If he laughed when he entered, or mocked her, she would scream, she decided. And let him deal with the consequences. She heard the catch of the window spring open and a cold breeze blew into the room.
Then she heard the bells, and the priestess behind her drew a ragged breath.
“Thank you,” said Sharra, laying her necklace on the table. “I suppose that is your sign.”
“The window was, actually,” said Diarmuid.
Her dagger was drawn before she finished turning.
He had tossed back the hood and stood regarding her tranquilly. “Remind me to tell you some day about the other time I did this sort of thing. It’s a good story. Have you noticed,” he added, making conversation, “How tall some of these priestesses are? It was a lucky—”
“Are you trying to earn my hate?” She hurled it at him as if the words were her blade.
He stopped. “Never that,” he said, though easily still. “There is no approach to this room from outside for one man by himself, and I chose not to confide in anyone. I had no other way of coming here alone.”
“What made you assume you could? How much presumption—”
“Sharra. Have done with that tone. I didn’t assume. If you hadn’t had the window opened I would have walked out when the bells rang.”
“I—” She stopped. There was nothing to say.
”Will you do something for me?” He stepped forward. Instinctively she raised her blade, and at that, for the first time, he smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you can cut me. For obvious reasons I offered no blood when I came in. I don’t like being in here on Maidaladan without observing the rites. If Dana can affect me the way she is tonight, she deserves propitiation. There’s a bowl beside you.”
And rolling up the sleeves of his robe and the blue shirt he wore beneath, he extended his wrist to her.
“I am no priestess,” she said.
“Tonight, I think, all women are. Do this for me, Sharra.”
So, for the second time, her dagger cut into him as she took hold of his wrist and drew a line across the underside. The bright blood welled, and she caught it in the bowl. He had a square of Seresh lace in his pocket, and wordlessly he passed it to her. She laid down the bowl and knife and bound the cut she had made.
“Twice now,” he murmured, echoing her own thought. “Will there be a third?”
“You invite it.”
He stepped away at that, toward the window. They were on the east side and there was moonlight. There was also, she realized, a long drop below as the ground fell sharply away from the smooth Temple walls. He had clasped his hands loosely on the window ledge and stood looking out. She sat down on the one chair by her bed. When he spoke it was quietly, still, but no longer lightly. “I must be taken for what I am, Sharra. I will never move to the measured gait.” He looked at her. “Otherwise I would be High King of Brennin now, and Aileron would be dead. You were there.”
She had been. It had been his choice; no one in the Hall that day was likely to forget. She remained silent, her hands in her lap. He said, “When you leaped from the gallery I thought I saw a bird of prey descending for a kill. Later, when you doused me with water as I climbed the walls, I thought I saw a woman with a sense of how to play. I saw both things again in Paras Derval five days ago. Sharra, I did not come here to bed you.”
A disbelieving laugh escaped her.
He had turned to look at her. There was moonlight on his face. “It is true. I realized yesterday that I don’t like the passion of Maidaladan. I prefer my own. And yours. I did not come to bed you, but to say what I have said.”
Her hands were gripping each other very tightly. She mocked him, though, and her voice was cool. “Indeed,” she said. “And I gather you came to Larai Rigal last spring just to see the gardens?”
He hadn’t moved, but his voice seemed to have come very near, somehow, and it was rougher. “One flower only,” said Diarmuid. “I found more than I went to find.”
She should be saying something, dealing back to him one of his own deflating, sardonic jibes, but her mouth had gone dry and she could not speak.
And now he did move forward, a half step only, but it took him out of the light. Straining to see in the shadows, Sharra heard him say, carefully and masking now—at last—a tension of his own, “Princess, these are evil times, for war imposes its own constraints and this war may mean an ending to all that we have known. Notwithstanding this, if you will allow, I would court you as formally as ever a Princess of Cathal has been courted, and I will say to your father tomorrow what I say to you tonight.”
He paused. There seemed to be moonlight all through the room suddenly, and she was trembling in every limb.
“Sharra,” he said, “the sun rises in your eyes.”
So many men had proposed to her with these, the formal words of love. So many men, but none had ever made her weep. She wanted to rise but did not trust her legs. He was still a distance away. Formally, he had said. Would speak to her father in the morning. And she had heard the rawness in his voice.
It was still there. He said, “If I have startled you, I am sorry for it. This is one thing I am not versed in doing. I will leave you now. I will not speak to Shalhassan unless and until you give me leave.”
He moved to the doorway. And then it came to her—he could not see her face where she sat in the shadows, and because she had not spoken…
She did rise then and, uttering the words through and over a cresting wave in her heart, said shyly, but not without a thread of laughter, “Could we not pretend it was not Maidaladan? To see where our own inadequate desire carried us?”
A sound escaped him as he spun.
She moved sideways into the light so he could see her face. She said, “Whom else should I ever love?”
Then he was beside her, and above, and his mouth was on her tears, her eyes, her own mouth, and the full moon of midsummer was upon them as a shower of white light, for all the dark around and all the dark to come.
It was cold in the open but not so very bad tonight, and there was a shining light on the snow and the hills. Overhead the brighter stars gleamed frostily down, but the dimmer ones were lost in the moonlight, for the full moon was high.
Kevin rode at a steady pace toward the east, and gradually the horse began to climb. There was no real path, not among the snow, but the ascent was easy enough and the drifts weren’t deep.
The hills ran north and south, and it wasn’t long before he crested a high ridge and paused to look down. In the distance the mountains glittered in the silvery light, remote and enchanting. He wasn’t going so far.
A shadow moved among the snow and ice to his right and Kevin swung over quickly to look, aware that he was weaponless and alone in a wide night.
It wasn’t a wolf.
The grey dog moved slowly, gravely, to stand in front of the horse. It was a beautiful animal for all the brutal scars, and Kevin’s heart went out to it. A moment they were thus, a tableau on the hilltop among the snow and the low sweeping sigh of the wind.
Kevin said, “Will you lead me there?”
A moment longer Cavall looked up, as if questioning or needing reassurance from the lone rider on the lone horse.
Kevin understood. “I am afraid,” he said. “I will not lie to you. There is a strong feeling in me, though, the more so now, since you are here. I would go to Dun Maura. Will you show me the way?”
A swirl of wind moved the snow on the hilltop. When it passed Cavall had turned and was trotting down the slope to the east. For a moment Kevin looked back. There were lights behind him in Morvran and in the Temple, and dimly, if he listened, he could hear shouts and laughter. He twitched the reins and the horse moved forward after the dog, and on the downhill side the lights and noise were lost.