Only a few minutes? Longer, much longer. No, he didn’t know. “I suppose there is some truth in both things,” he said, and no longer knew what he was talking about. He rubbed his cheek where the hand had struck him.
“I have some bread that is stale, but I was going to put it on a stick over the fire. What do you think?”
“I should like that,” he said, and realized he was starving. He also realized that his chest hurt, as if someone had punched him with his fist. He rubbed his hand over his chest, and the ache receded.
He watched her slice the remaining bread into thick slices and fix it to a stick. She began waving it close to the flames. She said, without looking up, “What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much,” he said, and sat cross-legged beside her. “It is dark in the back of the cave. There’s nothing there.”
“You weren’t gone long enough to see everything, surely.”
“No,” he said, taking a toasted slice of bread off the stick she was pointing at him. “Just a few minutes.”
“Fearless whinnied while you were gone. I looked outside but didn’t see anyone.”
“I will look again after I’ve eaten this delicious bread. This was a very good idea, Merryn.” He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d been pulled into a black hole by someone who’d laughed and then slapped him. And then—As he chewed on the toast, he closed his eyes, and there was Brecia, lying on top of him, trying to save him, killing herself in the process, and he felt what the prince had felt, anger at himself for his foolishness, his failure, his anguish that he would die and never have Brecia.
But it all happened in his head. He had no death wound. He’d been gone but a few minutes. A dream—it had been some sort of dream that they’d wanted him to relive. Why? So that he would know they were real, that he would accept them? Why?
The curse. It always came back to the curse.
He calmed himself. They would show him what must be done. He ate more of the delicious toast. Whatever was, whatever had been—it was fading quickly from his mind, from his memory.
Merryn said as she pulled a burned bit off her own toasted bread, “You said you had to come here, that it has something to do with the curse. I don’t understand that. You said you didn’t find anything. What will you do now?”
He kept chewing on his toast, looking directly into Merryn’s small fire. He said, “This is the origin of the curse.” He frowned. “Or this is where the curse has to end. I don’t know yet.” He had no intention of telling Merryn that someone had slapped him hard and laughed when he’d leaned over that black hole, and pulled him into a long ago death scene.
She said, “But you don’t know what you’re supposed to find here? What you’re supposed to do here?”
He shook his head. “I feel like a blind man.” But he was no longer scared. The dreams that weren’t dreams—they’d made him a part of them, made him feel them.
He shook his head and ate the final piece of bread.
“What are you going to do now, Bishop?”
He looked at Merryn’s hair, the red dulled in the dim cave light. It was braided tightly around her head, not long and flowing down her back with white ribbons. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just know that we must be here. All of it happened so long ago.”
“What happened so long ago?”
He hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “Many things,” he said, “were long ago.” He watched her apportion the remaining strips of salted herring. His pile, he saw, was three times larger than hers. She was humming softly under her breath. A lock of red hair had come out of the tight braid and was curling lazily around her breast. Without warning, he felt a bolt of lust that nearly stopped his breath in his chest. Overwhelming lust, such lust as he’d never felt in his life, not like this, like thunder striking him, pounding into him, prodding him, sending him into madness. It was too much, this lust. He had to have her. He had to have her now. He saw the prince, he saw Brecia. “Now. I want you now.”
She dropped her small pile of herring into the fire, stared at him, and saw something that scared her to her toes. “Oh, no!” she said. “Look what you’ve made me do, Bishop. Stop what you’re thinking and help me.” She was leaning over the fire, trying to pull the separate strips out of the flickering flames and ashes, but it was no good.
“Take mine, I don’t care, but first, I have to have you, Merryn. Now.”
“What’s wrong with you? You eat toasted bread and suddenly you’re overcome with lust? How could you want me? You wanted me before and then you pulled away. Admit it, you don’t really want me, you just want what I would bring you. What is different this time?”
How could he not want her? Oh, God, he wanted to come inside her and she wanted him to admit something? He liked the toasted bread. Hadn’t he already told her that? He shook his head, but nothing was there except roaring lust and he simply couldn’t control it, not now. He reached for her. To his surprise, she handed him a strip of the dried herring. He ate it, reached for her again, only to have her stick another strip into his mouth.
He said around the fish he was chewing, “I want to see you naked. I want your legs open wide. I want your hands on me, right now.”
“You’re not afraid that the curse will smite you?”
The curse? What utter nonsense. “Come here, Merryn. Take off that gown and come here.”
Slowly, she came up onto her knees, then stood, hands on hips, looking down at him. “No,” she said. “Go away, Bishop. Don’t talk like this. I’ve never heard you talk like this. Your face is shadowed, but I can see that your eyes look strange. No, stay where you are. Go away!”
“I cannot do both.” He saw her eyes nearly cross as he spoke those words, not bad words, with a bit of wit in them. He was the same, dammit. It was just the lust for her that was driving him over the edge. He heard the quick hitch in her breath before she turned on her heel and ran out of the cave.