He climbed up onto the bank, peered at it in another flash of lightning-and nearly wept with relief. It was. It was a cave. A small one, but if it wasn't too shallow, it should hold them both with no difficulty. Pure luck had formed it from boulders caught in the roots of a tree so big two men couldn't have spanned the trunk with their arms.
And a pair of bright eyes looked out of it at him.
He didn't care. Whatever it was, it would have to share its shelter tonight. The eyes weren't far enough apart for a bear, and that was all he cared about.
Somehow he got himself up into the cave; somehow he dragged Rune up with him. Erratic lightning showed him what it was in the cave with him; an entire family of otters. They stared at him fearlessly, but made no aggressive moves towards him. He ignored them and began pawing through the packs for something warm and dry to put on her.
He encountered the instruments first. His lute-intact. Hers was cracked, but might be repaired later. Her penny-whistle was intact, and the tiny harp he'd given her. The bodhran drum was punctured; his larger harp needed new strings-
All this in mental asides as he pawed through the packs, pulling out soaked clothing and discarding it to the side.
Finally he reached the bottom of the packs. And in the very bottom, their bedding; somehow dry. Her fiddle wrapped in the middle of it, safe.
There wasn't much time, and he didn't hesitate; every moment she stayed chilled was more of a threat. He stripped her skin-bare and bundled her into both sets of bedding. Then he stripped himself and eased in with her, wrapping her in his arms and willing the heat of his body into her.
For a long time, nothing happened. The storm died to the same dull rain they'd coped with for the length of the Faire; the lightning faded away, leaving them in the dark. Rune breathed, but shallowly, and her body didn't warm in the least. Her breathing didn't change. She wasn't waking; she wasn't falling into normal sleep. If he couldn't get her warm-
Lady of the Gypsies, help me! You are the queen of the forests and wilds-help us both!
Finally he heard faint snuffling sounds, and felt the pressure of tiny feet on his leg and knee.
The otters' curiosity had overcome their fear.
They sniffed around the bundle of humans and blankets, poking their noses into his ear and sneezing into his face once. It would have been funny if he hadn't been sick with worry for Rune. She wasn't warming. She was hardly breathing-
One of the otters yawned; another. Before he realized what was happening, they were curling up on him, on Rune, everywhere there was a hollow in the blankets, there was an otter curling up into a lithe-warm!-ball and flowing over the sides of the hollows.
As they settled, he began to warm up from the heat of their six bodies. And as he warmed, so, at last, did Rune. Her breathing eased, and finally she sighed, moved a little-the otters chittered sleepily in complaint-and settled into his arms, truly asleep.
He tried to stay awake, but in a few moments, exhaustion and warmth stole his consciousness away, and he joined her and their strange bed-companions in dreams.
He woke once, just after dawn, when the otters stirred out of sleep and left them. But by then, they were not only warm, they were a bit too warm, and he bade the beasts a sleepy, but thankful, good-bye. One of the adults-the female, he thought-looked back at him and made a friendly chitter as if she understood him. Then she, too, was gone, leaving the cave to the humans.
Rune woke with an ache in her head, a leg thrown over hers, and arms about her. Behind her, someone breathed into her ear.
What happened? She closed her eyes, trying to remember. They weren't in the cottage they'd found; that much was for certain. . . .
Then she remembered. The elves, her one-sided fight with music and magic, then the flight through the storm. After that was a blur, but she must have gotten hurt, somehow-
She wormed one arm out of the blankets, reached up to touch the place on her head that hurt worst, and found a lump too tender to bear any pressure at all, with a bit of a gash across the middle of it.
That was when she realized that she wasn't wearing so much as a stitch. And neither was Talaysen.
He murmured in his sleep, and held her closer. His hands moved in half-aware patterns, fitfully caressing her breasts, her stomach. . . .
And there was something quite warm and insistent poking her in the small of the back.
She held very still, afraid that if she moved, he'd stop. Despite the ache in her head, her body tingled all over, and she had to fight herself to keep from squirming around in his arms and-