To Target the Heart

by Aldrea Alien

  “I fecking hope not,” Zurron muttered. “Last thing we need is a bloody war.”

  “And it is the last thing my father wants,” Darshan assured the man. That didn’t mean Udynea wouldn’t be ready for one. The empire fought with herself more often than not. Squabbles amongst lords that were only settled after imperial forces moved in. It certainly kept the army sharp.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The tower stood dark against the blushing peachy hue of the sky. Surely, with the speed they travelled and the time they’d wasted, any troops sent to fetch them would’ve already arrived. They were acting alone. There would perhaps be additional tongue lashings for the two princes, and further ignoring of his own presence, but nothing further.

  At least, he could hope.

  Every time he saw the cloister on Crowned Mountain, Hamish was in awe of its ability to remain in place. Hewn from the very cliff face, it clung to the side of the mountain. Slashes of green broke up the grey-brown monotony of the mountainside, gardens to supplement the tithe gifted to them by the very farms their group had visited on the way.

  It had taken them seven days to get here since leaving Mullhind. All of them without a sign of being followed.

  He thought the delay at Old Willie’s, and the messy business at the guard outpost, would’ve left them too far behind to make the trip today worthwhile. But they had made up the lost time by way of Darshan’s globe of light illuminating the road as dusk drew near. Just a half-hour here and there had swiftly added up, leading to them spending less time in the dubious safety of tents and more in the security of barns and sheds.

  They had halted just off the road winding up the mountainside. A spring lay in the clearing, the warm water bubbling up from somewhere deep in the ground.

  His lover stood at his elbow, staring up at the building. Darshan seemed unimpressed with the structure, but then the cloister was an old Domian outpost. Given that the southern half of Udynea was once part of the ancient empire, it undoubtedly had dozens of such buildings. “How far away is it?” Darshan asked. “Will we be required to climb?”

  Hamish shook his head. Whilst the cloister had a solid rope and pulley for hauling supplies up the cliff face in a half-hour, few were willing to risk their lives to such a contraption. The road stopped at the foot of the cliff where a narrow path snaked its way up to the cloister gates. “It’s an hour or two via horseback.” They would spend the night there before heading off for home come midmorning.

  “Then why are we stopping?”

  “To cleanse ourselves,” Gordon replied. “The priests prefer visitors to be unsoiled before entering.” He jerked his head at the pond from which their unsaddled horses currently drank. “A little dip usually suffices. We’ll eat on the way up.”

  “Bathe in a natural pool in the middle of nowhere? How terribly rustic.” Although Darshan continued to affect a casual air, a hint of trepidation lurked in the flatness of his lips and the dull way he eyed the pond.

  With the horses tethered, they shed their clothes and leapt into the water. The pond was deep enough for even his father to relax sitting down. Although, just how tall his father stood was a bit of a mystery to them. He had fond memories of him and his brother attempting to measure their father’s height as boys without him knowing. Seven foot was their estimate.

  Hamish slithered into the pond, tepid water enveloping him like a warm sheet in winter. He sank until only his chin sat above the surface. Closing his eyes, he tipped his head back against the edge of the pond. The act of bathing usually took a few minutes of scrubbing to ensure all the dirt was gone, but no one was exactly in a rush to clamber up the mountain.

  After a while, he became aware of the presence not far away on his right. That better nae be you, Gor. His brother had a wicked sense of humour when it came to water games. Most were harmless enough if both parties knew how to swim, but he wasn’t in the mood for a dunking.

  Opening his eyes revealed Gordon to be bobbing amicably on the other side of the pond with the two guards chatting to his left. And Dar?

  He twisted to find his lover sitting quietly at the side of the pond, not that far from where Hamish floated. Odd. The man had been bemoaning the lack of a decent tub to bathe in all the way here.

  Hamish pushed himself off the rocky bottom of the pond, drifting closer to Darshan without looking like the man was his goal. Halting at his lover’s feet, he rested his arms on a flat rock. “Are you nae going to join us?”

  With his lips curving into a watery imitation of a smile, Darshan shook his head. “Thank you, but I shall politely decline the offer. I am perfectly all right staying dry.”

  “It’s nae cold.”

  Silent laughter creased the corners of those hazel eyes. “That is not my concern.”

  Hamish clambered onto dry land. Water dripped from his beard, trickling down his chest in a freezing trail as the spring breeze cooled the drops and nipped at his bare skin. “What is, then?”

  That hazel gaze darted down then back up and Darshan’s tongue peeked out to wet his lips. Still, he remained uncustomarily silent. During much of their travels, the man had barely stopped talking, be it to attempt teaching Hamish the Udynean language or natter with either Gordon or the guards. Much to the latter two’s consternation at first.

  Was it the naked part that bothered Darshan? The man had been slightly apprehensive the first time he had undressed in Hamish’s presence. “Do men nae bathe in front of each other in Udynea?” It seemed a little at odds with what he’d been told countless times in the past, but not everything about the empire had lived up to his expectation.

  The question seemed to shake Darshan from his stupor. “No, there are several public baths within Minamist alone, not including the one within the palace. I just—” He huffed, frowning. Red bloomed in his cheeks. “I am not generally the self-conscious type, but it has occurred to me that all of your bits are uncut whilst I—”

  “We’re just bathing,” Hamish said before Darshan could finish talking. Uncut? His lover was clearly the opposite. Did that mean they had actually put a blade down there? A shudder passed through him at the thought. “Nae one stares at another’s dick whilst they bathe.”

  “I beg to differ. You turn up to any public bath in Minamist with that monster and you would garner nothing but stares.” He cocked his head, his brows twitching into a considering frown, before adding, “And perhaps a few proposals.”

  Hamish laughed, heat flooding his cheeks. “Remind me to never visit a public bath during my next visit to Minamist.”

  “Are you two joining us?” Gordon bellowed from the other side of the pond. “Or are you going to cluck at each other like two old chooks?”

  The pit-sized lump at the fore of his lover’s throat bobbed. “All right,” Darshan grumbled. He flung his arms wide. “If you gentlemen would be so good as to turn around, I shall get in.”

  “Get a load of Sir Modest, here,” Sean crowed. Submerged to his neck, his surfacing hand sprayed water everywhere as he jerked a thumb towards Darshan. “What are you going to show us that we dinnae already have?”

  Darshan muttered something in response as he peeled off the layers of clothing. Although the words were just loud enough for Hamish to hear, they were also spoken in the Udynean tongue. He recalled a few words from his daily tutoring with his lover on the language, but not enough to string the sentence together.

  Finally, Darshan divested himself of his smalls and tossed them atop his pile of clothing.

  Hamish couldn’t help the appreciative sigh tightening his throat. His lover might not have been a solid man, nor was he as thickly carpeted as every other man Hamish had been with, but what was there was… Perfect. The priests said the Goddess had a hand in creating each being, if that were true, then she could’ve put Darshan forward as her masterpiece.

  “Fecking hell,” Sean blurted, breaking Hamish’s quiet adoration. “You’ve had a good inch lopped off your pecker.”

  Hamish groaned
. Yes, the look of Darshan’s nether region was a little odd with the foreskin missing, but he couldn’t believe any of them would be crass enough to point it out.

  Before anyone else could say a word, Gordon lazily swept his arm in a wide arc, splashing the guard. “Nae more than the inch of floppy skin you’ve got hanging there.”

  “I’ll give you an inch,” Sean shot back.

  Hamish faltered in the act of getting back into the pond, slithering into the water by way of inertia. Of all the words to come out of the man’s mouth, he hadn’t thought it would be those.

  Gordon laughed, deep and hearty. “Just an inch? I ken you were small, but you didnae have to measure it for me.”

  Snarling, the guard practically leapt across the pond like a surfacing fish. The man barrelled straight into Gordon, dragging the pair of them under. Water splashed everywhere.

  “Come on, lads,” Hamish grumbled, fighting the urge to strangle the both of them. “Have a little restraint.”

  “They are,” Zurron piped up from his new vantage point on Hamish’s left. “It’s a lot of restraint you want them to have, nae a little.”

  “I really do not mind,” Darshan said. He had slipped into the pool whilst the two men continued to wrestle and splash each other, and now bobbed at Hamish’s right elbow. “Reminds me a little of home.”

  Frowning, Zurron leant forward to address Darshan around Hamish. “Seeing two lumbering men fighting in water reminds you of home?”

  “Naked wrestling has always been quite the popular sport in select circles. It is actually gaining a wider audience at present.”

  “Two men actually wrestle naked?”

  “Or two women. And yes.”

  “Are they doing it… willingly?”

  “You mean are the contestants slaves?” There was a grim edge to Darshan’s otherwise congenial smile. “Some of them might be—there are very few sports slaves are forbidden from competing in—but not the majority.”

  “And what does the winner get?”

  “The usual, I would suspect.” Darshan shrugged. “Money, women, men… prestige. It is all largely in good fun. Except for those betting on the wrong outcome, I guess.”

  “I’m picking there are rules, then?”

  “Rules for what?” Sean asked. The pair had surfaced and now gave them comically identical squints of confusion. “Loping a pecker off? I can tell you the first one: nae mine. Nae whilst I’m still breathing.”

  Darshan’s expression soured.

  “Actually,” Hamish said, diverting his lover’s attention. “Since Sean brought the topic up and all… I’ve been meaning to ask about…” He waggled a finger downwards whilst rubbing at the back of his neck. Deciding how to breach a clearly delicate topic was one of the reasons he hadn’t done so. What was the correct way to speak of it? “Why are you… cut?” He thought it might’ve been an unfortunate accident, but if it was common enough for a man such as himself to garner attention, then maybe that was the way in Minamist.

  “We call it Khutani,” Darshan replied. “Both for the act and the coming of age practise where it is done.”

  “You cut it off deliberately?” Sean mumbled, his cheeks losing their usual slightly golden tone.

  Hamish glanced at the other two men, both Zurron and Gordon looked equally as sick as Sean. What earthly reason could an entire culture have to remove pieces of themselves? Especially a region such as that.

  “It has been around for as long as the Udynea Empire. Probably back before we were even truly an empire. The foreskin is removed when a boy is…” Darshan scrunched his face in thought. “Thirteen? Fourteen years of age. When rather varies by city. I was done when I was twelve.”

  As one, the rest of the group hissed in sympathy, grasping or covering their privates.

  Hamish winced right alongside the others, certain everything had just attempted to retract right up inside him. The mere thought of letting a blade anywhere near that region… “Ouch.”

  His lover laughed. “Yes. Although, not for long if one has access to a healer or has been in training long enough to acquire innate healing as I had.”

  Hamish hadn’t seen any healing beyond what had been used upon himself. He had heard tales of the plague that’d happened a few years before either him or his siblings were born. So many lives had fallen to the sickness by the time his grandfather had allowed the Tirglasian spellsters to leave their cloisters. Once magic had intervened, the plague had ground to a halt faster than a dry waterwheel, but what had intrigued him was how the stories explained the utter lack of fear those spellsters were rumoured to have shown. They spent days surrounded by death and illness and never once felt the slightest bit unwell.

  “Then, wouldnae it just have grown back?” Gordon asked.

  “No?” Darshan arched a brow at the man. “Healing magic does not work in such a fashion. It uses the body’s natural ability, just expediting the process. That is, typically, why scarring still occurs. Given that neither humans, dwarves nor elves can regrow severed parts like a lizard, the best the body’s capable of in such a circumstance is the usual crude method of knitting everything together. Scarring and all.”

  “I dinnae see any sc—” Hamish said before catching himself, his cheeks burning. No one here minded that he liked men, but being so free with his tongue in their company could mean a slip up back home.

  Out the corner of his eye, he caught Zurron’s sly smile. “I bet you’ve had a good long look,” he snickered, his grin widening when Hamish splashed him.

  Darshan cleared his throat. If he had heard the elf, he made no indication. “The one thing the healing magic does well is reduce most marks to a few fine lines, if it does not mend seamlessly. As you can no doubt tell, the latter is a far more common outcome.” He indicated the shoulder that had been shot only five days prior, which showed no sign of the injury. “I could show you all the full effect on a more noticeable part, if you would like?”

  Hamish shook his head before anyone could suggest otherwise. “We’ve all seen healing before.” Granted, in his case, only when he had been the patient. “You mentioned something about it being innate?” He had thought all healing was instinctual, whether there was magic involved or not, just that the non-magical type was far slower and didn’t always save the life it was trying to mend.

  His lover frowned and Hamish scrunched deeper into the water. Had he asked something he shouldn’t have? He would be the first to admit how woefully ignorant he was in what information could be shared, especially around magic.

  “It is harder to explain to those lacking the ability.” Darshan gave a considering hum. “Once there has been a certain—” He waved his hand, the right words clearly escaping him. “Healing magic is an intimate skill. It requires sufficient training and understanding of how the body works—not to mention constant usage of the ability and all that. It is through that training that the body begins to draw upon magic to heal injuries without conscious thought.”

  “Handy,” Sean murmured. “I suppose, being aware your magic can mend any injury makes taking the reckless option less dangerous.”

  Darshan’s lips twisted wryly. “Not really. There are exceptions to most things and healing has its limits. Whilst comforting in some situations, the magic cannot differentiate between a simple pricked finger and a broken leg, reacting with the same urgency either way.” He shrugged, rippling the water. “It is but one of the immutable norms, much like elemental magic must obey certain rules.”

  “Such as?” Hamish coaxed. His lover had seemingly relaxed, talking about a topic obviously a great deal more pleasant than their previous one. If Hamish was capable of keeping the conversation going in the same direction, then the others would likely forget too.

  “Fire requires heat, air and fuel if not feeding off a spellster’s magical energy. The apparent conjuring of water from nothing is little more than the act of drawing moisture from the air—rather tricky in dry climates. That sort of thing.”


  “I dinnae—” Hamish fell silent, just like the rest of the men. He likely wore the same considering frown as well.

  Darshan chuckled, submerging himself until the laughter became just bubbles burbling beneath the hook of his nose. “Do not tell me you all thought magic happened just like that.” He snapped his fingers, flicking droplets in all directions.

  But that was it. Hamish had given no thought towards how spellsters created the terrors and miracles they performed. Likely no more so than their ancestors had the day they bound and cloistered their once-revered chiefs. Magic was a thing best left alone.

  Forgotten.

  He shouldn’t be intrigued by the idea of watching Darshan display more of his abilities. Nae after seeing just how dangerous the man could become when riled.

  ~~~

  They continued to bathe in relative silence, the heads of the other men no doubt swimming with new information. The quiet suited Darshan just fine as it enabled him to turn his focus to the cloister. Whilst it clung rather impressively to the side of the cliff, the building looked to be the size of the academy him and his siblings studied at. Being a place of prestige, the academy typically had between fifty to seventy students.

  He couldn’t see the cloisters operating on the same low ratio of students to teachers, but perhaps the same number of spellsters walked those halls as did in the academy. It made sense, if he viewed it from a Tirglasian standpoint, for small groups of spellsters to be contained across the land rather than something like the massive prison setup they used in Demarn.

  “They’re nae expecting us,” Gordon said. “Or you.”

  Darshan frowned at the man. Had he heard a note of reassurance in Gordon’s voice? Did the man think Darshan held reservations about entering the cloister after asking to visit in the first place? Under ordinary circumstances, he supposed the average spellster would be at risk of confinement. Not that they called it as such. “It is kind of you to be concerned, but I already gathered my ambassadorial status grants me immunity from such laws. Was I wrong to think so?”