him what it was in the cave with him; an entire family of otters. They stared at him fearlessly, but made no aggressive moves towards him. He ignored them and began pawing through the packs for something warm and dry to put on her.
He encountered the instruments first. His lute-intact. Hers was cracked, but might be repaired later. Her penny-whistle was intact, and the tiny harp he'd given her. The bodhran drum was punctured; his larger harp needed new strings-
All this in mental asides as he pawed through the packs, pulling out soaked clothing and discarding it to the side.
Finally he reached the bottom of the packs. And in the very bottom, their bedding; somehow dry. Her fiddle wrapped in the middle of it, safe.
There wasn't much time, and he didn't hesitate; every moment she stayed chilled was more of a threat. He stripped her skin-bare and bundled her into both sets of bedding. Then he stripped himself and eased in with her, wrapping her in his arms and willing the heat of his body into her.
For a long time, nothing happened. The storm died to the same dull rain they'd coped with for the length of the Faire; the lightning faded away, leaving them in the dark. Rune breathed, but shallowly, and her body didn't warm in the least. Her breathing didn't change. She wasn't waking; she wasn't falling into normal sleep. If he couldn't get her warm-
Lady of the Gypsies, help me! You are the queen of the forests and wilds-help us both!
Finally he heard faint snuffling sounds, and felt the pressure of tiny feet on his leg and knee.
The otters' curiosity had overcome their fear.
They sniffed around the bundle of humans and blankets, poking their noses into his ear and sneezing into his face once. It would have been funny if he hadn't been sick with worry for Rune. She wasn't warming. She was hardly breathing-
One of the otters yawned; another. Before he realized what was happening, they were curling up on him, on Rune, everywhere there was a hollow in the blankets, there was an otter curling up into a lithe-warm!-ball and flowing over the sides of the hollows.
As they settled, he began to warm up from the heat of their six bodies. And as he warmed, so, at last, did Rune. Her breathing eased, and finally she sighed, moved a little-the otters chittered sleepily in complaint-and settled into his arms, truly asleep.
He tried to stay awake, but in a few moments, exhaustion and warmth stole his consciousness away, and he joined her and their strange bed-companions in dreams.
He woke once, just after dawn, when the otters stirred out of sleep and left them. But by then, they were not only warm, they were a bit too warm, and he bade the beasts a sleepy, but thankful, good-bye. One of the adults- the female, he thought-looked back at him and made a friendly chitter as if she understood him. Then she, too, was gone, leaving the cave to the humans.
Rune woke with an ache in her head, a leg thrown over hers, and arms about her. Behind her, someone breathed into her ear.
What happened? She closed her eyes, trying to remember. They weren't in the cottage they'd found; that much was for certain. . . .
Then she remembered. The elves, her one-sided fight with music and magic, then the flight through the storm. After that was a blur, but she must have gotten hurt, somehow-
She wormed one arm out of the blankets, reached up to touch the place on her head that hurt worst, and found a lump too tender to bear any pressure at all, with a bit of a gash across the middle of it.
That was when she realized that she wasn't wearing so much as a stitch. And neither was Talaysen.
He murmured in his sleep, and held her closer. His hands moved in half-aware patterns, fitfully caressing her breasts, her stomach. . . .
And there was something quite warm and insistent poking her in the small of the back.
She held very still, afraid that if she moved, he'd stop. Despite the ache in her head, her body tingled all over, and she had to fight herself to keep from squirming around in his arms and-
Suddenly he froze, one hand on her breast, the other-somewhat lower.
He woke up. And now he's going to go all proper on me.
'If you stop,' she said conversationally, 'I am going to be very angry with you. I thought you taught me to always finish a tune you've started.'
Please, God. Please, whoever's listening. Don't let him go all formal now. . . .
'I-I-uh-' He seemed unable to form any kind of a reply.
'Besides,' she continued, trying to think around the pain in her skull, 'I've been trying to get you into this position for weeks.'
'Rune!' he yelped. 'I'm your teacher! I can't-'
'You can't what? What difference does being my Master make? You've only got one apprentice, you can't be accused of favoring me over anyone else. You haven't been trying to seduce me, I've been trying to waylay you. There's a difference.' There, she thought with a certain satisfaction. That takes care of that particular argument. 'It's not as if you're taking unfair advantage of your position.'
'But-the pressure-my position-'
'I like the pressure,' she replied thoughtfully, 'though I'd prefer to change the position-' And she started to squirm around to face him. He choked.
'That's not what I meant!' he said, and then it was too late; they were face-to-face, cozily wound in blankets, and he couldn't pretend he didn't understand her. She could read his expression quite clearly from here. She smiled into his eyes; he blushed.
'I know that's not what you meant,' she told him. 'I just don't see any 'pressure' on me to drag you into my bed except the pressure of wanting you.'
'But-'
'And if you're going to tell me something stupid, like you're too old for me, well you can just forget that entirely.' She kissed his nose, and he blushed even redder. 'I wouldn't drink wine that was a month old, I wouldn't play a brand new fiddle, and I wouldn't hope for fruit from a sapling tree.'
'But-'
'I also wouldn't go to an apprentice in any Craft for anything important. I'd go to a Master.'
'But-'
She blinked at him, willing the pain in her head to go away. 'You're not going to try and tell me that you've been celibate all these years, are you? If you are, then Gwyna was lying. Or you are. And much as I'd hate to accuse my Master of telling falsehoods, I'd believe Gwyna on this subject more than I'd believe you.'
His mouth moved, but no words emerged. She decided he looked silly, gasping like a fish, and saved his dignity by stopping it with a kiss.
He disengaged just long enough to say, 'I yield to your superior logic-' And then the time for talk was over, and the time for a different sort of communication finally arrived.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
'You are going to marry me, aren't you?' Talaysen asked plaintively, picking his now-dry clothing off the rocks beside the stream and packing it away. There was no sign of last night's storm; even most of the debris had been washed downstream. And as if in apology, the day had turned bright and sunny around noon. Rune had caught a fish, using some of their soggy bread for bait; he'd managed to get a fire going, so they could cook it. The rest of the day they'd spent in laying out everything that had gotten wet to dry, and figuring out just how badly Rune had gotten hurt.
She'd gotten off fairly easily, as it turned out. She had gotten a bad knock on the head, but nothing a lot of valerian couldn't help. They were now a day behind, of course, but that was better than being lightning victims, or confined in the elven-king's hall.
Rune looked over at Talaysen's anxious face, and grinned wickedly, despite the black eye and bruises the tree limb had gifted her with. 'Isn't it supposed to be me that's asking that?' she mocked. 'You sound like one of the deflowered village maidens in a really awful Bardic Guild ballad.'
He flushed. 'I'm serious. I-you-we- We can't just go on like this. You're going to get harassed enough if we're legally wed! If we aren't-'
