K M Frontain, page 39
Marun squeezed him slightly. “Yes, you did,” he insisted. They could have caught the boy by his smell alone. It had been almost solid.
Kehfrey refused to answer, obviously deciding to disbelieve him silently. This made the sorcerer smile over his head, but only as the faintest of twitches at the corners of his lips, hardly a smile that anyone would recognise as one, but for two brothers who understood him better than most.
Emboldened by that small gesture, Vik at last spoke to his lover.
“Where are we going?” he said.
A familiar laugh occurred just then and Vik turned to search over the heads of the pedestrians. Marun looked toward him and caught the youth staring off at a crowd of young men. As he watched, one of them lifted a hand in greeting toward Vik.
“Who is that?”
“An acquaintance.” Vik averted his head without returning the greeting.
Marun saw the distant youth glower in disappointment. Their eyes met. The young man quickly avoided his gaze. Marun faced forward again, thinking of Rhet’s punishment, thinking how it would feel to watch Vik do the same to that hopeful slut who even now stared covertly at him.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Vik reminded.
“We’re passing through Wistal to a place on the further side.”
“Where exactly?”
“The ruins on Held Mount.”
“That place! Why? It’s haunted!”
“Is it?” Kehfrey said. “Ghouls?”
“I hope not!” Vik answered. He’d come out of their room the night Lord Avehlt had arrived with Lord Rhet. He’d wandered to the head of the stairs at exactly the wrong time, the moment when Marun had called Kortin up from the cellar to show Avehlt and his men what would happen to them if they didn’t cooperate. The ghoul had crossed the stairwell below as Vik had stood on the topmost step. He’d hobbled back 334
into his room and stayed within for three more days, until Kehfrey had sworn to him he’d made the sorcerer rid the house of the dead thief. Vik didn’t want to see another ghoul again. Ever!
He glanced over at Kehfrey and knew from his brother’s expression the boy regretted mentioning ghouls. Kehfrey had followed him out of the room that night, but he hadn’t fled back in. No, he’d gone down to the library and seen Avehlt cower away from his mutilated and dead half-brother. Kehfrey had refused to speak of the things he had witnessed that night, no matter how much he’d been pressed. Vik supposed he was glad of that.
Watching the elder brother closely, Marun saw the fear flash through his eyes. Kehfrey must have seen it too, for he averted his face and heaved a great silent sigh. The boy had disturbed his precious older brother’s equilibrium and berated himself. Marun knew it.
“The temple is not haunted,” he said.
“Temple!” three voices answered.
“This ruin was a temple?” Olomo continued. “Of what divinity?”
“The followers worshipped the earth.”
“And you seek answers about the boy there! Why?”
“Because the earth can answer! You know nothing! Be quiet!”
“Kehfrey must not be polluted with earthly magics! He is meant to reach Ishpaäf! Not have his essence corrupted by the old worship!”
“I said be quiet!” Marun hissed. “If you speak again, I will send you off that horse and leave you lying in the street for all to pick over!”
Olomo grimly shut his mouth. He looked at the boy. Kehfrey glanced at him and away. Olomo averted his eyes. The boy had indicated for him to desist. He sucked in a silent, angry breath and endeavoured to calm himself in the ways taught him by his masters.
“Why would the earth answer?” Kehfrey asked Marun. The sorcerer opened his mouth to reply, when a peremptory voice interrupted him.
“Vik! Vik! Where have you been?”
The four of them turned their heads in surprise, but Vik also pulled his mount up. Assassin and sorcerer quickly matched the motion.
Kehfrey smiled from within his master’s arms and named the arrogant man striding toward them.
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“Oh. It’s the great Astabe.”
Marun scowled. Yes. Astabe. Vik’s lover before him. He knew that much from what Rhet had hinted. The artist stalked forward with an offended scowl on his proud aquiline face. He pushed between bystanders without excusing his rudeness. He was obviously someone to be reckoned with, or so he thought.
“Vik! You left me in the middle of a project!” Astabe said. He looked up at the youth resentfully. “I was forced to use someone else to finish.”
“What? You couldn’t remember his ass enough to finish it from memory?” Kehfrey said. “Now there’s as plain an insult to your beauty as you get, Vik.”
Astabe started and looked over at the other horse. With a myopic squint of his eyelids, he located and recognised the boy before he identified Marun. He didn’t bother to look up after that. His eyes fixed on the boy with the intensity of a predator with a prey animal in sight.
“You! The devil!”
Marun smiled above the boy’s head. So. Kehfrey had introduced himself at some time. As much as this initially amused him, his smile quickly frosted over, for Astabe stared at the boy in just the wrong way.
“Vik? Who is this boy? I know you know him,” Astabe questioned.
He actually stepped closer to examine the child. “If you get him to pose for me, I’ll forgive you.” Vik was strangely silent in response, but Astabe didn’t notice. His hand lifted to touch the child’s leg, at which point Kehfrey kicked it away.
“Hands off, Astabe! I’ll gut you beforehand!”
Astabe’s gaze darted upward in outrage. His eyes fixed on the boy’s flat stare, and then his attention seemed to be drawn further up, tugged higher against his volition. His eyes met thunderous brown and he blinked in sudden fear. “Marun!” he whispered. His skin turned white.
“Have you finished the project?” the sorcerer demanded.
“No! Not yet! Just a few more touches! Another devil! The boy, for example, would be perfect. A juxtaposition of purity and evil.”
“Unless you have him committed to memory, forget it!” Marun kicked his mount onward, knocking into Astabe. Astabe jumped out of the way and apologized as if he’d committed the blunder.
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“Get it done, Astabe!” Marun issued coldly. Vik gaped down at the white-faced artist and then hurried to catch up with his lover. “That bastard!” Marun hissed. “I’ll kill him!”
“Why?” Kehfrey asked.
Vik called to Marun before Kehfrey had an answer. “You knew each other!” he cried. Marun rebuffed him with a cold look, but Vik would not be deterred. “How do you know him?” he demanded.
“I commissioned Hell’s Gate from him. The lazy bastard is taking forever to finish it.”
“You commissioned it?”
“Did you commission the one with the tiny whanger, too?” Kehfrey said.
“What?” Uncertain what the boy meant, Marun looked over at Vik.
Oddly, Vik was blushing.
“The one with the reclining naked man with the tiny whanger,” the boy detailed.
“Let me guess. A whanger is a penis?”
“Right. Well?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well. I wonder who did?” the boy said with a perplexed frown.
“Somebody with a fear of big whangers, I suspect,” Marun
murmured dryly. Vik had turned his head completely away from them.
“Would you happen to know who, Vik?”
“No,” Vik said quietly.
That very quietness caught his brother’s attention. “It was you! You modelled it! He got nothing right!”
“I told you! Big whan—! It offends some people!” Vik scowled at his little brother, looked up and saw his lover eyeing him coldly. “What? I modelled for your commissioned work as well!”
“And Astabe carefully hid you from me, and then made an
unflattering portrait of you, no doubt intending to use it to put me off.
I’m going to kill that sleazy bastard!”
“Gods! You didn’t even know me! Why kill him now?”
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“I saw the angel! I asked him about it! He said he’d painted it from his imagination!” At this point, Marun commenced to squeeze Kehfrey, so angry he didn’t notice what he was doing. “All this time, coming to me, begging for funds for more paint, more models, more everything! All this time he’s been buggering you and painting a portrait with a small whanger!”
Vik hissed in outrage. Kehfrey squealed. “Hi, now! My ribs!”
Hastily, Marun relaxed his grip, but he continued to glare at Vik.
“I tell you what,” Kehfrey said. “You tell Astabe to go piss off and I’ll finish both works. Or fix them. Whichever! Just quit arguing!”
“You! Finish the artist’s work?” Marun exclaimed. “This isn’t a dough snake to frighten Gamis with.” Although, that snake had been very good, actually. It could have fooled him.
“I can do it!” Kehfrey shouted. “Astabe is an idiot! He can’t paint! He dabs his brush like a butcher cutting tripe with a cleaver! He paints like he glued his brush to a wobbly, useless penis too small to pick up with tweezers!”
Marun almost laughed, for more than one reason. The child was hopeless. And wise. The entire matter had become amusing. “I want him to finish, Kehfrey,” he refused. “Thank you for the offer all the same.”
“Oh, that’s just fine!” the boy said in irritation. “You can at least get Vik’s small whanger number and let me fix that.”
“Kehfrey!” Vik protested.
“Fair enough,” Marun agreed. That would serve Vik and Astabe right. Let Kehfrey turn the portrait into a caricature. He would hang it in the entrance hall. Just where the big whanger would catch the most light.
“Oh, Kehfrey!” Vik said. He would never live this down. All his friends would laugh behind his back. If that cold bastard Marun let anyone near him again.
Kehfrey glared at him. “You think I can’t!”
Vik didn’t reply at first. He knew Kehfrey was good with a piece of chalk or charcoal, but he was only seven years old. Vik’s anger burst out.
“Come on, Kehfrey! I’ve seen you make houses and stuff! But this is different!”
“Stuff! Just because the rain washed the best ones away before you visited, they’re all stuff?”
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“Rain?” Marun asked.
“Only had the sides of buildings to work on,” the boy told him.
Marun grinned. “Now you’ll have a nice piece of canvas,” he said, shooting a nasty look at Vik. “And if I like it, I’ll get you to do more portraits of your brother.”
“Like hells you will!” Vik glared repressively at Marun, but his lover only smiled, promising he would dare. “Gods bust it!” Vik said.
“Hi, Vik! Don’t be so pissed. See! He’s jealous. He does love you.”
Vik’s mouth shut on a second curse. He stared at Marun. Marun stared back. The man abruptly averted his face.
The damned brat! This family! Why this family? They would drive him mad!
To his side, Vik watched the sorcerer’s frozen expression and slowly smiled. He looked down at his brother, to find Kehfrey grinning at him.
Vik’s smile warmed further and his blue eyes brightened with delight.
Well, that’s better, the boy thought. Vik wasn’t going to feel like a substitute anymore. At least for a while.
***
The temple was indeed a ruin. The giant slabs of granite that crowned the worn hill had tumbled some time in the very distant past. The rocks were coated with vegetation, so much so, they were nearly buried.
Kehfrey climbed on one massive slab and jumped up and down
experimentally.
“What are you doing?” Marun demanded. He had walked in past the slabs and stood in the centre of the broken circle.
“Checking for echoes,” the boy answered tersely.
“Echoes?” Was he talking about the echoes in his head again?
“If it echoes, there’s a cave under it. If there’s a cave under it, there could be treasure.”
Oh. Those sorts of echoes. “Thief,” he uttered quietly.
Kehfrey didn’t hear him, or pretended that he didn’t. He clambered off the fallen slab and took off for a second one. Marun followed his 339
progress, turning slowly to keep track of him. They were alone on Held Mount. He had ordered the assassin and the boy’s brother to remain below with the horses. The chaperones had kicked up a fuss, but he had squelched the rebellion. Eventually.
The aggravation of that altercation still pricked Marun. Vik had been adamant, refusing to back off until the sorcerer had given him a black eye, but this had prompted Kehfrey to jump him, and then Olomo had pulled a knife before remembering knives were useless. With shadows pressing in all around them, Olomo had opted for pulling Vik away from the sorcerer, and Marun had turned and carried enraged Kehfrey part of the way up the mount, just to keep him from running off in revenge for Vik’s injury. So. Here they both were, standing within the ruins of an ancient temple, participants in a wary truce.
Kehfrey gave up on the second slab and dashed over to a third, this one half supported by another. Thumping on that one was quite useless.
Of course he just had to go beneath instead. He disappeared into the cavern, and Marun stared at the dark hole, wondering if he’d have to chase after the child, but Kehfrey poked his head back out quickly.
Insisting that he must continue to wear black, Olomo had made Kehfrey a small dark child with only white skin and flaming hair to set him off from shadows. Just now, he looked like a floating head. The rest of him crept out, ruining the illusion. He carried something in his hand, something that wriggled and weaved angrily.
“Kehfrey!” Marun barked. He had an asp in his hands! The sorcerer rushed forward in alarm.
“I had to catch it! It was going to bite me!” the boy said in defence.
“Did it bite you?”
“No. I got it by the neck when it darted at me.”
Losing the initial panic, Marun peered more closely at the writhing snake. Kehfrey did have it behind the neck and quite securely. It was a thick serpent, with a vicious, ridged head. The mouth gaped open, revealing fangs dripping toxin. Kehfrey held the asp further away and Marun stared in utter bemusement. The boy had caught a venomous snake while it had made its biting lunge. Exactly how fast did that make the boy?
“Don’t tell Nicky!” the child begged.
“What?”
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“I promised not to catch any. I didn’t have a choice this time. I swear!”
“You caught one before?”
“No, but I wanted to,” he admitted. “Nicky made me promise not to.
You won’t tell her, will you? She’ll tear my head off. She doesn’t like me playing with snakes.”
He stared at the boy. The child seemed very concerned and it was Nicky who had generated the emotion. Marun was beginning to loathe that woman. “Throw the snake back under the rock!” he snapped.
Obediently, Kehfrey went back to the slab. He unwound the sinuous body from his forearm and tossed it in quickly. He darted back to Marun, skipping backwards the first few steps to be certain the serpent didn’t come after him. Once assured that it would not, Marun knelt in the centre of the circle and pulled at the dry grass, digging in and ripping out chunks along with their roots.
“What are you looking for?” Kehfrey asked.
“A slab.”
“Another one? How big?”
“This one is smaller.” Marun thrust his fingers into the soil and he felt it. He pulled a hunk of turf away and saw it clearly. There was a groove in it, which told him he was near the edge. Kehfrey bent down and touched the groove. He pulled his hand back immediately.
“What did you sense?” Marun asked. Kehfrey shook his head. He looked ready to fly off. Marun grabbed his arm and pulled him closer.
The boy resisted. “I won’t hurt you,” Marun said.
“There’s something bad here!” Kehfrey exclaimed. He didn’t bother accusing Marun of lying. He was worried about the other thing more, the thing hiding below the slab. Here, in this circle, the cave of crystal teeth was closer. Strange as this seemed, Kehfrey knew it was so.
“It isn’t bad. It isn’t good. It’s just there,” Marun said firmly.
“Why is it the source of power?”
“I don’t know. It just is.”
“What is that mark on the rock? Is it writing?”
This, Marun didn’t answer, for he couldn’t tell Kehfrey, not now. The truth would only frighten the boy. “Kneel,” he directed the child, but 341
again Kehfrey resisted. Marun hissed in frustration and pulled the boy down forcefully.
“I don’t want to touch it!” Kehfrey protested.
“You will!”
He set the boy in front, grabbed his hand and shoved it down until it splayed flat over the exposed sacrificial stone. The child’s small thumb settled into the blood groove. Kehfrey tried to pull it out, but the sorcerer pressed his hand too firmly against the cold granite. Crouched above, Marun began the words of summoning.
Kehfrey cried out in pain. He put his free hand to his ear and ducked the other into Marun’s chest, but heard his deep voice all the same, resonating through his chest. Each uttered word rang in the child’s head, the next compounding on the previous. He screamed in an attempt to drown the echoes, but his desperation amounted to nothing, for the words reverberated louder and louder. Through a mist of tears, he saw shadows everywhere, creeping between the stones and toward them, but beneath their bodies an aura of green swelled upward until it enveloped his splayed hand. The touch of this glow was at once intrusive and exquisite. The pain receded, but he was still panicked and gulped huge lungfuls of air. Presently he grew dizzy and fell into the echoes.
Marun felt the child go limp. Even so, he held the small body aloft, permitting nothing but his hand to touch the stone. The chant was almost over. They were almost there. He commenced the final verse, and the emerald glow rose up and swallowed them both. He groaned the last of the summoning. It seemed every muscle in his body became unendurably rigid, and he quivered with the tension. He ached so much he could have screamed, but he felt the great entity approaching. He must not scream. He must show no weakness.
