Drakis thought about this for a moment, the silence resting easily between them. “Elder Shasa. .”
“Yes, Drakis.”
“Have you determined whether I am this ‘prophet’ everyone is looking for?”
“Drakis, what a strange question,” Shasa said. “It seems to me that a prophet would know the answer to that question himself!”
“I don’t know, Elder,” Drakis replied. “Sometimes I believe it, and sometimes I think it’s just nonsense. I hear the Dragon Song in my mind, but from what I understand so do many others. My name fits the prophecy, but then it’s a common name. . there is none more common among human slaves.”
“There seem to be a lot of people who want you to be the Drakis of prophecy,” Shasa replied. “Perhaps you should ask a different question.”
“A different question?”
“Yes,” Shasa said as he, too, gazed off across the harbor. “Perhaps you should ask yourself what you want. Do you want to be the Drakis of the prophecy. . or do you want something else?”
Drakis stared at the balding man sitting next to him for a moment.
“Because if you’re looking for something else. . then you might consider looking down that upper path around the western hill,” Shasa said casually. “I believe I saw Mala following that same path toward the Lace Pools not ten minutes ago.”
Drakis smiled and stood up at once. “Thank you, Elder Shasa!”
“Write your own destiny, Drakis,” Shasa called after the warrior as he sprinted down the path.
Drakis could hear the cascade of the Lace Falls before he saw it, a gentle, quiet roar of water tripping down a rock face. The warrior in him knew that it masked the sound of his approach, and almost without thought he softened his footfalls and stepped more gingerly down the beaten path that wound between the dense undergrowth and the tree canopy above. The stream ran down the slope next to him, its clear, cool water rushing down toward Nothree far below. Before him, the forest was brightening as he neared the clear area around the pool.
He stopped just short of the water’s edge, holding his breath.
Mala.
She stood in the pool beneath the falls, the cascade of white water splashing around her shoulders and masking her body in tantalizing sheets. He could just make out the sweeping curve of her back above the surface of the pool, a hint of her breasts and the profile of her elegant neck as her face turned up into the tumbling water.
Mala turned toward the pool and dove, the momentary sight of her shoulders, waist, hips and legs shining in the morning sun taking his breath once more before the lacy foam on the surface that gave the pool its name hid her from him.
Her head surfaced near the center of the pool. She reached up out of the water with her glistening arms, and pushed the water back from her short hair.
“Hello,” he called gently across the water.
Mala turned suddenly toward him, but her startled, angry stare softened at once. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“If you’ve come for a bath, you’re too late,” she said, her shoulders just above the surface as she moved her arms back and forth through the water. “I claimed this pool, and it is mine by right. I will not share my private little paradise with anyone else-no matter how badly they need bathing-and you, most certainly, are desperately in need of a bath.”