The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [150]
Five more beaches and six kays later, as he scrambles down a skree of rock, he sees pale gray on a pale black boulder, pale gray surmounted by flame-red hair.
“Megaera . . .” His heart pounds faster.
Damn you . . . best-betrothed . . .
His feet slip under the impact of the unspoken words, but he recovers with only the faintest of staggers, hitting the slanted sands under the eastern cliffs at a half-run, his booted feet digging into the softer sand above where the gentle waves cascade in.
A coolness flows within him, the cool, shivering feel of fear. Creslin slows to a walk. Fear? Not his fear, but why fear?
. . . because you are stronger than I am, except in will . . . because I will always be forced to submit. My body cannot bear . . . just as your soul cannot . . .
The fragments of thoughts cascade through his head. His steps hesitate, more than necessary on the soft and shifting sand above the waterline. The white water foams in to within cubits of his feet. Overhead, the hazy, high clouds turn the sun shrouded-gold, and the damp breeze from the sea seems suddenly chill. He stops before the bleached black boulder.
“Megaera?”
“Yes, best-betrothed?”
“Why . . . why do you . . . avoid . . .?”
. . . to save my soul . . . myself . . .
“The correct word is flee,” she says.
What answers does he have? All he knows is that he has always loved the lady.
. . . Love? You don’t know love, just lust . . .
“Always lusted after the lady,” she corrects him, still sitting on the far end of the gray stone.
“Not just lust . . . not just that.” The calmness within his soul reassures him.
Why . . . love? How can you call that . . . love? “You’re lying to yourself. What you feel isn’t love,” she insists. Yet she is shaken by his coolness.
“Perhaps you don’t know love, either,” he suggests.
. . . don’t know . . . what it’s like . . . you have no idea. . .
“I know what I know.” Creslin’s heart pounds, even while his words are spoken quietly.
You know nothing . . . “Perhaps you should see what it feels like.” Megaera’s eyes fix on him.
“What what feels like?”
your . . . love. “What you call love.” Megaera smiles.
Can she never love him? He watches as she lifts one hand theatrically. Fire flares at her fingertips.
Flames leap along his forearms—or are they Megaera’s forearms?—and sweat beads on his forehead. His/her stomach turns at the order/chaos conflict, as if he had told an untruth.
“Come now, best-betrothed. That’s nothing like cold iron.” Megaera’s voice is hard, and both of her arms lift.
Yet the ugly internal twisting tells him that she is lying.
. . . nothing at all like fighting cold iron. . .
RRHHHsssssttt!
Fire slashes into the blue-green of the sky.
Creslin stands immobile on the rocky beach, looking at the redhead, his muscles convulsed and knotted like the bark of a gnarled oak.
“You didn’t spend a lifetime bound against such pain, O husband dear . . .” Damn you, sister dear . . . and you, unwitting tool. If . . .
Sensing the pain beneath the pain, Creslin forces his lungs to breathe and takes a step toward the end of the rock where Megaera sits. Once more that fire-white, almost lost within the blackness that enfolds Megaera, jets toward the clear eastern sky.
Again Creslin’s muscles knot with the internal flame that runs through his blood like acid. His guts turn, and he burns from sole to crown. But he takes another step forward. Megaera must feel the pain even more than he does, and how she has borne such agony for so long . . . how?
Not easily, best-betrothed . . .
The white flame, jetting into the sky, still burns both of them, and he sways, but breathes, and takes another step—another step toward the fires of the demons of light.
“Do you still love me, O best-betrothed?” How can you call . . . this love?
“Yes.” The words rasp from his hoarse throat as he reaches the midpoint of the seaward side of the boulder.
Megaera sits on