Shields Lady (34 page)

            Sariana thought of the image of her backside that had popped into her mind while she was on the river sled. She tugged on her lower lip and gazed into the fire while she considered it. Experimentally she tried projecting it toward Gryph, just as she had projected her passionate demands the night before. She glanced at Gryph.

"You see what I mean?" he said with an understanding expression.

            "We would have no privacy at all," Sariana said in shock as she considered the ramifications. He shook his head reassuringly. "I don't think it will work like that. I think we will have to be actively

projecting in order to send anything even remotely comprehensible. Just like working prisma."

            "Well, what about that - that lewd picture of myself that just appeared in my head yesterday?" He grinned, showing his teeth in the firelight. "I was bored. For once you didn't seem inclined to talk so

I decided to do a little, experimenting. I just wanted to see what would happen if I tried projecting a scene into your mind. This is the first time you've admitted you picked up on it. Until now I had no way of knowing whether or not you had received it. Which should tell you something."

            "What does it tell me?" Sariana asked automatically, Then she leaped to the obvious conclusion. "Oh, I see. I didn't send anything back to you so you had no way of knowing if I had gotten the message."

            "Right. I'll admit I don't know much about telepathy. Shields and their mates have always just skirted the edges of anything that could be labeled genuine telepathy. But judging from what I've learned by working prisma, I'd say it's not a passive process. It takes strength and a deliberate focus."

            "And both factors come into play automatically under conditions of extreme stress, is that it?" "And under conditions of passion," he added blandly. "Don't fret, Sariana, I can't read your mind any

more than any other man can read a woman's mind."

            "Well, that's a relief," she tried to say lightly. The truth was she was feeling extremely nervous about the whole matter. She rose and settled herself onto a convenient rock. "What are we going to do now?"

            "That's my Sariana," he said approvingly. "Back to business when things get sticky. Now, thanks to you, I've got a fix on a large source of prisma somewhere in this gorge. Tomorrow morning I will stash you safely here in this cove and then I will see if I can track the beams to their point of origin."

            She didn't like the casual way he said that. "Then what?"

Gryph shrugged in that gracefully negligent manner all westerners seemed to be born with. "Then I'll

decide what to do about it. If I think there's enough time, I'll wait until Delek and the others arrive. If there isn't time, I'll try to neutralize the weapons on my own."

            "Can one Shield neutralize a whole shipload of the prisma weapons?" "If he's strong enough. And if the ship is a small one."

            "How strong are you, Gryph?" Sariana asked quietly.

            "I don't know," he told her. "No Shield learns the limits of his own strength until he actually confronts a weapon ship. I've never even seen a ship."

            "Oh." She sat in silence for a while, dunking over what he had said. "If it turns out you aren't strong enough to neutralize the weapons and if you have no backup, what happens?"

            "You worry too much, Sariana," he said calmly. He got to his feet and began banking the fire. "We have a lot to do tomorrow morning. I think we'd better get to bed."

            Sariana started to demand an answer to her question, but she stopped, realizing she could guess the answer from his evasive response. Whatever happened to a Shield who lacked sufficient strength to neutralize his target, it wasn't pleasant. Perhaps it meant death. Or insanity. Sariana shivered and folded her cloak more tightly about her.

            The scarlet-toe on her shoulder yawned sleepily as Sariana reached up to pat it with the tip of her finger. Gryph moved around the fire, his actions efficient and economical as he made preparations for securing the campsite.

            "How close do you think that ship is?" Sariana asked, glancing out into the night-shrouded canyon. "Several kilometers away."

"What if this rogue Shield is watching for intruders into this gorge?"

            "I've told you not to worry, haven't I?" Gryph asked with soft humor. "When are you going to learn to follow simple instructions?"

"But, Gryph - "

            "If there is a rogue behind all this, my guess is he'll be sticking close to his prize. He's not out here prowling through the night. I'd know if he were. There is no prisma nearby other than my lock. It's not hard to estimate distance with prisma rays. You do it with a simple formula."

"I'm going to worry about you tomorrow," Sariana said bluntly.

            Gryph took off his boots, crossed the sand toward her and handed her the boots. Then he swung her up into his arms. "I'm just selfish enough to admit I'm going to like having you worry about me. But you'll be safe, Shield-mate. I'll make certain of that before I leave you."

            He waded out to the sled, lifted her over the low railing and set her on her feet. She clutched his boots while she waited for him to jump lightly on board the sled. The moon was directly overhead and a narrow strip of golden light managed to seep as far as the river canyon floor. It gilded the black depths of Gryph's hair and highlighted the arrogant planes of his harsh face. Sariana remembered the buckle she had purchased at the fair.

            "I almost forgot," she murmured as she went over to her travel pouch and opened it. "I have a present for you." She smiled as she turned around to hand him the small package.

            Gryph looked oddly startled. He stared at her in the moonlight and then his gaze dropped to the package in her hand. "For me?"

            "Well, I don't know anyone else who needs this quite as much as you do," she leased. "Here. Open it." His usually deft fingers rumbled slightly with the wrapping, but a moment later the exquisitely detailed

buckle lay in his palm. Holding it in one hand, Gryph opened his weapon kit and withdrew a tiny vapor lamp. He thumbed a switch and a narrow beam of light revealed the intricacies of the buckle. Gryph studied it for a very long time, apparently fascinated. When he glanced up finally, it was difficult to read his shadowed gaze.

"It's beautiful." His voice was rough and strangely husky. "Thank you, Sariana."

            "I bought it at the fair."

"I stopped there to buy something for you, too. That's how I happened to be close enough to realize you were in trouble. With so much going on yesterday and today, I forgot to give it to you." He reached into a pocket and withdrew a tiny package. "It's not much. After living with the Avylyns for a year you're

probably accustomed to fancier jewelry."

            She was amazed by his diffidence. It was so uncharacteristic of Gryph. Sariana was amazed too, by her own reaction to the gift he was handing her. She was thrilled. When she unwrapped the cloak pin she thought it was the most beautiful pin she had ever seen in her whole life.

            "Thank you, Gryph. It's really very lovely." She thrust it at once into a fold of her cloak. The scarlet-toe peered over the edge of her shoulder and studied the pin with idle interest. Then it went back to dozing.

            Gryph switched off the tiny vapor lamp and he and Sar-iana stood looking at each other in the moonlight.

            "You'll be careful tomorrow?" Sariana asked. "I'll be careful."

"Maybe I should come with you," she suggested.

            "Absolutely out of the question. You've already been in too much danger because of this mess. I won't expose you to any more risk. I'm going to make certain you're well hidden tomorrow."

            She heard the finality in his tone and knew this wasn't the time to argue. "What an arrogant man you are."

            His smile was whimsical. "Does that mean you've decided I do qualify as a man, after all?" She felt a pang of guilt as she realized he'd taken her provoking words seriously. "I only said those

things because I was very, very annoyed with you."

            "And because when you get annoyed you get even more mouthy than usual." He reached out to pull her closer. The soft night breeze wrapped her skirts aroiud his legs. "Lucky for you I'm such an understanding man, hmm?"

            "Lucky for me you're a man, period. Any kind of man at all," she whispered against his shirt. He laughed softly into her hair. "Why is that?"

"Because I've fallen in love with you, Gryph."

            He froze. Then his hands caught and held her face so that he could look down at her in the moonlight. His expression was stark and searching. "Sariana?"

            "Let's not talk about it," she said, her fingertips sliding upward into his hair. "There is so little time before morning."

            "But, Sariana - " "Hold me, Gryph."

His arms enfolded her with an urgency that swamped everything else.

            At dawn the next morning Gryph woke Sariana and gave her a few terse instructions. He told her she was safe in the shelter of the cove and if something happened to him, she could use the river sled to make her way back to Little Chance. There she was to go straight to Delek's house. Gryph made Sariana repeat the directions to his friend's home twice to make sure she had them.

            "With any luck, I'll locate the ship this afternoon," he told her crisply as he finished checking his weapon kit. "I'll go in tonight for a closer look. Then I'll decide if I'll try to destroy it on my own or wait for Delek and the others. One way or another I'll be back tomorrow morning."

            "I don't like it," Sariana said.

            He smiled at that. "You rarely do approve of any of my suggestions, lady." "You don't give suggestions. You give commands."

"I just want you to be as safe as possible."

            "I know," she said with a cheeky grin. "The fact that I can sense your intentions are well meant is the only reason I even listen to you at times like this."

            Gryph raised his eyes to the strip of dawn sky overhead. "Save me from empathic females." He picked up a blade bow and handed it to her. "Pay attention, Sariana. I'm going to leave this behind with you, it's

a good, all-purpose weapon and it can also be a useful tool. See all these different blades?"

            Sariana studied the small quiver of blades. Each was a slightly different shape. Many had attachments such as tiny ropes or nets that were cleverly bound to the shaft of the blade. The specialized attachments unfurled or uncoiled or snapped into position when the blade was fired.

"What about them?"

            "You slide the one you want into firing position like this." Gryph demonstrated with cool precision. "You fire it by releasing this trigger."

"Clever," Sariana said dryly.

"Sure. That goes without saying. It was invented by a westerner."

            He gave her one last, hard kiss and then he walked out of the cove without glancing back. He pushed all the hot memories of the previous night out of his mind, including Sariana's soft declaration of love. He had to keep his mind on his task or both of them and much of the populace of the western continent might wind up paying with their lives.

            He would deal with the issue of love later. Gryph made good time through the gorge. He walked swiftly along the river's edge. His fingers played on the prisma lock and in his mind he focused on the rays of light beyond the visible range that Sariana had helped him pick up last night. He kept a small portion of his awareness fixed on his surroundings. It would be stupid to become some hawkbeetle's dinner at this stage.

            The pulsing beam of invisible light that was peculiar to live prisma was clear in his mind now. It was beyond the range of human eyesight, but through some poorly understood process, it could be channeled through another bit of prisma. When that happened, a receptive, tuned mind could pick it up.

            Gryph had practiced long and hard as a boy learning how to focus, channel and control his awareness so that the strange prisma rays could be detected and tracked.

            That had been only the initial part of his training. The other half had consisted of learning how to tune his mind to the frequency of the emitting beam of light and jam it.

            The theoretical middle ground which no Shield had ever attempted as far as Gryph's people knew was to tune into the frequency of live prisma and resonate with it. It would be difficult to do, but once the frequency was under a man's control, he just might be able to stabilize it to the point where he could detonate the weapons in a deliberate, controlled manner.

            It was far more likely such an experiment would result in wiping out everything and everyone in the vicinity, including the crazy Shield working the prisma.

            By late afternoon Gryph had followed the pulsing beams to a point several kilometers from where he had left Sariana. He stopped when he realized how close to the source he was. All the hunting instincts and skills that had been bred and trained into him were fully alert.

            The gorge had deepened. The walls rose dizzyingly high overhead, revealing only a tiny strip of sky. Evening shadows were already thick on the valley floor.

            The river was a rough and tumble cascade now. White water foamed over boulders and squeezed through twists and turns in the narrowed riverbed channel.

            Gryph used the shadows, although he was relatively certain he wouldn't be noticed, even if someone up ahead was watching. There was enough natural cover in the area to hide his movements. Even another Shield would be unable to sense his presence. The pulses of the live prisma were so strong Gryph was certain they masked everything, including the weaker pulse of the neutralized prisma in his lock.