by J. M. Frey
Oh, hells, I’m going to write it, aren’t I? I can’t even fool myself. I’ve never been a good liar.
But, no, not all of it. Forsyth and Pip and the Readers of Legend . . . no. That’s not something I can tell the whole world. Especially without proof. That is a secret Kin and I will have to take to our graves. Bugger all.
So, with nothing to write until I figure out just how much of this adventure I can share, and nothing to illustrate on Kin’s part till I’ve written a bloody thing, we pass the afternoon in uncomfortable but companionable silence. We take a wordless luncheon on the balcony that overlooks the foothills of the Cinch, one of the few places where Chasmshine opens onto the outside world. I smoke more hash than I probably should, and Kintyre, upwind of me, doesn’t scold for once. When the afternoon light grows longer, I repack my bags with the supplies the servants have dropped off for us, and catch myself reaching for Kin’s pack before I realize I’m doing it. I straighten abruptly, dropping Kin’s bag by the hearth—nearly on his foot—and say, “Actually, no. Do it for yourself.”
There’s more venom in the order than I intended. I can feel the blush crawling up my cheeks, settling in my ears, when I realize how it sounded. Kin stares at me with wide, startled eyes, and I mutter a curse and flee to the stables. How embarrassing. How childish. Writer, why does Kin even put up with me?
Deciding that, while I’m hiding, I might as well see to Karl and Dauntless, I check their hooves, comb out and then re-braid their manes, and spoil them with a pair of apples stolen from our lunch. Kin should be here. Normally, he’s good with doing his share of work with the horses. He enjoys pampering the beasts, but he’s still smarting a little from the death of Stormbearer. And yeah, my little blow-up just now wouldn’t encourage him to follow me.
Horses have their own personalities. Stormbearer was a swagger-er, just like the man who rode him. Karl is excitable, keen to be in the middle of everything. But Dauntless—Dauntless was the product of both the dam and sire of Stormbearer, a little brother in all ways. That should have given the stallion an excitable temper and a passionate drive. Instead, Dauntless is . . . sweet. For all that he is the Shadow’s Horse—would be my horse, if I put on the mask—he’s a polite gentleman. His primness reminds me again of Forsyth, and that spot in my heart that had once been the placeholder for the rough, big-brother-bully sort of affection I’d held for the simpering lad throbs a little.
Forsyth is gone, and it will take two of us to fill his shoes. One to be lord. One to be Shadow Hand. And how in all seven of the hells are we going to survive the transition?
✍
The dwarvish feast is as raucous and filled with spirits and illicit kisses behind beards as they usually are. Before it disintegrates into the normal end-of-night orgy, Kin and I skulk back to our rooms, eager to be out of the fine lawn shirts and velvet waistcoats that we only wear to these kinds of official functions. Otherwise, they stay jammed in the bottom of our saddlebags, padding for the pots and pans.
As little as a few months ago, we would have stayed for the orgy. But I know I’ve lost all desire for sport of this kind with anyone except Kin. I’m relieved, I think, maybe more than is fair to my lover, that he seems to feel the same way about me. It soothes some of the hurt in me to know that the only one Kin wants to swive with is me.
And as little as four or five years ago, we might have snuck out of the mountain that night. The officious and boring seeing-off ceremony the morning we left was always a chore, and more than once we’ve repaid Andvari’s hospitality poorly by dashing out under the secret cover of darkness. But we are old adventurers now, well into middle age. We—or, at least, I’ve—since learned the importance of diplomacy. That, and also that the luxury of a feather mattress is too well to give up the chance for another night on one.
Writer, I’ve turned into my Pa. He used to groan for just another five minutes in bed, too, and hoard all the feathers from the plucked chickens for pillows to cradle his forge-weary shoulders.
So, in the morning, we pointedly don’t tease the hungover dwarves peppered with love-bites, hair still in disarray, as they stand on the gates of Chasmshine and solemnly wish us well on the remainder of our quest. Then I mount Dauntless (Dauntless and I should grow familiar with each other if I decide to . . . well, if I decide), and Kintyre mounts Karlurban. We spend the rest of the day in silence, except for the horse hooves striking the slate of the underground highway. The quiet is less tense than it was the day before, though. It’s more contemplative. I’m not sure if it’s me or Kin who’s thinking the most. Maybe it’s both of us. Maybe we’re just both frantically thinking about not thinking. Writer, it’d be funny if I wasn’t so preoccupied.
A few times, I take a breath to say something, open my mouth, then shut the damned thing again when I see Kin’s shoulders tense like he’s preparing to take a blow. We sleep in the underground way station, and emerge the next day at dusk on the northern coast of Urland. Say what you will about how dismal and claustrophobic dwarvish highways can be, the magic that allows you to traverse a whole kingdom in just a few hours is still wondrous. Kin and I are lucky we’ve befriended the dwarvish nobility, otherwise we’d never get access to the tunnels.
The horses are happy to be out in the fresh air again, and, yeah, to be honest, so am I. They canter a little showily through the broad scrub plains of Urland. This part of the world is sometimes called the Giant’s Graveyard because of the way the rough, age-pocked stone swells up, bone white, out of the hard-scrabble vegetation. It curves like ribs in some places, exists in dome-like skulls in others, with succulents and marrowbrush growing in the weather-carved gullies and little crevasses between. Some rocks are straight, and jagged at their tip, like a femur that was snapped, the leg left to rot under the sky. The Graveyard eventually levels out into the flat plain of grassland that abuts the Cinch, a thin strip that had once been at the bottom of a lake, when a river had ushered a torrent of ice melt and rainwater into the now-dry floodplains of Urland, lifetimes before Kin and I were ever born. Or Written into existence.
The reality of everything we’ve learned and heard and done over the last few weeks—last few months, really—hits me all at once. I feel lightheaded. The bright sunshine isn’t helping matters, but I swallow hard and shake my head, force myself to pay attention to my seat, lest I lose it.
Generations of history in our world, and it’s really only a few decades old. Written to seem ancient, but fresh as bad wine.
I have no idea if the stones are real giant bones, but the mask might know. Again, I am startled by the suddenness of the thought. So persuasive and calm, and sounding a hells of a lot more like Forsyth than I think I’m ready to admit to myself. Kin scouts the curve in the road ahead, searching for a good gully in which to make camp. I pull the mask out of the pouch in the side of my saddlebags, and hold it out ahead of me, an arm’s length away so a sudden jarring of Dauntless beneath me won’t accidentally fumble it toward my face. Through the eye holes, the Giant’s Graveyard looks just the same. Would it still if I said the Word? If I pressed the cool silver against my cheeks and—
A shiver runs through me, and I let the arm holding the mask drop.
Seductive, that’s what this is.
On its own? Was it part of the enchantment on the mask, that it works on the person who holds it until they give in? A spell that ensures there will always be a Shadow Hand? Is it a sort of semi-sentient parasite that needs a body and a brain to host it?
Or is it just my own inclination? My own curiosity and . . . and my own desperate desire to be needed in a way that isn’t auxiliary of or appended to Kintyre? To have something of my own. Just mine. In a way that nothing—not even my own body, really—has been mine since I was sixteen and watched a gorgeous blond git ride up to the forge and dunk his head in my smithy’s cooling trough before even saying so much as a “hello” or “may I?”
The sound of Karl’s hooves coming closer warns me in time to tuck the mask aw
ay before Kintyre turns the corner. I’m not ashamed, or hiding the mask, really. It’s just . . . it’s a conversation that I’m not sure I’m ready to have. Not after how the last one went. Not when we’re both still smarting from that. Kin more than me, though, judging by the way he’s sort of holding himself up from his saddle by the stirrups. Writer, his calves must be killing him.
“There’s a culvert over here,” Kin says, and his voice is a bit hoarse from the fact that neither of us has said much in the last two days. “Doesn’t look like rain, so we should be sheltered without getting soaked.”
I nod, and direct Dauntless to follow him. Culvert is a bit of a fancy word for what Kin leads us to—it’s more like a shallow depression between rolling hills, padded with the squashy moss that lives on the stone. But it’ll do for a night. We’ve slept in worse places.
Before I can get to unpacking anything, Kin’s taken over getting the saddlebags off the horses and brushing them down. Bemused by his sudden desire to take charge, I turn my attention to dinner, only to have him tell me that he wants to look after the fire and rehydrating the travel rations, too.
“Shall I collect brush for firewood, then?” I ask, hands on my hips as I watch him make a hash of it all already.
“Naw,” Kin says. “You just sit and smoke your pipe.”
“Sit and smoke my pipe,” I repeat, jamming a cork in the ire that’s threatening to bubble up again. “Like some useless maiden?”
Kin, who had been crouched over the pile of rocks he’d been arranging in a circle, looks up, jaw dropped and eyes wide, aghast. “What? Bev, no.”
“Then why don’t you want me to do my part?”
“It’s not that . . . I don’t want you to not do . . . Bev, I’m trying to be nice.”
“By implying that I can’t do anything for myself.”
“No!” Kin straightens. “No, of course not! I just thought that it would be . . . I want to . . . Writer’s balls, Bev, come on. You’re not making this easy for me!”
“Making what easy?” I ask, but the genuineness of his dismay has my ire flickering out already, the cold splash of his worry dowsing my embers.
Kintyre gestures around him and makes a frustrated noise. “You say you don’t want to be lesser-than, that you’re sick of having to do things for me, and I’m trying, Bev. I’m trying to show you that I . . . I don’t take you for granted . . . that you . . .”
“All right,” I say, letting him off the lure. The dangling has been amusing—once I realized what he was on about—but it’s not fair to let the fish suffer. I crowd up to him, grab his ears, and pull him down to catch his mouth.
“Don’t like it when you pull my ears,” he mutters into our kiss, but doesn’t shake off my hold.
“Your fault for being so damnably tall,” I say, but I say it with a smile. “And thank you.”
Kin grunts again and goes back to making dinner. I sit and smoke a pipe, and only occasionally shout suggestions as he over-boils the water, burns the last of the travel stew, and somehow makes mush out of what ought to have been a perfectly serviceable bowl of round-grain.
“It’s wretched,” he complains as we plow our way through the meal.
“Yeah,” I agree with a mischievous grin, and a wink that’s a peace offering. “But I appreciate not having to make it. I’ll take care of breakfast, though.”
✍
In the bright, cold chill of a late autumn morning, I stand in the Northwash River. In front of me, the waterfall crashes on, oblivious to my shivering discomfort and the way my arms are starting to quiver and burn from holding the chalice aloft. Kintyre might have been more enticing bait for the sylph, but I’m more devoted to my love. I’ve loved Kintyre longer than he’s loved me. It’s more deeply entrenched in my spirit and heart, so I won’t be easily turned. It has to be me who does this.
Not that I doubt my Pair’s adoration for me, or the depth of his affection. It’s just that my love is older. It’s harder to get grappling hooks into and pull apart. It’s been tempered by sorrow, and self-recrimination, and anger, and jealousy. It’s been buttressed with heroics, and sacrifices, honesty, and care. It’s strong. Today, I believe it. If the sylph does to me as she did to Forsyth, if she tries to bespell me and tempt me into her grasp, I’m confident that I won’t give in.
“Bevel, it’s not working,” Kintyre calls to me. “Come out of the water before you turn into an iceberg.”
“Just a little longer,” I call back. “I can stand it. It will work.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
I have to be.
“Daft arsehole!” my lover calls.
Kin stomps back to tend the fire he started when I insisted that it would go better if we let the sylph come to us rather than invade her home. He wants to be ready to help me dry off and warm up. It’s a bit sweet, really. Berk.
My patience is rewarded. After waiting in the frigid river for over an hour, the Cup that Never Runs Dry held toward the waterfall, standing unarmed and unarmored, the curtain of the water parts and the sylph steps out.
“What’s this?” she asks, licking her black-toothed chops, her voice a siren song of silver bells over the thunder of the cascades. “A silly little man who—oh.” She stops on the jumble of granite and lavender crystal talus accumulated under the crest of the falls. “My cup.”
“He said he’d return it to you, after the adventure was over,” I call back. My voice doesn’t carry like hers does, doesn’t have the magic of the water to amplify it, and it’s shaking with my chattering teeth, besides. “He wasn’t able to keep that promise, so we offered to return it in his stead.”
“Is he dead, then? The skinny one?” the sylph asks. She’s got one hand raised, as if she doesn’t believe that the cup is right there, before her, and also as if she expects me to suddenly whisk it back away again.
Kin makes a sort of gasping, choked sound at the insinuation that his baby brother is dead. In a way, he is, and we both know it. Dead to us, at least. Dead to this world. We know. It’s just jarring to hear someone else say it, and so flippantly, at that.
“Yeah,” I lie. If the sylph knows it’s a lie, she says nothing about it.
“Set the chalice in the water and begone, oath-keeper,” she says, chin thrust out and head held high like she expects me to argue with her.
“It’ll wash away!” I say.
“These are my waters,” she rejoins sharply. “It will not.”
Feeling my joints creak with the cold, I carefully release the chalice into the water. It floats serenely in place, as if the current around it wasn’t strong enough to nearly knock me over every time I adjust my footing.
“Right, then,” Kintyre calls. “Ah, thanks for letting us borrow it! Um . . . farewell?”
The sylph snorts and makes no reply.
Kintyre sloshes into the river, grabs me under the armpits, and hauls me to the bank. Normally, I’d fuss and complain at him for using his height against me, but this time, I don’t mind. Without even checking to see if the sylph is gone, he’s got me skinned out of my soaking clothes in a heartbeat. I’m too stiff—my fingers and toes and, I assume, my lips too blue to resist.
“My, my! What a thoughtful showing!” the sylph calls, the valley filling with her seductive laughter.
“Oh, piss off!” Kintyre calls back.
Over his shoulder—he’s kneeling to wrestle my boots off—I watch as the sylph makes a cutting gesture at the river. A spout flies off the surface of the water and smacks Kintyre in the back of the head. He splutters, surprised, and then, with another waterspout, the sylph calls the cup to her and vanishes back behind the falls.
“S-Serves you ri-right,” I chatter at him.
Kintyre looks up the length of my body with a glare, and then smirks mischievously. He shakes his head, and his wet, blond hair slaps against my goose-pimpled stomach.
“Hey!” I protest, but don’t have the opportunity to say anything more, bec
ause then we’re tussling and kissing, and he’s rubbing my shivering limbs with his palms, and I’m being wrapped up in all of our blankets and bedrolls and being plopped like a sack of grain beside the fire. Kintyre cuddles close, feeds me sips of hot broth and wine, even though I’m perfectly capable of holding the cup myself by now. And it feels, a bit, like understanding. And a lot like forgiveness.
✍
There are inns on the road south between the Salt Crystal Caverns and the Lost Library, and except for one night in Miliway where we can light no fires, we spend the next week pampering ourselves with daily shaves, nightly feather mattresses, and hot meals cooked by someone else. Kintyre is very careful not to cut me out of conversations, to ask my opinion, and to leave me space to speak for myself, which I appreciate, even if the tentative conscientiousness does start to get a little aggravating. He doesn’t need my opinion on everything; he can make up his mind for himself if he wants. But I remind myself that he’s trying. Trying to make it clear, in his ham-fisted and knuckleheaded way, that I’m more to him than just his sidekick.
We don’t talk about my apparent desire for marriage and children, though. And what would be the point of that? We’re two men. We can’t have either. A Trothing, like we saw in Gwillfifeshire, that we could do . . . but I can’t even begin to imagine Kintyre agreeing to something as full of spectacle and ceremony as jumping a flaming broom. Too common for him . . . too obvious.
We send the second to last quest item to Kingskeep by care of messenger hawk, now that we’re back in Hain. We talk briefly about going to Kingskeep ourselves, to put the Quill that Never Dulls into Lordling Gyre’s hands personally, but frankly, I can’t stand that little prick. And if we show our faces in Kingskeep, we’ll have to deal with King Carvel’s questions on Forsyth’s whereabouts, and the gaping absence of a Lord in Lysse Chipping, and the mysterious and sudden disappearance of Hain’s worst antagonist, along with his sadistic conspirator.