She shook her head. “That you make me feel so much.”
He felt himself treading on dangerous ground, but went forward nevertheless. “You asked me before why I came after you when you fell. The truth is, I had to. I am in love with you.”
Her face lost all expression. “You cannot be in love with me,” she whispered.
He smiled bleakly. “I’m afraid I have no choice in the matter. This isn’t something I can help.”
She looked at him for a long time and then shuddered. “Nor can I help what I feel for you. But while you are certain of your feelings, mine simply confuse me. I do not know what to do with them. I have my father’s purpose to fulfill, and my feelings for you and yours for me cannot be allowed to interfere with that.”
“They don’t have to,” he said, taking her hands firmly now. “They can just be there.”
Her silver hair shimmered as she shook her head. “I think not. Not feelings such as these.”
He kissed her again and this time she kissed him back. He breathed her in as if she were a flower. He had never felt so certain about anything in his life as how he felt about her.
She broke the kiss and drew away. “Morgan,” she said, speaking his name as if it were a plea.
They rose and went back through the damp grasses to the sheltering trees, to the elm where they had waited out the storm earlier, and sank down again by its roughened trunk. They held each other as children might when frightened and alone, protecting against nameless terrors that waited just beyond the bounds of their consciousness, that stalked their dreams and threatened their sleep.
“My father told me as I left the Gardens of my birth that there were things he could not protect me against,” she whispered. Her face was close against Morgan’s, soft and smooth, her breath warm. “He was not speaking of the dangers that would threaten me—of Uhl Belk and the things that live in Eldwist or even of the Shadowen. He was speaking of this.”
Morgan stroked her hair gently. “There isn’t much of anything that you can do to protect against your feelings.”
“I can close them away,” she answered.
He nodded. “If you must. But I will tell you first that I am not capable of closing my feelings away. Even if my life depended on it, I could not do so. It doesn’t make any difference who you are or even what you are. Elemental or something else. I don’t care how you were made or why. I love you, Quickening. I think I did from the first moment I saw you, from the first words you spoke. I can’t change that, no matter what else you ask of me. I don’t even want to try.”
She turned in his arms, and her face lifted to find his. Then she kissed him and kept on kissing him until everything around them disappeared.
When they woke the next morning the sun was cresting the horizon of a cloudless blue sky. Birds sang and the air was warm and sweet. They rose and walked to the riverbank and found the Rabb slow-moving and placid once more.
Morgan Leah looked at Quickening, at the curve of her body, the wild flow of her silver hair, the softness of her face, and the smile that came to his face was fierce and unbidden. “I love you,” he whispered.
She smiled back at him. “And I love you, Morgan Leah. I will never love anyone again in my life the way I love you.”
They plunged into the river. Rested now, they swam easily the distance that separated the island from the mainland. On gaining the far shore, they stood together for a moment looking back, and Morgan fought to contain the sadness that welled up within him. The island and their solitude and last night were lost to him except as memories. They were going back into the world of Uhl Belk and the Black Elfstone.
They walked south along the river’s edge for several hours before encountering the others. It was Carisman who spied them first as he wandered the edge of a bluff, and he cried out in delight, summoning the rest. Down the steep slope he raced, blond hair flying, handsome features flushed. He skidded the last several yards on his backside, bounded up, and raced to intercept them. Throwing himself at Quickening’s feet, he burst into song. He sang:
It was a ridiculous song, but it made Morgan smile nevertheless. In moments, the others had joined them as well, gaunt Pe Ell, his dark anger at having lost Quickening giving way to relief that she had been found again; bearish Horner Dees, gruffly trying to put the entire incident behind them; and the enigmatic Walker Boh, his face an inscrutable mask as he complimented Morgan on his rescue. All the while, an exuberant Carisman danced and sang, filling the air with his music.
When the reunion finally concluded the company resumed its journey, moving away from the Charnals and into the forestlands north. Somewhere far ahead, Eldwist waited. The sun climbed into the sky and hung there, brightening and warming the lands beneath as if determined to erase all traces of yesterday’s storm.
Morgan walked next to Quickening, picking his way through the slowly evaporating puddles and streams. They didn’t speak. They didn’t even look at each other. After a time, he felt her hand take his.
At her touch, the memories flooded through him.
Chapter Seventeen
They walked north for five days through the country beyond the Charnals, a land that was green and gently rolling, carpeted by long grasses and fields of wildflowers, dotted by forests of fir, aspen, and spruce. Rivers and streams meandered in silver ribbons from the mountains and bluffs, pooling in lakes, shimmering in the sunlight like mirrors, and sending a flurry of cooling breezes from their shores. It was easier journeying here than it had been through the mountains; the terrain was far less steep, the footing sure, and the weather mild. The days were sun-filled, the nights warm and sweet smelling. The skies stretched away from horizon to horizon, broad and empty and blue. It rained only once, a slow and gentle dampening of trees and grasses that passed almost unnoticed. The spirits of the company were high; anticipation of what lay ahead was tempered by renewed confidence and a sense of well-being. Doubts lay half-forgotten in the dark grottos to which they had been consigned. There was strength and quickness in their steps. The passage of the hours chipped away at uncertain temperaments with slow, steady precision and like a stonecutter’s chisel etched and shaped until the rough edges vanished and only the smooth surface of agreeable companionship remained.
Even Walker Boh and Pe Ell called an unspoken truce.
It could never be argued reasonably that they showed even the remotest inclination toward establishing a friendship, but they kept apart amiably enough, each maintaining a studied indifference to the other’s presence. As for the remainder of the company, constancy was the behavioral norm. Horner Dees continued reticent and gruff, Carisman kept them all entertained with stories and songs, and Morgan and Quickening feinted and boxed with glances and gestures in a lovers’ dance that was a mystery to everyone but them. There was in all of them, save perhaps Carisman, an undercurrent of wariness and stealth. Carisman, it seemed, was incapable of showing more than one face. But the others were circumspect in their dark times, anxious to keep their doubts and fears at bay, hopeful that some mix of luck and determination would prove sufficient to carry them through to the journey’s end.
The beginning of that end came the following day with a gradual change in the character of the land. The green that had brightened the forests and hills south began to fade to gray. Flowers disappeared. Grasses withered and dried. Trees that should have been fully leafed and vibrant were stunted and bare. The birds that had flown in dazzling bursts of color and song just a mile south were missing here along with small game and the larger hoofed and horned animals. It was as if a blight had fallen over everything, stripping the land of its life.