“In fact, just you and me, to put it shortly,” said Aryenis laughing happily.
“Yes, Shahzadi, just that. And you will show me that you want that—and me?”
“Must I show you?”
“Always. It isn’t only women that want to be told and shown the things they know. Men also sometimes. You see a man may come—probably will come—to disbelieve the things he knows, or thought he knew, unless he’s shown them clearly and repeatedly.”
“And then, O Harilek?”
“And then, Shahzadi, good-bye to happiness. Will you say good-bye to it?”
“Never!” said Aryenis, decisively. “I shall always show you the things you know. I shall just keep your eyes and ears, your mind and your every sense, so full of them that you’ll never have an instant to think of anything or any one except them and me. That please you, man of mine?”
“Yes, lady mine. That sketches heaven as in your song, ‘Just a man and a woman, all in all.’ One can’t want more than that.”
Then we rode in silence a space up the lane to Paulos’s house, where Aryenis had first talked of the things that matter, and of that greatest of gifts that man or woman might give if they had the right marks. The sun sank behind the western hills, leaving the eastern wall that ringed round Sakaeland one vivid glow of crimson snow above the long purple and lilac shadows under the cloudless sky.
I helped Aryenis from her mare, and we went up the grey stone steps to the open door with the firelight gleaming in the hall. She checked on the threshold, and I remembered just in time that it is ill fortune for a bride to cross the doorway of her home for the first time on foot. I picked her up in my arms and carried her into the hall, and as I put her down our lips met in the first kiss in our own home, in the firelit hall with the carved timbers, the half-seen trophies, the gleaming wood of floor and chair and settle.