Destiny's Lovers Read online

  Some cataclysmic force long ago must have torn the center out of the mountain and allowed this open area to form. He saw a pair of the long-tailed, red-and-yellow birds he had noticed before in the ravine, and thought it was possible that birds had deposited the seeds necessary to make the area look as it did. But there was no easy explanation for what else he saw when he moved forward.

  A round pavilion, a small white structure surrounded by columns, sat beside a quiet pool which reflected the building in its limpid surface. The pavilion was a miniature version of the ancient structure Expedition Leaders Tank and Narisa had discovered on their previous visit to this planet, and which now served as their headquarters.

  Reid blinked several times, trying to clear his sight, but the little building stayed where it was. It was an illusion. It had to be.

  Abruptly, Reid was aware of something, some Presence, and he knew he was in a sacred place. He told himself it was ridiculous to feel this way, with a chill running up his spine and his hair standing on end. His training was in science and mathematics, which ought to have made him immune to the kind of superstitious reaction he was experiencing. Yet he knew in some deep inner part of himself that the Presence existed. He knew when it - whatever it was - accepted him.

  Giddy with relief and exhaustion, he staggered across the soft moss, catching at tree trunks to maintain his balance. He nearly fell into the pool, but righted himself and continued his erratic course along the edge of the water until he reached the pavilion. It had three steps all around it, made of polished white stone. The columns were stone, too, as was the domed roof. There was a clear substance set into the center of the dome, to let in the light. The effect of openness and the concentrated light in this peculiar place within the mountain made the building seem to glow against the green background.

  Reid’s legs gave way. He sat on the topmost step, leaning his back against a column, trying to think. His mind was clearer now, with the unknown presence gone from his consciousness. The pavilion was immaculately clean, the garden - for that was how he thought of it, that was what it must be - was carefully tended. Someone had to do that regularly. Someone intelligent. Possibly someone who would help him find Alia and Herne and help them all get back to headquarters.

  But there wasn’t supposed to be intelligent life on Dulan’s Planet. The telepaths who had once colonized it had all been killed in a Cetan raid six hundred years ago, except for the Dulan for whom the planet had been named and a few friends, who had escaped to that larger white building on the lake, where they had left a record of their history. Was it possible that others had escaped, too, and, unknown to Dulan, built this structure?

  They would be telepaths. Reid found that idea intriguing. Centuries ago, the Jurisdiction had banished all telepaths, which was why a colony of them had settled on this planet in the Empty Sector, so far away from Jurisdiction territory. Reid had never met a telepath, but he saw no reason why normal humans could not exist on friendly terms with them. It was just such dangerous open-mindedness which had earned him a place in Tank’s expedition to this world.

  Reid heard a sound behind his back. He turned, instantly on guard. Footsteps. He had not noticed the stone path on the opposite side of the pavilion. It curved away through the trees, toward the gold-brown wall of the mountain. Someone was coming along the pathway. He hesitated only a moment, and only because he was completely unarmed, before he realized that if this was a telepath coming, there was little he could do to defend himself. He stood up, moved to the center of the pavilion, and waited.

  Chapter 3

  Janina was always glad when it was her turn to fetch the Water for the priestess’s rituals, and particularly so today. She wanted to get away from the temple complex, to be alone for a while without the responsibility for her usual duties. She would use this precious time to convince herself to accept as gracefully as possible the terrible fact of her failure the day before, and her inevitable fate as a lesser priestess under the rule of Sidra and Osiyar. She did not mind the hot, dusty walk from the village, nor the climb up the pathway which only a priestess might use, to the entrance into the mountainside. She loved the cool, shady quiet of the sacred grove. It was so different from the brilliant sunlight of the village and the ever-present glare from the sea. It seldom rained in Ruthlen. Fog was not unknown in the time each year just before cold weather arrived, but the usual condition was sunshine tempered by dry land breezes. Water was supplied by streams flowing from the mountains behind the village. The soil between mountains and sea was fertile and responded well to irrigation; the sea gave up fish and edible vegetation. Famine was unknown.

  A few farmers gathering the early harvest glanced up as Janina passed them, the water jar strapped to her back. No one spoke to her. She did not expect it. She was used to being ignored. No one threw stones at her any more, not since Tamat had taken her into the temple, and that was all that mattered to her in her relations with folk who were not priestesses.

  Janina went on her way so deep in thought that she scarcely noticed when she finally emerged into the grove inside the mountain. She had taken only two steps along the stone path before she was jolted out of her concentration by the sense that something was different. She felt the man’s presence before she saw him. She knew at once who it was.

  “You have come,” she breathed. “Just as I foresaw.”

  He was huge and dark and ugly, yet she felt no fear of him at all. He was dear to her; in some strange way he was part of her, though they had never met before except in her brief prophetic trance and in her dream. As she drew nearer, she saw that he was younger than she had imagined. He could not be more than a few years older than she was.

  He stood in the exact center of the little pavilion, watching her. He wore a suit the color of the blazing orange-gold sun and he was so magnificent it hurt her eyes to look at him, until she noticed that his suit was torn and dirty. Beneath the stubble of a dark beard his face was scraped raw on one cheek and swollen here and there where insects had bitten him. The hands he held out to her were torn and bleeding and very dirty. And his eyes, which she had not seen clearly before, were a dark and stormy grey, set deep beneath thick black brows.

  “Please,” he said, “I’m lost. I need to contact headquarters. There are two others, friends of mine, back there somewhere in the forest.” He made a gesture, vaguely indicating the area behind him.

  “You are not a god,” she said, her heart swelling with joy at his presence. “A god would not be dirty and tired.”

  “It was you.”

  Her accent was strange. She spoke in a centuries-old dialect of the standard Jurisdiction language, yet Reid had no trouble understanding her or recognizing her voice. Tense grey eyes met gentle silver-blue ones, met and held while between them passed a spark of recognition beyond any ordinary meeting.

  “You spoke to me before,” he mused, half to himself. “It was your voice I heard. You called me ‘beloved.’ You saved my life. I - whoever you are, thank you.” In that moment he knew deep gratitude combined with wonder and a sense of delight that he had been spared to meet her.

  “I knew you would come,” she said, then, “Reid. Your name is Reid. How odd that I only know it now, not before. Perhaps I had to see you to know it.”

  Reid hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about, but it didn’t matter. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen. She was small and slender, her figure perfectly proportioned. Straight, silver-gold hair flowed across her shoulders and down her back to below her waist. Her silver-blue eyes were the shade of the morning mist over the sea, touched here and there with flecks of pale, delicate purple. Her nose was straight and short, her skin had a faint golden sheen to it as though it was flushed by the sun, and her soft mouth was like a sweet, rosy flower.

  Reid felt like an alien brute beside her. His tall, hard-muscled figure loomed over her shorter form. He thought sadly that one so delicately made, so clean and fresh, must find him repuls
ive. He ran a hand across his face, trying to remember the last time he had taken a pill to keep his beard from growing, or the date of his last bath. He winced when he reached the scrape on his right cheek.

  “You are injured,” the lovely apparition said. “If you will sit down so I can reach your face, I’ll clean your cheek and put a salve on it. Over there, on the moss, away from the pavilion.”

  Reid thought his legs probably wouldn’t hold him up much longer anyway. He went where she told him to go. He stood swaying awkwardly, watching as she lifted one of the stones in the floor of the pavilion and took out a box.

  “Sit down, please,” she ordered again, opening the box to remove something from it. He dropped to the moss a few feet away from the edge of the pool.

  She was on her knees beside him, her slender, rosy-tipped fingers anointing his injured cheek with a creamy ointment she scooped out of a translucent blue container. She smelled wonderful, like all the flowers of the universe mingled into one perfume. Her skin was flawless, her hair like liquid silver. The soft pink tip of her tongue protruded just a little, caught between white teeth while she concentrated on what she was doing. She appeared to be totally unaware of the effect she was having on him.

  Reid felt a wave of warmth suffuse his tired body, re-energizing him. It was not lust, nor even lust’s sweeter, gentler cousin, desire, but something more, something richer and deeper. There was an eternal quality pervading his feelings toward the young woman kneeling next to him, though he did not know how he could react in such a way toward a complete stranger. And yet, she was no stranger to him at all. He felt as if he had always known her.

  She finished with his cheek. She looked into his eyes, smiling, and Reid was lost, body and soul, heart and mind.

  “If you will remove your clothing,” she said softly, with just the faintest blush beginning to stain her delicate features, “I will put more of this salve on that wound at your waist. It has bled onto your garment.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” He paused with one hand on the pressure-sensitive opening of his treksuit, the strangeness of his situation threatening to overwhelm him. He sensed again that there was a mysterious, more-than-human presence in the hidden garden. For all he knew, his lovely companion might be that presence. With an effort, he rejected the idea. He desperately wanted the silver-haired woman to be as human as he was. Attempting to reduce an unexplainable experience to what he could see or hear or touch, he decided that the best way to deal with circumstances he could not understand was by concentrating on practical matters. That included physical comfort. “What I really need, before any more medical treatment, is a bath. Is it permitted to use the pool?”

  “No. The pool is sacred.” She solved his problem quickly, however, and the crease that had appeared between her brows smoothed away. “There is another spring, near the entrance to the grove, which we use to cleanse ourselves and the water jars before taking the Water from the pool. I can bring you some of that. Have you touched the Water in the pool?”

  The frown was back, just for an instant, but it disappeared at his honest answer.

  “I only arrived here a few moments before you appeared. I did not touch the pool. All I did was walk across the moss and sit on the pavilion steps. I hope that’s not forbidden?”

  “It can be forgiven, as can your presence here, since you were in obvious need of help.” There was a twinkle in the depths of her soft, pale eyes. “I often sit on the steps myself. It’s a good place to think. How did you find the grove?”

  As he explained, he kept his eyes on her, partly because he feared she would vanish if he looked away, partly because looking at her gave him such pleasure.

  “How brave you are,” she whispered, then added, “I have always been told there is no one living in the world on the other side of the ravine.”

  “That is no longer true,” he told her. “There are ten of us. Or, rather, there were ten of us. I’m not sure Alla and Herne are still alive.” He stopped, thinking about the possibility of Alla’s death, and of Herne’s. He hoped it wasn’t so. He hoped they had been found and rescued by now. As for himself…

  “Where are so many strangers living?” she asked in amazement, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Except for the two who were with me, my friends are at least a quarter of this world away from here,” Reid replied.

  “How fortunate you are to have friends.”

  Reid gazed at her lovely face, thinking that those she lived with had no judgment at all if she were friendless.

  “We never go across the ravine,” she told him. “We only go into it occasionally to gather special plants to use for medicines. Like this.” She indicated the blue salve container she still held, then set it into the box beside other containers in several shapes and colors.

  “I will get your bath water while you undress.” She picked up the water jar and walked away down the curving stone path, leaving Reid to strip off his boots and treksuit in privacy.

  When she returned he stood barefoot on the moss, wearing only his skimpy, skin-tight lower undergarment. She set down the full water jar and pulled a clean cloth and a square green container out of the box that held the ointment.

  “Use this,” she said. “I must pour out the water for you, to make certain it flows away from the pool and not into it. We may not contaminate the pool.”

  The green container, made of polished stone with a hinged lid, held a semi-liquid cleansing agent, and the water from the jar was warm. Reid decided he didn’t care if she was watching him or not; he wanted and needed a bath.

  “Are there hot springs here?” he asked, lathering his shoulders and arms.

  “Yes,” she replied, busying herself with rearranging the contents of the box and not looking at his nearly naked body. “Sometimes the mountains smoke. Tamat says it is all part of the same system, which gives us fertile land and clear streams with all the water we want. Only this mountain does not smoke. Its heart is open to us, and the sacred pool is here.”

  “Volcanoes,” Reid said, scrubbing his legs. “This one probably blew out its core centuries ago.” He paused to look at her again, wondering why they were carrying on this geological discussion when he wanted to know everything about her.

  “I do not understand ‘volcanoes,’” she told him. “I only know what our High Priestess Tamat has told me - that once, long ago, the mountains spread fire and destruction across Ruthlen, but they have slept for many years now. Never in living memory have they caused devastation. They are the guardians of our good fortune. So long as we live in harmony with them, the mountains will not fail us.”

  Reid nodded, only half listening to this retelling of what he assumed was a local legend. Most of his attention was on the young woman’s beautiful face.

  “If you will kneel once more,” she said, “I will wash your back. There are pieces of leaves and other more unpleasant things stuck on it, and it is scratched in places.”

  Reid went down on his knees. She took the cloth and the cleanser from him and began to rub at his back, resting one hand on his shoulder as she leaned forward. He caught another whiff of the heavenly perfume she wore. He wanted to kiss the hand on his shoulder. He wanted to draw her around to face him and hold her in his arms and lie with her on the thick, springy moss.

  Suddenly he remembered that she must be a telepath. She probably knew what he was thinking. She had known his name. But she had asked questions of him as though she was unaware of anything outside her own small portion of Dulan’s Planet. If she were a telepath she should have known without asking - unless she was trying to trick him for some purpose of her own. Reid thought about that while she finished with his back, then washed his neck and ears and lathered his hair.

  “How dark you are,” she murmured. “How large and strong.”

  That soft voice, those caressing hands, were too much for any man to bear. Reid felt himself becoming aroused. He also felt great embarrassment about it. She must know. She must be p
laying with him.

  “Stay where you are and I’ll get more water to rinse you,” she commanded. He remained on his knees until she returned, afraid that if he stood she would see what he could not control.

  She upended the water jar over his head. The contents of this second jar were icy cold. With a shout, Reid stood, shaking off the deluge. She calmly handed him a small, dry cloth, only adequate to mop his face and stop the worst of the runoff from his hair.

  She took up the blue salve container again and moved away from him to sit on dryer ground a little farther along the perimeter of the pool, beside a bush heavily abloom with large, six-petaled red flowers. Reid dried himself as best he could, then joined her, sitting on the moss beside her. The crimson blossoms emitted a sweet scent that in his exhausted and unfed state made him feel dizzy. Or perhaps it was just the presence of a lovely young woman that affected him.

  “I don’t know your name,” he said.

  “I am Janina Tamat. Let me anoint your wound.” She leaned forward and began to apply the creamy stuff to his left side.

  Reid’s arms closed around her so that her head rested on his chest. He felt her sigh, and shudder a little, and then melt against him. She belonged where she was, in his arms. Reid knew it with an absolute certainty that shook him to the depths of his being. This lovely, delicate, unknown creature was the other half of himself. They had to join together, had to become one. It was predestined.

  “Janina,” he murmured, his mouth on her hair. He lay back against the moss, still holding her. The red flowers drooped above them, the languorous effect of their fragrance relaxing and arousing him at the same time. She lifted her head to look down at him, her pale hair spilling across her shoulders and his bare chest.