B00CH3ARG0 EBOK (24 page)

Another tone chimed. The Sural pulled out his tablet. “The
Jorann summons you,” he said, still speaking Paranian – out of respect,
Marianne thought. He lowered his voice and added, “My heart grieves for your
pain.”

Kazryth – the Paran – glanced at the Sural. “My gratitude,
dear one,” he replied in the same language, with a sigh. “Her health was stable
when I left.”

Laura looked from Marianne to the Sural to the man at her
side and back to Marianne. “What’s happened?” she asked in a hushed voice. “Ka
– ”

“Don’t use his name!” Marianne interrupted.

Laura flinched. “What? Why not?”

“His mother just died.” Marianne kept her voice pitched low.
“He rules Parania now. You must never use his name again.”

“Like the Sural?”

She nodded. “He is the Paran.”

Laura turned to him. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

He put a hand over hers with a grateful look and closed his
eyes. Swallowing hard, he opened his eyes again and straightened.

“Have you Parania brocade here?” he asked the Sural, his
voice steady.

The Sural busied himself with his tablet, nodding. “You will
find it in your guest quarters.”

When she’d worn Suralia brocade to visit the Jorann,
Marianne thought, it had made her feel like a swaddled infant. Or perhaps a
mummy. Parania brocade would be green – five layers of the stuff, in five
shades of the color. The dark inner layers were soft and lined for warmth in
the frigid cold of the Jorann’s ice cave; the pale outer layers were heavy.

 The Paran turned back to Laura. “My love,” he said in a low
voice, “I must go to the Jorann. When I return, I must leave for Parania
immediately. Will you be ready to come with me?”

Laura looked caught off-guard by the suddenness of it all,
despite her announcement the night before that she wanted to leave with him.

“I must return to Parania,” he repeated. “After I see the
Jorann, I must leave immediately.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “I’ll be ready.”

In a very un-Tolari-like fashion for such a public place,
the Paran caught Laura’s head in his hands and kissed her, long and deep.
Marianne bit her lip, choking back tears. Laura was leaving. Today. After everything
the poor woman had gone through, she deserved all the happiness she could find,
but ... Marianne was going to miss her terribly.

The Paran pulled away and left the refectory without looking
back. Laura sat breathless and blushing, watching him go. After he was gone,
she turned back to the table and met Marianne’s eyes.

“Don’t say it,” she warned.

Marianne shook her head. “I’m happy for you,” she said. “I
just wish this didn’t mean that you’re leaving.”

Laura heaved a sigh, her face relaxing in obvious relief. “I’ll
be back. Suralia and Parania are allies. I can visit any time I want, as far as
K— as far as the Paran is concerned.”

“Again, you are always welcome here,” the Sural said.

A grateful smile lit her face. “Thank you.”

“I know it has been difficult for you,” he said in a softer
voice. Then he looked at the two girls on his knees. “Kyza, Thela, go to your
tutors,” he told them, in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

“Yes, Father,” they both said, slipping off his knees and
scampering out of the refectory.

“Marianne, please send word when Cena thinks you’re close,”
Laura said. “I don’t want to miss your daughter’s birth.”

“I will,” Marianne replied.

“You can communicate with each other directly,” the Sural said.
“Ask the Paran for a tablet with the capability. I will make one available to
Marianne.”

Marianne beamed a smile at the Sural, who quit his chair and
bowed, offering each of them one of his arms.

“Shall I escort you to the morning concert?” he asked. “A
Suralian performs today.”

* * *

“I am hungry,” Storaas said, surprised at himself.

Cena hovered nearby. “Good,” she said. She helped him to sit
up and handed him a mug of tea. An aide offered him a trencher of food.

“I will be monitoring you closely, Storaas,” Cena said as he
bit into a roll. “It was necessary to repair a great deal of damage to a number
of your organs.”

He suppressed the annoyance that shot through him. “You only
delay the inevitable,” he said.

“Vent your anger on the Sural.” Her eyes glittered. “He
ordered me to act.”

“I cannot live forever.”

Cena crossed her arms. “You will if I am taking care of you.”

* * *

Laura declined to attend any of the art sessions after the
morning concert, going instead to her quarters, where she paced, trying to calm
herself. The man she was falling in love with had just lost his mother – and she
knew what that was like. Her eyes went moist. Blinking the tears back, she
wrapped her arms around herself and halted by the window of her sitting room,
gazing out at the stronghold gardens.

The man I’m falling in love with
. And John gone ... only
four months, she reckoned, or maybe five. After forty-one years of marriage.
What was she thinking? Was she crazy?
Good lord, woman, you’re sixty years
old. Act like it and control yourself.

Control herself. Ha. It was far too late for that. Perhaps
if she hadn’t spent the rest of the day after lunch with K— with the Paran, if
they hadn’t talked half the night, if she hadn’t let him kiss her after the
morning concert, maybe then she might have been able to keep a rein on herself
and not ended up in bed with him.

Or she might have kept a grip on herself, if he didn’t look
exactly like the sort of man she had dreamed about when she was a girl. That
really didn’t help. Head over heels she went, and now she was getting ready to
go off into unknown parts of Tolar with him – a man she’d only just met. Widows
her age didn’t act like this.

Hours ago, he’d gone off to see the Jorann, summoned bare
minutes after receiving word that his mother had died. Couldn’t the Jorann even
give him some time to grieve? You’d think she was old enough to have some
patience. Surely a few days would have been soon enough.

But there it was. The Jorann would be taking his name away
and bonding him to his people. She couldn’t imagine what that was like, but the
Tolari seemed to believe it was necessary. How do you take someone’s
name
away? What did it
feel
like?

And now he was the Paran. She shook her head. She’d liked
his name, but she could never speak it again, and Marianne said she shouldn’t
even think it, to prevent slipping and saying it out loud. That, her young
friend had said, would actually cause him pain.

And after he returned to his province and his people pledged
their lives to his, he would be the living representation of them. She
supposed, she thought wickedly, from now on when she made love to him, she was
making love to Parania.

She shook her head again and smiled to herself.
My Tolari
prince – my Latin lover.
She’d found, quite by accident, a man who seemed
to want nothing more than to make her happy. How lucky could a girl get? He
wasn’t jealous of her grief over John and wasn’t trying to compete with him; he
only wanted to be a part of her life now. And he was a prince.

No, a monarch, now. And that made her ... made her what? She
could marry him, but it wouldn’t make her a queen, or anything like it – not
that she had any ambition to be a queen. And it wasn’t marriage; it was bonding.
Would he want to bond with her? Would she even be able to do that? Being able
to join their hearts together, being able to feel his emotions as if they were
her own – for all that she could usually pick up on what other people were
feeling, she knew she couldn’t do
that
.

The idea was incredibly appealing, though.

Well then, to bond, she would have to become Tolari, as
Marianne had. She would face that when she came to it. If he asked her to bond
with him, she’d take the Jorann’s blessing so she could, or if she started to
feel too old and wanted to be young again, or if ... or if she just wanted to,
because being human on this planet wasn’t exactly safe when it came to food.

A knock sounded at the door. Her heart skipped a beat. Amused
to see herself acting like a love-struck teenager, she ran to the door and
flung it open.

Of course it was the Paran. No one else would have knocked. He
looked different, standing in the hall in front of her door, a new air of
authority draped about him, wearing a new robe covered with white embroidery
from collar to waist instead of just on the collar and cuffs. It took a moment
for her to realize what the difference was. His face was younger. The lines
were gone, though his hair was still grey.

He bowed. She moved aside to let him into the room and flung
herself into his arms as soon as the door was closed, pulling away to look at
him.

“You’re changed,” she said.

She reached up to touch his cheek. He smiled, his eyes warm
with affection.

“Yes, my love,” he said. “My body is younger. The Jorann
gave me her blessing as part of the ritual. It makes us young again.”

“I look too old for you now...”

He chuckled. “No. We do not count such things. When one is
of age, appearance is not important.”

“It’s—”

The door opened. Marianne walked in, carrying a tablet,
which she offered to the Paran.

“This is all the information we have on humans,” she said. “Everything
you’ll need, including the complete medical archive from the
Alexander
and
detailed specifications on the food supplements for Laura. The Sural copied my
library onto it too, which includes a lot of poetry that you might enjoy. Not
all of it is in English, but a great deal of it is. And there’s a copy of the music
archive from the
Alexander
as well.”

“You honor me, dear one,” he murmured, and bowed. “My
gratitude.”

Marianne turned to Laura to give her a warm hug. “Call me,”
she said. “A lot. I’m going to miss you.” She looked over at the Paran. “You’ll
give her a tablet that can communicate with mine?”

“Of course.”

She sighed as she let Laura go. “This is so sudden.”

“Yes,” Laura replied. “Yes it is. But ... I need to be away
from seeing the Sural every day.”

Marianne’s face filled with sympathy. “I understand,” she
said.

“My love, we must leave,” the Paran said.

“Do you have everything?” Marianne asked.

Laura smiled, feeling rueful. “It’s not like I have much. The
food scanner, the drawing I made of K– the Paran yesterday, the clothes I was
wearing when I arrived. That’s all I have.”

She sighed and headed for the door. Marianne joined her, the
Paran following. In the corridor, the Sural waited, and Laura noticed the two
rulers give each other a significant glance.

“It is extraordinary, is it not?” the Sural said as they all
walked toward the stronghold entrance.

The Paran’s eyes almost glowed. “I cannot conceive why some do
not want to be bonded to their people.” He shook his head.

“It has its disadvantages. To some, they outweigh the
advantages.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I have more reason than most to leave
my province, and I have spent more time away than I would wish. It is quite
unpleasant, but even so I would not have it otherwise.”

The Sural pressed the panel near the great doors that opened
the wall into the transit room. Laura eyed the long-distance transport pod in
the center of the room, crystal and ovoid and some five meters in length, hovering
over one of the two dark shafts in the floor.

“Watch that first drop,” Marianne said. “It’s a doozy.”

Laura laughed. “Thanks for the warning.”

“No one warned
me
.” Marianne glowered at the Sural,
who spread his hands apologetically.

The Paran led Laura to the pod. She drew a sharp breath, grinning,
when it formed a door at his touch, and followed him into it. A divan graced
each side of the pod’s middle, and cushions and blankets occupied the rear. When
servants placed their few belongings near one of the divans, the crystal flowed
up to grasp and hold the small collection of items in place.

Laura turned, waved to Marianne and the Sural, and gasped
again as the Paran closed the pod behind her and a control panel emerged from
its front wall. He put one arm around her, placed the other hand on the
controls ... and the pod dropped at high speed into the dark shaft.

* * *

With a sigh, Marianne turned toward the corridor.

“I envy him,” the Sural said, as the walls closed behind
them.

Her eyes felt like they nearly popped out of her head. “You?
Envy? What?”

“He is free to share her wonder at these new experiences. It
was necessary for me to ... surreptitiously ... share what I could of yours.”

“Forgive me,” she said, feeling a little guilty. “I wish I’d
known how you felt about me the day you showed me the transport pods.”

“It would have frightened you to know.”

She had to admit the truth of that. “Forgive me,” she repeated.

He smiled warmly at her. “I regret nothing. It was worth it
to be yours now.” He shook his head and came back to the present. “Have you
seen all the Paranian art?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Allow me to point out the exhibits I find most appealing.”

She grinned up at him. “I’d like that.”