He shrugged his shoulders unconvincingly. 'There's nothing I can do about it now. I couldn't make him a prisoner.'
He took off his warm wrappings, refitted the one-piece garment, then sat down on the steps of the altar and began sharpening his sword. But all at once he cast away the whet-stone, a hard and bitter edge on all his features.
'It's not fair,' he said. 'I wanted him to live….. I wanted him to be my friend.'
Sylviana studied him wordlessly, touched and taken back, as ever, by the power of his primal emotions. And when he looked up at her, she saw again the restless and hungry expression that so haunted her. She turned away, drawn to him as on a chain, yet afraid. Why did he move her so?
'I didn't want to lose Akar, either. Sometimes if you love someone, you have to let them go.' Now it was she who was unconvincing. And all at once, he wanted her.
Kalus rose, all his sorrows and reawakened desires now focused with total singularity upon the object, the living being of his love. He moved closer, and took her by the shoulders, and turned her towards him. There was nothing else in all the world.
'I want to make love to you.'
He kissed her, and stripped away the barriers between them, and touched her with the roots of his being, overflowing like a well-spring upon the earth. She had not the strength to resist him, and soon lost all desire to do so. He led her to his bed, and together they breathed deeper air than they had for many days.
*
Later that night, as they slept side by side, Kalus dreamed that he rode across a vast expanse on the back of a great horse, its silver mane flying in the wind of its speed. Then as the sun set the land became dark and he walked alone, till in the dense and shadowed underbrush there was a rustle of movement, and a great cat called his name.