The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [194]
“I don’t want to leave. I have to leave.”
“Just to study a lot of moldy old books with Nevyn? What are you going to do, wander around the kingdom with a mule and lance farmers’ boils for them?”
“If I have to, I will. It’s not a bad calling, healing people’s ills.”
“You’re daft!”
“You just can’t understand what the dweomer means—”
“Of course I can’t understand.” His voice was rising steadily. “There’s naught to understand except you’ve gotten this daft idea in your head, and now you won’t listen to reason.”
“Rhodry, it aches my heart to hurt you this way.”
He started to speak, then stopped himself. He got off the bed and walked over to catch her by the shoulders. His hands were so warm and comfortable that she wanted to weep.
“Don’t go. Jill, please. I need you so much.”
“You don’t need me. You just want me.”
“Well, isn’t that enough? I love you more than I love my own life, and that’s not enough?”
“I love you, too, but the dweomer—”
“Oh, curse the dweomer! I don’t give a pig’s fart about dweomer! I want you.”
“And I want you, but I can’t have you and the dweomer—”
“So, I’m only second-best, am I?”
“That’s not what I meant! By the hells, you’re as stubborn as a mule and twice as nasty! Why won’t you listen to what I’m saying?”
“Why won’t you talk sense, then?”
Later it would seem to Jill that they argued for half an eternity. Even at the time she realized she was quarreling only to keep her pain at bay, that she was desperately trying to find some reason to hate or at least despise him, but merely realizing wasn’t enough to make her stop. Rhodry, she supposed, was genuinely furious with her; she needed to believe so, anyway. Round and round they went, the same circling arguments, the very same words, even, until she wondered what she wanted from him, why she was dragging out this agony instead of merely leaving. Finally she realized that she wanted him to say, very simply, that he understood, and that this was the one thing he never would say.
“You don’t love me at all anymore, do you?” By then his voice was hoarse and cracking. “Tell me the truth. It’s some other man, isn’t it?”
“Oh, don’t be an utter dolt! I’ve never loved anyone but you in my whole life.”
“Then why could you possibly want to leave?”
“Because the dweomer—”
“See! It does mean more than me.”
“Not more than you. More than love itself.”
“That’s ridiculous! No woman feels that way. Who is it? It can’t be Nevyn, and Salamander’s back in Bardek, and—”
“Rhodry, hold your ugly tongue! There isn’t any other man. You’re just trying to salve your cursed wounded pride.”
“May the gods curse you! Why shouldn’t I try to find some shred of pride to cling to? I’m the one who’s going to have to announce to the entire rhan of Aberwyn that a silver dagger’s daughter didn’t find me good enough for her.”
All at once she saw the way out. It was a lie, of course, an utter and complete he, but at that moment she was desperate to break the chains of recrimination and hurt that were binding them round.
“Well, I’ve got pride of my own, and how do you think I could live shamed, after you cast me off one fine day?”
“Jill! I’d never do such a thing! Haven’t you listened to one cursed word I’ve said?”
“There’s somewhat you don’t know.” She turned away, embarrassed that she’d stoop so low.
“What is it?” His voice had changed to a frantic sort of worry. “What’s so wrong?”
“I’m barren, you dolt. Couldn’t you put that together on your own? After all these years, you’ve never gotten me with child, and there’s little Rhodda at home, waiting to call you father. It’s not your trouble.”
He was silent for so long that she finally forced herself to look at him. For the first time in that miserable evening he was weeping. She felt that she could taste her lies as a fetid thing in her mouth, but she forced herself to go on.
“You’ve got to think of Aberwyn, Rhodry. What’s going to happen to the rhan in twenty years’ time when there’s still no heir? I can’t do that to Aberwyn and her people, not even for the man I love, and I love you with all my