Such a joke. So few men with Little Brother’s symbol, and only on those that stayed in the water longest. It hadn’t been about courage in my case. It had been about desolation, but Chief Grandmother hadn’t seemed to see the difference.
I was prince, priest, son of good fortune to my people, but inside I was a ghost that had died on the day I’d been named a man.
Chapter Ten
Intana re-entered my cabin and stood at the foot of the bed without speaking. I looked toward him. He carried the seal one-handed, dangling at his side. Water dripped from his limbs. Silvery blood coated his chest, trickling from a curved mark beneath the collarbones.
I wondered how his life fluid tasted. Had it been Intana’s blood in my mouth last night? I didn’t think so. This morning, my lower lip had been sore. I had no doubt caught it against one of his sharper teeth.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He spat it back out at me. Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing. Are you badly hurt?”
“What do you care?”
“Enough to wish to ease your pain. Are you badly hurt?”
“No. He only knocked the breath from me.” Intana shoved the seal into a crevice between my desk and wardrobe. A too-heavy clunk warned of possible damage to the flooring, but I heeded only the shape of his flank, the way the grey cloths draped his buttocks and shaft. Wetness made the fabric cling to him.
“Why did Vaal send you, of all men?” he demanded, turning toward me, and damn, but I could have worshipped him on my knees, all because of damp, grey silk. “There are plenty of mortals that could have loved me, and more easily.”
“Why didn’t you ask Vaal this?”
“Because he chased me back onto this ship.”
“Are you sure He didn’t merely want to kiss you?”
“Not when his kiss would have swallowed me whole. I cannot defeat him in this meagre shape.”
“Defeat Him? Is it necessary to defeat Him to be His lover?”
“Don’t purposely misunderstand everything I say.”
I walked to the fallen chair and righted it. “Sit.”
“Why?”
“Just sit. I will see to your injury.”
He sat, and I fetched a cloth and came forward to swipe the moisture and blood from his chest. Some of the cuts were deep, but they became less deep as I watched.
“You heal quickly.”
“It helps that you care enough for me to do so.”
I frowned, my motions halting. “Is this how it works? Mortals must care, and thus you are strong?” He didn’t respond. I dared a quick glance at his face, caught a disconcerted expression. “You didn’t mean to say it,” I concluded. “I won’t tell your secret.”
“You could use it to hurt all of us. Even your Vaal.”
“And before that, how many of my people would have to die before our lack of caring weakened Him?”
“A great many,” Intana admitted.
“I don’t care to let more of my people die needlessly.” I dabbed some more blood from his skin, set the cloth aside. I stood, frozen, facing my desk. Thoughts grew in my mind, sprouted and formed seeds of new thoughts, and the vines that grew had thorns. “Who set Celestial Dome in the harbour, Intana?”
“My father. Why?”
“For what purpose did he set it there?”
“He called it the second egg from which I must hatch. Come back here to me.”
His hand grasped my left wrist. He tugged me down onto his lap. My lips first, my cheek and neck he kissed, then the nipple almost trapped within Little Brother’s circle. Back up to my lips he came and took them another time. My eyes remained open, but I did not let them focus.
“Why won’t you love me easily, Haru of the Brellin?” he murmured against me.
I didn’t answer. His hand had set upon my crotch and taken the breath from me. My eyelids drifted half shut.
“I felt you walking to the dome before you set your foot upon the cerulean path,” he whispered beneath my ear, kneading my shaft through silk while I draped his lap and could only listen and feel. “You walk with power, Haru, but your tread isn’t heavy. It’s barely noticeable, so light, yet potent enough to make me shiver with each step you take. I think I only noticed you because you were to be my Oradhé. If not for that, I wouldn’t have known you’d come into harbour.”
A sharp tug on the attachment of my trousers loosened them.
“I felt my father’s guardians try to repel you. You were a strange force rippling upon their perception, a blur, a gentle cloud, too vague for me to spy through their marble eyes. And then, when you drew closer, you slipped from their view somehow.
“Someone was with you, someone that called you Choné. His voice echoed all the way through the tunnels to me, but no one else heard.”
“Impossible,” I murmured.
“It happened,” he insisted. “I heard him name you, but it wasn’t your name. Your name is the one a dream boy speaks when your lips travel down his belly to his groin.”
“There are no sounds in that dream.”
“I hear them. I hear them all. The noises you make. The noises he makes. The birds that called in the air overhead, the surf on the sand, the movement of your bodies on the bed of fronds.”
His fingers closed around my bare shaft. My hips moved without volition. His touch tingled, almost sharp the sensation, hurtful, angry, but I wanted it, wanted so badly I moaned and turned my face in toward his shoulder.
My lips opened. My tongue peeked through to taste flesh luminous even in shadows. His hand squeezed a little harder, and I stiffened, jerking away before I had kissed his skin. A small noise escaped from my throat again. Lips brushed mine, but retreated before I could capture them properly.
And then words came to crush the passion from my body.
“In your dream, there is a shark in the water, grinding his teeth.”
I gasped. My eyes flew open, fixed full on him. “You lie!”
“I don’t. There’s a shark in the water now, grinding his teeth again. What are you to Vaal, Haru? How did you bring him into this harbour, past my father’s warding magic and without me noticing?”
I struggled off his lap, landed on his feet and rolled off. “What am I to Vaal?” I repeated, up on my knees, my left hand yanking to rights my trousers. “What are you to Vaal? Have you never thought to wonder that Little Brother lies in wait beneath Celestial Dome or its path?”
He frowned at me. “What does it matter that insignificant harbour sharks ply for a meal there?”
“Insignificant?” I couldn’t believe he was so dense. “Vaal’s favoured minions watch you for generations of Oradhé, and you never think to question why?”
“You tell me why,” he retorted. “You with Vaal’s body on your heart!”
“Little Brother’s!”
“Vaal’s!” He shot to a stand, hauled me up and shook me. “Vaal’s mark! Vaal brought you here, made the winds and the waves move to speed you to Verdant at the right time, a man that cannot love me without reservation. His body almost seals your heart! He sent me a man with his soul in a cage!”
“And you accepted me despite it! Has your father’s power over you waned so much?”
His expression lost the edge of accusation and became long with dismay, and though I looked full at him, I was too preoccupied to see the true Intana. Thoughts, seeds, more thoughts. They developed into a bramble patch that climbed to a peak.
A figure shadowed the open door of my cabin, and the brambles withered back. But I had already seen over the edge. My hands felt the cuts of the climb.
Vaal. What have You done?
“Lord?”
“What is it?” I looked at my first mate.
“Uncle is in the harbour, Lord, and the people of Verdant stand on the docks, shouting toward us.”
“What do they shout?”
“I think for you to make Silver Hair chase Uncle from the harbour.”
&nb
sp; I laughed, then stopped. With a smile freezing into a grim line, I stalked from the cabin, even yet holding my trousers in position, and went to the rail of the ship. This time, when I looked upon “Uncle”, I did not flinch away.
He was massive, far more massive than the last. But then, this wasn’t Uncle. He skirted the southern face of Celestial Dome and raced toward the ship, a great blotch with a dorsal fin looming higher than the deck. The wave He created might have swamped a smaller, less sea-worthy vessel, but my schooner rocked up and aside, accepted the flood of water on the main deck and passed the liquid back into the harbour where it belonged.
My crew grasped yards and rigging and prayed for mercy. I gripped the rail and looked down into a glossy black eye as Vaal rolled to see me better, passing the length of the schooner toward the bow. He dwarfed the ship. I estimated a span three times the length of my vessel.
The schooner rocked up and came down again. The after-waves swayed the ship as if a monster toyed with the keel. Nothing but a small jostling, this; a gentle greeting compared to the timber-shaking movement of the ocean.
Vaal. The image He slashed into my mind of the act He intended to perpetrate; why, beneath it, did I feel this thing, this sense of recognition?
“Kima?” I called.
“Lord?” he answered.
“Are any of our men within Celestial Dome?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Call them back. At once.”
“Yes, Lord.”
If Kima was frightened of the necessary trip to fetch our men, he didn’t show it. He climbed from the ship, leapt onto the floating dock, and raced into the new opening of Celestial Dome. Within a few minutes, he brought all our missing men back.
While I waited, I refastened my trousers as best I could one-handed and called for my cabin boy to bring me a vest and boots. I dressed quickly, with Intana’s help after he knocked Gari backward for daring to touch me. I said nothing as Intana assisted me into my vest, not making a sound even when we inserted my broken arm into the armhole and put my sling back on. He buttoned my vest, and I watched Vaal, who swam at the distant end of the harbour. The people of Verdant continued to scream at us from shore, but I gave them little heed.
“What is happening, Haru?” Intana said to me. He lowered to his knees to steady my footwear while I shoved into them. Though Vaal’s presence disturbed me, I couldn’t help thinking how close was Intana’s face to my crotch. Damn, but I wanted him.
I sent the cabin boy away before I answered his question. “You have made it clear strength of worship feeds power to the gods, child of Omos. Tell me? Has your father given much thought to you since he set you here with these people?”
“He hasn’t given any thought to me,” Intana replied, rising to tower over me again. My gaze shot back to the water. “In all this time, he has not visited me once.”
“Do the people of Verdant still worship him properly?”
“As they did of old, up in the temple on the mount.”
I looked away from Vaal, up toward the temple, a structure that rested higher than the royal palace. The silver domes and peaks sparkled in the sunlight. It seemed a beautiful temple, but I had never visited it up close. I would soon.
My gaze returned to my god. I should have felt something looking upon Him, but I only took logical note of His features as He rushed closer. His shape was very much like Uncle’s, a larger form of Little Brother’s, and His colour similar as well—black top, black sides, white belly—but an otherness lit from His body, a sense of larger presence, of things hidden, blackness unknown. Cold.
“Are we about to die?” said Kima, who had come to my other side.
“No, old friend. He makes for the depths beneath Celestial Dome and will only give us a wild ride again.”
Kima did not question my certainty. He shouted at the men to grab hold and stay fast, and we watched Vaal lunge beneath the surface and scrape the keel of the ship with His dorsal fin. The ship canted in the direction from which He had charged, and I struggled to climb to the higher side. I hauled myself up in time to see His sharp tail vanish beneath the dome.
“It’s not Uncle, is it?” Kima shouted to me.
“No. It’s Vaal.”
“Mercy, Lord! What does He want of us?”
“Only for you to deliver letters,” I said.
I clung to the rail, waiting for it to happen. Intana wrapped his right arm around me and seized the rail with his other hand.
“What is happening?” he repeated. “Tell me!”
“Your people gave insincere service to your father,” I said. “I saw how they treated you and the old Oradhé. They have been so certain, so little in need of reassurance, so without fear. They had you, their eternal slave, and all their respect for divinity of old has gone from them. What do they do with divinity but make you create paint? They have more respect for the sharks in their harbour. Vaal’s sharks.”
I looked at Intana to see his reaction. He was shocked, but he knew. I was right. Hypocrisy had been offered Omos since Intana had been enslaved to the first Oradhé.
“My father!” he whispered.
“Is either failing or dead,” I said, “or I would never have arrived in this harbour the day your last Oradhé died.”
His expression darkened with bitterness. “Vaal has contrived all of this.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps he only took advantage of your innocence and then your father’s inordinate pride. We shall see.”
I set my gaze on the dome again and observed it shudder. “It’s done,” I murmured. “Vaal has bitten the chain through.”
Intana rigid at my side, we watched Celestial Dome rise from the water. It ripped itself from the bay, the lurch upward sudden, the water raining down in a sheet that at first let us see nothing; and then it was there, the bottom, the layers of aquatic plants dangling, the chain in the centre. It had to be thicker than three men. Algae hung from it in clumps, but still the gold was discernable, the links each half a man’s height.
The dome went still higher and drifted off toward the natural wall of the harbour. We observed it ascend, none of us speaking, but heard on the docks and up the mount the people of Verdant wailing and beseeching Omos for forgiveness.
“He doesn’t listen,” Intana whispered. “My father has perished.”
“Don’t be so certain. If any still love him, then he lives. But let him find worshippers elsewhere, for Verdant is lost.”
“What have you done to me? If you had looked on me as you should have, I would be free to stop this. Order me to stop this!”
“Could you?”
He didn’t answer, nor did he hurt me, despite the anger he felt. No. This was too much for him as he was now, beyond routing mortal attackers from the slopes of Verdant, or driving them into the harbour where Little Brother would feed on the fallen. This was Vaal taking territory.
Celestial Dome loomed far above us, eroding. It came apart, tumbling into scintillating pieces that flittered away like sparks in a fire. We watched without further words, watched until the last of it had dissipated.
The massive chain that had linked it came crashing down to earth. The metal hit the eastern slope of the harbour and lay crumpled in rising dust. Where it landed, houses were crushed and people killed.
The wailing up the mount echoed all the louder, but now the lamentation had acquired a different note of hysteria. The people of Verdant finally understood. Omos would not answer their cries for clemency.
They had still to understand Omos could not, at that moment, forgive anyone, that perhaps he never would again. But they would know soon.
“Kima!”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Wait for my return and let no man panic. You are safe on this ship.”
“Yes, Lord!”
“Intana.”
“What is it?”
“Your egg has been destroyed and your strength made all the less. Am I right?”
“Yes.”
&
nbsp; “Can you take me up to the temple?”
“Yes.”
We rose from our knees. Intana clasped me with both arms, and to the temple we flew.
Chapter Eleven
The Temple of Omos was exquisite, the central structure fashioned of multitudinous arches that came together at a single apex. Minarets with pointed domes rose up in seeming disorder all about the grounds, and all of this was somehow positioned so that perfection had been achieved. Tiles of mother of pearl imparted a sheen to every wall, and thick glass grasped the sun and ruptured daylight into every colour.
No matter where we stood on the grounds, we had beauty to contemplate, but once we intruded within the temple proper, shadows dominated, silver hinted like stars caught in the ceiling, and the only light came from prisms that played colours over barren floors and walls. The disparity was shocking.
“What does it mean?” I asked Intana, who still clasped me around the waist. He seemed disinclined to let me go, and I didn’t protest. His warmth comforted me in this dark place, where the light seemed an intruder and fought for leverage on sombre surfaces.
“Have you lost all that wisdom you showed me minutes earlier?” Intana replied.
“I may have guessed Vaal’s mind, but this does not mean I can guess your father’s. Why did he want a temple like this?”
“He came from darkness and burst into light. This is what it means to be an ether dragon.”
“Is it so? With you?” I looked up and saw a fleeting, sad smile.
“Not quite. I was born of a womb, just as you were, and could be said to have come from the darkness and burst in to light, but my father’s womb was the heavens.”
“Then if anyone can disappear into obscurity and survive, it is him,” I said.
“And Vaal,” he replied. “He comes of a deeper obscurity.”
But perhaps one not so commendable. “There is a horrific stench in here,” I said.
Loved Him to Death: Haru of Sachoné House Page 11