'And of our kind?' he asked. 'Have there been many?' She clung to him. 'Not many. Nights are long and cold in the pens. We sleep together for warmth, and it happens sometimes.'
'You've never been fertilized,' he stated, hoping for the answer he wanted, wanting not to think of her carrying another's seed.
'No, the masters who owned me did not want young, and I would fight pongs when I was flowering.'
'If, someday, you could grow my seed—'
'I want that.'
He was moodily silent, and guilty, for his thoughts went to Alning, for whom he had spoken, conditionally, if he returned within two cycles of the time of long light. He would. Their journey would begin with the first warm days and he would be in the valley before Du retreated to the south again.
'I hate it when you leave me like this,' Jai said.
'Leave you?'
'You are far away in your thoughts.'
'I admit it.'
'You were thinking of her, of the female you left behind.'
'True, Jai. That is true. It troubles me. I am a mere male and although I have erred here in this land of the enemy, I like to think that I am an honorable male. Yet I don't feel that it is wrong to graft with you. How is that? And how is it that I can love two females?'
She cupped his face between her hands and kissed him. 'It is not love you feel for me, but the love of pleasure, and that is good, and natural, at least in the world as we know it. In an ideal time, perhaps, the code your people follow is good. But pong females are forced, quite young, and used without reservation by any master who desires it, and the pleasure we get with other pongs is the only pleasure in our lives. How can you love two? I have loved not many, but several, and yet I chose no mate, lest I love too deeply and he be taken from me by the Devourers, sold or traded away. The only love you have is the love for your Alning. Don't be concerned. When we arrive in your valley I will be your loyal slave, nothing more.' He did not see, in the dark, that tears were wetting her cheeks. 'I will always count myself blessed that I have had you for this little time, and if, later, you choose to give me a seed that I may nourish it and grow it and love it, and raise it in the freedom that you will give to all our people, then I will thank that Du of yours, and all the other dus.'
'There is only one Du,' Duwan said.
'As you will. I will thank him, and demand nothing more.' In his desperation, but with good sense still overcoming nature's strongest urge, the urge to graft when two Drinkers colored together, he found that the perfume of her flower tasted like nectar and that his mouth gave her exquisite pleasure, and then the coloration was gone and she was his.
Drinker does not live by love alone, and in the long months remaining he taught her everything he knew about Drinker history, and she taught him the language of the Devourers, and then the snow began to melt and they marched northward, sometimes sinking up to their knees in mud, swimming cold, swollen rivers, finding, as they slept in whispering groves, that Jai was now more sensitive to the whisperings.
One day they encountered two of the Devourers, males, and, being challenged, Duwan killed both with ease. They took fresh clothing and Jai took weapons, a longsword and a shortsword.
'Teach me,' she said, brandishing the weapons rather dangerously near Duwan's head.
He laughed and said, 'First lesson, don't decapitate your teacher.' She insisted, and in the light of campfires he taught her the basic strokes and thrusts. She was good with the shortsword, her left hand being quite nimble, but rather weak with the longsword. However, as the long trek continued, as they passed out of the land of the tall brothers into the marshy, grassy, seemingly endless tundra where flowers brightened the dull landscape as the strength of Du moved northward, following them, her right arm began to develop muscle so that she could truly swing the longsword. She was now dressed in male clothing, taken from the dead Enemy, and he called her his warrior maiden.
The time of the long light had come when Duwan finally saw the smokes of the land of fires in the distance, and it was passing as he led a frightened Jai through the seemingly deadly fields of molten rock. He was eager now, and he set a pace that left them both exhausted at the end of the long days. Ahead were the barrens. He began to recognize landmarks, and, after an extremely long and tiring march, saw the rock formations that told him the valley was but a day's march ahead.
He slept fitfully. If Jai noticed that he seemed bemused and distant she did not remark on it, nor did she try for closeness as he slept on his back, not touching her.
