Even though I would be as gentle as I am able, if you were to allow this to happen between us, I would hurt you, but only for the first time. After that…'
'It hurt for the first, second, and third time,' she broke in, her face dark with remembered pain and terror. 'I was scarcely eleven summers when those three brave warriors came to loot our home and kill my family. They took their pleasure of me, thrice within the hour, and left laughing.' Suddenly her voice was thick with shame and anger as she ended, 'So you see, Declan, you must search farther for your first virgin.'
He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through his nose before he would trust himself to speak. 'If ever I find your three brave warriors ' he said, 'the rest of their lives would be numbered in moments. But the gross dishonor that befell you is in the past and it is your future, hopefully our future years together that concerns me now. My feelings for you are
But you know my feelings for you. Please come to me, or at least give me hope. Give me an answer other than no.'
'Declan,' she said, and the sheen of tears in her eyes was plain even in the dim lamplight, 'you are a brave and resourceful warrior, noble and uncomplaining under pain, and in many other ways you have proved to be the gentlest of men. I have grown to admire you more and more over the past months and I too, have harbored feelings so fierce and strong that a young woman like myself should not dare to speak them aloud. But I keep trying to tease you, and test you for weaknesses where no weakness exists. But…' suddenly she smiled 'the answer is still no…'
Slowly her slender arm reached upward to pull aside the curtain and Declan saw that she was lying under the burnoose but not wearing it, or anything else. The petals of many, sweet-smelling desert flowers lay under and around her.
'… But I ask with love that you should come to me.'
–
For the next four nights they slept closely together in the tent and wakened in the morning to bathe together in the pool, and during the daylight hours they were never far from each other. Ma'el, who had tact and a gentle understanding, remained in the wagon so that they had nothing to do but be with each other. Then early on the morning of the fifth day, Declan was awakened by Sinead who was trembling violently, bathed in sweat and with her arms locked so tightly around him that he could scarcely breathe. Before he could speak she was almost screaming at him.
'Declan!' she cried out before he could speak. 'Please help me. Protect me from these horrible visions. They are of creatures of iron and smoke and great, screaming metal birds that take hundreds of people into their bellies before flying away with them. Save me Declan, I am losing my mind…!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ma'el Report. Day 112,138…
A physical and emotional coupling between my servants Sinead and Declan has taken place, but completely unexpected was her sudden acquisition of the timesight. The images that she foresees are terrifying her-they are so forward-reaching and clear in their implications that they frighten me as well-so that I must work with the assistance of her mate to save her mind from becoming dysfunctional. If this is successfully accomplished there will, of course, be no need to replace them as servants, a fact which on a personal level pleases me very much.
'It has become apparent that if I am to make the maximum possible utilization of her new faculty, the remainder of the Taelon surface and orbiting technology, as well as a little about my purpose in coming to Earth, must now be revealed to them without further delay.'
–
As Ma'el sat down cross-legged under the tent awning, Declan thought, not for the first time, that for a man so ancient in years the other's thin body had a flexibility and ease of movement that rivaled his own. At his right, Sinead could not have been sitting closer to him, with an arm around his waist and hanging on so tightly that the sand under them might have been water in which she was afraid of drowning. She released her grip when Ma'el inclined his head and looked at her.
'That is not necessary,' he said gently. 'During the words that I must say to you, a close physical as well as the emotional contact that exists between Declan and yourself will be a reassurance for both of you. Now, please believe me when I say that there is nothing in your mind that can harm you because the things that you have seen are far away and have not happened yet, nor will they happen in your lifetime. Mentally, it will be very uncomfortable for you, but when you are ready, please describe to me, in as much detail as you can recall, the sights, sounds, and words, if you heard any, that made up your recent time-sighting.'
'My timesighting?' said Sinead, replacing her arm even more tightly around Declan's waist and trying to delay the discomfort to come with a question. 'Did not you say, after many unsuccessful attempts to awaken the faculty in me, that I was an unsuitable subject who would never be able to see into the future?'
'I was mistaken,' said Ma'el. 'I had assumed that when a young woman given the faculty proved to be deaf and blind to the unfolding of times to come, the reason is that she cannot or will not bear the child or children that will extend her line into that future. Plainly that situation no longer applies here. The physical and emotional factors that…'
'Wait,' she broke in, turning to look at Declan with an expression of surprise and wonder. 'Does that mean… Am 1 already with child?'
'Perhaps,' Ma'el replied, 'and perhaps not. But sometime there will be progeny who will provide the time channel through which you now see so clearly. They will not be as gifted as you, because the degree of excellence of the faculty is dependent on the intensity of the physical and emotional bond between the original progenitors, which in this case is uniquely strong because never before has it been known for a timesight to see across two millennia.
'I say again,' he ended, 'the visions that you see, strange and terrifying though they will be, cannot harm you. Close your eyes to the present if it helps you concentrate, and tell me in your own words what you have already seen, and what else you are seeing now.'
She looked at Declan and he gave her an encouraging smile. He was unable to say anything because the thought that sooner or later they would be parents had paralyzed his tongue. Sinead smiled back at him, closed her eyes, and began to speak.
'The first image,' she said, 'had been of a great, screaming, landed bird. It had stiff wings, with four huge, open-ended caskets hanging sideways from them, and it was these that seemed to be screaming. It was bigger than the largest ship I have ever seen, larger even than a Roman trireme. Hundreds of people climbed into its belly without being chained or even driven inside with whips before it screamed louder, ran along a great, wide road and flew away with them across a city with buildings like enormous fingers of glass and stone that poked almost into the clouds. Between the buildings, carriages that moved without horses or slaves pulling them ran at great speed and made high, hooting noises. People dressed in bright raiment, more people than it was possible to count, walked the streets almost shoulder to shoulder, and…'
'What else did you see?' said Ma'el quickly when Sinead hesitated. Declan could feel her trembling and her eyes remained tightly shut when she replied.
'I-I did not see this the first time,' she stammered, 'but I can now. An enormous building shaped like a strange, transparent flower, or maybe a vegetable. Tiny people move about inside it and on the trimmed, green field on which it stands. There is a djinn dropping from the sky. None of the people seem afraid of it and one of them, no, I can see three of them now, wearing close-fitting, plush garments instead of cloaks, and, and they all look like you!'
Ma'el's body stiffened and for the first time since they had met Declan saw the other's calm, unlined face show emotion.
'You are sure?' he asked in a low, angry voice. 'Could it be a waking confusion of memory caused, perhaps, by your familiarity with me and the recent appearance of my djinn? My people should not be there.'
'Whether or not they be confusions of my memory,' Sinead replied firmly as she opened her eyes to look directly into his face, 'I am certain of what I saw and still see. Now I hear voices talking. The subject sounds
