The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [141]
Lydya finally looks away. Klerris waits for them to finish their argument.
Creslin tries again. “Can you tell me that things will get better?”
“No, I cannot promise you that.”
“Can you tell me that letting me know her as she knows me will make things worse?”
“What you plan will either kill you both within days or . . .”
“Or?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever tried a double link.”
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
Lydya looks at Creslin, and her eyes are clear and deep. “You’re using violence to equalize violence. Because the evil done first was so great, this may be the only answer. That does not make it right.”
“I’ve been a tool of the Blacks, of my father, of the Marshall. Don’t I have the right to try for happiness and love?” His voice is ragged.
“Patience does not always work for the young.” Klerris’s voice is slow and calm.
“Or for men,” adds Lydya wryly.
The silence in the room draws out. Lydya and Klerris look from Creslin to each other. Finally Lydya shrugs. “It will be quicker this way.”
“Quicker?”
“You’re already starting to develop a link to Megaera.
Doing what you want to do will hasten and deepen the process, but it may not change anything. Do you still want to?”
Why hadn’t he considered the feelings, the occasional strong thoughts that had not been his?
“Are you sure that you want to do this?” the man in black asks Creslin. “As you know from her reactions, the results can be rather severe.”
“No, I can’t say that I want to do it,” answers the silver-haired man. “It’s just that things will get worse if I don’t.”
Klerris shakes his head. “You’re young. There are worse things than having someone forced to watch out for you.”
“Not many,” answers Creslin, baring his arm. “Not when that someone is Megaera.”
Lydya smiles sadly. “You don’t know what’s in store for you. But the shock just might lead to some understanding.”
Klerris shakes his head, but opens the small case he has brought with him. “I do not envy you, Creslin. She is extraordinarily strong-willed.”
Creslin can say nothing, nor can he speak through the tears that flow.
XCI
“YOU ARE A demon-damned fool! You’ve probably just killed us both.” Megaera is flushed. While the afternoon is hot and cloudless, the sweat upon her forehead is not from the sun’s rays.
. . . damned oversexed, thin-brained lusting animal . . .
“You couldn’t wait! You couldn’t be patient! You couldn’t learn more about me! No, like all men, just when you think they might have some understanding, they start thinking with their glands.” She takes a quick breath, ignoring the breeze with which Creslin cools the terrace. “What I don’t understand is why Lydya even considered this idiocy.”
“Because . . .” Creslin stumbles “. . . she said that it was already happening one way or another, and . . .” He has to change what he was about to say. “. . . and I think she felt that if the process was too drawn out, neither one of us could possibly survive it.”
“Happening already?”
“Yes. Sometimes I can hear what you think, at least when you’re really angry.”
“What?”
“You just thought that I was an oversexed, underbrained, lusting animal.”
“Thin-brained!” she snaps.
“Fine. Thin-brained. It’s the same thing.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Where are you going?”
“For now, I’ll stay with Shierra.” She steps back toward the room that has been hers. “No, you don’t have to worry about my leaving Recluce. Not yet, at least.”
. . . not until the next time. . .
Creslin shrugs, although the words and thoughts go through him like a short sword, and he has to swallow. Again she is giving him no chance at all.
“I’ve given you more than enough chances, and you twist each one around to suit yourself.”
“That’s not true. Not quite true,” he amends.
“True enough.”
He feels the discomfort, although it is not his, and shakes his head.
“You . . . you don’t understand at all!” Megaera shouts. “Now even