Godbond Read Free

would have been surrender. I could not move.
    Go to him, I told myself fiercely. Or else go away, and make war on him, and cease looking on his face.
    I could not do either that night.
    He stirred restlessly in his sleep, my Kor, he moaned, and all night, small and winged and hidden in darkness, I looked on him and could neither go to him nor go away. And before first light he came fully awake, sat up and put his head in his hands as if he could not face the day.
    Then he got up, moving about quietly so as not to awaken his sleeping brother, and divided Dannoc’s gear from his, leaving Dannoc’s on the ground. He readied his own horse for travel. When he was done, he stood and looked at Dannoc’s face, the bruised and lidded eyes very still in sleep.
    â€œI will endure, apart from you,” he said, aloud but softly so that he would not awaken the one to whom he spoke. “I have made myself a pact to be strong. But I cannot bear this leave-taking.”
    They had come together, then, only to part again? In the stillness before dawn, perched very small amid towering mountains, in that hush and chill I clearly knew the truth. It was not force of my spleen that was sending Dan away from Kor; it was the power of his own yearning dream.
    Kor said to him, very softly, “If any mortal can find and awaken the god, it will be you. Seek well, great heart.”
    He seemed about to turn away, but did not move, and in the gray breaking of day I saw the struggle in his face, and I fiercely willed Dannoc to slumber soundly, not to awaken.
    Kor said, “So—so much I never told you.” He wished Dan to hear, in a sense, I felt sure of that. He more than half wished to wake him. “My brother, I remember the first time I saw you, stark mad, riding into the lodge on a lathered horse, your great knife raised to slay me—and I betrayed all my promises to my people, I wanted your love even then. It was as if I had found something that had been lost since before I was born. As if I had found a part of myself.”
    Though I would not let him wake, Dannoc stirred in his sleep, turning toward Kor, stretching a hand toward him for a moment before it stilled and lay slack on the ground.
    Kor went and kneeled beside him. Intensely he said, “Have you not felt it too, Dan, how there is something odd, fated, about us? The two of us, and Tass. Dan, remember how she stared when she first came to us? As if she recognized us, though she had never seen us before?”
    He touched his bond brother’s hand, but I willed Dannoc deeper into sleep.
    â€œ Ai , but you are exhausted,” Kor murmured. “And small wonder. You ventured … you came so close.…” The tumult in his face stilled as he gazed at Dan, remembering something of which I knew nothing. “Mindbond,” he whispered, and his eyes had grown calm and full of courage.
    He took Dannoc’s quiet hand in his and passed the grip of their bond brotherhood, kneeling by his sleeping brother’s side, as still as the sleeper, and in their stillness I sensed mindspeaking. Then Korridun laid his brother’s hand softly down. He bent and kissed Dan on the brow, the kiss of a king. Then, letting his touch not linger, he got up, mounted his horse and rode away, bound toward Seal Hold.
    He had come to the mountains to find his brother and bid him a fitting farewell. That done, he went back the way he had come, to the place where his duty lay, where his people and their quarrels awaited him.
    I watched after him, knowing I would not allow myself to look on him secretly again. I lost all strength, all resolve, all warrior hardness, doing so.
    Then I waited where I was. The sun rose high before Dannoc awoke, looked around him, then got up and moved about softly, silently, as if remembering a good dream.
    In truth, he was very comely, even with his blackened eyes and broken nose, for he was tall and strong of bone, nobly browed and fair