The Far Side Of Forever Part 17

Considering the state of my clothes and boots, I walked no farther onto the carpeting of my pavilion than was necessary to reach the soap and drying cloth, and then I hurried back out. Su took only a moment longer to get her own things, but she didn't turn immediately toward the stream with me; she hesitated very briefly, then without a backward glance walked over to Soffan Dra's tent.

"Thought you might like to come with us to the stream to wash," she said, looking through the open fold in the

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silk without taking her bedraggled condition inside.'' Lacici made it safe for us, so we might as weH all Jump in."

*'0h, I'd love to," the small woman's voice came, and then she was hurrying out with her drying cloth and soap in her hands, a warmer, truer smile on her face man I'd ever seen before. The smile, though, turned out to be for Su; when she saw me watching her it faltered, and then it was gone entirely. "On second thought, maybe I'll rest a while first and go to the stream later," she said, quickly moving those pretty green eyes back to Su while trying to revive at least a portion of the smile. "Thanks anyway for asking me."

"Wait," I said as she began to turn back to me tent, speaking before 1 could stop myself. "If you fall asleep and don't make it to the stream, you'll wake up in the morning with clean, new clothes and nothing but a body covered with half of what we went through today to put into them. I think you'd better-come with us now, and leave the resting for later."

She looked at. me in silence for a moment, her pretty face sober, and it was almost as though she knew how embarra.s.sed I felt. Then a good part of the warm smile came back, and she nodded once as her arm tightened around the drying cloth.

"Thank ^ou," she said, turning to share the smile and words with Su as well. "I'd be very pleased to go to the stream with you."

With that settled we moved off between two of the pavilions and headed for the stream, but not the section immediately behind the silk tents. I directed my two com- panions to the left, more toward the gate, where I'd thick- ened the bushes into a screen that would even let us swim a little without being seen. We all walked along in silence, theirs probably a good deal more comfortable than mine, and just as we reached the opening in the bushes, Soffann Dra put her hand on my arm.

"I know you don't like me and didn't really want me along,'' she said, looking up at me with what seemed to be difficulty. "I wanted you to know how much I appreciate your asking me anyway. It was a very nice thing to do."

"1 don't dislike you." I protested, feeling my cheeks

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go warm, especially when I saw the faint smile Su wore where she stood behind the smaller woman. "I just don't- make friends with women very easily, and we haven't really had much of a chance to get acquainted. I didn't mean to make you feel-unwelcome."

"Well, at least I wasn't feeling as unwelcome as Rik,"

she said with more of a smile, one hand going up to pat at her hair. "I'm more or less used to cool receptions from women, but I don't think he is. You two really got off on the wrong foot, didn't you?"

"If you're going to talk about 'Rik*, I withdraw my invitation," I said, suddenly feeling more annoyed man embarra.s.sed. Su had changed her smile to chuckling, which made it even worse. "If I knew for sure it was going to rain, I would have put up only five pavilions-or given his a leaky roof. And speaking of water, do you think we can get a little closer to the stream? Washing from this distance without magic won't accomplish very much."

"But I'm really curious about why you don't like him,"

she said with a laugh, turning to keep me in sight as I walked around her, then hurrying after me through the opening in the bushes. "You get along well enough with Kadrim and Zail; why not Rik^"

"Kadrim is a friend, and Zail is nice," I said over my shoulder without slowing, knowing beyond doubt that Su was also following-and still chuckling. "Our fearless leader Rik is neither, and now I'd like to talk about something else.''

"Oh, this is wonderful," Soffann Dra said, diverted at last by the large area I'd screened off. "There must be enough room here for at least fifty people, and you made the gra.s.s softer all the way to the stream. I don't know how you do it, but I'm certainly glad you do. And in case you didn't know, he hates that name."

I had stopped not far from the stream bank and was just beginning to try stretching some of the aches and tiredness out of my body, which probably accounted for the reason I spoke without first stopping to think.

"Who hates what name?" I asked, reaching wide toward the hot, late afternoon sun. "I know I'm tired, Soffann Dra, but I'm not following you at all,"

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"You don't have to be that formal," she said with a dimpled smile, sitting down to my left and raising the bottom of her gown to reach her boot laces. "You can both call me Dranna, the way my family did. And the name I'm talking about is 'fearless leader*. Rik knows you call him that, and he hates it."

"Oh, isn't that too bad," 1 said in a very sympathetic way, feeling considerably better as I joined-Dranna-on the gra.s.s to get rid of my own boots. "But doesn't he realize he ought to be happy with what he has? There are a lot worse things to call someone, which he may yet find

out."

"Wouldn't push it too far without thinking about it, if I were you," Su put in, standing to Dranna's left and loos- ening her hair. "You jump on a man's dignity too hard and too often, and he just might decide to jump back."

"And then Zail and Kadrim will probably get involved,"

Dranna added while I frowned at Su, the small woman's voice more sober than it had been. "Normally, I don't think either one would challenge Rik, but if you get him mad enough to come down on you, they might be forced into it."

"That's idiotic," I said after me briefest hesitation, addressing both of mem. "No one is stupid enough to get into an argument with a sorceress, not even Rik. And as far as Kadrim and Zail go, there's no reason for them to get involved. They both know I can take care of myself, so why would they bother?"

They both looked at me then. Su with a faint smile of amus.e.m.e.nt, Dranna with a searching stare, and then the small woman shook her head with a sigh.

"You really don't know, do you?" she said, green eyes still searching my face. "I'm not all that much older than you, but suddenly I feel ancient. Don't you know anything about men?"

"How much is there to know about them?" I came back, enough of the discomfort returning so that I got to my feet to begin taking off my clothes. "They're people just like everyone else, and some you like and some you don't. What's so complicated about that?"

"I think I understand now why they find you so fasci-

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nating," she said with another sigh, pushing her boots to one side and rising to her feet. "I'm just glad you don't get along with Rik. Taking another woman's leavings isn't what I'm used to, but at this point I can't afford to be critical. Not that I'd be critical of Rik under any circ.u.m- stances. I happen to like him and find him very attractive, and he even understands."

"Understands what?" I asked automatically, wondering why she kept talking in circles and changing subjects.

"And you haven't said why you think Kadrim and Zail would involve themselves in my argument with fearless leader."

"Rik understands how horribly helpless I feel," she said with another dimpled smile, glancing up at me as her hands reached to her gown front and began opening it. "I knew from the start that I didn't really belong on this quest, but I had no choice about going. I'm the only one of us who's absolutely helpless, the only one who can't do more than shiver through an attack and pray we survive.

It's terrible not being able to fight back, but 1 don't know how to, and haven't the courage for it in any event. Rik understands that 1 wasn't meant for a life like this, and he's patient rather than criticaL Something like that means a lot to someone like me."

"Men do more, sometimes, from feeling than they do from thinking," Su put in, some of her words m.u.f.fled in the folds of her yellow leather shirt as she pulled it off over her head. "Lot of the time the doing is nice, like the way Rik is with Dranna, but sometimes it's dumb, like the way Zait and Kadrim would be if they thought Rik might hurt you. They don't want you getting hurt, girl, and they won't take the chance it might happen. That's why they'd step into the argument."

"That really would be stupid," I said, growing annoyed again under her calm stare. "What's wrong with those two? Don't they understand I can take care of myself?"

"I don't think you'll find a man alive anywhere who's willing to consider a woman built the way you are, as able to take care of herself," Dranna said with an amused laugh, tossing her gown aside as she glanced at me. "Well, come on! Let's get to the washing."

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She ran forward with small, graceful steps to the edge of the stream bank, Su following at a more leisurely pace, both of them ignoring the tinge of red I was sure they could see all over me. What did what I looked like have to do with whether or not I could take care of myself? If being Sighted and powerful depended on what you looked like, half the wizards in the world would be too untalented to so much as light a match-and that included Morgiana- As small as she was, she'd never even be able to-

I cut off the internal debate with a kick at the pile of my dirty clothes, forced to admit that if I'd said any of that arguing aloud, I would have been wasting the breath.

Although I couldn't imagine why, 1 wasn't so dense that 1 didn't know Zail and Kadrim had been fighting over me just before the first attack. They were behaving the way warlock apprentices and sorcerers-and even a few male wizards-behaved around me witch apprentice Nedra, and I didn't know how to cope with that. It was something that had never happened to me before, and wasn't as enjoyable as Nedra seemed to find it. I was very glad that Zail had found a reason to be attracted, but Kadrim, although very handsome, was only a boy, and I didn't want them fight- ing, especially not against fearless leader-

"d.a.m.n," I said under my breath, adding a few street words inside my head, where I'd learned to keep them because of Morgiana. None of it was working out right, not the way it did in books. The quest wasn't a lark or a fun adventure, it was a race to save a world and its people;

the most attractive man around there was too busy being alert against attack to pay any real attention to me, and me first a.s.signation I'd ever had was with a boy I wanted nothing more from than friendship-but who seemed to want more from me. On top of that, I still hadn't figured out a way to take over leadership of the expedition, and that alone was enough to make me depressed. Su and Dranna were already splashing around in the water, so I took my jar of soap and went morosely to join them. If I was going to mope, 1 might just as well do it clean.

The stream water was blue-green and delicious, so cool and refreshing that I spent some time swimming in the light current rather than immediately beginning to bathe.