Lior and the Sea Read online

  *

  “I’m going to have to leave soon,” Aren said.

  “Leave?” Startled, Lior opened her eyes and looked up at Aren from his lap. He looked down at her, and Lior saw in his eyes again the seahorse’s look, irremediable sorrow. Her heart seized.

  Aren gazed out at the Sea. “How long can you stay out of your body?” he asked.

  “A day, maybe two—Aren, do you mean that—” Lior began to sit up, but Aren held her gently down; much against her will she settled back.

  “Very soon now,” he said, “unless I go back, I will not be able to—and that is contrary to my agreement.”

  “With Her?”

  Aren nodded. “When I was new here, and struggling for the words, you waited. You were so patient. Loved, I can wait for your answer.” He took a long breath. “But I will miss you…”

  Lior closed her eyes, unable to think.

  “Is it so hard to decide?” he whispered.

  She buried her face against his middle. “No, Aren, I love you, but—”

  He waited.

  “Aren—will I be me?”

  He stroked her dark hair. “Do you mean, will you lose your knowledge of yourself, swallowed up in me? Of course not. Why ask you to share with me if I would be as alone in the sharing as before it?” He smiled down at her. But Lior did not move and was not reassured. “What more, then?” Aren said.

  “It’s—it’s only—Aren, I was myself enough before, but only because there was nothing much better to do, no one to be myself for. I guess I was afraid to let my body love people, because when you love people, they die—my parents did—”

  “Until the world ends,” Aren said, “I do not die.”

  “—but instead I let my body love things, feelings and tastes, light and dark, the Fire—and that way having a body was at least bearable. But now, now there’s the touching, and the nights, the days, you here holding me, and inside and all around me when we share—and now I love being me, and I love having a body, and I don’t, don’t—”

  “—Want to give them up,” he said. “You said there would be giving and taking—”

  “And besides, what about the town? If I go away, who’ll take care of the people?”

  “And this is what I am taking from you,” Aren said, more to himself than to her. “Maybe the price is too high. I am no judge. Lior,” he said, and taking her by the shoulders, helped her straighten up and sit beside him. “Little one. I can’t stay. I could push my time a few days more, but it would be dangerous, and I would be returning Her evil for all Her good. I should go back to my right body tomorrow. I don’t want to go without you; your Name is part of mine now and the Sea won’t truly be the Sea unless you’re there—”

  So much use of human language, perhaps, had done it, or the pain of the moment, but Lior looked into Aren’s eyes and for the first time saw his thoughts there while he spoke. Unless you come with me when I go, he was thinking through the great clenching pain of loneliness-to-be, you will never come. You know it. I know it. I offered you too great a dare, and we both know that this is where it will end, untaken—

  “—but I can wait.” He smiled. “Even if you never come, still for a while someone loved the me that is. That will last me a long time.” O Goddess, the thousands of years piling on one another till there is no end to them, and alone, having just once known what it was like not to be—

  Lior put her arms around him. Even though it was the courage he loved, he sees that I, that I just can’t, and he still, still— “You’ll stay the night?” she whispered.

  “Certainly,” he said, “if you promise not to knock me out of the bed again.”

  She held him close and tried hard not to think of what she must be taking from him.

  *

  The night was all that Lior had known it would be, and worse; his darkness shut the starry dark away, and left it lonely—poor abandoned night, crying outside the circle of their arms to be let in. Held in his warmth, she wept, and he did too, till like a thief the dawn crept in the window…

  “I’ll go and see you off,” she said.

  They went together down the cliff trail in the growing light, and once on the beach Lior gathered Aren close and put her face down against his shoulder, shaking with the attempt to just this once find her old habit again and hold in the tears. “Oh, please be careful,” she whispered.

  “In the Sea,” he said, “what can hurt the Sea? I’ll be all right.”

  But she did not let go of him. “Aren,” she said, fighting the words out past something in her throat that was trying to keep them in, “I don’t—I want—”

  He waited.

  “You were—you were right— Aren, break my spell!”

  She felt his arms tighten around her. “You of all people should know better,” he said, his voice thick with his own weeping. “Why do you think I left last time, rather than let you waste your effort on me? No spell can be made to break unless the person under it wants to break it from their side too...”

  He kissed her one last time on the lips and once very tenderly on the forehead, and held her away. “I’ll wait,” he said. “Fare well, loved.” He turned and began to walk down to the shore. The waves reached up toward him.

  She stood and watched, as if watching a shrouded body borne up onto the pyre at a funeral, and knew that everything was going away with him—light, love, joy, the newest things in her life and the dearest. She was sending them away, willingly, where she knew she would never dare follow. And as an exchange she was taking empty arms, empty nights, welcoming back the old familiar loneliness, the narrow bed where there would once again be enough room, the days in which there would once again be enough time to get everything done, and then to sit on the shore and wonder why she felt something was missing—and would be missing forever—

  “Aren!” she cried after him.

  Just at water’s edge, where the breakers teased and curled, he stopped, turned—held out a hand.

  “Come on, Lior,” he said. “Just the two of us. Or are you afraid?”

  She felt herself being held still, felt her lungs seize and her throat choke closed over the words—and by that knew that the spell was of her own weaving, and that fear was the warp and the woof. Pull one thread and the whole thing begins to unravel. One thread—

  —just one—

  “Yes,” she said, pushing the word out of her frozen throat, a faint cracked squeak. And “Yes!” louder, and “Yes!”

  Aren dropped his hand.

  “—but I’m going with you,” she said.

  He was holding her again, and she was no less terrified of the loss of her body, perhaps of her humanity, but it was better to be afraid within his arms than without them. She held Aren to her and they rocked each other like children for a long time, until Lior raised her head, sniffling, and said, “Just one more thing.”

  “What?”

  Lior let go of him and turned away. There was of course no one direction to look in, but she held herself straight as befit a liegewoman of the Queen above all kings and queens, and closed her eyes to shut out, for this last moment, the sweet terror of life to which she was about to surrender herself. “Mother,” she said, very low, “I don’t know if I should go. There is our agreement outstanding. I haven’t given You the thing You most desire of me—”

  The wind fell to a whisper.

  Haven’t you? the answer came back.

  Lior bowed; then, quick as a child going swimming, peeled her Rodmistress’s robe off over her head, tossed it over a boulder, and turned to reach out to Aren.

  Solemnly, hands joined, the bride and the groom walked down into the water, out past the breakers, until the silver-gray morning Sea closed over their heads.

  *

  The people in Daike were only confused about the disappearance of Lior and the shipwrecked man until they found Lior’s robe, which the high-running tide had taken to play with. They knew then that the bodies would likely not be found; the
undertow off Daike is fierce. Any question of survivors was settled by Lior’s Rod, found shattered on her bed, sure sign of a Rodmistress’s death. The townspeople mourned her, but otherwise did well enough with just the circuit Rodmistress, who came through three times a year now. And certainly no one could fault the fishing, which became the best within memory; or the weather, which seemed to push storms just east of the town or west of it, but never straight in.

  Daike prospers still, but the place is no longer quite ordinary. Always around Opening Night, when the walls between worlds grow thin and familiar things turn strange, there falls a night of Moon on which the waves run with the blue Fire, as if that Sea of which the starlight is a faint intimation were breaking on the North Darthene coast instead of the shadowy shorelines of the Dead. Unearthly musics then are heard, and the burning waves have a voice. Some say it is the voice of Lior, crying out for revenge on the jealous Sea that slew her and her lover long ago. But few who say so have stood on that jewelled beach by night and heard the Sea whisper again and again, as if to another self:

  “You dared…”

  By the same author

  The Middle Kingdoms Series

  The Door into Fire • The Door into Shadow

  The Door into Sunset

  The Young Wizards Series

  So You Want to Be a Wizard • Deep Wizardry

  High Wizardry • A Wizard Abroad

  The Wizard’s Dilemma • A Wizard Alone

  Wizard’s Holiday • Wizards at War

  A Wizard of Mars

  In the Star TrekTM universe:

  The Wounded Sky • My Enemy, My Ally

  The Romulan Way • Spock’s World

  Dark Mirror • Intellivore

  Swordhunt • Honor Blade

  The Empty Chair

  Collected short fiction:

  Uptown Local and Other Interventions

  For more information, visit

  http://www.dianeduane.com

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  http://ebooksdirect.dianeduane.com

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