Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

She moved upon his body and the candlelight was deflected and then hidden as she came down over him. He struggled but only for a moment for his heart was pounding again and desire was overwhelmingly upon him, just as Alienor was, just as her own complex needs could be seen rising in her again, in the darkness of her eyes before they closed, in her movements above him, and in the ragged, reaching, upward, straining of her breath.

And before the night was over, before the half of it had passed, with the last candles of winter burning down, she had proven herself right, terribly, over and over again. And at the end even, she was the one who lay bound and open between the four pillars of the world that was her bed and Devin was no longer quite sure of who he was that he should be doing to her the things he was. The things that made her whisper and then cry aloud his name as she did, over and again. But he did know that she had changed him and had found a place within him where his need to seek oblivion was equal to her own.

THE CANDLE ON HIS SIDE of the bed burned out some time later. There was a small, scented drifting of smoke. The pattern of light and shade in the room changed; neither of them was asleep, they both noticed it. The fire was down to its embers; the dog still lay before it, its magnificent head stretched out on its paws.

‘You had better go,’ Alienor said, stroking his near shoulder absently. ‘While there’s a candle for you to carry. It is easy to lose your way in the dark.’

‘You observe the Ember Days?’ he asked, a little surprised at such piety. ‘No fires?’

‘No fires,’ she said ruefully. ‘Half my household staff would leave me, and I don’t even want to guess at what the tenant farmers or the villagers would do. Storm the castle. Call down some ancient curse with ears of corn soaked in blood. These are the southern highlands, Devin—they take their rites seriously up here.’

‘As seriously as you take yours?’

She smiled at that and stretched like a cat. ‘I suppose so. The farmers will do things tonight and tomorrow that I prefer not to know about.’ With a sinuous motion she curled downwards towards the foot of the bed and reached for something on the carpet by the bedposts. Her body was a smooth, candlelit curve of white flesh, with the marks he had made on her still showing red.

She straightened and handed him his breeches. It felt abrupt, a dismissal, and Devin gave her a long stare, not moving. She met the look, but her eyes were neither hard nor dismissive.

‘Don’t be angry,’ Alienor said softly. ‘You were too splendid to be leaving in anger. I’m telling you truths: I do observe the Ember rites and it is hard to find your way back without a light.’ She hesitated a moment, then added, ‘And I have always slept alone since my husband died.’

Devin said nothing. He rose and dressed. His shirt he found halfway between the bed and the doors. It was shredded so badly it should have been amusing. He wasn’t amused though. In fact, he was angry—or some feeling beyond anger, or beside it, a more complex thing. Lying naked and uncovered among the scattered pillows of her bed, Alienor watched him clothe himself. He looked at her, marvelling still at her feline magnificence and even— despite the change of mood—even aware of how easy it would be for her to stir his desire again.

But as he gazed at her a dormant thought surfaced from wherever thought had been driven in the primitive frenzy of the last few hours. He arranged the shirt as best he could and walked over to claim one of the candles in a brass holder.

She had turned on her side to follow his movements, her head now resting on one hand, the black hair tumbling about her, her body offered to his sight as a gift, a glory in the shifting light. Her eyes were wide and direct, her smile generous, even kind.

‘Good night,’ she said. ‘I don’t know whether you know it, but you are welcome back should you choose to come one day.’

He hadn’t expected that. He knew, without having to be told, that she was honouring him with this. But his thought, his disquiet from before was strong now and intermingled with other images, so that, although he smiled in return and nodded, it was neither pride nor honour that he felt.

‘Goodnight,’ he said and turned to go.

At the doors he stopped and, as much because he had remembered Alessan saying that the blue wine had begun with her as for any other single reason that he knew— then or later—Devin turned back to her. She had not moved. He looked, drinking in the opulence of the chamber and the proffered beauty of the woman on the bed. Even as he stood there another candle died on the far side of the room.

‘Is this what happens to us?’ Devin said then, quietly, reaching for words to frame this new, hard thought. ‘When we are no longer free. Is this what happens to our love?’

He could see her eyes change, even from this distance and in this wavering of light and dark. For a long time she looked back at him.

‘You are clever,’ she said finally. ‘Alessan has chosen well in you.’

He waited.

‘Ah!’ said Alienor throatily, simulating astonishment. ‘He actually wants an answer. A true answer from a lady in her castle at the edge of the world.’ It may have been a trick of the uncertain light, but she seemed to look away then, beyond where Devin stood, even beyond the tapestried walls of her room.

‘It is one of the things that happens to us,’