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He held it out to her again. “The last mouthful is for you.”
He had drunk less than half, but she could not argue the point further. She took the cup with a nod and gratefully drained it, while Arash with quick efficiency cleaned up the remains of their meagre meal.
He stood, drawing his right foot under him in the awkward way she was used to, and Lana unconsciously tightened her lips and shook her head. She knew something could be done, if not to restore full function to the knee, at least to relieve the constant pain she was sure he suffered. She had asked a couple of surgeons about his case, and the prognosis was pretty clear. Why wouldn’t he let her father finance the operation?
They shouldered their backpacks in silence. “Ready?” Arash asked briefly, and at her nod stepped into the wind and started off. Lana followed as the rope that joined them lost its slack.
Her hands were cold. She had only two thin pairs of gloves, and other than drawing her hands up inside her sleeves there wasn’t much she could do to warm them. Pockets were out of the question most of the way—she needed her arms free for balance.
The wind was horrible; she had never experienced such cold, strong winds in her life. Thank God now, except for gusts, it mostly came from behind. Whenever it blew into her face and her nose, terrifyingly, it seemed to suck the breath from her lungs.
They had been heading downhill for some time. More than once she was blown against Arash’s back. On each occasion he stopped, firm as a rock, till she got her balance, then with a brief word set off again.
“I suppose that’s a knack you get when you’re raised in the mountains,” she called once, but if he answered her, the wind snatched away his words.
It was funny—she didn’t like him, but she trusted him. There was no one she would rather have been in this trouble with, no one she would have trusted more to get her through this.
She searched for her reasons. Because he was not a man who lied to himself. Arash never disguised his perception of reality in order to bolster his ego.
How rare that was among men.
She knew there was no one Kavi trusted more. “Arash is my right hand,” she had heard him say to Alinor once. “If I only think about a thing, it is done, as if my own hand had done it.”
He was as fine a warrior as any of his famous ancestors: the Parvanis were a nation of storytellers and she had heard plenty of stories about Arash’s war exploits, from everyone but him.
She had nothing but respect for him as a man. She had never seen him perform an ungenerous act.
Except one.
It was a pity they couldn’t like each other. But chemistry was like that, sometimes. Something primitive operating in spite of all rational process.
And she, of course, had other reasons.
They came to ground that sloped sharply upwards, and here, the vegetation having got a little thicker, the path was visible. Arash turned up a defile, and the wind simultaneously changed direction and blasted fiercely at them. The snow it carried was cold and hard, stinging her face with sudden ferocity.
Losing her balance, Lana stumbled and cried out, but though the wind seemed to steal the cry right from her throat, Arash turned and stepped quickly down to her, his hand outstretched.
She grasped it and recovered her balance, her heart beating so hard and fast that she was lightheaded for a moment. She clasped her other hand to her chest and blew out a relieved breath.
“Thanks!”
Her pack was heavy enough to have made a fall nasty. She might have broken a bone. His grip was firm, and he held her for an extra second to be sure she was safe. Her heart was still going like a drumroll.
“All right?” Arash asked. “It will be easier very soon now.”
She nodded, and he let her hand go, turned and went on.
For a moment she stood frowning down at her hand. Just with that brief touch his hand had warmed her freezing fingers.
After a long struggle, half-blinded by the snow, they crested the ridge, and the world was transformed. Lana, breathing heavily from exertion, gasped at her first glimpse of what lay below.
Behind was the familiar white and grey of rock and mountain and snow, but at their feet the ground opened, as if a giant knife had cut a gash in the fabric of the earth and the two sides had been pulled apart to reveal the earth’s deepest beauty in a vast, rich valley.
“But it’s magic!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Oh, Arash, how beautiful! It’s like—it’s like Shangri-La!”
It was green with spring growth and the early buds on numerous trees. There were neatly planted orchards in a dozen directions, as well as the wild growth of natural forests.
There were villages, and farms with the neat, centuries-old terracing she had come to expect in Parvan. There were sheep and goats freckling the fields, and their bells jangled on the wild wind as shepherds hastily drove them home.
As everywhere in Parvan, there was evidence of the Kaljuks’ destructive bombs. Terraced fields were smashed, a roofless house gaped helplessly at the coming storm, sad skeletons of a burnt orchard clawed emptily at the sky.
But there were also signs everywhere that the inhabitants were rebuilding their lives. A half-finished new roof, the fresh bricks of a rebuilt muezzin tower, freshly plowed land.
Far to their right, a river cut through a rocky gorge and thundered in a massive, breathtaking waterfall down to the valley floor so far below. There it continued its journey as a river again, glistening between rich hilly banks all along the valley till it was lost to view.
At their feet the path they had been following suddenly became visible as a trail leading along the steeply sloping side of the valley down towards the river. It branched out in many directions, and she realized that this path was the inhabitants’ link to the caravan route and the outer world.
A blast of wind drove more stinging snow into her face as she paused to catch her breath, and Arash said, “We must hurry to get to cover. There is still some way to go.”
“Has the valley been cleared of mines?” she asked.
He nodded. “This valley was mostly spared the mines in any case, being so close to the Barakat border. The Kaljuks were afraid of bringing the Barakat Emirates into the war against them. If a pilot had made a mistake, if the mines or the bombs fell across the border…”
“I thought Central Barakat came in on Prince Kavi’s side.”
“Prince Omar is Kavi’s cousin and mine. He fought the war unofficially. His brothers, too, sent money and arms. But to engage the Barakat Emirates officially—the Kaljuks were at great pains to give them no excuse to formally declare war.”
“So this valley was luckier than some.”
He twisted his head in a nod. “As you say.”
“What is its name?” she asked, but Arash shook his head.
“Save your questions, Lana.”
He did not take the main path, leading to the left and sharply down, but a less-defined, though still visible, route to the right, in the direction of the waterfall. High on the green slope, it seemed more of a goat track than a human pathway.
Suddenly the storm broke in earnest. The muddy goatprints began filling with snow. The pattern of the wind was visible in the snowflakes’ whirling dance. Her eyes traced whorls, and spirals, and long sweeping blasts, and leaping chaos, all within the space of a few seconds.
The thought entered her mind—the secret of life is in those patterns, if only I could understand them. Then she blinked in surprise. She must be lightheaded from exertion and lack of calories. Or rapture of the heights.
One of Kavi’s bodyguards was a walking, talking sex bomb, as far as Lana was concerned. Arash Khosravi was powerfully built, and in their many discussions about the mysterious trio of Parvanis attending the university, Lana and Alinor convinced themselves that he really was a bodyguard.
He was also ruggedly good-looking, his eyes were a deep, unbelievably sexy violet, and he exuded masculine sexual confidence.
When he looked at her, Lana never felt that assessment in his gaze that she had learned to hate from men, never felt that question hovering in the air between them: Could I?
Arash’s sexual assessment was very different. When he looked at her, she seemed to hear a voice inside her head, saying, You have never wept with pleasure. I will make you do so. Or You have never been given all that you need. I will teach you how much more you need than you believe now.
She was sure he didn’t guess how far she was from the experience of real sexual pleasure.
When Kavian and Alinor started to date, Lana and Arash of course were often thrown together. Up close she had found him breathtaking. Mysterious, elemental. He was so different from the men she knew.
Even the way he carried himself was different. He walked as though the air were his own, and with every step his body seemed to restate a deep connection with the earth, as though his movements were part of the earth’s breath.
For a while she had been convinced the deep, almost primitive attraction she felt was mutual. She had told herself that Arash was choosing his moment. She imagined that he was deliberately building the intensity between them, increasing their anticipation.
She wished she had the courage to tell him her anticipation didn’t need any help. She had never felt such powerful sensual excitement in a man’s presence. Looking forward to the day Arash would make his move, she would burn and freeze and melt and shiver all at the same time.
Maybe, if she had not been so totally inexperienced, she might have been more confident that he would welcome some move from her. But he made her so nervous. What if she was imagining it all? What if her hormones had just made her sexually crazy?
The day drew nearer and nearer when he would go home….
Each day her heart ached a little more. Each day she thought, This will be the day. Each day she trembled when he was near.
And then the impossible arrived. Kavi and Alinor were leaving for Parvan the next day, and Arash was going with them. And with a deep sense of shock, Lana had realized that he was never going to make his move. And she might never see him again.
That night, at a farewell party at Kavi’s place, a little drunk—a little drunk and a lot desperate—Lana had stared across the room at Arash Khosravi where he leaned against a wall watching the proceedings, and knew that this was her last chance and that she could not let him go without a word….
She heard the introductory strains of a slow sexy song and, swaying across the room to where he stood, had slipped her body into his surprised hold, and her arms around his neck.
“Dance with me, Arash,” she breathed softly, smiling. “You’re going home tomorrow. Dance with me tonight.”
They struggled along the path that Arash chose. The evening closed in, and below them, all along the valley, lights came on in villages and isolated farms. And still they walked, the path dropping very gently as it proceeded around the valley’s slope, leading closer and closer to the waterfall. Its comforting rumble grew steadily louder, even against the blast and thunder of the wind and the thickening fall of snow.
She realized, after a while, that he had some specific goal in mind, and knew exactly how to get there. Several times before the snow got deep enough to cover all trace of the track, she noticed other tracks branching off, leading perhaps to this or that distant flickering light or cluster of lights marking a farmhouse or a village. But he always chose his path without hesitation.
Ahead of them there seemed to be nothing but shadow and the sound of the falls. Yet he moved sure-footedly, not pausing to take his bearings.
Then at last, just before evening darkened into night, when she thought her fingers and her nose must be black with frostbite, he stopped. The snow whirled, and Lana gasped as a white-grey wall loomed up in front of her.
A door creaked, and Arash led her through into a courtyard. There was less protection here than she would have imagined from the height of the wall, but the reason became evident when another gust swept aside the falling snow to reveal massive damage a little further along.
“Ya Sulayman! Ya Suhail!” Arash called, but his voice was eaten up in the roar of the storm.
There was no light anywhere.
“Is there a house?” Lana asked, peering around her. The wall was fairly typical, a kind she had seen before. It probably surrounded a large house and garden and perhaps an orchard. Generally such a place was the home of the sheikh or tribal leader, or the village chief. In her travels, finding the best projects to undertake—digging a new well here, rebuilding the mosque school there—she had often been offered the hospitality of such homes.
So it was likely that Arash had brought her to the house of the local sheikh. But it was strange that there were no lights. The house of a village chief should be full of people and lights, and, in weather like this, the courtyard and even some of the rooms might be crowded with animals. She wondered if it was even still standing.
“Yes, there is a house,” Arash responded, after shouting again and receiving no reply. “What is left of it.”
He moved forward, and she had to follow. Then, as they got closer, the snow briefly cleared, and she caught a broad vista of a once palatial, but badly damaged house. It had obviously been the home of an important sheikh. Probably the tribal leader of the whole valley, with a pedigree going back centuries.
Even half shrouded by the storm and cloaked in night, the ruin made her shake her head in sorrow. It must have been a beautiful place, built on several terraced levels up the hillside.
As they walked she saw the intricately patterned paving stones under her feet, broken now, and a dry channel said that a spring had once made its way through the garden. There were the remains of delicate archways and, just visible on the far side of the flat roof, an intact dome.
Although there were some signs of industry—a neat pile of new bricks, some boarded-up windows—no extensive repair seemed to have begun.
Arash led her towards a doorway and pushed open the door, and she followed him inside, out of the wind’s icy blast.
He shoved the door shut against the wind. They stood for a moment in total darkness. Catching her breath, she felt him fumble with something.
“Didn’t we bring a flashlight?” she asked, and found that she was speaking in a whisper.
“One moment,” Arash said, in a normal voice, and just then a match flared and she saw his hand reach for the glass chimney of an oil lamp on a small shelf just above her eye level at the doorway.
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