Free White Wolf by David Gemmell Page B

heart, and yet you know they love another.”
    He did not know how to answer her, and sat quietly, holding her hand. Finally he said: “You are a finer woman than she can ever be, Dayan. In every way.”
    “But you regret marrying me.”
    “No! You are my wife, Dayan. You and I together.” He sighed. “Until death.”
    “Oh Olek. Do you mean that?”
    “With all my heart.” She squeezed his hand, and closed her eyes. He sat with her through the dawn, and into the day. She awoke again toward dusk. The fever had returned and she cried out in pain. Once more he bathed her face and body, trying to reduce the inflammation. Her beautiful face took on a sunken look, and her eyes were dark rimmed. A second swelling burst at the groin, staining the sheet. As night came on Skilgannon felt a dryness in his throat, and sweat began to drip from his brow into his eyes. He felt tenderness in his armpits. Gently he probed the area. Already the swellings had begun. Dayan sighed, then took a deep breath. “I think it is passing, Olek. The pain is fading.”
    “That is good.”
    “You look tired, my love. You should get some rest.”
    “I am fine.”
    “I have good news,” she said, with a smile, “though now is probably not the time to share it. I was hoping to be sitting in the garden with you, watching the sunset.”
    “This is a fine time for good news.” Skilgannon tried to drink some water, but his throat was swollen and inflamed, and it was difficult to swallow.
    “Sorai cast the runes for me. It will be a boy. Your son. Are you happy?”
    It was as if a white-hot iron had been plunged into his heart. Sorrow threatened to overwhelm him. “Yes,” he said. “Very happy.”
    “I hoped you would be.” She was silent for a while, and when she spoke next the delirium had returned. She talked of lunching with her father, and what a fine time they had today. “He bought me a necklace in the market. Green stones. Let me show you.” She struggled to sit up.
    “I have seen it. It is very pretty. Rest, Dayan.”
    “Oh, I am not tired, Olek. Can we go for a walk in the garden?”
    “In a little while.”
    She chattered on, and then, in midsentence, stopped. At first he thought she was sleeping, but her face was utterly still. Reaching out he gently pressed her throat. There was no pulse. A searing pain lanced his belly and he doubled over. After a while it passed. He gazed down at Dayan, then lay down beside her, drawing her in to an embrace. “I did not choose to fall in love with Jianna,” he said. “If I could have chosen it would have been you. You are everything a man could desire, Dayan. You deserved better than me.”
    He lay there for some hours as the fever grew. Finally delirium took him. He tried to fight it, forcing himself from the bed and falling to the floor. Then he had staggered to the gardens, and out into the meadows beyond.
    Skilgannon remembered little of what followed, save that he had tumbled down a steep incline, then crawled toward a distant building. He seemed to recall voices, and then gentle hands lifting him.
    He had awoken to a silent room in a church hospital. His bed was beside a window, and through that window he saw a cloudless sky, rich and blue. A white bird had glided across the sky. In that moment everything froze and Skilgannon experienced . . . what? He still did not know. For a single heartbeat he had felt something akin to perfection, as if he and the bird, and the sky, and the room were somehow one and bathed in the love of the universe. Then it passed and the pain returned. Not just the physical pain from the huge, lanced cysts and the terrible toll they had taken on his body, but the agony of loss as he remembered that Dayan was gone from the world, no longer to hold his hand, or to kiss his lips. No more to lie beside him on still summer evenings, her hand stroking his face.
    Despair clung to his heart like a raven.
    A young priest visited him on that first day and sat at his