Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [94]
Rannon looked back at me again, and there was in her face a look of genuine surprise.
“Did you not see the rooms?” she asked. “Built for us? And the nursery where I hoped our children would be raised? Did you not understand what they meant?”
I stared at her, then looked down myself.
“I hoped,” I said.
She stepped forward and cupped my chin, lifted my head slightly to let her gaze explore my face. There was a question in her eyes, and to it I replied:
“If you cannot forgive yourself, then I cannot forgive myself either. If I had been stronger. If I had not doubted too. I would have let myself be arrested, knowing you would set me free.”
She smiled, a little. “I would have,” she said. “I know I would have.”
“Then forgive,” I said. “And let me forgive. And we’ll not talk of such things again because there will be no need.”
It seemed a long time before she spoke.
“Spirit and skin,” she said. “I will always be yours.”
To that there was no reply I could make.
At least not in words.
EPILOGUE
“WHAT ABOUT THEIR EYES?”
Hand in hand and smiling, Rannon and I went to check on those we cared about. The burns that Rhandh the Vlih had taken from Vohanna’s sorcery were healing. Rhandh himself was muttering and angry over being confined in bandages. I thought that a good sign.
Kreeg was improving as well, though still weak and pale from nearly having the life crushed out of him at Kellet’s Bay by that laith. His constant companion was Valyan, healthy himself, of course. Even Heril had returned from his journey and was a welcome face to see. He’d been my friend the longest of anyone upon Talera.
I regretted only two things. First, I regretted that Diken Graye had not been found. He had become a friend and I would have seen him pardoned for his unwitting and unwilling service to Vohanna. But not even his body had turned up. Second, I wished I’d been able personally to thank the Druidess, Ahrethane, who had aided me in the jungle. In a quick return to her leafy bower, I had searched for her and found nothing. On her table I’d left the boots I’d borrowed, and a note of thanks telling her to ask for me in Timmuzz if she ever needed anything.
One other thing had happened that caused me no regret but gave me pleasure instead. In searching for Diken Graye among the ruins of Vohanna’s pyramid I had found the very rapier that my cousin Eric Ryall had carried and which I had taken for myself after his death. That weapon had been torn from my hand by Vohanna’s saddle bird while I’d fought for my life against her Amazon form. Its blade was the sharpest and strongest I’d ever held, and I had learned since that it was forged from what is called Tyzinn steel, the secret of which is lost to the modern age.
Now, though, I was far more concerned with Bryce than with any sword. His room was open when Rannon and I arrived, but there were guards at his door and bars on his windows. He was sitting propped up on pillows in bed when we entered, his disconcerting silver hair coiled down across his shoulders. He turned to look at me with eyes in which the pupils were starting to show again through the rusted red. That red was itself fading gradually, leaving behind the natural grey irises with which he’d been born.
“Bryce,” I said, approaching him.
“Ruenn,” he replied, his voice steady but...hollow. I noted that my brother’s artificial hand was hidden beneath the covers and was grateful for that. I started to take his other hand, reconsidered. Rannon stood patiently behind me. Bryce had not acknowledged her.
It seemed I hardly knew the man before me.
I could think of nothing else to say, at first. Then my gaze caught in the luminous lines of ink that had been worked into nearly every inch of Bryce’s exposed skin. The brilliant colors were fading a bit, I thought, and hoped it was not just a wish.
“The physicians found specks of milkstone in your tattoos,” I said at last, gesturing at the scrawled runes on his body. “But