The Warlord and the Bard

by Eric Alan Westfall

  The words will be bad enough. I tell him of the horror when I was fourteen.

  Jerril

  The words come tumbling out, fast, intense, but every word as clear, as blade-sharp as if he had saved them in a memory crystal and is now replaying it, but only for himself. Words he has so obviously, or obviously at least to me, never spoken aloud. Some of the words, yes, when he told his family, there in a field under the stars, three moons casting a cold light on them, of the repeated rape that day of il’Kieron al’Marekh el’Halyn dar Andrae—the noble Kieron, son of Marekh, grandson of Halyn, of the House and Family Andrae—Crown Prince and Heir Presumptive, Warlord Unnamed. Of the death of the cripple, the prince born without Power, who was invisible to Power, the despised prince without Gifts. Of the birth of DarkFire, wielder of black flames that consumed the rapists in shrieking agony, and left their dead flesh unmarred. Of the birth of DarkFire, a young battle mage, the youngest since the founding of his House. Of DarkFire, the first Bearer of the Sword of Souls in more than four thousand years.

  The Sword that inflicted a scratch, such a tiny scratch on the back of the right hand of his aunt, the Princess i’Karaela, as she sat on a bench beside a decorative garden fountain. DarkFire, il’Kieron-who-was, found her there. She feigned shock, amazement, dismay at the sight of the tall, slender boy, naked and covered in blood, uncaring of his nakedness, accompanied by a great Serenite warhorse with blood on his hooves, and legs and chest...and muzzle. She struggled and barely succeeded in not blanching when the horse curled its lips and showed the blood on its teeth and gums.

  And so she lied, and lied and lied, as she claimed no knowledge of what her lover had done to her nephew, protested her innocence with all the arts she had used for years to mask her truth. So confident that the cripple she often derided could not possibly detect her lies.

  She had no way of knowing that the cripple died in that instant when his silent screams of terror, his voice long gone, were heard...by the souls of the Sword, who remembered him from the tests at four and eight and twelve...and answered. And in answering, ripped away the barrier between his self and all the Gifts and Power he should have had from birth, let them all come howling down into the empty vessel, filling it to the brim and then overflowing. So, knowing the truth of her lies, he called the Sword to him, enjoying the shock, the first faint frisson of fear on her face as it appeared in his hand. Enjoyed her returning arrogance when all the black blade did was cut her hand. An infinitesimal thing, barely worth noticing. Except...that tiny drop of blood on the tip of the Sword was all that was needed.

  He did not...precisely...enjoy the moment when the four chosen Voices of the Sword called out to her blood, called out to her soul, and when they were answered, the Voices became knives of air and ice that slashed her screaming soul into shreds, and then scattered the remains, forever denying her rebirth.

  He felt no regret as looked down at his aunt’s body, collapsed on the edge of the fountain, one delicate hand in the water, no trace of agony visible on the cool, serene face of the King-Emperor’s sister. She was of the blood; she had betrayed him. She deserved all of that and more. His only regret was that Jhadrek had merely died, and escaped her fate.

  I weep in fury for him, ignore the strength that crushes my hands in his, in the telling. If my fingers break, they can be healed; if they can not be healed...then...as the Goddess commands.

  But those words are only some of the words, the outer words.

  He pauses. A long pause. So long a pause I am nearly certain he has no more to say. And then...DarkFire, my DarkFire, gives me all of the words, opens his bleeding, pain-wracked soul to me, letting out the words dammed and damned for decades. They pour out of him like water over the Great Falls on the jungle world of Galene, plummeting miles to the floor of the vast canyon, where the spume rises hundreds of feet into the air, falls and rises, falls and rises, and then the water roars on and down in white water rapids no boat or raft could ride without a strong mage aboard, but where is the challenge in that? And eventually, the river widens, and slows, becomes almost peaceful, with no memory of the fury so far behind.

  DarkFire’s words rise and fall, rise and fall, and then fade into slow silence.

  But there is no peace in that silence, and the memory of the fury is here and now.

  He has not looked at me in all this time, his unbound hair hiding his face as he stares at our joined hands, soft strands caressing my skin. He squeezes my hand in gentle, unspoken thanks, and when I wince as the blood begins to rush back into my fingers, he realizes how much of his strength he has used. He lifts his hands away.

  “I’ve hurt you.”

  He begins to pull away, in all ways, and though my fingers ache, and I wonder how it is that my ring has not been reduced to tiny bits of white gold embedded in my flesh and bleeding, accompanied by even tinier orange-gold slivers of topaz, I reach out and grab his hands again. “Don’t.”

  The pulling pauses. He looks at me coolly, lifts an eyebrow. “You are commanding your Crown Prince?” He is imperious, my DarkFire, even sitting on a floor.

  “Certainly.” I lift an eyebrow back at him and do it better. “Toss out a title, and I’ll ‘command’ that one, too. I will not allow you to pull away from me.”

  He is very still. We both know that I can not stop him if he really wishes to be free. He can simply tell me...order me, actually, in a tone that admits of no uncertainties...to release his hands. There is no question he is far stronger than me, and so he could gently or roughly yank them free, move away and get up to tower over me. Even more so than when we are both standing. He does not move. And he is smug with all that knowledge.

  “Allow?” He stretches the sounds out and we both hear the almost-there addition of “you arrogant commoner.” “And just how will you stop me?”

  I am city-born and bred, although Lasrill does not compare to Illoraen-the-City—well, to be honest, no city in the Kingdom and Empire does. So I have never been confronted with a nervous or frightened or angry wild animal, a hair’s breadth from biting your hand or bolting, or both. Such as the one whose hands have gone tense in my loose hold. Though not quite as tense as they might have been, given the faint smirk that accompanies his words.

  Bardic tales can be a teaching tool. Tirin’s “Cozur and the Khet” was one, suggesting that slow movements, a soft voice, and gentle words are absolutely necessary to avoid biting, bolting or both.

  “Perhaps like this.” My thumbs gently circle and circle on the backs of his hands. The tiniest bit of tension drains away from his muscles.

  “Or this.” I let his right hand drop to my knee, lift my left hand, carefully following the “slow movement” teaching, open my fingers and run them through his thick hair, pushing it back behind his ear. I want so very much to follow that hand with my face, snuggling in that luxurious mane, breathing the scent of his hair, the scent of his body from our dancing. I don’t.

  “Or this.” At this point I am a perfect student of Tirin’s teachings. The plan calls for my next move to be a careful caress of the back of his head, with equal care to avoid any misperception that I’m attempting a soothing scratching behind the ear of a dire wolf just on the edge of erupting into a snarling anger that will result in my throat being ripped out, followed by other damage to the body that I will no longer be around care about.

  My mistake is looking away from what my left hand is doing and into his eyes. Bleak. Hunted. Haunted. Alone.

  Not alone. Never alone. Not any more. As the Goddess is my witness, he will never be alone again.

  And just that easily, the slow and careful plan drops into the Fifth Hell and vanishes. My left hand clasps the back of his head and pulls, while my own head meets him more than half way. From the way his eyes widen as our lips meet, I can only assume that kissing a dar Andrae before he kisses you first is yet another violation of Royal and Imperial protocol. Given the heat of his response, it is clear he has decided protocol can and should be ro
yally and imperiously fucked.

  He rises so he’s on his knees, which still means his head is higher than mine, without breaking the mutual exploration. The instinctive kind of exploration two men do when they kiss for the first time, knowing it is merely foreplay for sex to follow, even if the kiss/foreplay is only long enough to ensure you are both hard. He moves to holding my head with both hands, taking complete control of the kiss, leaving me to follow along as I can.

  He is good at what he does, given the way we are both panting, but if I were in control—as I will be later—the results will be the same. Perhaps better. Unfortunately, there is no way to test that any more. No way for a blind taste test, where someone else decides which of us kisses better.

  I briefly consider that important question. Do I have a problem with DarkFire kissing another man? No, actually I don’t. The only problem will be how to determine which one of them gets his balls cut off for initiating it, and who gets the second cut for responding. Or I can just slice whichever set of balls is nearest, and then take care of the other set.

  Somehow, I do not believe that will ever be an issue. This man is mine. Whether he has been given to me by the Goddess, or fate, or merely because I happened to have a wandering mind and a wondering hand, I do not care.

  Well...Hells. Fucking, fucking, fucking Hells!

  What I do care about is whether this is real. Whether this, all of this, is us and only us, or whether we are being forced into...whatever this is...by some spell or compulsion or a fucking juggernaut prophecy that flattens every obstacle in the way of completion.

  And I won’t...can’t...do this if none of this is real. I can’t do this if somehow I am doing to him what I did to Irik. If She is doing to us what I did to Irik.

  DarkFire

  I have not kissed a man since that day, but this one is an exception I am willing to make. Except, the bastard is thinking. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but he’s not giving his full attention to this kiss. Damn his delectable hide. Well, what I can see of it is delectable, and I am certain the rest of it is equally so. I break it off, pull back, still holding his head, look at him. He is satisfactorily flushed, slightly gasping, eyes a little glazed. But not nearly enough. I can do better.

  I move to sit beside him on the bed. But before we can get back to kissing....

  “Stop thinking,” I tell him.

  He focuses on me. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  I enjoy a single eyebrow discussion, especially since I’ve never had one with anyone so eloquent.

  Mine: “Really?”

  His: “Are you calling me a liar?”

  Mine: “If the smalls fit....”

  Damn. Smalls. There can be no possible question that I’m not wearing any. I wonder. Is he? Of course I’m going to find out in the very near future, but some preliminary investigation is certainly in order.

  I lean in, but he puts his palm on my chest. “Wait.”

  For what? I’m hard and leaking, though the black will conceal that for a little while longer. He’s hard as well. The only waiting that should be going on is for the length of time it takes us to get rid of our clothes. And then we can try kissing again, perhaps add in some caressing, and then get right to the sucking and the fucking.

  There is something suddenly odd about his voice. Hesitant, less assured.

  “Yes. I was thinking. That you’re mine, and that that kiss was a kind of competition between us that I was letting you win.”

  The only thing I really pay attention to is “mine.” Very well, I pay attention to the word “competition” as I always do, but that is a side issue. I will simply kiss him later, so long and so well he will admit I am indeed the best.

  Mine.

  There was something so very possessive in his voice, despite that oddness. An oddness that still sits there.

  The same kind of possessiveness I hear in my own head when I say the word inside. But not aloud. Claiming possession is...a surrender of a part of you. Telling a man you desire him with that degree of passion gives him leverage, gives him control, not wholly, but enough. I will never allow a man to be in control of me again. Besides, he will understand well enough. My actions are an avalanche to a snowflake in words.

  So I set the avalanche in motion, put my hands on his shoulders, and pull him towards me. The bastard turns his head away and again his words stop me.

  Chill me. Freeze me, actually.

  Not my body, just my...I had so briefly believed...newly-regained soul.

  “No. I can’t do this. I won’t. I won’t be forced.”

  I was right. Kissing is a mistake.

  Jerril

  Does he see the desperation in my face? Hear the regret in my voice? The fear? Apparently not. The coldness descends. The warmth, the fire that had been in his eyes is gone. I tell myself that I did not, in fact, see not merely hurt, but something akin to anguish, before he extinguished the heat. Before I extinguished the heat.

  His hands dropped away from my shoulders the moment I spoke. Though he has not moved, he is as remote from me as a star might be, with no Gate to connect us.

  Getting up and off the bed is an awkward scramble, completely at odds with the elegance of the dancing we had done, my...DarkFire and I. Getting to a spot beside the headboard, a little distance from the wall, is more of a lurch than a walk. But I need that space between us. I very much fear that if he touches me again, I’m going to just give in.

  But I won’t be forced. The promise after Irik still stands.

  Never.

  Again.

  Not by me, not to me. And I cannot allow him to be compelled again as he was at fourteen, except that this time it may well be by something...some One...he will be unable to resist.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, run my left hand through my hair. Open my eyes. He has moved. He is standing now, as well. At the foot of the bed. Away from the foot of the bed. He is staring at me, with the look of a man who has never heard of feelings, much less ever expressed them.

  Hells. He doesn’t see, doesn’t understand, what is happening here. Goddess damn it, how can he not? All that he does see, though every bit of that perception is false, is that I am rejecting him, compelling him to start rebuilding those walls. I have to make him understand, yet all the eloquence for which I am famed is gone.

  “My...DarkFire.” I pause and the reminder of the seven times I said that to him, back there in the real world, though this place seems real enough, earns me a glacial response.

  “Perhaps we should try to figure out how we are going to get out of this Goddess-damned white prison and back to where we belong.” He looks at the bed and drags my eyes there, too. “Since we are so obviously not going to be doing what this room is so obviously designed for doing.”

  “I want that as much as you do.” I pause and acknowledge that the erections are gone, and that there is a warlord-shaped ice statue a few feet to one side of the foot of the bed. “Did.”

  He says nothing. Just stands and stares. He is a High Court judge whose disbelief of everything the defendant has said, everything the defendant is likely to say, is patent.

  What have I done?

  “Goddess damn it!” I shout, letting out most if not all of the fear and the anger that goes with it. I can’t bear to see what I’ve just pushed away...what I had no choice except to push away...and as I shout I spin away from him and smash my fist into the wall.

  It hurts.

  My hand fucking hurts.

  My hands are my life. I could get by with my voice, with composing, but it is my skill with my hands and all the instruments I play that makes me a bard. One of the best in the Kingdom and Empire. Hells, the best. And I’ve just done my damnedest to destroy my life. Twice in a few minutes. Just because I’m afraid.

  I can’t help myself. What comes out of my mouth is not the sophisticated cursing I can do at length, without repeating myself, and in a variety of the Empire’s languages. Instead it is a childish wail, of “Shit, shit,
shit, shit, fucking shit!”

  I away from the wall, cradling my right hand in my left, bent over with the pain, lose my balance and fall onto the bed.

  A sardonic voice remarks, “I hope you don’t require the use of a functioning hand for whatever it is you do to put food in your belly.” The “you worthless commoner” is silent but heard by both of us.

  So he wasn’t told anything about me. That does my ego an Empire’s breadth of good. I force myself to look at him.

  DarkFire

  He is forcing himself to look at me. I fucking gutted myself to him, and he is so disgusted he has to force himself to look at me?

  If we were only where we belong, where the Rage still is, I could let it loose. Goddess damn him, when we get back I will let it loose and destroy him for this humiliation.

  Or I could just punish him here and now. I don’t need to kill him, in case we somehow get moved back...there...while I am in the middle of beating him. Or at the beginning. Or near the end, where he is lying on the ground, a bloody, bleeding, crying mess. I could....

  I step toward him, my fists clenched. My intent...my almost, but not quite certain, intent is, I am sure, visible on my face since I am making no efforts to conceal anything. Not here. Fuck him and the Kilthari grila he rode in on. I will conceal again when I am back where I belong.

  He doesn’t actually move on the bed, but I can feel the flinch.

  Goddess damn me. First I horrify him, and then I terrify him.

  I am indeed a monster.

  I turn away from him. I cannot believe the power I gave him over me.

  Jerril

  I flinched.

  From him.

  How the Hells could I do that to him?

  He’s angry; Hells, he’s fucking furious right now, and there isn’t the remotest resemblance to the always-in-control warrior who never puts emotion on display. And yet I know, I fucking know he won’t hurt me, despite the wounds I’ve just inflicted on him.