Loved Him to Death: Haru of Sachoné House

by K. M. Frontain

  “There were sacrifices,” Intana told me. “You won’t like what you see.”

  But I would still see it. I moved forward, Intana with me.

  I found Halva, naked with his guts laid open in a shadow between layers of rainbow. His splayed body, and the stain of blood around him, formed a butterfly shape in the dimness. Maggots worked over his intestines. The short, sporadic flight of blowflies created an eerie whirring noise in the near silence.

  “Why him? Because he brought me into the dome?”

  “More than likely.”

  They’d left Halva his eyes. No doubt he’d watched his bowels eviscerated and spread over the floor.

  I moved onward. Further in, more dead, blood spreading away in lakes and rivulets, intestines defining the black of the floor where blood did not. “Why the bowels?” I asked.

  “They are like a dragon’s coiled body.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  Intana laughed, and I with him. Morbid, I know, but that was how we were just then. We had to laugh or be horrified. I’d been horrified enough and didn’t feel to suffer the sensation more. But for Halva, I hadn’t cared for any of these men. Neither had Intana.

  Again I admit to being a selfish man. I will not waste sympathy on fools.

  We arrived at the centre of the temple, and here we discovered a heap of naked men, weapons still in their hands. The bodies still had the fresh colour of life, the eyes a glassy sheen, the faces a wetness from weeping.

  Movement. A blink. A tiny shift of a hand.

  Ah. Some yet lived.

  “Were you a temple servant?” I asked one that stared at me.

  “Yes. You have murdered us all.”

  “I did not raise that weapon to your gut. You did that yourself.”

  “At least help me spread it out, you vile whoreson. Then perhaps Omos will forgive us for letting you have Intana.”

  “Why should he forgive you when you intended to keep Intana?” I said. The temple servant looked away from me. Even so, I lowered to a knee and pulled his intestines free of his cavity. He tried to stab me, a weak attempt, easily evaded. I pulled out more intestines.

  “Damn you,” he whispered.

  “Did I not spread them far enough?” I asked, but he died before answering.

  Intana had been frozen to my rear throughout this. He spoke into the whine of flies. “How can you be so monstrous?”

  “He loved your father. How could I not help him, and therefore you.”

  “Oh. Should we help the others?”

  “You’ll only vomit.” I thought this funny, for he was a predator by nature, and yet he could not confront the carnage here. Looking back, I caught him with a hand over his mouth.

  “They stink,” he said, catching my amusement and the reason for it. He lowered his hand and revealed a sickly grimace. “I don’t eat carrion.”

  I prodded with my foot the one I had helped die. “This one doesn’t stink.”

  “Have pity,” someone in the pile whispered. “Desecrate this temple no further.”

  “You did that long before me,” I answered.

  “I’ll help that one,” Intana said. Repugnance had congealed into stark animosity. He stepped on blood, over limbs, and yanked entrails out. His victim screamed, then screamed again.

  “I can hurt them,” Intana said, looking up at me with his irises bright in the darkness. His fist still gripped intestine. “I can hurt them now without consequences. My father’s dead!”

  “I don’t believe it,” I said.

  The bloody offering lifted higher. “My father is dead!” Intana howled. “I murdered him when I lay with Vaal!”

  “Can you disobey me?” I asked. “Can you murder me and be free of your seal?”

  The intestines lowered, dropped with disgusting noise onto the dying man beneath.

  “So long as you are bound to me, your father’s power continues, and therefore he lives on,” I said. “Have faith in him, Intana. Even if you are the last to do so, you can keep him alive.”

  “There is Vaal,” he said. “If Vaal destroys you, he can destroy the seal if I do not find another Oradhé quickly enough. I can only be fatally damaged between the choosing of Oradhé.”

  He moved toward me, and when his face came out of the shadows, I beheld desperation. “I cannot protect you from him! Not as I am now! See me! See me properly!”

  “And then there will be no need to protect me at all.”

  His expression bittered. “I forgot. You are Vaal’s man, with a heart that is hollow. When did you scoop out your soul and throw it to Vaal?”

  “I am trying to see you in this darkness,” I whispered, “but the flies are buzzing inside my head and there’s blood behind my eyes, blood that’s gone cold and hard and has caked to my soul. If there is a liquid that can make this scab soft and wash it away, I have not found it. I’m sorry. I did not mean to be your Oradhé. I am too much of a coward to love you as you deserve to be loved.”

  The bitterness faded from him, and the hate that had fired his eyes dimmed to dull points of light. “Then I die the moment you do.”

  “We shall see.”

  I turned toward the entrance, and there was Vaal, standing in the opening. I knew the figure for my god, human though He appeared.

  He wore nothing. He had a tall frame, the outline perfect, that of a mature man, muscular but slim. I could not see His face clearly. I edged away from the pile of corpses, into a clean space where blood hadn’t splattered. Doing so did not guarantee my survival, but perhaps it would help.

  “You have letters to write,” He said, approaching. The way He walked, power, threat and assurance in every stride. The deep clarity of his voice provoked a cold energy to shoot down my spine. I trembled and forcibly stilled myself.

  “Oh. Yes. I’d forgotten.” I was to say goodbye to my family, but I understood this had changed. “Was there something in particular I should say?” I asked.

  “Your House is to come to Verdant. Your grandmother will be Chief Grandmother here.”

  “Oh.” This was good news. For me, I thought.

  Vaal had walked in faster than I’d expected, and before I said another thing, He caught me to His chest and set His lips on mine. His tongue, mine, touching in my mouth. The taste of the ocean, a trace that hinted blood, and a chill of power lurking beneath. He pressed my neck and spine back, plundered until I became dizzy.

  Intana’s anger and hurt sharp against my soul, Vaal’s body a cold burn, the sweat of near panic coming out of my skin; Vaal straightened, but only to rip the vest off my front. He set His palm on Little Brother’s mark, and I hung from His arm, gasping.

  A chill radiated into my heart, broke its rhythm. Three massive thumps shook my chest. The cold became a warmth that righted the pace, but which thieved the vitality from my legs. I gripped his upper arms, desperate. To flee, to stay, to surrender, to hate.

  He felt good. He terrified me. His touch provoked a sense of familiarity, but I took this to be reasonable. He was my god. Somehow I knew Him and could only cleave to Him, however that He terrorized my people and had seen fit to deem Jumi unworthy.

  He had the gold-brown skin of the Brellin. Glossy black, straight hair hung loose down his back and over the front of his shoulders. On my bare flesh, the strands felt like silk. His fingernails, black as well, formed a crescent of five sharp points against my chest. Spots of blood leaked where they pricked me.

  He smiled, and certain teeth threatened—a predator’s weapons, jagged and razor sharp—but some seemed as human as mine. His features resembled very much the men of Brellin, with the oval face, the slightly wide forehead, the peak of hair pointing down, but his eyes were inhuman, the shark’s black stare. No pupils that I could see in this darkness of Omos’s conquered temple.

  “Beautiful Haru,” He said, and my skin prickled everywhere. Creation. His voice. So deep. So male.

  Something…something about it. The way he spoke, it was…familiar.
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  My grip on His arms tightened. His smile widened. Beneath His palm, Little Brother’s mark felt as if it were sinking into my bones. The teeth bit my heart, and it stuttered again.

  Did He want me dead?

  Yes!

  Please!

  Jumi! Take me to Jumi!

  “How many more men must I kill because of you?” He said.

  The thumping in my chest faltered, returned with a horrific initial thud. I emitted a broken noise, stared at Him, uncertain, confused. “Why should You kill any man for me? I never asked this of You,” I said.

  His palm slid down my torso and hooked into my trousers. They ripped more easily than the vest. “Yes. You only ask me to take you to Jumi,” He said. “Always Jumi. I am never giving you back to Jumi.”

  He had my lips again and He ground my naked front against Him. His erection hurt the soft places along my hip. I heard Intana curse, but it seemed Vaal would ignore him, for the kiss went on.

  A sense of shifting in space came over me, of feeling not quite there, being surreal, cold, lost, but I could only shake in his grasp, clutch his arms, wish my heart would stop. When He let me breathe again, I realized we had moved. We were in the entrance, and I could see His face more clearly. I jerked back hard.

  Jumi’s face! Jumi’s face become a man’s!

  “Get off me! Get off!”

  “What is it? You don’t like what I offer you?”

  “That’s not Your face!”

  “Everything I eat is mine. Everything! And everything that swims into my territory is mine as well.”

  He crushed me up to His front again, made my right arm ache, my neck snap painfully, and I burned and yet felt cold. His words were the sharpest ice.

  “I killed Jumi because you loved him. I killed Rohuri for daring to want you. I killed the boys of your group who imagined having an instant of your time. I’ll kill more. Believe it.”

  I believed it, but I didn’t understand why.

  “Didn’t I explain? Beautiful Haru,” he whispered against my lips.

  “It’s not a good reason!” I cried, straining away from him.

  “Well, yes. You’re covered in peeling skin at the moment.” He pulled back to look me over with a disapproving expression. He prodded my broken arm and forced a yelp out of me, brought another spot of blood out of my body, this one making a stain on my sling. “And this stupidity. As bad as when you snapped your leg. You’re clumsy.”

  I’m not really. He was being facetious, but I wasn’t amused. He knew it and prodded my arm again.

  “Shit! Stop tha—!” I broke off, frozen in an instant for daring to remonstrate with a god. I, who had no sympathy for fools, was being one.

  “I’ll let Intana live, under certain conditions,” He said.

  “And those are?” Intana demanded. He emerged from the shadows of the temple. His pupils had grown luminous with anger again. I feared for him.

  “Don’t ever ask Haru to see you as you truly are,” Vaal said. “Don’t tempt him. Don’t trick him. Cover his eyes if you must. Those are My conditions.”

  “Will you kill me if I love him?” Intana asked.

  “No. I’m keeping you both for my bed. You’ve grown prettier since I last saw you, Intana.” Vaal smiled and He was all shark in that instant. I saw the truth of Him on the minaret field, the monster waiting just outside the real. His human shape was but a splinter on the nose of that massive body.

  The vision vanished when His black eyes locked on mine.

  Jumi. Jumi’s face become a man’s. A Brellin face, with the heavy fringe of eyelashes I had adored when we’d been boys, the sweeping ridges of eyebrows I’d played my fingertips along, the lips of sweet curves for which I had plotted ways to steal kisses. But now the jaw had widened with maturity, the cheekbones become more defined, and the lips learned to move with cruelty.

  Despair should have crushed me, but something within had swollen, broken the scabs of my sorrow, burst them wide. And I didn’t feel more sorrow. Though I knew this was not Jumi, I could not make my heart know it with me.

  It beat, and beat, and I understood the earlier faltering for leaps of joy.

  Damn you, Vaal.

  “You see me. Don’t you, Haru?”

  “Yes.”

  “What am I?”

  “A shark.”

  “Can sharks feel?”

  I stared a moment without answering, then shut my eyes on the overwhelming truth of Him. “Yes,” I whispered. “But mostly hunger.”

  He laughed, crushed me tight and kissed me again. “They hunger for warmth on occasion, warmth that isn’t spilled blood and fresh meat,” He whispered against me. “Will I keep Jumi’s face?”

  “It’s Your face.”

  “Good, Haru. You learn quickly. But then, you always have.”

  He released me. The wind of the mount hit my bare front. When my eyes opened, He had vanished.

  I slumped onto the tile walk, not a muscle in me strong enough to keep my body upright. Splintered. I’d been splintered, mind from heart, soul from thought. What my mind wanted, and my soul desired, were no longer one and the same. A great, serrated tooth had been stabbed between them.

  Intana knelt at my side, and he was trembling. “Haru, you’re a little slut,” he said.

  “Damn it, Intana! How can you say that?” I cried.

  “Every part of you is soft but that,” he answered and almost crushed the erection in my lap.

  I grabbed his forearm, but could not force him to leave go. “Aiee! Stop! That’s a fear reaction! What are you thinking?”

  “That you’re a liar!”

  He toppled me with a rough push and set his mouth on my shaft. Fear can do such strange things to people.

  My muscles regained some of their strength, enough that I could squirm beneath his body and get my head between his legs. I took him down my throat. His shaft was beautiful. The finest silver swirled the length. The most perfect cream blue existed everywhere else, and the head beneath his foreskin was a surprisingly dark colour. Almost cobalt. Yes, cobalt.

  Even his scrotum was pretty, and I can’t say that about many men—and yes, I have looked when I dared. Intana’s was a darker blue than typical for him, with silver scaling lining the delicate ridge in the centre.

  But my attention didn’t stay on his testicles for long. I yanked grey cloth aside. Again I saw cobalt. By all creation, I had to get my fingers in there, or my tongue. Something.

  I came in Intana’s mouth just thinking it, and the noises I uttered must have done for him, because he gave me a gift I can’t describe. His seed…heaven on my tongue. The aftershocks of my orgasm went on and on.

  It must be a sin. It tastes too good, I thought.

  Intana laughed with his throat still over my shaft, and I almost broke his nose squirming to get away, it tickled so much.

  “Haru!” he complained.

  “Not my fault.” I sat up, crossed a leg beneath me and leant an arm on a knee, the one that had hit Intana’s nose. “Where did He go?”

  “Ah, what do I care!” Intana lurched up and stalked away down the mount. I began to see his shape fade into something bigger. I shut my eyes and turned my face away.

  “Vaal, what have you done?” I whispered.

  ‘Beautiful Haru.’ As if I’d gone out of my way to win Him. I’d done nothing but exist.

  “Sometimes that’s enough,” He said.

  I gasped and looked behind. He watched from inside the temple.

  “I was hungry, and there was food within.”

  I performed a queasy rise to my feet. “Don’t kiss me, please. Some of the food was giving off a revolting stench. And I knew one of them.”

  “Yes, I’ll go rinse my mouth just for you.” He wandered down the mount, directly after Intana. His hair hung to the small of his back and swayed with each step. His bottom: a set of perfect curves and creases going down to slim but muscular legs. It hurt to look at His image, this reflection of a futu
re that had never happened. But there it was, Vaal with Jumi’s shape.

  I stared for a moment, uncertain, distressed, needing. Then I shrugged out of the remains of my clothes, kept my boots all the same, and followed after my god. From the curve of a wall, I watched Vaal and Intana have an argument that ended in three broken minarets and a bite on Intana’s thigh, another on Vaal’s chest. Eventually, Vaal crushed Intana beneath Him and fucked Intana until he groaned and begged, instead of blasphemed and struggled. When Intana reached that stage, I stepped away from the wall and moved closer.

  I don’t know what possessed me. My distress and uncertainty still existed, about my place with Vaal and my relationship with Intana, but Vaal had become the master of my choices and my doubts counted for nothing. The need… Yes, I still needed, but what I needed mystified me. I only knew I had to be near them.

  I moved quietly and paused near a flowering thorn bush. I thought to seat myself on the grass in the shade, and wait for the culmination of their coupling, but Vaal looked up and met my gaze. I froze in place. A predatory smile curved His lips.

  “You like what you see, Haru? Come here and see it better.”

  Vaal rolled himself and Intana to the side, exposing Intana’s front to my view. He swiped grit from Intana’s erection, fisted His fingers around the shaft, squeezed skin up, squeezed down, revealed cobalt glistening with the dew of pleasure. Intana arched, hissed, stared at me with half-lidded eyes. Anger smouldered beneath fans of silver eyelashes.

  Vaal put a finger on Intana’s moisture and stretched a line of liquid up to a creamy lower abdomen. He set His palm down on skin and rubbed the wetness across Intana’s navel. “Come, Haru,” Vaal said. “You looked like you wanted more of this earlier. Come and take more.”

  I’d become aroused, and they knew it, but I hesitated. Intana had been silently hostile since he’d caught sight of me. He didn’t want me there.

  “I’m sorry. I should have remained distant. I’ve interrupted.” I began to back off.

  “I said come here!” Vaal snapped. He must have throttled Intana’s shaft, because Intana grimaced and whimpered through his teeth.

  “Don’t hurt him!” I protested. “I didn’t mean to interrupt! I just…”