A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [31]
“Please, Dalla, won’t you take a little stroll with me? Oh, by the gods who live in the moon, I’ve dreamt about you every night for weeks.”
“Have you?” Dallandra shook her arm free. “Then maybe you’ve been drinking too much Eldidd mead before you go to bed. Try taking a herbal purgative.”
“How can one so lovely be so cruel? I’d die for you. I’ll do anything you say, fight a thousand Round-ears or ride alone to hunt down the fiercest boar! Please, won’t you give me some quest? Something dangerous, and I’ll do it or die all for your sake.”
“What a lardhead you can be!”
“If I talk like a madman, it’s because I’m mad all for the love of you. Haven’t I loved you for years? Have I ever looked at another woman in all that time? Haven’t I brought you gifts from down in Eldidd? Please, won’t you walk with me a little ways? If I die for lack of your kisses, my blood will be on your head.”
“And if I get a headache from listening to you babble, then the pain will be in my head, too. Cal, the alardan’s full of prettier women than me. Go find one and seduce her, will you?”
“Oh, by the gods!” Calonderiel tossed his head, his violet eyes flashing with something like rage. “Doesn’t love mean anything to you?”
“About as much as meat means to a deer, but I don’t like to see you unhappy. We’ve been friends for ever so long, since we were children, truly.”
Just seventy that year, Calonderiel was a handsome man, tall even for one of the People, towering a full head above her, his hair so pale it seemed white in the summer sun and his eyes as deep-set as a dark pool among shade trees. Yet Dallandra found the thought of him kissing her—or worse yet, caressing her—as repellent as the thought of biting into meat and finding a maggot.
“Besides,” she went on, “how would your pack of friends take it if I chose you?”
“They’d have to take it. We threw knucklebones to see who’d get the first chance to court you, and I won.”
“You what?” Dallandra slapped him so hard across the face that he reeled back. “You beast! You gut-sucking sheep worm! Am I supposed to be flattered by that?”
“Of course you are. I mean, aren’t you glad to have four men all ready to die for you?”
“Not if they dice over me first like a piece of Eldidd ironware.”
“I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Horse turds.”
When Dallandra started to walk away, he grabbed her arm again, bobbing his head and ducking before her like a bird drinking from a stream.
“Please, wait! At least tell me this: is there someone you love more than me? If there is, then I’ll ride off with a broken heart, but I’ll ride.”
“Since I don’t love you at all, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone I loved more, but actually, I haven’t even looked. Why don’t you believe me, you cloudbrain? I don’t love you. I don’t love anyone. I don’t want to get myself a man. Plain truth. No more to say. There you are.”
Rage flared in his eyes.
“I don’t believe it. Come on, tell me: what can I do to make you love me?”
She was about to swear at him, then had a better idea.
“I’ll never love any man who isn’t my match in magic.”
“What a rotten thing to say! What man’s ever going to match you? That’s a woman’s art.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Dallandra gave him a small smile. “A man could learn it, too—if he had the guts, and most of you don’t.”
This time, when Dallandra shook free and walked on, Cal stayed behind, savagely kicking at a tuft of grass with the toe of his boot. She hurried on to the lakeshore, where Nananna and Halaberiel were sitting in the long grass in the shade of a willow tree, their heads together and talking urgently.
“I’ve asked the banadar to do us a small favor,” Nananna said. “Concerning yesterday’s vision.”
“Of course I’ll go look for this man, Wise One. I’ll take my