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at all. The choice is hers.”
    “Is it, Lord?” Torma grunted at his shoulder.
    Kavan grinned at him. “If I give the maid her head it will seem that way to her.”
    He was counting on her to remember her duty as he left the assembly behind. She believed in the augur. What she didn’t know was the augur was controlled by his own mind, as the alchemist had once controlled it. He wondered if she’d encountered the alchemist’s spirit yet. The last time someone had disturbed him he’d altered the course of the water and flooded the village.
    A vision of her anxious emerald eyes and long silvery hair stole into his thoughts and his mouth curved into a smile. He’d experienced conflicting emotions as soon as he’d set eyes on her. She was destined to be his lady. He was convinced of it, despite the counsel of his mother.
    Tiana had recognized the undeniable awareness between them too. He’d seen it in her eyes. Yes, she was denying it to herself now, refusing to admit to the inevitable. Her early temple training had taught her to ignore the call of the flesh. It would be easy to take her but he’d seen too many Truarc maids die from rough treatment. Those who survived capture and settled down were those treated gently, like the mother of Javros. Truarc women made caring mothers.
    Leaving Torma to guard his door he strode on to the battlements and gazed up at the High Place. Tiana’s sleep would be uneasy. The forest beyond the sanctuary was full of night creatures and their gibbering would disturb her sleep. Soon, the moon would move to the other side of the planet and she’d lose its light. All she would have for company then were the stars above her and the spirit of the alchemist, whose body was preserved in a crystal tomb behind the fall.
    And the Pitilan, he reminded himself, grimacing. He hadn’t forgotten it, just pushed the problem of it to the back of his mind. The beast was a laboratory abomination, and as such had no part in the scheme of things. He’d been forced to make arrangements with the watchers to disable the creature. Then it would be killed. Before he brought the rift together, he would insist that all the Pitilan left on Truarc, and their gene bank, be destroyed.
    He admitted that Tiana was not without courage in her defiance of him. Her tongue had a barbed edge to it, and she wouldn’t have willingly come through the portal if his hawk had not tricked her into it. He’d learned that threats were met by stubborn reasoning by her and wondered whether persuasion might be a better course to take. Her intelligence was based on a strong intuitive sense, as yet untapped.
    The fact that she was a kindred spirit excited him, though he’d be the first to admit his own power was slowly being leached by the concentration needed for his task, plus the power of the pivot stone. There was also a strong possibility he’d be destroyed by the joining of the rift, which was why he needed to endow her with the means to produce the God child.
     A smile played around his mouth. To coax Tiana from the barrier she surrounded herself with and show her the wonders of his world would be a challenge. She would sense trickery and resist, pitting her wits against his. Not there was any doubt about the outcome. The silver-haired witch would be his eventually. It was written. He just hadn’t expected to have to work so hard for her trust.
    “Seven dawns,” Kavan whispered, his flesh pricking with delight at the thought of a different chase. “I shall send you dreams to pleasure your nights, daughter of light.”
    His voice spread across the lake in widening ripples, whispered upon the rocks below the fall and sent vibrations up through the crystal pipes.
    The body of the alchemist shivered in his tomb.
     

Chapter Four
     
    As Tiana had promised herself, the next morning she bathed. Lowering her shivering body into a reed and fern-sheltered pool above the fall, she delighted in the feel of the cool, silky water,