'I would imagine.' Herewiss was surprised at Sun-spark's initiative on his behalf.
(And not far from here there's a subsurface cavern full of raw gems of all kinds, though mostly rubies. I took the chair and left them a ruby about the size of a melon. Soon the streets will be filling with furniture.)
Sunspark came back in with a few slices of hot venison on a trencher of bread. Under her arm was a skin of Brightwood white, the last of Freelorn's liberated supply.
'Don't carry it like that — you'll warm it up!'
(Oh. Sorry.) She laid the skin on the table with the food, and Herewiss stared at it a little morosely as Sunspark went rummaging through his bags to find the lovers'-cup. I wonder where he is, thought Herewiss. Probably stuck in some damn dungeon in Osta, trying to figure out a way to bribe the guards to send me a message . . .
Sunspark looked at Herewiss as she set the cup on the table and poured the wine. She said nothing.
'I wish he were here,' Herewiss said.
Sunspark shook the skin to get the last few drops out, stoppered it, and put it away. (You would probably quarrel again,) she said.
'How would you know?' Herewiss said, stirred slightly out of his tiredness by anger. 'You're rather new at this sort of thing to be so understanding of it, don't you think?'
(Some aspects of it,) Sunspark answered without rancor. (But some are much like the ways of my own people. There are still more likenesses between our kinds than there are differences, I think.)
'So what are you basing your feeling on, that we would quarrel again?'
Sunspark sat down among the cushions, hesitated a little. (He's seeking to bind your energies, that one is,) she said.
'As I bound yours? Ridiculous. He's my loved.'
(But that is a binding. Your loved, you said. It's not the same kind of binding as there is between us, true. But you have — commitments, you have set ways in which you treat one another—)
Herewiss remembered the terrible alienness of the last night with Freelorn, the feeling of having a stranger in the bed — all the more terrible because the stranger had been his loved not half an hour before. 'The way he treated me is nothing I ever saw before.'
(Well enough. But when one form of binding doesn't work, an entity tries another—)
Dully, Herewiss began to eat. The food was tasteless. 'And he was doing that?'
(It could be. Your strength is considerable, though. It comes as no surprise that he went away so angry. I think he'll try again, but not the way he did last time—)
'It seems so useless. I need my Power — I thought he understood that—'
(The little one, the shieldmaid,) Sunspark said, (she understands. I think he might envy that a little.)
Herewiss considered it.
(That seems all she does, though; understand,) said Sunspark. (Which may cause problems— But enough. Eat!)
He ate, and began to feel a little less tired and lightheaded — but he could feel depression beginning to creep up on him. Maybe — maybe there was something he could do. There was, after all, the Soulflight drug—
'Sunspark,' he said, 'the bottle of drug, would you get it for me?'
She regarded him with an odd startled look. (Will you hazard it again? I'm not sure this place is good for its use. There are influences here that may have contaminated your use of it the last time—)
'The last time was bad because the argument was fresh, Spark,' Herewiss said. 'I could use a little something to cheer me up, to relax me—'
(Relax you?? Herewiss, you are fresh from a bout of sorcery; you slept for a night and a day! You know how debilitating the drug is! It'll be the end of you if you abuse it!)
'What are you worrying about?' Herewiss said. 'I'd come back.'
Sunspark looked at him, her face still, though Herewiss could feel the roil of emotions that she did not yet know how to make into the proper expressions. She turned and went out of the room very quickly.
A pang of guilt smote him immediately. That was mean of me, he thought. But it is funny that it should be so concerned—
He stopped in midchew. All the little kindnesses that he had been accepting from Sunspark; all the small gentle gestures: the chair, the food it brought back from the villages on the edge of the Waste, the sword blanks it had been fetching all the way from Darthis— But he had been judging it by human standards. No elemental would act like that normally. He compared the Sunspark of his first acquaintance, rough, uncaring, fierce of demeanor, testing him with thoughtless ferocity, with this one — calm, considerate, a tamed power waiting on him at table. A fire elemental, handling water for his sake. And now concerned about his death, where before it had not even believed in it. The feelings he had underheard when it went out of the room: fear? pain?
Maybe love?
Oh, no, he thought again. It couldn't possibly have understood about love, but I did try so hard to teach it. And now it knows. And it wants to try it out, the same way it tried to unite with me before — but this time on my terms—
He put down what was left of the bread, and stared across the table at the lover's-cup. It needs, now, I have taught it loneliness, which it never knew before. And now I'm going to have to teach it pain, because I can't be what it needs, but I will go get what I need—
The cup sat there, full of wine and promise. It was the Goddess's cup, the cup poured for Her at each meal to remind those who ate that all set before them was, one way or another, the product of Her love — as were the people with whom they ate. When the meal was done, if there were lovers there, the youngest of them would drain the cup together in Her name. If one was alone, one said the Blessing for the Sundered and drank it in his own name and the name of his lover, wherever that one might be. Herewiss remembered how it had used to be in the lonely days when he was young. He had been rather ugly, and when he drank the cup and called on the Loved Who Will Be to await his coming, he secretly despaired of its ever happening, of ever finding another part of himself. Now, in these later days, at least he had a name to speak; but most of the time he seemed to be drinking the cup alone, and for the past month or so the ceremony, once a reassurance and a joy, had become bitter to him.
Here, though, was a possibility. To take the Soulflight drug, and step out of the body, and go in search of Freelorn; to meet him outside the flesh, so that they could admire anew each other's inner beauties, without the bitter base emotions clouding their eyes. To look upon one another transfigured, and share one another in the boundless lands beyond the Door, united in an ecstasy of freedom, of joy and omniscience and incalculable power—
Sunspark came back in with the bottle. Her eyes were shadowed and she would not look at Herewiss directly; her eyes lingered on the lovers'-cup as she came to stand by the table. Herewiss reached out and took the bottle from her.
'Thank you,' he said.
Her eyes glanced about uncomfortably. Herewiss reached out, took her warm hand, looked up and met those eyes and held them. Deep brown-amber eyes, shot with sparks of fire, looked fearfully back at him.
'Sunspark,' he said, 'don't worry, I'll be all right. Please don't worry.'
She squeezed his hand back, but the fear in her eyes was no less. She turned and left.
Herewiss reached for the lovers'-cup, unstoppered the bottle and poured the drug into it, just a little more than he had used the last time. He mixed the wine to dissolve the drug, and drank.
Then he sat back, his eyes closed, and waited.
It was like falling asleep this time. But not falling; rising, rather, a floating feeling, as if he and the chair both were borne upward. After a time this ceased, and silence rang in his ears like a song. He opened his eyes, and raised his hand. It came out of itself, slipping free; his own large hand, but changed — both more sensitive to what it touched, and more sensitive somehow to its own handness. Just curling it and flexing the fingers outward again was an exquisite feeling. The shell of flesh from which it had emerged was inadequate-looking, a stiff, cold, pitiful thing. Herewiss stood up and came free of himself effortlessly. He did not give his body a second look; he scorned it, and thought himself elsewhere.