentle and loving and caring, then it will be no surrender but a glorious alliance instead."
"I think Burel is right, Delon," said Egil. "Something untoward may have happened to Ferret in the past. Yet any fool can see she cherishes you… or at least this fool can see such. You must be nothing but gentle with her, and perhaps her inclination to withdraw will fade.
"And you, Burel. Aiko is indeed a warrior without peer. You must treat her as no less. But as Delon says, she is also a woman. If you love her and she loves you, there will come a time when you two will become lifemates, soulmates, as have Arin and I, and that void you've felt with other women will be filled at last."
"No invasion? No surrender?"
Arin shook her head, No.
"Hmm." Aiko looked speculatively ahead at the men faring westward on their camels. Then she sighed, and as if reluctant to admit any kind of weakness, she said, "I have absolutely no experience in this at all, Dara."
"None of us do at first, Aiko," replied Arin. "I will help thee all I can."
"And my experience is all bad," said Ferret. "Too, I am frightened."
"Oh, my child, thou must set aside thy fear. It will not be easy, for given thine experience thou wilt need the most courage and trust of all, yet thou couldst not have survived on thine own if thou didst not possess grit. As to the trust, that can only come with time and gentle touch, yet it will not come at all if thou dost take no risk."
And so they fared westerly, three males in the lead in deep conversation, three females trailing a distance after in gentle dialogue as well, and in between rode an old man who snorted, "Lovers and would-be lovers, bah!"
They came into Aban on the seventeenth of December, just after the setting of the sun. Once again they made their way to the Golden Crescent inn. And on this night as Egil and Arin arranged for a room of their own, Aiko stepped to Burel and, looking him in the eye, said through her silken veil, "Will you share my room?"
As Burel stammered out his reply, Delon caught Ferai's gaze with his, and she looked long at him, but in the end she said, "I will sleep alone."
Egil made arrangements through the innkeeper to sell the camels back to the stable from which they had come, and then, as Arin arranged for hot baths for all, he and Alos made their way down to the docks to see to the state of the Brise.
"We couldn't find any Yilan Koy on any chart that Alos and I bought," said Egil, freshly scrubbed and seated at supper, the first hot meal any of them had had since setting out from the Temple of the Labyrinth six days past. He turned to Burel. "It was Yilan Koy, right?"
Burel nipped another mouthful of shish kebab from his skewer. He chewed slowly, thoroughly, and finally swallowed and then said, "That's what my mother said. My father sailed from Yilan Koy somewhere along the coast of Kistan."
"This would go well with ale," said Alos as he plucked up a gobbet of lamb that had fallen onto his plate. Like all the others, the old man was clean again. It hadn't even required any urgings from Aiko for him to take his bath, for as he had said, he "needed to get the red out."
As Arin reached for the steaming rice, she said, "Perhaps it is shown on thy charts by another name."
"True," replied Egil. "Yilan Koy sounds like no common name I ever heard. And the charts we purchased are written in the common tongue."
"Damned hard to find, too," grunted Alos. "We had to pay a pretty penny to get ones we could read."
She turned to Ferret. "Mayhap our scholar at the archives can translate for us."