Elven Star

14

“We know the best trails,” Rega had told Paithan. As it turned out, there was no best trail. There was one trail. And neither Rega nor Roland had ever seen it-Neither brother nor sister had ever been to the dwarven kingdom, a fact they took care to keep from the elf.

“How tough can it be?” Roland had asked his sister. “It’ll be just like all the other trails through the jungle.”

But it wasn’t, and after a few cycles’ travel, Rega was beginning to think they’d made a mistake. Several mistakes, in fact.

The trail, such as it existed and where it existed, was quite new. It had been carved through the jungle by dwarven hands, which meant that it wended its way far beneath the upper levels of the huge trees where humans and elves were more comfortable. It meandered and turned and twisted through dark, shadowy regions. Sunlight, when it could be seen at all, appeared reflected through a roof of green.

The air this far below the upper reaches seemed to have been trapped here for centuries. It was stagnant, hot, and humid. The rains that fell in torrents above trickled below, filtered through innumerable branches and leaves and moss beds. The water was not clear and sparkling, but had a brownish cast to it and tasted strongly of moss. It was a different, dismal world and after a penton’s[22] traveling, the humans in the party grew heartily sick of it. The elf, always interested in new places, found it rather exciting and maintained his usual cheerful demeanor.

The trail had not been built to accommodate loaded caravans, however. Often, the vines, trees, and brush were so thick that the tyros could not crawl through with the packs on their hard-shelled backs. This meant that the three had to remove the loaded baskets, lug them through the jungle by hand, all the while cajoling the tyros into following them.

Several times, the path came to a halt at the edge of a bed of shaggy gray moss and plunged downward into even deeper darkness; no bridges had been built connecting the way. Again, the tyros had to be unloaded so that they could spin their webs and float down. The heavy baskets had to be lowered by hand. Up above, the two men—arms nearly breaking—braced themselves and slowly paid out the rope, lowering the baggage through the air. Most of the heavy work fell to Roland. Paithan’s slender body and light musculature were of little help. Eventually he took the job of fixing the rope around a tree limb and holding it fast, while Roland—with a strength that seemed marvelous to the elf—handled the lowering by himself.

They dropped Rega down first, to be on hand to untie the baskets as they were lowered and to keep an eye on the tyros to be certain they didn’t crawl off. Standing at the bottom of the cliff in the stagnant gray-green darkness, alone, hearing growls and snufflings and the sudden, hair-raising call of the vampire sloth, Rega gripped her raztar and cursed the day she’d let Roland talk her into this. Not only because of the danger, but because of another reason—something completely unforeseen, unexpected. Rega was falling in love.

“Dwarves really live in places like this?” asked Paithan, looking up, up, up and still not being able to see the sun through the tangled, dark mass of moss and tree limbs overhead.

“Yeah,” said Roland shortly, not particularly eager to discuss the issue, afraid that the elf might ask more questions about the dwarves than he—Roland—was prepared to answer.

The three were resting after encountering the steepest drop yet. Their hempen ropes had barely been long enough, and even then Rega’d been forced to climb up a tree and untie the baskets, which were left hovering some three feet off the ground.

“Why, your hands are covered with blood!” Rega exclaimed.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Paithan, looking ruefully at his palms. “I slipped coming down that last length of rope.”

“It’s this damn wet air,” muttered Rega. “I feel like I’m living under the sea. Here, let me treat those for you. Roland, dear, can you bring me some fresh water.”

Roland, slumped wearily on the gray moss, glared at his “wife”. Why me?

Rega shot her “husband” a vicious, sidelong look. Getting me alone with him was your idea.

Roland, glowering, rose to his feet and stomped off into the jungle, carrying the waterskin with him.

Now was the perfect time for Rega to continue her seduction of the elf. Paithan obviously admired her, treating her with unfailing courtesy and respect. In fact, she had never met a man who treated her so well. But holding the slim white hands with long graceful fingers in her own short, stubby-fingered brown hands, Rega felt suddenly shy and awkward as a young gir! at her first village dance.

“Your touch is very gentle,” said Paithan.

Rega blushed hotly and glanced up at him from beneath her long, black eyelashes. Paithan was regarding her with an unusual expression for the carefree elf—his eyes were grave, serious.

/ wish you weren’t another man’s wife.

I’m not! Rega wanted to scream.

Her fingers began to tremble, and she snatched them away, fumbling in her kit. What’s wrong with me? He’s an elf! His money, that’s what we’re after. That’s all that’s important.

“I’ve got some salve, made of spom bark. It’s going to sting, I’m afraid, but you’ll be healed by morning.”

“The wound I’m suffering will never heal.” Paithan’s hand s!id over Rega’s arm, his touch soft and caressing.

Rega held perfectly still, allowing his hand to glide over her skin, up her arm, lighting fires as it passed. Her skin burned, the flames spread to her chest and constricted her breathing. The elf’s hand slid around to the small of her back, he drew her near. Rega, holding onto the bottle of salve tightly, let herself be pulled to him. She didn’t look at him, she couldn’t. This will work out fine, she told herself.

The elf’s arms were slender and smooth skinned, his body lithe. She tried to ignore the fact that her heart was beating so she thought it might crash through her chest.

Roland will come back and find us … kissing … and he and I will take this elf … for everything …

“No!” Rega gasped and broke away from Paithan’s embrace. Her skin burned, inexplicably she shook with chills. “Don’t … do that!”

“I’m sorry,” said Paithan, immediately drawing away. His breathing, too, was coming in short, deep gasps. “I don’t know what came over me. You’re married. I must accept that.”

Rega didn’t answer. She kept her back to him, wishing more man anything that he’d hold her in his arms, knowing that she’d pull away from him again if he did.

This is insane! she told herself, wiping a tear from her eye with the heel of her hand. I’ve let men I don’t care two stone for put their hands all over me. Yet this one … I want him … and I can’t …

“It won’t happen again, I promise you,” said Paithan. Rega knew he meant it and cursed her heart for shriveling up and dying at the thought. She’d tell him the truth. The words were on her lips, then she paused.

What would she say? Tell him that she and Roland weren’t husband and wife, that they were really brother and sister, that they’d lied in order to trap the elf into an improper liaison, that they were planning to blackmail him?

She could see his look of disgust and hatred. Maybe he’d leave!

It would be better if he did, whispered the cold, hard voice of logic. What chance for happiness do you have with an elf? Even if you found a way to tell him you were free to accept his love, how long would it last? He doesn’t love you, no elf could truly love a human. He’s amusing himself. That’s all it would be. A dalliance, lasting a season or two. Then he’ll leave, return to his people, and you’ll be an outcast among your own kind for having submitted to an elf’s caresses.

No, Rega answered stubbornly. He does love me. I’ve seen it in his eyes. And I’ve proof of it—he didn’t try to force his advances on me. Very well, then, said that irritating voice, so he loves you. What now? You marry. You’re both outcasts. He can’t go home, you can’t either. Your love is barren, for elves and humans can’t reproduce. You wander the world in loneliness, years pass. You grow old and haggard, while he remains young and vital …

“Hey, what’s going on here?” demanded Roland, leaping unexpectedly out of the brush. He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Nothing,” said Rega coldly.

“I can see that,” murmured Roland, edging dose to his sister. She and the elf were standing at opposite edges of the small clearing in the jungle growth, as far apart as possible. “What’s going on, Rega? You two have a fight?”

“Nothing! All right! Just leave me alone!” Rega glanced up into the dark and twisted trees, clasped her arms around her and shivered. “This isn’t the most romantic spot, you know,” she said in a low voice.

“C’mom, Sis.” Roland grinned. “You’d make love to a man in a pigsty if he paid you well enough.”

Rega slapped him. The blow was hard, well aimed. Roland, his hand to his aching jaw, stared at her in amazement.

“What’d you do that for? I meant it as a compliment!” Rega turned on her heel and stalked out of the clearing. At the edge, she half-turned again and tossed something toward the elf. “Here, rub that on the sores.”

You’re right, she told herself, hurrying into the jungle where she could have her cry out in private. I’ll leave things just the way they are. We’ll deliver the weapons, he’ll leave, and that’ll be an end of it. I’ll smile and tease him and never let him see he meant anything more to me than just a good time. Paithan, taken by surprise, just barely caught the thrown bottle before it smashed on the ground. He watched Rega plunge into the brush, he could hear her crashing through the undergrowth.

“Women,” said Roland, rubbing his bruised cheek and shaking hifr head. He took the waterskin over to the elf and dropped it at his feet. “Must be her time of season.”

Paithan flushed a deep red and gave Roland a disgusted look. The human winked. “What’s the matter, Quin, I say something to embarrass you?”

“In my land, men don’t talk about such things,” Paithan rebuked.

“Yeah?” Roland glanced back toward where Rega had disappeared, then looked over at the elf and his grin widened. “I guess in your land men don’t do a lot of things.”

Paithan’s flush of anger deepened to guilt. Did Roland see Rega and me together? Is this his way of letting me know, warning me to keep my hands off?

Paithan was forced, for Rega’s sake, to swallow the insult. Sitting down on the ground, he began to spread the salve on his skinned and bloody palms, wincing as the brown-colored gunk bit into raw flesh and exposed nerves. He welcomed the pain. At least it was better than the one biting at his heart. Paithan had enjoyed Rega’s mild flirtations the first cycle or two on their journey until it had suddenly occurred to him that he was enjoying them too much. He found himself watching intently the play of the smooth muscles in her shapely legs, the warm glow of the firelight in her brown eyes, the trick she had of running her tongue across her berry-stained lips when she was deep in thought.

The second night on the trail, when she and Roland had taken their blanket to the other side of the glade and laid down next to each other in the shadowed sunlight of rain’s hour, Paithan had thought his insides would twist out of him in jealousy. No matter that he never saw the two kissing or even touching affectionately. Indeed, they treated each other with a casual familiarity he found quite astonishing, even in husband and wife. He had decided, by the fourth cycle on the trail, that Roland—though a good enough fellow as humans go—didn’t appreciate the treasure he had for a wife.

Paithan felt comforted by this knowledge, it gave him an excuse to let his feelings for the human woman grow and blossom, when he knew very well he should have ripped them up by the roots. Now the plant was in full bloom, the vine twining around his heart. He realized now, too late, the harm that had been done … to them both.

Rega loved him. He knew, he’d felt it in her trembling body, he’d seen it in that one, brief look she’d given him. His heart should have been singing with joy. It was dumb with sick despair. What folly! What mad folly! Oh, sure, he could have his moments of pleasure. He’d done that with countless human women. Love them, then leave them. They expected nothing more, they wanted nothing more. And neither had he. Until now. Yet, what did he want? A relationship that would cut them both adrift from their lives? A relationship looked upon with abhorrence by both worlds? A relationship that would give them nothing, not even children? A relationship he would have to watch come at last and inevitably to a bitter end?

No, nothing good can come of it. I’ll leave, he thought. Go back home. I’ll give them the tyros. Callie’ll be mad at me anyway. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat, as the saying goes. I’ll leave now. This very moment. But he continued sitting in the clearing, absently spreading salve on his palms. He thought he could hear, far away, the sound of someone weeping. He tried to ignore it, but eventually he could stand it no longer.

“I think I hear your wife crying,” he said to Roland. “Maybe something’s wrong.”

“Rega?” Roland glanced up from feeding the tyros. He appeared amused. “Crying?

Naw, must be a bird you’re hearing. Rega never cries, not even the time when she got stabbed in the raztar fight. Did you ever notice the scar? It’s on her left thigh, about here …”

Paithan rose to his feet and stalked off into the jungle, moving in a direction opposite to that which Rega had taken.

Roland watched the elf leave out of the corner of his eye and hummed a bawdy song currently making the rounds of the taverns.

“He’s fallen for her like a rotten tree limb in a storm,” he told the tyros.

“Rega’s playing it cooler than usual, but I guess she knows what she’s doing. He’s an elf, after all. Still, sex is sex. Little elves come from somewhere and I don’t think it’s heaven.

“But, ugh! Elven women! Skinny and bony—you might as well take a stick to bed. No wonder poor old Quin’s following Rega around with his tongue hanging out. Ifs only a matter of time. I’ll catch him with his pants down in a cycle or two, and then we’ll fix him! Too bad, though.” Roland reflected. Tossing the waterskin on the ground, he leaned wearily back against a tree and stretched, easing the stiffness from his limbs. “I’m beginning to kind of like the guy.”