With Moondance gone, he had a chance to get a good look around while trying to sort himself out. There didn't appear to be any "doors" as such in this dwelling; just doorways. This bathing room was multileveled; highest level was the "pool for resting" which cascaded to the next level and the "pool for washing," which in turn was above the "floor" and the channel carrying the water away that was cut into it. There were no windows in the walls of natural rock; the whole was lit by a skylight taking up the entire ceiling, and there were green and flowering plants and ferns standing and hanging everywhere. There was only one entrance into this room - that led back to the bedroom, also rock-walled and roofed with a skylight, from what Vanyel could see of it.
The ledge between the pools was not that high, though it took far more of Vanyel's strength to get over it than he would have believed. Once in the larger pool he discovered that his surmise was right; crystalline hot water bubbled up from the sand in the center of the pool; someone had improved on nature by forming the rock of the pool sides below the waterline into smooth benches.
It was wonderful; the water was about as hot as was comfortable, and was forcing him to relax whether or not he wanted to. He closed his eyes and sat back, deliberately thinking of absolutely nothing, and only opened them again when he heard light footsteps crossing the stone floor below him.
It was, as he expected, Moondance, who had brought with him an earthenware beaker of what proved to be cider and a plate of sliced bread and cheeses and fruit.
"Eat lightly," the young man warned, climbing to Vanyel's level and setting his burdens down on the rim of the pool at Vanyel's right hand. "You have been three weeks without true food, and spent more than one of those days drugged."
"Three weeks?"
Moondance shrugged. "You needed Healing, of a kind your good Healer Andrel could not give you. I think perhaps no Healer among your folk could have given you such Healing; they know nothing of the Healing of hurts caused by magic, only of illness and wounding. That is a study only a few have made, and most of those few Tayledras. Eat, young Vanyel. There are herbs in the bread and the drink to strengthen you."
"Where - where is Savil?" he asked, suddenly a little worried at being alone with a stranger.
"With Starwind. She was very weary, both in body and in soul. This - thing that has happened. It has been a deep grief to her, as well to you. Her heart is as sore, I think. They are old friends, my shay'kreth'ashke and Savil, and there are no secrets between them, and much love. She has need of such love. Perhaps more than you, for she has had no one to lend her support."
Vanyel had looked up at him sharply at that - with the word ashke striking him with the force of a cold slap in the face, making his heart pound painfully.
Moondance looked down at him, something speculative in his glance. He weighed Vanyel for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked away, deliberately. "I have a thing to say to you, a thing I wish you to think upon."
Vanyel put down his cider, and waited, apprehensively, to hear the rest.
"I have shared your thoughts; I know more of you than anyone, except, perhaps, your shay'kreth'ashke."
Moondance changed his position so that he was sitting with his back to the pool, leaning his weight against his hands and staring up at the clouds visible through the skylight. He was being very careful not to look at Vanyel.
"As you have guessed from my words," he said, "I am shay'a'chern. As is Starwind. As you." Now he gave Vanyel a very brief, sidelong glance. "I am a Healer-Adept and I Heal more than people - I Heal places. I know the natural world as only one who wishes to restore it to its rightful balances can. This is the thing I wish to tell you; in all the world, there are more creatures than just man that make lifetime matings. Among them, some of the noblest - wolves, swans, geese, the great raptors-all creatures man could do worse than emulate, in many, many ways. And with all of them, all, there are those pairings, from time to time, within the same gender. Not often, but not unheard of either."
Vanyel found himself unable to move, and unable to anticipate the direction this was taking.
Now Moondance dropped his eyes to catch and hold Vanyel's in a joining of glances and wills that was unbreakable.
"There is in you a fear, a shame, placed there by your own doubts and the thoughts of one who knew no better. I tell you to think on this: the shay 'a 'chern pairing occurs in nature. How then, 'unnatural'? Usual, no; and not desirable for the species, else it would die out for lack of offspring. But not unnatural. The beasts of the fields are innocent as man can never be, who has the knowledge of good and evil and the choice between, and they do not cast out of their ranks the shay 'a 'chern. There was between you and your shay 'kreth 'ashke much love - only love. There is no shame in loving."
Vanyel couldn't breathe; he could only see those ice-blue eyes.
"This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there. I give you these things as food for your heart and mind."
Once again, before Vanyel could move, he bent deliberately and kissed him, but this time on the forehead.
"I leave you for a moment with both kinds of nourishment." He smiled, and gave Vanyel a slow wink. "Since you are not to stay in the pool forever, I must needs find you clothing. I would not mind, but your aunt grows anxious and wishes to see you awake and aware, and we would not wish to put her to the blush, hmm?"
And with that, he jumped down from the pool ledge to the floor, and vanished again.
Twelve
“Here." Moondance, a crease of worry between his brows, was back in a few moments with a towel and what looked like folded clothing; green, like his own. "You shall have to care for yourself, I fear. There is trouble, and I have been called to deal with it. Starwind and Savil will be with you shortly." He hesitated a moment, visibly torn. "Forgive me, I must go."
He put his burdens down on the pool edge and ran back out the doorway before Vanyel could do more than blink.
Gods - I feel like somebody in a tale, going to sleep and waking up a hundred years later. It seems so hard to think - like I'm still half asleep.
He dressed slowly, trying to collect his thoughts, and making heavy work of it. He did remember - vaguely - Savil telling him that he was too ill for Andrel to help; and he definitely remembered - despite the fog of drugs about the words - being told that she was going to take him to some friends of hers. He hadn't much cared what was happening at that point. He'd either been too drugged to care, or been hurting too much.
Presumably Moondance, and the absent Starwind, were the friends she meant. They were fully as strange as those weird masks of beads and feathers that Savil had on her wall. As was this place. Wherever it was.