Taltos Read online

"I ought to be afraid of you," he said. "But I'm not. I'm only afraid of one thing. That you don't love me."

  "Oh, but I do," she said. "And I always did. Always."

  His shoulders sagged for a minute, just a minute, and then he turned away from her. He was so hurt, but he would never again have the vulnerable look he had had before. He would never again have the pure gentleness.

  There was a chair by the window to the porch, and he appeared to find it blindly and choose it indifferently as he sat down, still turned away from her.

  And I'm about to hurt you again, she thought.

  She wanted to go to him, to talk to him, to hold him again. To talk the way they had that first day after she'd come to herself, and buried her only daughter--the only daughter she'd ever have--beneath the oak. She wanted to open now with the kindling excitement she'd felt then, the utter love, thoughtless and rushed and without the slightest caution.

  But it seemed as beyond reach now as words had been so soon after that.

  She lifted her hands and ran them back hard through her hair. Then, rather mechanically, she reached for the taps in the shower.

  With the water flooding down, she could think, perhaps clearly, for the first time. The noise was sweet and the hot water was luscious.

  There seemed an impossible wealth of dresses to choose from. Absolutely confounding that there were so many in the closets. Finally she found a pair of soft wool pants, old pants she'd had eons ago in San Francisco, and she put those on, and on top a loose and deceptively heavy cotton sweater.

  It was plenty cool enough now for the spring night. And it felt good to be dressed again in the clothes she herself had loved. Who, she wondered, could have bought all these pretty dresses?

  She brushed her hair, and closed her eyes, and thought, "You are going to lose him, and with reason, if you do not talk to him now, if you do not once again explain, if you do not struggle against your own instinctive fear of words, and go to him."

  She laid down the brush. He was standing in the doorway. She'd never shut the door all this while, and when she looked up at him, the peaceful, accepting look on his face was a great relief to her. She almost cried. But that would have been ludicrously selfish.

  "I love you, Michael," she said. "I could shout it from the rooftops. I never stopped loving you. It was vanity and it was hubris; and the silence, the silence was the failure of a soul to heal and strengthen itself, or maybe just the necessary retreat that the soul sought as if it were some selfish organism."

  He listened intently, frowning slightly, face calm but never innocent the way it had been before. The eyes were huge and glistening but hard and shadowed with sadness.

  "I don't know how I could have hurt you just now, Rowan," he said. "I really don't. I just don't."

  "Michael, no ..."

  "No, let me say it. I know what happened to you. I know what he did. I know. And I don't know how I could have blamed you, been angry with you, hurt you like that, I don't know!"

  "Michael, I know," she said. "Don't. Don't, or you'll make me cry."

  "Rowan, I destroyed him," he said. He had dropped his voice to a whisper the way so many people did when they spoke of death. "I destroyed him and it's not enough! I ... I ..."

  "No, don't speak anymore. Forgive me, Michael, forgive me for your sake and my sake. Forgive me." She leant forward and kissed him, took the breath out of him deliberately so it would remain wordless. And this time when he folded her into his arms, it was full of the old kindness, the old cherishing warmth, the great protective sweetness that made her feel safe, safe as it had when they'd first made love.

  There must have been something more lovely than falling in his arms like this, more lovely than merely being close to him. But she couldn't think what it was now--certainly not the violence of passion. That was there, obviously, to be enjoyed again and again, but this was the thing she'd never known with any other being on earth, this!

  Finally he drew back, taking her two hands together and kissing them, and then flashing her that bright boyish smile again, precisely the one she thought sure she'd never receive again, ever. And then he winked and he said, his voice breaking:

  "You really do still love me, baby."

  "Yes," she said. "I learned how once, apparently, and it will have to be forever. Come with me, come outside, come out under the oak. I want to be near them for a while. I don't know why. You and I, we are the only ones who know that they're there together."

  They slipped down the back stairs, through the kitchen. The guard by the pool merely nodded to them. The yard was dark as they found the iron table. She flung herself at him, and he steadied her. Yes, for this little while and then you'll hate me again, she thought.

  Yes, you'll despise me. She kissed his hair, his cheek, she rubbed her forehead back and forth across his sharp beard. She felt his soft responsive sighs, thick and heavy and from the chest.

  You'll despise me, she thought. But who else can go after the men who killed Aaron?

  Five

  THE PLANE LANDED in Edinburgh's airport at 11:00 p.m. Ash was dozing with his face against the window. He saw the headlamps of the cars moving steadily towards him, both black, both German--sedans that would take him and his little entourage over the narrow roads to Donnelaith. It was no longer a trek one had to make on horseback. Ash was glad of it, not because he had not loved those journeys through the dangerous mountains, but because he wanted to reach the glen itself with no delay.

  Modern life has made all impatient, he thought quietly. How many times in his long life had he set out for Donnelaith, determined to visit the place of his most tragic losses and reexamine his destiny again? Sometimes it had taken him years to make his way to England and then north to the Highlands. Other times it had been a matter of months.

  Now it was something accomplished in a matter of hours. And he was glad of it. For the going there had never been the difficult or the cathartic part. Rather it was the visit itself.

  He stood up now as this tentative young girl, Leslie, who had flown with him from America, brought his coat and a folded blanket and a pillow as well.

  "Sleepy, my dearest?" he asked her, with gentle reproach. Servants in America baffled him. They did the strangest things. He would not have been surprised if she had changed into a nightgown.

  "For you, Mr. Ash. The drive is almost two hours. I thought you might want it."

  He smiled as he walked past her. What must it be like for her, he wondered. The nocturnal trips to far-flung places? Scotland must seem like any other place to which he had at times dragged her or his other attendants. No one could guess what this meant to him.

  As he stepped out onto the metal stairway, the wind caught him by surprise. It was colder here even than it had been in London. Indeed, his journey had taken him from one circle of frost to another and then another. And with childish eagerness and shallow regret, he longed for the warmth of the London hotel. He thought of the gypsy sleeping so beautifully against the pillow, lean and dark-skinned, with a cruel mouth and jet black eyebrows and lashes that curled upwards like those of a child.

  He covered his eyes with the back of his hand and hurried down the metal steps and into the car.

  Why did children have such big eyelashes? Why did they lose them later on? Did they need this extra protection? And how was it with the Taltos? He could not remember anything that he had ever known, per se, to be childhood. Surely for the Taltos there was such a period.

  "Lost knowledge ..." Those words had been given to him so often; he could not remember a time when he didn't know them.

  This was an agony, really, this return, this refusal to move forward without a bitter consultation with his full soul.

  Soul. You have no soul, or so they've told you.

  Through the dim glass he watched young Leslie slip into the passenger seat in front of him. He was relieved that he had the rear compartment entirely to himself--that two cars had been found to carry him and his little entour
age northward. It would have been unendurable now to sit close to a human, to hear human chatter, to smell a robust female human, so sweet and so young.

  Scotland. Smell the forests; smell the sea in the wind.

  The car moved away smoothly. An experienced driver. He was thankful. He could not have been tossed and pushed from side to side clear to Donnelaith. For a moment he saw the glaring reflection of the lights behind him, the bodyguards following as they always did.

  A terrible premonition gripped him. Why put himself through this ordeal? Why go to Donnelaith? Why climb the mountain and visit these shrines of his past again? He closed his eyes and saw for a second the brilliant red hair of the little witch whom Yuri loved as foolishly as a boy. He saw her hard green eyes looking back at him out of the picture, mocking her little-girl hair with its bright colored ribbon. Yuri, you are a fool.

  The car gained speed.

  He could not see anything through the darkly tinted glass. Lamentable. Downright maddening. In the States, his own cars had untinted windows. Privacy had never been a concern to him. But to see the world in its natural colors, that was something he needed the way he needed air and water.

  Ah, but maybe he would sleep a little, and without dreams.

  A voice startled him--the young woman's, coming from the overhead speaker.

  "Mr. Ash, I've called the Inn; they're prepared for our arrival. Do you want to stop for anything now?"

  "No, I want only to get there, Leslie. Snuggle with the blanket and the pillow. It is a long way."

  He closed his eyes. But sleep didn't come to him. This was one of those journeys when he would feel every minute, and every bump in the road.

  So why not think of the gypsy again--his thin, dark face, the flash of his teeth against his lip, so white and perfect, the teeth of modern men. Rich gypsy, perhaps. Rich witch, that had come plain to him in the conversation. In his mind's eye he reached for the button of her white blouse in the photograph. He pulled it open to see her breasts. He gave them pink nipples, and he touched the blue veins beneath the skin which had to be there. He sighed and let a low whistle come from his teeth and turned his head to the side.

  The desire was so painful that he forced it back, let it go. Then he saw the gypsy again. He saw his long dark arm thrown up over the pillow. He smelled again the woods and the vale clinging to the gypsy. "Yuri," he whispered in his fantasy, and he turned the young man over and bent to kiss his mouth.

  This too was a fiery furnace. He sat up and forward and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.

  "Music, Ash," he said quietly, and then, settling back once more, his head against the window, his eyes large and struggling to see through the horrid dark glass, he began to sing to himself in a wee voice, a tiny falsetto, a song no one might understand but Samuel, and even Samuel might not know for sure.

  It was 2:00 a.m. when he told the driver to stop. He could not continue. Beyond the dark glass lurked all the world that he had come here to see. He could wait no longer.

  "We're almost there, sir."

  "I know we are. You'll find the town only a few miles ahead. You're to go there directly. Settle into the Inn and wait for me. Now call the guards in the car behind us. Tell them to follow you in. I must be alone now here."

  He didn't wait for the inevitable arguments or protests.

  He stepped out of the car, slamming the door before the driver could come to his assistance, and with a little goodwill wave of his hand, he walked fast over the edge of the road and into the deep, cold forest.

  The wind was not strong now. The moon, snared in clouds, gave an intermittent and filmy light. He found himself enveloped by the scents of the Scotch pines, the dark cold earth beneath his feet, the brave blades of early spring grass crushed beneath his shoe, the faint scent of new flowers.

  The barks of the trees felt good beneath his fingers.

  For a long time he moved on and on, in the dark, sometimes stumbling, sometimes catching hold of a thick tree trunk to steady himself. He didn't stop to catch his breath. He knew this slope. He knew the stars above, even though the clouds tried to obscure them.

  Indeed, the starry heavens brought him a strange, painful emotion. When at last he stopped, it was upon a high crest. His long legs ached a little, as legs should perhaps. But being in this sacred place, this place which meant more to him than any other bit of land in the world, he could remember a time when his limbs would not have ached, when he could have hurried up the hill in big, loping steps.

  No matter. What was a little pain? It gave him an insight into the pain of others. And humans suffered such terrible pain. Think of the gypsy asleep in his warm bed, dreaming of his witch. And pain was pain, whether physical or mental. Not the wisest of men or women or Taltos would ever know which was worse--the pain of the heart or the pain of the flesh.

  At last he turned and sought even higher ground, climbing steadily up the slope even when it seemed impossibly steep, often reaching for a grip upon branches and firm rock to help himself.

  The wind came up, but not strongly. His hands and feet were cold, but it was not a coldness he couldn't endure. Indeed, coldness had always refreshed him.

  And indeed, thanks to Remmick he had his fur-collared coat; thanks to himself he had his warm wool clothes; thanks to heaven, perhaps, the pain in his legs grew no worse, only a little more annoying.

  The ground crumbled a little. He could have fallen here, but the trees were like tall balusters keeping him safe, letting him go on and on rapidly.

  At last he turned and found the path he had known would be here, winding up between two gently rising slopes where the trees were old, untouched, perhaps spared by all intruders for centuries.

  The path descended into a small vale covered with sharp stones that hurt his feet, and made him more than once lose his balance. Then up again he went, thinking the slope quite impossible except for the fact that he'd climbed it before and he knew that his will would overcome the evidence of his senses.

  At last he emerged into a small clearing, eyes fixed on the distant overhanging peak. The trees were so close he could not easily find the path now, or any simple footing. He moved on, crushing the smaller shrubbery as he went. And as he turned now to his right, he saw far below, beyond a great deep crevasse, the waters of the loch shining with the pale illumination of the moon, and farther still the high, skeletal ruins of a cathedral.

  His breath went out of him. He had not known they had rebuilt so much. As he fixed his eyes on the scheme below, he made out the entire cross pattern of the church, or so it seemed, and a multitude of squat tents and buildings, and a few flickering lights that were no more than pinpoints. He rested against the rock, safely nestled, peeping, as it were, on this world, without any danger of tumbling and falling down to it.

  He knew what that was, to fall and to fall, to reach and cry out and be unable to stop the fall, his helpless body gaining weight and speed with every few feet of bruising terrain beneath him.

  His coat was torn. His shoes were wet from the snow.

  For a moment all the smells of this land engulfed him and overpowered him so that he felt an erotic pleasure moving through him, gripping his loins and sending the coarse ripples of pleasure over his entire skin.

  He closed his eyes and let the soft, harmless wind stroke his face, let it chill his fingers.

  It's near, it's very near. All you have to do is walk on and up, and turn there before the gray boulder you can see right now under the naked moon. In a moment the clouds may again cover the light, but it will be no less easy for you.

  A distant sound touched his ears. For a moment he thought perhaps he was imagining it. But there it was, the low beat of the drums, and the thin flat whine of the pipes, somber and without any rhythm or melody he could discern, which drew from him a sudden panic and then a low, pumping anxiety. The sounds grew stronger, or rather he allowed himself to hear them more truly. The wind rose, then died away; the drums came strong
from the slopes below, the pipes whining on, and again he sought to find the pattern and, finding none, ground his teeth and pressed the heel of his palm to his right ear to shut the sound off finally.

  The cave. Go on. Go up and go into it. Turn your back on the drums. What are the drums to you? If they knew you were here, would they play a true song to draw you in? Are the songs even known to them anymore?

  He pushed up and on, and coming round the boulder, he felt the cold surface of the rock with both hands. Twenty feet ahead, perhaps more, lay the mouth of the cave, overgrown, concealed perhaps from any other climber. But he knew the random formations of stone above it. He walked higher, with one steep, heavy step after another. The wind whistled here among the pines. He pushed at the heavy overgrowth, letting the small branches scratch at his hands and face. He didn't care. At last he stepped into the blackness itself. And slumped, breathing heavily against the wall, and closing his eyes again.

  No sound came to him from the depths. Only the wind sang as before, mercifully obscuring the distant drums if, indeed, they still made their awful ugly mayhem.

  "I am here," he whispered. And the silence leapt back from him, curling perhaps into the very depths of the cave. Yet nothing gave an answer. Dare he say her name?

  He took a timid step and then another. He moved on, with both hands upon the close walls, his hair brushing the roof overhead, until the passage broadened and the very echo of his footfalls told him that the roof was rising above him to a new height. He could see nothing.

  For one moment fear touched him. Perhaps he had been walking with his eyes closed; he didn't know. Perhaps he had been letting his hands and ears guide him. And now, as he opened his eyes, as he sought to draw the light into them, there was only the blackness. He might have fallen, he was so afraid. A deep sense told him he was not alone. But he refused to run, refused to scramble out like some frightened bird, awkward, humiliated, perhaps even injuring himself in his haste.

  He held fast. The darkness had no variation in it. The soft sound of his breath seemed to move out forever and ever.

  "I'm here," he whispered. "I've come again." The words drifted away from him into nothingness. "Oh, please, once more, for mercy's sake ..." he whispered.