The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [217]
But she had slept little, and when she did she dreamed of pushing Travis Wilder into the tangle in the Weirding while a man and a woman cried out in dismay. The man was Beltan, of course; he loved Travis. At first she thought the woman to be Grace, but then she saw that the other had eyes of gold. Before she could look closer, the threads tangled around Travis, drawing him into the dark center of the tangle, and in an instant he was gone. Except the tangle kept growing until it devoured everything, including Lirith herself.
Now, somewhere behind her, she heard the sounds of voices. The Mournish were beginning to stir. The others would be up soon. Lirith turned.
“Hello, beshala,” Sareth said, his brown-gold eyes soft in the morning light.
Lirith lifted a hand to clutch the spider charm at her throat, but any words she might have spoken were stolen away by the wind. Above, gulls cried.
She must have walked right past him. He leaned against the trunk of an ithaya tree, wearing his billowing pants and open vest. The morning light shone off the bronzed skin of his chest, and the wind tousled his black hair. In his hand he held a card. A T’hot card. She could not see its face.
Last night, in the darkness, she had been able to forget how handsome he was. Not now. She felt weak at the sight of him. Then her eyes drifted down to the leg that ended not in flesh but wood. His lips twisted in a grimace. He dragged his wooden leg back.
Lirith looked up in horror. She didn’t mean to make him hide his leg. It was part of him, like his fine hands, or the sparse, pointed beard on his chin. She would change none of it. Again she tried to speak but could not.
This is foolishness, sister. Tell him. Tell him what you are feeling!
“It brings good luck, the old women say,” he said in his deep, thrumming voice.
She tilted her head, confused. He pointed to the spider charm, which she still gripped.
Lirith let her hand fall from the charm. “Do they? I’m not sure that it has.”
Last night, Vani had told how the Scirathi used magical spiders of gold to poison those they wished to kill. That was how they had murdered Orsith. And she had seen them in her dreams.…
It seemed he sensed her thoughts. “No, do not let the work of the Scirathi decide what you believe. It is as a mockery that the sorcerers of Scirath use spiders to work their evil. For in Morindu, spiders were held to be sacred. And so my people still consider them. In our legends, they are the weavers that bind the world together.”
Lirith sighed. “We had thought it was Sif who was behind the murders, because we found one of the spiders where the priest Orsith was slain. But that was just coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe not entirely. I imagine the Scirathi saw in the arachnid god an opportunity to mislead and confuse any who sought to discover the source of the murders.”
Lirith nodded, but it was not of spiders that she wished to speak.
“I have heard …” Her voice faltered, and she moistened her lips. “I have heard it said that outsiders are never allowed to marry into the clans of the Mournish.”
Sareth stared past her, motionless. “What you have heard is true.”
The words were a dagger, but one she had known was coming. She turned away to hide the wound that surely had appeared in her breast. “I see.”
But maybe it didn’t matter. Who was she to think a man would marry her? She recalled the dream, how Sareth had turned to stone in her arms. For her, was not the dream already true? A man would find no warmth within her, no life. No children.
A rustling behind her. She smelled clean sweat and spices, and her throat went dry. A warmth touched the back of her neck: the breath of a man.
“Beshala …” he whispered.
She closed her eyes. “You keep saying that word, but I don’t know it. What does it mean?”
“In the tongue of my people, it means beloved.”
A gasp escaped Lirith; it was a sound of pain. She turned, searching his face for answers. “No, it can’t be. Beshala. I remember—that was what you called me in Ar-tolor, the first moment you saw me.”
His eyes were solemn. “So I did.