The Desert Spear

knees. “Creator. You’re married already!” She felt like she couldn’t breathe.
    But Arlen looked back at her, and he laughed. Not the polite barks he might give at a jest, or a cruel sound meant to hurt, but a full laugh that shook his body so much he needed to put a hand on Twilight Dancer to steady himself. She felt her lungs ease as the sound denied her fear. Something in her gave way, and she found herself laughing along as he roared at the joke, hugging her sides and kicking her feet. It went on a good while, and the tension between them had vanished when they finally slowed to sporadic giggles, and then fell silent.
    Renna got to her feet and put a hand on Arlen’s arm. “If there ’s something I don’t know, then tell me.”
    Arlen looked at her and nodded. Again he pulled from her grasp, walking a few feet away, his eyes on the ground.
    “Here,” he said after a moment, kicking the dirt. “There’s a path to the Core right here.”
    She came over, looking with her warded eyes. Indeed, the glowing mist eddying about their feet was flowing from the spot like smoke from a pipe.
    “I can feel it,” Arlen said, “stretching all the way to the Core. It’s calling to me, Ren. Like my mam at suppertime, it’s calling me, and if I wanted to…” He began to fade away, as if he were a ghost…or a coreling.
    “No!” Renna shouted, grabbing at him, but her hands passed right through. “You tell it to throw its call down the well!”
    Arlen solidified after a moment, and she breathed a sigh of relief, though his eyes were still sad. “The paint ent why I can’t live a normal life, Ren. This is where drawing too much magic leads. I’m more demon than man now, and honest word, each dawn I wonder if today’s the day the sun’s gonna burn me away for good.”
    Renna shook her head. “You ent no demon. Demon wouldn’t be worried about Deliverer’s Hollow, or Tibbet’s Brook. Demon wouldn’t care if some girl he knew got cored, or put his life aside for months to try’n help her.”
    “Maybe,” Arlen said. “But only a demon’d ask that girl to become one herself.”
    “You din’t ask me nothing,” Renna said. “I make my own choices now.”
    “Then take time and make it with care,” Arlen said, ” ’cause it ent one you can take back.”

CHAPTER 31
JOYOUS BATTLE
    p.
333 AR SUMMER

    ROJER TOLD EVERYONE HE practiced his fiddle by the great stairwell of the manse rather than in his own wing because that precise spot would let the sound echo throughout the building. It was true enough, but the real reason he had chosen the spot was that it afforded a perfect view of the door to Amanvah and Sikvah’s chambers. For three days, he ’d seen no sign of the girls.
    He didn’t know why he cared. What had he been thinking, standing up for Sikvah when he had the perfect excuse to refuse them both? Or letting them stay after they had tried to kill Leesha? Was he actually considering becoming son-in-law to the demon of the desert? The thought of marriage had always terrified Rojer. He had left hamlets half a dozen times in the last few years to avoid that noose.
    Marriage is professional death,
Arrick had always said.
Women are eager to bed Jongleurs, so we oblige them. But once you’re promised, suddenly all those things that drew her to you in the first place need sorting. They don’t want you traveling anymore. Then they don’t want you performing every night. Or at odd hours. Then they want to know why you always choose the sunny girl to throw knives at. Before you know it, you’re working as a corespawned carpenter and lucky to sing on Seventhday. Sleep in any woman’s bed you like, but keep a packed bag next to it, and leave the first time you hear the word
promise.
    Yet he had leapt to Sikvah’s rescue without a thought, and even now, the beautiful harmony of their voices resounded in his head. Rojer ached to join that harmony, and when he thought of how their robes had fallen to the floor, it brought another kind of ache, one he hadn’t felt for any other woman since he met Leesha.
    But Leesha didn’t want him, and Arrick had died drunk and friendless.
    Abban’s women appeared now and again to bring food and remove commode pots, but the door to the girls’ chambers never opened more than a crack, and always slammed shut before he could so much as peek inside.

    That night at
alagai’sharak,
Rojer kept a nervous eye on Jardir. Kaval had Gared and Wonda fighting with spear