Sentinelspire - Mark Sehestedt [87]
When he emerged from the pool, someone was standing on the shore watching him.
Berun blinked and wiped the water from his eyes, but when he looked again the figure was still there. The stranger began moving out of the deeper shadow, and Berun could tell by the movement that it was a woman. As she came out from under the oak canopy, a bit of the light from the sky reflected off her dress. It had seemed downy gray in the shadows, but as she stood under the sky, it sparkled like frost, catching the violet light of evening and reflecting some of it back against her skin. Berun followed her with his eyes, and as she stopped, the first edge of the moon broke over the treetops, shedding the glade in her pale light. It gave Berun his first good look at the woman.
She was strikingly beautiful, and her body had the leanness of an elf. Her sleeveless gown stopped just above her ankles, and it seemed to be made of many strips of fabric, so light that they fluttered in the breeze, reminding Berun very much of new spring blossoms. The fabric seemed pale against the darkness of her skin. Her hair fell well below her waist, and she had flowers and even tiny sprigs twined within her tresses.
"Good evening to you, lady," Berun called out.
"Peace to you, Berun," she said. He found the melodic lilt of her accent very pleasing.
"How do you know me, lady?"
She stared at him in silence for a long while-so much that Berun became uncomfortable. Finally she looked up to the sky and said, "Have you forgotten what night this, Child of the Oak Father?"
"I-" Berun stopped, realizing that he had given no thought to the day. What day was it? He might have been in the earth under Chereth's spell for years for all he knew. "I… don't know."
"Tonight is the Jalesh Rudra," she said. "I am Lebeth, daughter of the Oak Father. You must play for me. Fulfill the covenant."
Berun blinked and looked away. The Jalesh Rudra. That meant it had been three days ago that Lewan had been taken, that the earth had risen up to swallow Berun. To fulfill the covenant, he would play the pipes for the daughters of the Oak Father, and if he found her favor, she would give herself to him for a night's coupling beneath the trees.
Still standing up to his chest in the water, Berun bowed his head and said, "Forgive me, lady. Great misfortune has overtaken me, and I have lost my pipes."
"I know of your needs," said Lebeth. "Our father knows of your needs. I will meet yours, but you must meet mine, according to the covenant."
She held out her hand, and the pale moonlight reflected off a small set of pipes, one of the finest he had ever seen. He could not remember if she had been holding them the whole time. She might have summoned them from the moonlight, for all he knew.
"So be it," said Berun. He waded to shore. It struck him then that Lewan should have been there, that Berun should be leading him through his first Jalesh Rudra; that if not for Sauk and the Old Man, his apprentice would have awoken tomorrow a boy no longer, but a man in the sight of the Oak Father. Berun's heart quickened in anticipation of what was to come, but his mood was tinged with sadness at Lewan's absence.
He came ashore where he thought he had left his trousers and boots, but they were gone.
"Your clothes are gone," said Lebeth, and when Berun turned she was standing only a few feet away. Though they were beneath the trees, the sparkle of starlight had not left her gown. Indeed, tinier sparkles dotted her arms and cheeks. This close, he caught the scent of her-night breeze through spring blossoms, but beneath it, a hint of something musky and primal.