Despite himself, what he noticed most were her wounds. Bruises, scrapes, cuts, and old scars mapped a tapestry of past battles over her skin. They did not detract from her beauty-he had spent his entire life seeing scars on the men of the mines-but it pained him to consider her suffering so.
“I suppose not,” he answered belatedly, shucking Pathil’s cloak. Next, he pulled off the itchy tunic the Hunter had given him. Though he had spent almost his entire life clad so, he felt self-conscious in just his skin and a loincloth.
“Can you swim?” Zera asked.
“A little,” he admitted, then told how he had collected waterbugs and fish on his little river island. He omitted how the flood had swept him downstream, and how if it had not been for Sandros snatching him from the river, he surely would have drowned.
“You ate bugs?” Zera said, wrinkling her nose in playful distaste.
Without waiting for a response, she spun on her heel. Too late Leitos looked away from the rounded, curving flesh of her backside, a sight that burned into his mind, left his mouth dry and his heart stuttering. She hit the surface like a well-thrown blade, barely disturbing the pool.
Leitos jumped in feet first. He popped up, breathless from the unexpected cold. Where she swam effortlessly to the stone wall, Leitos paddled awkwardly.
“This wall is the foot of the pillar you saw outside,” Zera said. “A little way down, there is an opening. Follow it a short way, then swim toward the light.” Leitos, doing all he could not to inhale water, simply nodded. She offered a slow, coy smile, then looked down. “Follow me.” In a graceful movement, her head and feet reversed themselves and she was gone.
Leitos floated amid rising bubbles, took a deep breath, then imitated her dive. Once underwater, he swept his arms back and kicked, the movement unpracticed, but familiar enough to give him confidence.
Darkness fell over him quickly. He kept kicking and reached out with one hand to touch the smooth stone wall. As Zera had promised, an opening presented itself. He swam into it, uncomfortably aware that it was akin to swimming into a yawning mouth. Just as his lungs began to ache for want of a fresh breath, he noticed a hazy glow ahead. He kicked harder, suddenly sure the immense weight of the pillar above him had waited eons for this exact moment to crumble-
He broke the surface before panic set in, and splashed to the edge of the second pool. This one was much smaller than the first, as was the cavern under which it hid itself. A lone shaft of sunlight sliced through the darkness from on high, lighting swirling motes of dust in a golden, enchanted glow. Leitos swam to a thin crescent of sand, climbed out of the water on his hands and knees, then rolled to his back, relishing each breath. The air was warmer in this cavern, and fresher.
“To escape, should the need ever arise,” Zera said, kneeling off to one side, “pass into the darkness just below the opening above. There is a fissure there, almost too narrow for even me, that leads out a little over a mile to the west. The way is dank, close, and blacker than any night. Once in, you cannot turn around. I took that way … once. Wriggling along like a blind worm, that single mile took a day and a night to travel.”
Between imagining what such a journey must have been like, and guessing that the need would have to be great indeed to prompt him to take it, Leitos’s eyes drifted shut. When they opened again, the light had changed from golden to ruddy.
“You have been asleep for hours,” Zera said, smiling. She was sitting cross-legged, idly tracing a finger through the sand.
“And you?” Leitos asked groggily.
“I took what rest I needed,” Zera answered, leaving Leitos to wonder if she had slept at all.
“And now we must swim back,” Leitos said, cringing at the memory of the cold water and the dark, breathless passage under the pillar.
“No point waiting,” Zera said with a playful grin.
She hopped to her feet, strode near, and leaned down. Her hair, hanging loose, tickled his nose. Her nearness set his heart to racing, but before he could do anything about it one way or another, she caught him under the arms, lifted him as easily as if he were a babe, and tossed him, squawking, into the pool.
Having made the trip once, the return swim was not nearly as terrifying as before. He popped up at the same time as Zera and paddled quickly, wanting to beat her to dry land. Zera, sensing what he was about, stroked smoothly to the lip of the pool, getting there just ahead of him. As with all she did, she climbed out of the pool with a uncanny grace, then stood waiting for him, water sluicing over her skin.
Mildly disgruntled, Leitos glanced at her hand held out to help him up. With a conceding nod, he took her hand. Before she could settle her feet, he abruptly jerked backward. Startled, Zera yelped as she flew over his head. Even before the echoing sound of her splash fled the rocky chamber, Leitos hurled himself up and out of the water. He was sitting calmly, as if he had been waiting there for hours, when Zera’s head crested the surface.
Treading water, she gazed at him. The inner light of her eyes danced with some emotion he did not recognize. It scared him a little, that strange fire, so unlike anything he had ever seen, and all the more because of what that radiance hid from him. What is she thinking? he thought, skin prickling.
He barely managed to keep his expression serene, but his heart had tripped into a faster beat. He scooted back when she climbed slowly out of the water, her stare unwavering. She crawled to him faster than he could retreat, the supple muscles of her arms and shoulders flexing and relaxing with every movement.
With a sudden blur of speed she was on him, a breathtaking hunter, him the hapless prey. She loomed, her face inches from his. Her lips stretched, and for a moment gleaming white teeth and twin portals of a green inferno filled his vision.
She abruptly caught the back of his head and drew him close. “Before we sup,” she growled playfully, “I must tend your wounds.”
“W-what?” Leitos rasped, his wounds that last thing on his mind.
“Your hand,” Zera said, sitting back on her heels. One moment she was there, so close his skin still held the memory of her faint heat; the next she had moved away, leaving him with a disturbing sense of loss. Her gaze flickered to his hand.
Leitos blinked rapidly, trying to understand what had just happened. To keep Zera from seeing the confusion in his eyes, he looked down at his hand, the same he had slashed while retrieving his knife when fighting the Alon’mahk’lar. He had forgotten about cutting himself, and during the night the wounds had clotted. Swimming and climbing in and out of the pool had reopened the cuts. Blood, a scrawl of thin reddish ink, stained the pale skin of his palm.
He was still looking at his wounds when Zera moved closer, until their knees touched. Stricken by conflicting thoughts-Is she playing some perverse game? Am I a gullible, self-deceiving fool? — he had not noticed that she had gotten up and returned with supplies. He looked into her face, then quickly away, resolving not to let her ensnare him again by whatever baffling charms she had used before.
Without speaking, she used a rounded wooden rod to grind together a mixture of dried leaves and water in a stone bowl. Once finished, she dipped her fingers into the thick, foul-smelling paste, then daubed a layer on his wounds. Finally, she bandaged his hand with a scrap of faded brown linen. Through it all, her touch was delicate and sure, suggesting she had done the same for others, even herself, many times before.
When at last she glanced up, she did so with a contriteness that troubled Leitos. Hers was not a face made for regrets. “I am sorry I toyed with you,” she said in a rush. Leitos felt a flash of vindication, then tamped it down. He did not want to revel in her apparent shame. She went on.