“Today on the docks, I thought about that equation once more, and…and suddenly pretty dresses and awful gossiping twits didn't seem like such a bad life after all. You know?”
“I know.” Errollyn nodded. “I was raised in the foothills of the Telesil Mountains. My uman was Dahlren.” Sasha gazed up at him wonderingly. Errollyn did not speak of his childhood often. “She was an old thing, and unimpressed with people, human or serrin. The world of wild things was her world. She was too old to take an uma, but she took me nonetheless. I grew up mostly alone, save for Dahlren, and she wasn't much for conversation. I learned the ways of animals, I learned the herbs of healing lore and I learned to hunt. Sometimes I look around in this city, and wonder what I'm doing here. I dream of greenery when I sleep. I dream of trees, Sasha. Do you dream of trees?”
“There's an old vertyn tree,” Sasha murmured sadly. “It grew at the back of our house on the hillside. I climbed it many times when I was younger, and later, Andreyis climbed it with me. It always amazed me that I could be so high, and yet the mountains were so much higher. It made me think about the scale of things, and about the Goeren-yai saying, that one could never trust a human judgment of size and power, and how all the greatest warriors of history were as nothing compared to the mountains. I dream of that tree sometimes.”
“Dahlren died when I had just thirteen summers,” Errollyn continued. He looked sad and thoughtful. Sasha took the hand in her hair and entwined her fingers with his. “That was terrible. We lived mostly alone, there was just a little village down from the shoulder of the hill where we had our small farm. I had help with the va'eth aln, the funeral rites, but not much else. I insisted on staying on after that, on my own…I was stubborn, you would say. I continued my own learnings, as Dahlren had done. I think it changed me. I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like had I taken a different uman. But I am who I am, and wonderings will achieve nothing.”
“Dahlren was du'janah,” Sasha said sombrely. “Wasn't she?” Errollyn looked surprised. “That's why you were sent to be her uma.”
Errollyn slid off her with a sigh, to Sasha's regret. She worried that she'd said the wrong thing. But Errollyn lay close, a hand propping his head. “She was du'janah,” Errollyn confirmed. “It was discussed, between my parents and various elders.” His brilliant eyes darkened. “I wished they'd just leave me alone. My elder sister had taken an uman who was a master of woodcraft. I wanted to learn woodcrafts too, but it was insisted that I should take a du’janah uman. Dahlren was unsuitable, and too old, and unfriendly and fit to die on me before I could complete useen, but that did not matter to them.”
Sasha put a hand on his chest. He was nearly hairless below the neck. It seemed a natural condition of serrin. “Did you love her? Dahlren, I mean.”
Errollyn smiled faintly. “I grew to. I helped with small tasks that her fingers found difficult, or her arms lacked the strength for. And I did love her lore, and grew to love the forests and hills more deeply than anything. I took Dahlren's small affections where I could.”
Sasha smiled. “You learn to recognise them after a while, don't you?”
Errollyn raised an eyebrow. “You with Kessligh?” Sasha nodded, with no small exasperation. Errollyn shook his head. “No, Kessligh is a veritable eruption of love and joy compared to Dahlren. She could spend days, and not speak a word to me. But I learned to love her anyway. Love is not always a good thing. It hurt all the more on the winter morning when I woke and found that the previous night's chill had taken her life. I blamed myself for years, but it was so fast, and she'd insisted her cough had been nothing.”
Sasha ran a hand through his hair. Her heart ached to hold him, and she knew that he probably would not mind…but she was Lenay, and one did not embrace or comfort a man in pain. Not if one valued his dignity, and his honour.
“I met some of her family at the va'eth aln,” Errollyn continued. “They insisted she'd left them, and had not been cast out as Dahlren sometimes told me. They were all baffled by her. They said it was an unfortunate thing to be du'janah. After a short while of conversation, I think I began to understand why she left.”
“Errollyn,” Sasha said softly. “Tell me. What is a du'janah? Precisely, in your own words.”
Errollyn gazed at her. Exasperation built to a faint wince. “I…I don't know, Sasha, it's so difficult to explain to a human…”
Sasha straddled him. Pushed him onto his back, and lay on his chest, nose to nose. She kissed him gently, and pressed herself to him, a pleasant warmth of skin on skin. And was pleased to feel him harden once more against her. She propped herself on her elbows. “Look,” she told him, “I can't get any closer than this. If you can't tell me now, then you probably can't tell anyone. Sel ath'avthor shalma'ta mai, el'ath dael baer'il shoen.” “And if it cannot be said in words, it probably doesn't exist.”
Errollyn made a wry smile. “You can get closer,” he suggested.
Sasha kissed him again. “I can?”
“You can.”
“Ah.” Sasha reached down and slid him inside her once more. She was a little sore, but she didn't care at all. “Now tell me,” she breathed on his lips. Errollyn ran his hands up her bare sides, over her back, making every rib glow, and every small hair tingle.
“To be du'janah,” Errollyn said simply, “is to be without vel'ennar.”
Sasha stopped making love to him and gave him a very blunt stare. “If that's all you've got for me, I'm kicking you out of this bed.”
Errollyn grinned then laughed. Kissed her deeply. Sasha resisted a little, waiting warily for an answer. Errollyn considered her, sharp-eyed and penetrating. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?”
“Several times.”
“You have an amazing shape.” His hands found her hips. “Serrin women tend to be slimmer. But these hips are extraordinary. And your eyes, so dark and exotic…”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Sasha said impatiently. “I know, dark features are so exotic to serrin. Big deal. Give me an answer or you're lying on the floor.”
Amusement flashed in his eyes. “You try to be tough, but you're just putty in my hands.”
“Oh yeah?”
Errollyn's arms came about her, and he moved firmly against her, up between her thighs. He kissed her, a hand coming up into her hair, and suddenly she was struggling for breath.
“Errollyn…” she managed, barely freeing herself. “Look, stop it, I'm serious!”
“You don't look serious,” he whispered to her, not stopping at all. “You look excited.”
“Oh spirits…no, look, just…” He rolled her over, effortlessly, half pinning one arm. He weighed so much more than she and, at this range, his power was daunting. She ought to have been alarmed, she knew. She disliked being helpless. And yet, for all her warning instincts, she'd never been so desperately pleased to be overpowered in all her life.
She cried out as Errollyn made love to her. Her heart thudded madly against her ribs, and she could no longer breathe but gasp. Right when she felt herself on the early road to her third climax of the day, Errollyn paused.