The Warlord and the Bard

by Eric Alan Westfall

  I hope he turned away just now because he couldn’t bear to look at me, and not because by looking at me he was increasing the likelihood of losing control and just beating me to death. And despite my certainty he won’t, if he does...I won’t resist.

  I am in too much pain and too angry at my own stupidity just now to do anything other than clamp my lips shut over another moan. I struggle to sit up. Well, there definitely isn’t going to be any sex now. Not that it was likely anyway after my other stupidity.

  # Yes, idiot child. You were very stupid. Are very stupid. #

  I look at His Royal and Imperial Iciness. What the Hells does he think he’s doing, linking with me and calling me an idiot child even if I have been acting like both? I open my mouth to blurt something out at him about invading my mind when I realize...it couldn’t have been him. The link did not match his voice.

  # A slow idiot child as well.”

  # G...Goddess? #

  # Smug. Self-righteous. Forgetful, too. #

  # I... # I stutter and sputter and make myself stop. What do you say to an angry Goddess? Okay, perhaps not truly angry or there might be bolts of lightning sizzling my ass, but...a seriously pissed-off Goddess? Oh Hells, She heard that too.

  # Starting off with an apology might be a good thing. #

  # Of course! I, uh, I apologize. # Except I have no idea what I am apologizing for.

  # For calling Me a liar. #

  # I didn’t! I...I wouldn’t. #

  # But you did. Moments ago. Not with those direct words, but still, what else is a Goddess to conclude, when one minute you’re babbling on about free will, and the next I am compelling you to do something you would never otherwise do?”

  # But I.... # And I stop. She is, of course, right. One minute—back there in the real world, true, but nevertheless—one minute I am smugly talking about my free will and my will to be free, and the next I am basically accusing Her of wiping away all of that. The apology I offer is, this time, a knowing one and a sincere one.

  # You could have met so many different ways, tonight. I thought this one would be the most fun. #

  # Most fun? You made me.... #

  I only have the slightest sliver of time to realize my renewed stupidity before Her Voice—an enraged Goddess Voice, not the conversational tone She has been using—roars “Made?” at me. I have no idea whether it is inside or outside of my head or both since it is accompanied by a howling thunder that makes the noise of the storm over the Delassit Sea seem like the soft sound of the breeze generated by a butterfly’s wings.

  # This is what it would be like if I made you love him. Only you would not know what had been done. #

  She lets part of me remain aware, but unable to do anything, as I experience what I had done to Irik, only with possibly-never-now “my” DarkFire as the focus of the compelled adoration. To make Her point more...pointed, She magnifies the effects of the compulsion fourfold, eight-fold, sixteen-fold. I am drowning in lust, permanently erect and leaking, desperate to do anything and everything he might demand of me, with no ability to recognize whether any of the demands are foul and perverted, no ability to refuse even if I could have understood that they are, moons-high ecstatic over the tiniest touch, depressed four miles down at the bottom of the Grand Chasm on Iniri if I sense, or even imagine, a dollop of disapproval from him. A second, somehow less than a second after it begins, that part of me that watches starts begging unashamedly for it to stop.

  And it does.

  Her Voice softens to the comparative gentleness of all of the Throne World’s thunderstorms for the last four years happening at once. # I have not, will never, make you love him. Get it? #

  # Got it. #

  # Good. #

  Her Voice is now just an “ordinary” Goddess-Voice in link. Friendly. As if I have not been taught a well-deserved lesson. Yet another well-deserved lesson. # So, you are not recanting your apology? #

  # Uh, no. #

  # Good. I don’t think you would be happy if you made Me unhappy with an apology retraction. Now, true, I may have given you a little...nudge. That wasn’t a compulsion, was it? And you have groped men before, haven’t you? A fair number of them, if I recall correctly, and if I recall correctly My recall is perfect. How many men have you groped? Let Me count their names.... #

  # Uh, no, no, uh, that won’t be necessary. Especially not if, uh, he’s listening in. #

  # He isn’t. He hasn’t been. This is between Me, and an idiot bard. #

  # Uh, can it really happen? I mean, not just him and me, well, that, too, but all of it. The prophecy? #

  # I have no idea. There are many ways you could have met, and many ways this could have gone once you met the way you did and arrived here. In one of the Worlds Beside, you never meet him at all. So,My dear idiot bard, if you hadn’t fucked things up, you could have been fucking by now. #

  I hope my mouth dropping open isn’t visible. That it is figurative rather than literal.

  #You expect your Goddess to be all ethereal and profound and remote and completely unaware of everything that is said and done in Her name? I am a virgin Spring, a fecund Summer, a Harvest Mother, and a Winter Warrior who brings death before the rebirth of Spring. Do I want the prophecy fulfilled? I believe it should be. Will I make it happen? Never. Will it happen? That depends on the two of you. Make this right. #

  # Uh. Well, yes. I will. But.... # I gulp and this time I’m certain it is aloud, too. # Uh, well, will You be...uh...observing? #

  She laughs. A soft, joyous laughter that soothes my soul. # No, I will not be spying on you, which is, of course, what you actually meant. However, I do have a most excellent imagination, as women do, and the thought of two men doing.... #

  # Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Women imagine men having sex? And...and enjoy what they imagine? That’s...that’s just plain.... #

  # The next word out of your mouth, in link or not, better not be ‘disgusting.’ #

  # No! Of course not! Never. Just...unexpected. And, uh...unnerving?#

  She laughs at me again. # Now, go. Surpass my imagination. Create a tale of words and deeds of such power that if what happens was reduced to words on parchment, any woman...or even a man...who reads them would blush...or even flush. Make this right, Jerril. #

  I feel Her hand take mine, and Her thumb run gently over the bruises and starting-to-swell knuckles. She stops. I look down at my hand.

  # Make this all, all right. #

  The pain is gone. As She is gone.

  And so is he.

  The room is empty. I almost blurt a thought about Her telling me to make it right and then sending him back without me, but I catch the thought and crush it before it can fully form. I will not be an idiot yet again in a succession of idiocies so great I have already lost count.

  The door to the outside is open, which provides me with a glaring clue about where he might be.

  He is.

  I step through the door and stop. I could not possibly miss him. When the world beyond these walls is composed of variations on a theme of white, grey and silver, a man that tall, with hair that black, with clothes and boots of black and silver, is going to be very visible. As I will be even more visible, with the combination of gold and flame. Not that there is anyone to observe us.

  Another step. Another stop. I realize I do not know how much, if anything, he heard and saw of what just happened to me. Hells. # Uh, Goddess? #

  Her Voice is amused. # No. He saw nothing because he turned his back on you. Nor did he hear anything. He waited just a short time, but when you didn’t speak to him, he left. #

  # But...but we were talking. You and I. #

  # Which he had no way of knowing. #

  Well, Nine Hells. I flinch as if I believe he will hurt me, he gives me an opportunity to say something, anything, and when I reject him again with silence, he leaves. At least he is not heading toward the horizon.

  # Do you have a plan for getting him back? For making this right
? #

  I would prefer to use a white lie and insist that I do, but honesty with a deity is probably not only the best policy but the safest one. I prefer not to piss Her off again. # I haven’t worked one out yet. And I have ample time to do so...all of, what, forty, fifty paces between here and him? I am, however, sure that groveling will be involved. If I don’t do it voluntarily, he’ll just insist on it. #

  I’ll take it slow. More time to think, to plan a grand and glorious grovel if all else fails. And at the moment the “all else” is non-existent. But I can’t walk too slowly, or he’ll think me reluctant. If he even notices; yet somehow I know he will. I can’t walk too quickly, or he’ll think me eager, which will put him even more firmly in control than he is at the moment. So...a speed that is just right.

  Apparently not. At the twelve-step mark I hear, # Oh, for My sake, get on with it. # Followed by a swift Goddess-boot in my ass.

  I am not sure if the intended effect was to make me move faster, or the actual result: I stumble a few steps, fall and my knees and hands hit the not-soft-enough white grass hard enough to surprise a “Well, shit!” out of me. Part of the pain is the rock which is naturally just where my left palm lands. When I sit up on my haunches, and look up, he is looking at me.

  Okay. It is...dear Goddess grant my plea!...inevitable I am going to be on my knees in front of him at some point, most likely in the not too distant future, but I really would have preferred a more elegant way of getting there. Especially since I am far too far away from him for being on my knees to be truly useful.

  Although perhaps that is not totally true. I think I saw a glimmer of interest just now, before he shut it down behind the now-impassive warrior’s face he is showing me.

  Would it be extremely lewd and lascivious of me to look at his crotch and that magnificent bulge down his left thigh? To make sure he sees where I am looking and lick my lips? To reach inside my shirt, perhaps just to scratch a sudden itch, or perhaps use my thumb and forefinger to tweak my nipple?

  It would, indeed.

  I do it.

  It would be a lie to say my getting up goes smoothly. I wonder briefly if that Goddess-boot bruised my ass, and how I’m going to explain it if it did. Assuming, of course, my well-thought-out non-plan succeeds in getting us both naked and in a position where he can see my ass. His expression is not exactly conducive to being naked and viewing asses.

  I grab a few extra seconds by brushing myself off, though there are no leaves, and there is no discernible dirt. Left shoulder, upper arm; repeat for the right. Palms swiped twice. Forward lean, palms down my thighs to my knees, brush and repeat. Straighten up. It is, of course, sheer accident, a totally unintentional movement that brings my right hand, my infamous right hand, across as I straighten, to flick the invisible dust, dirt and leaves that could never have gotten there in the first place, off my groin. The inevitable happens. Or at least just a little. Though there is nothing little at all about what is there.

  I finally look at him.

  Well, Hells. All that for nothing. He has his back to me. From his stance he is the Warlord again. No longer drunk. In full control. He has banished the Crown Prince and Heir Presumptive to wherever they go when he does not need them. My...DarkFire is gone as well. I suspect if we weren’t here, the Sword of Souls would be in what the tales say is a plain black scabbard, hanging down his back, the hilt precisely placed so that all he has to do is reach up with his right hand, grasp it, and slide the light-and-soul-drinking blade up and out.

  That is what he is probably contemplating at the moment...getting us back to Illoraen-the-City, back to where magic works and he has his Rage back, and then using the Sword to destroy me.

  I wonder if he will find out that his parents hired the Royal and Imperial Fuck-Up before or after the execution.

  I look down and away from that arrogant, furious back, and start to turn away. Except... She said I was to make it right. Surely She would know if that was a literally impossible task, and since She hadn’t just whisked us back when I fucked things up, then there is still a chance.

  Not that he needs that particular blade to destroy my soul. I’m doing a fairly good job of doing that all on my own.

  When in doubt, apologize. When there is no doubt, apologize.

  “I’m sorry.”

  That at least gets him to turn around. He faces me as if we are duelists, though I am uncertain if we are the prescribed number of paces apart. “For what?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you sorry? You undoubtedly have things to apologize for—to many people—that are as numerous as the stars in the Heart, but what particular piece of offensiveness, here and now, are you trying to get out of with two words I don’t believe for a second?”

  She not only never promised me a rose garden, She never promised me this was going to be easy.

  I pause to think of how to say it, when I should have had the words in mind before the start of the apology. The pause just annoys him even more, and his voice is filled with disgust.

  “You don’t even know what requires an apology, do you?” He uses that don’t-say-a-fucking-word hand slash at me again, before I can even get my lips to move. “Don’t bother. The Hells with this. We’re stuck here, with each other, for some reason, so we’re going back inside that...room, house, whatever the Hells it is, and try to figure out how to get back where we, or at least I, belong.”

  His grin is savage. “You may have belonged there, as they say in the tales for children, ‘once upon a long-ago time,’ but when we get back, you’ll find your long-ago time ends with that return. I’m going to take great pleasure in kicking your ass along every Land-Road or Sea-Road between Gates, and every fucking Gate until you’re outside our borders. Or if not personally, I’ll ensure it’s done.

  “Last stop: Ginareth. A poor world with only two Gates. One to the Empire, and they want nothing to do with us, and as Ginareth has nothing we want, we’re happy to have it so. They have no idea where the second Gate leads, and don’t care to know. I’m not sure how someone like you will survive on a world like that, knowing you have no way out. Knowing that everyone even remotely connected with guarding or operating the Empire’s Gate will know who you are and know you are exiled. Forever. But then, that will never be my problem. Now move your Goddess-damned ass out of my way.”

  He starts toward me, his stride far longer than mine. If he stays in a straight line, he will walk into me, that massive chest leading the way just enough to knock me back on my ass as he walks through me.

  This is a pure dominance thing. I give in, like the humble commoner I am, move aside, turn. He leads, I follow. An “I am the fucking Warlord of the whole fucking Kingdom and Empire” thing, when there is open space to a far horizon on either side of me, but even the small detour to pass me by without touching would be a loss of face. Warlords do not lose face. Neither do Crown Princes, or any of the other personas that go with his titles.

  Fuck that.

  “No.”

  He actually stops. A single long Warlord-stride away, perhaps a stride and a half. He looks surprised. I would wager, oh, the cost of my return home, already safely in an account at the First Imperial Bank, that once he outgrew having to listen adults generally, and was then required to listen only to those few who outranked him within the Empire, or the military—a miniscule number at best—no one has dared to deny him anything.

  At least not with an outright refusal.

  He moves closer so that while not chest-to-chest...not yet in the way I want, and the way I think he actually wants as well...he is in a position to loom over me. He looms well. He’s had a longer-than-mine lifetime to perfect the skill. But that only works on someone loomable.

  I’m not.

  “No to what?” So very Warlord. A warrior’s obey-or-suffer voice. But a Warlord’s power is inherently based on an ability to inflict pain. Except...he has no weapons. No Rage to call upon, even though he fears losing control over it. There
is no discernible Power anywhere to fuel a spell. Short of using those massive arms and fists to pound me into the ground—which he knows, and I know, he won’t—there is nothing he can do to me, here and now. He knows that, as well. He hates it.

  I like it. Take advantage of it. “No, to pretty much everything you said. Yes, we need to talk about how to get back, but that’s an eventual conversation, not a now conversation. Regardless of what has happened here, or might still happen, you won’t be kicking my ass anywhere, or having it done. Now if you want to talk about other things relating to my ass...and yours...that’s another eventual conversation. Or perhaps that’s not a conversation at all, just the ‘show’ part of ‘show and tell.’ Right now, though, I’m going to apologize, and tell you what happened and why, and you’re going to listen.”

  “No.”

  His “no” is different from mine. It isn’t really child-like. He hasn’t done that petulant foot-stamp and folded arms that go with “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, and you can’t make me.”

  But he might as well have. And again, he knows it. And again, hates it.

  Laughter is not always the best medicine, nor even a good medicine at times. I manage not to laugh. And somehow I know he knows I am holding back laughter.

  Though I am not laughing, I am smiling as I spread my arms to gesture at everything that surrounds us...and does not.

  “Nowhere to hide, you’re not going to put your fingers in your ears and go ‘la-la-la, and there’s nowhere to go, either. If you head for the horizon, I’ll just follow, start talking and keep on talking until I’ve said what I need to say. And then, knowing myself as well as I do, I suspect I’ll keep right on talking.”

  That tiny twitch to the left corner of his mouth is an incipient smile. I know it is.

  I’ll find a way to make it an actual smile.

  He firms his lips, cedes the point to me, walks around me, making sure we do not touch.

  It is, of course, nothing more than an accident that as I follow him closely back to the bedroom, free-standing though it is, as we start across the rectangular tiled area outside the door, just the perfect size for a comfortable couch on which one...or two...might sit and watch a sunset, I slip and fall. Slip on the admittedly extremely smooth, extremely not slick tiles.