The Realm of the Deathless, page 9
“Not yet,” Aster said. “But I’m sure this is where my father wanted me to go..”
“It could be her,” Dusk said. “The woman. She’s the only one who isn’t a skeleton. And if this is some higher and farther away version of the lands I know, then this place—my mother’s palace might be a shadow of it. And my mother a shadow of ... her. And a descendant, if this place is what I think it is”.
“You called it Ghartas Sauvens,” Aster said. “The Demesne of the Sun Queen.”
“Yes.”
“So, hang on,” Errol said. “Dusk’s Kingdoms—to me, they seem like fairy tales. Snow White. Jack and the Beanstalk. There’s magic and such, but the people are basically people. But these guys—”
“Would be more like what we think of as gods,” Aster finished. “Like those of the Greeks or Norse. The amount of elumiris here is incredible. We are fortunate they’re all dead, or—whatever state she’s in. If any of them were around, I think we wouldn’t last ten seconds if they wanted to kill us, or enslave us, or turn us into pigeons.”
“So this is it?” Errol said. “The top? The highest and farthest away? Where we’re trying to get to? Could the woman on the throne actually be the Sun, like in the story? Hidden away in her castle?”
Aster shook her head. “I don’t think so. A sun queen, yes. The actual personification of the sun—I don’t think so. Not yet. I think we have further to go. Dad’s ship got us this far. From here, I think we’re on our own.”
“Maybe the wagon,” Dusk suggested. “Perhaps it can take us further.”
“Maybe,” Aster conceded. “Let’s take a break, eat something, and have another look.”
They rested on the roof; it was chilly, but they were loath to break up anything there to make a fire. Aster was able to conjure one that burned right on the stone, without need for fuel. They ate cheese and dried meat they had packed up with them and sat talking for a little while, but after a bit, Aster and Billy wandered off, and Ms. Fincher said she was going to sleep. A little after that, Dusk tugged at his hand.
“Let us keep watch,” she said.
Errol glanced over at Shandor, the only one remaining at the fire.
The Gypsy nodded. “I will rest,” he said, “and relieve you in a bit.”
“Okay,” Errol said.
***
Aster remembered the first time she had kissed Billy. It had been—important. It wasn’t the first time she had kissed someone, but it was the first time she had liked it. And she had really liked it. This thing people had talked about, love, had for most of her life been beyond her. She had loved her father, of course, but that was sort of the point. For her, love was all tied up with pain and loss, and was never an entirely good thing. Good things didn’t last. Billy hadn’t lasted; she had just decided she loved him when he vanished from her life.
Now he had returned to her, against all odds. And now, when they were alone—at her father’s ancient tower, and now here—his kisses felt ... hungrier. His hands moved on her body more freely each time. Sometimes it felt good, sometimes his choices were... puzzling. She wanted more and less at the same time. She knew where this was going, in one sense. Billy was restrained and respectful, but whatever he had been born, he currently owned the body and yearnings of a young human man. And that body wanted hers, there could be no doubt of that. But like love, her feelings about sex were—fraught. All twisted up with violence and control. She was both curious and repelled by the very idea of it, of letting someone not just close, but inside of her. The one time it had nearly happened, there had been a knife at her throat.
And if they had sex, and it was okay, and she didn’t hate it—what then? Where did they go from that? Nothing good lasted, right? Everything had to end. Zhedye, what if she got pregnant? Were there spells to stop that happening?
Their lips parted, and she had no doubt what she saw in his eyes. But as much as she wanted to embrace it, to just let it be, it wasn’t in her nature.
“Why did you come back to me?” she asked softly.
“Because I love you,” he said. It came out immediately, which was weird. Billy almost never answered a question without thinking about it for a long time. It was both one of his most endearing and most annoying characteristics.
“I know,” she said. “but—you said giants don’t feel love—not like this. Not for something or someone—so small.”
This time he did take a while to answer.
“You’re right,” he said. “I wandered distant places, waded in the sea whose far shore is the stars, where everything is very big, and very slow.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “You’ve told me this. That sometimes giants become curious about the little things, and become small, so they can experience what ... we experience. But then you become big again and forget the little things. But you didn’t forget me.”
“Because I learned that love is not a little thing,” he said.
“Yes, you said that, too. But I don’t understand it,” Aster said. “It’s wonderful, but I don’t know what it means. Has this happened to other giants?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said.
“How can you not know that?”
“I have seen other giants,” he said. “We know when another is around. But we don’t—talk, or touch, or ... kiss. We don’t go looking for company. We don’t like or love—or hate.”
“Really? Then how do—umm—how are more giants made?”
“We just—are,” he said. “We always have been. There are no giant children.”
“It sounds lonely,” she said.
“It’s not, when you’re a giant,” he replied.
“And yet you chose to be like this? Small?”
“I didn’t choose it,” Billy said, touching her cheek with the palm of his hand. “It chose me. You chose me.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “You think I cast a spell on you, or something?”
“No,” he said. “It’s more—basic—than that. I can’t explain it. I can only feel it.”
“So you’re saying this isn’t so much something you want as something the universe is forcing you to do?”
“I ... you’re confusing me,” Billy said. “I love you.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hear that. I just—that’s a word, Billy. Everyone means something different by it.”
“You say it,” he said. “What do you mean?”
“You know what?” she said. “I don’t know.”
She disentangled from him. He tried to pull her back, but she wouldn’t let him; he didn’t force it; he let her go. But what if he didn’t? Even as a human, he was stronger than she. Of course, she had her magic... .
She needed to be alone. Now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just remembered, there’s something I need to do.”
NINE
THE CHILDREN OF GODS
The silver ship was where Aster had left it. She murmured the password and boarded, went down to her quarters, and opened the box she’d put the automaton’s head in. She had tried several times on the voyage to destroy it or dismiss the spirit that inhabited it but had been unable to do either; any physical damage to it repaired itself in relatively short order. And the spirit in it was strong.
The body was probably following. It might be a year behind them or a few days. But either way, keeping the head around seemed dangerous. It was time to deal with it.
She took it from the box, then wafted her way back up the stairs and walked to the edge of the cliff with no bottom. She stood there for a moment, ready to pitch it in. But she paused. She lifted it in front of her so the eyes she had carved were looking at her.
She had made it for Errol but hadn’t been satisfied with it. She’d thought she could do better, and she had. The model Errol had worn not only looked more like him, but had several improvements, including a little homunculus of bone that contained his soul, in case he had to leave the bigger body. But obviously, she had built this one well enough to carry a passenger of spirit.
She wondered which of Dusk’s siblings had summoned this thing. Nocturn seemed the likeliest bet, and yet—how had she managed it? It was difficult working magic in a world that held so little of it. Aster had spent years learning to do it, but she had had one of the greatest sorcerers ever known to help her along. How had Nocturn—or any of her cousins—been able to turn such a trick?
“Speledi,” she murmured, commanding it to speak. She had tried before, without result. She didn’t expect it to work this time, either.
The eyes remained vacant. She sighed, and drew back her arm to throw it into the gulf, even as all of the hairs on it pricked up.
“What shall I say?” the head asked.
The lips did not move, the eyes did not light. But she heard the words as clearly as when Errol had spoken, housed in his automaton.
“Tell me who you are,” she said.
“I am not worthy of a name,” the head said. “I have never been given one.”
“What are you, then?”
“I am sent to fetch,” it said. “To fetch what my master desires.”
“Who is your master?”
“Why would that person tell me their name? It would only loosen their power over me. I know their command and their desire but cannot tell you who they are.”
“Then what did they send you for?”
“Why should I tell you that?” the head said. “You made me speak, but I already have a master.”
“Tell me or I will cast this head into the abyss,” she said.
“You can do that,” the head said. “It is in your power.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. It reminded her of a story about a rabbit, a fox, and a thicket of briars she had once heard.
She still wasn’t strong enough to destroy it. Until she was, it was best she keep it under her control.
She put it back into the box, latched in, and then put the strongest Utterance of Sealing she could muster.
As she prepared to return to the others, she became certain of one thing. The automaton that had followed them from the mall had not been animated by Nocturn, or Hawk, or any of her cousins.
Something else was after them.
***
Veronica was dozing in the cave when she felt someone arrive. Someone had come to see the Severed Giant.
That’s what Veronica called him, anyway.
She had been in this place for a while, long enough to become bored of waiting for Errol to arrive. She had even begun to worry that Mistral might have been mistaken about her ability to find where Errol was headed. Or maybe he had been coming here but hadn’t made it. She had sneaked past some things at the boundary of this Kingdom, wild, insane things that might have been people once, if people had lightning or molten metal or ice for blood and spent their time in constant rage, shifting forms from more-or-less human to titanic wolves, bears, and storm clouds. They hadn’t noticed her slip in, but they were always looking, like dogs sure there was a scrap of meat on the floor someplace. They were infected by the enemy, and so was the silent queen on her golden throne. The castle wasn’t safe. But down here, in the Severed Giant’s cave, near the water, she felt hidden. And she was starting to understand what the giant wanted.
But now someone else had arrived. Delia Fincher.
She hadn’t seen Veronica yet; in fact, her eyes were strangely vacant as she began walking on the huge chains that held the cavern’s occupant.
The Severed Giant was at least a hundred feet long, maybe more. His skin was grey and withered and clung tightly to his bones, his long, lank hair was the color of dishwater. He was suspended by an arm and a leg, on huge metal chains, so he hung like a hammock, just a few yards above the water basin in the middle of the cave.
An eye was turned in Delia’s direction as she approached, huge, white, and opaque, like that of a long-dead fish. He did not have another eye; in fact, half of his head was missing, and half of his body, as if he had been sliced in two by an unimaginably large knife or saw and the right side discarded. He was twisted and his back bent the wrong way into an arc; she could see his severed insides, still red with blood.
But he was not dead. His veins were pulsating; blood still flowing in them. She watched his single lung sluggishly inflate, pushing out of the open chest cavity, then diminish back into the riven cage of his ribs.
Delia completed her trip across the chain, made her way up to the creature’s head, and then closed her eyes and snuggled up against him.
Even given everything Veronica had seen, been through, and done, that seemed a little weird. But it confirmed the notion that had been growing in her gut.
But that would wait. If Delia was here, Errol must also be.
***
Errol and Dusk sat on the edge of the palace roof, right at one of the corners. It gave them an excellent view of the plains and mountains, as well as part of the depths that surrounded the place. In the High and Faraway, you never knew what direction trouble might come from. It could as easily arrive by dragon or flying ship as by land, so a good watchman tried to cover all of his bases.
He was a decent watchman. Dusk was excellent.
Together, they left something to be desired.
Despite his misgivings, they were kissing again. It was weird, at first. Dusk had plenty of enthusiasm, but not a lot of practice. It felt like she was trying to prove a point or win a contest, at times. But eventually—after a minute or so—he warmed up to it. His mind stopped trying to talk him out of it, and the back part of his brain that was concerned mostly about things below the waist kicked in. He began moving his lips across her cheek, to her ear, down to her neck....
She knocked him back so hard his head went light.
“What the ...” he gasped. She was staring at him, wideeyed, touching her neck, panting. “What’s wrong?”
“You were ... my neck. What were you doing?”
“Kissing you,” he said.
“Surely not!” Dusk said. “Kissing is for the lips.”
“Okay, well, maybe technically it’s called necking,” Errol said. “But it’s a thing we do where I come from. If you don’t like it—”
“Like it?” she said. “I feared you were going to bite me.”
“What, like a vampire?”
“I don’t know what that is,” she said. “I meant like a wolf, or a lion. The neck is ... vulnerable. A single well-placed bite, and I would be dead in a matter of heartbeats.”
“But why would I do that?” Errol asked.
“You wouldn’t, of course,” Dusk said. “I know that. But ...”
“It’s meant to feel good,” Errol said. “You didn’t like it at all?”
“It felt dangerous.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why people like it,” he said. “I never thought about it like this, but maybe it shows trust. You know, that you trust the person you’re kissing.”
She looked dubious. “So you would let me do that to you?”
“Ah—well, yeah. If I have to. You know, to prove I trust you.”
“Very well,” she said. “Bare your neck.”
“So,” he said, “you probably don’t want to start that way,” he said. “You do what I did, just sort of move down there—”
“You mean sneak, like a thief?”
“You’ve stolen things,” he pointed out.
“No,” she said. “I’ve taken things. That’s different. Bare your neck.”
“Fine,” he said. He leaned his head back and a little over to the side. She started kissing him.
“Like that?” she said.
“Ah—maybe slower. Gentle. Like you’re looking for something with your lips.”
She frowned, but then bent back to him.
“Oh!” he said.
“That’s right?” she said.
“Umm. Yeah,” he said. “That’s—good.”
He reached up and stroked her long, auburn hair as her lips moved up his neck. He felt like he was melting. He tried to keep quiet, but he couldn’t help a gasp now and then. His skin had always been sensitive, and it had been a long time ...
She came back up and faced him, smiling.
“Well?”
“That’s fun, Errol,” she whispered. “You’re so helpless. Like I could do anything to you, and you couldn’t stop me.”
“Right,” he said, trying to calm his breathing. “Like that.”
“I could bite off your ear or slit your throat. Anything.”
He blinked. “We need to work on your pillow talk,” he said.
“My what?”
“Never mind,” she said. “You want to switch, let me try now?”
“You want me to be helpless, Errol?” she asked, lowering her lips toward his.
“Well, not helpless ...” he said.
She kissed him, and it went on for a while. She was catching on.
They parted and looked into each other’s eyes for what seemed a hundred years.
“I’m not helpless, Errol,” she said. “I cannot be.”
“Okay,” he said. “But can you trust me?”
“I’m trying to do that,” she said. “That also does not come easily to me.”
At first, he thought the noise he heard was some sort of sound effect in his head, to go along with the pounding of his pulse. But then he realized it was something else, something familiar.
Dusk heard it too. “It sounds like horns,” she said.
It did, a little. And there were lots of them. Some were almost below the range of hearing, and others sounded something like the distant screech of jet engines. They rose and faded and rose again, dissonant and unsettling.
The horizon lit with lightning, and again, as if a storm were coming over the mountains. There was another jagged line of light, and another, then tens and hundreds of them.
“If it is a storm,” she said. “I think it an uncanny one.”
“What?”
“I think someone knows we’re here, and they don’t think we ought to be.”
“Someone? Who?”
“We were wondering what happened to the children,” she said. “That might be them.”
The children of gods, Errol thought. He remembered reading some Greek and Norse mythology. He remembered thinking that most of those characters weren’t the sort you wanted to meet or even see from a distance. He looked back. The flashes seemed to be getting closer, albeit slowly. And the horns were getting louder, wilder.
“It could be her,” Dusk said. “The woman. She’s the only one who isn’t a skeleton. And if this is some higher and farther away version of the lands I know, then this place—my mother’s palace might be a shadow of it. And my mother a shadow of ... her. And a descendant, if this place is what I think it is”.
“You called it Ghartas Sauvens,” Aster said. “The Demesne of the Sun Queen.”
“Yes.”
“So, hang on,” Errol said. “Dusk’s Kingdoms—to me, they seem like fairy tales. Snow White. Jack and the Beanstalk. There’s magic and such, but the people are basically people. But these guys—”
“Would be more like what we think of as gods,” Aster finished. “Like those of the Greeks or Norse. The amount of elumiris here is incredible. We are fortunate they’re all dead, or—whatever state she’s in. If any of them were around, I think we wouldn’t last ten seconds if they wanted to kill us, or enslave us, or turn us into pigeons.”
“So this is it?” Errol said. “The top? The highest and farthest away? Where we’re trying to get to? Could the woman on the throne actually be the Sun, like in the story? Hidden away in her castle?”
Aster shook her head. “I don’t think so. A sun queen, yes. The actual personification of the sun—I don’t think so. Not yet. I think we have further to go. Dad’s ship got us this far. From here, I think we’re on our own.”
“Maybe the wagon,” Dusk suggested. “Perhaps it can take us further.”
“Maybe,” Aster conceded. “Let’s take a break, eat something, and have another look.”
They rested on the roof; it was chilly, but they were loath to break up anything there to make a fire. Aster was able to conjure one that burned right on the stone, without need for fuel. They ate cheese and dried meat they had packed up with them and sat talking for a little while, but after a bit, Aster and Billy wandered off, and Ms. Fincher said she was going to sleep. A little after that, Dusk tugged at his hand.
“Let us keep watch,” she said.
Errol glanced over at Shandor, the only one remaining at the fire.
The Gypsy nodded. “I will rest,” he said, “and relieve you in a bit.”
“Okay,” Errol said.
***
Aster remembered the first time she had kissed Billy. It had been—important. It wasn’t the first time she had kissed someone, but it was the first time she had liked it. And she had really liked it. This thing people had talked about, love, had for most of her life been beyond her. She had loved her father, of course, but that was sort of the point. For her, love was all tied up with pain and loss, and was never an entirely good thing. Good things didn’t last. Billy hadn’t lasted; she had just decided she loved him when he vanished from her life.
Now he had returned to her, against all odds. And now, when they were alone—at her father’s ancient tower, and now here—his kisses felt ... hungrier. His hands moved on her body more freely each time. Sometimes it felt good, sometimes his choices were... puzzling. She wanted more and less at the same time. She knew where this was going, in one sense. Billy was restrained and respectful, but whatever he had been born, he currently owned the body and yearnings of a young human man. And that body wanted hers, there could be no doubt of that. But like love, her feelings about sex were—fraught. All twisted up with violence and control. She was both curious and repelled by the very idea of it, of letting someone not just close, but inside of her. The one time it had nearly happened, there had been a knife at her throat.
And if they had sex, and it was okay, and she didn’t hate it—what then? Where did they go from that? Nothing good lasted, right? Everything had to end. Zhedye, what if she got pregnant? Were there spells to stop that happening?
Their lips parted, and she had no doubt what she saw in his eyes. But as much as she wanted to embrace it, to just let it be, it wasn’t in her nature.
“Why did you come back to me?” she asked softly.
“Because I love you,” he said. It came out immediately, which was weird. Billy almost never answered a question without thinking about it for a long time. It was both one of his most endearing and most annoying characteristics.
“I know,” she said. “but—you said giants don’t feel love—not like this. Not for something or someone—so small.”
This time he did take a while to answer.
“You’re right,” he said. “I wandered distant places, waded in the sea whose far shore is the stars, where everything is very big, and very slow.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “You’ve told me this. That sometimes giants become curious about the little things, and become small, so they can experience what ... we experience. But then you become big again and forget the little things. But you didn’t forget me.”
“Because I learned that love is not a little thing,” he said.
“Yes, you said that, too. But I don’t understand it,” Aster said. “It’s wonderful, but I don’t know what it means. Has this happened to other giants?”
“I don’t know,” Billy said.
“How can you not know that?”
“I have seen other giants,” he said. “We know when another is around. But we don’t—talk, or touch, or ... kiss. We don’t go looking for company. We don’t like or love—or hate.”
“Really? Then how do—umm—how are more giants made?”
“We just—are,” he said. “We always have been. There are no giant children.”
“It sounds lonely,” she said.
“It’s not, when you’re a giant,” he replied.
“And yet you chose to be like this? Small?”
“I didn’t choose it,” Billy said, touching her cheek with the palm of his hand. “It chose me. You chose me.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “You think I cast a spell on you, or something?”
“No,” he said. “It’s more—basic—than that. I can’t explain it. I can only feel it.”
“So you’re saying this isn’t so much something you want as something the universe is forcing you to do?”
“I ... you’re confusing me,” Billy said. “I love you.”
“Yes,” she said. “I hear that. I just—that’s a word, Billy. Everyone means something different by it.”
“You say it,” he said. “What do you mean?”
“You know what?” she said. “I don’t know.”
She disentangled from him. He tried to pull her back, but she wouldn’t let him; he didn’t force it; he let her go. But what if he didn’t? Even as a human, he was stronger than she. Of course, she had her magic... .
She needed to be alone. Now.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just remembered, there’s something I need to do.”
NINE
THE CHILDREN OF GODS
The silver ship was where Aster had left it. She murmured the password and boarded, went down to her quarters, and opened the box she’d put the automaton’s head in. She had tried several times on the voyage to destroy it or dismiss the spirit that inhabited it but had been unable to do either; any physical damage to it repaired itself in relatively short order. And the spirit in it was strong.
The body was probably following. It might be a year behind them or a few days. But either way, keeping the head around seemed dangerous. It was time to deal with it.
She took it from the box, then wafted her way back up the stairs and walked to the edge of the cliff with no bottom. She stood there for a moment, ready to pitch it in. But she paused. She lifted it in front of her so the eyes she had carved were looking at her.
She had made it for Errol but hadn’t been satisfied with it. She’d thought she could do better, and she had. The model Errol had worn not only looked more like him, but had several improvements, including a little homunculus of bone that contained his soul, in case he had to leave the bigger body. But obviously, she had built this one well enough to carry a passenger of spirit.
She wondered which of Dusk’s siblings had summoned this thing. Nocturn seemed the likeliest bet, and yet—how had she managed it? It was difficult working magic in a world that held so little of it. Aster had spent years learning to do it, but she had had one of the greatest sorcerers ever known to help her along. How had Nocturn—or any of her cousins—been able to turn such a trick?
“Speledi,” she murmured, commanding it to speak. She had tried before, without result. She didn’t expect it to work this time, either.
The eyes remained vacant. She sighed, and drew back her arm to throw it into the gulf, even as all of the hairs on it pricked up.
“What shall I say?” the head asked.
The lips did not move, the eyes did not light. But she heard the words as clearly as when Errol had spoken, housed in his automaton.
“Tell me who you are,” she said.
“I am not worthy of a name,” the head said. “I have never been given one.”
“What are you, then?”
“I am sent to fetch,” it said. “To fetch what my master desires.”
“Who is your master?”
“Why would that person tell me their name? It would only loosen their power over me. I know their command and their desire but cannot tell you who they are.”
“Then what did they send you for?”
“Why should I tell you that?” the head said. “You made me speak, but I already have a master.”
“Tell me or I will cast this head into the abyss,” she said.
“You can do that,” the head said. “It is in your power.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. It reminded her of a story about a rabbit, a fox, and a thicket of briars she had once heard.
She still wasn’t strong enough to destroy it. Until she was, it was best she keep it under her control.
She put it back into the box, latched in, and then put the strongest Utterance of Sealing she could muster.
As she prepared to return to the others, she became certain of one thing. The automaton that had followed them from the mall had not been animated by Nocturn, or Hawk, or any of her cousins.
Something else was after them.
***
Veronica was dozing in the cave when she felt someone arrive. Someone had come to see the Severed Giant.
That’s what Veronica called him, anyway.
She had been in this place for a while, long enough to become bored of waiting for Errol to arrive. She had even begun to worry that Mistral might have been mistaken about her ability to find where Errol was headed. Or maybe he had been coming here but hadn’t made it. She had sneaked past some things at the boundary of this Kingdom, wild, insane things that might have been people once, if people had lightning or molten metal or ice for blood and spent their time in constant rage, shifting forms from more-or-less human to titanic wolves, bears, and storm clouds. They hadn’t noticed her slip in, but they were always looking, like dogs sure there was a scrap of meat on the floor someplace. They were infected by the enemy, and so was the silent queen on her golden throne. The castle wasn’t safe. But down here, in the Severed Giant’s cave, near the water, she felt hidden. And she was starting to understand what the giant wanted.
But now someone else had arrived. Delia Fincher.
She hadn’t seen Veronica yet; in fact, her eyes were strangely vacant as she began walking on the huge chains that held the cavern’s occupant.
The Severed Giant was at least a hundred feet long, maybe more. His skin was grey and withered and clung tightly to his bones, his long, lank hair was the color of dishwater. He was suspended by an arm and a leg, on huge metal chains, so he hung like a hammock, just a few yards above the water basin in the middle of the cave.
An eye was turned in Delia’s direction as she approached, huge, white, and opaque, like that of a long-dead fish. He did not have another eye; in fact, half of his head was missing, and half of his body, as if he had been sliced in two by an unimaginably large knife or saw and the right side discarded. He was twisted and his back bent the wrong way into an arc; she could see his severed insides, still red with blood.
But he was not dead. His veins were pulsating; blood still flowing in them. She watched his single lung sluggishly inflate, pushing out of the open chest cavity, then diminish back into the riven cage of his ribs.
Delia completed her trip across the chain, made her way up to the creature’s head, and then closed her eyes and snuggled up against him.
Even given everything Veronica had seen, been through, and done, that seemed a little weird. But it confirmed the notion that had been growing in her gut.
But that would wait. If Delia was here, Errol must also be.
***
Errol and Dusk sat on the edge of the palace roof, right at one of the corners. It gave them an excellent view of the plains and mountains, as well as part of the depths that surrounded the place. In the High and Faraway, you never knew what direction trouble might come from. It could as easily arrive by dragon or flying ship as by land, so a good watchman tried to cover all of his bases.
He was a decent watchman. Dusk was excellent.
Together, they left something to be desired.
Despite his misgivings, they were kissing again. It was weird, at first. Dusk had plenty of enthusiasm, but not a lot of practice. It felt like she was trying to prove a point or win a contest, at times. But eventually—after a minute or so—he warmed up to it. His mind stopped trying to talk him out of it, and the back part of his brain that was concerned mostly about things below the waist kicked in. He began moving his lips across her cheek, to her ear, down to her neck....
She knocked him back so hard his head went light.
“What the ...” he gasped. She was staring at him, wideeyed, touching her neck, panting. “What’s wrong?”
“You were ... my neck. What were you doing?”
“Kissing you,” he said.
“Surely not!” Dusk said. “Kissing is for the lips.”
“Okay, well, maybe technically it’s called necking,” Errol said. “But it’s a thing we do where I come from. If you don’t like it—”
“Like it?” she said. “I feared you were going to bite me.”
“What, like a vampire?”
“I don’t know what that is,” she said. “I meant like a wolf, or a lion. The neck is ... vulnerable. A single well-placed bite, and I would be dead in a matter of heartbeats.”
“But why would I do that?” Errol asked.
“You wouldn’t, of course,” Dusk said. “I know that. But ...”
“It’s meant to feel good,” Errol said. “You didn’t like it at all?”
“It felt dangerous.”
He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why people like it,” he said. “I never thought about it like this, but maybe it shows trust. You know, that you trust the person you’re kissing.”
She looked dubious. “So you would let me do that to you?”
“Ah—well, yeah. If I have to. You know, to prove I trust you.”
“Very well,” she said. “Bare your neck.”
“So,” he said, “you probably don’t want to start that way,” he said. “You do what I did, just sort of move down there—”
“You mean sneak, like a thief?”
“You’ve stolen things,” he pointed out.
“No,” she said. “I’ve taken things. That’s different. Bare your neck.”
“Fine,” he said. He leaned his head back and a little over to the side. She started kissing him.
“Like that?” she said.
“Ah—maybe slower. Gentle. Like you’re looking for something with your lips.”
She frowned, but then bent back to him.
“Oh!” he said.
“That’s right?” she said.
“Umm. Yeah,” he said. “That’s—good.”
He reached up and stroked her long, auburn hair as her lips moved up his neck. He felt like he was melting. He tried to keep quiet, but he couldn’t help a gasp now and then. His skin had always been sensitive, and it had been a long time ...
She came back up and faced him, smiling.
“Well?”
“That’s fun, Errol,” she whispered. “You’re so helpless. Like I could do anything to you, and you couldn’t stop me.”
“Right,” he said, trying to calm his breathing. “Like that.”
“I could bite off your ear or slit your throat. Anything.”
He blinked. “We need to work on your pillow talk,” he said.
“My what?”
“Never mind,” she said. “You want to switch, let me try now?”
“You want me to be helpless, Errol?” she asked, lowering her lips toward his.
“Well, not helpless ...” he said.
She kissed him, and it went on for a while. She was catching on.
They parted and looked into each other’s eyes for what seemed a hundred years.
“I’m not helpless, Errol,” she said. “I cannot be.”
“Okay,” he said. “But can you trust me?”
“I’m trying to do that,” she said. “That also does not come easily to me.”
At first, he thought the noise he heard was some sort of sound effect in his head, to go along with the pounding of his pulse. But then he realized it was something else, something familiar.
Dusk heard it too. “It sounds like horns,” she said.
It did, a little. And there were lots of them. Some were almost below the range of hearing, and others sounded something like the distant screech of jet engines. They rose and faded and rose again, dissonant and unsettling.
The horizon lit with lightning, and again, as if a storm were coming over the mountains. There was another jagged line of light, and another, then tens and hundreds of them.
“If it is a storm,” she said. “I think it an uncanny one.”
“What?”
“I think someone knows we’re here, and they don’t think we ought to be.”
“Someone? Who?”
“We were wondering what happened to the children,” she said. “That might be them.”
The children of gods, Errol thought. He remembered reading some Greek and Norse mythology. He remembered thinking that most of those characters weren’t the sort you wanted to meet or even see from a distance. He looked back. The flashes seemed to be getting closer, albeit slowly. And the horns were getting louder, wilder.
