Deep in conversation with his people, Eldri walked through the hall. He continued to hold Roca's hand, keeping her at his side. The curiosity of everyone around them washed over her like a fountain, soaking through her shields. Although she knew almost nothing of their language, she was developing a feel for its cadences and sounds, aided by her node. It sounded as if Eldri was making arrangements of some kind.

She earnestly hoped they included warm, dry clothes for the riding party.

Roca suddenly felt as if her shoulders heated up. Turning, she looked past the people around her.

Across the hall, Garlin was coming through the entrance, his hair disarrayed from the wind. A woman in a red robe walked at his side. He was watching Roca with a scowl, but when her gaze met his, he turned back to his robed companion.

Eldri slowed to a stop and took Roca's hands, drawing her to face him. "We will have a ceremony for Jacquilar in the morning. Then I will take you back to the port."

"Jacquilar?"

His voice caught. "The man who died."

She squeezed his hands, offering comfort with touch rather than words. His staff hastened off to take care of the arrangements, tactfully leaving their Bard alone with the unknown woman he had brought into his home.

Eldri curled his fingers around hers. "Tonight we will have a dinner in your honor."

She spoke gently. "You need not do this."

"But I must. I asked you here. It is not your fault we had a tragedy." He released one of her hands and raked his fingers through his hair, tousling the shoulder-length mane. "Never before has it been such a problem to come up here."

She ran her thumb over his thick fingers. "I wish I knew a way to make it better."

"You do just by being here." He lifted her hand and pressed his lips against her knuckles. Then he lowered her hand, turning it this way and that. "You have beautiful fingers. Strange, but pretty." A hint of his earlier mischief returned. "One wonders what you could do with them."

Roca flushed, remembering her fantasies about his hand. She disengaged her grip, feigning a coolness far different from what she felt. "Does one, now?"

"One does indeed." He led her over to a more private niche in the wall. "Surely we could learn-what is the word? Brad told me once." He paused. "Ah. I know. Anatomy. You must teach me your anatomy."

"Diplomacy."

"You have diplomatic anatomy?"

She barely managed to hold back her laugh. "I come here for diplomacy. Not anatomy."

"You break my heart, beautiful lady."

She slanted him a dry look. "Your heart is as strong as big, st.u.r.dy lyrine."

Eldri grinned, his grief seeming to ease, at least for this moment. He set her against one wall, in a carved archway that went nowhere. "Will you not give me a single kiss?"

"No."

He wasn't the least deterred. "You are an ice queen beyond compare, Roca. A matchless woman." He put his hand against the wall behind her, his palm near her head. "Can no man melt your heart?"

Roca couldn't help but smile. "Oh, Eldri, stop." She ducked under his arm.

"Come back," he protested. By the time he turned around, she had moved several paces away.

"We agreed," she said. "We do business here. No personal."

"I remember you saying this." His lips quirked. "I don't remember agreeing to it."

"You must behave."

Eldri sighed. "Very well." He approached her with more decorum. "Shall we have a conversation?"

Roca could tell he was hiding his sorrow behind bantering. She gentled her voice. "I wondered what call you this world."

He said a beautiful word, his voice chiming. Roca thought he must have incredible vocal cords, to create such melodic sounds. It happened when he spoke English, too, but much less so, perhaps because the phonetics didn't lend themselves as well to the music.

"Is a lovely word," Roca said. "Can you say again?"

"Lyshriol."

"Lyshriol." It sounded so dull and pedestrian on her lips.

Eldri smiled. "Something like that."

"So you not call this place Skyfall?"

He waved his hand in dismissal. "Brad's friends at Starlane Resorts call it that."

"Is wrong?"

"Not exactly." He paused. "It is hard to translate Lyshriol. It means something like 'the clouds have come to the ground.' "

Roca had to admit it was a clever interpretation by the resort planners. Skyfall resembled Eldri's translation, but at the same time it would have meaning to people from Earth, where the sky was the color of the clouds here. "Does it bother you that they say Skyfall?"

"What they say matters little."

"But when the others come, will not this bother you?"

"Others?"

"The people who want to build here."

"You talk in puzzles." When she started to answer, he shook his head. "Let us enjoy this night.

Tomorrow is so soon."

Roca let it go. His sorrow had come closer to the surface of his mind, clear now despite her barriers.

She wondered if she and Eldri could ever fully shield their thoughts from each other. The compatibility that linked them went further than desire or fascination. If only she had more time to know him. If only she wasn't supposed to wed Dayj Majda. If only.

Roca realized then that she felt more than Eldri's grief. Another anguish went deeper in him, the suppressed pain he had revealed in the plains when he had spoken with such vehemence:No! I am not different!He wanted to enjoy tonight, not because tomorrow would come too soon-but because he feared it would never come at all. It startled her that someone so alive and vibrant could feel such despair. He guarded that part of himself so tightly, she doubted she could pick up the reason for his dread even if she dropped her barriers all the way.

Outside, the snow continued to fall.

The dining hall made Roca's breath catch. Hundreds of white and green candles filled it with golden light.

Cl.u.s.ters of red bubbles hung under rafters made from green gla.s.swood. Mosaics in gold, blue, red, and purple gla.s.swood patterned the walls in star designs that fascinated her. In places, their symmetry broke into scenes of mountains, suns, and plains. Roca couldn't be certain, but she thought some of the images included stylized starships in the sky, symbols probably long forgotten by Eldri's people.

The room was smaller than the hall where they entered the castle, but still substantial. Along table filled its center, made from blue gla.s.swood that looked as deep as a sea when Roca gazed into it. Afire roared in the hearth at the far end of the hall, the flames gold, green, blue, and red, taking on the colors of the gla.s.swood logs they were consuming.

The people of the castle and the riders from the plains poured into the hall together, filling it with their musical voices and bright clothes. The men dressed like the riders, and some had overshirts lined with fur.

The women wore knitted leggings with fur-lined knee-boots, and tunics embroidered in glistening threads.

A shy girl had taken Roca to a chamber with sun and moon mosaics on the walls. She had given Roca a pair of leggings dyed a vibrant blue, and a gold tunic edged in blue and green embroidery. The leggings stretched to fit Roca's long legs and she managed to pull the fur-lined tunic down to her hips, but the clothes clung to her more snugly than to the other women, who were smaller. The boots hadn't fit at all, but Eldri had found a pair of his that she could wear.

Now Eldri sat at the head of the table, with Roca on his right. People filled the seats on both sides, and Garlin sat at the opposite end of the long table. No cla.s.s distinction seemed to exist here; these were the same folks who took the lyrine to the stables, tended the hall, and set the tables.

Roca doubted many of them were over fifty and most seemed much younger. But they didn'tlookyoung.

Garlin was one of the oldest adults, and Roca was beginning to think he hadn't reached forty. Everyone out of their teens showed signs of age: lines around the eyes, gray in their hair, drier skin that became leathery or loose on the eldest. Although she knew less advanced cultures had few means to delay aging, it stunned her to encounter such blunt evidence of that. She had never interacted with a culture this primitive. These people would be old and decrepit at an age when members of her own circle were just reaching the vigorous prime of their lives.

The servers were teenagers. They brought out pale stone dishes heaped with steaming entrees, then took their places at the table. Roca blinked at the food. It was all bubbles, nothing but bubbles in a mult.i.tude of sizes, shapes, and colors. A youth piled her plate high with fragrant spheres.

Eldri grinned at her. "Eat. Enjoy."

Roca managed a smile, aware of the others discreetly watching her. She picked up a utensil by her plate, a fork with two p.r.o.ngs extending from a cupped bowl similar to a spoon. Then she delved into her meal.

She ate slowly, giving her nanomeds time to a.n.a.lyze the food. Nothing reacted enough to stimulate a rejection in her body. If her meds encountered a poison they couldn't neutralize or dispose of, they might spur her to vomit. It wasn't the most elegant process, but it worked.

The food confused Roca, but it tasted delicious. Some bubbles were sweet, some sour, others crunchy or chewy. One particularly succulent entree was hard and spicy on the outside and meltingly smooth inside.

The man next to her sipped wine from his mug, which was made from the same white stone as the other table settings. After setting it down, he picked up a white cloth embroidered with green and gold stars and wiped his mouth. It surprised Roca, though she wasn't sure why. Then she realized, with embarra.s.sment, that she had expected people in a less advanced culture to have less refined manners.

Here the opposite was true, a reminder that she should avoid a.s.sumptions.

"Roca?" Eldri asked.

Startled, she turned just as a youth set a stone cup by her plate. The young man had the violet eyes ubiquitous among the Lyshrioli and pale lavender hair. Roca had never seen that color of hair occur naturally before, but it didn't seem uncommon here. She nodded to thank him for the drink, and he smiled shyly, blushing, which made the freckles across his nose stand out. Then he backed away, bowing.

Eldri leaned over to her. "You enchant my kin."

"These are your family?"

"Some. Others are friends." He indicated a girl farther down the table. "Chaniece is the daughter of my aunt's oldest cousin." He relaxed in his chair, nodding to the man on his left, beaming at others. Several people called out to him, and a man down the table raised his mug.

Roca smiled. "They like you."

His grin flashed. "They are a wise people."

She snorted. "And you are so terribly modest."

Eldri laughed freely, and gently, with no edge. "So Garlin admonishes me." He tapped the rim of her cup."This is water. I asked them to boil it for you."

"I thank you, kind sir."

"Perhaps, if I charm you enough, you will thaw enough to acknowledge that I am tolerable, eh?"

Roca laughed. "You are incorrigible."

He smiled companionably. "That too."

Conversation flowed around them, drawing Eldri's attention. Roca understood little of what anyone said.

Children chattered, and the younger ones ran around the hall when they grew bored with dinner.

Everyone used the tongue common to this land, a language called Trillian. No one but Eldri spoke English, though Roca knew Garlin could if he wished. The Lyshrioli language was sheer joy, caressing her ears. Her node was processing it, but she doubted she could learn enough in one day to converse.

She obviously fascinated Eldri's people. Their moods flowed over her, soaking through her shields.

Some of the women projected a friendly regard, looking forward to having someone new in their in-grown society; others resented Roca's favor with their Bard. Many of the men envied Eldri, including some who watched Roca with an appraising regard that disquieted her. Had she not been Eldri's guest, she wondered if she would have made it to her room alone that night, whether she wanted company or not.

Roca shuddered, remembering Darr, and her growing trust of Eldri faltered. As charming as he had been this evening, this was also the man who had hauled her off from the port. In his culture that might be considered a good-natured prank, but for her it evoked darker memories.

Yet despite all that, she enjoyed the festivities. She loved learning new customs and coming to understand people. She watched carefully, trying to adapt. Being an empath helped; she could catch nuances she might have missed otherwise. At one point she started to pick up a long knife by her plate.

As she touched the handle, shock came from everyone around her. She left the knife alone and the concern of the people faded. It wasn't until after Eldri started using his own knife that anyone else picked up theirs.

The meal took several hours, with many courses, ending with sweet yellow bubbles in syrup. Everyone had wine, a potent brew that made Roca's eyes water. It only took one cup to relax her quite agreeably; her nanomeds weren't designed to stop her from getting drunk.

After dinner, Roca went with Eldri up a staircase against the far wall. Below them, young people cleared the table while the older folks gathered into groups to talk and tell stories. Mellow from the wine, Eldri took her hand in his. Had she been sober, she would have pulled away, but right now she couldn't seem to remember why it was important she remain uninvolved. His large palm hinged around hers, enveloping her fingers, leaving her thumb free. She rubbed his hinge, wondering why his ancestors had redesigned their bone structure. Did his feet also bend that way, with four instead of five toes? She imagined pulling off his boots and trousers to find out, and heat spread from her face down her body.

"Do you wish to wash before you sleep?" he asked as they walked up the stairs. "Chaniece can bring you water. I will have her boil it."

She gave him a mellow smile. "Just make warm. No need boil. Only what I drink." Her voice slurred. "I clean myself with blue water."

He leaned closer to her. "I will help."

Roca waggled her finger at him. "Behave."

"But life would be so boring then."

Roca slanted him an admonishing look, but it had a different effect from what she intended, making his gaze turn sultry. He didn't look the least admonished. It occurred to her that as tipsy as she was right now, she might be letting him know more of what she felt than was wise.

They had reached the landing at the top of the stairs. Roca gazed over the hall below. It enchanted her, bathed in golden light, crowded with people in rustic clothes, the furniture glowing in deep gla.s.swood hues.

Roca sighed. "So beautiful."

"Yes," Eldri murmured. "It is."

She turned to find him watching her instead of the hall. His violet eyes mesmerized. Everyone here had eyes like that, but on him they looked different. She wondered why she had ever considered brooding men attractive. Right now, Eldri was gorgeous. His desire flowed over her, stirring reactions that should have stayed dormant.