Blade didn't groan. He howled like a madman as his hips bucked and thrashed and pounded himself into Crystal. The woman clung frantically to him as her pelvis took on a life of its own, as if he was a log she had to ride through foaming rapids.

At last she screamed, a scream muffled in Blade's chest and her own hair. She screamed again, then the scream turned into happy sobbing.

At last Crystal was silent and Blade caught his breath. She lay on top of him, still snugly fitted to him, and giggled.

«I caught you by surprise, with the Voice. Didn't I, Blade?»

«You did.»

«You say the Voice is not unknown among the English, just not lawful or much taught?»

«Yes. All the English women I knew who had the Voice were unlawful for me to bed. So I never had the Voice with a woman at the same time I was in her.» He grinned. «Next time I'll know what I'm doing.»

She laughed out loud. «You mean, this was your first time with a woman. You-ouch!» He pinched her admirably firm and rounded buttocks.

«No, it was not my first time bedding a woman. Nor will it be my last time bedding you.»

«I certainly hope not!»

It wasn't.

Blade and Eye of Crystal took to each other with enthusiasm, tenderness, and laughter. Blade would have enjoyed her company even without the sex, or the sex without the telepathy. Having everything made it just that much better.

Crystal taught Blade a few things about telepathy in sex. He discovered that he could arouse her by simply projecting the image of her writhing in climax. She promptly returned the favor. They found that if she brought him to climax by fellatio while they were in contact, she would also climax, nine times out of ten.

They discovered a lot of other things, which Blade knew he would have to report to Lord Leighton when he got back home. They would make interesting reading, and not entirely because of their value for the study of telepathy. For the first time Blade didn't like the idea of talking about his sex life in Dimension X as frankly as the Project required. He'd be revealing things he'd never thought were there to be revealed!

However, that didn't alter the fact that he was learning a lot about telepathy while he was having fun! If having Crystal's every little response written down in Lord Leighton's files helped give the Project controlled telepathy-well, they'd just have to be written down. This was all the more important, now that Cheeky was almost certainly gone for good.

Once he and Crystal became lovers, Blade found that he didn't think about Cheeky for days at a time, and when he did he didn't miss him as much as before. He wondered how much Crystal knew about Cheeky, and whether she was doing anything to affect his memory. Whether or not it was deliberate, he was grateful for the healing she was giving him.

Because he was so grateful, and for other reasons as well, Blade could never quite bring himself to explain to Crystal how soon he might have to leave her. She seemed to sense it anyway, and was remarkably cheerful about the prospect.

«We are good as we are, Blade. If we tried to be different, we might not be as good. My father says you are a man who has traveled far, and my Voice tells me the same. You would not wish to stop traveling, and if I asked you to you would be angry. Nor would I care to have as husband a man who might spend so much time away from my bed-Blade, have I hurt you?»

«No.» How to explain about Zoe, who'd left him for just about that reason, with the Official Secrets Act buggering up things even worse? He'd thought that memory and its pain were dead and buried, until the Guardian's probe of his memories showed him otherwise.

Eye of Crystal wasn't worried about being loved and left, but her father worried for her. Or at least Kyarta told Blade that, as nearly as he could understand. The Guardian's wife was handsome and charming and by no means stupid. But she kept changing the subject on a whim, and she never used two words when five would do half as well.

«He thinks you ought to be named Distant Eagle,» Kyarta said. «But that would be using an old name too soon after the man who brought it honor died."' She spent the next ten minutes telling him about the dead warrior Distant Eagle, before remembering that his name had really been Gray Eagle.

«He fears I will travel on and leave Crystal grieving?» Blade finally asked.

«Oh, yes,» she said. Another twenty minutes went by as Kyarta related tales of all the young women among the Uchendi who'd been loved and left during the last ten years, talking as if she'd known each one personally.

Blade felt his blood pressure rising, but kept his temper. He didn't want to annoy the woman. Like her husband, she would be a dangerous enemy, and she was telling him a lot of things about the Uchendi that just might be useful. He also suspected that she was a much better listener than she seemed, and would remember any slips of his tongue.

Finally, Kyarta ran down enough to say, «But I do not worry about Eye of Crystal. She knows what she's doing with you. She is strong.» And that was that.

Of course Eye of Crystal was strong, Blade realized. After all, she'd reached the age of twenty living with this woman without going out of her mind. He wondered sometimes how the Guardian put up with her.

The Guardian would not bother Blade or his daughter as long as his wife insisted they be left alone. And River Over Stones was not going to go against the blessing the Guardian had given Blade. At least not in public, and so far he'd found no chance to do anything in private.

The rest of the warriors of the Uchendi seemed to be waiting to make up their minds about Blade. Or perhaps they were waiting for someone to help them decide? Blade suspected it was the latter. The warriors of the Uchendi were an independent-minded lot, but in some matters they followed their leaders.

Who was the key leader in this case? It didn't take Blade long to know it was Winter Owl.

The Guardian's brother-in-law was the most famous living warrior of the Uchendi, one of the dozen greatest the tribe had ever known. He hadn't said anything against Blade, but he hadn't said anything much for him either. As long as he held his tongue, the warriors would keep an open mind on the subject of Blade of the English.

All very well, as far as it went. An open mind meant safety for Blade, but it didn't help the Uchendi. The Rutari might declare war any day; certainly they would make more raids. Blade knew he could help, if they let him, by giving the Uchendi weapons and teaching them to use them to overcome the shpugas. Without those hairy menaces, the Rutari would be no match for the plainsmen.

He'd need Winter Owl's support for any such new weapons, though. Without it, none of the warriors would listen to him. Even worse, Winter Owl might see Blade as a menace to his authority and influence. Then he would speak out against Blade, even in the face of the Guardian's blessing. Blade might have to leave the Uchendi for his own safety, and they would have to face their enemies with their two leaders quarreling.

An ugly picture, it seemed to Blade. And easily avoided, if he could just win over Winter Owl.

But how?