Branwen and Valeria, meanwhile, remained. They studied me with some concern.
“How are you, Rorke?” Valeria slid her hand into mine from where she sat between myself and Branwen. Her touch was somehow dizzying. I shut my eyes, aware at once of how exhausted I was.
And aware, too, that somewhere—somewhere north of Rhineland, if she had spoken truth—Gundrygia was with my child.
“I’ve certainly felt better,” I confessed with a dry but not altogether humorless chuckle. “And worse. At least I didn’t almost die this time.”
“Don’t curse it,” said Branwen, grinning lightly. “There’s still time yet before we find Valeria’s ring.”
“True…I’d ought not to tempt Oppenhir to challenge Weltyr’s will. Ah! But, I must admit—it is a painful and confusing will sometimes.”
“That is the way with all gods,” said Valeria in gentle agreement, her soft, cool hands working back and forth gently over mine. I sighed at her caresses, leaning toward her, and she took her head in my arms to draw me against her sweet-smelling bosom. There I filled my lungs with tender flesh and drowned my ears in the steady rhythm of her heart. I shut my eyes again as Branwen reached over to trail her fingers down my scalp.
“Do you want to find her?”
The high elf’s gentle question was truly a question, unladen with suggestion or reluctance. All the same, I shook my head, saying, “Yes—but there isn’t time. Who knows what the spirit-thieves might do with Valeria’s ring.”
Valeria asked the next question. “And who knows what she might do with your child, Rorke?”
“It’s her child, too,” I reminded them both, kissing the back of Valeria’s hand and straightening back. While I sat up, a lad with short chestnut hair passed us by. I lowered my voice, at once keenly aware of the other passengers around. “And she’s mad…but I don’t know that she’s mad enough to hurt her own child. Either way, when next we find her she’ll be ready to fight us again. I want to make sure I’m ready for that…and, if that could wait until after she’s given birth, moreso the better. I don’t like the thought of things turning ugly.”
The women exchanged a glance before Valeria, that gentle ambassador of love, asked me in her rich and wonderful voice, “Have you given much thought to fatherhood, Rorke?”
“Only insofar as I find myself frightened by it,” I admitted, laughing, “and the question of how I can be what I have never experienced.”
“We durrow have no fathers,” boasted Valeria with a patient smile, “and we manage all the same to be perfectly fine parents to our daughters.”
“Yes, but you at least had mothers. I have no parents except the Church—and now I wonder if I have been regarded as warmly in turn. I don’t think so, sadly. But…it doesn’t matter.”
Again, I lapsed into silence, more given to brooding when I was exhausted. Certainly I was in need of time to fully digest the events of the day, from my acquisition of Exigence on.
Valeria, however, went on. “And if things do come to their worst, Rorke—if you must slay Gundrygia and raise the child without its mother—who will help you?”
I was reluctantly to voice my hopes out loud and hoped the answer showed in my face, but they waited to hear it aloud. I gave it after slight delay, confessing, “Well—if you two find yourselves with me then, I would hope, perhaps—that is—I don’t—”
Both women threw back their heads in spates of laughter, sharing a look and rolling their eyes in good humor.
“So bold in matters of sex,” teased Valeria softly, her cheeks attractively flushed by her mirth, “yet so shy in love.”
“I would not be so shy,” I told her in return, staring into her pale eyes in some lovestruck wonder, “if I did not feel it impetuous for me to assume you were willing to leave your duties for me, Materna.”
“Haven’t I already?”
I opened my mouth, unable to come up with anything resembling a real response, and soon enough shut up again. Smiling, Valeria patted me. She then rose from her seat and announced, “I’m off to find Indra and Odile…aren’t you two just famished! Come meet me in that commissary they pointed out to us while we were boarding.”
Valeria slipped past Branwen and sauntered up the aisle. The high elf filled her empty seat at my side. Hand sliding into mine, Branwen asked, “What are you going to do with that sword?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Keep it safe. Gundrygia seemed to think it has some power—what, exactly, I’ve no idea.” While Branwen lapsed into thought, my hand tightened around hers. She looked up at me questioningly until I observed warmly, “You came with us.”
“I came with you,” she corrected, pressing against me. Branwen’s soft body always able to cause a stir in me, I slid my arm around the small of her back and filled my senses with her marvelous flesh. My head bent over hers as she said, “I’m very fond of Valeria and Indra and Odile after all this, but it’s you…you’re the one I’m here with.”
My mouth sought out hers and she moaned against me, her tongue trailing out to invite the caress of my own. Breaths mingling humidly between us, Branwen’s body slid against mine and her hand explored my chest.
“Maybe we’d ought to wait,” I breathed into her sensitive ear, kissing it to its high-swept peak. “At least until it’s dark…until we won’t get caught.”
With a chuckle and a randy, crooked grin, Branwen extricated herself
