by Dan Wingreen
Aidan nodded. "You're…kind of the best thing that’s ever happened to me."
Eallair's smile widened into a full, bright grin that made Aidan’s heart leap wildly in his chest. He had seen a thousand smiles and smirks on Eallair’s lips in the short time they’d known each other, most of which had been aimed directly at him, but this was the first time Aidan had no doubt the emotion he was seeing was one hundred percent genuine. He was so distracted he didn’t realize Eallair was moving until he was once again cupping Aidan’s cheek with his too-smooth palm.
"I think maybe you are, too," Eallair said, his voice soft and filled with wonder.
He leaned towards Aidan.
Oh. I'm gonna get kissed again. A shiver of anticipation shot up his spine. He'd quite liked kissing.
Before Eallair could get any closer, though, someone nervously cleared their throat from nearby. Eallair stopped and they turned to see Two Rivers standing a few feet away, his tanned cheeks surprisingly red.
"Um," he said awkwardly, refusing to meet their eyes. "The Shaman sent me to tell you that it's time for you to go to the caves now."
Eallair let out a frustrated breath as he leaned back away from Aidan, his hand lingering. Aidan's cheeks burned. How long had Two River’s been standing there? Several of the People carrying bodies to the fire were staring as well. The "necromancers" showing affection for each other seemed to get mixed reactions. Some seemed almost warm, one man even had a small smile on his face, others seemed even more resentful than before. One woman was sitting on the ground, cradling in her lap the head of a man who was obviously dead, as she watched them with silent tears running down her face. Aidan looked away, suddenly feeling guilty that something was beginning for him in a place where so much had ended for so many others.
If Eallair noticed any of this, he didn't say. All he did was glare at Two Rivers for a moment before sighing. "Fine then," he said. He dropped his hand from Aidan's cheek and gave Aidan's hand a quick squeeze. "Let's get this over with."
◆◆◆
Aidan wrapped his arms tightly around his body as the cold breeze kicked up again. He shivered.
I never thought I'd actually miss a corpse fire.
He looked over his shoulder, but they were far enough away from the village that the distant glow of the fire had finally faded into the night. He sighed; somehow it seemed even colder now that he couldn't see it. He turned back around. The strange illuminated darkness of the desert stretched out in front of him, the flatness and the rolling landscape seemed to go on almost forever, the uniformity broken by what might have been actual hills in the distance.
They'd been walking for about twenty minutes, heading towards a nearby cave system where the necromancer was supposedly hiding out. How the Shaman knew he was there, Aidan had no idea. Neither did Eallair, who hadn't really stopped complaining about it since they left.
"Just head east and you will come upon them," he muttered, mocking the Shaman's way of speaking. "You will know you have reached the right place. Bloody mystic man of the desert crap. Can't even give us a guide or point it out on a map. Try that shit with me, won't bloody work. Bein’ all vague like don't mean you're smart—means you're stupid, can't even give fuckin' directions like a normal person…"
Aidan rolled his eyes. Eallair had been going on like that on and off since leaving the village, apparently oblivious to the cold. Personally, Aidan wondered how much of that anger was because of the Shaman's vagueness and how much was because their kissing was interrupted.
Aidan smiled to himself, his chilled lips seeming to heat up at the memory.
Eallair had kissed him.
It almost seemed unreal, when he thought about it. Why in Merlin's name would someone like Eallair want someone like him? He'd never been desirable to anyone else before. In his whole life, Aidan had been on exactly four dates with three different people, all of them wizards. The first two men had been quiet and subdued, much like Aidan had been, and neither one liked him enough to try asking for a second date. The third man was funny at least, and seemed interested, but when the time came for their third date, he just never showed up, leaving Aidan sitting alone at the restaurant feeling embarrassed and unwanted. It blew his mind that someone as interesting and adventurous as Eallair could want anything to do with him when he couldn't even hold the interest of boring, ordinary wizards.
He was interested though, Aidan didn't doubt it. Not just because of the kissing, which had seriously been understated in the books he'd read, but because of the way Eallair had looked at him. No one had ever looked at Aidan like that. Like he was something worth looking at.
Everything had changed, too, since the kiss. Every interaction and look seemed different, charged with something new and exciting that hadn't been there before. Or maybe it had, and Aidan just never noticed. Even the way they walked together, close enough so their shoulders touched, a hand occasionally shooting out mid-rant to catch Aidan as he stumbled on an unseen rock followed by a smile that barely interrupted the flow of words, was new.
Also new were the questions floating around Aidan's head. What, exactly, were he and Eallair now? Friends? The kissing was a bit more than friendly. Certainly Aidan had never thought about kissing Carl. Married? Even ignoring all the legal issues since they couldn't exactly walk into a DMS and get a marriage certificate, not even Aidan was naive enough to think that. Dating, then? How could anybody date when they were outlaws on the run, though? Would this count as their first date?
That'd be a great story to tell the kids. 'How did you and dad meet?' 'Well, son and/or daughter, we were on our way to find King Arthur and start a rebellion against the government when we got sidetracked by hunting down this necromancer…'
And why was he even thinking about kids?
Aidan shook his head. He obviously needed a distraction. Lucky for him, even before The Kiss, Eallair had always been pretty distracting.
"So, you said you lived in Britannia?" Aidan asked suddenly. He'd always been curious about Eallair's past, but now that they were…whatever they were, he was even more so.
Eallair stopped his grumbling and glanced at Aidan. "Aye," he said cautiously.
Aidan ignored it. Eallair had some serious privacy issues, and as much as Aidan appreciated how much he'd already opened up to him, he figured being his…whatever he was, gave him the right to pry. At least a little.
"What's it like?" Aidan asked.
Eallair cocked his head. "Um, I dunno, it's a place?"
"A place," Aidan said flatly.
Eallair shrugged. "Yeah. I haven't been there in years, but, it's kind of a lot like here, actually. From what I hear ain't really much has changed since I been gone."
Aidan held back a sigh. That was something, at least.
"So, the rest of the world is just like here?" he asked. That seemed kind of boring. Boring and tragic.
"Depends on where you’re talkin’ about. America’s big, so you got most of the major bits of nature; desert, forests, plains, bit o’ the tropics even. Some places are colder, some hotter. Governments are pretty much the same as here; oppressive, powerful, run by those what think they know best and don’t care to hear different. Least in the places I've been. And you gotta keep in mind, I ain’t been everywhere. But in the part of the world I traveled, Britannia, Germany, Iberia, what’s left of Old Rome, everything's more…charged, I guess, than here. More violent."
"How?" Aidan asked.
"It's the old world," Eallair said with a shrug. "Old world with old hatreds and old wars. Britannia and West Francia are still lobbin’ spells across the Channel. Scandinavia and the Russian Empire are still at each other's throats. Castile, Leon, and the Moors are still fighting over their peninsula. It's kind of amazing if a year goes by over there without a full-fledged war breakin’ out."
Eallair kicked at the ground, watching as the sand got caught in a sudden gust of wind.
"So different from over here," he continued, looking up at the
sky.
Aidan followed his gaze. For the first time since they'd stepped out of the carriage, he was struck by how beautiful the night sky was in the desert. The stars were bright, much brighter than they were in the city, seeming to stretch across the entire planet like a sparkling blanket. The moon was full and bright and bigger than he'd ever seen it, as if just being away from the city was enough to give it new strength. Of course, it still lit the desert up too much for Aidan; still made him feel small and exposed and vulnerable…but it was also oddly comforting, in a way. Tangible proof that just because something looked weak when viewed from inside the city—from inside the heart of the government’s power—didn’t mean it couldn’t be strong and bright outside the oppressive crush of order and civilization.
"Ain't as unified as the name 'United States' would imply," Eallair said softly, "what with the shaman or the People or whatever they wanna call themselves bein’ their own country unto themselves, but it's peaceful. The heavy border patrols and the Southern Barrier keep the Aztecs in Mexico, and anybody what ever tried to settle more than ten miles or so into the Canadian Territories ain't never been heard from again, so you ain't surrounded by enemies. It's…nice. Or it could be, if certain things were different."
Eallair let out a short laugh. "Actually, out of all the places I been, this is the best of 'em."
"Oh." Aidan frowned slightly. Maybe there was a reason why nobody really studied history or bothered with the rest of the world. It all seemed kind of…sad. "That's depressing."
"Ain't it though?" Eallair said with a sardonic grin. It faded quickly and was replaced with an almost wistful look. "Actually, it ain't that bad. You got a real chance here. Ain’t got none of the problems slowly burning the old world to death; government here got that much right, at least. This place could be great, maybe even the greatest country in the world, if you had the freedom to fulfill all that potential."
Aidan didn't say anything for a while. It was just starting to hit him how much work they actually had in front of them. He'd kind of just been assuming everything would fall into place when they woke Arthur up. He'd be bright and glorious and everything they needed, they'd fight a war that would be terrible, but necessary, and then after everything would just be…good. He never thought about the rest of the world or how countries interacted or even about the people who shared this half of the world with them. Even if they succeeded, it would be a constant fight to make sure they didn't slip into the problems of what Eallair called the "old world".
"I hope so," Aidan said after a long, thoughtful silence.
They didn't talk much after that, Aidan lost in his thoughts and Eallair apparently uninterested in complaining anymore, content to watch the sky and occasionally touch Aidan when it wasn't strictly necessary. Not that Aidan was complaining.
Aidan lost track of time, the bland desert features blurring together as his mind wandered until he couldn't tell if he'd been walking for hours or if he hadn't moved at all. He went on like that until, out of nowhere, he was suddenly hit with a sense of wrongness, just like he'd felt in the village except much, much stronger. It slammed into him like a hammer, physically pushing him back as he let out a soft sound of distress. The black feeling settled onto his chest; a damp, pulsing weight like being buried under a wounded, dying man.
"Lee—"
"Aye, I feel it too," Eallair said. "Can't believe that bloody Shaman was right," he added, grumbling.
Aidan shuddered, visions of dead children and rotting corpses filling his head. He thought he could even smell them burning again. "It's horrible."
"It'll get worse," Eallair said brightly. Aidan scowled.
"That isn't helping."
Eallair fixed him with an implacable look. "Ain't supposed to."
Aidan's jaw clenched. He's trying to scare me away. Determination made it easier to push past the revolting sensation, and he drew himself up, squaring his shoulders. "Fine. What do we do next?"
If Eallair was surprised or disappointed Aidan hadn’t run away, it didn't show on his face. "Look around. We've gotta be close, for it to be this bad. There should be a cave around here, somewhere."
Aidan looked dubiously at the flat ground and small hills, but Eallair had already gone off looking, so he just gave a mental shrug and went in the opposite direction.
The weight on his chest was getting heavier, the sick feeling of wading through death making it difficult to focus on being annoyed with Eallair. "Stupid sorcerer.”
He sighed. Why couldn't Eallair just accept Aidan was there to help him? It was sweet how he protected Aidan, and Aidan actually did like it when he could get past feeling like a burden, but Eallair didn't need to protect him from risks he was taking willingly. The irony of Aidan thinking of scolding Eallair about letting someone make their own choices wasn't lost on him. But he couldn't—
Aidan was hit with a sudden, dizzying wave of nausea. He stumbled, then tripped over what could best be described as nothing and fell on his face in the sand. He groaned and fought against the urge to throw up. It passed quickly, and he scrambled to his feet looking around and hoping Eallair hadn't seen. He hadn't. He was still some distance away with his back turned towards Aidan.
Thank Merlin.
The last thing he needed was Eallair thinking he couldn't even walk without falling on his face. It would make it a hundred times harder to convince him he could watch after himself enough to be helpful. Not to mention looking like an idiot in front of the only man who ever wanted to kiss me… Aidan rolled his eyes, then scowled as he saw all the dust and sand on his new jacket. He shook his head in disgust as he brushed off, but quickly regretted it as his head swam again.
What was that…
He stopped mid-thought, staring at the ground in front of him.
Better question, what are those?
All around him were odd, swirling lines in the sand. They went back and forth over each other several times, but as he looked, he could tell that most sets seemed to be made up of two lines spaced equally apart, just bigger than the length of two people sitting side by side…
Tire tracks, he realized suddenly. They were tire tracks.
The People had been here.
Which meant the cave had to be close by.
Aidan grinned and started following the closest set of tracks. After about ten minutes of carefully following the way the tracks looped around and crossed other tracks, sometimes obscuring the original tracks he was following and completely screwing him up, he realized they weren't actually going anywhere. They were circling something. He frowned, looking around for anything that seemed worth circling, but the only thing around that wasn't just flat sand was a small hill that was only about the height of Aidan’s stomach at its highest point. He stared at it, then shrugged and started slowly walking around it. It wasn't like there was anything else to…
He stopped as he came around the other side of it and stared in disbelief.
"Lee!" he called. "I think I found it!"
Footsteps pounded across the sand as Eallair ran towards him, coming to a stop beside him. They both stood there, staring.
"Hmm," Eallair said finally. "Don't exactly see that every day."
The hill had started out normally on one side, the side opposite Aidan and Eallair, but instead of continuing on like a hill normally would and coming down on the other side, it looked like someone had cut this hill in two down the middle and threw away the other half. Where there should have been sand was a sheer rock wall with a hole in the middle, about four feet around.
The entrance to a cave.
It was well hidden. Almost perfectly hidden actually, since Aidan wouldn't have looked twice at the hill if the slimy wrongness hadn't stopped them, and if he hadn't seen the tire tracks. The only problem with it? While it was invisible coming from one direction, it stood out quite a bit coming from the other. What was the point of having a hiding spot that only worked if someone happened to be coming from a specific—
/> Except, that was the direction they had come from. The direction anyone coming from the village would have come from. And that was a pretty big coincidence to try and swallow.
"This was made, wasn't it?" Aidan asked warily.
"Aye," Eallair said, frowning. "That shearing's too smooth to be natural. Cave door's too round, too. It looks…"
"It looks like the walls of that hole the Shaman dropped us in," Aidan finished, barely holding back a shudder.
"Aye," Eallair said. "I don't like this. It's too perfect. This was made to be hidden from the village and I ain't never seen anyone what could shear rock that way. Except the Shaman."
Aidan swallowed. "Do you think he made it?"
"To hide from his own village?" Eallair sounded skeptical. "Don't seem like the type. And look, all those tire tracks; they're circling the damn thing. They knew exactly where the necromancer was, and they didn't go in after him."
Aidan ignored the flash of irritation that it only took Eallair a minute to figure the tracks out. "The Shaman said that he 'felt us', or whatever, and had to come back to the village."
"He also said they couldn't find the necromancer and that was clearly bullshit." Eallair scowled. "I don't much like bein' lied to."
"But…why would he lie?"
Eallair was quiet for a long time. "I don't know," he said finally. "But it ain't for anything good."
He turned to Aidan.
"I don't want you going in there."
Aidan started to protest, but Eallair cut him off. "No, listen to me. This is different than what we thought. A necromancer's bad enough, but there's something wrong with this whole thing. The Shaman lied to us and no one lies when something's less dangerous than it's supposed to be." He stepped closer and gripped Aidan's shoulders, his gray eyes filled with concern. "Please, Aidan. Stay out here. For me."
Aidan almost gave in. He knew real worry when he saw it, knew this was more than Eallair's usual protectiveness. There was real fear in the sorcerer’s eyes, and in the end, that was what held Aidan back.