That part of the dream he could face. But what followed was harder.
He was almost grateful for the knock at the door.
“Come,” he said, knowing that Ellerson would bring light with him; knowing that he would stop at the threshold a moment before stepping across and closing the door behind him. Knowing that he would come alone.
“Avandar.”
“I…often have trouble sleeping.”
“I rarely do.”
“That does not surprise me.” He lifted a hand to touch the peak of the window frame. “It was perhaps…to attain such easy sleep that I came to you.” He turned; the light that Ellerson carried was a muted, simple lamp.
“My turn to stand behind the light, and you in it, is that it?” the domicis asked quietly.
“Even so.”
“Tell me.”
“There is not much to tell.”
“You killed that child.”
He turned away again. “I have seen enough of the dying, old man. That child was already dead. I spared him a few minutes of isolation, fear, pain. You would have done the same had he been a dog.”
“Yes. Had he been a dog.” The night was harsh. “You killed the five men.”
“They would have killed me.”
“True enough. But your battle killed some thirty people, at best count.”
“So few?” The windows were airless. “I have killed thousands, in my time.”
“In your time,” Ellerson replied. “Not on mine.” He set the lamp down. “Tell me why you’ve come, Avandar Gallais, and I will do what I can to help you. Refuse, and I will likewise refuse. This was a game, to me, and I repent of it; it is now clear that I have accepted a task whose failure will be too costly. I can step back, or I can go forward.
“I am prepared to wash my hands and step back.”
Avandar Gallais stepped into the darkness and stared a long time at the older—at the younger—man’s face. “You are not what I expected, Ellerson of the domicis. I will tell you what I may tell you. If it is enough, it is enough.”
Ellerson stood quietly, seeking to take no comfort by seating himself. He was, in his way, like the mountains that Avandar Gallais called home.
* * *
He spoke first of his dream. He had thought to be interrupted, but Ellerson did not offer him that comfort, except to say, almost dryly, “you accepted, of course.”
“I was a younger man,” Avandar replied, as if that were answer enough. In a way, it was. “Younger,” he said, “and less sure of my power.” His hands, shadowed, were still visible in the night of small room and single window. “I am sure, now, of nothing but power.”
“You aren’t a god.”
“No. But if I killed no other men in my life, I would live as long as one. As far as I’ve been able to determine, the length of life is year for year: One potential year of their life for one actual year of my own.
“I said I did not wish to feed upon my own, but I have, and if I do not hunger for their lives, I hunger for the thing that takes it most: war. Dominion.” His hands dropped. “I had an Empire, of a sort, when I chose to accept the god’s offer.
“And an Empress, a woman of beauty and power in her own right, a partner of consequence.” This, then, was the second part of the dream, the part that defined his existence, that made him understand the mercy of gods. “She was fair, Ellerson, as your Northern snows; the sun could not bite her. Her hair was dark, the blue-black of night, and her eyes were dark as well; nothing cold at all about them. She was as tall as I, harder and more determined, and she had turned her talent and her energy to the study of magery so that she might be my equal.” He laughed bitterly. “My equal. I indulged her shamelessly. She was the jewel in the crown; the crown itself.” He looked into the dim light, the old man’s stiff face. “I tell you this because I am a fool, and I am too new from loss. I will kill you if I hear it spoken of, because it will have to have come from you.”
“If I choose to accept you, Avandar, what you say will be as close to sacred as words can be.”
Truth, there. “And if not?”
“If not, I will take your words as a confidence between a lord and the man who has chosen, for this single night, to serve him as only one of the domicis can.”
That surprised him. He was silent a long while, unsure of whether or not the silence was due to his wife or this strange man. “She was the first kill,” he said at last.
Ellerson said nothing.
“She knew what I had done. I do not know how, but I assume the god’s servants told her. Did I tell you that she was like the fires themselves? Hot, scorching, blistering—sudden in her anger and her fury, sudden in her love. She felt betrayed; she felt abandoned to mortality by me, by the only man she had chosen to love.
“She came to me in fury, and she—who had honed her talent at my side and knew better than any what my weaknesses were, attempted to destroy me. I tried to speak to her. To speak with her—she was beyond reason. A day, two days, and we might have spoken and had peace of one sort or another, but there was no peace offered.
“I did not intend to kill her.”
“But you did.”
“Worse, Ellerson. When she died, I felt it. The life that left her, the magery that had been her pride—and mine—came to me as if they were swords and I was the only sheath they had ever known. I had doubled my life span, and my power, in a single blow.
“But she was not just any woman. She was of an old, old line, and had in her the blood of the firstborn. It was not above her to place a curse upon the gift that had been given me. You have chosen victory over love, she said, and this is what it will buy you; eternity. You will come to curse it, for you will hold nothing that you value until the day you choose another man’s cause over your own. As you have conquered, so must you serve.”
He did not kneel; did not sit. But the stiffness left him. The nightmare of death, her slack blistered face, the shock and the anger melting into hurt and denial. Nights that he could not leave the dream quickly enough he still woke screaming at the feel of her life bleeding into his. He had tried so hard to stop it.
But his pride was part of his power; he could not scream in front of this old man. He spoke instead, quickly to cover the pain, to pass over it, “She was the first of six wives who attempted to take my life. It…makes a man cynical about love and the fair sex.”
“Did you kill them all?”
“No. Not after her. But I didn’t love them either; not that way. In the case of my wives—or my children—I let executioners deal with their deaths. I could not quite bring myself to claim them.”
“Your children?”
“Sons, mostly. They tired of a father’s Imperial grip, and as my life would extend infinitely beyond theirs, they saw no better way to free themselves. I will admit that I had some sympathy for them; they were young men much like I had once been.
“I built Empires, and after a while, I left them. To my sons, to their sons. Once in a while to my daughters. But it pales, as time passes. We live—we who are mortal—in a world of ‘ifs.’ Imagine, Ellerson, that you have finally lived the perfect life.
“I chose to absent myself from war for a time—albeit a short time—and to find a woman who might be wife not to the Warlord, but to a soldier, a common man who had cunning and strength to recommend him. It was not a guise that suited me well, but I wore it. And I found such a woman, and I lived with her. I joined the army of the man who ruled the city in which we lived; it was long ago.
“War came.” He fell silent for a long moment. “She was lost to the war; my son was lost to it. I remained. I conquered. I made my enemies pay, and with every life I took, the time of my return to her—to any of the people I loved—grew more distant.
“Was I a good man? What does the word mean? I have never understood it, and I understand it less and less with time. In my youth I did things that I could not speak to you of; I am not proud of them now, but I do not judge th
em, and those injured are so long dead it is hard to believe that any other judge exists. But I am not what I was.
“It is tiring, to watch every person you love wither and die. Whether they die attempting to take your life, or die because you have chosen to join battle—and I have chosen many battles, and I have held many of my children as they lay insensate with pain, unaware of me, of my presence—they die and I remain. I am tired, Ellerson. I have come this way to fulfill her curse and have peace.
“I tried. I tried it on my own. I lived what I thought was a life of service. Three lives. It was not, apparently, enough. And it came to me that I did not understand service; that I could not understand the conditions of her curse enough to be free of it. I had heard of this…unusual guild long before you were born, and I had thought to recover from my last life and come to you here for instruction.”
“You’ve come here to learn enough to die?”
Avandar smiled softly. “Not the way I would have worded it, had you offered me the choice, but yes, I believe that is what I said.”
“You realize,” Ellerson said quietly, “that the magi would kill for the opportunity to speak with you. That the historians would stand in line, beg and plead for years on end, for a chance to listen to what you might say.”
“I would speak to them in tongues that have long since died,” Avandar replied, “if I spoke at all. There is some history that is better left buried; I would bury my own if I could. Will you aid me?”
Ellerson was quiet. “I cannot answer you tonight, except to say this: I may not be able to give you the peace you desire, but if it is in my power, I will point you in the right direction.”
* * *
Pride.
Pride was the root of all great falls, in both story and religious text. In that ground where old religions faltered and fell into the realms only children now knew, it was a sin so often warned against that the children themselves had lost the sense of its grandeur and its greatness; in their language it was a crime much like theft.
But Ellerson was no longer contained by childhood. He stood in the darkened classroom, framed by door, the lamp’s oil burning dangerously low. After a moment, he walked through the door to the room that was his preserve, his territory, his hallowed ground. He paused in front of a desk that still held the scorched and blackened marks of two palms.
Closing his eyes a moment, he listened to the tenor of Avandar Gallais’ voice. How could a man such as he learn the value of service when in truth he had never done anything but rule? Even in this, his desire was his own, a thing apart from a master or mistress.
And what had Akalia seen in the Three Dreams, that had driven her to accept what was plainly otherwise unacceptable?
I am too old for this, he thought, and set the lamp in the cradle of burned wood.
He knew what he would do, of course, because he could still hear the man’s voice breaking and breaking again, like water against the seawall, the new corpse of a child held against chin and chest.
* * *
“Service in the guild is not the service offered by a servant, or a guard, or even a Southern oathguard. The Chosen of Terafin, who lay down their lives, and make of their lives their duty, are not—could not be—domicis. Do you understand this?”
“No.”
The one good thing about Avandar: He was honest to a fault. Ellerson could understand how a man of his nature had somehow stood still for long enough to learn the art of magery. His focus was astonishing.
“To be willing to die for a cause is not what the heart of service is about. Young men scattered across the globe throw their lives away—uselessly and usefully—on a daily basis. They neither know, nor understand, the heart of service; they offer themselves, and they are accepted.” Here, the sun cast a shadow. It had taken Ellerson the better part of two weeks before he was willing to appear in public with Avandar Gallais again.
But the days were long and lovely and he found this student so oppressive he almost had to get up and walk around to escape the sensation of being caged with a hungry beast. Avandar himself did not seem to mind the interruption, although he did not appear to understand it.
“First,” Ellerson said, as they walked by the seawall, a place where few people ventured, “there is the matter of inclination. I am not a man interested in serving power.”
“And yet you are with me.”
“I will teach you, but teaching has different constraints. I would never serve a man of your nature.”
“Why?”
“You are a man of power, Avandar, and service to power is its own responsibility. I am not willing to become what I would have to become to be useful to you.”
“And what have you served, then?”
“This is not about me, and the question is therefore impertinent—but I will answer it. I have served merchants in my time, in particular three who sought to achieve some status within the patriciate. They were not well-bred, but they were cunning and they were decent enough.”
“And you taught them manners, one presumes?”
“That and more, although they did not hire me to teach them.” He shrugged. “I cannot speak of them further; it is part of the code. But I have been hired on contract, I have fulfilled my contract and I have returned to the guild.”
“I do not understand.”
“No, I suppose you don’t. There are two ways to offer service. The first is for a term: a year is usually the shortest, and five the longest. The second is for the life of the master—or mistress—who requests a domicis. These are always people of power.” He looked down at the sea, which was oddly still beneath their feet.
“Why do you make the distinction?”
“A domicis must protect his master and mistress, and that protection takes many forms. He must be aware of their needs, sensitive to them, and able to respond by either presence or absence, without the need for formal spoken word. He must understand what they desire when they themselves do not understand it, and this is one of the most difficult things a domicis learns to do.
“It is part of our art, to understand people.” He turned to look at Avandar Gallais. “You were called Warlord; you understand people in a fashion, but I would say given your long years of experience, that you actually understand less than the students who remain with the guild after the first three years of their lessons.”
It did not surprise him when Avandar Gallais bristled. He wondered, almost idly, if the man would melt the stone beneath his hands.
The stone did not melt. After an uneasy moment, Avandar Gallais spoke again. “Pretend for the moment that I am such a student. That I have been judged ready and worthy. To whom would you…display me?”
He will never be ready for this. “A person of power, Avandar. A man or a woman who has need of the talent you display—a man or woman who can take the flow of your power and bend it to their life without being so bent by it they lose that life.”
“In other words,” the mage said, showing a humor that always surprised Ellerson, “no one.”
* * *
The days grew longer; grew shorter; grew longer again. There were no more mages, no more attacks; the streets had become so safe that Ellerson—had he been a different man—might have forgotten what he had witnessed in the Common.
But two things happened to change that.
The first was a visit from an old student. An old student who had, as many did, sought service to a woman of power, and who had been found acceptable by the Terafin herself—the most powerful woman in the realm, after the Kings. He was curious; he was always curious when his students returned to him seeking advice or favor. Morretz was not a man who did either.
“Morretz,” he said, as he took a seat. “Akalia says you have an unusual request?” He was suspicious of any unusual request Akalia placed before him, but he was not suspicious of Morretz.
“Very.”
“You know I’ve retired from all of this nonsense.”
“Of cour
se.”
“Which is why you had Akalia call me in, no time for more than a quick change of clothing and a hasty gathering of personal items?”
“Not precisely.”
“Then tell me. Precisely.”
“The Terafin wishes to hire you, for a contracted period, not for life. You will have a wing of the House proper, and it will be your domain; you may choose your own servants, if those provided do not meet your approval, and you will, of course, be given a generous budget out of which to operate. You will be offered the sum of not less than two thousand crowns for a period which may be as short as two days and as long as two years.”
“Two thousand crowns? That is rather a lot. Am I to serve some nefarious criminal?”
“Ellerson, The Terafin might not be aware of your particular choices in masters, but I am—I assure you that we would not house a nefarious criminal under your care.”
“The patriciate is composed of them.”
“However,” Morretz continued, knowing him well, “we would certainly not shy away from asking you to serve a petty criminal.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A girl. Possibly of age, but most likely fourteen or fifteen by her size and look.” Pause. “She came off the street of the older holdings. With her den.”
* * *
“Akalia, tell me.”
Akalia looked old. She lifted her head and met his eyes with a fraction of her usual vigor. “That girl,” she said softly, “needs you.”
“More of your dreaming nonsense.”
“No, Ellerson; part of the original. I am tired of this, in a way even you would find difficult to understand.” She rose. “But Avandar Gallais was sent to us for a reason.” She frowned. “Morretz saw him. He was not particularly pleased to renew the acquaintance.”
“He didn’t mention—”
“Don’t ask him. And don’t ask me.”
“I cannot possibly accept the care of this girl—although I admit my curiosity and my inclination are both piqued—while having the care of Avandar Gallais.”
“No.”
“And you would let me take service to the girl?”
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