Oyre grasped his outstretched arm, pulled, kicked at his shin, and stepped back swiftly, propelling him full length into the water.
The moist lips of the pool closed over Laintal Ay. It felt astonishingly hot. He surfaced, yelling for breath.
She leaned down laughing with her hands on her handsome knees.
“You wash yourself before you are fit for me, you flea-bitten warrior!”
He splashed her, smacking the surface of the water between laughter and anger.
When she helped him out, she was considerably softer. She felt slippery in his grasp. As they knelt down in the grass, he slid a hand between her legs, feeling her fine details. Immediately, his seed burst from him across the grass.
“Oh, you fool, you fool!” she cried, and caught him a slap across the chest, her face distorted by disappointment.
“No, no, Oyre, it’s all right. Give me a minute, please. I love you, Oyre, with all my eddre. I want you always, always. Come to me, rouse me again.”
But Oyre stood up, full of annoyance and inexperience. Despite his coaxing words, he felt enraged with her, with himself. He jumped up beside her.
“Scumb you, you shouldn’t be so pretty, you minx!”
He grabbed hold of her arm, swung her brutally round, and thrust her towards the steaming pool. She grabbed his hair, snarling and screeching. Together they tumbled into the water.
He got an arm about her back, caught her underwater, kissed her as they surfaced, grabbing a breast with his left hand. Laughing, they climbed to the muddy bank, rolling over together. He hooked a leg round hers and climbed on top. She kissed him passionately on the lips, thrusting her tongue into his mouth even as he entered her queme.
There they lay in the secret place, serene, ecstatic, making love. The mud beneath them, plastering their sides, emitted comfortable noises, as if full of microbes all copulating to express their joy in life.
She was climbing languorously into her hoxney skins. The soft pelts were distinctively marked with dark blue and light blue stripes, each stripe varying in width as it chased its way down Oyre’s body. The afternoon had become stifling, and thunder rumbled near at hand, occasionally breaking into claps like sharp cries of protest.
Laintal Ay sprawled close, watching Oyre’s movements, eyes half-closed.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he said. “For years. Your flesh is a hot spring. You’ll be my woman. We’ll come here every afternoon.”
She said nothing. She started singing under her breath.
“I want you badly, every day, Oyre. You want me too, don’t you?” She looked at him and said, “Yes, yes, Laintal Ay, I wanted you. But I cannot be your woman.”
He felt the ground tremble under him.
“What do you mean?”
She seemed to hesitate, then she leaned towards him. When he automatically reached for her, she pulled herself away, tucked her breasts into her tunic, and said, “I love you, Laintal Ay, but I am not going to become your woman.
“I always suspected that the academy was just a diversion—a consolation for silly women like Amin Lim. Now the weather’s fine, it has fallen apart. To be honest, only Vry and Shay Tal care about it—and possibly old Master Datnil. Yet I value Shay Tal’s example of independence, and imitate it. Shay Tal will not submit to my father—though I expect she desires him madly, as everyone does—and I follow her example: if I become your possession, I become nothing.”
He scrambled up on his knees, looking wretched. “Not so, not so. You’ll be—everything, Oyre, everything. We’re nothing without each other.”
“For a few weeks, yes.”
“What do you expect?”
“What do I expect…” Her eyes rolled upwards, and she sighed. She smoothed back her still damp hair and looked away, at the young bushes, at the sky, at the birds. “It’s not that I have such a high regard for myself. I can do so little. By remaining independent like Shay Tal, perhaps I can achieve something.”
“Don’t talk that way. You need someone to protect you. Shay Tal, Vry—they’re not happy. Shay Tal never laughs, does she? Besides, she’s old. I’d look after you and make you happy. I want nothing better.”
She was buttoning up her tunic, looking down at the toggles which she herself had designed (to the tailor’s amazement), so that the skins could be put on and off without trouble.
“Oh, Laintal Ay, I’m so difficult. I have difficulty with myself. I don’t really know what I want. I long to dissolve and flow like this wonderful water. Who knows where it comes from, where it goes to?—from the very eddre of earth, maybe… I do love you, though, in my horrid way. Listen, we’ll have an arrangement.”
She stopped fiddling with her tunic and came to stand looking down at him, hands on her hips.
“Do something great and astonishing, one thing, one deed, and I’ll be your woman for ever. You understand that? A great deed, Laintal Ay—a great deed and I’m yours. I’ll do whatever you wish.”
He got up and stood away from her, surveying her. “A great deed? What sort of great deed do you mean? By the original boulder, Oyre, you are a strange girl.”
She tossed her damp hair. “If I told you, then it would no longer be great. Do you understand that? Besides, I don’t know what I mean. Strive, strive … You’re getting fat already, as if you were pregnant…”
He stood without moving, his face hard. “How is it that when I tell you I love you you insult me in return?”
“You tell me truth—I hope; I tell you truth. But I don’t mean to hurt you. Really I’m gentle. You just released things in me, things I’ve said to no one else. I long for … no, I can’t say what the longings are for … glory. Do something great, Laintal Ay, I beg you, something great, before we grow too old.”
“Like killing phagors?”
Suddenly she laughed on rather a harsh note, narrowing her eyes. For a moment, her resemblance to Aoz Roon was marked. “If that’s all you can think of. Provided you kill a million of them.”
He looked baffled.
“So you imagine you’re worth a million phagors?”
Oyre pretended to smite herself hard on the forehead, as if her harneys had come loose. “It’s not for me, don’t you see? It’s for yourself. Achieve one great thing for your own sake. Here we’re stuck in what Shay Tal says is a farmyard—at least make it a legendary farmyard.”
The ground trembled again. “Scumble,” he said. “The earth really is moving.”
They stood up, shaken out of their argument, ignoring each other. A bronze overcast spread from the aerial castles, which now took on purple hearts and yellow edges. The heat became intense, and they stood in the midst of an oppressive silence; backs to each other, looking about.
A repeated smacking sound made them turn towards the pool. Its surface was marred by yellow bubbles which rose and grew until they burst, to spread filth through the hitherto clear water. The bubbles sailed up from the depths, releasing a stink of rotten eggs, coming faster and blacker. Thick mist filled the hollow.
A jet of mud burst from the pool and sprayed into the air. Gobbets of scalding filth flew, pocking the foliage all about. The humans ran in terror, she in her garb the colour of summer skies.
Within a minute of their leaving, the pool was a mass of black seething liquid.
Before they could get back to Oldorando, the skies opened, and down came the rain, grey, and chilling to the flesh.
As they climbed into the big tower, voices could be heard overhead, Aoz Roon’s prominent among them. He had just arrived back with allies of his own generation, Tanth Ein, Faralin Ferd, and Eline Tal, all sturdy warriors and good hunters; with them were their women, exclaiming over new hoxney skins, and Dol Sakil, who sat sulkily apart on the window sill, regardless of the rain beating down. Also in the room was Raynil Layan, his skins perfectly dry; he fingered his forked beard and looked anxiously back and forth, without either speaking or being spoken to.