The Dragonstone

CHAPTER 5 7

As they set about cleaning up the camel dung, Burel said, "I have always known that the demon and I would meet someday, for it was written. What I did not know is that Lady Aiko would be there as well." The big man smiled over at the Ryodoan, receiving a smile in return.

Ferret cocked an eyebrow. "It was written?"

Basking in Aiko's grin, Burel swung his gaze to Ferret and nodded.

"What do you mean, 'it was written'?"

"Something my mother told me before she died," replied Burel.

"Oh," said Aiko, her voice all but unheard, her smile fading.

"What is it, my Lady?" asked Burel, turning his attention again to her.

Aiko sighed. "I was hoping your mother yet lived."

"No. She died of fever when I was but ten or so."

Aiko looked down at the red stone. "My own died giving birth to me."

Burel dropped the bag he was carrying and stepped to the Ryodoan and embraced her. "I at least have my memories," he rumbled, "whereas you have none."

His arms around her, Aiko looked up at Burel as if studying his face. At long last she said, "I've never told anyone this, Burel: I never knew my mother, but even so, I miss her."

He looked at her and wanly smiled. "As do I, Aiko. As do I."

Aiko's heart suddenly leapt, for it was the first time he had addressed her in the familiar.

"My mother is dead, too," said Ferret. "And my father. Murdered both."

She gazed back at the campsite where the others readied for the day's travel. "I wonder if any of us have parents alive."

They walked and rode all that day, pausing to take up old camel droppings they had left behind on the way in, as well as taking up any new; too, they cleaned up their own excrement old and new as well, leaving nothing behind to point to the temple in the maze. At sunset as they made camp they heard the demon horn howl, and Alos jumped and spat oaths. It sounded at midnight as well, startling the old man awake once more. "I've heard that cursed thing twice a night for the last, um, twenty, thirty days. Is it to plague me the rest of my life?" In spite of his ire, he fell instantly asleep again.

As they fared for the second day through the twisting rock canyons carved deep in the scarlet maze, the talk did turn to parents, and only Arin of them all had a dam and sire who yet lived, though not upon Mithgar but Adonar instead. All the others had died of illness or in battle or of natural causes, or had been murdered, or, in the case of Aiko, her father had died broken and disgraced, denied even the honor of committing seppuku when his daughter had been unmasked.

Upon learning this, when next they led the camels, Burel slipped an arm about Aiko and they walked along in silence.

"Well then," said Delon, after a while, striding alongside Ferai, "we'll just have to become our own family, though I'll consider you, my sweet, as but a remote tenth cousin."

Ferret looked up at him. 'Tenth cousin? But why?"

"I would not have you be close kin, for then I couldn't do this." And he paused and took her face in his hands and kissed her long and gently.

Their camels, disturbed at being stopped, emitted loud hronks.

Alos, following, broke out in a cackle.

Ferai, her heart pounding, her face reddening, drew back from the bard. But he threw his arms wide and broke out in song.

Together they tugged on their camels, the beasts growling in dismay for now, of all things, they were being asked to move again, when they had just barely gotten stopped.

And down the canyon they continued, Delon singing a heartfelt refrain shared by two other men deeply enamored, each of them oblivious to the fears of those they loved: Dara Arin, who dreaded what the oncoming decades would do to her mortal lover and how he might react; fierce Aiko, who could but barely acknowledge that she had room for love in her warrior heart; and untrusting Ferai, who'd been raped as a child.

That night, as a distant demon howl echoed through the scarlet maze, they made camp on the Island in the Sky. While they waited for the water to boil above the charcoal fire, Ferret glanced across at Burel and said, "Tell me more about these things which you say are, um, written. Just exactly what do you mean by that?"

Burel did not look up from the fire. "I will ask you this, Ferai: do you believe that you can choose your paths in life?"

Ferret poked her riding stick at the charcoal, nudging a lump to where it would catch fire. "Yes, Burel, I am totally free to do anything I so choose."

Burel shifted his ice-blue eyes away from the glow and toward her. She shivered as if from a sudden chill, but she did not look away. For a moment his gaze held hers, then he looked to the eastern night sky and pointed at the full moon shining aglance o'er the crimson maze. "If you so desired, could you step to the moon?"

Her own gaze followed his, and for a long while she did not answer. But at last she said, "Perhaps. But it would take long training in the ways of Magekind." She glanced at Burel's sword, then added, "Or in the ways of Dwarven crafting to make a ship that can sail the skies above."

Burel grunted, then said, "But you cannot step there now merely by wishing it so."

Ferret grinned and shook her head. "Alas, I cannot."

"Then there are limits to your totally free choices, eh? You cannot step to the moon, cannot fly, cannot change into a fish, cannot do countless things. They are beyond your means. That is, merely oft what you may desire is not a choice at all."

"True, Burel. Nevertheless, my will is entirely free. Of all those things within my power, I can pick and choose which to do."

The big man shook his head. "I think not, Ferai. I think all is predestined, and this notion of free choice, of free will, is but an illusion."

"How so?"

Burel took up a pebble. "Consider this stone. If I were to place it so that it would roll down a slope and strike another stone of like size lying on the surface, would it not cause that second stone to roll downslope as well?"

Ferret nodded but remained silent.

Burel continued. "And if I knew precisely where the first stone would strike the second, would I then not know exactly how both stones would react, the angle and speed at which the first would bound, as well as the direction and pace of the second?"

Again Ferret nodded.

"Then consider this: if those above Elwydd and Adon created all, and know all, and set all in motion, would they not know, know, our destinies? Are we not merely like pebbles impelled by the many collisions in our lives? Collisions which the highest of all already know the outcomes, and the outcomes of those outcomes, and so on forever?

"You may believe you have choices, Ferai, yet the collisions in your life are already set and your path is immutably determined… just as is mine, just as is all that was, that is, and that will ever be. We are merely moving through an endless story already told."

"Ha!" crowed Ferret. "If it is an endless story, then how can it already be told?"

Burel merely shrugged.

Ferret shook her head. "If you think the path is already set, then why strive to do anything, why make any choices whatsoever?"

"Because it is written that we shall do so, written that we shall strive and make choices though, like the pebbles, we merely rattle down the preordained way."

"Bah!" growled Ferret, then she turned to Arin. "What say you to this mad man, Dara?"

Arin smiled. "My view is different."

"How so?"

The Dylvana scratched a line in the rocky soil. "All lives are made up of choices. Should we choose this way, then here we shall go." Her line in the grit jagged left. "But should we choose elsewise"-she moved her stick back up the scrape and jinked it to the right-"we go this way instead. Life itself consists of branching pathways, turning left and right and running straight, or swerving at any number of angles, some paths more likely than others, though any path may be taken. And each choice we make leads to still more branches ahead.

"When we live a simple life, perhaps isolated and full of routine, then the impinging events and choices are few. But as our lives cross with those of others-family, friends, strangers, foe-their choices at times affect what we do, as our choices at times affect them. And the more people we encounter, the more our paths cross and crisscross and cross again. The more people and events, the more branches, the more confusing the tangle… so many choices and interlinked branches as to represent chaos itself.

"However, because as Burel says, most people cannot choose to step to the moon or burst into flame or lift a mountain or become a god… or a countless number of things entirely beyond their power, then this endless tangle of branches is indeed bounded by practicality-a bounded chaos, if thou wilt.

"Looking into the past, though, we see the tangle resolved into sets of choices made, chaotic no more but fixed instead-much as Burel would have it. But looking into the future is like looking into an endless snarl of choices, like looking into chaos itself all knotted and meshed and entangled, as you, Ferret, believe.

"There are, however, past and present and future events which stand out above the confusion and chaos, with virtually all paths leading from them or to them in due time, almost regardless of what choices are made."

"Like wyrds?" asked Egil.

Arin nodded. "Thou couldst think of it that way: wyrds for individuals, couples, families, clans, communities, nations, the world. These are the ways of prophecy… ways leading toward signal events."

"And this is what you deem the green stone to be, eh? A wyrd for the world?"

"Yes, Egil, I do."

Delon shook his head. "But Dara, first you tell us we have choices, and then you tell us that all paths lead to signal events. If all paths lead to such an event, then what we try to do is hopeless."

"I did not say all paths lead that way-"

"She said virtually all paths," interjected Ferret.

"Bah," snorted Alos. "Immutable destiny. Choices. Wyrds. It's all nonsense. It's the fickle gods who reach down and meddle with our so-called destinies, shoving us this way and that, visiting calamity upon us when we least expect it."

"No, Alos," protested Delon. "Although the gods may meddle, I think our destinies are written in the stars." He looked around for agreement, but found none. "Even so, there are choices to make, for it is said that the stars impel but do not compel, though one should heed their urgings."

Burel turned to the Ryodoan. "I would hear what you think, Aiko."

She looked up from the glowing coals, her eyes dark and unreadable. "Whatever comes, we must endure." Aiko fell silent and said no more.

Ferret said, "Well I think Dara Arin is right: all before us is chaos and we have free choices to do that which is within our power."

"The chaos is but an illusion," said Burel. "In truth the paths we take are already set before us, and nought we do will alter our steps along the way."

"Ha!" barked Ferret. "Not mine, Burel. I will not march lockstep on a path not of my choosing." She leaped up and with consummate ease twirled in pirouette then executed a backflip.

Delon clapped his hands together in pleasure and shouted, "Bravo, luv!"

Breathless and laughing, Ferret sat down again. "There, Burel, was that foreordained?"

Burel merely nodded.

Ferret snorted.

"Perhaps, Ferai," said Burel, "you are along to make us believe that we indeed have free will."

"And perhaps, Burel, you are along to make us believe we do not."

"Here, let me show you. See, the arm moves in an arc, and a curved blade matching that arc will sustain contact throughout a long slashing cut, whereas to do so with a straight blade requires you to alter the stroke as you cut, and here the edge may either lodge or lose contact altogether."

"But, Aiko, such a curve in a blade would hamper a clean thrust."

"Yes, Burel, it would. The straight blade is best for thrusting, piercing; the curved for slashing, cutting."

"My sword will cleave anything."

"Indeed it will, though to do so it carries great weight, and given a chance a quick foe can defeat it."

Burel touched his neck. "I remember."

In the light of the rising sun Aiko drew one of her swords. "My blades have a delicate curve, not too much to hamper thrusts, but enough to aid a slashing cut." Aiko momentarily paused, as if considering, then she handed the weapon to Burel. He received it as if it were a fragile treasure.

"Aiko!" called Arin.

The Ryodoan turned. "Yes, Dara."

"Let me examine thy wound."

Aiko sighed and, casting a glance at her sword in Burel's hand, she reluctantly trudged toward the Dylvana, the Ryodoan unfastening her leather jacket.

After moments: "Hmm. I do believe we can remove thy stitches ere we set out today."

"What of kinmichi?”

Arin nodded. "Thou canst begin again… slowly at first."

"Hai!"

As the camels headed westerly, Ferret reined back to ride alongside Arin. Both of their faces were now covered with silken scarves, for they now rode across a land where hidebound fools held sway. "Dara, I would speak to you in private."

Arin glanced at Egil. He shrugged and tapped his camel with his riding stick, calling out, "Hut, hut," and moved ahead to join Burel and Alos, while Delon to the fore rode alone in the lead.

As Egil looked back, masked Aiko rode up to join Arin and Ferret, and she was not turned away. "Hmm," said the Fjordlander, "what is it they share?"

Burel looked about. "The women of Ilsitt were always talking together-especially when their blood came upon them… or not-and often when I came near they would stop."

Egil sighed. "Women's secrets, I suppose."

"Heh," barked Alos. "Females. A bunch of cackling hens, if you ask me."

"Have you been around many females, Alos?" asked Burel.

The old man looked at the big man, Alos's white eye glaring. "Me? Of course not. I've other interests."

Now Burel looked at Egil. The Fjordlander shrugged and replied, "Some. Though I think when it comes to these matters, Delon has the most experience of us all."

"Let's go see," rumbled Burel. "I have a question to ask."

Together, Burel and Egil urged their camels ahead, but Alos did not ride forward with them.

"How will I know I am in love, Dara?"

The Dylvana looked at Ferret and smiled. "Thou shall know, for every idle thought thou hast will be filled with pleasant visions of him. Thou wilt admire his strengths, see his goodness, but not be blind to his failings. And thou wilt desire intimacy-"

"Intimacy?"

"Not merely lust, Ferai, but a sharing of feelings, of heart and mind and soul as well as a physical sharing."

Aiko let out a long sighing breath. "What you name physical sharing, Dara, seems like surrender to me."

Arin looked at Aiko in surprise.

"Surrender?"

"Yes, Burel, it is somewhat like surrender. You are, um, invading her being."

Burel sighed. "I don't believe that Lady Aiko has ever surrendered to anything in her life. She is a warrior beyond compare."

Delon nodded, then said, "But she is also a woman and you are a man. You must woo her, and if she desires you, she will make it known."

Burel blew out a breath. "I have no experience in wooing. The women of Ilsitt came to me, rather than I seeking them out."

Delon laughed. "It must have seemed as if you had found Paradise, eh?"

"They seemed to enjoy it, as did I, physically. But something was ever missing," replied Burel. "There always seemed to be a fulfillment lacking, as if there were no true sharing."

"A sharing?"

"Yes, Aiko, a sharing." Arin glanced far ahead to where Egil rode. "When I am with Egil I do not feel as if I 'surrender,' but as if I share instead. Each of us cares for the other's need-physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually-and we are both fulfilled." Arin rode a moment in silence, then said, "Do not take me wrong: one need not be in love to crave a physical sharing-honest lust will drive one to the heights of desire, and slaking that desire most wonderful. But without love there is no lasting contentment… pleasure, yes; tranquility, no. Lust without love is that way: full of fire and passion, but empty of serenity when quenched."

Ferret shook her head. "As to the physical part, in my long experience there was no pleasure, no caring involved… only force and brutality, only violence." She gritted her teeth in memory.

Arin looked at her in dismay. "A man did this to you?"

Ferret nodded.

"Does he yet live?" growled Aiko.

"No," replied Ferret, her voice grim.

"For the first time in my life," said Delon, sighing, "I believe I am truly in love. Yet Ferai seems to withdraw whenever we begin to get close."

"Adon," said Egil, "that's not the case between Arin and me."

Burel looked at Delon. "Perhaps it is something in Ferret's past which pushes her away."

Arin sighed. "Ferai, thou must try to accept the past for what it truly was: the man who forced thee was an uncaring, savage animal interested only in its own immediate gratification. There was no love involved, not even sharing. There are many like him in the world. Yet, there are uncounted more who are gentle and caring. Egil is one such. So, too, I deem, are Burel and Delon.

"And thou, Aiko, thou shouldst set aside this notion of surrender. When thou dost finally take a man into thine embrace or unto thy bed, it will be thou who wilt choose, thou who wilt say yea or nay, and should he be an uncaring beast-"

"He will not survive," growled Aiko.

Arin smiled. "Ah, yes. But should he be gentle and loving and caring, then it will be no surrender but a glorious alliance instead."

"I think Burel is right, Delon," said Egil. "Something untoward may have happened to Ferret in the past. Yet any fool can see she cherishes you… or at least this fool can see such. You must be nothing but gentle with her, and perhaps her inclination to withdraw will fade.

"And you, Burel. Aiko is indeed a warrior without peer. You must treat her as no less. But as Delon says, she is also a woman. If you love her and she loves you, there will come a time when you two will become lifemates, soulmates, as have Arin and I, and that void you've felt with other women will be filled at last."

"No invasion? No surrender?"

Arin shook her head, No.

"Hmm." Aiko looked speculatively ahead at the men faring westward on their camels. Then she sighed, and as if reluctant to admit any kind of weakness, she said, "I have absolutely no experience in this at all, Dara."

"None of us do at first, Aiko," replied Arin. "I will help thee all I can."

"And my experience is all bad," said Ferret. "Too, I am frightened."

"Oh, my child, thou must set aside thy fear. It will not be easy, for given thine experience thou wilt need the most courage and trust of all, yet thou couldst not have survived on thine own if thou didst not possess grit. As to the trust, that can only come with time and gentle touch, yet it will not come at all if thou dost take no risk."

And so they fared westerly, three males in the lead in deep conversation, three females trailing a distance after in gentle dialogue as well, and in between rode an old man who snorted, "Lovers and would-be lovers, bah!"

They came into Aban on the seventeenth of December, just after the setting of the sun. Once again they made their way to the Golden Crescent inn. And on this night as Egil and Arin arranged for a room of their own, Aiko stepped to Burel and, looking him in the eye, said through her silken veil, "Will you share my room?"

As Burel stammered out his reply, Delon caught Ferai's gaze with his, and she looked long at him, but in the end she said, "I will sleep alone."

Egil made arrangements through the innkeeper to sell the camels back to the stable from which they had come, and then, as Arin arranged for hot baths for all, he and Alos made their way down to the docks to see to the state of the Brise.

"We couldn't find any Yilan Koy on any chart that Alos and I bought," said Egil, freshly scrubbed and seated at supper, the first hot meal any of them had had since setting out from the Temple of the Labyrinth six days past. He turned to Burel. "It was Yilan Koy, right?"

Burel nipped another mouthful of shish kebab from his skewer. He chewed slowly, thoroughly, and finally swallowed and then said, "That's what my mother said. My father sailed from Yilan Koy somewhere along the coast of Kistan."

"This would go well with ale," said Alos as he plucked up a gobbet of lamb that had fallen onto his plate. Like all the others, the old man was clean again. It hadn't even required any urgings from Aiko for him to take his bath, for as he had said, he "needed to get the red out."

As Arin reached for the steaming rice, she said, "Perhaps it is shown on thy charts by another name."

"True," replied Egil. "Yilan Koy sounds like no common name I ever heard. And the charts we purchased are written in the common tongue."

"Damned hard to find, too," grunted Alos. "We had to pay a pretty penny to get ones we could read."

She turned to Ferret. "Mayhap our scholar at the archives can translate for us."

Ferret nodded but did not speak, seemingly occupied by her food instead, though she consumed little.

That night, Ferret watched as Arin and Egil retired to one room, and as Aiko and Burel stepped into another. Delon stood across the hall and softly said, "Goodnight, luv," then he entered the room where Alos was, leaving Ferret in the corridor alone. She sighed and stepped into her chamber and softly closed the door behind.

Removing her veil and bandoliers, she fell backward onto the bed and stared up at the stucco ceiling, with its stipples and dimples and rough texture holding all patterns and none. Finally she roused and doffed her boots and leathers, and poured clear water from the pitcher into the basin at hand and washed her face.

Toweling off, she blew out the lantern and fell once more to the bed.

As she lay and stared into the darkness above, through her window she could hear noises from the city outside: people passing to and fro, the occasional sound of an ired camel, horses' hooves now and again, muted conversation and laughter.

Unbidden, images of Delon came into her mind, echoes of words said, visions of him riding and walking and sitting and singing, fragments of melodies… words from Arin: When thou dost finally take a man into thine embrace or unto thy bed, it will be thou who wilt choose, thou who wilt say yea or nay… no invasion… thou wilt need the most courage and trust… it will not come at all if thou dost take no risk… Ferai, thou must try to accept the past for what it truly was… for what it truly was… set aside thy fear… it will be thou who wilt choose… it will not come at all if thou dost take no risk… risk… risk…

The pale yellow light of a rising gibbous moon came creeping in through her window, and in the soft radiance again she got up and washed her face in cool water, and then lay down once more.

Still, images of Delon came unbidden to her mind, and she lay in her bed, her lips afire from the memory of his kiss, her loins and breasts burning, her entire body aflame…

… risk…

It was near mid of night when she at last arose and padded across the hall to tap on Delon and Alos's door.

The next morning, when Alos awoke he found he was in the room alone.