Alea sighed and tilted her head back. "By patience. Time and again I lost my temper with him, but he never yelled back at me, only nodded and looked very serious. Mind you, I'm not saying he didn't argue—but it was more a matter of trying to persuade me to explain myself, of seeking to understand what I meant."
Rod felt another surge of pride in his son but asked nonetheless, "When he understood, did he still argue?"
Alea sat still a moment, frowning and searching her memories. Then she said, "He usually ended up agreeing with me." Then, "I don't suppose we ever argued about anything really important. Looking back on it, I'd have to say those quarrels were really his explaining his ideas to me three different ways and telling me all his reasons for them—and once I understood why he wanted to do a thing, I found he always made sense. Well, almost always," she amended, "but the other time or two, I was willing to go along with him and let him find out for himself how mistaken he was."
Rod's smile fairly glowed. "But you didn't realize you loved him."
"No, just that he was my shield-companion" Alea turned to him with a frown. "You don't mean that kind of patience can only come from love!"
"Not always, no," Rod said, "but usually. How long did it take you to realize it?"
"Four years." Alea's gaze strayed back to the fire. "It was only a few months ago, really. We were on a planet where the colony had deteriorated into a set of warring clans. I realized that I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, to …" She broke off, blushing. "I still wasn't willing to call it love, though. That didn't happen until his little brother… until Gregory sent him word that…" She remembered why Rod was out in this forest and changed her wording. "… That his mother was ill. He became so worried then, so sad and solemn, and I knew that it was no time to pick a fight, that all I could do for him was to be quiet and wait for him to talk—then listen." She frowned, puzzled by her own behavior. "I suppose that was the first time I'd been so worried about him that I only thought about his needs, not my own—and he had done it for me so many times!"
She was silent, staring at the fire. Rod sat and waited.
"Yes, that was the first time," Alea said. "Come to think of it, it was the first time I'd ever been sure that he was so preoccupied that I didn't need to be on my guard, that I let myself be really open to him. He was so vulnerable, hurting so badly, and it would have been so very wrong to do anything that might have wounded him then."
Rod waited again, but she stayed silent. At last he said, "So you finally caught a glimpse of him as he really is."
"Yes." Alea nodded. "The inner Magnus, the little boy inside the man, the very young man who'd been hurt so badly by love." She turned to Rod with a slight frown. "That's why I had to come find you, you see—to learn why Allouette hurt him and how the hurt could have stabbed so deeply that the boy inside would have been afraid to love again, no matter how fearless the man might have become."
Rod gazed at her a minute and longer, then closed his eyes and nodded. "There are others who know him well enough to tell you that."
"Not any longer," Alea said. "His brothers and sister told me that themselves. He's changed so much, they said, that they don't really feel they know him any more."
"But they do know who hurt him, and why," Rod said gently.
Twenty-Three
"WELL, SO DO I." ALEA SAID. "IT WAS ALLOUETTE, I've learned that much—but I don't know how she hurt him, don't really understand how she could have cut him so deeply." She scowled, anger gathering. "I don't think I can ever forgive her for that!"
"Don't be sure," Rod pleaded. "It wasn't the Allouette we know now that scarred him. The woman you've met still has to be distracted from hating herself for her crimes."
"I'll agree with her every word," Alea said bitterly. "How could Cordelia and Geoffrey forgive her? How could Gregory fall in love with a woman who could do that to a man?"
"Because he didn't have much choice." Rod turned away to gaze at the fire. "Of course, they all think they know what Allouette did, but Gregory was too young to understand. Even Geoffrey didn't, though I'm sure he thought he did. Cordelia, though, she was old enough to know. In fact, it was she who helped patch him up."
"But she won't talk about it," Alea said. "She won't violate his confidence, she told me. That means you're the only one who knows Magnus well enough to tell me what I need to know, and who might be willing."
"He won't tell you himself?" Rod's brow creased with sadness. "There was a time when he was very open."
"Was there really?" Alea stared into his eyes with an intensity that was almost frightening. "When he was a boy? Tell me of him!"
Rod studied her a few minutes, then smiled with nostalgia as he looked away. "He was bright and quick, though always with that exaggerated sense of responsibility that comes with being the eldest…".
"There must have been a time when he wasn't eldest," Alea pressed. "Cordelia is three years younger than he, isn't she? What was he like when he was an only child?"
"Bold." Rod smiled back over the years. "A sunny disposition, always happy, somewhat mischievous—and very bold. It never occurred to him to be afraid." He turned to her, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. "He was blond then, you know—golden-haired."
"No." Alea stared wide-eyed, drinking in every bit of information. "How could he have grown to be black-haired?"
"That was the result of a little family trip we took," Rod said, "an excursion into a land of faery, where magic really worked, and where we discovered that we each had an analog, a person very much like us fulfilling a role very much like the ones we hold here on Gramarye."
"This is only a story, isn't it?" Alea asked.
"No, it's quite a bit more." Rod told her how three-year-old Geoffrey had been kidnapped through a dimensional gate and how the whole family had gone after him and how, years later when all four children were in a predicament that went beyond even their powers, Magnus had reached out to that alternate self and borrowed bis talents—but had gained more than he expected, for his hair had turned black, as his analogue's was, and his sunny nature had developed a somber side that was usually hidden but surfaced when he was distracted.
"Too fanciful to believe," Alea breathed, but Rod could see in her face that she did.
"I came back from it with a temper that was absolutely vile," Rod admitted. "It took years for me to expunge it— and that, only with Gwen's help."
"Is that what Magnus meant when he said you were cured when he was cursed?" Alea asked.
"Did he say that?" Rod asked in surprise, then, "Yes, I can see how he would. Not then, of course—years later. I'd lapsed into mental illness, you see—the aftereffects of an attempt at poisoning, but it's past now …"
Alea remembered what Magnus had told her and reserved her own opinion on the issue.
"I've always felt very guilty about that." Rod stared into the fire. "If I hadn't gone crazy just then, if I could have been more patient and understanding, maybe I could have protected him…" His voice trailed off; his stare intensified.
Alea saw his pain and reached forward to rest her hand on his in sympathy. "You can't blame yourself for being ill," she said softly.
"No. No, I can't, can I?" Rod turned to her with a bleak smile. "Or if I can, I shouldn't. But the timing was absolutely deplorable—a cursed coincidence, if you will."
The word struck an alarm inside Alea. She stiffened and said, "Magnus told me that you taught him to be wary of coincidence."