A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [180]
With a laugh she glinted away like a flash of light from a mirror and reappeared standing next to him.
“Then stay here with me until he gets back.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to go ride with the herd tomorrow. It’s my turn. We have to keep moving the horses around, you see, so they get enough to eat.”
With a puzzled frown she reached up to drape her arms over his shoulders, as light and languid as a bit of cloth. When he kissed her, suddenly he could feel her weight.
“There’s lots of food for your horse right here.”
“True, but we’ve got lots more horses back at camp.”
“You’re one of the elder brothers now. Isn’t that odd.”
“Is it? Why?”
“I don’t understand you people. You change so much.” She pressed herself close to him and kissed him. “Come lie down. Then we’ll go somewhere nice.”
Over the next few weeks, Rhodry grew very sly and very clever about stealing time for his White Lady. He did his share of the alar’s work, spent just enough time with Calonderiel and his other friends to allay any suspicion, and dug up one good excuse after another for his fits of melancholy and long solitary rides. Every now and then he noticed Aderyn studying him, but he always managed to display enough good cheer to put the old man off. Everyone assumed that he was still pining for Jill on the one hand and adjusting to his new life on the other. After all, to go from being the most powerful human being on the western border to just another man of the People—and one without even any horses of his own—was the kind of change that would leave most men brooding. No one suspected the truth, that he was as much in thrall to his White Lady as any Cerrmor brothel lass ever was to her opium pipe.
Yet of course, she was as much in thrall to him. Every time he left her, she begged him to stay, and no matter how much he tried to explain, she could never understand that he needed food and shelter. When he tried offering to take her back to camp with him, she turned furious, screaming at him and clawing his face like a cat. He had so hard a time explaining those scratches to Aderyn that he resolved to stay away from her, but the next time that he had a chance to slip out and ride her way, he took it. She was waiting for him, as sunny and loving as if they’d never fought. Indeed, he had the feeling she’d forgotten all about it.
That day she took him to a place that she called, quite simply, the sea caves. Enormous amethysts, jutting crystals as big as a horse’s head and sparkling with mineral fire, lined those caves, and turquoise water as clear and warm as liquid light filled them. Together they drifted down winding halls through chambers walled with gold where creatures spoke to them in voices sweeter than any harp. At times it seemed to him that they were asking his help, begging him to stay and rid their country of some evil, but he could never quite understand the sense of their words, only its emotional tone. At other times he and his White Lady were left alone to satisfy his desire. When at last the vision faded he was too exhausted to raise his head from the grass at first, but then he became aware of thirst, so urgent it was like a burning in his mouth. He hauled himself up, staggered out up to his knees in the pond, and gulped water until he could hold no more. She came to sit beside him and stroked his sweaty forehead with a pale, cool hand.
“The sun’s in the east,” he said at last. “It must still be morning. But it seemed we were gone a long time.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Just time passing, that’s all. It seemed like days, but it couldn’t have been more than a few hours.”
She stared at him, her eyes narrow, her lips a little parted, in utter confusion.
“Well, don’t worry about it, my love. It doesn’t matter.”
Yet, when he reached camp, he found that it did matter. As he rode up, a couple of men came running, asking him where in the hells he’d been for the last two days. He realized, then, just how long he’d been gone—lost in her strange world and without a bite of food or a mouthful of water. He ducked into Aderyn