Read Arrow's Fall for Free Online Page A

mat whole stack in a minute—yes, Skif and Cymry deserve what they got. Poor Talia would have been ready to skin both of them given the chance. ...”
    “Oh?”
     
    Kris was more and more pleased by Dirk’s reactions, He needed no further urging, and related the tale with relish, stopping short of the fight—which had been caused, in an obscure sort of way, by Dirk—and the swimming match that followed. He insisted then that they ought to take themselves out of the way of those students assigned to clearing tables.
    “Fine; my room or yours?” Dirk was doing his damnedest to keep his feelings from showing. Unfortunately, Kris knew him too well; that deadpan dicing face he was putting on only proved he was considerably on edge.
    “Good gods, not yours—we’d be lost in there for a week! Mine; and I still have some of that Ehrris-wine, I think. . . .”
    The tales continued over the wine and a small fire, both of them lounging at full length in Kris’ old, worn green chairs. And every other sentence Kris spoke seemed to have something to do with Talia. Dirk tried his best to seem interested, but not as obsessed as he actually was. Kris let the shadows hide his faint smile, for he wasn’t fooled a bit.
    But not once did Kris let fall the information Dirk really wanted to know—and finally, emboldened by the wine, he came out and asked for it.
    “Look, Kris—you’re the soul of chivalry, but we’re blood-brothers, you can tell me safely! Were you, or weren’t you?”
    “Were we what?” Kris asked innocently.
    “S-sleeping together, you nit!”
    “Yes,” Kris answered forthrightly. “What did you expect? We’re neither one of us made of ice.” He figured that it was far better for Dirk to hear the truth—and to hear it in such a way that he took it for the matter-of-fact thing that it was. Talia and Dirk were probably tied neck-and-neck for the position of his “best friend.” And that was all he and Talia meant to each other. He could no more conceive of being in love with her than with the close friend he now faced. He watched Dirk covertly, weighing his reaction. “I—I suppose it was sort of inevitable—”
    “Inevitable—something more. Frankly, during that first winter it was too blamed cold to sleep alone.” He launched into the whole tale of their blizzard-ordeal—with editing, He didn’t dare reveal how Talia’s Gift had gotten out of control. Firstly, it wasn’t anything Dirk needed to know about. Secondly, he was fairly certain it was something that should be known by as few as possible. Elcarth and Kyril, certainly—but he was pretty well certain it just wouldn’t be ethical to go around telling anyone else without Talia’s express permission.
    He concluded the tale with a certain puzzlement; Dirk seemed to have suddenly gone dumb, and very soon pled exhaustion and left for his own room.
    * * * *
    Oh, Lord. Of all the damned situations to be in—his very best friend in the entire world with his hooks quite firmly in the first woman Dirk had even wanted to look at in years.
    It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t any damned fair. No woman in her right mind was even going to want to look at him with Kris around. And Kris—
    Kris—was he in love with Talia? And if he were . . .
    Gods, gods, they certainly belonged together.
    No, dammit! Kris could have any female he wanted, Herald or no, without even lifting a finger! By all the gods, Dirk was going to fight him for this one!
    Except that he hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about fighting for her. And—Kris was like a brother, more than a brother. This wasn’t any kind of fair to him—
    He lay sleepless for hours that night, staring into the darkness, tossing and turning restlessly, and cursing the nightjar that was apparently singing right outside his window. By dawn he was no closer to sorting out his own feelings than he had been when he threw himself down to rest.
     
Two
    “Talia!”
    Elspeth greeted Talia’s appearance at