Mouse and Dragon (12 page)

"Ah. Then you will not find it surprising that two Master Healers were immediately called to your side—Kestra and Tom Sen. It was Master Kestra I spoke with today when I arrived at the Hall.

"Of the most recent trauma, you have been healed. There was, so Master Kestra tells me, some small bit of burn, which she pronounces insignificant. She is, by the way, all admiration for you and the solution you employed to preserve yourself."

"Solution?" Aelliana frowned, trying to recapture
that
memory, but it eluded her, lost inside a sound like shouting and the image of a solar system entirely unknown to her.

"You had created yourself a piloting problem," Daav said softly. "A model star system, the balancing of which kept your mind focused and the . . . more inimical effects of the Learning Module at bay."

"Oh, but that's standard protocol," she said. "The Learner will not disturb a brain at work."

"Thus did you save yourself, when those of us who would have, could not." There was something in that which reminded her too nearly of Clonak, but when she turned to look into his face, all she saw was weariness.

"The Healer who was with me when I woke, the
first
time today," she said, the memory suddenly upon her. "I had asked her if I were brain-burned. She said she was trying to determine just that, and then—I fell asleep. How odd, that I hadn't recalled that until just now! When I woke again, I had no question but that I was perfectly well."

"Healers are bright, and terrible, and wise," Daav murmured, with the air of one quoting . . . poetry, perhaps.

"I've had so little experience of Healers—none, in fact." She bit her lip and glanced at the side of his face, waiting for him to continue, but he merely strolled on, a man communing with his garden. The impulse to touch him was very strong. She curled her hands into fists, counted to twelve, and then asked another question.

"They—the Healers did something else, didn't they, Daav?"

"The gloan-roses are doing well, don't you think?" he said, pausing to call her attention to a mound of glossy green leaves and flowers the color of heart's blood.

"They're very pretty," she said, but he was gone, angling across the short plush grass, to a wooden bench set within the embrace of the rosebushes.

Daav sat, one knee folded on the seat, his arm on the back of the bench, chin on his arm as he regarded the roses. The perfect study, Aelliana thought, of a man who very much did not want to answer the question that had just been put to him.

A step out from the bench, she paused, and asked herself, very earnestly, if she
truly wished
to know what the Healers had wrought. If it were enough to give
Daav
pause, perhaps she did not. And yet—

"I scarcely know myself." The words rose to her lips unbidden, a whisper no louder than the soft brush of the breeze over rose petals.

"Daav." She sat on the bench, folding her hands tightly onto her lap. "What
else
have the Healers done?"

He closed his eyes. "Aelliana, have mercy."

Mercy? Her stomach knotted painfully, familiarly.

"Have I escaped brain-burn only so the Healers might discover a greater flaw?" And yet, what? What might be so terrible that he wished to hide it from her, when copilot's care—

And if the copilot's best care of his pilot was to conceal an unpleasant truth?

"I am an oaf." His voice was cold.

He straightened and turned 'round on the bench, his feet flat on the ground. Leaning forward, he put his hand over hers where it was fisted on her knee.

"Aelliana, it is nothing dire—I had only wished you to have some days to become accustomed, and to know yourself again before hearing the rest of what confronts you."

Anguish swept through her, and self-loathing, tenderness, avarice, and pain.

"I think," she said unsteadily, "you had better tell me."

"Yes, I suppose I had better." He sighed, and took his hand away, settling back into the corner of the bench. It took a ridiculous amount of willpower, not to snatch his hand back to her, but she managed to sit seemly, fingers folded tightly together.

"The other thing that the Healers did is that they
pruned away
, as Master Kestra styles it, a layer of scar tissue—again, an approximation—from the old trauma. She felt that you might be . . . 'easier,'
van'chela
, though there was no healing it entirely."

"It had happened too long ago," Aelliana said.

"And compensations had been built. Yes, exactly so." He took a breath, and exhaled, carefully, she thought.

"What they found, when the thing had been done, was—a hint, Aelliana—that you and I are the two halves of a natural lifemating." He raised his hand, as if to forestall the question she could not think to ask.

"Master Kestra warned me, most plainly, that the seed which ought to have blossomed into a full joining, had been . . . stunted; oppressed by the scarring. She did not—she
would not
—say that we should ever become what we were intended to be."

Ran Eld, Aelliana thought bitterly, had been a genius, indeed. Always, it had been given him, to know precisely how best to harm her. Yet, she had loved Daav, now that she was not too craven to call it by its proper name—had loved him perhaps from the first . . . 

"You understand that my brother whom you met, is linked to his lady, heart and mind. He—they—speak of their bonding as . . . the greatest joy of their lives." Daav cleared his throat. "In our circumstance, with the link stunted, or dead—"

"It may not have had room to grow, but it is not dead!" she cried, and stood up, one knee braced on the bench as she put her hands on his shoulders.

"Can you
not
feel it?" she demanded.

Silence was her answer; or perhaps the shiver of wonder, leavened with fear, was her answer.

She looked down into his face, angular and beloved, his lips just parted, black eyes watching her with such care. Her blood heated, and a longing so fierce that her eyes teared tore at her, even as she bent and put her lips against his.

Deeply, she kissed him, feeling his answer in every cell of her body.

* * *

Her mouth was sweet, and unexpectedly cunning. Desire stiffened him all in an instant, and he ran his hands into her hair, sweeping it free of the silver ring, returning her kiss wholly, as her fingers stroked deliciously down his throat. With him wedged into the corner of the bench, it was she who had the upper hand, and it seemed she wished to exploit her advantage, as she explored him, each touch an agony of pleasure, as if her desires and his were one. Never had a lover known him so well; nor played him with such surety. He was molten, all but beyond thought.

But not quite.

"Aelliana—" Her name was scarcely more than a moan; the question: "How do you know these things?" incinerated as her mouth found him.

Too fast, too fast
. A laborious thought, but thought nonetheless. He reached for her, but she eluded his hands, focused entirely upon his pleasure, and in such manner . . . Aelliana did
not
know these things.

He moved, not in passion now, but in horror, his blood going from molten to ice. Loud as he was, he had overtaken her, who could access his inmost feelings through a touch! She started back with a strangled cry, lost her balance, and crumpled to the grass.

"Aelliana!" He threw himself after her—and froze as her hands came up, warding him, green eyes dazzled, panting with mingled horror and lust.

"Help me," she gasped, and closed her eyes.

Help
her, when her danger was all from him? And, yet, who better then her copilot—her lifemate?

He took a deep breath, reached through the turmoil of emotion and spun himself into a circle of quiet peacefulness. For the space of three heartbeats, he only breathed, letting calmness inform his mind. When he was certain of his control, he opened his eyes, and settled himself comfortably on the grass beside her.

She was panting yet, and shivering where she lay, her hands fisted at her side, muscles hard with anguish.

"Aelliana," he said, softly. "Look at me."

She whimpered, her brows drawing together, but she did not open her eyes.

"Look at me!" The command mode, flicked with precision against abused nerves.

Her eyes snapped wide, and met his.

"Copilot's duty, Aelliana," he murmured, willing the sense of his words to reach beyond her disorientation and fear. "I will help you. Can you trust me so much? And do exactly as I say?"

"Ye-e-s . . ."

"Good. I am going to teach you the Scout's Rainbow. You saw it, this morning, and thought it useful, eh? And so it is, useful. It is the first tool we learn, and the one we reach for most often. There is nothing to fear in the Rainbow. However, if at any step you should begin to feel anxious or afraid, only open your eyes. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Good. Close your eyes, now, and visualize the color red. Let it fill your head to the exclusion of all else. Tell me, when you have it firm."

Three heartbeats, no more, which was better than most hopeful Scoutlings achieved.

"Now," she whispered.

"Good. Allow your thoughts to flutter away, unconsidered. Focus on the color red, warm, comforting red. Let it flow through your body, beginning at the top of your head, warm and relaxing—down your face, your throat, your shoulders . . ." His voice was soft, softer, the rhythm of the words timed precisely to aid the student in achieving trance.

Watching, he saw her muscles lose some tension and felt a flutter of relief.

"Visualize the color orange. Let it fill your head, to the exclusion of all else. Tell me, when you have it firm."

There was a pause, and a whisper of velvet along silk. He glanced away from Aelliana's face, just as orange-and-white Relchin settled himself at her opposite side, chicken fashion, his eyes slitted in approval.

Distantly, Daav felt relief. Relchin had an . . . affinity for the Rainbow. That he appeared to oversee Aelliana's inaugural journey could only be a good omen.

"Now," Aelliana whispered.

"Good," he answered, drawn back into his role as her guide.

Color by color, he took her through the Rainbow, watching her relax more deeply at every level.

Once, at yellow, and again at purple, he reminded her that she might exit the exercise simply by opening her eyes, which was the protocol. She chose to continue, which everyone did.

In the choreography of the Scout's Rainbow, the ultimate safe place lay beyond violet. Each person who traversed the colors found a different door at the end of the Rainbow, uniquely theirs, the room behind it always a refuge.

At the far side of violet, with Aelliana breathing as sweetly as a child asleep, he asked the question, softly as her own thought: "What do you see?"

"Hatch," she murmured. "
Ride the Luck
's hatch."

Oh, indeed?
And what shape had her safety taken before she acquired her ship, he wondered, and shuddered to think that there might have been none.

"Will you enter?" he suggested.

She did so, and he guided her into a deeper trance—not as rich as the Healers might provide, but restorative beyond mere sleep.

Copilot's duty done, he stood, ordered himself, and took stock. Reviewing the Rainbow had lent him an extra level of lucidity beyond even what the grandmother's art had given him. Which was well. For now, he must take up lifemate's duty, which was stern. Stern, indeed.

He dropped to one knee and gathered her into his arms, his lifemate, his love. Rising, he turned toward the path, and the house, Relchin his high-tailed escort.

One-handed, he flicked the blue coverlet back, and laid her gently down among the pillows. Relchin leapt up to the bed and was already curled next to her head by the time Daav had dealt with her boots and straightened again.

He drew the cover over her, smoothed his hand along her hair, lying in a tangled fan across the pillow—and dropped to his knees, his face buried in the cover by her side.

His lifemate, for whom he had ached, whom he had waited for, and despaired ever of finding. Against all odds, she was discovered, willing—no, eager!—to stand with him—

And he was a deadly danger to her.

That Aelliana could sense his emotions—
that
was abundantly plain. As plain as the fact that his will had overruled hers and influenced her to knowledge and actions beyond her—and perhaps repellent. Daav shuddered, and pushed his face deeper into the coverlet.

Despite the gift that Aelliana had received of the Healers' meddling, he knew no more of her now than a Scout with a high empathy rating had ever known. And how they two might remain together, when he could overpower her with a thought—

That was not a lifemating. Lifemates stood equal upon all things. This . . . 
aberration
that the Healers had wrought—

"It will not do," he said, raising his head, and looking down at her sleeping face. So precious—and his, to treasure as she deserved, and to protect from any who might do her harm.

Even from himself.

"We are a broken set,
van'chela
," he told her, tranced though she was. "And I could wish your brother not already dead so that I might thank him fitly for his care of you."

Which was perhaps, he thought, something that he might not wish Aelliana to feel from him.

He stood, staggered and caught himself with a hand against the wall. Looking down, he saw her face through a fog of tears, and shook his head.

"Good night, beloved. Sleep deeply. Dream well."

He bent, and kissed her, chastely, on the cheek. On the neighboring pillow, Relchin yawned.

"Mock me, do. It's no more than I've earned." He extended a hand and rubbed the cat's broad head. "Guard her well," he murmured.

At the door, he paused to turn on the night dims, so that she would not be frightened to find herself in a strange room, should she, after all, wake.

Then he went away, eventually to his own apartment, stopping first at the central control board, where he removed himself from the list of those whom the house would admit to her rooms.