Darkover: First Contact by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page B

all out now. It’s a long climb still to where we left our packs and equipment.”
    She said, twisting her lips in bitterness against the memory of how she had flung her pack from her, “Do you suppose they’ll still be where we left them?”
    MacAran’s hand closed over hers. “Don’t worry about it. Come,” he added gently, “you need rest. We can talk about it some other time.”
    She relaxed, letting him guide her steps in the darkness. MacAran moved along at her side, exploring this new sureness and wondering from where it had come. Never for a moment had he doubted that he was moving directly toward Camilla in the darkness, he could feel her in front of him, but there was no way to say that without sounding quite mad.
    They found the small shelter-tent set up in the lee of the rocks. Camilla crept inside gratefully, glad MacAran had spared her the struggle in the dark. MacAran felt confused; when had they set the tent up? Surely they had taken it down and stowed it in their packs before descending this morning? Had it been before or after they lay together by the stream-bank? The worry nagged at him but he dismissed it—we were both pretty freaked-out, we might have done anything, and hardly been conscious of it. He felt considerable relief at realizing that their packs were neatly piled inside— God, we were lucky, might have lost all our calculations . . .
    “Shall I fix us something to eat before you sleep?”
    She shook her head. “I couldn’t eat. I feel as if I’d been dream-dusting! What happened to us, Rafe?”
    “Search me.” He felt unaccountably shy with her. “Did you eat anything in the forest—fruit, anything?”
    “No. I remember wanting to, it looked so good, but at the last minute—I drank the water, though.”
    “Forget it. Water’s water and Judy tested it, so that’s out.”
    “Well, it must have been something ,” she argued.
    “I can’t quarrel with that. But not tonight, please. We could hash it ever for hours and not be any closer to an answer.” He extinguished the light. “Try to sleep. We’ve already lost a day.”
    Into the darkness Camilla said, “Let’s hope Heather was wrong about the blizzard, then.”
    MacAran didn’t answer. He thought, did she say blizzard , or was it just weather? Could the freak weather have had anything to do with what happened? He had the uncanny sense, again, that he was near an answer and could not quite grasp it, but he was desperately tired, and it eluded him, and still groping, he slept.

CHAPTER FIVE
    They found Marco Zabal after a vain hour of searching and calling in the woods, laid out smooth and straight and already rigid beneath the grayish trunk of an unknown tree. The light snow had shrouded him in a pall a quarter of an inch thick, and at his side Judith Lovat knelt, so white and still beneath the drifting flakes that at first they thought in dismay that she had died too.
    Then she stirred and looked up at them with dazed eyes and Heather knelt beside her, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and trying to get her attention with soft words. She did not speak during all the time that MacLeod and Ewen were carrying Marco back to the tent, and Heather had to guide her steps as if she were drugged or in a trance.
    As the small dismal procession wound through the falling snow Heather felt, or fantasied, that she could still feel their thoughts spinning in her own brain, Ewen’s black despair . . . what kind of doctor am I, lie fooling around on the grass while my patient runs out berserk and dies . . . MacLeod’s curious confusion entangled in her own fantasy, an old tale of the fairy folk she had heard in childhood, the hero should never have woman or wife either of flesh and blood nor of the faery folk, and so they fashioned for him a woman made of flowers . . . I was the woman of flowers . . .
    Inside the tent Ewen sank down, staring straight ahead, and did not move. But Heather, desperately anxious at Judy’s