While the two of them knelt in the sand, patting and stroking each piece, Nim sighing with pleasure, I bit into the little green fruit. "Vasrin's hand!"
Rab grinned, showing his few brown teeth, and in sheer excitement started banging a spoon in one of the pots.
Gerick shot up to sitting. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." My assertion came out as a whimper. My nose was running, my eyes watering, and my lips puckered. Now I knew why they called these things spits. "It's just time for you to wake up. We're going back to Avonar today."
He ruffled his hair tiredly and looked around at Paulo's packing job and Rab carrying our scorched pots off to the cache across the gully. "Earth and sky. You two have a lot of confidence in me. I feel like an empty barrel."
"You must be blind." I swallowed the sour fruit and smiled—or grimaced—at Nim, who had appeared a bit worried at my outburst. As soon as she went back to her admiration of our spare water flasks, I lowered my voice and continued. "At the least, your perception of your own gifts is a bit skewed. As long as you make a habit of what you've learned these past weeks, use the technique to replenish your power, you can do anything you wish. Eat something, consider the universe for a while, and then we'll start your portal-making lessons. And be polite, but don't eat those green things unless you enjoy having your tongue curled."
After a brief trip out of sight, he took a long pull from a water flask, ate his square of cheese, and pocketed two spits with admirable diplomacy, indicating he planned to hoard them for his journey home. Nim and Rab bobbed their heads, but didn't look at him. They had called him "the sleeping demon" and had never addressed a word to him for the entire week. As soon as he turned away, they whispered to me that they urgently needed to go hunting.
While I saw Nim and Rab on their way, promising to leave everything we didn't need tucked into their cache in the rocks, Gerick rolled Paulo onto his side. The sleeping fellow didn't wake, but he did stop snoring.
I sat with my back to the most comfortable rock in the grotto. "Ready for your lesson?"
Gerick stood with his arms folded, looking at nothing. His face, shadowed with several days' growth of reddish hair, was sober and worried, older somehow, and the cast of his skin—a natural red-gold—was deeper than usual. "Before we begin . . ."
I had the sinking premonition that he was going to apologize for something. "Portals are complicated," I said, pointing to the sand in front of me. "We need to get busy if we're going to get out of here today."
"Not until I've— After last night—" He blew softly, rubbed the back of his neck, and then clasped his hands tightly behind his back. "I'm not good with words. You've seen that. All these months I've tried to think what to say to you, and I've come up with nothing but sentiments you would rightly scorn. But I just— Everything you've done, especially last night— You've made me think differently about Dar'Nethi. I have to tell you that. I know it changes nothing about the past. Not many people would even understand what it means, but I think you do."
"Well . . ." Moments passed as I tried to come up with something to say that did not expose the absolutely disproportionate happiness I felt. I had to be quick. Gerick looked as if a knife were slowly sliding across his throat. ". . . that's good then. I'm glad. Though, as a compliment, it's not quite up to the one I got last night when you were falling out of your saddle. I was told that I was 'the damnedest woman this side of the Lady Seri.' "
He laughed then. Deep. Heartfelt. Resonant with health and good humor and hope as only the laughter of those who know the truth of pain and grief can be. I laughed, too, and for once tried not to analyze or question, but just to enjoy a moment of quiet grace.
Chapter 31
After an hour of listening to a lecture on Dar'Nethi enchantments and power-gathering in general, another discussing portal creation in particular, and another of intense questioning about particular aspects of defensive and offensive combat spells about which I could offer little information, Gerick began to work on his portal-making. After two hours of exhausting practice to get each step perfect, four false starts, and a trip into Paulo's mind to borrow an exact image of Mistress Aimee's sitting room and the garden just beyond it, he had created a shimmering doorway that hung in the still air of our desert hiding place. The sun was already down, but the brutal heat of afternoon had not yet yielded its sway.
Without seeming to notice the sweat rolling down his brow or the traces of fresh blood streaking the dirty bandages on his hands, Gerick gazed solemnly on his work. "Do you suppose it goes where we intend? Damned awkward if I've mucked it up."
"You were holding back," I said, fanning my face with a tuft of gray grass. "I've told you fifty times: A Dar'Nethi spell-working will never come together perfectly if you starve it. Portals are immense."
"We used everything I had last night. Now we've this portal to make, another oculus to destroy, and who knows what else. I've only been awake a few hours. I can't possibly think or . . . live . . . enough in a few hours to replenish what we'll need."
"You have to open yourself completely when you draw power. Use everything. Not just experience. Not just the world around you at the very moment you're thinking of it. But everything you feel. Everything you are. Everything you remember. You are not a simple Grower who's done nothing but plant seeds his whole life! Your capacity is enormous. The 'fuel' you have to fill it is enormous. Use them."
"I'll try to do better. But there's only so far I can go." He had closed himself off again, just when I thought he was beginning to trust me.
Annoyed, I was more blunt than I intended. "Then sooner or later you'll fail."
Exchanges like this, with half the conversation unspoken, exhausted me. Sometimes I knew what he was trying to say, and sometimes I was completely at sea. No wonder D'Sanya had done all the talking.
While he and Paulo peered into the night beyond the portal, I grumbled to myself that anyone stupid enough to take a Dar'Nethi without talent as a mentor deserved no better teaching than he got, and I tried to convince myself that I was not at all unhappy that Gerick had no need to use my hands for portal-making. The residual effects of his power drifted on the hot air like a shower of cherry blossoms, but nothing would ever compare to the exhilaration of wielding his enchantments with my own hand.
Only the faint orange glow of a small fire gleamed in the darkness beyond the portal. But Paulo swore he could see through the garden door to the blue couch where Aimee had once sat drinking tea, and the low table where she had set the book she could read so amazingly with her fingers, and the tapestry footstool where she had set her foot—her most elegantly perfect foot, his expression reported. Mercifully he restrained himself from speaking it aloud.
Gerick listened soberly as Paulo finished his earnest description that had so little to do with accurate memory, then shook his head ever so slightly as his friend stepped through the portal. I stood right behind Gerick to watch, and I couldn't help myself stretching up on tiptoe and whispering in his ear. "He needs to tell her, you know."
Gerick peered over his shoulder, frowning as if I'd reminded him of a step he'd missed. "What's that?"
"How he feels. She can't see it, and he doesn't talk enough for her to hear it. She doesn't know."
The wrinkles in his brow smoothed. "I think he could as easily claim the throne of Avonar."
I considered pointing out that perhaps he could advise his friend, as it seemed he'd found ways to say such things himself. But it would perhaps not be a wise thing—and certainly not a kind thing—to tweak the bruised heart of a powerful sorcerer who had once been a devil.