Cyncaidh and Varia had stayed up late the night before, bundled warmly on a balcony, holding hands while she watched her first aurora, a marvelous play of lights shimmering and pulsing not just in the north but over the entire bowl of sky. Then they'd slept late by their standards, and busied themselves for a time while the sun climbed the sky, he entering various records into a ledger, while she read more imperial history.
By late morning the temperature was perhaps 75 degrees Farenheit, almost hot for late summer on the Northern Sea, and they'd left the manor on foot, hiking a graveled path that led through half a mile of forest to the shore. Cyncaidh wore moccasin-like step-ins, soft, bleached-linen trousers, a low-crowned, untrimmed hat of straw, and a jacket-like shirt with sleeves only to the elbows. Varia wore a short kilt over knit tights, and a knit top with long sleeves. Held by the beauty of the morning, neither of them said much as they walked.
A gap opened in the forest, widening as they approached the beach, broadening the view ahead. The sky held not a cloud, and the air only a light breeze. The dry haze of autumn was three or four weeks in the future, and the air was crystalline, showing the icy water sapphire-blue to the horizon. Well offshore, a string of rocky islets angled northeastward across the view, providing perspective and composition.
They had no escort. Cyncaidh himself carried the basket that, besides a picnic, held jackets in case the wind picked up. A servant had preceded them by half an hour, with blankets, oars and sail. He'd installed the sail, seated the spar, then left by another path, to avoid imposing on their privacy.
The small cove was sheltered on the northwest by a low spine of basalt, the ghost of some ancient volcanic dike, ground down, rounded and smoothed by glacial ice. By contrast with its near blackness, the dry beach sand was surprisingly white, and audible as they crossed it to the small dock where a fourteen-foot skiff was tied. There was a minute of verbal exchange, cheerful and mostly purposeful. Then Varia crouched in the bow with a short boat hook, while Cyncaidh pushed off from the dock and manned the oars, leaning into them and pulling out into the smooth-surfaced cove.
She put down the hook and watched him row, noting the sinews in his long forearms, his lean athletic lines. It was a body that little by little, these weeks, she'd learned to appreciate and love. It differed from Curtis's, as their personalities differed. Both men were muscular, though their lines and proportions were not at all alike. Both were strong-willed, too, but not bullheaded—considerate, able to give way—and both were sweet and loving. But Raien was—not wiser but more intellectual, and in bed a smoother, more skilled lover. Curtis relied more on his reactions. Of course he was nearly thirty years younger, but the difference was more basic than that.
Her life, she told herself, had been rich after all, in gifts as well as trials.
It occurred to her she'd been comparing the two men, the loves of her life, something that would still have been impossible, unthinkable, just four weeks earlier. The changes in her viewpoint and emotions still sometimes surprised her. They'd been sneaking up on her over the gentling, strengthening weeks of intermittent sessions with Mariil, sessions that healed both mind and spirit. And she'd discovered she could think of both men without guilt or any other discomfort. Or compulsive assignment of precedence. Each loved her, and she loved both of them.
But Curtis was in another world. He'd hardly fit in this one.
Not that healing was complete, it might never be, but it seemed to her it had gone far enough that she could face whatever she needed to face, without being overwhelmed or experiencing great grief. And Mariil had seemed to thrive on helping, as if she too was getting a new lease on life. The techniques she used, certain others also knew, A'duaill for one, and increasingly herself, with Mariil her teacher. But Mariil, Varia recognized, had the greater healing talent. It was a healing not imposed like surgery, but internal, replete with tears and laughter, the realizations and decisions her own, though guided and facilitated by Mariil's insights, skilled questions and instructions.
Commonly the effects weren't noticed until, the next day or week, Varia realized that certain responses had changed, that this and that reaction and attitude were different than they had been. And in the process of opening and cleaning out old mental lesions, more than the effects of abuse were dealt with: old learning and conditioning were also exposed. Some of which she cancelled or modified, and some she reaffirmed within her newly evolving world view.
Under the gentle pressure of sun and sea breeze, her eyes had closed. Now she became aware that the skiff's movement had smoothed, and she opened them again. Cyncaidh had stowed the oars and raised the sail, and lost in her thoughts, she hadn't noticed. He sat grinning in the stern with the tiller under his arm, while the breeze bellied the linen. The cove was behind them; his eyes were on her. She smiled back at him. He could be boyish too, a boyishness different than Curtis's.
Cyncaidh watched her eyes close again. Lovely, lovely eyes, he told himself, in a lovely face relaxed and lightly tanned. Looking at her, he felt strong, strong and able. And lucky.
He loved her tan. It was a rare ylf that tanned. Among them, protection from sunburning was a subtler function of ylvin physiology. Which could be overloaded, thus the ylvin fondness for hats and body covering against prolonged exposure. He loved her legs, too, admired them, preferred them bare; their clean lines and smooth muscularity excited him sexually. And he loved her slender waist; her back, well-muscled instead of bony; her easy flexibility. The strength that still surprised him when her passion released it, and the dance exercises that Sisters were taught, to maintain their endurance and beauty. She did them daily now, elaborating on them, she told him; said she intended to make an art form of them.
Dancing she excited him, and relaxed she soothed him. As now. He wondered what she was thinking behind her closed lids, and hoped it was of him.
Varia opened her eyes from time to time, to see Raien in the stern, and the shore falling farther behind. With a following breeze and little draft, they moved briskly.
This was the third time he'd had taken her boating. The first two trips had been overnighters, exploring the coast first westward, then eastward. Bypassing fishing hamlets, they'd skirted wild beaches, snooped cliffs, and explored the lower reaches of streams, Raien unstepping the spar and using the oars when necessary. She'd loved the places he'd shown her; some looked as if no one had been there before. They'd poled up one rocky gorge which in spring, he said, was a raven rookery, loud with the croaking of the large black birds, hundreds of them, their nest trees clinging to rocky walls, where fledglings gripped the branches determined never to let go despite the noisy urgings of their elders.
Sometimes she'd rowed. At first her request had surprised him, but he'd overridden his cultural conditioning and let her take the oars. More than once, she'd told him, she'd rowed Will's rented boat on the Mustoka River, while Will worked the water with his casting rod, for bass. Raien had frowned, and she'd asked him why. He'd been trying to visualize it, he'd said. Trying to visualize Will, and Varia's marriage to him. He had less difficulty, he told her, visualizing her life with Curtis, though he wasn't at all sure his images were realistic.
It seemed to her she handled the complications of her past more easily than Raien did.
With the following breeze, sailing was simple, and Cyncaidh's attention remained largely on Varia. Her lovely eyes opened only for seconds at a time. Her aura, he noted, was almost as calm as if she slept; whatever she was thinking was pleasant but unexciting. Shortly they drew even with the nearer islets, and he angled toward the one they'd picnic on. Most were mere skerries, bare black rocks overswept by waves in the heavier storms. Three, however, had developed shallow soils and a bit of vegetation, while the largest had not only scrubby aspens and birches, but a small stand of black spruce, complete with nesting birds that fed on bearberry and bilberry, and the seeds of other dwarf shrubs that grew there.
"Here comes our picnic ground," he said, and opening her eyes, Varia turned to see. He lowered his sail and manned the oars as they coasted in, letting the tiller trail, pulling up beside a natural dock he knew, a finger of dark basalt. The bow slid gently onto shiny black shingle rock, and Varia, stepping onto the natural dock beside her, pulled the bow farther up, grounding it securely. Someone in the past had driven a steel picket into a crack, and Raien tied up to it, then took the picnic basket ashore, putting it down higher on the narrow beach, where he spread their blankets on the sand.
"It's a little early for lunch, don't you think?" Varia asked.
He grinned down at her from his six-feet-four. "I thought we might do other things. Here where we have both privacy and sunshine."
She grinned back, put her arms around him and raised her face. "What did you have in mind, your lordship?"
He began to show her, his hands in the back of her tights while they kissed. After a minute they lowered to their knees, then lay down, dallying and petting, and before long made slow love in the sunshine. Afterward they had their lunch: coarse bread, apple butter, cheese, and a flask of beer cooled in the shallows. When they'd eaten, he led her into the shade of the spruce grove, and spread the blankets on feather moss. There they made love again, then dressed and napped, and afterward sat in the beached skiff to finish the contents of the basket.
He pointed northeast, out at the farther islets. "You can see the farthest two from here," he said.
The non sequitur remark sharpened her awareness. His aura reflected watchfulness, a certain tension; he had something to tell her, and wasn't sure how she'd take it. Puzzled, she looked where he pointed.
"Out there is the Sea Gate."
"Sea Gate?"
"There's a gate there, presumably to Farside. I thought you should know."
Frowning, she stared at him, not yet angry.
"It's called the Sea Gate because it opens over the water between the last two skerries. And it's different in other respects. The other gates I've heard of open when the moon is full, at midnight or high noon. This one opens irregularly during periods of northern lights, and apparently stays open for hours at a time. Perhaps days sometimes.
"Long ago, one of my great-great-uncles went through in a boat to see what was on the other side. He planned to see, then return at once, and several boats waited for him. Only his boat came back, overturned but intact. Twice since then volunteers have gone through, and not even their boats were seen again."
He paused, looking at her. Her expression had turned thoughtful. "I thought we might go out there," he said. "After last night it may be stirring. We can feel it if it is. Would you like to?"
She answered only after a long moment's lag. "Has anything ever come through from the other side? Besides your great uncle's boat?"
"Not that we know of. Nothing seen floating, no bodies or anything unusual washed up on the beach."
She couldn't correlate the geography of the two worlds well, but it seemed to her that Lake Superior might be on the other side, and told him so. He nodded thoughtfully. "If it is, it's probably cold, like the sea here. And if the arrival there is rough, rough enough to overturn you . . ."
"I've gone through both ways," she said. "Coming through to this side is the most violent, but going through the other way, you never know what position you'll arrive in. Hardly ever on your feet."
"I've read the same sort of thing. Do you want to sail out there? Close enough to feel if anything is happening?"
Again she frowned thoughtfully. "I suppose we should. I don't know what we'll accomplish—nothing, probably—but . . ."
He nodded, and after they'd stowed their things in the skiff, she got into the stern. He untied the painter, lifted the bow free of the shingle rock and pushed off, Varia holding the tiller. Then he raised the sail and sat down by her in the stern. Approaching the gate site, they felt nothing unusual, and after circling it, turned to tack their way shoreward, slowly, for the skiff had little draft, and only skeg and rudder to bite the water.
On their way back to the cove, a slender ship passed them, a Sea Swallow swift and graceful, its mast unseated, driven by long oars. The colors of an imperial courier fluttered at the stern. When the couple reached the manor, the courier met them, giving Cyncaidh a sealed envelope, while a troubled Ahain hovered unnoticed in the background. Slitting the envelope, Cyncaidh read the message, then turned to Varia. "Lochran has died. The Chief Counselor. Unexpectedly. The Emperor wants me to come at once, with the courier."
Ahain interrupted. "Your lordship!"
Cyncaidh turned, noticing him now. "Yes?"
"Lady Cyncaidh lost consciousness this morning after you left. Lord A'duaill says it's a stroke. He doesn't think she'll live out the day."
Cyncaidh's jaw clenched, and he turned to the courier. "I'll stay till my wife can either travel or has died. Meanwhile I'll have preparations begun."
"As you say, Lord Cyncaidh."
"Meanwhile I'll look in on her, and discuss her condition with Lord A'duaill, my wizard and healer. You and I can talk further after supper." He turned to Varia, who stood white-faced, her knuckles between her teeth, not at the unexpected move but at the report of Mariil's stroke. "Lady Varia, perhaps you'd care to come with me."
She nodded. "Of course, your lordship."
They went together to the second floor, to the east wing, and went in. Mariil was still unconscious. They'd been there only minutes when her spirit aura flickered out. She was dead.