by Joey W. Hill
“I threatened to make Lord Uthe dance with me at the ball,” Keldwyn was saying. “Though I decided I should show him some of our Beltane dances. The waltzes that night were far too gentle for a soldier like him.”
Finished dressing his hair, Catriona slid her arms over Keldwyn’s shoulders, her chin propped beside his jaw. “Be careful of his challenges, Lord Uthe,” she said. “He has danced against other males on Beltane night in a grand competition. Long after they fall, overwhelmed, he dances on, even inside the fire itself, the flames twirling around his body.”
“Have you seen this?” Uthe asked.
“No,” she said gravely. “But I’m sure it’s true, because he’d never exaggerate like a common boastful male. He’s far above such ordinary behavior.”
“I’m sure,” Uthe responded, just as seriously. A dimple wreathed the corner of her bow-shaped mouth.
Keldwyn reached back and rumpled her dark hair. “Insolent creature. Go play in the stream with Della some more. I want to watch you enjoy yourself.”
“You just want to finish the cakes.” She snagged two, offering one to the unicorn and letting Della feed the dragon before they set forth down the hill again. The pink, purple and silver insects landed on their shoulders, heads and arms, coming back even when the girls’ movements dislodged them. Looking up, Uthe saw more of them clinging to the tree providing them shade. Closer examination showed they weren’t insects but Fae, with tiny bodies, antennae and wide, oblong eyes that studied him with as much interest as he was studying them. One drew what looked like a pair of tiny swords and brandished them. Obligingly, he showed his fangs. The whole flock dispersed with a whisper of sound like hissing.
“Did I just earn respect or a curse?” he asked.
“You’ll find out in short order, I’m sure.”
Uthe smiled, but studied the landscape around him, his gaze lifting to the stone castle behind the grove of trees. Though it was distant, he could tell some form of verdant green ivy climbed up the formidable walls. “It has been a long time since I have felt small in my world, my lord. And I suspect this is just a snapshot of everything that is here.”
“Every world has its wonders. That is King Tabor’s castle, Caislean Talamh, the Castle of Earth. Perhaps you will have the opportunity to meet him, once your quest is complete.”
He hadn’t thought about completing it. Uthe didn’t see himself coming out of the other side of it alive…or aware. “I wish you did not feel compelled to do this with me, my lord.” He set his jaw. “I wish I didn’t need a companion for it whose value to his own world and my own is so great.”
“Well, you do, so no sense wasting thought on that. I expect we’ll both have plenty of room for regret before our journey is over. No reason to overload it on the front end. Tell me more about being a Templar. I was involved more in my own world during that time.”
Uthe stretched out on his back to watch the insect Fae drift and buzz through the branches. He lifted his hand as if he could touch them. Caught by the motion, some descended, their weight like butterflies on his skin, the curve of a knuckle. Beautiful as they were, his vision swam before him and their presence was replaced by a stone wall, the one in his quarters in al-Asqa. He saw his fingers tracing the cross he’d carved there, like many of his brethren had. It had been a sign of devotion, proof that he was there to serve.
“In the beginning, it was very simple, like all good ideas are. Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Lands were being preyed upon by Seljuk raiders. The First Crusade had captured Jerusalem for the Christians, but then many of the Crusaders returned home. Because their salvation had been firmly secured by the Pope’s decree, there was no need to stay in that hot, unfriendly part of the world. Which was just as well, since many of them were little better than thugs. When they took Jerusalem, the streets ran with blood. Men, women, children, Muslim, Jew, Christian.”
“You were there for that?”
“No, thank God. Hugh told me of it. Under the Muslim rule that was there before the First Crusade, all three faiths had been allowed to visit and worship at the holy sites, though non-Muslims had to pay a fee. In the void that followed, Turkish raiders entrenched themselves on the popular routes to attack the Christians who then came to the Holy Lands in droves, thinking themselves safe because Jerusalem was now in Christian hands. Which is where the Templars came in. Hugh and his men were protecting the pilgrims. I was allowed to join their ranks after spending time with them and fighting their cause. I was no knight, but eventually Hugh knighted me. At that time, a knight could still bestow knighthood on another. I was content merely to fight with them, but he said knighting me would allow the Order to more fully utilize my leadership and fighting skills going forward. Though one of the Order’s core tenets was ‘deference to ability, not nobility,’ he foresaw that might not always be the case.”
“He was correct.”
“Yes. As our numbers grew modestly, our skills came into demand. We knew how to fight against the raiders, protect trains of pilgrims and strategize to maximize our resources, all things that were useful to the men who brought armies to fight the Second Crusade. We were placed in charge to guide and protect them during marches, as they moved supply lines and men from place to place. We were drawn into their wars, becoming Crusaders instead of Templars.” Uthe turned his hand to study a pink Fae who was rubbing her front arms together like a cricket, producing a thin flutelike music. Three others joined her, a small quartet.
“Yet though they were never intended to be that grand, they did in fact become that grand,” Keldwyn noted. “Remembered to this day.”
“Romanticized to this day,” Uthe responded dryly. “In truth, we lost more battles than we won, though it was not for lack of courage or zeal. When we learned how to protect the pilgrims’ financial resources through a credit system, we also became bankers, bankers who loaned money to kings. There are times I think Hugh’s dream was co-opted from the very beginning, by a Pope who turned us into archaeologists to find a fortune in gold. The support we bought with that gold was the first step to turn the Templars into something they were never intended to be.”
“An intriguing history lesson, my lord.” Keldwyn had rolled onto his back, too, one knee bent, the other long leg stretched out. He lifted his hand, and the Fae on Uthe’s arm took off like a flock, landing on Keldwyn’s fingers and forearm. “Yet not entirely what I seek to know. You left Rail, came to Jerusalem and became a Templar, all for one painful reason. A reason that doesn’t fit a lovely meadow, a unicorn and a picnic of mead and cakes.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Uthe waited a few more heartbeats, thinking it through. Kel didn’t say anything further, and Uthe suspected he wouldn’t push, but Uthe was getting closer to the point he would tell him what he’d told no one. He didn’t have to give him any explanation at all, but this inexplicable compulsion to leave his story in the mind of another was nudging him in that direction.
Base nature couldn’t be dispelled by prayer. Sometimes he’d wondered if the Templars had been an experiment to test that. Was it possible to combine higher spiritual aspirations with the human propensity for violence and come out with an outcome that served God? Warrior-monks. Killing in the name of God, but not like the First Crusaders. Those had been men in too much debt, those without enterprise, or felons escaping human justice under the Pope’s auspices. Templars killed in the name of God, but supposedly without the avarice for blood, no pleasure taken in the deaths.
To God goes the glory. Back then, he’d needed that peace so desperately. Yet his life, before during and since had always been a river of blood. First with the Templars, then the various brutal struggles between vampire factions that had ultimately led to the establishment of the Council. He’d fought over a hundred battles for reasons that blurred in his mind and overlapped.
“When you cannot believe in a larger purpose, sometimes the best you can do is believe in its reflection. Hugh’s piety fed my soul. There was something in
describable about his beliefs. They gave me a balance, a peace. I am vampire. I cannot be servile. I might die by the sword, but even violence can have a code, as the existence of the Vampire Council proves. He gave my savagery a nobility. In time, the service of it, the release of will to another that still allowed me to use my strength, my power, my bloodlust…it was freeing.”
“I do not wish to disturb unpleasant memories, Uthe,” Keldwyn said. Uthe heard nothing but sincere truth in the male’s words. “But it is important for me to know the reasons for your path, to help you, as we go forward. Particularly if you get to a point you can no longer offer me information as freely.”
He was right, it was logical. Yet it wasn’t only logic. “I have already reached a point I must trust you far more than I expected to do, my lord. At times it is unpleasant and uncomfortable, for I still do not know you well enough. An error could be easily made. Yet at no other point in my life has it been so important that I not err in the slightest.”
“Which is why having someone you can trust completely is essential. And instead, you have me.” Keldwyn’s expression was blank, revealing nothing. “Either I have been sent as an answer to your prayers, or a way to foil them. You overlook a third possibility, however.”
“What is that?”
“I could be neither agent of light nor darkness. I could just have nothing better to do with my time right now.”
Uthe huffed a half chuckle, earning a curve of Keldwyn’s distracting lips. “Not true, my lord. We have several debates pending on important Council policy changes. Endless hours in chambers, arguing minutiae with Helga and Carola. Thwarting Belizar and Stewart’s every attempt to scuttle anything that hints of change.”
“You make it sound so appealing. A missed opportunity. I’m sure the household staff would have served tasty snacks.” Keldwyn sobered. “You know I speak the truth. If I am to be your proper ally in this, I need all the information I can.”
“Perhaps it would be simpler if I thought that was the only reason you ask these things.”
Keldwyn’s expression was getting easier for him to read. There were small changes to the muscles around his eyes and along his jaw that intensified his expression, the potency of his gaze. What was also getting disturbingly predictable was Uthe’s response to that particular reaction. His pulse accelerated and his fangs lengthened, as if to a threat or blood-based pleasure. Which made him want to move, fight or fuck. Touch, taste or bite.
“Give me another question for now, my lord,” he said, more brusquely than intended, but it didn’t seem to dissuade Keldwyn.
Keldwyn didn’t speak immediately, his eyes fastened on Uthe’s face, but then he relented. “The battle of Hattin. Why did the Templars blindly follow Gerard into such a fruitless battle? He was a vain man clearly not serving the will of God. Did you so need to emulate your relationship with God on an earthly plane that you abandoned your judgment, the judgment that Lyssa prizes so highly and with good reason?"
"No," Uthe said. "And yes. We were trained to trust the Grand Master unconditionally with our welfare, believing he would never act against God’s will in favor of pride or ego."
"If you truly believed that, you were all suffering a fatal case of naivety."
"Soldiers have little choice but to follow orders. In time, we set that aside as a given. The ones in charge, even the ultimate purpose, become unimportant, because those are things we cannot control. We fought, because that was what we were charged to do. Our focus became loyalty to the code of battle and protecting the man at either side. That seems to be the way all wars go.”
Uthe sat up, linking his hands around his knee. “For those of us who stayed in the Holy Lands for any length of time, it was clear the best way to praise Jerusalem and all the gifts there was for it belong to all three peoples to whom it was important: Jews, Muslims and Christians, not just one of them. It was those Crusaders who stayed and raised families who learned to co-exist with the Muslims and Jews in ways that ironically would have brought peace—if not for leaders who felt differently, who thought the only way to honor their understanding of faith was to let one religion try to crush another through bloodshed. Who kept bringing their armies out of Europe, Mongolia, Egypt, Turkey and God knows where else.”
“You made your peace with it, yet there are still shadows in your eyes. There are demons you have not laid to rest.”
“As I now know well, a demon cannot be laid to rest, my lord. It’s not the nature of a demon. It can only be sent back to its cell to rage and plot its next escape.” Uthe shook his head. “The wisdom I have gained helped me provide useful advice to the Council and know the best ways to make that advice heard, at least some of the time. You serve the same role yourself. After so many years, everything you know and understands crowds in on you. You know things without actively knowing, because only in a peaceful, still acceptance does it make any sense. You find the answers in the utter quiet, a lack of action. You're a vessel, but instead of moving in the ocean, it moves through you and you stay, if not still, without destination.”
“A very peaceful outlook for a vampire.”
Uthe touched the braid running from Keldwyn’s temple, feeling the rough texture of the meadow grass amid the silk strands. "Whereas you question faith like the serpent in the desert."
Keldwyn’s eyes morphed into a snake’s, a slit pupil and vivid gold irises, the effect so real Uthe jerked back. The Fae blinked and the illusion disappeared. Keldwyn closed a hand on his wrist. “My apologies, Lord Uthe. It’s a form of glamor that comes easily to me. I was teasing you, in perhaps a grim way, but teasing nonetheless.”
Uthe nodded, but when he tried to ease himself out of Keldwyn’s grip, the Fae turned Uthe’s hand over to examine his palm. “How is it you have calluses?”
“The dagger, again. Because I practice with my sword regularly, then and now, the calluses remain.” Uthe tugged on his hand, managing to free it this time. “Forgive me, my lord, but it is time for me to take some blood. You said there would be a source for my use?”
“Of course.” Kel seemed to focus on something internally. A communication, for Della emerged from the wood, skipping along with the dragon floating above her.
“Della is of a sufficient size and age to give you nourishment. And yes, she is high functioning enough to make that decision. She donates her blood to the humans’ Red Cross. When Catriona asked if she would give you a similar amount of blood, she was more than willing. She has a generous heart.”
As she drew closer, Keldwyn waved a hand, drawing her attention the way he’d done to put Rand to sleep. When her eyes followed the graceful ripple of his fingertips, he spoke a word and the child came to a swaying stop, blinking dreamily. The dragon made a questioning noise, landing on a tree near her. “In this state, she will feel no pain,” Keldwyn explained.
“I don’t understand my lord.” Though Keldwyn had made his intentions clear, the constriction in Uthe’s gut refused to process it until Kel said it straight out.
“She will provide your meal, Lord Uthe.”
Chapter Eleven
“She is a child,” Uthe said woodenly.
“She is a teenager, and old enough to give you a cup of blood without it causing a problem.”
Bring him to me, boy. Hold him down. Hate them grabbing onto me, their whiny little pleas. Shut him up. Now!
Uthe stood up and walked away. He faced a magnificent tree covered with purple blooms. While the trees in his world were alive, they didn’t reach down with branches like questing fingers and brush them over his shoulders as this one did. Risking it taking offense, he moved closer and pressed his forehead against the rough bark. Sensation. In the end, it was best to focus on sensation alone. Thought was where true pain lay.
Keldwyn was behind him. “If you had specific menu requirements, it would have been good to know them ahead of time.”
“She is a child. I cannot drink from a child.”
“I told you, it will no
t—”
“You’ve been among us long enough to know this." Uthe turned on the Fae. “While sex is not required when taking blood, I cannot set my lips to her throat without getting sexually aroused. I can block that so she would be unaware of it, even if she were not enchanted, but it still feels unclean to me. Wrong.”
“My lord.” Keldwyn drew Uthe’s attention to the empty mead goblet he held in one hand. Kel tapped the short dagger at his own belt with the other. “I am aware of that, which was why my intent was to do it this way, by drawing the blood and having you drink from the cup.”
It made logical sense. It was all logical, but the things that had been loosed in Uthe were incapable of being called back to rationality.
“I will not touch a child’s blood. You may make what you wish of that, play your mind games, but that is as it is, Lord Keldwyn. If you have nothing available, then I should be fine for the next couple days, or we can summon a second mark from the…”
Keldwyn reached toward him. “Varick, I—”
Uthe knocked his hand away. “How many fucking times must I tell you not to call me by that name? Do not speak it. Ever.” No matter that it held no memory of Uthe’s father when Keldwyn spoke it. Instead, the word possessed a seductive purr that made Uthe want him to say it over and over.
“There is more to this.”
“This quest and the right to fuck me don’t give you the right to every thought I have,” Uthe snapped. “Let her go. Free her. I cannot look upon her until you do.”
“All right. It is done. Will you look?”
“Not yet.” Uthe turned away and stared into the forest again. “Leave me alone. I need several moments to myself.” He should have said ‘respectfully,’ honoring the courtesies, but what had hold of him now was ugly, coarse. He prayed Keldwyn would heed him.
The Fae was a weighted force at his back, but at length, he withdrew. Uthe let out a breath as he heard him speak to Della in low tones. The girl giggled and chattered something at him. She ran off, her sneakered feet pattering over the grass. Uthe closed his eyes, seeing her precocious expression. But he couldn’t hold onto it. He knelt, began the 23rd Psalm. It was an eternal comfort, though when he imagined lying down in green pastures, he saw bloody and torn sheep. Lambs. He’d wondered why they’d eventually called Jesus the Lamb of God, because nothing was as helpless as a lamb. But they’d crucified him, hadn’t they? Sacrificed him, proving the fragility of the man.