The Land of Night

by Kirby Crow

  Scarlet hesitated, looking to Liall, but Liall was neutral, his expression only changing when Melev spoke of magic. So he’s still mad about that, Scarlet thought. He longed to be alone with Liall, to explain how forbidden it was to reveal the Gift to an outsider, and how he had often felt guilty about keeping that secret from Liall, but there seemed little chance of being alone now.

  Scarlet nodded, and Melev placed his hand –so warm!– on Scarlet’s temple, right on the spot that was drilling hot needles through his brain. It hurt. For a moment, a searing pain that cut through all the other pains rocked him, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped. Melev quickly laid his other hand on Scarlet’s shoulder, preventing him from pulling away as the healer explored the aching area of Scarlet’s chest with careful, precise touches. Then Melev laid his palm flat above Scarlet’s heart and went very still for a moment. Scarlet tensed, expecting more pain, but it suddenly vanished, as did all his other aches, as if taken away by the wind.

  Scarlet opened his eyes to see Melev smiling at him. “What did you do?”

  Melev began to examine Scarlet’s hands next, pressing his fingernails to see their color. “I helped you.”

  “You’re not a curae,” Scarlet said. No curae that he had ever met could take pain away so easily.

  Melev was amused. “Oh, indeed I am not.”

  “Are you a Shining One?”

  Now that caused a stir in the room, and Melev looked at him and shook his head, showing him his enormous white teeth in a grin. “Nauhin nen chth,” he said, which left Scarlet no wiser, but he sensed to ask for a translation would be pushing it.

  Melev placed Scarlet’s hand under the blankets to keep warm and rose, turning to Liall. “The bear must have hit him harder than you realized. His skull was fractured. You were right to call for me.”

  Was? Could Melev have healed him so quickly? Scarlet looked at Melev with fresh awe, doubting, but he had to admit that he was feeling much better, and no longer sick. He was only vastly tired.

  Liall’s cold expression wavered for a moment. “And now?”

  “I have repaired it. There is no bleeding on the brain, neither have his lungs taken serious damage. He is bruised and battered, but he will live.”

  Liall seemed to be grinding his jaw as he nodded at Melev, then he switched to Sinha and Scarlet was shut out of their conversation. Melev cast a look at Scarlet and switched back to Bizye, addressing Liall.

  “Your t’aishka is strong,” Melev remarked. “But you must take much better care of him. Please order him to rest.”

  Scarlet frowned. Most Rshani automatically assumed that Liall owned him or had some authority over him, and it bothered him no less now that it had months ago.

  “He is not mine to order,” Liall said slowly. “But I will ask him.”

  “Ah, yes.” Melev nodded, as if he understood perfectly. “It is the old ways, once again.”

  Liall seemed distressed at that, but Scarlet was too tired to figure it out. Liall’s coldness shut him out more effectively than if the prince had tossed him out of the palace and locked the gates. Be damned to him, then, Scarlet thought wearily. His eyelids drooped and he sank exhausted into sleep.

  ***

  Scarlet slept most of the night and woke to find Liall gone. When he asked Nenos where the prince was, the old man only shrugged apologetically and urged Scarlet, with signs and a few words in Bizye, to get back into bed and rest. Scarlet shook his head and got up to dress, and Nenos reluctantly laid out a very nice but plain red woolen virca and black breeches and boots. Scarlet wandered into the dining room and sat along at the large table, and after a short while Nenos silently brought him che. An hour went by as Scarlet fretted, then two, and by that time Scarlet was convinced that Liall was making plans to ship him back to Byzantur, just as he had threatened to do on the sea voyage.

  There was a knock at the outer door and Scarlet stood, his heart speeding up, but it was only Cestimir’s page, inquiring if ser Keriss was well enough to receive visitors. Scarlet’s hopes fell and he did not feel like visiting, but neither did he feel like being penned up in the apartment all day waiting for Liall to come to him, if he came at all.

  “Of course I’m well enough,” he told the page, who spoke very decent Bizye. “Tell him to come up.”

  When the boy had gone, Scarlet regretted his decision. He was going to be poor company for a prince, but anything was preferable to just sitting here brooding over Liall.

  Liall had killed his own brother. How? Was it by mischance, or something darker? Scarlet wanted the truth from Liall. All of it, not just the little bits of it Liall thought he could handle. Scarlet’s own father had let him keep his secrets and never pried, believing that Scarlet was mature enough to handle it on his own, and trusting that, if he could not, he would ask for help. Help, which would, naturally, never be withheld. It was the Hilurin way: blunt, proud, and loyal. Scarlet would have forgiven Liall any truth, but lies were harder to dismiss. Liall naturally saw the matter differently, being foreign-born and raised with another kind of logic: one that twisted like snakes and slid away like smoke when you tried to grasp it.

  And you, he asked himself. What about you? Didn’t you lie to Liall about the magic?

  I did, he argued silently. But it wasn’t only my lie. It’s what I was raised with: never show the Gift to anyone who is not First Tribe. If they’re not of the Blood, they won’t understand and they’ll kill you for it. Well, hadn’t that wisdom been proven already? Look how courtiers behaved in the great hall.

  The shouts of kill it! still rang in Scarlet’s ears: those pretty, glittering men and women calling for his death.

  Haven’t we paid enough for that lie over the years in burned villages and dead kin and our bones buried in the fields?

  But not Liall, that inner voice argued. Never Liall. He wouldn’t have hated you.

  Scarlet was beginning to despair of either of them ever realizing who the other really was, and the prospect of arguing with Liall any further depressed him beyond words. He didn’t want to lose Liall, but he wanted to lose himself even less.

  Alexyin escorted Cestimir, as usual, and conferred with Nenos at length before leaving the Crown Prince alone with Scarlet. Nenos stood looking at the young men for a few minutes, his hands clasped behind his back and his kind face very concerned.

  “How do you feel?” Cestimir asked politely.

  “Well enough,” Scarlet answered, and then gave Cestimir a hard look. “Aren’t you afraid like everyone else, prince?”

  “Should I be? Are you going to strike me down with your little flame?”

  Scarlet snorted and rolled his eyes. At least one Rshani had good sense. “You’d think that’s what I threatened to do to your kingdom. Be like trying to cut down a forest with a fruit knife, that would. We don’t... we try not to use it that way. That isn’t what the Gift is for.”

  “What is it for?” Cestimir asked, honestly curious as he sat down across from Scarlet.

  Scarlet dropped his gaze. “For living,” he answered honestly. “Survival; small magics to get us by in a hard world. That’s what Deva gave us.” He looked down at his own four-fingered hand that so fascinated the Rshani. “Without it, we may all have been dead already, with the way the world hates us,” he added almost defiantly.

  “I don’t hate you, ser Keriss.”

  Scarlet ventured a searching look at the prince. “You don’t, do you?” he said after a long moment. “It makes no difference to you?”

  Cestimir grinned. “None at all, except that now I have even more questions to pester you with.”

  Seeing that the young men were speaking easily with one another, Nenos left.

  Cestimir pulled his chair closer to Scarlet’s. “Did you really mean to burn Vladei?”

  Scarlet thought seriously before he answered. “It was very odd,” he admitted. “I’d never tried to use my Gift that way before I left home. Not as a weapon. I didn’t think I could. Something has b
een happening to my Gift since I left Byzantur. It feels... stronger. I don’t know.” He sighed. “Maybe it’s this place. Maybe it’s being so far away from home and everything is so new and...”

  “Frightening?”

  “Oh, you can’t fright a pedlar,” Scarlet retorted primly with a little smile. “But I’ve felt close to it a few times. I don’t like your step-brother much, if I can say so.”

  “You can,” Cestimir grinned, folding his arms. “Others say worse about him. He’s a dangerous man.”

  Scarlet snorted. “Who yelps like a girl at the sight of a little withy.”

  “It didn’t look little to me,” Cestimir admitted. His eyes shone. “It looked wondrous.”

  Scarlet shook his head, smiling.

  “You want to get out of here, don’t you?”

  Scarlet stared. “What do you mean? Leave Rshan?”

  “No, not leave my brother, you ninny.” Cestimir reached over and slapped Scarlet's arm for his foolishness. “Would I do that to Nazheradei, knowing how he loves you? No. I meant would you like go sleigh-riding with me?”

  Scarlet cast a cautious look to the kitchen, where he knew Nenos was listening, but Nenos did not speak Bizye. “They won’t let us.”

  “They won’t know,” Cestimir said with a rakish grin. “Or at least, they won’t until it’s too late, and by then we’ll have had our fun and they can be as angry as they please.”

  In spite of his dour mood, Scarlet chuckled. “Have you always been like this, or did my coming here spark some kind of Wilding streak in you?”

  “Don’t worry,” Cestimir laughed, rising from his chair. “They won’t blame you. I’ve done it many times before. If anything, I will be blamed for corrupting you, poor innocent Byzan.”

  The prince stepped out of the dining room and into the kitchen, and Scarlet could hear him conversing with Nenos in low tones. After a few moments, Cestimir came back in and held his finger to his lips in a signal for Scarlet to be silent. The outer door opened and closed, and Cestimir grabbed his arm, hauling him up out of the chair.

  “Get your coat. You’ll need a hat and gloves, too. Hurry!”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sent him on an errand. It won’t take him that long, so we must be swift. Shoo!” He pushed Scarlet into the bedroom to dress.

  Scarlet snatched up Liall’s blue and silver coat and a new fur-lined hat brocaded with red flowers. The coat was far too big for him, but his own red coat had been taken after the snow bear hunt and he hadn’t seen it since. He wasn’t even sure they would bring it back; something about the blood of the bear being sacred.

  He met Cestimir near the outer door and the prince took his hand. After opening the door and peering out, Cestimir dragged Scarlet into the wide corridor and down a flight of stone steps. The boy was so much taller than Scarlet that he pulled Scarlet easily along, which annoyed Scarlet a bit. He was getting used to all these Rshani, even one three years his junior, towering over him. He did not like it, but he was getting used to it.

  They made several twists and turns throughout the palace, and Scarlet was afraid they would be stopped at any moment, but Cestimir knew his home, and they met no one in the narrow and deserted passages the Crown Prince chose for their route.

  Very shortly, they were outside in the twilight cold, standing before a sleigh with their minders left behind. A fierce-looking man with a full blond beard and heavy white eyebrows stood next to the horse-drawn sleigh, holding a whip and swathed in fur up to his neck.

  “Is this wise, Majesty?” Scarlet asked, suddenly positive it was not. Liall was going to be furious.

  “Certainly!” Cestimir said cheerfully and climbed into the enclosed carriage of the sleigh. He held out his gloved hand to Scarlet.

  Cestimir’s merry grin was so infectious that Scarlet laughed and climbed into the carriage, forgetting for the moment that Liall had warned him direly about leaving the palace. Liall fretted like an old woman. What harm could there be if he was with the prince?

  This sleigh was smaller than the one that had brought Scarlet and Liall from the port, but had larger windows. “Yesuk!” Cestimir called. The prince rapped out an order in Sinha, and the driver bowed and climbed up into the seat behind the pair of horses.

  “Yesuk is my driver,” Cestimir explained, “and has also gotten me both into and out of a great deal of trouble. They keep trying to send him away to some other post, but I shan’t let them.”

  Cestimir tapped on the window, and through it Scarlet could see Yesuk lift his heavy arms to snap the reins. They were off.

  “Where are we going?” Scarlet asked. Yesuk clucked his tongue at the horses and the sleigh began to pick up speed. Its runners on the snow sounded like the hiss of a snake inside the carriage, and the air was very cold.

  “Anywhere, so long as it’s away from here for a few hours.” Cestimir chuckled. “Stop fretting! Liall has gotten you as scared as he is, imagining assassins behind every door. Relax,. Yesuk will protect us, and no one else knows we have left.”

  Neither of the two young men saw the lone figure by the roadside that the sleigh passed swiftly. Or, if they did, they believed him to be a wind-blasted stump of a tree or a rock, so still was the Ancient and so heavy was the fall of snow piled on his shoulders and head as he stood there with his bare feet rooted in the earth, colored like the landscape, patient as the mountain.

  Melev turned his head to watch as the sleigh passed, and his moonstone eyes shone with an inner light that had not been kindled in centuries.

  ***

  It was a measure as to how frightened Liall was that he had sent for Melev to heal Scarlet. A Rshani healer is bred, not taught, and many considered them not quite mortal. Some, like Melev, were Ancients able to heal wounds that would otherwise be impossible for a man to recover from.

  Liall sat vigil outside his apartments until Nenos assured him that Scarlet would be perfectly well by morning. He left then, wandering deep in thought through long, chilly halls and glittering atriums, finally finding his way down to the barracks, which were bleakly empty. Jarek’s troops were engaged on a battlefield to the north and were not expected to return for several days. She was routing Vladei’s rebel supporters, which by now was no secret. That accounted for Vladei’s act of desperation on the Hunt and his attempt to publicly discredit Liall in the great hall. Time was growing short and Vladei was losing ground with the Barons. If Vladei did not strike decisively and soon, Cestimir would be king. That knowledge was bound to make Vladei desperate and Liall sleepless.

  Every hour that Liall spent in the barracks was an hour that he longed to be with Scarlet, but stubborn pride held him back. Scarlet had patently dismissed Liall –a prince!– from his presence, and it galled Liall to realize that he was not quite the master here. Not that he ever really fancied he was, or that Scarlet had no influence upon him, but to have it done so publicly...

  Did he mean what he said, Liall wondered. Does he wish to leave me? And –gods help me– would I allow it? What kind of man am I if I do not? Then there was the matter of his magic.

  Buggering gods, Liall thought. Scarlet can do magic. He had to say it aloud several times to the empty barracks, certain that it must be some trick or sleight of hand that the wily pedlar had mastered. He even had Scarlet’s clothing and packs searched and examined, but beyond a piece of black flint from the Byzan hills and a battered strip of iron, there was nothing Scarlet could have made a fire with in plain sight of three hundred people. The tales were true. Hilurin magic existed, and Scarlet had never trusted him enough to tell him of it.

  Neither of us truly trusts the other, Liall realized. Not in the ways that matter, the way of mates who are destined to be together. I called him my t’aishka, and he does not even know what I mean by it, for I am too afraid to say it aloud. Twice-beloved. Twice-chosen. A lover I have known beyond life. It was his face in my dreams all those years, and yet... it was not. We have known each other before.

&
nbsp; I must amend this, Liall thought, pacing the barracks and slapping his fist into his palm in frustration. I must convince him to stay with me, and the only way to do that is to be honest with him. Tell him everything. But how? Where are the magic words to explain the killing of my own brother? Yet I must, or we will never heal the lies between us.

  Near the dawn hour, he climbed the stairs to his apartments. Nenos reported that Scarlet was well, but still asleep. The old servant’s manner was so carefully blank that Liall nearly stormed in to drag Scarlet out of bed and demand that they settle things between them. Or else he would strip and join Scarlet in bed, and let their bodies speak what they could not. Sanity prevailed though, and Liall settled for growling and stamping down to the scriptorium, where he buried his head in paperwork for hours.