The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [148]
“Can’t we learn to . . . live . . . with each other?”
“You? Me?” She laughs, hard and cold. “When I must preserve you, when I cannot stop knowing how you feel . . .”
. . . still changes nothing. . .
“Do we have any choice?” he asks.
Megaera does not answer, although she sits across from him on the stool until he can no longer remain awake.
XCVI
THE SMALL ROOM on the top floor is brightly lit by four mirror-backed, white-brass lamps. Outside the narrow casement windows, the rain continues to fall, as it has for the past eight-days.
“If this keeps up much longer, there won’t be a crop left to save anywhere in East Candar, Jenred,” complains the heavy White Wizard. “And the Hamorian envoy has protested that you used wizardry to trick him into reporting Creslin’s theft of the Westwind treasures.”
“They don’t really believe that, do they?”
“I don’t think the emperor of Hamor is exactly pleased with the total loss of twelve ships.” Hartor shifts uneasily in the chair, and his eyes flicker toward the half-ajar doorway.
“Oh, well. It was worth a try,” notes the thin man in white, lifting his head as if to sense something in the air. He frowns, looking again at the rain outside. “Creslin is strong. I have to grant him that.”
“Strong! That’s like saying the winters in Westwind are cold.”
“So . . .” rejoins Jenred, still puzzled, still looking for something—for an odor or for a whispered word he cannot make out. “It doesn’t affect us. He’s not leaving Recluce, and he certainly gives Hamor something else to worry about.”
“Jenred,” Hartor says slowly, “why couldn’t you just have left Creslin alone? Let him wander through Fairhaven untouched? He would have wandered off somewhere and settled down, perhaps taught as a Black.”
“It wasn’t possible.”
“I thought it was. So did the council.”
“Thought what?” The thin wizard’s eyes swivel from the rain to the doorway and back again.
“That you were still after Werlynn, the only man who ever escaped you. Hatred makes for bad policy, Jenred. We can’t keep on making decisions based on hatred.”
Jenred struggles to his feet but topples as the black sleep closes around him.
Hartor takes a deep breath and bends over the sleeping form, removing the amulet and chain of office. He looks from the former High Wizard to the dark clouds and the rain. Then he eases the amulet and the golden links into place around his own neck as the White guards enter with the chains of cold iron.
XCVII
CRESLIN STANDS ON the hillside east of Land’s End, overlooking the Eastern Ocean. Below, the waves ebb and foam around the beached hull of the Hamorian ship.
Megaera is somewhere away from the shore. He has a sense of walls surrounding her—possibly the keep’s. His eyes drift back to the hull, the sole remnant of the Hamorian raiders. Then he shakes his head ruefully, and with a soft laugh, he turns, walking briskly toward Klerris and Lydya’s cot.
Lydya is there. Klerris is not. Lydya escorts him to the newly built covered porch and motions to a wooden chair. She perches on the half-wall, her face solemn. “How are you?”
“All right so far. Megaera’s still spending nights at the keep.”
“Did you expect anything less?”
“I could hope.”
Lydya’s eyes are level with his. “That’s not why you’re here.”
“No. I want Klerris to build a ship. Rebuild one, actually.”
“He might like that. He’s enjoyed the building projects a great deal more than he’s enjoyed the plants. What are you planning on rebuilding? Fishing boats?”
“The Hamorian war schooner on the eastern beach.”
“Can it be done?”
Creslin shrugs. “I certainly hope so. We need our own ships. When you think about the markup on goods—”
“That’s a big job.”
“We could use the prisoners for it. Some of them might even want to crew it.”
“Crew what?” interrupts another voice. Klerris stands in the recently created doorway leading from the main room of the cot.
Creslin repeats his idea. As he does so, Lydya slips back into the cot, leaving the two men alone on the porch.
“I don’t know,” muses Klerris.
“We have to,” insists