When Gant and Jan returned with the wagons Sil and Avin were sitting with Riani. She had woken, finally, and was
sitting up, looking pale and weak. Sil was combing her hair and Avin was holding her hands.
“Thank the gods for that!” Gant muttered, “Yeah” Jan agreed, “Why do you think that happens to her and not to us?”
Gant shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know. You used to get headaches in the one at the Keep. I never did and Avin
and Sil didn’t seem to get them as much as you. Its just one of those things.”
Jan still wondered though. They secured the horses and wagons and reported back to the others. Riani was looking
dazed and far away like the last time and Avin looking full of worry. Gant shook his head slowly. It was bad timing
for Avin to be mooning around like a lovesick teenager. He thought about taking him to one side and telling him to
bed the wench and have done with it, but changed his mind. Riani was no town tart, and Avin no casual user of
women. It would have to run its course.
Riani was standing up with Sil and Avin supporting her. She had a look of defiant determination on her face as she
pulled away from both of them. “I can walk” she insisted. Gant smiled. She was a strange one was Riani. Full of
fight and brave with it. He would just have to keep an eye on the two of them and kick Avin up the backside if he
slumped to low. Maybe Riani too. Maybe it would all be fine once they had some decent quarters and the two of them
had a room to rutt in. For Gant life was simple. If all appetites were satisfied, then life could flow through him
without hindrance. It had served him well as a philosophy over the years, but he couldn’t force it upon anyone else.
Jan was tinkering with the molecular identification gadget. He was comparing the readings that it had given for
Riani before she entered the Portal in Est, with some he’d just taken. They were very different. She was still
showing only one pattern of energy, that was all alright, but it had changed its pattern significantly. For one
thing it was generally “more”. He could tell that what energy had been within her before, it had perhaps doubled
itself. It was almost like what happened to the Elite mages, except that all of the energy was undoubtedly Riani’s,
and her body had been able to accommodate the change in flow without external signs of damage. He was not a healer,
but his curious nature made him want to take a closer look at her. He loped over to the wagon where Sil was helping her in.
“Riani” he called “Welcome back.”
Riani gave Jan a long searching look. “You have something to tell me.” she said, knowing that he had.
“Yeah” he took out his machine and showed her both of her energy patterns. She was fascinated by them.
“I wondered whether you had any reaction, you know, like changes in your body like Sil but you look just the same as before.
Well, you’re paler, but that’s the long sleep I guess.”
Sil came to look too. This was most interesting. It was as if when Riani entered a portal her body took in some of
the energy from it perhaps? The portal didn’t work with magic though, it was technology, something the people who
had lived on The Scrapyard had called electricity. Sil and Jan decided that they would take readings from her every
day, to see if the level decreased again or remained stable and asked Riani if that was alright.
“Yes of course, and thanks. I want to know what’s happening to me. Right now I’m thinking that I can’t risk a
portal again. I hate knowing that someone has to look after me for days. It means I’m of no use.” Sil told her
about the glamour spelling, that it hadn’t faded. Riani was surprised.
“I don’t remember doing anything to maintain it “ she said shaking her head.
Jan pointed his scanner at Sil. Shaking his head he tapped it at the power source and tried again. “What’s the
matter?” asked Sil, concerned that something was even more wrong with her than before.
Jan was still shaking his head “it’s the power source, or the connection on the …” and absently wandered back to
the other wagon for another one without explanation or farewell, muttering to himself.”
Riani and Sil looked at each other and laughed. “He’s totally obsessed with that thing” Riani observed. Sil nodded.
“He’s always been like that with new gadgets, he’ll be back when he’s sorted it out. I think we can consider
ourselves to be under Jan’s experimental eye for a while. He just sees us both as non standard energy readings.”
“How are you Sil?” Riani asked. Sil’s answer was clear and confident.
“I’m feeling good Riani, I’ve cried a lot over the last few days. I’ve stopped pretending I don’t feel anything for
Hirn. They are confused and very powerful emotions, not easy to have or to explain, but I feel them.
“You look well” Riani commented
Sil laughed, “that’s thanks to you and your spelling gift”
“No it isn’t, at least not directly” Jan’s voice piped up again from behind them.
“What do you mean?” Sil asked puzzled and getting up so that she could see the gadget better. She flicked some
switches on it and looked again. This wasn’t possible.
Jan called to Avin and Gant to come over.
“Can you both do detection spellings?” he asked.
“You know I can” was Avin’s uncharacteristically sharp response.
Gant nodded, “a bit basic but I can spot an enchantment, Yes.”
“Then both please check Sil for a glamour spelling”
This was pointless, they had all seen Riani cast a glamour over Sil, and though it was a mystery as to how it had
remained in place while Riani was unconscious, there was no mystery as to how Sil looked as lovely as she did.
Slowly surprise, delight and disbelief crossed the faces of both men in a repeating pattern.
“Gods!” exclaimed Gant.
“My feeling exactly” whispered Avin.
Jan ran around the party, excitedly showing them his findings. Sil’s energy pattern was one clear flow, there was
no sign of energy from any other source than her own.
Sil stood silent, not knowing what to think or say. Not daring to believe what had happened. Jan was mainly
curious. “Now what caused that?” he mumbled, and wandered away again, presumably to find out.
Sil clasped Riani’s shoulders, her eyes grateful and in awe of her “You did this, sister. Somehow you did this for me.”
“I know its what I truly wanted for you, what we all wanted for you, but I don’t know that I did anything.”
Riani was trying to think, trying to know what she had done, how she might have done it.
It was a very happy band of merchants that wound their way along the twenty miles or so of track to the old
barracks. Gant sat making lewd suggestions to Sil, and receiving blows in return, and swigging on a flask of ale
whilst driving one of the wagons. Jan was sitting in the back flicking constantly at Sil with one machine or
another. Sil felt as if she had been given a new life. She had lost her history, and with it had gone a lot of
pain. She felt truly joyous.
Riani and Avin sat in the other wagon. He didn’t know what to make of this. It was beyond all his book learning.
He settled for a simple, but very difficult task first.
He had made a promise to Riani while she was asleep and he decided there would not be a better time to keep it than now.
“I’ve got something to tell you” he announced. She looked at him quizzically, waiting for him to speak again.
“I didn’t see you naked in the corridor at the Keep. I turned away. Your spelling to dry your clothes was nearly
perfect. I snatched your shift to get your size and…” he wasn’t finding this easy, he looked at her for some sort
of reaction, but she was just listening, her expression was unreadable. “and…the day you stood at my door with that
dagger in front of you was the luckiest day of my life, and I love you Riani. I truly do.”
Riani was hearing his words as if for the second time. She had a perception of herself suspended in a dream and
hearing him say those words, of being unable to reach him to answer or to touch him. She could reach him now though.
“Husband, your shrew of a wife needs you to stop this wagon.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, scanning the road for danger.
“We are.” He’d stopped the wagon, and when he had she kissed him, her hands touching his face, then travelling
downward seeking inside his shirt to find warm skin. He held her very tightly, feeling passion flow through him
and desire for her in a primal and basic way that unnerved and excited him.
They kissed for long minutes on the seat of the wagon. Hands touching each other seeking to feel flesh beyond the shield
of their clothing. Riani had not felt this sort of yearning before.
She longed to be taken, to be naked and free. “I want you Avin” she whispered into his ear,
“I always have since the first time you flung your legs up onto your desk in those provocative leggings and told me your name.”
They parted for a moment and Avin jumped down and secured the horse to a tree. Riani was waiting for him in the
back of the wagon, already naked. He joined her there and they at last exchanged their innocent and earnest love
for a passion that overwhelmed them both completely, seeking sensation and pleasure.
There were no terms of endearment whispered, and no barriers between them. He held her arms down by her side as if
to leave no doubt that he was the stronger, and then released her to show her that she was free within that
strength. She pulled him down onto her and into her with an uncontrollable need, both of them thrusting and seeking
for the pleasure that was drawing them towards it. As they touched it she felt his arms clasp her so tightly that
it was almost painful. Then, with tension between them released, they lay silently attendant in that other
love, wondering at where they had just lost themselves, and just needing to touch.
Riani was no longer lying chastely in the arms of a father figure and a protector.
She was lying in the arms of her lover, dangerously vulnerable. It was exciting to her.
And Avin was no longer required to be lesser than he was, able to express his physical self with a woman who was
not afraid of his strength. It was a freedom for him.
“We should probably join the others” Avin whispered, not wanting to move. “I think they will know what keeps us”
Riani said softly. She still wanted him, and as they touched again she realised that he also still wanted her.
Their first frantic and desperate clutchings had made it possible for something else now.
Permissions to travel a longer road, experiencing it's scenery and its less obvious pathways.
Touching, caressing, holding, feeling.
Long kisses, longer embraces. Skin was soon once more aflame and their touching became urgent once more.
His eyes were full of fire as they
looked into hers, with no fear of rejection and no thought of anything except where they were both going.
and this time more slowly they flew along the route
of their pleasure. His eyes never left hers, she surrendered herself, everything of herself to those eyes,
she felt his body and hers begin to move as a single entity.
Each breath that escaped him caused her to travel further towards delight as they alighted on her neck,
teasing in subtle invitiation within heightened sensitivity.
Each soft exclamation of joyful discovery that escaped her as he touched her skin excited him,
drawing him onward until he had no self to either please or control.
She felt herself embracing that same freedom as it overwhelmed and transport them both.
She felt life's fire. From within him, or from in her reflected back? It didn't matter.
They held each other in that blaze, and then it engulfed them, causing them both to cry out in their release,
and brief but eternal flight.
They fell back onto the hard floor of the wagon exhausted.
It was still mid afternoon and the rain had stopped.
Avin saw that her arms were bruised where he had grabbed her in passion. He kissed the bruises.
“I‘ve hurt you…” he wondered whether he’d caused her too much pain.
She looked at the red and blotchy beginnings of bruising and stroked his face.
“ Pain and pleasure seemed like the same thing when we were there.”
She had felt as if in another world, and so had he.
“Are you telling me to hurt you Riani?”
That wicked and slightly thrilling grin, that was also an expression of part of him crossed his face.
He was facing the true strength of his own urgency for perhaps the first time.
Gant had been right, he was no casual user of women, though he had had lovers, he hadn’t felt like this with any of them.
It hadn’t been as honest before.
“I liked that“ she uttered softly from a new place inside of herself, seeing no reason to lie after the truth that
they had just shown to each other, “I might be. I don‘t know.”
He laughed and held her close to him, whispering in her ear, “we have a lot to learn from each other."
Neither wanted the moment to pass, but time, always the bitter rival of love, began to press for itself to be considered.
Brief worries about the task ahead were it’s weapons.
Soon it had produced enough apprehension in both of them to cause them to rise and dress themselves again.
The recollection of how they had been with each other was lingering in both as
more than a memory, and they remained quietly still in it. A moving vista of their last few hours playing itself
out slowly as they continued along the road to find the others.
The gravity of their situation was just beginning to reassert itself as they approached the track up to the old barracks.
Gant had already assigned everyone quarters. Avin and Riani sauntered in just as everything was organised.
”Good evening, you two, glad you could finally make it!” he bellowed like one of Duke Arrin’s sergeant major’s,
but he was smiling, relieved to see that the sexual tension between the two of them seemed to have dissipated
completely. At least now if there was trouble he had two powerful mage warriors in front of him again, and not a pair of lovesick kids.
Riani started to open her mouth but Gant didn’t give her time.
“Over there!” He pointed down the corridor towards a room well away from the rest of them.
Then he smiled again widely at both of them “Shagging in public would be bad for morale.”
Avin grimaced shaking his head, Gant could be a real brute at times. Riani again tried to say something but Gant
was having none of it, in full military flow, and enjoying his chosen role he yelled,
“and come out looking more like warriors! Move yourselves! “
They both complied. Gant had organised everything very well, and Avin felt a weight had fallen from him, knowing
that he didn’t always have to be “the boss” and that Gant had just naturally taken the lead when he had fallen down for a while.
Riani sneaked off, as soon as she felt the coast was clear of Gant, to look for Sil. She wanted to check whether
the changes to her were permanent. She found her working with Jan on another contraption.
She could see at a glance that Sil was still intact, still “cured.”
Sil looked up and smiled, “I’m no different Riani…you on the other hand….” Sil handed her a mirror.
Riani looked radiant. She was surprised, and then realised why.
“One thing we’ve both learned seems to be about how useless repression is “ Sil said gently.
Riani nodded. “Agreed” acknowledging that Sil had the right of it.
She had avoided being a woman in love for long enough.