The Far Side Of Forever Part 15

I bit my lip at the question and looked in Zait's direction again, but everything Kadrim had said was true, and I had already agreed to listen to his secret any time he was ready to tell it. I don't believe in going back on promises to friends, but I had been so looking forward to that dinner. . . .

"Tonight it will be just the two of us," I conceded with as much of a smile as I could manage, forcing my eyes away from Zail and back to my big, young friend. "You have my word on it."

"You seem to wish it were otherwise, yet shall I take the sadness from you with what I will say." he a.s.sured me, seeing what I hadn't wanted him to see. "You will find that the men of other worlds are not so blind as those of your own, nor so backward. Have I told you that the first woman to take my heart was much like yourself?"

"Why-no," I answered, surprise coming to cover me confusion I felt over the rest of what he'd said. "You sound as though you really have had dozens of women-if not hundreds. You also make it sound as though you met your first woman a very long time ago."

"A lifetime has pa.s.sed in the interim," he said very softly, his face now expressionless, his sight turned inward with loss. "Her appearance was not like yours, for she was small with hair as red as my own, yet was she bright and alive and filled with the fire of a woman of pride-yet also innocent and in need of great gentleness. I loved her as a drowning man loves solid ground, as a suffocating man me breath of life; had I been called upon to give my life for hers, it would have been my pleasure and joy to do so. It was she, however, who gave her life for mine, and never will 1 forget the moment of it- It gave her great joy

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to know I was unharmed, yet when she died in my arms the joy of the world died with her."

"How did it happen?" I asked in a very unsteady voice, my throat tightening in echo to his whisper. Those hard blue eyes were completely dry, but only because he was the sort to keep tears strictly on the inside. "Was there an accident of some sort?"

"More stupidity than accident," he said with a sharp shake of his head, old anger fighting to free itself. "My enemies were not many for they seldom survived our meeting to continue as enemies, yet was mere one who lacked the stomach to face me. Had I been wise I would have sought him out and slain him, yet did I feel then that such a doing would be dishonorable. I allowed him to live so long as he kept from me and mine-which lasted till he approached unseen, with a bow. The shaft was meant for my back-and took her, instead, between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s when she threw herself in its path. My enemy's death, when I tracked him down at last, was neither swift nor easy, yet does revenge fall short as a means to replace that which has been lost. A lifetime of loneliness had already pa.s.sed by then. and each day thereafter brought more of the same."

He was back to looking straight at me by then, a steady, unwavering blue gaze that left me with nothing to say. It hurt to know that someone so young had had so terrible a loss, and right then I felt very close to Kadrim. I reached over to touch his arm, trying to make him know without words that I understood how he felt, and a faint smile returned to his face.

"She, too, would have shared my loss in such a way,'*

he said, his voice still soft. "I was not mistaken in seeing me similarity between you."

"The similarity between who?" another voice asked, a much more open and friendly voice. We both looked around to see that Zail now rode to my left, and his smite warmed when I quickly withdrew my hand from Kadrim's arm.

"Kadrim was just telling me about someone he once knew," I said rather quickly, half to keep the boy from being hurt by having the subject rehashed once again, and

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half to rea.s.sure Zait that my touching Kadrim hadn't meant anything. "He and 1 are friends, you know."

"Friends," Zail said with even more of a smile, glanc- ing with what seemed like amus.e.m.e.nt at Kadrim. "When you're young it's important to have friends you can count on, and I'm sure Kadrim knows he can count on you-and the rest of us as well. Even though our own friendship has become a good deal more special. We'll make up tonight for that dinner we missed last night, just we two special friends."

"Zait," I began, trying to think of some way to tell him that I couldn't have dinner with him that night even though 1 really wanted to, without sounding as though I were making excuses. I looked ahead to where Soffann Dra now rode with Rikkan Addis, both of them chuckling over something, without finding any inspiration, and then Kadrim decided to save me the trouble.

"Laciel will be in my company this darkness, friend Zail." he said, the smoothness of his voice somehow taking the amus.e.m.e.nt that had abruptly left the other man- *'0ur friendship may not yet be as special as yours with her, but perhaps the darkness will bring about a change- for the better. I hope. She ha& given her word on the matter.''

"You made her give you her word?" Zail asked, his gray eyes more than annoyed as they rested on Kadrim.

"You took advantage of her, and now you're crowing about it? When it comes to dealing properly with women, my young friend, you still have a lot to learn."

"It is scarcely I who means to take advantage," Kadrim came back. his head high and his blue eyes a good deal colder, his voice losing quite a lot of friendliness. "Never have I forced myself on innocence with overwhelming words meant to dazzle and blind, with no more than one end in mind. A few words of honest praise indicating sincere interest, perhaps, and then ..."

"And then on to the next name on the list," Zail cut in with a snort of scorn, his eyes and voice also growing colder. "Any one of those names will do, and they're forgotten as soon as they're checked off. But some of us are capable of having a vision of perfection, an ideal

no

which raises one name far above all others, the culmina- tion of all he's ever searched for in one single, slender form. That's me one worth striving for, the one to win no matter what has to be done to . . ."

"To achieve one's own purpose?" Kadrim took his turn at interrupting, a distant, regal sneer in his stiffened atti- tude. "Even should it not be best for the one striven for?

And once that one is achieved, then what? A short time of pleasure and self-indulgence, and then the realization that the ideal is no longer quite as ideal, perhaps? A true man advances his cause with a view toward sharing, of himself as well as all things which are ..."

I was getting dizzy looking back and forth between them, but the next interruption became me last. An ear- piercing scream sounded that even startled the horses, and then we were all in the middle of what had caused the scream, a vocalization of the understandable terror felt by Soffann Dra. A vine from one of the trees had whipped down to wrap around her where she rode next to Rikkan Addis, trying (o unseat her, trying to draw her back into the trees with it. The man had drawn his sword and slashed the vine through, but we'd all automatically reined in and now there were other vines after us! It was too late to try riding away from the attack, and even the horses were being threatened.

Zail, Kadrim and Su had their blades unsheathed only an instant behind Rik's, and the flurry of whispering swings was almost lost behind the high-pitched whining coming from the trees all around us. The forest world was still as bright and beautiful and peaceful as it had been, which made it all a good deal worse than dank, threatening dark would have been. Kadrim grunted as he swung his weapon and Zail cursed in a low, furious voice; me horses were snorting and shivering, picking up the fear so thick around them.

And then a vine wrapped itself around me from behind, sticky sap dripping from it onto my clothes and flesh, tiny suckers searching for skin to attach to, strong as the arm of a well-muscled man. I gasped and shuddered as it began tightening around my arms, knowing it was ready to pull me back into the forest to whatever was waiting, and horror

III.

and disgust finally forced me out of shock and into action.

For some reason revulsion had frozen me till then, but that wasn't the time to be fastidious.

A single word caused the vine around me to shrivel to black dust, faintly increasing the whine in the trees all around, and that told me what 1 needed to know. The trees and vines feared something too, and that was the best weapon with which to fight them. I composed a three word spell and then spoke it. Seeing me blazing swords as they flamed to life all around us, watching their flickering edges sever and shrivel every vine in their reach, following them as they darted around searching for more antagonists to touch. The presence of edged steel hadn't bothered the vines, but my swords were made of fire that burned hotter and hotter. The vines withdrew from the attack with a whining shriek that could be felt in your bones, panic- stricken at the thought of what could happen if even one sap-covered vine stayed too long in contact with those fiery weapons. In minutes the entire forest would be ablaze, and the trees had a lot more to worry about on that score than we did. We could always retreat to the gate, and wait until sheets of flame cleared the way for us.

"Let's get out of here fast'",Rikkan Addis called from up ahead, his sword still in his fist, and that was an idea none of us cared to dispute. The horses leaped ahead when we put our heels to their flanks, needing urging from nothing but recent memory.

After a while we reined in the horses from a gallop, but we didn't dawdle and I kept the swords of fire whirling around over our heads. Some of the forest we rode through seemed to-draw away-from the circling swords, but it was difficult telling if those parts were merely withdrawing from the heat, or would have attacked if we were unpro- tected. To be perfectly honest, I had no interest in finding out; the thought of hostile vegetation has always been able to make me shudder, and I preferred the drain on my strength due to keeping the swords above us, to the consid- eration of what might come at us if I sent them back to nothingness.

It seemed to be only a little past noon when we found a place to stop for lunch. Fearless leader had already turned

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thumbs down on three previous places, ones he said looked a little too pleasant and inviting, but we were all hungry and the horses needed to rest and graze. With a great deal of reluctance he let us stop in what wasn't really a clear- ing, only a place where there were fewer bushes and no low-hanging trees, and after he had looked around we were allowed to dismount-with strict orders not to wan- der off alone for any reason at all. Someone else might have felt stupid saying something like that in a place like the one we were in, but not ol' fearless leader; looking or sounding stupid never seemed to bother him.

It was time to put a fence around the horses and conjure us some food, so I reluctantly let the swords of fire go. 1 could have maintained mem while doing the rest, but mat would have been an even greater drain on strength that was more than adequate but still limited. We still had a lot of hours left to spend on that world, and no way of knowing what was ahead of us.

"I hope the gra.s.s doesn't do them any harm," Rikkan Addis muttered^ staring at the horses through the fence I'd put up as everyone else gathered around me. This time I'd erected a normal fence with a gate that anyone could get through-just in case we needed to get to the horses fast and I was too occupied with other things to open or banish a magical fence. "I don't like or trust anything on this world."

"That's why I put my own gra.s.s inside the fence," I said without more than a glance for him, shaking my head just a little as I rubbed at the knots in my shoulder. "Fear not, fearless leader, I'm not about to let us get left afoot.

Okay, now everybody step back a little."

They all did as I'd instructed, so I spoke the spell that produced the nicely stuffed picnic baskets, then gestured to them to help themselves. It wasn't exactly a picnic outing we were on, but the suggestion couldn't hurt and might even help soothe everyone's digestion. The four went to the two big baskets and began looking through them, but there wasn't anything in the way of joking or light converation while they were doing it. There hadn't been conversation at alt since me attack, and all of them spent as much time looking around as looking at the food.

"3.

We all found places in the gra.s.s around the baskets, and once InThig came-out of the brush to pace silently all around us, even Rikkan Addis was able to force himself to relax enough to eat something. The vines had gone after all of us but me demon, which was, at least to me, perfectly understandable. InThig liked its cat-shape and used it most of the time, but that didn't mean it was made of the same thing real cats were. InThig wasn't usable prey to the vines, and they had left it strictly alone. We worked our way silently through the sandwiches and ale from the baskets, most of us moving from automatic swallowing to some small appreciation of what it was we were eating, and then InThig stopped beside Rikkan Addis.

"I would recommend against too lengthy a halt here,"

it growled, putting those blazing red eyes on the man very briefly before letting them go back to random searching.

"There's something odd about this place I can't quite pinpoint, and the feeling grows stronger with each pa.s.sing moment. Perhaps I can't identify it because it's no threat to a life form like myself.''

"But it is a threat to us," Rikkan Addis said at once, throwing away what was left of his latest sandwich and abandoning his ale as he rose immediately to his feet.

"We'd be stupid to wait around until it was ready to jump on us. Let's get out of here."

Again no one argued with the suggestion, but even as we all climbed to our feet and I banished what was left of the food with a gesture, we discovered we were too late.