Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 17

"I'm glad you're coming to Sinanju," Remo said softly, tracing a line with his finger along the smooth, moonlit skin of her leg.

"I won't leave you until I have to."

157.

He found it difficult to speak. "You-you don't ever have to."

"Ah, yes I will. Look. My star." She pointed to the sky. "The golden one."

It had been a dumb attempt, Remo decided. Too soon and too awkward. He'd never been good at sweet-talking women. He let it pa.s.s. "To the north?" he asked, pretending to be interested.

"Yes. Its name is Gullikona-'Golden Lady.' My parents named me for her. 'Jilda' is the name I chose for myself when I was grown."

He touched her hair. Golden Lady. Embarra.s.sed, he pulled his hand away. He didn't want to paw her like some lovesick adolescent. What he felt was crazy. He'd have to control it.

"According to one of our legends, Gullikona was once, in the old days, a beautiful princess with hair like spun gold. Although she was betrothed to a mighty warlord, she fell in love with a young warrior and took him to her bed. When the warlord found out about her infidelity, he a.s.signed her lover to serve on his own ship for a long voyage to distant lands. Once at sea, the warlord tortured his rival and brutally murdered him, cutting off the young man's hand. Then he sent a special messenger on a small boat to return home to present the severed hand to the princess.

"When she received the horrible present, the princess was so overcome with grief that she went to the seash.o.r.e that night and built a great bonfire. Then, clasping her lover's dismembered hand between her own, she walked into the flames so that she might be with him for all time in Valhalla.

"The legend says that her burning hair made such a beautiful fire that even the G.o.ds took notice. Freya herself, G.o.ddess of love and pleasure, found pity in her heart for the doomed lovers. She plucked the princess from,the 158.

earth, fire and all, and placed her in the sky, where the dead warrior's spirit would be sure to find her. And there they remain, the flames of their love burning to the end of time."

"Gullikona," Remo whispered. "Sam-I mean Jilda-"

She laughed. "You liked Sam, didn't you? She was more refined than 1 am. Unfortunately, her high-heeled shoes were unbearable."

"What were you doing in London?"

"Why, looking for you, of course. 1 began my search in Morocco. I just missed you in Lisbon. I was afraid that you might not stop in England at all, and that I wouldn't get to meet you before my turn in the Master's Trial. But that would have been too late."

"You would have fought me?"

"I'd have had no choice. The elders of Lakluun would have been watching. That was why I had to see you before you arrived on my island."

"To talk me out of coming?"

"To see, first, if you were worthy. If you had been an arrogant boor who thought with his fists, I would have taken pleasure in fighting you. But in any case, I had to meet you alone before the battle. As I have said, I will not kill or be killed by a stranger."

"But why wouldn't you tell me who you were?"

She touched his face. "Would you not have suspected trickery if you knew I was to oppose you in combat?"

Remo thought. "Even then, I wouldn't have fought you."

"Because I'm a woman?"

Remo shook his head. "Because ..." He felt himself trembling.

Stop, he told himself. Don't let yourself fall so hard you'll never pick up the pieces again. But he didn't stop, and he brushed her lips with his own, and felt his loins 159.

rush with desire, and then he didn't care if he had to spend the rest of his life regretting this moment, because it was worth whatever price he would have to pay.

His hands filled up with her. He couldn't get close enough. He belonged with her, inside her. Gently he entered her, and her hot flesh welcomed him, smooth, caressing, hungering.

I do love you, he thought. And I don't care if you can't love me back. This is . . . almost enough. Almost everything I need. And almost was almost the best thing that had ever happened to him.

"Remo . . ." Jilda breathed, arching him deep into her. "Remo, I love you, too."

With a cry, he let himself flow into her. She held him, strong and sure, their love together burning hot enough to set fire to the stars.

And suddenly, Remo knew what he would be willing to give up to keep her with him: everything.

Chapter Seventeen.

He slept until the sun was full in the sky and the night mist nearly gone. Jilda kissed him awake.

"Then it wasn't a dream," he said, tangling his fingers in her hair. "What's this?" He lifted the heavy leather cape fastened around her neck. Beneath it was the green dress he'd taken off her the night before. "You're dressed. Is it against your religion to fool around in daylight?"

"Emrys is anxious to get started. We've charted an Arctic course."

He sat up. "How long have I been sleeping?"

"You needed the rest. Everything's been prepared." She handed him a thick sheepskin wrapper. "This is for you. We're heading toward the Irish Sea, then north, over Scandinavia and Russia by water. It will be cold."

Emrys met them half a mile away, a knapsack slung over his shoulders.

"Where's Griffith?" Remo asked. "I wanted to say good-bye to him."

"At home, where he'll stay," Emrys said gruffly. "All weeping and wailing he was. Couldn't stand the sight 160.

161.

of him another minute." He walked briskly, his face creased. "He's a good kid," Remo said.

Emrys grunted.

They reached the sh.o.r.e within the hour. Jilda commandeered the project of building a watertight boat out of wood and twine, covered with animal skins from Emrys's sack.

"We can't go halfway around the world in that," Remo complained.

Jilda arched an eyebrow. "When we need another, we will build another," she said.

Never question the logic of a Viking, Remo thought.

It was noon by the time they all settled into the boat. Remo pushed it out of the shallows and jumped in. The small square sail Jilda had brought with her caught the wind and carried them quickly toward the gray, tossing waters of the deep.

Someone shouted, far away, on the sh.o.r.e.

"Who is that?" Jilda said, straining to make out the small figure who ran to the edge- of the water, waving his arms frantically overhead.

"By Mryddin, it's the boy," Emrys muttered, standing up shakily. "Go back!" He slapped at the air with his big hands. "d.a.m.n you, Griffith, I told you not to follow!"

"Take me with you, Da!" the boy shrieked. "I must be with you. The spirits have told me. Come back, I beg you, Da!"

Shaking a fist at his son, Emrys sat down with a thump that rocked the boat precariously. "Disobedient imp. I'm shamed by the lad, truly shamed."

"He loves you very much," Jilda said. She stood up. "Very much. Look."

Throwing off his shoes, the boy splashed into the water and started swimming the long distance to the boat.

162.

"Is he in the water?" Emrys boomed, trying to rise. "I can't see that far." Jilda pushed him down. The big man's face was strained with worry. "Ah, I suppose he'll give up soon enough and go home," he said with a forced casual air.

The boy swam, a half-mile, a mile. The boat sailed further out to sea, the distance between it and Griffith growing longer with each minute, but the boy continued to flail doggedly on course.

"Is he still coming?" Emrys asked nervously.

"He is."

"Fool. Thinks he'll catch us."

Jilda watched the tiny swimmer, her dress blowing in the gusting wind. "No. He knows he cannot catch us," she said quietly. "All the same, he will not give up." She crossed her arms in front of her. "I was wrong about that one. He calls himself a coward, but his spirit has the strength of ten warriors." She watched him silently for fully another five minutes while Emrys snorted and shifted in his seat, pretending unconcern for his son. Then, without warning, Jilda stripped off the leather cape she wore around her shoulders, and her shoes of sewn skin, and the green dress that fluttered like a sail, until she stood naked on the bow of the boat.

"What in the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Remo shouted. "Let's just turn the boat around, for G.o.d's sake-"

"The boy will not live long enough for that. I have seen drowning men before." She jumped high into the air and dived. She hit the water like a knife, without a ripple, emerging a hundred yards away. With smooth, long strokes she swam to him and carried him back in her arms to the boat.

"Da," Griffith gasped breathlessly as he climbed in. "The Lady of the Lake! The Lady of the Lake came for me. The spirits said I would be protected."

. 163.

"Silence," Ernrys roared, swatting the boy with the back of his hand. "We've lost a whole day because of your foolish ways. Now we'll have to take you back."

"He comes with us," Jilda said.

"Ah, no. I'll not be hampered by such a one as talks to ghosts and tries to drown himself." He coughed politely, handing Jiida her dress. "I'll thank you, though, for saving his life, miss. Not that he deserved it."

Jilda took the dress, but made no attempt to put it on. "He is one of great faith. Perhaps we will need that in the days to come. My people, too, believe in spirits." She slipped on her shoes. "I will look after him," she said.

She dressed quickly, utterly unself-conscious of her nakedness. Her hair, wet and sparkling in the sunshine, looked as if it belonged to a sea nymph. Her eyes had changed color again to match the steel blue of the water.

"Sam, Jilda, Gullikona," Remo recited. "Are you the Lady of the Lake, too?"

The steel eyes smiled slyly. "I am what I must be," she said. "Like all of us."

Out of the corner of his eye, Remo saw Emrys fumbling to put his arm around the shivering, beaming boy.

Chapter Eighteen.

A negotiation was underway on the campus of Du Lac College in Minnesota. The two-story ivory-colored mansion that was the home of the college president was ringed by a squad of thirty National Guardsmen, carrying rifles, and staring at a small hillock thirty yards away where two men were talking.

Behind the two men was a crowd of 300 students, dressed in the 1980s version of sixties Greenwich Village chic. There were a lot of bandanas and ripped T-shirts, along with designer jeans and hair died orange and purple and green.

Smith moved into the crowd of students who parted to make way for him, then closed in to swallow him up.

"Who are you?" a female student asked.

"Dr. Feldmar's a.s.sistant," Smith said. "She around?"

"Like I haven't seen Birdie yet. She ought to be here."

"Like this is her show, right?" Smith said.

"Yeah."

Smith looked toward the small gra.s.sy knoll halfway toward the college president's mansion.

164.

165.

One of the two men there was Smith's age, but he wore cutoff jeans, and a flowered shirt with a black bandana around his open throat. The other man was younger but conservatively dressed in a sports jacket, dress shirt and slacks.

Smith moved through the crowd so he could hear the two men talking.

"We want an end to racism on campus," the older man was saying. He looked bored.

Smith said to a young woman standing next to him, "Who is that guy?" The young woman was bouncing a rock the size of a chicken egg up and down on the palm of her hand.

"That's Vishnu," she said.

"Who's Vishnu?"

"Who are you anyway?" the woman asked suspiciously.