The Towers Of the Sunset (22 page)

“YOU STILL DON’T understand, do you?” Megaera twists on the hard stone, curling one leather-trousered leg under her. She half-faces the east, where, beyond the three-kay spread of the cleared meadows, the broad walls of the town cast shadows across the buildings.

Creslin looks to his right, at the orange sun about to set behind the western hills, then turns back to Megaera. He tries not to frown, knowing it is futile this close to her. Yet, sensing the raging storm within her, he wonders if any answer is safe. “I don’t think so.”

She lifts her arms, letting the long cotton sleeves slide back to reveal her scarred wrists. “You’ve seen these before. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

“I won’t.” He could remove the scars, but there is no purpose in doing so until the mental scars that underlie them are gone.

“Iron, cold iron, every day since… since I stopped being a little girl. Do you know what it’s like. Do you?”

“No.”

“And then Ryessa, sister dear, and Dylyss exchange that cold iron for hot iron. Your blood for my chains, and my life is linked to yours. Do you know what it is like to sense your abilities and never be able to use them? At least not fully. Not without pain.”

Not be able to use whose abilities? His or hers? “Go on.”

“You don’t really want to hear.”

“Why do you-” He fixes his eyes on her. “I said to go on.”

“No.” She looks away. “I refuse to be humored, even by someone who is basically nice, if dense.”

“Fine,” snorts Creslin. “Then tell me why you showed that troop of wizards’ road guards where I was. That almost killed me.”

“What?”

“You know exactly what I mean. You and your damned white bird circled right overhead until that wizard could see me.”

“Is that how it looks to you?” Megaera’s voice carries a surprised lilt.

“Don’t you know?”

“How would I know?” She lifts her arms again, letting the scars face Creslin. “How would I know? When every trip across the skies burns your skin and soul? When the only sunlight you see in days is through an iron-barred window? It’s only in the last season that I could work without searing myself.”

“You don’t know? You don’t see that damned bird when you reach for me?”

“Of course not, you idiot! Who would tell me? Are you strong enough to hold your hands across a red-hot grate to call your storms? And if you are, are you going to wonder what it looks like?”

A shadow appears on the stone pavement behind Megaera. Creslin watches as the dark countenance of
Florin takes in the scene. The Duke’s guard-master nods at him soundlessly and steps away, a faint smile on his normally immobile face.

“Don’t you understand?” demands Megaera.

“What am I supposed to say? If I say I understand, you’ll say I don’t. If I admit I don’t understand, then I’m damned, because no one can possibly understand your trials.” Creslin swallows, but the words have been bottled up too long. “You’re the one who insisted on branding yourself, on flinging yourself against cold iron. You had a choice. Not much of one, but you had it. There were times when you could have walked away, like at that banquet. What guard could have stopped you?” His words continue to rush out. “You didn’t have to fight for every little step. You didn’t have to prove yourself against the guards of Westwind. You didn’t have to cross the Westhorns in winter and on foot. You didn’t have your mind stolen by the White Wizards. Or your skull nearly split twice. I never did any damned fool things that threatened you. Your sister may have, and the
Marshall may have, but I didn’t. So stop laying all your troubles on me, as if somehow I caused them.”

Megaera’s mouth is wide open. “You… you still don’t understand anything. Your mind-if you have one-is as closed as Westwind itself. You were trained as a warrior-who would stop you? You’re one of the most powerful Storm Wizards born-who could stop you? The only chains you’ve ever had are those in your head, and you still wear them!” Now she is standing, and her eyes flash brighter than the sunset.

Creslin blinks. What chains?

“I had chains, and they couldn’t hold me,” she continues. “You have chains and you don’t even know it. Light help me! You certainly won’t.” Reddish fire plays on her fingertips, then vanishes, and her face pales. “Damn you! Damn you!”

The footsteps of her riding boots echo on the stones long after she has fled from the parapets.

Chains? What are his chains? Or is Megaera just imagining something?

He lets his arms rest on the stone still warm from the day’s sun. Megaera is telling the truth as she sees it, and that is more disturbing to him than the enmity of all the wizards of
Fairhaven.

In time, he looks out upon the twilight, letting a few words slip out into the darkness.

… harp strings tell the story’s old, from when the angels fled the fold, and yet you sing that truth is strong, when every note you strike is wrong.

Should I trust what singing brings, when hatred hides in silvered strings?

The song is wrong, the words not quite right, and he wishes he had his guitar. For all he knows, it rests somewhere in Sarronnyn.

CRESLIN KNOCKS ON the heavy door and waits. The note that had been handed to him by Aldonya at the noon meal is in his belt. Megaera had not been present. All the few neatly scripted words state is that he and she need to work together.

“Coming…”

Megaera’s door is iron-bound, just as his is. Sometimes, the obvious constraints are easier to escape.

The heavy oak swings open, and Aldonya stands there. “Come in. Her grace will be here shortly. She is expecting you.”

As he steps into the room, Creslin looks around. A closed door to his right leads, presumably, to a bedroom. A high-armed wooden couch and an armchair flank a low table on which rest two cups and a covered pot from which a wisp of steam drifts.

The wood paneling, brass wall lamps, small table, and matching chairs by the window are the same as in his room. The colors are different, for Megaera’s spreads and hangings consist of blues and creams, unlike the greens and golds of his quarters.

Aldonya steps away from the closed door. “Would you like some hot tea?”

“No… no, thank you.” He pauses. “Have you been with Megaera long?”

“No, your lordship. I… entered her service here.”

“You were with the Duke’s household?”

“No, ser. Her grace… found me herself.” The girl’s eyes do not quite meet his, and he wonders how much of the truth she is hiding.

“She is rather… striking.”

“Yes, ser.”

Again the words conceal more than they reveal, true as they sound.

“Good afternoon, Creslin.”

Megaera’s voice is not quite husky; its tones carry the sound he recalls from that night whose events may never have occurred. Could they have ever occurred as he recalls them? With Megaera’s present attitude toward him?

She glides toward the window. The unlit lamp has been lifted onto the window seat, and a small mirror rests in the middle of the high octagonal table. Creslin follows, realizing for the first time how slender she is, with fine and delicate bones.

“Sit down. Whatever happens, you need to know a few things. You can go, Aldonya.” The dismissal is soft, almost gentle, especially in contrast to the level tones she has directed at Creslin.

He steps toward the table, then sits down. The door closing is the only sound of the serving girl’s departure.

Megaera sits down opposite Creslin, her back to the half-open window. “I’m sorry about the other day, but I still don’t like you very much.”

“I can’t say that I understand, because you’re not telling the truth, either to me or to yourself.” He pauses, then adds quickly, “If it helps, you’re probably right about me. I haven’t thought a lot of things through.”

“I attempt to apologize, and you attack me.” Her eyes drop to the mirror on the table. “So tell me, Ser Storm Wizard, what I feel.” The words are like blocks of ice.

“It wasn’t meant as an attack. You don’t know what you feel about me,” he guesses and waits for her reaction. His guts remain calm, indicating that he, at least, believes what he says.

Megaera remains silent, her green eyes cool.

“You hate your sister,” he tells her, “and you hate the fact that you’re tied to me. You feel that you ought to hate me, but deep inside you don’t. And you hate that, too.” He raises his hand, in case her hand is headed for his cheek again.

“I owed you for one thing, Creslin. Hatred doesn’t enter the picture.”

“I did not say that you liked me. I did not say that you were secretly in love with me. I said that you did not hate me.”

“I could easily hate you, especially for your arrogant assumptions.”

“As you wish…”he sighs. “You had something you wanted to tell me?”

“Only because I wish to live, and that is clearly impossible if you do not. I have no desire to be mindless, or partly mindless, either.”

“Why don’t we just find a wizard who can undo this lifeline?” he suggests.

“Because it’s too late. Sister dear was clever. I was imprisoned until you had returned to Westwind. Now- even by the time of the betrothal-breaking the tie would kill me. Sister had no idea of what you are, and she had to ensure that you remained alive to further her plans for using your mother’s troops. What better way?”

Creslin shivers, but the tension between them has dropped.

“Do you recall how you felt when you were in the road camp?” Her voice is brisk again.

“No. I have two sets of memories, one without a past.”

“They call it the White Prison. That’s what the books say. Korweil’s library is good, at least.” She frowns before she continues. “But it’s effective only with people who don’t know what it is or how it works… or with someone who’s been injured or hurt.”

“I was naive.” Creslin looks warily at the small mirror on the table.

The redhead shakes her shoulder-length hair, flowing free except for the combs above and behind her small, delicate ears. A brief smile touches her lips at his admission.

Creslin swallows as he looks at the creamy skin of her neck and the fine collar bones showing above the scoop-necked, pale green dress she wears. This is the first time he has seen her without a neck-high tunic, a riding jacket, or a full-closed cloak. He swallows again, and his heart beats faster.

“Stop it!” She is flushing.

“Oh…” Her reaction strikes him like the ice gales of the Roof of the World, cold enough to freeze him in his tracks.

The blush leaches from her cheeks.

“You feel everything I feel or think?”

She turns toward the leaded panes of the window. “No. Only… when you’re near and you feel strongly. When you were working on the road… just the worst…” She looks away, although her hands and scarred wrists remain on the tabletop.

Creslin waits, trying not to gnaw his lips, trying to keep his hands still. Megaera is silent, not quite looking at him, but not overtly avoiding his glance.

“You said we still have to work together,” he finally ventures.

“What do you think we should do?”

“Do?” Creslin wants to bite his tongue for the stupidity of his words. “I’m not sure. I’d hoped to learn something in
Fairhaven-”

“I trust you did learn something.” Megaera’s voice is dry.

“A great deal.” He forces a laugh. “But not exactly what I had intended.” He paused. “I can’t return to Westwind. So… where can we go?”

“It’s not where we can go. It’s where you can go.”

“That’s not quite true. I suspect we could return to Sarronnyn. Or we could stay here. The Duke needs all the support he can find, whether he’ll admit it or not.”

“Do you honestly think we would be safe for long in either place?”

“Why not here?” asks Creslin.

“The Duke has no heirs. As a young man, he had the spotted fever,” Megaera says flatly. “The Duchess died four years ago. She had no siblings.”

Creslin nods. “So the wizards will wait for his death, but if you stayed, with a claim on the Duchy…”

“I’m glad I don’t have to explain everything.”

Creslin tries not to clench his jaw, merely tightening his lips. Finally he speaks to break the silence. “That leaves nowhere in Candar.”

“You have moments of brilliance, best-betrothed. Especially when you note the obvious.”

“Are we looking for a solution, or are you more interested in insulting me?” Even as he says the words, Creslin wishes he had not.

“Truth is not an insult, not unless you are looking for deception.”

He wonders why he bothers. Then again, Megaera scarcely chose to be tied to him. “I know very little of human nature, of the intrigues of rulers, and… probably… little of women, at least of those not raised in Westwind. I know that, and you know that. I admit it. What good does it do to keep pointing it out to me? Does it make you feel superior?”

“Perhaps I am. In some ways,” she adds almost hastily, a strained look on her face. “Damn you…” she whispers, refusing to look at him, her head bowed and her eyes fixed on the polished wood of the table.

Creslin shakes his head. In one moment Megaera is almost approachable, yet in the next… She is like two different people. Then he swallows, understanding finally. His eyes burn, and he tries to wall off his feelings, knowing that it is already too late, knowing that she feels what he feels almost as soon as he does.

“Stop it! I don’t need your damned pity! Just go on being dense and stupid. It’s easier that way.” She has left the chair and turned her back to him, standing with her face toward the open leaded-glass windows.

The room is close, the air still, and Creslin touches the winds, bringing a breeze in through the narrow opening, watching as the air lifts strands of Megaera’s red hair. She does not acknowledge his actions or his presence.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, he pushes back his chair and stands. He walks over to the couch, away from Megaera.

“How much longer can we stay here?” he asks.

Megaera does not answer him at first, keeping her eyes fixed on the hills beyond the outer wall and to the south-a better view than that in Creslin’s room, which merely faces a corner tower of the outer wall.

“Korweil cannot force us to leave.”

“Do you want to stay?”

“Where could you-we-go?”

“What about Reduce?” Creslin asks.

“That desolate island waste? Better that I stayed behind iron walls with sister dear.”

Creslin shrugs. “Hamor?”

He senses that Hamor is no answer.

“Nordla?”.

“That’s as cold as Westwind, and they don’t honor the Legend there.”

“I don’t think they do in Hamor, either. Not since the empire was founded.”

“Damn you all…”

“Then I guess it has to be Reduce, at least for a while. Unless you want to risk staying here.”

Megaera does not turn, nor does she speak.

“We should talk to the Duke after dinner.” Creslin waits. “I will see you then.” He moves toward the door, but Megaera still says nothing.

He closes the door and turns down the corridor toward his quarters, followed by another pair of armed guards.