Her back and neck ached with tension; her hands had knotted themselves into tight fists. Her stomach was in an uproar, and her throat tight.
This was no way to handle a problem.
She tried to empty her mind, just empty it of all the anger and frustration, the need that was driving her out into the unknown, and the heavy burden of responsibility she was bearing. Gradually the tension drained out of her. Her stomach calmed, her hands relaxed. She concentrated on the muscles in her back and neck until they UN- knotted.
She stopped thinking altogether. She simply-was. Watching the stars, letting the warm, ever-present breeze blow over her, inhaling the dry, dusty scent of the grasses she lay in, feeling the earth press up against her back.
This place felt very much alive, as if the warm earth itself was a living being. It calmed her; she found her tension all drained out of her, down into the earth, which accepted it into a tranquillity that her unhappiness could not disturb.
Gwena's right. I was cruel. She felt her ears flushing hotly, and yet if she had the chance to do it over, there was nothing she would not have repeated. What happened to us? there was a time I would have gladly heard him say he loved me. there was even a time when I might have been able to fall in love with him. Gwena was right; I could do so much worse.
Tears filled her eyes; they stung and burned. Not from what she had done to Skif-he was resilient, he'd survive. But from what she was going to face in the years ahead. If we all survive this, I probably will do worse. I'll probably have to marry some awful old man, or a scrawny little boy, just to cement an alliance. We'll need all the help we can get, and that may be the only way to buy it. If I took Skif, I'd at least have someone who loves me for a little while...But that wasn't fair to him; it was wrong, absolutely wrong. She'd be using him and the affection he was offering, and giving him nothing in return. She didn't love him, and there was no use pretending she did.
Furthermore, he was a Mindspeaker; he'd know.
Besides, when she married that awful old man, whoever he was, she'd have to break with Skif anyway, so what was the point?
What was the point of all of this, at all? When it all came down to it, she was just another commodity to be traded away for Valdemar's safety.
And intellectually, she could accept that. But emotionally?? she asked the stars fiercely as tears ran down into her hair. Why do I have to give up everything? why can't I have a little something for myself? that's not being selfish, that's just being human! Talia has Dirk, Kero has Eldan, even Mother has Daren... Why isn't there anyone for me.
There was no answer; she held back fierce sobs until her chest ached.
Maybe she wasn't as sophisticated as she had thought, after all. Maybe all her life she had believed in the Bardic ballads, where, after long struggle, the Great True Love comes riding out of the shadows.
All right, maybe it's childish and stupid, but I've seen it happen-Happen for other people. That fact was, the notion was childish and stupid-and worse, if she spent all her time waiting for that One True Love, she'd never get anything done for herself.
But, oh, it hurt to renounce the dream...Chapter Nineteen INTERLUDE
Dawnfire woke all at once; her heart racing with fear, but her body held in a strange kind of paralysis. She couldn't see anything. All she could feel was that she was so hungry she was almost sick, and that she was standing; her position seemed to be oddly hunched over, but-No, it wasn't hunched over, it was a perfectly normal position-for Kyrr's body. She was still in the body of her bondbird. Only-Kyrr was gone. She was alone.
She opened her beak to cry out, and couldn't-and then the paralysis lifted, and a hazy golden light came up about her, gradually, so that her eyes weren't dazzled.
She was on a perch.
As she teetered on the perch, clutching it desperately, trying to find her balance without Kyrr to help her, she saw that there were bracelets on her legs, and jesses attached to them, and that the jesses were fastened to a ring on the perch.
The light came up further; she moved her head cautiously at the sound of a deep-throated chuckle to discover that now she could see the entire room. An empty, windowless room-except for a bit of furniture, one couch, and its occupant.
She couldn't help herself; panic made her bate, and she flapped uncontrolled right off the perch. She couldn't fly even if she hadn't been jessed; she hadn't Kyrr's control-and she hung at the end of the leather straps, upside- down, swinging and twisting as she beat at the air and the perch with her wings.
