The First Protector

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The sun was still low in the sky by the time Sinead had immersed him several times in the pool and pulled his litter back to the sandy bank where her instruments, bowls, boiled cloths, and several short lengths of rope lay spread out on a sheet ready for use. Declan felt cooled by the bathing but it was not the icy, breath-stopping cold that had gripped him during the previous night. Sinead shivered in the cool, morning breeze, then dressed herself quickly and knelt beside the litter and raised it a short distance above the sand before speaking.

"Please lie on your good side," she said, selecting a length of rope and passing it around his body and the underside of the litter as she spoke. "I am going to tie down your chest, waist, thighs, and lower legs so that, in the event that you have another rigor, you won't be able to move and perhaps cause me inadvertently to cut you in the wrong place. I will leave your arm free so that you may assist me by holding the deep-body-seer in position, but in case you have a serious tremor and lose control of it, I will place a noose around your wrist so that I can pull down the arm and secure it to the litter and proceed unaided unless…" she raised her voice slightly, ".,. Ma'el decides to help me."

The old man had left the wagon and was walking toward them. They both knew that Ma'el had keen ears and would have heard her, but when he stopped beside them he made no mention of her words. Sinead tried again.

"With respect, Ma'el," she said, "surely you have it in your power to help Declan. Some magical device or potion, perhaps, that will remove this sac of poison and.'.."

"You have mentioned this matter to me earlier this day," the old man broke in gently, "and my answer then as now is no. Believe me, there is a strong reason why I will not provide medication for one of your people's bodies. I have given away many of the secrets of my own people and done things to yours in the hope of providing you, and myself, with a timesight into your world's future. I thought that your forecast of the arrival of the djinn was an early demonstration of the faculty, but continuing timesight you could not give me."

"I'm sorry that I disappointed you," she said, "because I owe you much…"

"Do not be sorry," he broke in. "You are not responsible for the physical and emotional damage that was done to you, or for the sexual negativity that resulted over which you have no control. So clear your mind, and allow mine to aid yours in the only way it can, by wishing you sharp eyes and steady hands.

"If Declan is not to die this day," he ended quietly, "it is your skill alone that will make him live."

In the short but seemingly endless time that followed, Declan thought that he suffered twice, once because he had already undergone this cutting and knew what to expect, and again when it was happening but taking much longer. But his muscles did not lock in a rigor as he held Ma'el's device steady above Sinead's gentle, precise hands, and his body remained still and unflinching without help from the ropes. Deliberately he did not look at her in case that would be a distraction and instead looked into the eyes of the watching Ma'el, which were so dark and deep that he did not know whether they were empty of feeling or showing too much of it for him to read. While he did not watch Sinead, he knew exactly what she was doing from moment to moment because she talked about it continuously in a quiet, competent voice.

He thought this might have been the teaching method of her dead healer father while demonstrating to his young apprentice daughter, and perhaps she was hoping that he might be watching her from somewhere and approving.

A triangular incision had been made and below it she had cut out a cone-shaped hollow that revealed and gave access to the abscess at its point. It was large, bulging, and covered by a thick skin that would have ruptured and spread poison throughout his body very soon. The skin was pierced, but only enough to introduce the cleaned quill that enabled most of the poison to be sucked out, then it was widened to remove the rest of it until her eye and Ma'el's device showed that no more remained. As much of the emptied abscess shell as it was safe to remove-part of it was adhering to the bowel wall-was cut away. For several moments the wound was allowed to bleed clean, then it was packed with herbs that would promote healing and a flamwort to reduce inflammation before she inserted a drain, closed up, and finally looked at his face.

"Declan," she said, "you are a strong, stubborn, and brave man. You did not move and neither did you cry out, even though I would have thought none the less of you if you had done both, many times. But now you can be at ease, it is over and it went well. Close your eyes and let sleep take you."

His eyes were already closing so that he felt only a tired surprise when she bent forward and touched her lips lightly to his forehead.

It took many weeks before a steadily increasing appetite caused the thin, knobbled sticks that were his arms and legs to thicken again with firm, healthy flesh and muscle. Gradually he became able to walk unaided about the ravine and even climb its rocky walls and, best of all, to splash daily in the pool. When he watched her it was evident that Sinead, too, enjoyed using the pool, but he doubted that she derived as much pleasure from watching him, and there was some invisible and unspoken constraint that kept them from swimming in it together. Their words to each other were more polite than they had ever been, but neither of them seemed to say anything of importance and he could not find the words he wanted to speak. Without making any mention of the situation between his servants, Ma'el said that he was pleased that Declan was returning to full health, and the hints that he dropped about them soon continuing their journey to Cathay became less gentle with each passing day.

At night Sinead continued her recent habit of leaving the tent's dividing curtain open but only by enough, she said, for her to know at once if he was having a feverish relapse. Declan felt so well that he did not think that would happen and he could not understand why she did not think so, too. Yet every night when his eyes were closed and he was pretending to sleep, he could feel her eyes watching him until he opened his whereupon she would close hers. It was like some stupid, childish game that increasingly angered and disturbed him until one night he could stand it no longer.

"Sinead," he said quietly, raising himself onto one elbow, "I know you are not asleep."

"I'm not," she agreed. "Have you a fever, a chill? What ails you?"

"I have no fever," he said, "nor am I cold. But I would like your body warm beside me again."

She sighed and seemed to pull herself more tightly into her burnoose as she said, "I have seen the way you look at me, not only when I'm bathing, and knew that soon you would ask that of me." She regarded him in silence for what seemed like a long time, then said, "The answer is no."

"1 do not like or want that answer," Declan said. He took a deep breath and went on, "Perhaps my manners are un-subtle and my words too direct. But even though they feel strange to me, my feelings for you are true and strong, stronger than any that I have ever known in my past violent and unruly life, and much too strong for me to want to risk hiding them behind pretty and, you might think, dishonest words meant only to sway you to my will. That is what I want to do, but there is much more that I want to do."

She looked at him, her expression serious but not angry, and did not speak.

"You are a woman and a gifted healer," he went on, speaking slowly and clearly as if he was instructing a child. "You are a woman who is graceful, comely of face, and with the beauty of form and person that all men desire but so few live to attain. You are a woman well taught in the healing arts in spite of your tender years, who is soft and gentle when gentleness is needed, and firm and direct in your encouragement when it is not. You are a woman with a lively wit and a mind that can accept, and even use, strange and fearful wonders that would drive another into gibbering madness. You are a

…"

A small hand appeared from her burnoose, palm held outward. There was an impatient edge to her tone as she said, "A woman. If I had not already known that I would of a certainty know it by now. Please, is there a point to these endless statements of fact that you are trying to make? And if your next weighty pronouncement is to be that you are a man, I know that, too."

"I am a man," he went on doggedly, "who has traveled with you and shared many strange and dangerous adventures with you over the course of half a year. When a man and woman are forced to be in each other's company for a lengthy period, I have been told, they grow either to hate or to love each other very much, and we have…"

"Who told you this," she broke in, "your wise old father?"

"My father did not ever speak to me about such matters," he replied. "It was Brian who told me during the voyage to Alexandria, while we were sharing a night watch and he had grown tired of asking me about Ma'el's secrets and was being serious and philosophical rather than amusing. He also said that when women had the choice they rarely chose as their intended mates men who were charming or skilled with words. Instead they sought out husbands who would be strong and constant and capable of providing for and defending the home they would build and the children they would beget, rather than some charming weakling with winning ways and an endless store of pretty compliments.

"But 1 was saying," he went on, "that we began by hating each other from the first moment we met, until in time the hatred faded and, on my part at least, has changed to love. It is a love that disturbs and delights my sleep and, when I awaken unfulfilled, it puts an ache in my chest and a hunger in me that no herbs or food will ease, and whenever I look at you it makes the muscles of my hands and arms cramp with the effort of not reaching out to grasp you and hold your lovely body close and… We have been near to each other and yet apart for a long time. On the ship when we worked on the leg of Tomas, and at other times, I thought that your hatred of me and what I am was fading, and surely your treatment of my wounds was not the act of a person who hated me. Have you none of these softer feelings for me, no smallest spark that with time and patience and continued pleading might be made to burn as fiercely as the fire that rages in me for you?"

She had closed her eyes while he was speaking. A moment passed before she opened them and said, "I am a small, weak, beautiful woman and you, you are what you are. What is to stop you taking me?"

"No!" said Declan fiercely. "I could take you, now and for many nights to come. You would bite and scratch and doubtless add more scars to this already scarred body, and the pleasure would far outweigh the pain. But I do not want to take you like that, not against your will, for that way you would really come to hate and despise me.

"Hatred is not what I want from you for the rest of my life."

Her eyes were closed again, tightly. She did not speak.

"I do not want to make you my property," he went on softly, "like a cloak or a pair of boots or something else of use or value that I have come to own. No, I am a man who would have died and who you made well and strong and vigorous again, so I and the rest of the life you have given me are your property, not mine."

Her eyes were open again, very wide, but still she did not speak.

"If you do not want this property," he went on, "if your answer is still no, then I must leave you, and quickly, lest my resolution and self-control fail me and my behavior becomes that of a rutting animal rather than a thinking man. When we reach the caravanserai and you and Ma'el continue the journey to Cathay, I shall ask to be released from his service and take employment as a guard on the next caravan returning to Alexandria, or wherever else fortune takes me. And if other women should come into my life, none of them will be the one I truly love…"

Declan broke off. It was difficult to tell in the light of the dimmed lamp, but it seemed to him that her eyes were wet. He felt a small stirring of hope because he thought he might know the reason.

"I have never seen you show fear," he continued in a reassuring voice, "but you are very young and virginal and, as is natural, afraid of what I would do to you-"

"You are well experienced," she interrupted, "in deflowering virgins?"

The words were a stinging criticism but somehow her tone sounded sad and disappointed rather than angry. He shook his head firmly.

"I have not had that experience," he said. "But all women begin as virgins, and when I was much younger and a virgin myself, one of the nicer, motherly ones told me that it had been far from pleasant when it happened to her. Even though I would be as gentle as I am able, if you were to allow this to happen between us, I would hurt you, but only for the first time. After that…"

"It hurt for the first, second, and third time," she broke in, her face dark with remembered pain and terror. "I was scarcely eleven summers when those three brave warriors came to loot our home and kill my family. They took their pleasure of me, thrice within the hour, and left laughing." Suddenly her voice was thick with shame and anger as she ended, "So you see, Declan, you must search farther for your first virgin."

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose before he would trust himself to speak. "If ever I find your three brave warriors " he said, "the rest of their lives would be numbered in moments. But the gross dishonor that befell you is in the past and it is your future, hopefully our future years together that concerns me now. My feelings for you are

But you know my feelings for you. Please come to me, or at least give me hope. Give me an answer other than no."

"Declan," she said, and the sheen of tears in her eyes was plain even in the dim lamplight, "you are a brave and resourceful warrior, noble and uncomplaining under pain, and in many other ways you have proved to be the gentlest of men. I have grown to admire you more and more over the past months and I too, have harbored feelings so fierce and strong that a young woman like myself should not dare to speak them aloud. But I keep trying to tease you, and test you for weaknesses where no weakness exists. But…" suddenly she smiled "the answer is still no…"

Slowly her slender arm reached upward to pull aside the curtain and Declan saw that she was lying under the burnoose but not wearing it, or anything else. The petals of many, sweet-smelling desert flowers lay under and around her.

"… But I ask with love that you should come to me."

–

For the next four nights they slept closely together in the tent and wakened in the morning to bathe together in the pool, and during the daylight hours they were never far from each other. Ma'el, who had tact and a gentle understanding, remained in the wagon so that they had nothing to do but be with each other. Then early on the morning of the fifth day, Declan was awakened by Sinead who was trembling violently, bathed in sweat and with her arms locked so tightly around him that he could scarcely breathe. Before he could speak she was almost screaming at him.

"Declan!" she cried out before he could speak. "Please help me. Protect me from these horrible visions. They are of creatures of iron and smoke and great, screaming metal birds that take hundreds of people into their bellies before flying away with them. Save me Declan, I am losing my mind…!"