Colors of Chaos

CXIX

CERRYL GLANCED OVER at the blonde head on the pillow beside him, then leaned back in the grayness before dawn. After all these years…why now?

“…waited all these years…” Leyladin’s voice was thick with sleep, but she turned toward him. “…you waited, too.”

“I saw you in the glass…more than a half-score of years ago.” He propped himself up on his left elbow to study her, and his fingers traced the line of her chin.

“I didn’t know who you were, then.”

“I didn’t know who you were, either.”

“I haven’t changed much.”

“You still like green.”

Leyladin wrapped her shift around her as she sat up against the headboard, a pillow behind her.

“You don’t need that,” teased Cerryl. “The shift, I mean.”

“Oh?” She arched her eyebrows.

“You didn’t last night.”

“That was last night.” The archness of her voice broke into a laugh.

Cerryl laughed with her.

After a moment, she cleared her throat. “Oh…I’d better tell you. Kinowin made me promise.”

“Promise what?” Cerryl didn’t want to talk about Kinowin or Jeslek or anyone else.

“He had a message, one he didn’t want to write down.” Leyladin shook her head. “He’s getting old, like Myral did. He was always so tall and strong, and now he’s a little stooped, and he has to concentrate when he walks so that he doesn’t shuffle.”

“So quickly?”

“It happens quickly.” Her eyes misted as she looked at Cerryl.

He shivered, knowing yet another reason why she had come to Spidlar.

“It’s not that-yet.” Her voice thickened. “Life is short enough…It’s too short.”

Cerryl was already discovering that. “Ah…what?”

Leyladin swallowed. “He said…you did not need to fight Jeslek. Just follow Myral’s teaching about keeping chaos from you when you channel it, and you’ll do what Myral expected.”

“I wasn’t thinking about fighting Jeslek.”

“Kinowin didn’t think so, but he wanted you to understand that Anya is the real danger to Fairhaven.”

“Because she doesn’t believe in it and because she’s using her ties to Jiolt to influence the traders?”

Leyladin shook her head ruefully. “Why am I telling you this?”

“Because I might not have known and because it helps for someone else to think the same thing and because I trust you and Kinowin.” He paused, thinking about the silksheen he had never been able to follow up on-that he had known went to Jiolt. “Besides, a lot of what I know about Anya is from what I sense but couldn’t ever prove. So it helps to know others have discovered things or feel the same way.” Cerryl’s stomach growled-loudly.

“I suppose I should let you eat.” Leyladin leaned forward and her lips brushed his cheek.

“If you want to abuse me like you did last night…”

“Abuse? Who abused whom?”

Cerryl found himself flushing.

“You’re handsome when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Blush.” Leyladin grinned. “It goes all the way down.”

Cerryl knew he was red at least from the waist up. “You.”

“Go on. You get dressed first.”

“Me?” Cerryl swallowed, realizing that any more byplay and he’d only embarrass himself more.

“You can figure out what we’ll eat while I’m dressing.”

“Oh.”

“Let a poor woman try to regain a little mystery.”

“Mystery-that you’ll always have.” Cerryl put his feet on the rug around the four-poster bed, then walked to the wash table. The water was cold, and he took a moment to infuse it with chaos.

After shaving and dressing, he emptied the water out the north side window, where it did little damage, adding to the icy pyramid against the brick below, and refilled it.

“Close the window…please.”

“I’m sorry.” He closed the window and heated the water until it was almost steaming, even though his head was throbbing.

“Dearest…you didn’t have to do that.” Leyladin leaned forward, and Cerryl didn’t care about the headache.

“You-you are impossible.”

Suddenly he swallowed. “You know what I feel…some of the time.”

“I didn’t need much to know that.” The playful smile vanished, and she nodded: “At times, you know what I feel. It happens, sometimes, with mages.”

Cerryl sat down on the edge of the chair. “I just thought I was imagining.”

“No…dearest. Why do you think I’m here?”

“Because I’m impossible?” He forced a smile.

“You know better than that.”

This time his smile wasn’t forced. He leaned over the bed and kissed his blonde healer, this time on the lips. “I’ll leave you to your mystery.”

“Go get something for us to eat-if you know how.”

“I manage.”

“Good.”

Somehow, the gray day felt sunny as he clumped down the stairs in his heavy white boots.