The third time I visited her, her niece was not home. She had gone off to help a friend in Buckkeep Town who had experienced a difficult birth. Jinna told me this after she had greeted me with a warm embrace and a lingering kiss. In the face of her willing ardor, my resolve to be restrained melted like salt in the rain. With no other prelude, she latched the door behind me, took my hand, and led me to her bedchamber. “A moment,” she cautioned me at the threshold, and I halted there. “Now come in,” she told me, and when I did, I saw the charm had been draped with a heavy scarf. She took a deep breath, like a hungry man anticipating a good meal, and suddenly all I could focus on was the surge of her breasts against the bodice of her gown. I told myself it was a foolish mistake, but nevertheless I made it. Several times. And when we both were spent and she was half-dozing against my shoulder, I made an even more foolish mistake.

“Jinna,” I asked her softly, “do you think this is wise, what we do?”

“Foolish, wise,” she had sleepily responded. “What does it matter? It harms no one.”

Her question was asked lightly, but I answered seriously. “Yes. I think it does. Matter, that is. And perhaps does harm.”

She heaved a heavy sigh, and sat up, brushing her tousled curls from her face. She peered at me nearsightedly. “Tom. Why are you always so determined to make this a complicated matter? We are both adults, neither of us is vowed to another, and I’ve promised you that you cannot get me with child. Why should not we take a simple, honest pleasure in one another while we may?”

“Perhaps for me, it feels neither simple nor honest.” I struggled to make my reasons sound sensible. “I do what I have taught Hap is not right to do: to be with a woman I have not pledged myself to. Did he tell me today that he was doing with Svanja what we have just done, I would rebuke him severely, telling him he had no right to—”

“Tom,” she interrupted me. “We give our children rules to protect them. When we are grown, we know the dangers, and choose for ourselves what risks we take. Neither you nor I are children. Neither of us is deceived about what is offered by the other. What danger do you fear here, Tom?”

“I . . . I dread what Hap would think of me, if he found out. And I do not like that I deceive him, doing that which I forbid him to do.” I looked aside from her as I added, “And I would that there was more to this than just . . . adults taking a risk for pleasure.”

“I see. Well, perhaps in time, there may be,” she offered, but there was an edge of hurt in her voice. And I knew then that perhaps she had deceived herself as to what we shared.

What should I have replied? I don’t know. I took the coward’s part and said, “Perhaps in time there will be,” but I did not believe my own words. We lingered awhile longer in bed, and then rose to share a cup of tea by her fireside. When at last I told her I must go, and then lamely insisted that I could not tell her a specific night when I could call again, she looked aside and said quietly, “Well, then, come when you’ve a mind to, Tom Badgerlock.”

And with those words she gave me a parting kiss. After her door closed behind me, I looked up at the bright stars of the winter night and sighed. I felt guilty as I began my long walk back to Buckkeep. I was cheating Jinna out of something, not by denying her a false avowal of love, but by accommodating our attraction. I doubted that I would ever feel for her anything more than I felt right now. Worst was that I could not promise myself I would not continue to see her, even though a lusty friendship was all I could ever offer her. I did not think well of myself, and felt worse as I forced myself to admit that Hap probably guessed that I now shared Jinna’s bed from time to time. It was a poor example to set for my boy, and the road back to Buckkeep Castle seemed very black and cold that night.

Chapter IX

STONE WAGER

As a Skill-user advances in strength and sophistication, so also increases the lure of the Skill for him. A good instructor will be wary with his Skill candidates, strict with his trainees, and relentless with his journeymen. Far too many promising Skill-users have been lost to the Skill itself. The warning signs that a Skill student is being tempted by the Skill include distraction and irritability when he is about his normal daily tasks. When he Skills, he will exert more strength than is necessary for the task, for the pleasure of the power running through him, and spend more time in a Skilling state than is required for him to accomplish his business. The instructor should be aware of such students, and be quick to chastise them for such behavior. Better to be cruel early, than to vainly wish one could call back a student who sits drooling and mumbling until his body perishes of hunger and thirst.