No Other Love Read Online Free Page A

bones
was the way her features resembled those of Ananka. It could not
be, unless it was some trick played on his mind by forces he did
not understand. He longed to pull the covering off Merin’s head, to
see if her hair was the same light golden brown as Ananka’s had
been. What in the name of all the stars was going on here?
    She looked right at him with those wonderful
eyes and said in all innocence, “I have recorded everything I can
from this position. Will you show me the grotto stair, please?”
    There was nothing for it but to stop gazing
into her eyes like a star-struck boy and begin searching for the
steps. Knowing where they ought to be, he found them soon enough,
buried beneath six centuries of dirt and leaves and overgrowth. He
and Merin started down the slope, all that was left of the ancient
masonry.
    “Take my hand,” he advised. “You don’t want
to fall.”
    “I need both hands for the recorder.” That
wasn’t true. She could have put the recorder away until she reached
the bottom of the slope, but she did not want to touch him. Until
just a few minutes ago she had never looked directly at a man who
was looking back at her. When she met Herne’s gaze she had felt
stripped, ravished, lost forever, and she had understood why she
had been trained to keep her gaze always lowered in the presence of
others. Appalled by her own response though she was, and horrified
to find herself speaking an untruth for the second time in less
than a day, still she wanted to raise her eyes to his again. But
she dared not; in such uninhibited behavior lay the seeds of
disease and disaster, complete social disorder, war and all its
terrors….
    She kept her eyes fixed on her recorder.
Because she wasn’t watching her footing, she tripped over a root.
The slope was too steep for her to regain her balance. She bounced
against Herne, who was a little ahead of her. He grabbed at her to
pull her upright, but he missed and they both went down, rolling
and sliding, trying to catch branches and bushes and rocks along
the way until they stopped in a heap of bodies and shoulder-kits.
Dazed and breathless, Merin felt the heavy strength of a masculine
body pressed firmly on top of her. She was so shaken that she
scarcely noticed the way her head was hanging over the edge of a
large, dark hole.
    “That,” said Herne, his mouth pressed close
to her ear, “is the entrance to the grotto.”
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Last night there was a stream running along
here,” Herne said.
    They were using the lamp he carried in his
shoulder-kit to light their way down the slippery, earth-clogged
steps. Merin looked where he indicated, but saw only a rock channel
worn smooth by the passage of water at some time in the past.
    “There was a lake here,” he added when they
reached the bottom of the steps, “a beautiful, blue lake. And
draperies blowing in the wind. And a couch, right there.”
    What they saw now was a small black pool. The
walls and roof of the underground chamber dripped viscous moisture.
There was no sign of billowing draperies, nor of any luxurious
couch. Instead, there was a ledge of bare rock and on it the
skeleton of a small, bat-like creature. The breeze was gone, too.
The air was heavy, and as still as the water in the stagnant pool.
All of this Herne and Merin saw in bits and pieces as he moved the
lamp about, and where the light did not reach weird shadows loomed.
Merin moved closer to him.
    “How did you know this chamber was here?” She
did not look at him. She concentrated on the recorder. Tarik would
expect detailed notes on this discovery. “You cannot have seen
everything you are speaking of in the second or two during which
the woman appeared to you by the campfire, and what I have seen
since we began to explore this site does not match the descriptions
you have been providing to me.”
    “It was later,” Herne said, speaking slowly
and, Merin thought, reluctantly. “In the middle of the night she
brought