“I don’t want to be—” He snapped his mouth shut.

“—any more of a nuisance that you’ve already been?” she guessed.

“Something like that.”

“On a long enough trip, everyone takes their turn at being a pain in the ass. Don’t let it worry you. Morlock was sort of an idiot about that glass flower, but you don’t see it bothering him.”

“I don’t see anything bothering him.”

“And you’d like to be like that? I suppose I understand. When I was young and foolish, I felt the same way. But in the intervening years, I discovered two things. One is that things bother Morlock more than he lets on. He just doesn’t show it the way we do because he wasn’t raised by men and women. The other thing was: I’d rather be me than anyone else in all the worlds.”

“Of course,” he breathed. It was a confession of his adoration. He knew it, only after he had spoken, and she knew it, too, he thought. Her radiant gray eyes fixed on his and she smiled. He reached reflexively for his mask, but she reached it first with her long, clever fingers and tossed it across the shelter.

“If you touch that thing again tonight,” she said, smiling angrily, “I’ll strip your clothes off and toss your bare ass out into the snow.”

“I don’t want you to have to look at the hole in my face,” he said, turning away from her. “My beautiful face,” he added bitterly.

She took him by the chin and turned that face toward her again. “I’m older than you are,” she said, “and I know that something can be broken and still be beautiful.”

“Like me.”

“Like your face. You are not broken. I’ve seen you struggling with this, becoming a man under the weight of it and . . . and other things. But yes. I still find your face beautiful.”

She kissed the wound where his nose had been. He felt with horror her soft, firm lips on the ragged, seeping edges of his wound. He was shocked to the core, and without thinking he pushed her violently away. She landed on her elbows next to his discarded mask, her eyes wider and more luminous than ever and a crazy, terrifying grin on her face.

“That’s the way you want to play it, eh?” she said.

She launched herself with her elbows and landed on top of him. He tried to hold her away from him, but she was so strong. . . . Plus, she cheated by tickling him where his leg met his hip, which never failed to make him convulse (although he had no idea how she knew that). She rewarded herself with a long, wet kiss (on his mouth this time, thank the Strange Gods), and he could not even try to hold her away any longer.

“I’m not worthy of you,” he whispered in her ear.

She laughed wickedly and the sound stabbed him with pleasure. “That’s not your problem, Uthar. The only thing you have to decide is whether you want to fuck me.”

“Always have,” he whispered.

“Then get your damn clothes off. No, never mind!” Her left hand danced across the fastenings for his clothing while her right hand did the same for hers. In seconds they were rolling around unclothed on the floor of the shelter and he was exulting in the sacred, unspeakable beauty of her nakedness: rosy ivory skin shading to golden brown on her arms and face, iron muscles moving under her sheath of female softness, mouth wet on his, tongue searching desperately for his, then he was on her, ungracefully, eagerly, and she guided him with her clever hands, and her pubic hair scratched along the shaft of his penis as he sank into her, and she was hot and wet, hotter than the dying sun, wetter than the sea.

The world was silent. There was no sound anywhere.

Uthar moved his hips as far back as he dared; he felt he would die if his penis didn’t stay inside her vulva. Then he rode that silken slide of ecstasy down to its end again, and one more time, and then his body was shaken by a storm of orgasm. It was pleasure enough to unhinge the mind, yes, and it was a relief, yes, and it hurt. It hurt the way it hurts when you’ve been carrying something for too long, so long you’ve almost forgotten what it was like before you were carrying it, and then you set it down, and it’s wonderful to be free of it, and only then are your muscles free to feel pain.

He lay atop her, gasping out words of love and worship, and the world wasn’t silent anymore.

He heard his beloved’s voice as if from far away, through the golden fog of carnal ecstasy: “Well. That wasn’t so bad. How soon can you go again?”

It was a long night, and yet too short.

In morning’s blank, ugly light her beauty was still sacred, transcendent, superbly practical. She set about the tasks of the morning as if they had sex every night.

As the others were still disestablishing the occlusion over their shelter, and somewhat out of earshot, he said to her, “If—”

She said, “I’ll tell you when I’m done with you.”

And that was what he had to hold onto that day. She was not done with him. She had never, in the course of the entire night, said that she loved him. And of course, love had little to do with her choice of a life-mate. And would a demimortal like her condescend to be the life-mate of a wholly mortal man whose life was so much shorter than hers?

The worst possible way to look at it was this: she was mating with him because, nosed or noseless, he was the only eligible man for thousands of miles. This was all the more possible, since he’d heard her remark to Morlock something about “my brother, a dwarf, and a meat-puppet that looks like a werewolf.” Kelat wasn’t any of these things; hence, last night—and tonight, possibly, and perhaps an indefinite number of nights. Then nothing, when she had a longer list to choose from.

It was worth it, he decided. He’d have given up a thousand noses to have what he had with her now, however long it lasted.

The random assignments of shelter mates continued. When Kelat and Ambrosia had a shelter to themselves, they coupled like murkles in heat. Otherwise, they were companions on the road, no different than the others. Kelat assumed that the others knew, but nevertheless no one ever referred to it, giving the affair a pleasing quality of sneakiness and privacy.

One day, Kelat was concerning himself with numbers (the bites of food left in his disturbingly light pack; the odds that he and Ambrosia would pair off tonight), when he saw a piece of ice falling from the sky.

The weather had been as monotonous as the road north: clear and cold. He wondered if this was the first blast of an ice storm . . . but the sky was cloudless; the silver sun glittered on the ice, almost an arch, or a. . . . There were scales or something on the arch. . . .

Liyurriu snarled and ran forward, but it was too late: the gigantic ice-dragon’s tail slammed down and trapped the Ambrosii and Deor beneath it.

The werewolf ran on. Kelat threw off his pack and ran after him, drawing his spear as he went.

The ice dragon’s gigantic wolflike head slithered into view. It was almost impossible to see its glassy outlines against the white snow. But Kelat could see hollow fangs that dripped with something like venom. . . .

Liyurriu had closed with the dragon’s head and seemed to fly up into the air. Then Kelat realized the werewolf was climbing something—some feathering, or icy plates on the side of the serpentine head.

He kicked off his snowshoes and leaped for the same—hoping it was there rather than actually seeing it. He landed a foot or two off the ground, sliding across a piece of nearly invisible ice, leaving scars from his cleated boots. He jumped at the next feather, and the next, until he was beside Liyurriu in the back of the thing’s gleaming, surprisingly narrow neck.

It was ware of them, and the head began to twist around. That was good because it was turning away from their companions, still trapped under the tail. It was also bad because they nearly fell off. Liyurriu and Kelat both grabbed for the nearest dorsal plate and managed to hang on.