Ten days later, she was making stew when he returned from trapping later than usual. The stew’s aroma filled the small cave with smells of herbs and mutton. She was just adding the final ingredient when Damar stopped and threw a new bail of cured furs down, glaring at her murderously.

“What in the name of all the gods are you doing?” His voice was the most vicious it had been when speaking to her. She blushed hotly.

“Adding kid-root,” she answered, staring at him agape.

“Kid-root?” His hand shot out, but her reflexes were too quick for him.

“Yes, kid-root,” she glared at him now. “I found it up by the ridge of idols. We Ryllidan use it all the time; it helps with digestion and circulation and speeds healing.”

“I know what kid-root is . . .” He sighed heavily. His eyebrows shot up suddenly, and he cocked his head to consider her for a moment. “How many times have you used that in our stew?”

“Just one other time,” she said, confused. “Why? It did us no harm . . .”

She trailed off as Damar collapsed in a fit of laughter. He laughed so hard he knocked his head on the floor. Still, he laughed. Finally, he sat up from the wracking laughter and gazed at her, a shadow of desperation tinged with hope and apology in his eyes.

“That explains a lot,” he said once he caught his breath.

“What?” Belkynn stared at him. Was he relapsing? Too many marlbuttons?

“The night we had the new wine,” he said. “I thought it was something in the wine. Or simply that I’d turned into the dirty old man I always feared I’d be . . .”

“What do you mean?” She clenched her jaw, staring him fiercely in the eye.

“I guess it’s time we talked about that, then,” he said quietly.

“I have a wife back in my own world.”

“Wife?” She gagged, then let herself vomit on him. “WIFE?”

“Lovely,” he muttered, wiping the mess off his hide shirt.

“Sorry.”

“Sorry?” She punched him. He sighed heavily, wiping the blood from the cut through his right eyebrow.

“Nice punch,” he said dryly, sadly.

“Wife?” She raised her foot off the ground, but the sadness in his eyes kept her from kicking him. She also stopped herself because she was afraid she might not stop. And because he did not react to defend himself—he wouldn’t stop her if she attacked.

“Back in my native world,” Damar said sadly. “I may never see her again. But I’m still alive. If time passes the same there . . . she’d be dead of old age long ago. But time is relative . . .”

“Wife?” Belkynn sat down. She reached out, unthinking, and started to put the bulb in the stew.

“Don’t,” Damar warned softly. “That’s the root of this evil.”

“What?” She gazed at the bulb in her hand. It was very similar to her native kid-root, but more elongated. The blooms were darker and larger on the plant she’d taken it from, and the leaves were more spade-like. But that was fairly usual, at least from her experience.

“The Tribes call that . . .” He laughed and broke off. “The folk in the Kadro valley call it shepherds-bane.”

“Shepherds-bane?” Belkynn blushed to the roots of her hair.

“Yeah,” Damar offered a wan smile. “It’s what they give their ponies to get them randy.”

“So . . .” She gazed at the floor, eyes suddenly moist. “It was the stew?”

“What?” he asked pointedly.

“Us . . . what happened . . .” She choked on the words. Damar was not her first lover. But she had never before desired a man the way she did him. Refusal had never stung her before—and she’d been rejected by far more handsome men. Still, her heart fluttered in ridiculous unreason. She hated him. She loved him. She wished him dead. She wanted him now. Right now. Right here. She would kill for him. Or kill him if she couldn’t possess him.

“You’re not much used to being a girl, are you?” Damar put a warm hand on her knee. She smacked it away.

“What is it you want?” She was hissing the way her mother had at her father. Belkynn Kallon was not that kind of woman. It stung her pride to feel out of control.

“Right now?” He rose and fetched a skin of wine. “I want to drown in a river of wine.”

“Why?” She glared at him again. Damn him for his calm. Why didn’t he hit her back? That way she could justify tearing his eyes out and tossing them in the stew.

“I’d offer you some wine,” he smiled gently. “But a woman of your nature should refrain.”

“What nature?” She rose again, ready to kick his head off his shoulders. He didn’t want her; it was only the shepherds-bane that had driven him to couple with her. How could she have been so stupid.

“Sorry,” he shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “I perhaps should have said one in your condition.”

“With dislocated hips?”

“Pregnant.” He said it like a death sentence. Or she heard it so. She couldn’t be certain.

“What?” She glared at him as though he had suddenly grown snakes for hair.

“You’re with child,” he shrugged. “That’s why you’re so moody.”

“Child?” She sat again, careful not to re-injure her hips.

“I thought you knew,” he said, wide-eyed and earnest.

“What do you care?” She spat. “Now you needn’t bother with the Mists.”

“Like I’m getting off the hook that easily,” he said, snorting at the idea. “This is just a necessary delay, Belkynn Kallon.”

Her name from his lips soothed her. A bright coal of resentment burned in her heart for his power to soothe her. Had he no idea that he could possess her for the price of a word, a look, a gesture?

“Necessary?”

“Your bloodline has a very strong and important place in the destiny of Dreydillon,” he told her. “I knew it before you set out. I just didn’t count on . . .”

“On what?” she challenged.

“Divination is a sketchy thing,” he mused. “I see glimpses of the future, but only very significant events or people have any sort of detail . . .”

“So you—what? You used me to further the cause of your Fulcrum?”

“Please don’t accuse me, Belkynn,” he pleaded with his eyes more effectively than with his raspy voice. “As vast as my experience is, I tend to have human feelings and sensitivities now and then.”

“Human?” she spat the word. “What is human about seducing a woman half your age? And getting her with child? And what of that child? What have you planned for that?”

“Please,” he served her a bowl of stew. She took it, but stared at it as though it were a serpent. “Have something to eat and be calm. Ask what you want to know . . .”

“Don’t patronize me, old man!”

“Well . . .” He dug his fingers through his beard to scratch his chin. “Yes. I am old, girlie. Far older than you imagine. Doesn’t mean I don’t have the natural urges of any other man.”

“Natural urges?” She fought back the temptation to throw the stew in his face. “So that’s all I am to you, am I?”

“Not for a second,” he enunciated clearly, eyes bright. “I wanted you the moment you put that pick to my throat. Maybe earlier. You’re the best cliff scaler I’ve seen who isn’t a skulkrist . . .”

“Wanted me?” She interrupted, spit flying as she ranted at him. “So you wanted me, did you? I’m a trophy skulkrist now, am I? And where do I fit in with your wife and you?”

“Leave my wife out of it,” Damar growled.

“Oh,” she stood and glowered over him, “I’ll leave her out, alright. Right after I tell her—”

“Girlie,” Damar rose like a raging bear and grabbed her shoulders in a steel grip. “I only have so much patience. And none whatsoever for slander or threats against my wife. Leave it alone.”

“Where is she?” Belkynn sighed deeply and relaxed her posture, maintaining eye-contact.

“Back in the real world,” Damar mumbled darkly.

“This is the real world, you . . . you . . .”

“Your real world, Belkynn Kallon,” he said softly, tension draining from him. He looked suddenly tired and ancient, though in a timeless way she found stunning. He stared forlornly at a ring on the third finger of his left hand. It was bound in some sort of hide. When she asked, he told her that it was a symbol of marriage in his culture. A physical symbol the likes of which seemed to be absent in Dreydillon. She thought it a strange custom; married people always come home to each other, but who could expect them to deny nature’s call simply because they have a lifelong mate?

Granted, it was rather bad manners for married men to go around anywhere and get young women with child. Dreydillon men knew how to prevent such indiscretions . . . not that it was unheard of by any means. And then there was the matter of shepherds-bane; it was known to make even the oldest of males as randy and virile as a stable stud. And was a guarantee of fertility nearly every time . . .

“How old?” She asked conversationally. “How old is older than I imagine?”

“I lived in this mountain more than forty summers before they fetched me to Helion,” he shrugged. “Spent decades as a student at the Helion Academy. Decades more gaining tenure, and scores of years holding tenure. I was forty years old when I woke up down the mountain from here.”

“Over a hundred?” She gazed at him curiously now, mind working on concepts she could barely name.

“And then some,” Damar nodded.

“Like a Delyllan?”

“I’m a roundear,” he pushed the hair over his ears to demonstrate. “No relation to the fair folk.”

“So why don’t you look older?”

“Don’t want to,” Damar grinned weakly.

“You weren’t summoned?”

“Nobody’s taking credit for it if I was,” he drank deeply of the wine, brushing away a trickle of blood as it seeped from the cut over his eye.

“I should stitch that,” Belkynn reached for the stitching kit he had given her.

“Leave it,” he said darkly.

“It was too much,” she said by way of apology, feeling something like but less than remorse.

“Can’t touch what I’ve been doing to myself on the inside since that night,” he muttered. He motioned with his hand and the glow of the firestones dimmed beneath the stew.

“What?” She looked at him closely.

“Funny thing, guilt,” he said, shrugging.

“Guilt?”

“Yes. Guilt. All those years . . . I’ve not been with anyone else since my wife . . .”

“What?” She stared at him, astonished. Something shifted inside her. The burning coal of resentment burst into a flood of pity and compassion. “Gods! That must have been lonely.”

“Lonely?” He sniffed, looking up to meet her eyes. She could see now the naked, humble humanity of his tortured soul and mind. “I like being alone,” he said, snorting with a cynical laugh.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“For what?” He looked up again, eyes filled with compassion and curiosity.

“Causing you grief,” she muttered. Pushing aside her hollowed helplessness, she scooted over to tend to his cut eyebrow.

“It was an honest mistake,” he shrugged, speaking now of the shepherds-bane. “That mistake is so common it starts every course in herbology at the Helion Academy.”

“Maybe I knew . . .” She poured water from a clay pot onto his brow, washing the cut.

“Don’t do that to yourself, Belkynn Kallon,” he said, tone paternal. “I’ve been through all that. Convinced myself I was using the wine as an excuse to play the reprobate . . .”

“It was my idea,” she teased, bending to kiss his forehead before starting to stitch it with the bone needle he had threaded for her while she washed the wound.

“Was it?” He looked up through his brow as she stood over him.

“I was hoping for the right opportunity to seduce you,” she replied.

“So you drugged me?” He asked, half teasing.

“Where’s the glory in that?” She tied off after her fourth stitch and bit through the gut-thread.

“Glory? Who’s the trophy now?”

“Hmph! I thought I was winning a husband.” She ducked down impulsively and kissed him on the mouth.

“Honorable endeavor,” he muttered, taking another deep drink from the wine.

“If you didn’t already have a wife,” she said more venomously than she intended.

“Should have asked me,” he shrugged.

“After all this time . . .” She looked at him in the way her mother gazed at her father to win him to her. “Perhaps it is merely obsession to cling to her memory.”

“If you were waiting at home for me, Belkynn Kallon, how long would you want me to remain yours?”

“I would not permit you to wander,” she said. “And if you did . . . I am a Ryllidan Ranger.”

“The most talented and lovely I’ve yet met,” he said, blushing as he said more than he intended.

“I’m not that lovely,” she blushed.

“I’ve seen a great many beautiful women in my time,” Damar said, winking. “I think I’m qualified to tell you how attractive you are.

“What I can’t figure is why you’d care to trap an old codger like me into . . .”

“I like a good challenge,” she said, shrugging.

“Where’s the challenge?”

“I’ve heard you turned down every courtesan in Helion before you left there, that nobody ever knew the mighty Damar to be anything less than ascetic in those pursuits . . .”

“Oh really?” Damar snorted scornfully. “That’s a far cry from what the rumors around the Academy had to say.”

“They accused you of . . .”

“Everything from bestiality to pederasty to having neither sex nor gender,” Damar huffed. “Nobody cared to know the truth. Spiteful . . .”

“So,” she fluttered her eyelashes. “You were just waiting for the right temptation?”

“I was avoiding complications,” Damar said flatly. “What’s the use in playing around with someone you’ll outlive? Especially when she’ll age and wither while you remain robust and too clear of mind to do anything but mourn for thirty years . . .”

“What about love?” Belkynn held her breath for a moment, afraid his bitterness could only increase.

“Love . . .” His voice was velvet and low, it touched her again low in her belly. She leaned toward him, seeing a gleam form over the sapphire as tears filled his eyes. “Love is a luxury only the young can afford, Belkynn Kallon. It is a bane to old men. It robs us of reason, of caution.”

“And yet?” She saw in his eyes that there was more.

“Don’t torture me, woman,” he croaked. “My heart belongs to my wife.”

“Is there so little room there that only love for one may fill it?”

“Oh, there’s room.” Tears streamed now down both cheeks. “Room enough for everything—and nothing.”

“Love me,” she said. “It’s that simple, Damar.”

“I do love you, Belkynn Kallon,” he told her, pulling her gently to his chest and kissing the top of her head. “I love you too much to bear.”

Between the shadows behind his eyes and the echo behind his voice, Belkynn understood too poignantly that she would never be first in Damar’s heart. Another held that place. And Damar seemed incapable of displacing her.

“And yet too little to . . .” She sighed deeply. “It is enough. I love you, too, Damar.”