Margaret Weis - Heroes And Fools

The chuckle gave way to outright laughter. “Demial, don’t tease me. I know you weren’t fooled by all that. You always saw right through me.”

She gaped at him.

He covered her hand with his larger ones. “You’re joking with me, but I suppose I deserve it.” He brought her fingers up to his lips and kissed them lightly.

Her fingers were roughened from working in the mine. Just hours ago, she could have used the staff to make her skin soft and sweet again. Now all she did was stare dumbly as his lips moved on her scarred knuckles.

He sighed playfully. “All right, I can see you’re going to force me. I’ll say the words. I didn’t love Taya. I never did. I only said those things about her to keep other women interested. When you came back, I began to say them especially for you. I knew that remembering her made you jealous, and it pleased me to see the fire in your eyes when I mentioned her. Now I know. It’s always been you I loved.”

Her heart would have leaped, would have tasted the joy of her triumph, but he said it with such callous lack of emotion. “I don’t understand.”

“I was just teasing you, before, saying all that about missing her and my heart being with her. In the end, I hated her, Demial,” he said lightly. He released her hand and leaped to his feet. He quick stepped across the small space between her and the fireplace, jittering with unspent energy. He wiped his hand across his mouth. “She was my childhood friend, my perfect friend. That was long ago. I wish she’d been killed in the war. I wish I’d never had to see her like that. I wish I could have remembered her the way she was. I hate her for coming back, for making me see her that way. I wanted. . I wanted her to die quickly so that my life could go on! Oh, I stayed with her. I played the part of the true and faithful lover, the way everybody expected me to, but I hated doing it, and I hated her.

“Gods! All those hours in that horrible, little room, listening to her ravings. . I wished her dead, and now she is. I wished her dead, and it worked, and now we can be together.”

He looked at her expectantly, but Demial sat, still and stunned. Numbness was nothing compared to this. This was like being dead. Except. . her chest was still rising and falling with breath, and her back was cool from the breeze, and her shins were warm from the fire. Warmth and cold and air, did the dead feel those things?

He came to her. He went on one knee before her, leaned in, and laid his cheek against her shoulder. “So?” he asked, voice muffled against the robe that still smelled of Taya and death.

Demial didn’t move away as his breath seeped through the cloth, as it moistened her skin, sliding across her shoulder and down towards her breast and up along her neck. “So. . what?”

“I said ‘Now we can be together,’ and you’re just sitting there as if you’re paralyzed. Don’t you realize what this means? I’ve almost done what I was supposed to do, done what the whole village expected of me. Soon the mine will be finished. It’s what I’ve been waiting for, the perfect moment to cement my plan. Now they’ll follow my leadership. We’ll open the mine again and make this village better than it was before.”

Demial stared at the fire and felt a little spark, hot and orange, flare up in her breast. It was the first hint that she was going to come back to life, that she was going to be able to feel something again. It wasn’t joy that her perfect plan was within her grasp. It was laughter-cold, hard laughter.

All her diligent work at the mine had given her the acceptance she wanted. Everyone in the village respected her now. She could have the man she’d always wanted. All the pieces of her perfect plan had fallen into place, like the wooden shapes of a child’s puzzle. And she would have the man she’d always wanted, because it wasn’t going to be safe to do anything else. She was going to have to take him, just to keep an eye on him. Her perfect mate thought, after all her hard work at the mine, he was going to step back in and take over where he’d left off, that he’d become the leader, and she’d fall into place as his perfect follower.

She shifted, moving so that his forehead no longer had the support of her shoulder, forcing him to sit up. “I’m tired right now, Quinn,” she said coolly. “I want to sleep for days and days. We’ll talk about it then.”

His surprise was plainly visible on his handsome face. “All right.” He stood slowly, giving her time to change her mind, say something, to reach for him. When she didn’t, he touched the top of her head, so lightly he barely stirred her hair. He kissed her just as lightly. “We’ll talk about it later, Dem.”

He was gone, long strides taking him away into the darkness, and she was alone again.

The dying fire was all red and orange and yellow, without even a hint of blue to the flame that would have reminded Demial of Taya’s eyes or of magic. As she watched the fire dance, the rain began. Drops fell down the chimney, into the golden flame, sizzling angrily as the fire ate them.

He felt so cold, and she looked so warm. He wanted to reach out and touch her, just as he had always wanted to touch the others before her. However, Mendel did not permit him that; the cursed little bald man didn’t want him to take any chances. Vandor Grizt was expected only to watch and wait, wait to obey his master. Wait and obey, that was all Vandor was permitted.

The gem-encrusted brooch she wore he once would have coveted for himself, but as Vandor could not keep it and Mendel would have no use for it, his interest in the jewelry swiftly faded. He had come here for something else, something more important.

She stared past him, amber eyes admiring her reflection. He knew her name, but only because Mendel had told it to him. That she had reason to be vain was obvious. But such mundane observations were beyond his purpose. . at least so he told himself.

With a sweep of her long, silver hair, the noblewoman rose from her mirror and departed the chamber, no doubt on her way to visit the lover her much older and generally absent husband knew nothing about. Vandor watched her as she paused to admire a tiny sculpture, then look herself over one more time in another mirror.

He ducked away, shivering from the ever-present cold. Her chance glance at the second mirror had nearly put them eye to eye. She probably wouldn’t have been able to see him, but one could never tell. . and Vandor Grizt had no desire to taste Mendel’s anger.

At last she stepped out of the chamber, closing the door behind her. Vandor eyed the prize he sought, the very sculpture the noblewoman had stopped to admire. It had been given to her not by her lover but by her husband, and she could not suspect that it contained latent magical forces. Probably even her husband had not known it when he had purchased the sculpture. Mendel, though. . Mendel had learned of its existence only two days after the sculpture had arrived in Lauthen. Mendel always knew, Chemosh take him!

Vandor shifted position, knowing he would not have long to act. The ungodly chill made him feel stiff and clumsy, but he could no longer hesitate. He had to do it and do it now.

The mirror melted away from his hands as he reached out and seized his master’s prize.

Fingers tingled as blessed warmth coursed over those parts of his arms that protruded from the mirror world. Without meaning to, he paused to savor that warmth, allowing it to spread even a little to the rest of his body. How delightful to be warm again, however briefly, to feel even some hint of the real world!

The warmth grew until the heat no longer pleased Vandor, but rather began to burn. Tendrils of smoke rose from his hands, and his sleeves began to shrivel and blacken. With a sudden sense of urgency, the thief picked up the statuette, an intricate figurine of a dryad and her tree, and drew it into the mirror.