Worry was wearing Ash down. He didn't think he'd ever been this tired before in his life. Tired in quite this way, at least. He wasn't as physically worn out as when he'd brought Kieran to the mission, but resting his body didn't seem to be erasing the weariness in his mind. He was tired of running, tired of fear, tired of hunger and saddle sores and thinking about horses and water. Tired of Kieran being hurt. Tired of the priest's sourness and Miyan's mindless cheer.
He didn't listen to the talk in Iavaian between Ilder and Miyan while he stowed their belongings with the military neatness that could no longer soothe him. When Miyan wanted to take over the food-related chores, he let her. He changed Kieran's bandage, sniffing at it for a hint of rot as he'd seen doctors do, trying to be relieved that he didn't smell any despite the fact that the wound was leaking pale fluid and looked angrily red. Kept his temper when Kieran grumbled at him about having to eat, about having to drink water, reminded himself that it was easy to be angry about everything when you were in constant pain. Maybe Kieran's anger was infecting him; maybe if he stayed calm it would ease the pain a little; but it was getting harder. There was a feeling within the cave like a thunderstorm building, which made the hairs on his arms stand up. Maybe that was why he'd wanted to come here. He didn't know, and hoped no one demanded an explanation.
At last, when the light began to fade and the air's heat to dissipate, he couldn't stand it anymore. Kieran was sleeping and there was no work left to do. He took the priest's book and one of the rifles and walked out. Father Ilder watched him go and didn't say anything about the book. Scared of him, now that he was armed again.
Outside, the sky was still bright, but everything down in the little valley was in shadow. Sunlight yellow as beer still poured across the high ground, and his impulse was to go up there and open his mouth, let it pour into him. Half-walking and half-climbing, he scrambled up the easiest part of the slope.
A view opened before him, a view of such hugeness that it seemed to snatch him away from himself, spread him out so thin he was intangible. To the north, beyond the gullied land they'd traveled today, featureless yellow-gray plain spread out to the limits of distance. East, it curved around farther out, then swallowed the hills as it did to the north. South, the eroded squareness of these hills smoothed out into rounder, higher land, each progressively more enormous mound identically bald on top. A few sported twisted trees on their flanks. And to the west, the workings of time grew more apparent, the land redder, until the horizon was made up of chops and slices that he supposed were buttes and canyonland, but which in the low-slanting sun looked just like the cracked mud plates of the flat where he'd awakened the morning after their escape.
He counted back. That had been only nine days ago. Only nine days. It was inconceivable how much had happened in nine days. No wonder he was exhausted.
From below, he could still hear the priest's voice, faintly. He walked south until he couldn't hear it anymore, and then a little farther, until he couldn't have heard anyone from camp even if they yelled. It was irresponsible of him, he knew. And part of him cried out against leaving Kieran with those people, who didn't care enough. But it was a small part, drowned out by the need to be alone, just for a few minutes, to have no one looking at him or judging him. He found a knob of reddish clay earth about his own height, climbed it, and sat down facing north, toward the most open of his views.
Feeling a little self-conscious, he looked the rifle over, thinking about the dead man from whom it had come. Had that man left some trace of his nature on his weapon? It didn't feel charged in any way; didn't even feel like a weapon, just some metal and wood that happened to be made in this shape. He worked the bolt, and his hands wanted to follow that by firing. Instead, he set it across his knees. Opened Ilder's journal. Read a little, but it made that trapped-irritated-weary feeling start to rise up again; Ilder's tone was so condescending, so convinced that the people he studied were misguided, backwards and wrong. So Ash left the book alone and just stared at the place where the sky met the world.
Homesickness crept up on him. It was too dry here, far too open, the trees were sick and the grass angry, the animals hostile and the people lost. He wanted to water the whole desert and make green spring up with a wave of his hand. He wondered what Kieran would think of Ladygate, where the passage of a million feet couldn't keep moss out of the sidewalks, where the drainpipe of every tenement had a wisp of ivy climbing it, and rain was a lullaby all summer. And in the winter, snow, turning the night sky yellow with the reflection of streetlights, smothering sound, making every conversation an exchange of secrets; had Kieran ever seen snow? Ash wanted to take him north, show it to him. Show him the Shale River gray as its namesake under a sky clotted with cloud; show him Tenkist Park in the spring, a blizzard of pink petals from the cherry trees swirling through burgeoning green; take him to the top floor of the South Bank Library, to the little corner window at the back of the science section, that looked down on a landscape of moss-splotched roof tiles and haphazard chimney pots almost as strange as the desert. Feed him the library's thick silence, the smell of leather and dust there. Lie with him among the sound of bees up on the bluffs at midsummer, when the air was wet enough that you drank it instead of breathing it.
And after that, why not farther north? All the way to Yelorre, to fogbound shores Ash barely remembered. He wasn't even certain whether the views he recalled were real, or whether he'd invented them. He could never see his parents' faces, though sometimes a voice would flood him with a memory of wonder and a warm sweetish smell and the color blue, so that he thought his mother's must have sounded similar. Of the house where he'd been born, and where his parents had died, all he recalled was a flash here and there: a brick-edged step where a hole in the mortar contained an anthill, brown carpet on a shiny wooden floor, a green caterpillar hanging from a thread in spring rain. The only really clear image he retained was of a stretch of jagged shore, red-black granite standing against a heaving sea, the wet beach sharply dark at his feet and graduating into soft paleness with distance. It was so clear a picture that he felt he must have constructed it in later life, because a four-year-old's mind could not have been so observant, could it?
But now he wanted to find that beach. He wanted that coolness in his throat, that fine mist against his skin. His soul felt parched. The beauty of Iavaiah was one that battered and scoured. He couldn't rest here.
What tired him was the sense that every single thing he touched was hostile. Nothing accepted him; land, people, air, everything abraded him. Everything but Kieran, and even he, being as precious and endangered as he was, caused an anxiety Ash had no idea how to work past. He'd never been so lonely in his life as he was now, not even after his arrest when he'd occupied a solitary disinfectant-smelling cell beneath the courthouse wondering whether his aunt would be arrested as well. Then, he hadn't had any options. Now he had too many, and they all looked bad. He wanted to go home.
And he knew that if he had to leave Kieran behind to do it, he'd never see Aunt Isobel or Ladygate again.
I'm going to die here in the dust and heat, it's foolish to think there's any other possible outcome. Kieran will die and then I'll die. Because I can't take care of him, because there's no one to help me help him, no one to save him. How can this be happening to us? We're not even old enough to join the army! So unfair...
He let his self-pity run that far, and no farther. His own illogical whining was starting to make him angry; he certainly wasn't going to give those pointless thoughts any more time.
I should be thinking about staying alive. The Watch isn't going to give up on us, not if they sent three men after us on the Canyon road. Unless we have a serious storm or come up with some other way to hide our trail, we're going to have more of them to deal with. And they'll be readier this time, and we won't know their movements to ambush them. With Kieran basically useless, I'm the only one here who can shoot, and I can't shoot that well.
So think, Ashleigh. What washes out the kind of trail Watch trackers follow? Lots of other people -- should we be heading for a city? Rails; don't know where any are, from here. Water -- hah. Weather; no control. Time. That's about it, as far as I know. My hunch that something in a place like this might help, well, there's kind of a power feeling inside the cave, but how the hell would I know if it was doing anything? And this is a damn bad place for them to find us, we'd be cornered.
We should never have come out here. We should have laid low in Burn River until we could get on a train going to the coast, Gevarne or somewhere big like that, and then we should have left the country.
He turned his head to look wistfully at the mountains, beyond which Prandhar declined to comply with the extradition treaty. Realized that he'd heard no news for so long that for all he knew the Commonwealth was at war with Prandhar now. Saw a flicker of movement and froze, tightening his grip on the rifle.
Just a dozen yards away, a small hoofed animal was picking its way along the shoulder of another mound of dirt. He thought at first it was a goat, from the size, but as it came into better light he saw that it was a deer. It stopped every few feet to nose at the ground, but didn't seem to be actually eating what it found. He didn't blame it; nothing here looked really edible. All dry and thorny. That something as rounded and graceful as that little deer could live here was strange, beautiful and wrong.
He set the rifle against his shoulder. There wasn't much in the way of decision behind the action. Regret warred with what he could only think of as the spirit of the desert seeping into him. He didn't really try to put the deer's neck in the notch of the sight, it just ended up there.
The gun cracked and punched his shoulder, and the deer half-leapt and fell.
When he came skidding down into the valley with the deer across his back, Miyan and the priest were waiting for him. The priest looked anxious, but the girl was smiling broadly. She had a kitchen knife in one hand and a folded oilcloth tarp in the other.
Ash dumped the dead animal before her. He looked pointedly at the knife. "How'd you know?"
She darted a wary glance at Ilder, then smiled and shrugged, and didn't answer.
"Okay. You butcher it. I'm done." He went from evening blue to the grainy almost-black of the cave. When his eyes had adjusted enough that he could find Kieran without stepping on him, he knelt down beside him. Tested the temperature of Kieran's face -- still too hot. Listened to the thick sound of Kieran's breathing.
Bent over his knees until his forehead rested on the blanket over Kieran's stomach, and gave in to silent weeping.
When Kieran moved, Ash froze. He was about to sit up when Kieran's hand landed on the back of his neck.
"What did you kill?" Kieran whispered.
"A deer," Ash answered just as quietly.
"I dreamed you killed a ghost." Then, a little while later, "I trust you, Ashes. Did I say that before? I think I really trust you."
Ash couldn't answer. Could only squeeze his eyes shut and bite his lip, hoping Kieran wouldn't see he'd been crying. He was afraid evidence of his weakness might cause that statement to be retracted, and he couldn't have borne it.
"I don't trust those people at all," Kieran went on in the same phlegmy whisper. "Let's get out of here. Let's ditch them, okay?"
"You need rest," Ash murmured.
"I won't get it with them around. I want to leave."
Ash nodded slightly, knowing Kieran would feel it if he couldn't see it.
"Do you... like the desert, Ash? Do you think you could stand living out here for a while? Not in this --" The beginning of a cough, swallowed down. "Not here. A better place I know about. It's... pretty lonely. I should warn you."
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Ash managed to keep the quaver out of his voice. "We'd have each other to talk to, right?"
"Right. So tell me. Yes or no."
"Yes. Of course yes. I'd live on the moon, if that's where you are." He could no longer hold his weeping in check. Kieran's hand tightened on the nape of his neck, then slid down to his shaking shoulder.
"Why are you crying, Ashes?"
"I'm scared. I'm tired."
"One of us hurting is enough, edeime, you don't have to hurt with me. Can't you see -- feel -- kii aveh, you're the blood that my heart beats, you're in my veins. Yena ma kii aveh. Please don't cry." Kieran's voice was failing, barely audible, and his hand slid weakly down Ash's arm. Tangled in his hair; tugged at a curl, a sad mockery of playfulness. They were both exhausted, no longer able to protect each other, and Ash was terrified.
He reached out with his mind, groping with his empathic sense at the frustrating divide between himself and Kieran, the distance which made them separate. It seemed impossible to breach at first -- then suddenly his mind relaxed into the right shape, and warmth came welling up, concern, love, weary joy at the simple fact of his presence. Feelings enough like his own that they might have been hard to distinguish, but he had learned the flavor of Kieran's emotions now, the particular cornered hopefulness of them. There was a haven of kindness in the world after all. Just a little one. Just Kieran-sized. Not enough light to find his way, perhaps, but enough that he knew he wasn't blind. Not enough to solve any problems, but enough to remind him why he couldn't give up trying.
"I'm done crying now," Ash promised. "I'll be stronger in the morning."
"Come sleep, then. I'm cold."
Ash took his boots off and eased under the blanket. He couldn't put his head on Kieran's shoulder, because weight on the uninjured one would pull at the injured one, but he could curl up with his arm draped over Kieran's waist. "Warmer?"
"Yeah. Thanks." A gurgle of a laugh. "You know it's going to give that priest the screaming creepies, that we sleep like this."
"Who cares what he thinks?"
"Well, I never cared what anyone thought, but I didn't know if you might."
"Nope."
"Good." A long sigh, and Kieran was asleep.
Ash lay awake a little longer, listening to the sounds of the priest and Miyan working by lamplight outside. Feeling his heart swell up until it threatened to choke him. I love you, he thought at Kieran, you have to fight this off and get well, because if you die the whole world will end. He knew that in theory people survived grief and were even happy later, but somehow couldn't believe it would apply to him. If he lost Kieran, his heart would simply stop; he was certain of it.
When he slept, he dreamed a barren wasteland of sun and stone with a tiny pool of water at the center. Beside the water, he had built a little box and was growing a flower in it. He kept telling Kieran to wait a few minutes longer for his birthday present, the flower would bloom any moment. But Kieran got impatient and walked away, and no matter how Ash ran, he couldn't catch up.
--==*==--
Pain and distress woke him; he panicked for a moment when he found the blankets empty, his mind full of the agony that spiked in time with the sound of coughing from outside. As he scrambled up to go to Kieran's rescue, though, the sensation grew less acute, and the distress faded to mere disgust, punctuated by a spitting noise.
He went out into light so near the color he'd last left that only the sharp cold told him it was just before dawn instead of just after sunset. Kieran was leaning on the edge of the stone porch, taking shallow breaths.
Ash sensed his annoyance, and decided it would be a bad idea to be too solicitous. "Want a hand there?"
"Yeah, with my pants." Kieran backed away from the edge; he was holding his fly closed again. "Damn embarrassing. Don't step in the spit, I just hocked up something that looks like a raw egg."
"Charming." Ash hopped down next to him and did up his trousers for him. "It's generally considered impolite to describe what you spit up."
"Yeah, but this one's so interesting. I think I'll name it, and drag it around on a leash."
Grinning despite himself, Ash tested Kieran's forehead, found it sweaty and warm instead of dry and burning. "You sound like you're feeling better."
"Yeah. A lot. So I'm thinking we should just go. Before they wake up."
"Oh." Ash frowned. "That seems a bit dishonest."
"We didn't promise to babysit them."
"True, but... all right, but we'll only take one of the horses, and leave them most of the deer. And some of the other supplies. I promised Miyan one of the rifles."
"Fine, whatever." Kieran's hand closed hard around Ash's arm, and his look was as close to pleading as he ever got. "I just want to get away from them."
Puzzled, Ash nodded. "What's wrong, what's bothering you so much? You seem really --"
"I heard them talking, when you went out yesterday. That priest was telling his innocent little girl all about the various tortures and punishments that God has planned for 'perverts and sodomites' both on earth and in Hell. Really filthy stuff -- red-hot iron up the ass kind of stuff. And she was just listening and nodding, like none of it mattered to her." He paused to breathe, looked as if he might cough but managed not to. "And then you came in and you were like clean air all of a sudden, and I just want to go, all right? Things will never be simple with people like that around."
Ash couldn't refuse him. "Let's go where things are simpler."
As quietly as he could, he brought the packs outside and sorted them. He took all the food that he and Kieran had brought with them, except for the canned goods and the can opener. In exchange, he took a bag of raisins, which he thought was a fair trade. He took the notepad and pencils he'd grabbed from the priest's private room, but left the coded journal. Kept one of the two kitchen knives they'd brought from the mission, left one of the rifles and a handful of ammunition. He carved a flank from the deer hanging up outside and rolled it in salt in the bloodstained tarp, packed up saddlebags and backpack and bedroll, filled canteens and divided the remaining horse feed. While he worked, Kieran watched him with silent interest, slightly smiling.
He chose the mare as he'd done for the past few days, because her sturdier frame was better able to stand their riding double. He didn't mount behind Kieran yet, though, wanting to spare the animal's strength as long as Kieran was able to ride without help. The gelding whickered plaintively as they left him behind.
Kieran directed him by a meandering route that had a general westward trend, and was never straight or level. As the sun climbed higher, as they crept across the pale-yellow hugeness of the desert, Ash began to feel free in a way he never had before. It was a little frightening, this freedom, knowing in his bones that no one could judge him or change him. Not even the tiniest pretense could survive out here, in this emptiness. He was only himself. Kieran was only Kieran. The sky was emptier than he'd ever seen it.
They talked a little, from time to time, about small things. Ash talked more than Kieran did. Kieran would ask a question, then sit back and listen while Ash babbled. He said he liked listening. Contentment radiated from him; tainted though it was with pain and the constant current of wary anger that always ran beneath the surface of Kieran's mind, it was nevertheless a good feeling. And for all his worry and weariness, Ash was filled with quiet joy to know that Kieran was happier for his presence.
They saw no sign of pursuit, nor in fact any indication that human beings had been here within the past thousand years. Kieran sometimes pointed out small carvings on solitary stones, sigils so weathered that Ash would not have known they were made by human hands unless Kieran had told him so.
Several times during the day they halted to rest. Though Kieran was more alert than he had been most of the time since he'd been shot, he was nevertheless bone-tired and hurting. They found water mid-afternoon, just a seep where Ash had to dig for it; Ash had Kieran drink off all that was left in their canteens, then took his time filling them again. Kieran took a nap while he did this. Insects shrilled and rustled, a wandering breeze stirred the dust along the ground without raising it into the air, and overhead an eagle circled on an updraft as if it were out for pleasure rather than business. Ash let Kieran sleep for about an hour; watched over him, listened to the thick sound of his breathing, thought kisses at his pain-pinched face but did not touch him. Then they moved on, to where the hillsides grew rockier and steeper, more often cut to the bone by wind and water, and at last became canyonlands indistinguishable from the others they'd walked or ridden through in the past days.
Kieran was able to dismount without help when they stopped for the night. He even helped a little with the cooking, stirring the pot of venison stew so it wouldn't burn while Ash took care of everything else. Ash fried thick slabs of flatbread, and dusted them with sugar this time, contrary to custom. Kieran protested the weirdness of putting sugar on flatbread, but ate five pieces anyway.
When it came time to change the bandage, he helped, using his good arm to ease the injured one out of the sling, holding it carefully in his lap. His chest looked lopsided. Ash worried about how to get the pad of gauze unstuck from the wound, but when he undid the strips of stronger fabric that held the pad in place, the stained square of bandaging fell off into his hand. It was so wet it felt heavy, and he nearly dropped it in disgust. The stain was brown at the edges and pale at the center, and it smelled. Not like rotting meat, thank god, but still not pleasant.
Kieran's shoulders were uneven. The left one showed clearly the angular structure of bone and muscle that Ash found so delicious; the right was smoothly swollen, all shape drowned in a fatness of engorged flesh. The wrongness of the sight made him want to gag. Something watery was leaking out around the stitches.
"That's pretty damn disgusting," Kieran said mildly.
"It's... it's part of the healing process."
"Don't bullshit me. I might not be an empath, but I can see the look on your face."
Ash sighed. "Okay. Yeah. I guess I know better than to try to tell you pretty lies. It's obviously seriously infected, and the infection's gotten into your lungs. You should be in a nice clean hospital bed somewhere, not riding all day and sleeping on the ground at night."
"Huh. They don't let folks my color into nice clean hospitals."
"They do in Prandhar."
"How'd you plan on getting there? Fly?"
"Wish really hard, maybe," Ash returned, forcing a wry smile. "Let's get this cleaned up. You're the toughest person I've ever heard of, let alone met, and if anyone can fight this off it's you."
Kieran started to say something, coughed, spat a mottled brownish string into the dust. "Damn straight," he croaked, but with his head lolling back and his eyes narrow in pain.
Ash had boiled a pan of water before starting, and now he dipped a cloth in the pan and started dabbing away the crusted pus that had been under the bandage. Father Ilder's neat stitches had all held; the priest had known better than to pull them too tight, so the swelling hadn't forced them. But the bullet's entry hole was a ragged star shape, and the exit wound above Kieran's shoulderblade was a rough half-moon as long as Ash's palm, hard to heal. If the bone hadn't deflected it upwards, the bullet would have torn a plum-sized hole on its way out. Ash had seen what the same caliber did to the deer's neck.
Thinking about that led by a meandering path to the more general thought of Watch weaponry, and thence to other things they could do, and from there to the idea of pattern-magic, the closely guarded secrets of ritual thaumaturgy that only government-sanctioned mages were allowed to know. Ash had once proposed, in one of his rare face-to-face meetings with a Resistance contact, that they gather what they could of thaumaturgic secrets and disseminate them as widely as possible. Even a list of which superstitions and kitchen-spells seemed to work the best would be a blow against the government monopoly, if it was spread widely enough. The contact had admitted that it would be a good idea, except that no one had been able to get hold of one book, one single page from any Watch collegium in the Commonwealth.
As for foreign material, there was a certain quantity of the stuff which could potentially be translated, though smuggling it into the country was difficult work. And it was primitive, for the most part, relying more on Talents than on pattern. Only in the Commonwealth had magic been advanced to a science. Ash's contact had also suspected the Theocracy of planting agents in foreign countries to disseminate misinformation, write books and articles that clouded the subject and advanced plausible but incorrect theories. None of it was reliable.
Now he found himself wondering how any of that could possibly matter. Magic was all sense and force; he knew this when he could feel it working. How could there possibly be a finite set of words and pictures and gestures that worked, among an infinite stretch of possibilities? Someone who really understood the way energy flowed should be able to make up his own ritual.
He set the pan back on the fire and dropped the bandage in to boil. Then he got his rifle and ejected the magazine. It took a moment to find the catch that released it; it was in a different place from the one on a hunting rifle, and the magazine was rectangular, hidden in the stock.
"Lockeart bolt-action repeater," Kieran creaked, sounding dazed. "Always wanted one of those. Army issue. Only way to get it's off a dead soldier."
"Or a dead Watchman," Ash said while he thumbed a round out of the open-sided clip.
"One of those rifles is mine, right?"
"Of course."
"Who you gonna shoot? Not time to put me out of my misery yet."
Having put the magazine back in, now two rounds short of its load of six, Ash set the rifle aside. "I just wanted a bullet. Look at the size of this bastard. Can you believe one of these actually went through you?" He held up the thing where Kieran could see it, fully two inches long and pointier than an ordinary bullet, its brass casing stamped with the letters ECT-LS in tiny print. Eskarne Theocratic Commonwealth, Long Standard. Ash started combing the dust around him for a likely-looking rock.
"Whatcha doing?"
"Something stupid, probably."
"I said that to you once. Remember? Got my head kicked in."
"Different kind of stupid." Finding a pebble with the right kind of surface, Ash bent to filing the letters off the casing.
Kieran watched him for a while, then let his head sink back, smiling a little. "You're a weird kid."
"Ever heard of having a bullet with your name on it?"
"Yeah, so?"
"I got to wondering if anybody ever really did that. I mean, when they set out to hunt somebody, did anyone ever actually scratch that person's name into the bullet?"
"I never did." He coughed, sat up halfway to spit. "Wish you'd picked up the one that got me. Now that would be chalhia."
"Translation?"
"Lucky metal. It's usually a coin -- something you had in your pocket on a day when everything went right, drill a hole in it and hang it around your neck. I got shot point blank with -- what is that, forty-six cal? And I'm still breathing, and the fucker who shot me isn't. I call that lucky."
"Well, it looks like we're thinking in tandem this evening. Because lucky metal is exactly what I'm making here. I hope. To tell the truth I have no idea what I'm doing, but I've begun to suspect that no one else does either." He thumbed dust off the bullet, held it up to the light, and nodded. Then he got the knife from his pack.
"Wait." Kieran raised himself on his elbow. "You gonna draw on it? Draw this." He smoothed the ground beside him, then doodled a simple little design, a chevron shape with a dot in it. "Don't know the whole old alphabet, there's about four thousand symbols in it, but people still use a few of 'em. That one's iku, and also at'ta. Means 'fly straight' or 'do it right' -- I got it written on my gun, dunno if you saw that." He let himself fall, with a grunt. "Who's that bullet for?"
"Me." Then, "Relax!" he added as Kieran growled with trying to sit up again. "I'm not suicidal. Relax."
Frowning, Kieran stayed lying down, but rolled his head to watch what Ash was doing. With the knife's point, Ash scratched carefully at the brass. Thumbed the filings off and popped the bullet into his mouth. The metallic flavor of it flooded his throat and sinuses, and he began to feel flutters rising in his stomach, tightness in his head. Kieran felt it too, his scowl turning to puzzlement as Ash worked. A length of brown twine from the neck of the coffee bag was the best string he could come up with; he untwisted the center section slightly, plucked a few of the fine hairs from the back of his neck and laid them in the untwisted part, let it twist itself back up to hold them. His eyes had watered a little when he'd pulled out the hairs; taking the bullet from his mouth, he dabbed tears on it along with the spit. Finally, he nicked his left middle finger, which he'd heard carried the vein that ran straightest from the heart, and dabbed a drop of blood on as well.
"What the fuck are you doing, Ash?"
"I'm not quite certain." He held the bullet up, waiting for it to dry. "I'm not sure it's going to do anything. I'm not sure we could tell if it did."
"Think I felt magic, a minute ago."
"Me too."
"But what --"
"I put my true name on it, so to speak. Here's my initials, and your fly-straight rune. Blood, spit and tears. Hairs in the string. It's a piece of me now, or at least that's the theory. But it's also a bullet, still. So it wants to go -- it wants to bury itself somewhere." Judging it sufficiently dry, he knotted the string around it. He bent to put it around Kieran's neck; when the bullet settled in the hollow of Kieran's throat, the Iavian gave a small gasp of startlement. His green eyes went wide, and a flush spread across his cheeks bright enough to be visible under his dark pigmentation.
"It's a compass," he said wonderingly.
"That's the idea," Ash nodded. "Did it hurt you? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. I'm -- I'm not going to tell you what that felt like. Oh, it's definitely working. That's creative as hell, how did you think of it? What I don't get is why you think I need it. We playing hide and seek?"
"I noticed that you sleep more easily and wake up less ill if I'm with you, that you have nightmares if I'm not. Now I'm with you every second; you always know where I am. So if I have to scout ahead, or go hunting, anything like that, you'll still be able to rest. And also..." he trailed off.
"Also?"
"Aw, it's morbid. Forget it."
"You figure morbid's gonna bother me?" Kieran laughed a little.
Ash shrugged noncommittally. "I can't afford to get hurt, while you still need me. I guess I thought if there was already a bullet around with my name on it, maybe the others couldn't get a fix on me."
"That's a good idea. Maybe I should make one too."
"Kai, every long-standard round in the territory is already sniffing after you."
Kieran grinned as if that were a compliment.
In the morning Kieran said he felt better again, but Ash noticed his movements were slower, accompanied by more wincing, and he coughed more often. The skin around the wound was hot; his forehead was clammy. He stumbled when he tried to get up on the horse alone. He turned it into a joke, complaining that he was seasick and would stay in his cabin until the storm was over, but he couldn't hide his frustration and growing fear. Sometimes his directions were confusing; he'd say things wrong, telling Ash to go round the left side of that tree, when there were no trees to be seen, or up a slope when the slope led down. Sometimes he lapsed into Iavaian, and had to be reminded that Ash didn't speak that language. Throughout the day's travel he dozed more than he had the day before. Even with Ash pouring oil on the waters of his dreams, he wandered into nightmare more easily than before, grunting and mumbling in his sleep.
The mare was getting thinner. Ash could see every tendon and bone in his own hands, and as for Kieran, there was nothing left of him but rope and girders. To pass the time, and to give himself something to settle Kieran's dreams with, Ash fantasized about where he'd rather be, and how he'd rather nurse Kieran -- an ivy-cloaked house on Helermont Bay, windows thrown open to the salt wind, sunlight blue and gold with the sparkling sea. There would be a stone-tiled stove to drive off the damp at night, and blankets of soft red wool, and clean white sheets and towels to cool Kieran's fever. Shelves on the walls would be full of old familiar books, so that he could entertain Kieran by reading to him; there would be plenty of warm, filling food, and fruit, and tea, and silly urchin children singing for spare change and sweets under the window. There would be days when gentle rain fell, when the only sound would be the creaking of fishing boats along the docks, and there would be lots of windy bright days when the gulls would yelp and holler overhead. Ash sometimes let himself fall so deeply into this fantasy that the next thing to bring him back to reality hit him with an almost physical shock. After that happened a few times, he decided the daydream's escape wasn't worth the dismay of returning from it.
That night, neither slept well. Kieran kept them both awake coughing. His lungs were making noise constantly now. His pain overflowed into Ash, his fear showed in his eyes, his weariness had reached the bone. He said nothing about it, but gripped Ash's hand desperately all night.
When it was light enough to travel, a potential problem occurred to Ash. He'd been following Kieran's instructions, but what if Kieran became unable to give them? He had no idea where they were. He doubted he could even retrace their circuitous path, let alone find the river or the road or any landmark from here. As for their destination, Kieran had been vague about it, and what if there was no help for them when they got there?
He addressed this concern tentatively once they were underway, but he must have been leaking emotion, because Kieran went off on a delirious streak of apologizing. He meandered between Eskarne and Iavaian, incoherent in both languages, and seemed to be talking to a lot of people who weren't there. Ash could only try to soothe and quiet him, and got no answer to his question. A sickness of a different kind was growing in Ash's heart. To see someone so strong broken down so badly was hard enough. But Kieran wasn't getting any better. He just kept getting worse.
At midday, they rested. In trying to dismount, Kieran took a disastrous spill, falling on his injured side, which dragged out of him a high scream like a dying animal's. It made Ash's scalp crawl to hear it, and to see Kieran panting and whimpering and coughing in the wake of the fall was unbearable. In addition, this accident broke several stitches; or, rather, ripped the loops of thread through weakened skin, and a rivulet of stinking yellow-and-red liquid ran out from under the bandage.
Trying to stay calm, Ash built a small fire, boiled water, and cleaned the wound as best he could. Kieran was conscious through this, but couldn't seem to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. His breathing was shallow, full of clicks and whistles. He seemed to have nodded off by the time Ash tied on a clean bandage, but stirred when Ash tried to move away.
When he spoke, his voice was so weak that Ash had to ask him to repeat himself. "You'll like it there," Kieran wheezed. "It's like a garden. There's a pond... and pictures... I found a wild rose with... all those little thorns... looks like hairy legs... like a bug..."
"You don't have to talk," Ash said gently. He tried not to share his fear.
"Not delirious," Kieran said a moment later.
"Okay. You should sleep a bit. We could just call it a day --"
"No. Listen." Kieran opened his eyes long enough to find Ash's face, closed them again with a smile. "I want to think about you being... being there... in the garden. You need green. Flowers. Love you. God I love you. I'm picturing... you there by the pond."
Ash thought he could actually hear a crack run through his heart, like lake ice breaking. He couldn't speak.
"I won't make it. You go, though. Down... from here take any... anything looks like water... cut it running down. Hit a dry stream... bed..." Pause to cough, wracking, fiery agony all across his chest echoing in Ash's mind. "Upstream there. Find a wet... a stream... wet sand, maybe mud... upstream. Got it?"
"Yes." Ash's voice betrayed him; the word came out as a sob, making Kieran open his eyes again.
"Don't be sad. Giving you a present. Listen. Not far now, nobody... knows about it and it... it's got power still. It might. Hide you. Oh god --" A convulsion of a cough, which left him gray and shaking.
Moving to the uninjured side, Ash helped him sit up to spit. Wiped his lips and chin, smoothed back the sweaty tendrils of hair that had escaped his braid. Kieran leaned into Ash's shoulder, walking his hand clumsily up to grip a handful of Ash's shirt. Ash said, "You're not going to die. I won't let you."
"I'm scared," Kieran whispered.
"Don't you dare give up."
"Not. Go down swinging."
"Don't go down at all! Damn it, Kai, are you listening to me? I refuse to live without you!"
Kieran made a sound that might have been a laugh. "You're such... a kid... but I do love to hear... hear you talk."
"Fuck this. Get up." Ash levered Kieran's arm around his shoulders. "Help me. You know you can. Come on, for god's sake get your legs under you --"
"Oh shit. Ow." But Kieran managed not to be completely limp, even if Ash had to take most of his weight.
"Good. Just a couple steps. Lean on me and I'm going to put your foot in the stirrup, now grab -- good --" It wasn't as hard as it should have been to boost Kieran into the saddle. For someone so tall, he didn't weigh nearly enough.
"What's the damn hurry?" Kieran wheezed.
Ash took his place and the reins, holding tight to keep Kieran from falling, for the Iavaian was entirely strengthless now, too weak even to sit up. "You're going to see your garden with the wild roses." He forced the weary horse to walk. Only after they were well underway did he realize he'd left the saucepan behind. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. The world was flat, unreal, composed of only three things: I love him; he loves me; he is dying. It seemed to Ash that there was nothing more painful than those three statements together.
"Gonna sleep a little bit," Kieran said. "If I die... wake me up... so I can watch."
"If you die I'll follow you and beat you up, you jerk. Fight."
"Yeah. Okay. Bury me... in the garden. Write... my name on the... wall." A slight laugh. "Big heart around it. Like kids do."
"Look, stop thinking about death things. Think about life things. What do you want to do while you're recovering, in this garden?" This got no response, but Ash could sense that Kieran was awake. "What's our day going to be like? You want to teach me things? I'll teach you Hanite if you want, I'll teach you to swear in Prandhari --"
"Tattoo." Kieran raised his good hand weakly, then dropped it. "Need eight dots. You too -- you want one?"
"Sure. You can show me how. Then what? There's a pond, you said; Maybe we could go fishing?"
A faint nod was all Kieran could manage.
"And then when you're well, what do you want to do?"
"Fuck your brains out." Kieran's laugh started strongly, but ended in another gurgling cough.
With a painful smile, blinking too fast, Ash managed to return a bit of a chuckle. "There, now, you wouldn't want to miss out on that, would you? You're just going to have to stay alive."
"I'll see... what I can do."
A few minutes later Kieran sank into unconsciousness, and this time he fell quickly below the strata where dreams occurred, down into the trenches of his mind where Ash couldn't find him. To the empathic sense, he gave out nothing but pain and sickness; his emotions dropped off the map.
This left Ash free to weep as much as he wanted, and so, ironically, the tears wouldn't come. Maybe I'm starting to believe my own talk, about there being a future. Such a sweet future. I could never have imagined a world so perfect, even an hour ago. This garden he was talking about, I wonder... no, it does exist, it has to be real, and he will live to see it, and he'll get better, and we'll live there together and we'll be happy...
If he dies, I'll bury him under that rosebush he mentioned. Then I'll put his gun in my mouth and blow my head off.
Ash tried not to think so much, after that. He concentrated hard on figuring out which way was downhill, discerning the marks cut by water long-dried, guessing which way it had flowed.
Hours crawled. The sun was sinking when he found the dry streambed Kieran had mentioned; he cursed the slow pace, but even if the horse had been capable of a better gait, anything faster would have jolted Kieran unbearably. Then he wasted an hour going the wrong way, before he found some patterns in the sand that corrected his guess about which direction was downstream. This area was wind-whipped and bare, a plain of scattered boulders and mean, straggling weeds, with far-apart buttes standing out of it like rotten teeth. Eventually a line of stunted cottonwoods resolved into view; he deduced this must be the waterway Kieran had described, and impatience made him urge the mare to go faster. She ignored him. The animal was exhausted. Kieran was still comatose, breath bubbling in his lungs.
Evening fell purple across the land. The moon was already up, and by its growing light Ash was able to keep the trees in sight, and eventually to turn upstream on the buried creek; little more than a wet place in the sand, with occasional deposits of thick mud that sucked at the mare's hooves and made her prone to stopping. He feared she'd refuse to start walking again, but he always managed to convince her.
At a stretch of open water, he let the horse drink, and lowered a canteen on its strap to fill itself. He dribbled some into Kieran's mouth. Kieran didn't even swallow.
Time went even stranger. The moon hung still for what felt like years, and then moved a handsbreadth in the sky when he blinked. Eventually the stream became continuous, and he had to urge the horse up out of it, onto the dry land beside. He didn't remember when he'd left the open plain, but somehow he'd gone beyond the scattered outcroppings that had made a horizon at sunset, and was in a valley. Sometimes it was so narrow that he had to move back into the water, praying that the horse wouldn't step on a buried rock and break a leg. Sometimes it was as wide and gently sloped as he thought a valley ought to be, and he imagined it carpeted with green grass. From time to time the stream spread out so that it was just a wet spot on the ground, but that happened less often as the night wore on. Trees grew here, and the way was sometimes choked with brush and weeds.
All this time, Kieran was sinking deeper. Little by little his pain stopped transmitting itself to Ash; it was not that the wound hurt less, but that Kieran was subsiding below it. Ash had the feeling his own heartbeat was driving Kieran's, felt that somehow his own life was being drained away to keep Kieran alive. He hoped it was true.
When the hills faded away to either side, he thought at first it was just another valley. Not until the stream began to swing into a series of oxbow loops did he realize he was crossing a wide plain.
Riding with his head bowed for so long, he'd missed the point where the near and narrow horizon fell away, but now he was seeing some distance ahead. In the dark it was hard to tell just how far. Stands of trees punctuated this flat area, and the horse began to balk every few minutes to grab at a patch of grass or snatch a clump of leaves from some low-growing bush. Let this be it, he prayed, please let this be the garden, and shelter not far ahead... A sparkle off to the left proved to be the moon reflected in water, and as he saw it, Ash sat up straighter in a frail burst of new energy. Kieran had said something about there being power here. Was it this water, was the water sacred? But as he skirted the pond, he felt a greater energy beyond, like a fire's warmth on his face. The black horizon rose as he drew nearer to the power's source. He'd found the far edge of the plain, apparently a sheer cliff, its height impossible to judge, and in the cliff wall some kind of regular shapes were emerging.
All at once it came clear, and a thrill of awe ran through him at the size of the thing, at the mere fact of its existence in this country where so many ancient temples had been thrown down. An opening in the stone, twenty feet tall and a hundred wide, lay before him. This open mouth was toothed with thick pillars. Broad, shallow steps led up into the place. From between the center pair of pillars the stream flowed out, guided by a paved channel into a reflecting pool that was crossed by two flat bridges. These bridges were each a single slab of stone a foot thick; one had cracked and fallen into the pool, but the other was intact. Grasses, vines and flowers twined and choked these structures. The air was full of the smells of water, blossoms, and rot.
Ash guided the horse across the intact bridge and up the steps. Echoes of each hoof's fall clattered loudly inside, giving the impression of a vast space, but Ash didn't bother going in much past the rank of pillars.
There's something here. Or someone. Some old god, some lingering scent of sanctity, and I've just ridden a muddy-hoofed animal into the temple. That's probably blasphemy. Well, let your curse fall on me, whoever you are, but don't blame Kieran for it.
Gathering what strength he had -- a little more than he really had, it seemed, borrowing on credit -- he dismounted and pulled Kieran down with him. He couldn't stand; catching Kieran knocked him down, and it was all he could do to gentle Kieran's fall a little. Then there was no way he could get up again to unpack blankets and things, even if the mare weren't wandering away in search of the vegetation he hadn't let her explore on the way in. So he stayed where he fell. Sprawled, cradling Kieran in aching arms.
I'll just rest a moment. Just until I'm strong enough to go catch that stupid horse. He could hardly find any sign of life in Kieran's mind at all now. As for Kieran's body, it was utterly limp, skin chilled and greasy, heartbeat weak, breath labored and loud. With each breath, liquid gurgled and clicked in Kieran's lungs. The sound was dreamily horrifying. Too terrible to be real.
Through the remnant of the night, Ash lay listening to that sound. Through the blues and grays and purples of daybreak, through the gold and white of dawn, he listened to the wet rattle of Kieran's breathing.
Until, just as sunlight flooded the western mountains, the sound stopped.
The next few minutes were a chaos of frantic action in denial; trying to make Kieran take just one more breath, trying to turn back time just a few moments, to that last breath he'd allowed to slip by, as if he could have caught it with both hands and held it, shoved life back in; trying to trade anything, everything of himself to turn the broken body in his arms from a corpse to a person again.
No use. No hope. Everything wrecked. Every second of his life in vain, all leading up to this second of understanding that Kieran was destroyed, that there was no more of him in the world anywhere. All that strength and striving, all that brilliance and cruelty and sweetness and fear and love, vanished like a voice in still air.
He opened his throat and let the grief rush out; he couldn't stop howling, even though howling didn't help. If he could have smashed the world to powder, in that moment, he would have.
Like snapping out of a daydream, pattern where there had been chaos: he was suddenly whole and real. All the smallness of mortality, gone in an instant. Pain shed like an ill-fitting garment. The confining walls of a twisted, damaged mind, an injured body full of limitations and riddled with needs and fears like wormy wood, shucked aside. Free.
Alone. Cut off. Amputated...
No; not quite free. He could stretch, yes, unfurl, but there were still limits, only farther and less solid. These senses were not as precise as those of the body, either. There were reasons for mortality. Yes. Memory was stored in the brain more than in the mind. His recollections were vague. This pattern was weak, this pattern was missing things, contained new whorls and new colors, he didn't know himself now. What did these patterns mean? Whole spiral arms of himself were unfamiliar. Creations of the last life lived. Had this happened before? Had he ever made himself new before, just by living as flesh?
More power. More power would be needed for thinking and knowing and being. There was power here -- stale, small. He drew it, and drew with it a sense of outside, of farther, deeper, higher, elsewhere. Prayers needled him immediately. Stinging rain of small entreaties. No proper offering, only begging and cursing.
Then, right inside, heartfire, a pure black flame of lamentation. Rare, sweet, mind-stinging perfume of anguish, offered directly to him as --
For me? -- no one could possibly hurt so much for me --
-- a sense of place and form began to resolve. More appropriate in every moment, the sacrifice. Beauty of shape and color; beauty of broken heart, involved in him entirely. A song of screams, a kneeling dance of rocking and ground-punching and hair-tearing, an incense of tears.
I didn't mean to hurt you so much, I'm sorry, I'm sorry --
He might bless this mourner with a gift of madness. It would be a short gift; the line of that life was veering sharply toward the border. The intention was clear; he'd never seen an imminent suicide so free from blurring doubt.
-- you idiot, you overdramatic stupid precious thoughtless wonderful selfish --
Patterns within his pattern moved against him. Perspectives smaller and sharper than his own threatened to become him. He perceived a kinship with the corpse now, remembered what he should not have retained, images and qualities from that life. Only one life, out of so many. But new. There had not been anything new for so very long. There had not been a reason for anything. And this pattern, semi-self, rather than fading to feed his power, sank tiny barbs into his older substance and tore him.
It was a sick thing, a broken thing, steely and smoldering and rusty and splintered; full of calcified, encysted passions, it was angry with a child's ill-aimed despairing anger, it was a child, he had been a child, he had been very nearly a man and then this stupid thing happened and it's never fair, it's like the world hates me, everything I touch turns to shit as a nearly direct result of actions taken centuries ago in order to eradicate him, propagating through the economy of history to include all his people in suffering like this, he doesn't deserve it, maybe I do but he's a really good person and this is just wrong as so many things had been wrong for such a long time.
With a sight that needed no eyes, he perceived the body of the boy he'd briefly been. Its death was growing more final by the second; soon it would cool. Then rot. Then dry to dust. And he? Burdened with the part of self he'd grown while in it, would he crack? Rot from the inside? Would he -- unbelievable! -- ache forever for that dirty, skinny mortal who was even now hunched wailing beside the corpse? A creature that lived in a flicker, fragile, a life too short for learning, even if this particular life weren't planning to end itself before sunset anyway. Was it possible that even one moment -- face tear-glazed and blotchy raised howling, bloodshot blue eyes sightless to the sightless sky -- was now indelibly part of his pattern? Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Horrible. It could not happen like this. It might fragment him. It could destroy him. Already the colors of the newer, lesser self were beating back the true equations of his power, eating at them like a cancer.
What am I, a ghost? If that were all, I'd say it was all right, at least I died free, but he -- how can I abandon him like this? I won't leave him, I won't!
That suddenly, the lesser pattern overwhelmed the greater, and he was reaching for more power than he'd meant to draw. Sudden wind stirred the mourner's hair as the temperature inside the temple dropped; plumes of vapor now carried the mourner's keening sobs, leaking between clenched teeth. There would be nothing left, all would go into this effort. He feared that fighting with himself at this point would break him up like smoke. He would truly be a ghost, then. So there was only one option. But still the power wasn't big enough. To push, to kill, took only a little; all life was under tension, reeling steadily toward its end, and a sharp shock in the right place could break it loose. Forcing those parted strands back together, on the other hand...
Trees in the garden stirred, then tossed, then thrashed and shed branches. Farther and farther he ranged, looking for anything he could use. Over the pool, down the stream, fog rolled. Within the temple, a skin of ice formed on the water in the channel. Even in the madness of grief, the mourner paused to wonder at the cold. From the depths of the earth, he tapped the groaning pressure of opposing stone, and the ground shuddered. Thunder rose up; dust sifted down.
Almost. Almost. Now --
Pain so intense was a thing like ecstasy; he couldn't even scream for it, while his body wrenched with the effort of expelling the stuff that had drowned him. His state was something more than consciousness, and less -- all sensation, no volition. He was nothing but a giant swollen throat, splitting open with agony, heaving and heaving and heaving.
Blocked, suffocating. Couldn't force it all out, lungs hitching, trying to inhale, choked, the stuff was reeling back in --
Then hands on him, fingers in his throat, gagging him, but the blockage was going out again, these hands were -- someone was -- Ash was reaching down his throat and hauling out fistfuls of the stuff.
And he was breathing. Searing, hot-cold air, more coughing, more pain. Then vomiting, and all the time his eyes and nose were running, and he could hear the sounds he was making, broken-backed-dog sounds... but he was alive. He had been dead. He was alive. Blind with pain, barely strong enough to breathe, but breathing. Heart stuttering like a string of firecrackers. Would have thought he was dying if he hadn't just been dead.
Did I dream that?
Does it matter?
"Oh thank you oh thank you thank you." Ash was sobbing the words as if he couldn't hear himself, over and over like an incantation.
Gradually he calmed; Kieran heard sanity return in his voice as it trailed away. Eventually Ash got up and moved around a bit, sometimes more or less near but always near enough. The compass around Kieran's neck knew where Ash was. Near enough. Talking, crying, cleaning with wet cloths, making a soft place for Kieran's head, petting and soothing. Warmth was returning. Fragmented thought began to pull together.
When water dribbled between his lips, Kieran found swallowing a terrible effort. Nevertheless he had to make a further effort after that, to pry his eyes open and to smile.
He was pillowed on Ash's lap. Above him, Ash's face was pale as dust, eyes black-circled as if he'd been punched twice. Dirty-haired, sunburned, tear-tracked, hollow-cheeked; beautiful, precious.
"Oh Kai, I was sure I'd lost you. I felt you go."
With great concentration, Kieran forced his lips to move. "Came back."
"Please stay with me now. Please get better. You're going to get better, right?"
He couldn't keep his eyes open anymore, but he managed one more word. "Yes."
As pain seeped away, back to being bearable, a sleepy contentment came over him. Something very strange had happened, but he could think about it later. There was going to be a later. Ash's voice followed him down, a whisper: "Don't go too far."
I won't, he thought gratefully. I don't have to, now.
--==*==--
Brilliant dreams came then. Dreams of pure color and meaning, without faces or time. He slept shallowly, dreamed close to the surface, half-lucidly, and never lost his sense of Ash's nearness. Sometimes he woke enough to perceive the real world outside his dreaming. There was birdsong, and a smell of green. He heard Ash talking to the horse. For a while Ash lay beside him, and they dreamed together, and then he saw things he'd never seen before: snow sifting through a streetlamp's glow of yellow gaslight; the smell of wet leaves and gunpowder and dog, cramped legs and cold hands, ducks rising from among rushes in a whirring, yapping cloud; a woman's face, lined and smiling, pencils stuck in the coil of russet braids that crowned her; a whispering, mist-covered sea.
Best of all, when he woke in the dark, shivering, Ash woke as well, and talked to soothe him. The words came with pictures, sounds, even smells. I've smelled the sea. Never been within a hundred miles of it, but I know now what it smells like. He could feel his strength returning, drop by drop. He could be patient until he was well. It was all going to be okay now.
--==*==--
There came, inevitably, a time when he woke with a full bladder and a rumbling stomach. Morning was near, he could smell it in the air, and somehow the smell was lonely. The sound of predawn birdsong was lonely. Ash still slept, hadn't woken with him; that perfect connection was gone.
He was cold, weak, and dizzy. For several minutes he weighed the warmth of the blankets against the pressure of his bladder. At last he surrendered to necessity and moved.
Inch by inch. Every movement took concentration. His attempt to stand was nearly a disaster, and he went quickly back to his knees. Settling on a halting motion on his knees and one hand, like a three-legged cat, he made it as far as the edge of the top step, between a pillar and a stone-lined groove carrying a stream of smooth water. But one look at the stairs told him that there was no way he could make it down. So he pulled himself upright against the pillar and, leaning on it, pissed in the stream.
Then he laughed. He'd befouled the temple. And he remembered dreaming that it was his own temple. A temple to him. In which case, using the sacred spring as a toilet was permitted.
Now he had the problem of his trouser buttons again. Which, he realized, was not a problem at all. He didn't have to sleep with his pants on. There wouldn't be an early-morning scramble for departure; this was their destination, and he could lie around until he was entirely recovered. Sitting on the edge of the blanket, he methodically removed his boots, socks, and pants, smiling a little to see how yellow-pale his legs looked compared to his arms. Then he slid back into the warmth he'd left, and relaxed, and was ambushed by weariness. Surprised he'd gotten up at all.
The next time he woke, Ash wasn't present. Kieran's boots were standing neatly together by the nearest pillar, but the rest of his clothes were gone. His compass told him that Ash wasn't far, though. He was out there, would probably be visible if Kieran sat up. Kieran didn't feel like sitting up. All he could do was lie here and wait for Ash to come back, but that was okay now. He was surprised to discover that he was completely certain Ash would come back, and would have been doing something good and necessary, and would go on doing good and necessary things. He hadn't ever known that kind of certainty before.
Which left one unanswered question: What the hell does he see in me?
--==*==--
By the time Ash returned, he'd wandered a long way from that train of thought. He'd dozed a little more, but hunger kept him from really sleeping. So it was with great pleasure that he watched the redhead kneel and lay out his bundled shirt, spilling a pile of ripe vegetables.
"Where'd you get those?" Kieran said. His voice was painfully hoarse, but he could achieve a conversational volume now.
Ash gave a grin that seemed to light him up like a beam of sunshine. "You were right, it's just like a garden! There are garden plants running wild all over the place! I found tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, there's corn but it's not ripe, everything's a little on the small side -- how are you feeling?"
"Hungry."
"I figured. Besides that?"
"Tired. Bit sore. Uh... how are you holding up, Ashes? You looked pretty beat the other day."
Ash came closer, and when he was no longer half-eclipsed by the bright day behind him, Kieran could see that he was much cleaner than before. His clothes looked cleaner too, and a little damp along the seams. His face was still too thin, but his color was healthier. Sunburn nearly gone, eyes no longer bruised. He said, "How am I? Better than I've ever been in my life." A bright fragment of laughter spun out of him. "Can you believe how much has happened in just a few days? Not even three weeks since we left Churchrock. At the moment, I'm in serious danger of starvation, and so are you. That would have really scared me a little while ago. Now I'm just thinking -- so we feast on fresh veggies today, and something's bound to turn up tomorrow. What the hell does tomorrow matter?"
"Sounds like you've gone off your head a little." Kieran smiled to soften it.
"Most likely. I don't have clue one what I'm going to do with this stuff -- I can't stew it, I forgot the saucepan where you had that fall." Ash had to roll his eyes up and think: "Day before yesterday." Kieran didn't blame him for hesitating; it seemed they'd been here much longer.
"I'll eat it raw."
"Can you eat eggplant raw? You can't eat squash raw. Just a second." He brought over a tomato -- smallish, as he'd said, but it gave off a dusty savor even before he cut it into quarters. He bit into a slice and chewed thoughtfully. "It's all right. Probably wouldn't like it if I paid for it, but for free, with hunger sauce, it's good. Here, I'll help you sit -- oh!" He said this last syllable in a tone of mixed pleasure and apprehension, because Kieran had managed to sit up all by himself. "You sure you're up to that? Want something to lean on?"
"Nope." Kieran was as surprised as Ash was. "This isn't hard at all."
They ate the tomatoes raw; there were just enough of the small, tough, intensely-flavored fruits to take the edge off their hunger. The one bell pepper Ash had found tasted bitter and woody, but they managed to get that down as well. For dessert, they had the remains of a bag of raisins Ash had lifted off the priest.
"I'll bake the squash for supper. I think I can manage something involving stones and coals, but it might turn out a little burnt. There isn't much of anywhere to build a fire, though."
"What are you talking about?" With a gesture of his good hand, Kieran indicated the expanse of stone around them.
"You mean, in here? But this is some kind of temple. I don't want to make any... thing... angry."
Kieran grinned. "Hell, I pissed in the stream last night 'cause I couldn't get down the steps. I don't seem to be cursed."
"You did what?" Ash looked horrified for a second, but he couldn't keep it up. He let out a giggle. "You have no respect for anything, do you?"
"Almost."
"But still -- I didn't tell you this before because I didn't want to alarm you, but when you... when you died, for a minute, then just before you came back, the air got really cold in here. I mean, I could see my breath. And then the ground gave this little shimmy, almost like an earthquake."
"I know. I saw it."
"You... saw it?" Ash leaned closer, fascinated and frightened. "Tell me."
Kieran shook his head. "I don't understand, really. Or remember very well. But I was here... all over the place, I sort of occupied this whole space. And I wasn't really me. I was something else, or part of something else, and... you realize I wasn't in any shape to remember anything, I didn't have a brain to remember with... I got the impression that I -- this other me, this bigger me -- I'd been around for a long time. A long time. I mean, hundreds of years, maybe thousands." He looked down, and realized his hand had started trembling. "Help me lie down?"
Ash lowered him gently onto the pillow that was actually his rolled coat, then rested a hand on his forehead, smoothing back the strands of hair that tickled his face. "So you were really outside your body?"
"I was outside my mind, Ashes. I could almost see it. All these twisty swirly -- ideas, fibers of ideas, symbols? I can't, there are just no words, but it was intense, the bigger part of me wasn't real happy with the part that belonged to the body. Like it had been a big waste of time or something. This big part scared the living shit out of me, it was like an animal's mind, like some big meat-eating animal, it had no conscience. It was primitive. It was disgusted by me, like I was a bug crawling on it. But at the same time, I was that big mind, and I could see so far into the past I was nearly blind with it..." He bit his lip, as something seemed to stir in his memory, something nauseatingly large and powerful. A sea monster in tar. "I think it was a carnivore. Not literally. I mean, I think it was a thing -- I was a thing -- that ate other minds. Or had done, in the past. And I was scared that I couldn't eat the -- this me -- because it was too prickly.
"That all went by really fast, but then I could sort of see, only it wasn't in pictures, not like with eyes, more like that sense of space you get with having a Talent, when you kind of know where stuff is even in the dark. But this was really clear. I could see things -- heat, I could see sounds -- and you were just off your head, yelling and crying, and I could taste the craziness in you. The fucked-up thing is that it tasted good. Not good exactly -- good like pepper. Like liquor, how it burns, and I really liked it, and at the same time I couldn't stand it, and I was so sorry to be doing that to you... there was something else in you, Ash. I don't know if I was seeing your soul, or your magic, or what, but it looked all scrunched down and knotted. Then... somehow I decided to come back. I couldn't leave you. So I grabbed all the energy I could find, and I kind of knocked the sickness out of my body to make room, and --" He waved vaguely. "I think it was partly a dream. Maybe anyone with a death Talent can do that -- come back, if there's anything to come back to. But I just have this really vivid image of you looking up, and your eyes are so bloodshot that the blue part seems to be glowing..."
"It's all right now. It's over now."
"I know. The worst part was being cut off from you. No, the worst part was that I was sure you were planning to kill yourself. Were you?"
Ash looked away. "Yeah," he whispered.
"That's not okay, Ash! What if you'd done it before I could make it back, and I came back for nothing?"
"For nothing?" Ash echoed in quiet disbelief.
"And even if you could somehow be sure, before you did it -- I won't ask why you'd want to but -- but I wouldn't want you to, I'd want you to keep going, maybe then there'd be somebody in the world that remembered me as something besides a waste of skin." He grabbed Ash's hand and squeezed it as hard as he could, which wasn't very hard. "Promise you'll put all that suicidal bullshit out of your head. Promise, if something else happens to me, you won't --"
"I'm not sure I can." Ash tried a smile, but it didn't look right. "I was really not in control of my faculties. Sorry. This is a burden on you, I know. Maybe we should talk about something else."
"Okay. For now. Later, I'm going to make you promise."
Ash scrubbed his hands down his face. "Are you up to having your bandage changed? Or do you want to rest a bit first?"
"Go ahead."
It was difficult not to keep talking about the subject he'd agreed to drop. Not that he planned on getting killed, but the world was a dangerous place, and the thought of Ash following him into the grave -- especially now that he had an idea how strange and lonely death would be -- he couldn't stand it. But a minute later, Ash found something that distracted them both.
"This is unbelievable."
"What is?" Kieran ducked his chin as far as it would go, but couldn't see the wound.
"It's closed. It's completely healed over. Does this hurt?" Ash touched the place, gently. Then, when Kieran shook his head no, poked it a little harder.
"Ow. That one hurt."
"Okay, then this will hurt some too, but I have to test it." Hands walked along his collarbone, testing the join.
"Weird," Kieran said. "You know what it feels like? It feels like there's no break at all. It just feels bruised."
"All I can find is a little bump. I want to leave your arm in the sling for a while longer, so you don't rebreak it. But I think you're healing incredibly fast, all of a sudden. I'd better get these stitches out before they turn into a novel form of tattoo."
"Do you think maybe you're healing me?"
"Me?" Ash looked up from snipping the loops of thread. "But I don't have a healing Talent."
"Maybe you do. Maybe that was what I saw balled up inside you."
Ash shook his head. "I wish. I think you're doing it yourself. This is going to feel weird, now -- I don't have a tweezers and I can't get a grip with my fingers, so I'm going to have to use my teeth."
"Whatever works."
Patiently, he sat still while Ash pulled the stitches out. The sensation was actually rather pleasant, for all it hurt a little. Everything seemed more vivid today. When he'd first discovered this place, it had been during a rare cold snap, one of those times that came along every two or three winters when night's frost stayed on the ground all day, and high clouds grayed the world. Hard pellets of snow had been spitting down on and off. He'd been up on the high ground, trying to find something to eat, and had stumbled on this place from above. A small herd of deer, and the shelter the temple provided, had kept him alive until the cold broke.
He hadn't explored the temple much. He knew the part he could see from here -- a warehouse-like space supported by fat pillars every twenty feet or so, with a mouth-shaped hole in the back wall that poured out water. There were paintings on the walls, but only toward the back were any of them even recognizable as human figures, and it was impossible to guess what they were doing or who they were meant to be. He hadn't explored the two side passages, having lacked a lantern. His most vivid recollection of the four or five days he'd spent in the place was of running into a thicket of wild rose, rich with the glossy red ovals of rose hips, which he had eaten. It was off to the left, he thought, the south end of the valley. He'd made a circuit of the area, and judged the valley to be an oblong about a mile wide and a bit less than two miles long.
Now, instead of a browned landscape salted with dirty white at the roots, he saw a green paradise. Grass and wildflowers spread the open places; beneath tall pines and cottonwoods, thicker vegetation grew, viny tangles and thorny shrubs. Here and there a lone acacia stood. On the north side, where the slope was gentle, irregular swathes of other plants made strange textures of green; he couldn't see, at this distance, what they were, but he guessed that was where Ash had found the vegetables. Someone had planted a kitchen garden there, once upon a time. And in the rockier places, the wild roses grew. As he watched, half distracted by the sensation of Ash's lips and teeth nudging the new scar on his back, he saw a dark speck appear on the crest of the hill.
Apprehension made him tense enough that Ash sensed it, and stopped. But it wasn't a man, he realized when the speck started down the slope, two others coming up and over behind it. "I think," he said slowly, "that our dinner has arrived."
"Where?" Ash peered along Kieran's pointing finger, but shook his head.
"Those brown things. I think those are deer."
"I can't tell. These glasses aren't quite right. I'll get one for you, though, if they are. You'll have to give me some pointers -- that one I got the other day was a lucky shot."
"Huh. They'll see you coming a long way off. Might be better to wait until they get closer."
"But they'll eat all the veggies!"
Kieran laughed. "Wouldn't you rather have venison than eggplant?"
"We'll need both, if we're going to get our strength back."
"Okay. All I can tell you is, go really slow, and stop whenever they notice you. Hold still until they forget about you, then move again. Deer have really short memories. Oh, and stay downwind."
"I knew that much already. I'll finish with the stitches later." He took his rifle and trotted away.
Kieran quickly lost interest in watching him stalk the deer. It would take him quite a while to get close enough. To pass the time, Kieran had a go at standing up, and discovered that he was barely dizzy at all. Much of his earlier shakiness must have been due to hunger. He wrapped one of the blankets around his waist as a kilt -- it hardly hurt at all to use his right hand now, as long as he didn't try to hold any weight with it -- and went exploring.
First he explored the packs and saddlebags. Ash had done his usual neat-freak job of things, and Kieran was pleased to see that this included laying out all their weapons in plain view and easy reach, fully loaded, with spare ammunition nearby. He'd also done some laundry. Kieran found his leather pants turned inside out and laid flat in a patch of sunlight, his shirt and an extra blanket and all the spare bandaging materials washed and drying. What food they had was carefully stowed. There was nothing left in quantity but coffee, sugar, salt, and flour; only about one meal's worth of beans and rice remained.
Kieran set the remaining beans soaking in the skillet. If Ash didn't bag a critter, they could at least fill their stomachs tonight.
A different pack contained non-consumables. Complimenting himself on his foresight, Kieran took a candle out of one of the two boxes of a dozen he'd got from the store in Smith. He lit it, tucked the remaining matches in the waist of his kilt, and went to have a look around.
The spring wasn't as interesting as it should have been. It was just a hole in the wall where water fell out. Some painted shapes above it looked like they were meant to be storm clouds. The water ran in a sheet down the wall to fill a basin paved with pale limestone, which narrowed down into the channel that crossed the temple and went outside. He felt there should have been some carvings or something around it, but there weren't. The central two files of pillars had carvings, but they were just geometric designs. It was like the place had been left unfinished; no, more like the builders had cut corners. Rushed? Broke? Didn't care?
Passages led out from the back two corners. Doorless openings, on a more human scale than the rest of the place, they led into utter darkness. He tried the left-hand one first. Trying to summon up a sense of awe at his ancestors' engineering greatness, he could only manage a feeling that he was sneaking around in somebody's house while the owner was on vacation.
The hallway dead-ended about thirty feet in. Disappointed, he tried the other one, expecting it to do the same. But here, he found a wonder. Colors glittered and danced in the light of his candle. Not faded parades of figures, like the ones in the main room, but dense blocks of text interspersed with jewel-like scenes of frenetic detail. The text was in the old symbol-script that he couldn't read. That was all right, though, because just looking at these pictures would occupy him indefinitely.
The first one he brought his candle close to depicted a city in a valley. The artist had simplified it to a few buildings, but they way they were jammed together on top of each other made it clear they symbolized a great metropolis. A river, painted deep lapis blue, ran at the city's foot. Bright flags flew from its heights. The sun still had some gold leaf clinging to it.
Another picture showed a leopard killing a rabbit. The leopard wore a jeweled collar. In the background, a smiling woman in an elaborately draped and girdled gown directed the leopard with a gesture of her hand.
Another was full of tiny human figures, each one wearing a conical helmet and carrying a spear, each spear decorated by intricately drawn lacings and wrappings, all different.
He could make out no sense of narrative flow, no matter which direction he read the pictures. Some seemed to show important people, kings or gods, because certain figures were drawn larger than others. Many showed only animals or vegetation; a few were filled with abstract geometric shapes. He recognized one of these geometrics as being a stylized wind knot, which implied the others had symbols hidden in them as well. There was an entire book's worth of writing in this place, which piqued his curiosity, got him thinking about hunting up some old guy who could still read this stuff.
At the end of the hall was a closed door. It had once been lacquered red, but it was faded now, cracked in many places; when he touched it the whole thing came apart. Jumping back to get out of the way extinguished his candle. He groped out another match, stopped himself from striking it on the wall lest he harm the paint, struck it on the floor instead and relit the candle. And let his jaw fall open in wonder.
Gold. There was gold in there. Great masses of it.
Stepping carefully over the splintered remnants of the door, he entered a glittering vault of color and shine. Vases, boxes, candleholders, incense burners, and all manner of smooth-polished objects stood in ranks from wall to painted wall, and all of them shone with the same buttery gleam. The colors of these walls' paintings were even brighter, and the human figures they depicted were not marching straitly through history, but celebrating and fighting and dancing and fucking and dying in ornate profusion.
But the centerpiece of the room, which it was hard to look away from, was a life-sized statue of a young man reclining on a couch piled with cushions. It seemed to be carved of limestone, but beneath all the paint and ornament it was hard to tell. Even more than the gold things, this seemed to be a lost treasure. The subject's body was posed realistically, his kilt draped in such a way that Kieran could guess it was linen edged with cloth-of-gold rather than some other fabric, the tiny braids of his long hair were each individually carved; it was almost as if a real boy had been frozen in stone. If so, he seemed to have enjoyed the process. The unnaturally beautiful face held a serene expression, tinged with just a hint of a sardonic smile. He was crowned with a wreath of poppies. Kieran wondered how the sculptor had managed to get their petals so paper-thin without breaking the stone, until he worked up the courage to step closer, and saw that the flowers were actually, of all things, glass.
Kieran closed his weak right hand around the bullet hanging at his throat. He wanted Ash to come see this, and wondered if it was possible to send a message. He didn't want to turn his back on the statue for fear it would -- he wasn't sure what. Disappear, or wake... it disturbed him. It made him think of the spiritual predator he had halfway been in the moments of his death.
How long he looked at it, he didn't know. Eventually he heard Ash say his name and muttered some reply; he couldn't bring himself to yell.
Some time later Ash stood beside him, caught by the statue into ignoring the gold just as Kieran had been. The carving looked new; none of the paint had worn or chipped, not one gem had fallen from the golden armbands and anklets the reclining figure wore. The skin had been painted reddish-brown, the hair black, the eyes darkly outlined. The ends of the tiny braids had been crosshatched to make them look like bundled hair. Someone had adored the subject of this statue, to spend such effort on detail. It must have been a king, or a god... Kieran was afraid he knew which god it was meant to be.
At last, Ash spoke. "It's you," he said quietly.
Kieran turned slowly to look at him, unwilling to understand. He saw that there was a streak of fresh blood on Ash's sleeve. So he'd got his deer after all. "What do you mean, it's me?"
"Look at it." Ash pointed at the statue's face. "Right down to the expression. I know it doesn't make sense, but that's you. I half expect the thing to open its mouth and say, You done staring yet?"
Kieran smiled a little at Ash's imitation of his voice, but an uncomfortable sense of recognition was stealing over him. "Maybe it's an ancestor of mine. That would be ironic, huh? If this -- king, or whatever -- was my gazillion-times-great grandfather."
"Ironic? It would be spooky. It is spooky. Look, he's even got your hands, I think he's even as tall as you are. And I think... move the candle a little." Ash nudged his hand, and as the light moved, a reflection started up eerily in the statue's eyes. They weren't painted, as Kieran had assumed. They were inlaid. And they were not black, but dark green.
"Well. That's... that's pretty fucking odd. Because, I mean, obviously it's not me, so I guess..."
"It's a portrait. Look at the details. Look at -- oh, there's a difference. His nose is a little crooked."
"It is?" Kieran ducked to get a better look, head-on, face-to-face with the statue.
When he found himself at the same level, head tilted at the same angle, he had the sudden impression he was looking in a mirror. And his reflection was laughing at him. He straightened suddenly and turned his back on it.
"That is creepy as fuck," he said quietly.
As he walked away, he could feel it staring at his back. He didn't realize he'd tensed up his injured shoulder until he was back in the big room and was surprised at a sudden lessening of the ache.
He went all the way outside, down the steps to the grass. He didn't feel quite clear of it until he was standing in the sunshine, listening to the buzzing of flies over the carcass of the deer that Ash had shot. The sun was over the mountains. The air was hot and still. The wound that had nearly killed him was healing practically overnight, Ash was turning out to be a damn good hunter, there had been that thing about being outside himself and the crushing sense of history he'd seen there, and now he'd found an unbelievable fortune in ancient gold, with which he could do nothing on account of being a fugitive, and a statue that looked way too much like him. Minus scars, plus a crooked nose. He was tired.
Ash came silently down behind him and put a hand on the small of his back. "You can blow out your candle now, if you want."
"Oh." With a startled laugh, Kieran pinched the wick. "What happened to the horse? I don't see it."
"She wandered off as soon as I unsaddled her. She's out there somewhere."
"Won't be hard to find, I guess."
"What do you suppose this place is? How come the people who put all that gold in there never came back for it? And why's it never been looted?"
"How should I know?"
Ash shrugged. "I'm just making noise, I guess. It's funny -- we've found this humongous pile of treasure, and we can't touch it."
"Yeah. We try to sell it, we'd get caught."
"Sell it? I was thinking about studying it. There's almost no Iavaian temple art left in the world, and here we've found all the lost altar furniture or something. How could you think about selling it?"
"How could I not? That stuff was made of solid gold!"
"But it's your --"
"Heritage. Huh." Kieran spat into the reflecting pool. "Lemme tell you something about heritage."
Ash took the candle and matches from him and set them on the bottom step. "Tell me while I butcher this deer. You can stop me if I'm about to do a bad job, because I've seen it done but I never did it myself."
"You're pretty good at killing 'em, for someone who's never done it before."
"I've hunted before, but it was a bit too civilized. My aunt and I always hired a couple of guys to come with us and do the icky stuff. I didn't even have to carry the raw meat. I watched them, though." He'd apparently watched closely enough, because he started with the right sort of cut. Although he worked so slowly and meticulously that he seemed to be dissecting the thing for science, rather than butchering it for food.
Kieran sat down on the lower step to watch. It was a relief to be off his feet. He had no stamina. Still, he thought he was doing pretty well, for someone who'd been dead the previous morning. He held his right arm across his lap, to rest the shoulder. "What do you know about the war?" he said.
"Guess I don't have to ask which war you mean. Well, I know the official version, which goes something like: after about three hundred years of missionary work, Dalanists had gained a small number of converts in Iavaian territory. The rest of the people continued to worship devils and live sinfully. Then came the Nine Days' War, in which tribal leaders tried to abolish Dalanism. The Iavaian Dalanists, fearing for their lives, petitioned the Commonwealth for assistance. Commonwealth troops occupied and annexed the territory and imposed law and order, to the great benefit of the inhabitants, who are lazy benighted savages and should be grateful. Oh, I forgot to throw in the phrase 'minimal bloodshed' -- the histories always have to put that in somewhere. And then I know a bit of the unofficial version, which is that the reason the death tolls are so low is that the Commonwealth only counted armed enemies killed in organized conflict. Guerilla fighters are counted as bandits. Noncombatants aren't counted at all, even though -- I gather -- they died in droves."
"Ever talk with somebody who was there?"
"No. Never really got a chance to talk with any Iavaians but you, and I studiously avoided soldiers and Watchmen back home." He lifted his wrist as if to wipe his brow, but stopped, wrinkling his nose at the sheen of jelly-like deer blood that clung to it. He stripped off his shirt and tossed it in the reflecting pool, where it immediately became the center of a comet-shaped red cloud.
Kieran watched the thread of blood being swept down the stream, until Ash bent to his task again. Then he watched the working of bone and muscle under freckled skin. Remembered how Ash had splayed a hand across his back, a moment ago, how good it had been to feel that. The illusion of fragility was fading, the more he watched Ash's body. Abruptly he was glad he was wearing a makeshift kilt, instead of his tight leather pants.
"Well." Kieran cleared his throat, trying to get back on topic. "What they call the Nine Days War, that was actually about three years long. Only, it was the Dalanists who started it. Bands of 'em were knocking down temples and stealing stuff from them. These weren't really religious people, see, they were mercenaries. Mostly poppy farmers who got put out of work when the Tiwa'hanaka outlawed opium growing. Which they did because the Commonwealth made them do it."
"Yeah, with trade sanctions and stuff, I read about that. The Tiwawhatsit, that's the tribal ruling body, right?"
"The Five Tribes' Brotherhood, yeah. So these farmers were wrecking temples and holy sites, and any kind of religious or historical thing they could find. Which the Commonwealth was paying them to do. They found a lot more of 'em than the Eskaran army would've found, too, because they grew up being shown those places and told to be reverent. Also they were assassinating priests and holy people. Now, before the Annexation, most Iavaians with a Talent didn't do anything with it, but the ones who did were mostly priests. What I hear is that the Eskarans were offering a bounty for heads with shaved scalps. Because priests shaved their heads, male and female both. Five ya for a woman and eight for a man."
"Which is?"
"I dunno how much a ya was worth. I've seen the coins, people collect them and melt them down for the silver. I'd guess about half a throne."
"Okay. Go on. Presumably people got fed up with this."
"Right. And there were little skirmishes, and attempts to arrest the temple-burners, and so forth. But the way things were set up, each of the five tribes had its own army, and those were raised by levy from each clan, so they weren't real organized. And a couple tribes that didn't have a member on council, like the Riaha, the High Pass tribe, were represented at the clan level, but they resented that, so their troop levies weren't real cooperative."
"I'm impressed. You know a lot about this."
"It only happened thirty years ago. The Eskarans couldn't kill everybody who remembered. And arresting them for talking about it only works if they talk in public. Anyway, as soon as the Tiwa'hanaka started making some progress against the temple-burners, in jumps the Eskarne Theocratic Commonwealth, claiming its converts are being persecuted. On that basis they rounded up and imprisoned whole villages, and when they ran out of room in their prison camps, they just started killing everyone they found who wasn't for sure on their side. But like you said, they didn't count those, because they were noncombatants. By the time the Tiwa'hanaka got it through their thick heads that they couldn't make the invasion stop by lodging diplomatic protests, the Eskarans were dug in. And then the different tribes had different ideas about how to fight, and they argued, and some of 'em went off half-cocked, and some of 'em sat around blabbing until it was too late.
"When they finally did get right down to fighting, the ones who took any serious casualties fled or surrendered. The only ones who ran a decent war were the Tama, and even then, most of them bugged out when the going got too tough. I want to be proud of my clan, because they stuck it out to the end, but all they managed to do was get a whole generation wiped out. Men and women were both fighting by then, so only kids and old folks were left. My mom was raised by her grandma. She told me she'd had two brothers and a sister, but they died of cholera when they were moved into the cities."
"That's... that's really sad, Kieran. It's horrible."
"Sad? It's stupid! My point is that they brought it on themselves! It was their own fucking fault! What were they thinking? There wasn't even a real border between them and the Commonwealth, just a river partway, and an imaginary line. The biggest military power in the world, which a hundred years ago took a big bite out of Paiwaar and then spent their time taking Yelorre and losing it and retaking it -- my point is, it should have been obvious there was a wolf at the door. A goddamn rabid wolf, camped out on their doorstep. But did they have a coherent political body that could make fast decisions if it had to? No. Did they have any solid diplomatic ties to anyone who could maybe step in on their side if it was needed? No! They pissed off Prandhar arguing over some dumb chunk of land nobody wanted anyway. And did they have a competent military force? No, they had a bunch of village bullies who'd been sent to drill because they were raising hell at home. Untrained, illiterate, narcissistic fuckwits who had more loyalty to their second cousins than to the People as a whole. What I'm saying is, we asked for it."
"You would have done it differently, I take it."
"Hell yeah."
"What's this? Do we eat this?"
"That's the liver. We eat that. We fry it with that eggplant you're so keen on, as soon as you're done there."
Ash gave a half-happy groan. "Never thought I could be so hungry while up to the elbows in lukewarm slithery guts."
"Welcome to the country life."
"Anyway. You were saying?"
"I was done."
"I don't get what brought that on, though. Just felt like ranting about history?"
"Oh. Well, I figure the reason all that treasure is holed up in here, is because it was hidden from the temple-burners. And I guess it makes me kinda mad that someone had the presence of mind, and the manpower, to move things like that big heavy statue here to this place nobody knew about, and then keep anyone from knowing about it all this time, but they couldn't get their shit together enough to fight a war. What the hell good does all that gold do anyone? They should've sold it to buy rifles. If they had a hiding place this good, they should've used it as a guerilla base. Staged raids from here."
Ash was picking up speed, slicing off meal-sized strips and laying them out on the grass. Blood was running off his elbows, spattering his pants. The soles of his feet were black with dirt. He looked savage, primitive; his cultured voice was an amusing contrast. "Isn't this place kind of far away from things? I mean, to be any use as a staging area."
"Actually, it's only about fifteen miles to the road, that way. South," he added, as he realized Ash hadn't seen him pointing. "From there, only a couple days' ride to Canyon, and you can do it faster if you're on foot. If I'm not carrying much more than a canteen, a rifle, and a sack of lunch, I can do forty miles in a day, easy. That is, if I'm in top shape. I probably couldn't make it across the valley, right now."
"You'll get your strength back."
"Plus there's a built-in escape route. The way's a bit twisty, but if you go all the way downstream -- you remember that dry riverbed? You must've followed it, to get here. Well, you follow that down about fifty more miles, and it runs into the Burn."
Now Ash craned around to look at him, frowning. There was a smudge of blood on one lens of his glasses, where he'd shoved them up his nose with the back of his hand. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Gotta swear you to secrecy." Kieran grinned to show it was a joke, but Ash took him seriously.
"Cross my heart."
"Little known fact, you can spend hours -- maybe days -- in the edge of the Burn and not get hurt. And the power, even on the fringe, will backlash down your trail and blur it out, so nobody can trace you by magic. The rumor is that the more Tama blood you've got in you, the less the Burn hurts you."
"Hence its name?"
"Yep."
"Do you think anyone's ever been to the middle of it?"
"Huh. No way. Thing's thirty-six miles across, and what I heard is that the fringe part ends about two miles in. After that -- bloosh."
"Bloosh?"
"Your nose bleeds, your ears bleed, and then you have about five minutes to get out before your brain turns to jelly and you die."
"Oh. Well, I should probably avoid the place, since I'm pretty sure I have no Tama blood in me whatsoever. Although I seem to have a great quantity of deer blood on me, so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wash off."
"We should decide where the garbage goes."
"You decide."
"I guess just pitch it in those weeds over there. We really should bury it, but --"
"No shovel." Wrinkling his nose, Ash hoisted the bundle of hide, hooves, and guts, and hauled it into the thicket Kieran had indicated, about a hundred yards away. It still might attract coyotes and wildcats, not to mention flies, but at least the smell wouldn't reach them. Probably.
As Kieran levered himself off the step, he found he was formulating an excuse to join Ash in bathing. Several casual things to say about it ran through his mind. But none of them came out of his mouth. He watched Ash walk away, and stayed where he was. He told himself it was because he was still weak and sore from his injury, however fast it was healing.
So he decided to see what he could do about food. He'd just remembered that their only pan was currently full of beans.
The best way to deal with dried beans was to soak them for an hour, then boil them to mush, then fry the mush. But it was also possible to soak them overnight, then cook them lightly; he'd never liked them that way, but it crossed his mind to tie them up in a square of bandage gauze and hang them in the stream. Then they'd be ready tomorrow. That done, he set to slicing up the deer's liver. He'd never bothered slicing one before, just roasted it whole, so he made a literal hash of it. Oh well, it was meat. Fortunately Ash returned, in wet pants, with an armload of wood, before Kieran could get too far into the eggplant.
"You plan to eat the stem?"
"Oh. Huh. I suck at this. You do it."
"Okay, you make the fire."
"My arm's tired."
"You can do it one-handed, right? Where's your sling? Put your sling back on."
"Cluck, cluck."
"I am not being a hen, you're being a -- the kind of person who makes everything worse by trying to be tough, I'm sure there's a word for it."
Kieran washed his hands, re-slung his arm, and built the fire. Then he leaned his back against the nearest pillar and dozed off in the afternoon sun.
The next thing he knew Ash was prodding him awake, looking concerned and a bit shaken.
"What's wrong?" Kieran glanced around, half expecting to see a rank of Watchmen charging across the valley.
"Time to eat."
"That's why you look like you found a bone in your applesauce?"
"Uh. No. You were talking in your sleep."
Not sure whether to be embarrassed or amused, Kieran took the bowl of food he was offered and busied himself with eating for a little while. After the first bite, it was no longer a pose. He was pretty sure he couldn't have made fried liver and some boring vegetable taste so good. He wolfed down half of it before he was willing to stop long enough to talk. "What was I saying?"
"I don't know, it was Iavaian. The thing that spooked me is you weren't mumbling, like people usually do when they talk in their sleep. You sounded like you were lecturing."
"Weird."
"This whole place is weird."
"Yeah, but..." A sudden spike of worry hit him, as he realized Ash might want to leave. And where could they go? And what if Ash associated him with the weirdness, wanted to ditch him, he'd been a huge burden lately --
Before he could say anything, Ash reached out to rest a hand briefly on his knee. "It's all right. It's a friendly weirdness, I think. Look at how fast you're healing. It likes you."
I'm going to have to say something soon, or do something. To make sure he knows how much I want him to stay with me. But can I make that kind of -- it's a demand, really, can I demand that of him? No, I can't ask, because if staying made him unhappy, and my asking made him do it anyway --
"Kai, it's all right," Ash insisted. Responding to the feeling, not knowing its source. Kieran resolved to set it aside for now, think it over when Ash was asleep or something.
After they'd finished with the liver and eggplant, Ash juggled the two halves of the squash out of the hot embers. He'd sprinkled sugar on them, but they were still not very good. Kind of dry and stringy.
"You really need butter to do this right," Ash explained. "I thought of using a bit of deer fat, but decided against it."
"Gah. Good call."
"Maybe we'll find a bee tree, get some honey, that would've worked."
"Well, I'm eating mine anyway. I'll have yours if you don't want it. Pass it over." He polished off both portions, right down to the charred skin. Finally, his belly felt full for the first time in -- he couldn't remember how long. "Now this," he said, "is life."
"Don't get too comfy. You've still got some stitches in you."
Kieran moved away from the pillar and took off his sling so Ash could get at his back. Probing at the scar with his fingers to find out how many stitches were left, he found that it didn't hurt unless he really dug in. "This is bizarre. It hurts a lot less now than it did -- what, four hours ago?"
"Not even that. I think it was a bit after noon when I started pulling the stitches, and the sun's still at half-mast. Yeah, something around here is definitely healing you. Oh. Bad thing." He tugged at a stitch with his fingers. "You've totally healed up around the thread."
"Just go ahead and haul it out."
"If you say so." Ash's breath washed across his shoulder, and then he felt a slight scrape of teeth, and a sharp needling sensation. This was repeated three times in the same spot before it was followed by a tug, and Ash switched to fingers to pull the loosened thread the rest of the way out.
"That didn't hurt much."
"It didn't bleed much, either. Just little dots. When I did it before, it ripped the scar some. Ready for the next one?"
"Quit asking me. Just do 'em all."
Now that he was full of good food and feeling nearly healthy, he found he was far more bothered by the feeling of Ash's mouth on him than he'd been before. Definitely getting better. Well enough to --? He was abruptly unsure how Ash would respond if he turned around and kissed him. They were comfortable together, true, glad together, good friends, there was trust. But for all he knew, Ash had been feeling filthy and regretful about that night -- might not be remembering it as lovemaking, but as a seduction. They hadn't discussed it. Even if he still wants me, he'd probably rather not do anything right now. He's had to deal with spit and blood and pus and vomit. And I'm not real clean just presently.
I'm making excuses. I'm scared. This is idiotic. I know he cares for me, loves me -- I know that, right?
The other day, when I said I loved him, he didn't say it back.
Ash paused in the middle of working on a particularly tricky thread. "Are you all right? Is something bothering you?"
"Just because you're an empath doesn't mean you get to eavesdrop while I'm thinking."
"Oh. Hell. I was, wasn't I? I'm really sorry."
Kieran sighed, wishing he'd phrased that better. "Just get it done, will you?"
That was the last thread on his back. Then Ash came around to work on the front, and that was even more disturbing. Kieran couldn't stop imagining warm breath and grazing teeth moving upwards from there, in along his collarbone, up his throat. His hands made fists to keep from reaching out, and he wondered why he was stopping himself.
Seven stitches later, Ash picked the final scabbed thread out of his teeth and held it up, and Kieran breathed a sigh of relief that it was over. Relief and regret.
"What a day," Ash said. "I saw a hill of gold, got a history lesson, squidged around in guts, and ate scab."
Uncomfortable as he was, Kieran couldn't help grinning. "That was fun, what do you wanna do now?"
"You should bathe." A hesitation, Ash's smile faltering as he realized he was being rude. "I don't mean you smell, it's just, when you've been ill --"
"No, I do smell, I can smell me."
"And if you wait any longer, you'll have wet hair when night comes."
"Yeah."
"Sorry, I'm usually more tactful than that. Don't be mad."
"Don't be such a drama hog. Of course I'm not mad." Feigning exasperation, Kieran got up and lurched off toward the pond. When he reached it and looked back, he couldn't see Ash in the entrance of the temple. Ash was making no effort to watch. He really wasn't interested.
Well, naturally. Like you're such a prize, Trevarde. Why would anyone want to look at your skinny yellow ass?
Dropping his blanket-kilt, carefully setting his compass on top of it, he waded in. The water was warmer than he'd expected. Just cool enough to offset the hot sun. His legs looked sickly-pale under the surface. Weeds and mud squished between his toes, making him wonder how he'd get out without ending up with mud shoes.
He was tempted to swim out to the middle, but wasn't sure he had the strength to get back again if he did. Instead, he skirted the edges, beginning to enjoy the water despite his self-pity. About halfway around, he found a place where the mud gave way to sand. This shallow beach, he discovered, ran twenty feet out, then suddenly dropped off. He didn't test the drop-off; he was sure weeds would wrap his ankles and drown him. It was sickening to be so weak.
Sitting crosslegged on the sand, so that the water was chest-high, he pulled the string off his braid. A bunch of hairs came with it. Strands kept coming out as he unraveled the braid, wrapping around his fingers, so he imagined that when he got it completely undone the whole thing would fall off, leaving him bald. Of course, that didn't happen. He ducked his head a few times, working his fingers in, and each time had to pick loose hair off his hands.
"Hey."
Ash's voice startled him. He twisted around, shoving his wet hair back. The redhead was standing on the edge of the grass where it met the sand, rifle slung over his shoulder, offering a lump of soap. When he saw he had Kieran's attention, he tossed it underhand.
Kieran caught the soap neatly. "Going hunting again? We've got enough to last us a week."
"Nah, I thought I'd kind of stand watch."
"Oh."
"There might be, you know, various toothy critters. Not that you couldn't take 'em, normally, but --"
"Yeah, okay."
Ash sat down with the rifle across his knees, and made a show of gazing off into the distance.
Funny that I didn't sense him coming closer. I'm not wearing that compass charm he made, true, but didn't I used to have a better sense of where he is? I guess we don't have that connection anymore. No, what am I thinking, it's because I'm in water. Why am I hunting reasons to be unhappy? What am I trying to push away?
Turning his back on Ash, more to hide his expression than from modesty, he went to work with the soap. His skin was two shades lighter when he was done scrubbing it. When he washed his hair, the lather turned gray, and grit got caught under his fingernails.
He lay back to rinse off. Watched his hair swirl above him, deep black clouds streaked with milky soap-water. Then he did the whole thing again. As he did, he was aware that he was stalling. Because now would be a very good time to open the subject -- all those difficult subjects -- what sort of relationship they had, whether to stand by confessions made in strange circumstances. Once it was given a label, it could no longer be changed or denied. And if it turned out to be a bad idea, things could get so much worse...
Leaving things unspoken wasn't really an option anymore, though. It was all too obvious. He just knew he was going to botch everything, but if he acted like it didn't matter, that would be a kind of botch as well. It shouldn't have been so confusing. He couldn't figure out why the thought of being the one to reach out seemed so sick. Why he felt he ought to convince Ash that he was -- what, unworthy? Dangerous? Wasn't that a kind of arrogance?
So he wasted time, trying to think of what he wanted to say, finding all his words scrambled and useless.
Eventually he started to get chilled. He tossed the soap up on the bank. Ash set the rifle aside and offered the spare blanket, the one he'd washed earlier. Kieran wrapped the blanket around his waist and wrung out his hair. When he looked up again, Ash had a comb.
"Thanks." Kieran reached for it, but Ash didn't hand it to him.
"I'll do it for you."
"Oh. Okay." For the zillionth time that day, he sat with his back turned and let Ash mess with him.
It was a beautiful day. They were free. He was miraculously healed, when by rights he should have been dead. It was stupid to brood. So how come he had to drag out memories of almosts and false starts and mull over them like some crippled soldier wearing out his old battles?
If I try to explain, I might drive a wedge between us. I don't really have to say anything now, do I? Maybe it can wait. Maybe it's an insult to him to assume he doesn't understand. Maybe I don't want him to understand.
The comb paused. "Kieran, what on earth is the matter?"
"Eavesdropping again?"
Combing resumed, but stopped again after only a few seconds. "But you seem so unhappy. Can't I help?"
"You are helping."
"Then why does it seem like it's me you're unhappy with?"
Kieran studied his oversized, knobby hands where they rested on his oversized, knobby knees. He hated the whole clumsy overgrown body he was stuck in. As he tried to find a way to answer that wouldn't make his decision for him, his stomach began to roil as if it were full of rattlesnakes. His voice came out whispery: "You're not the problem."
"Then what is?" After a moment, Ash's hands touched his sides. Sun-hot arms slid around his waist; a faintly stubbled cheek rested against the sensitive new scar. Lightly, painlessly. Helpless to refuse, Kieran leaned back into the embrace.
And there goes the option of leaving the subject alone. Oh shit, I'm going to blurt and babble, aren't I? Kieran's head started to hurt, right in the middle of his forehead. "It's hard to explain." His own voice sounded strange to him. "I guess I'm just -- I'm confused. That's all."
"Tell me. I'll help you figure it out."
"It's not -- can I use your own words on you? Is that fair?"
"Go ahead. I won't be angry."
"Then... I need to know how you feel about me." He winced, when he heard himself say that. I sound pathetic.
Slowly, Ash let go. He moved to where he could see Kieran's face. "You don't know?" He sounded incredulous. "I love you. I thought you knew. I guess I've been a coward. I should have shown it more. I love you."
The words were like physical blows, with the weight of quiet intensity Ash put into them. Kieran felt his expression go strange as he met Ash's eyes, was caught by blinding blue. His headache spread all across his forehead, his whole head felt too tight. "Say it again."
Ash's smile was lopsided. "I'm stupidly, helplessly, crazy in love with you. I'd do anything for you. I want to belong to you, like a name, I want to be a thing people have to know to know you. I don't understand why that's hurting you."
"I don't... I don't know either." To his shock and dismay, his voice broke.
"Kieran?"
"I'm not -- shit, I'm sorry --" He put his hand wonderingly to his face, disbelieving, as a hot spill of wetness streaked down the side of his nose. Next, to make matters worse, came a hiccuping sound that he realized was a sob.
"Please tell me what's wrong. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Kieran could only shake his head. He clamped his hand over his mouth to contain the mounting pressure of this feeling, these noises, but they wouldn't stop. He couldn't see. He couldn't think. He wasn't ready. Showing teeth, clenched in a futile attempt to silence himself, he reached blindly and blundered into Ash's arm, wrapped his fingers around it. Reached out with his heart's hand, not to do harm but simply to make contact. Show me. Show me you know what kind of poisonous animal I am, before you say those things.
Through that touch a flood of feeling poured. So good it was agonizing. How could anyone stand it? How could Ash ever feel something that pure for someone so wrecked?
"Say it again!" Kieran ordered, hating the way his voice wobbled and fractured.
"I love you, I want to make you happy, I'll do anything."
"Why, Ash? Why -- why me? Of all the people in the world -- you couldn't have found someone worse, don't you know what I am?"
Ash's voice was low and sweet, trying to calm him. "Yes, I know what you are."
"And what I've done. All the things I've done."
"I see why you did those things. Maybe you had alternatives, maybe in hindsight you can think of what they were, but at the time -- do you need me to forgive you? Would that help?"
"There are things no one can forgive me for."
"Stop. I don't blame you. I don't have the right to judge you, but I'm the only one who really knows you, and I say you're not a bad person. Sometimes you're a very good person; the rest of the time you're just trying to stay alive. But you're not bad. That's the truth." When that only made Kieran cry harder, he grabbed Kieran's chin and made him look. His eyes were pale and bright as sunlight on water. "You deserve to be loved. I'm going to keep saying so until you believe me. I think you're wonderful. You're strong and smart and funny and brave, and so gorgeous it breaks my heart to look at you. There's no one else in the world remotely like you. Do you know why it drove me out of my mind when I thought you were dead? Not just because I missed you, not just because I wanted you to be alive, but because something totally unique had been destroyed. As if the tallest mountain in the world just one day fell down, or the deepest lake just dried up. I cried because I missed you, but I lost it because the world missed you. Missed out on you. That's how important you are."
"I can't believe that." It was easier to talk now, though the tears were still running.
"You don't have to. I'll believe it for you."
"And when you change your mind --"
"I won't."
"You should! I can't be trusted, I don't know why you keep trusting me, it's going to get you killed, what if I get you killed?"
"What if it's worth it?"
Kieran jammed his eyes shut, hiding from the clarity of Ash's stare. He drew a shuddering breath. It was a while before he could speak, and even then he couldn't answer what Ash had said. "This is so embarrassing. After all the times I called you a crybaby." He dragged his wrist across his eyes, examined the wet streak on his skin so he wouldn't have to look up. "I've been such a rotten person. Don't tell me I haven't -- I was a contract killer, for fuck's sake, I murdered people I didn't even hate! I want to atone for it. Don't just forgive me outright, Ashes, let me earn free of it."
"That's fair."
"I'm afraid to touch you. I'm afraid I'll spoil you. You're so pure, and I'm such a fucking cesspit."
"No."
"I'll dirty the one clean thing I ever knew."
With a sad smile, Ash took up his hand and kissed the knuckles. "If that's the case, well, the truth is it goes the other way. The closer you get to me, the cleaner you become. Look back on the time we've known each other. Look at the changes."
Gathering his thoughts, looking honestly at memory, was harder than it had ever been. But he forced himself to see clearly, and it was true. His cynicism had been eroding ever since he'd first seen a gawky nameless white boy staring at him on the train. It had become impossible to lie to himself, shout himself down. "I'm too raw now," he said. "I used to say you care about things too much. I'm starting to do that too."
"It gets easier."
"I've never said anything nice to you, have I?"
Some of the sad went out of Ash's smile. "A few things. One thing especially comes to mind, though you might not remember saying it."
"I remember. I meant it."
"You could say it again, now, if you want."
It stopped in his throat, then came out in a rush. "I love you."
He was astonished by the feeling that ran into him from Ash's hands; he had no point of reference for anything so high and bright. Such joy. It was true, it was all true, somehow it made Ash perfectly happy to hear those words, despite their flawed source. Suddenly he was no longer helpless or confused.
Saying it the next time was easier. "I love you, Ash. I love the way you do things, how you learn so fast, your hands are so fast and clever, it makes me happy to look in my pack just because it's so like you to line everything up neat like that." This could be addictive, how easily he was making Ash flush with pleasure just by talking. "I should have said all this a long time ago. I like your curiosity, the way you listen and ask questions, I like how you see the world, without judging people, I don't understand how you do it but I really admire it. I could go on all day. The way you talk. The way you laugh. I love the way you try to do right without thinking whether it'll hurt. I love the way you curl your hands up by your mouth when you sleep, and the way you scratch your nose when you're thinking -- everything you do leaves trails in my brain, it stays."
Ash was studying his hands, ears scarlet. "You can go on like that as long as you want. Um. Particularly you could tell me -- oh, now I'm going to sound vulgar -- do you remember saying, when you got well, you were going to. Um."
"Fuck your brains out?" Kieran laughed, feeling light and dizzy.
"Well, yeah." Ash glanced up, then ducked his head again. "I know I'm sort of funny-looking, and you deserve to be with someone as gorgeous as you are, but if you do still... want me..."
"You're not funny-looking. You're like gold and ivory, your eyes are diamonds, you're a treasure to me." Kieran took a deep breath, watching Ash's face in profile, waiting until Ash finally straightened to look at him. He bent to place a deliberate single kiss on Ash's lips; when he pulled back, Ash leaned after him just a little, wanting more, and only then was Kieran certain.
With shaking hands, he took Ash's glasses and set them aside, just for the relief of looking away for a moment. The touch of Ash's hand pushing back his damp hair was as strong as burning, but good, far too good.
"Kai," Ash whispered; the shape of his lips moving around the name was unbearable. Kieran barely began the motion to embrace him, and Ash was suddenly all over him, kissing him ravenously. Sun-warmed skin, legs tangling; they couldn't get close enough, sitting up; Ash bore him down and pressed along the length of him, biting his lips, and it didn't hurt, it was perfect, it was the first unshadowed beginning he'd ever tasted.
For aeons they clung together, locked in an alchemy of breath and spit and wondering, gradually realizing that they had lost the barrier between themselves, were mingling now in mind and heart, could no longer be certain which of them originated which sensation. Even groans and sighs could be told apart only by timbre. The blurring of identity abated a little when Ash broke the kiss in order to follow the line of Kieran's jaw to his ear, but every touch was still amplified. With hands and lips they began to explore each other. While he tasted freckled shoulders and narrow wrists, Kieran was aware that Ash had been wanting just as strongly to taste scars and tattoos.
He rolled Ash under him and slid his hand down. "Can I --?"
"Oh please yes --"
Neither of them could stand waiting, but he drew it out anyway, taking his time with the buttons, dragging his palms down Ash's thighs to strip him, savoring. "There are freckles on your knees." Kieran returned to Ash's throat and kissed his way down. He went as slowly as he could, not wanting to rush this, but Ash's hands knotted in his hair, desperately impatient. He surrendered, opened his throat and gulped Ash down, a skill he'd learned in his sordid former life finally put to a good use; he knew now exactly how good it felt, as he caught an echo through the empath's skin, following Ash's broken whimpers with muffled sounds of his own. When Ash arched convulsively and let out a moan two octaves lower than his speaking voice, Kieran nearly went off as well.
For a time, Ash lay stunned, round-eyed. His mouth worked several times before he was able to speak. "Kai. You. Oh."
"Yes." Words were silly things now. They had a much better way to communicate. As soon as Ash got his breath back, he was caught in the echo of Kieran's need, hungry to reply in kind. Curious, awkward, his unsure touch lethally sweet. His eagerness seemed so young; there was something kittenish in the way he wouldn't let Kieran do anything but lie there while he methodically worked out what ought to be kissed, bitten, licked -- and what tickled. But then he was done with exploring and invited Kieran to fulfill his promise, and once Kieran was inside him wiry muscle jumped into sharp relief, his eyes burned, his intensity was almost frightening. Flying, falling, Kieran had a moment of terror that he would somehow break Ash if he let himself go, that he might release all his magic along with his tensioned desire and kill them both, but it was too late to make decisions. The sight of their fingers knotted together, brown against white, was the last straw. He called out Ash's name and lost his own. Heard himself sobbing incoherent endearments in two languages, was rolled under the storm of Ash's reaction, surrendered to the empath's twining of their emotions into a loop that fed on itself until they were both blind and blazing. For a timeless time, the universe consisted entirely of one two-stranded knot of ecstasy.
Returning from that place was like regaining consciousness after being knocked cold. They lay breathlessly twined together for a time, tasting their own flavor in each other's mouths, running hands aimlessly along sated skin, mirroring the awe in each other's eyes.
"Are we..." Kieran found speaking hard for a different reason now. A fierce proprietary joy was welling up, filling him so full there was hardly room for speech anymore. "Is there a word for what we are? What that was? Or should I just say -- edeime kii, my lover?"
"Yes. Say it a lot," Ash replied with a dreamy smile. "Say 'mine.' Get all jealous and possessive, and growl at anyone who comes near me. It gives me such a kick when you do that."
A laugh bubbled up in him, coming out strange and jerky. "I've been doing that all along, haven't I?" He pushed his fingers through Ash's hair, viscerally pleased at the way the curls sprang back. Picked a fragment of grass off Ash's neck.
"I wish we could stay like this forever. Right here, in the sun, by the water."
"Why can't we?"
"We'll have to come up with more supplies somehow. And we can't be sure we've lost the Watch. Even if this place masks us, there hasn't been any rain. Our trail hasn't washed out."
"Huh." It was hard to think about anything at all, but that was a valid point. Kieran took his time brushing away grass and leaves that had stuck to Ash's skin, letting the idea roll around in his head. His mind felt clean and empty. There was plenty of room to think. "Well," he said slowly, "I wonder if maybe we can do something about that."
"What do you mean?"
"Just a sec." He got up long enough to spread out the blanket he'd been using for a kilt, and they both lay down on it. Now Ash got into the game of picking off bits of vegetation, so they let themselves be distracted by it, laughing -- giggling. Kieran was fairly sure he'd never giggled before in his life. And now he was like a kid, just playing.
Eventually, when they could no longer find any more twigs in each other's hair, Ash reminded him. "What did you mean, we can do something about it?"
"When I saw that storm, the one that broke us out of prison, I kind of got the feeling that I'd called it. It was there already, but I told it where to go. We're past the season for heavy rain, but maybe I could find something, steer it over."
"That would be really interesting, if you could."
"Yeah. For one thing, it would make me a bit of a stormcaller, as well as a jinx. Which means two Talents."
"But you said 'we' -- what can I do?"
Kieran wasn't sure how to answer. He was distracted by the faint line of tiny, gilded hairs that ran up to Ash's navel. All the gold hidden in the temple was spare change compared to this. "You shine," he murmured, raising his eyes to the copper-speckled alabaster of Ash's face. "I saw you shining like this once in a dream. Have you noticed you're not sunburned anymore?"
"No, I --" Ash blinked and caught his breath as Kieran touched his lips, no longer chapped and cracked as they'd been yesterday.
"There's a lot more power here than I thought. It's healed you too, you just didn't notice because you weren't too beat up. Did you get the feeling there's more of it between us? I mean, do you feel stronger than before? Magically. Because I do."
"Absolutely. I don't have to strain to sense you -- in fact, I have to make an effort to keep from smudging our minds together."
"So I think we can maybe do more than we could alone. Maybe if you sort of ride with me, I could make it rain."
"How do I --"
"How do you think?" He pulled Ash close again.
Without the force of pent-up desire behind it, the mingling of their minds was not so sudden this time, and he could watch it happening. They both wat