Sasha sighed and reached for a blanket that had come loose in their lovemaking. She drew it over them both. The air had a chill, most unlike the warmth of recent weeks. “I have to go soon,” she told him. “There's work to be done.”
Errollyn studied her, one hand toying with her hair. “You're sad.”
Sasha smiled, and wrapped her arms around his middle. “Only out there,” she said.
“Kessligh will be fine,” Errollyn assured her. “He'll be a better swordsman on one good leg than most people manage on two.”
“I know.” She shook her head against the pillow. “It's not just Kessligh. It's…all this suffering. Is…is this my life? Do you think?”
“Do you think?”
Sasha rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I…damn, I shouldn't be thinking about this now. I don't want to spoil it.”
“I'd like to think I mean more to you than just a good fuck,” Errollyn remarked. Sasha blinked at him. They'd been speaking Lenay, of course. It astonished her how that was just an unconscious habit with people she trusted.
“I didn't mean that,” Sasha retorted.
“I know,” Errollyn said mildly. “I'm just saying that if I wanted to bed some girl who was pretty and said nothing of substance, I'd pay some midslopes whore for a night.”
Sasha smiled. “Oh, I doubt you'd have to pay.” She brushed shaggy hair from his face. “It just struck me today…walking past these piles of burning corpses.” Errollyn stroked her hair. She took a deep breath. “I've always had this…very simple equation. Every time Kessligh's training became too painful, every time I hurt myself in sparring, or fell off a horse, or awoke one morning feeling just so stiff and awful that I couldn't possibly rise from my bed, I told myself that if this weren't my life, then it would have to be Baen-Tar, and Alythia's life, all pretty dresses and gossip and marriage. And suddenly, my present situation wouldn't seem so bad.
“Today on the docks, I thought about that equation once more, and…and suddenly pretty dresses and awful gossiping twits didn't seem like such a bad life after all. You know?”
“I know.” Errollyn nodded. “I was raised in the foothills of the Telesil Mountains. My uman was Dahlren.” Sasha gazed up at him wonderingly. Errollyn did not speak of his childhood often. “She was an old thing, and unimpressed with people, human or serrin. The world of wild things was her world. She was too old to take an uma, but she took me nonetheless. I grew up mostly alone, save for Dahlren, and she wasn't much for conversation. I learned the ways of animals, I learned the herbs of healing lore and I learned to hunt. Sometimes I look around in this city, and wonder what I'm doing here. I dream of greenery when I sleep. I dream of trees, Sasha. Do you dream of trees?”
“There's an old vertyn tree,” Sasha murmured sadly. “It grew at the back of our house on the hillside. I climbed it many times when I was younger, and later, Andreyis climbed it with me. It always amazed me that I could be so high, and yet the mountains were so much higher. It made me think about the scale of things, and about the Goeren-yai saying, that one could never trust a human judgment of size and power, and how all the greatest warriors of history were as nothing compared to the mountains. I dream of that tree sometimes.”
“Dahlren died when I had just thirteen summers,” Errollyn continued. He looked sad and thoughtful. Sasha took the hand in her hair and entwined her fingers with his. “That was terrible. We lived mostly alone, there was just a little village down from the shoulder of the hill where we had our small farm. I had help with the va'eth aln, the funeral rites, but not much else. I insisted on staying on after that, on my own…I was stubborn, you would say. I continued my own learnings, as Dahlren had done. I think it changed me. I sometimes wonder what my life might have been like had I taken a different uman. But I am who I am, and wonderings will achieve nothing.”
“Dahlren was du'janah,” Sasha said sombrely. “Wasn't she?” Errollyn looked surprised. “That's why you were sent to be her uma.”
Errollyn slid off her with a sigh, to Sasha's regret. She worried that she'd said the wrong thing. But Errollyn lay close, a hand propping his head. “She was du'janah,” Errollyn confirmed. “It was discussed, between my parents and various elders.” His brilliant eyes darkened. “I wished they'd just leave me alone. My elder sister had taken an uman who was a master of woodcraft. I wanted to learn woodcrafts too, but it was insisted that I should take a du’janah uman. Dahlren was unsuitable, and too old, and unfriendly and fit to die on me before I could complete useen, but that did not matter to them.”
Sasha put a hand on his chest. He was nearly hairless below the neck. It seemed a natural condition of serrin. “Did you love her? Dahlren, I mean.”
Errollyn smiled faintly. “I grew to. I helped with small tasks that her fingers found difficult, or her arms lacked the strength for. And I did love her lore, and grew to love the forests and hills more deeply than anything. I took Dahlren's small affections where I could.”
Sasha smiled. “You learn to recognise them after a while, don't you?”
Errollyn raised an eyebrow. “You with Kessligh?” Sasha nodded, with no small exasperation. Errollyn shook his head. “No, Kessligh is a veritable eruption of love and joy compared to Dahlren. She could spend days, and not speak a word to me. But I learned to love her anyway. Love is not always a good thing. It hurt all the more on the winter morning when I woke and found that the previous night's chill had taken her life. I blamed myself for years, but it was so fast, and she'd insisted her cough had been nothing.”
Sasha ran a hand through his hair. Her heart ached to hold him, and she knew that he probably would not mind…but she was Lenay, and one did not embrace or comfort a man in pain. Not if one valued his dignity, and his honour.
“I met some of her family at the va'eth aln,” Errollyn continued. “They insisted she'd left them, and had not been cast out as Dahlren sometimes told me. They were all baffled by her. They said it was an unfortunate thing to be du'janah. After a short while of conversation, I think I began to understand why she left.”
“Errollyn,” Sasha said softly. “Tell me. What is a du'janah? Precisely, in your own words.”
Errollyn gazed at her. Exasperation built to a faint wince. “I…I don't know, Sasha, it's so difficult to explain to a human…”
Sasha straddled him. Pushed him onto his back, and lay on his chest, nose to nose. She kissed him gently, and pressed herself to him, a pleasant warmth of skin on skin. And was pleased to feel him harden once more against her. She propped herself on her elbows. “Look,” she told him, “I can't get any closer than this. If you can't tell me now, then you probably can't tell anyone. Sel ath'avthor shalma'ta mai, el'ath dael baer'il shoen.” “And if it cannot be said in words, it probably doesn't exist.”
Errollyn made a wry smile. “You can get closer,” he suggested.
Sasha kissed him again. “I can?”
“You can.”
“Ah.” Sasha reached down and slid him inside her once more. She was a little sore, but she didn't care at all. “Now tell me,” she breathed on his lips. Errollyn ran his hands up her bare sides, over her back, making every rib glow, and every small hair tingle.
“To be du'janah,” Errollyn said simply, “is to be without vel'ennar.”
Sasha stopped making love to him and gave him a very blunt stare. “If that's all you've got for me, I'm kicking you out of this bed.”
Errollyn grinned then laughed. Kissed her deeply. Sasha resisted a little, waiting warily for an answer. Errollyn considered her, sharp-eyed and penetrating. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?”
“Several times.”
“You have an amazing shape.” His hands found her hips. “Serrin women tend to be slimmer. But these hips are extraordinary. And your eyes, so dark and exotic…”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Sasha said impatiently. “I know, dark features are so exotic to serrin. Big deal. Give me an answer or you're lying on the floor.”
Amusement flashed in his eyes. “You try to be tough, but you're just putty in my hands.”
“Oh yeah?”
Errollyn's arms came about her, and he moved firmly against her, up between her thighs. He kissed her, a hand coming up into her hair, and suddenly she was struggling for breath.
“Errollyn…” she managed, barely freeing herself. “Look, stop it, I'm serious!”
“You don't look serious,” he whispered to her, not stopping at all. “You look excited.”
“Oh spirits…no, look, just…” He rolled her over, effortlessly, half pinning one arm. He weighed so much more than she and, at this range, his power was daunting. She ought to have been alarmed, she knew. She disliked being helpless. And yet, for all her warning instincts, she'd never been so desperately pleased to be overpowered in all her life.
She cried out as Errollyn made love to her. Her heart thudded madly against her ribs, and she could no longer breathe but gasp. Right when she felt herself on the early road to her third climax of the day, Errollyn paused.
“To be serrin is to be one, Sasha,” he murmured, gazing into her eyes. “To be one like this.” He moved against her. Sasha retained barely enough dignity to feel embarrassed that her only reply was a half-muffled squeal against her bitten lip. “This is the vel'ennar. It is the oneness. We do not know each other's thoughts, and we cannot read each other's minds, but it is close. When King Leyvaan invaded, serrin from everywhere came immediately. They did not wait for a message, they simply knew something was wrong. They felt it, Sasha, as you feel me.”
Oh dear spirits, she certainly did. She kept her mouth shut, not trusting herself with words.
“To feel the vel'ennar is to never feel alone. It is to never feel insecure in company. It is to never hate those who think differently. That is why we don't kill each other, Sasha-or not for a thousand years, at least. That is why we are collective, as humans are not. That is what makes us different from you.”
“Except that you…” Sasha managed, with a struggle for composure. “You don't have it?”
“No.” His eyes gleamed, though whether it was from anger, or arousal, Sasha could not say. “I am the throwback. I am what serrin were, a thousand years and more ago, back when we did still kill each other. Sometimes I think they fear me. The entire, collective philosophy of the serrinim rests on the assumption of vel'ennar. They depend on it, especially in this conflict with humans. They look to our differences, and cling to them. They see the likes of me as threatening the balance. So they send me out into the wilds, like they sent poor Dahlren, before they made her so bitter that she abandoned them entirely to seek a solitary life and death in the foothills.
“That's what made me so mad, Sasha. I grew to love Dahlren, but I feared that this wretched, bitter person would be me, given enough time. I want to feel the vel'ennar, I've always wanted it, as badly as I want you now, so badly it hurts. But I could not. Other children would exchange smiles at the unspoken humour, and I wanted to know what the joke was. Others would form bonds, the nature of which always baffled me. They knew I was different, and they were kind, but their kindness smothered, as though they thought I suffered from some terrible, incurable disease, when, as far as I knew, I was perfectly healthy.