“I’m sorry.” The words came out painfully. “Please forgive me.”
Luc’s mouth opened. His hands shaped antlers on the air. “What the hell was that, with the stag?”
Jon rubbed his eyes. “Some crazy nightmare. That’s it, Luc. I’m never touching any drugs, ever again.”
“Yeah? That doesn’t include coffee, does it?” He got up to make drinks. Jon followed him.
“I’m serious. You’re right about me, I’ve wasted my whole life acting like a prick. Couldn’t see what was in front of my face. I’m truly sorry.”
“Me too, Jon.” Lucas turned to him, meaning it. They looked at each other and hugged, tight and close. Luc couldn’t remember Jon ever hugging him like that before, in simple affection—almost desperation—with no ulterior motive. It was hard to end it.
“Can we wipe the slate clean?” Jon said as they let go, a little awkwardly.
“Sure. Why not.” His mouth dried as he asked the hardest question, “Have you seen Lawrence?”
Jon shook his head. “I don’t know what happened. I was out of it.”
“You missed all that?” Lucas studied his befuddled eyes, reached up to tidy Jon’s tangled hair. “We opened the Gates. The world went mad. Shadow giant, hurricane, huge storm. Thought it was going to tear the house down. I’m still shaking.”
“I had the worst trip of my life.” As Lucas made coffee, Jon stood at his elbow. “While I was out there—something shot me with a hot arrow and then there was this huge god called Anteros sitting on my chest . . .”
“You were stoned. I get it.”
“But it’s important. He was talking about unrequited love. It made me realize . . .” Jon shadowed him as he found sugar and milk. “I’m absolutely useless at loving people. Even if I do, I can’t show it. I don’t even know how it feels, because I’m frightened it might hurt. It made me realize . . . look, I don’t want to waste my life being scared and cynical. I don’t want to lose you because I never said anything.”
Lucas turned round to him. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We’re brothers.”
“Only half. And so what?” Color came into Jon’s cheeks. When he smiled, his beauty reappeared through the grime. “What does that matter to Aetherials? We were always close. We did things together that we never admitted to, but still, we did them. And we weren’t always stoned.”
Luc felt blood rising in his face. “That was—I don’t know—different. Just because we were lonely, and too bloody sad to get girlfriends.”
“I was never lonely with you. You’re the only person I’ve ever felt safe with. That’s what Anteros was telling me. This bond between us—it matters. When it’s just you and me, it’s simple, isn’t it? You understand what I’m saying? We were lovers. Admit it.”
“Yes,” Lucas said, flustered. “I don’t know. We were close, Jon, but you really messed up my head.”
“That’s in the past. It’ll be different.” Jon paused, grinning. “You’ve made three mugs—can’t you count? Luc, I’m trying to tell you—”
Iola came into the room. Gilded by candlelight, she’d never looked more strange and exquisite, the more so because Luc saw her as Jon must, in complete amazement—unexpected and brand new. She came to Luc’s side, raised her fingertips to his cheek and kissed his mouth.
“You’re Jon,” she said, turning to regard him with gentle recognition.
He stared back in bewilderment. “Okay, who’s this?”
“This is Iola,” said Lucas. His awkwardness was tempered by a strange feeling of pride, a sense of finally growing up. “She’s a sort of guardian to help the Gatekeeper . . .”
“I see.” Jon’s gaze dropped.
“She was hiding from Lawrence, but I found her and . . .” Lucas found himself stammering to explain, to smooth the atmosphere, but Jon only gazed stonily back at him with eyes full of soured dreams. As he ran out of words, he looked past Jon and saw Rosie in the doorway.
She was a mess, her clothes damp and singed, her face colorless, her eyes empty. She looked like a waxwork of herself. “Thank heaven I found you,” she said quietly. “I’ve got a lot to tell you both.”
The hill stood grey and silver in the dawn, strewn with torn branches, scoured clean by rain. Grass and bracken were moistly fragrant. The scent of the air, fresh, raw and vibrant, was overwhelming.
Rosie walked up to Freya’s Crown with Jon and Lucas and the Aelyr girl, Iola. Returning to the Great Gates to view the war zone at least gave them something else to do and think about. As long as they kept moving, the talons of pain couldn’t find a purchase. She daren’t stand still.
Lucas had cried. Jon hadn’t; he’d only stared, his pupils black and dilated. He looked like an angel who’d been dragged through a bramble hedge. He had only whispered, “I always thought Sam was indestructible.”
So did I, thought Rosie. She’d left her parents recovering at home. The damage to Oakholme from the lightning was a mess, but not a disaster; it could be repaired. As for herself—she could not and dared not cry. If she started, she would never stop. She had to be strong now, as Sam would have been.
Through the silvery light a woman came walking towards them, wearing a slate-blue cloak over a long black dress. Raven hair flowed around her shoulders. She might have formed from the shadows of Freya’s Crown itself. It was Virginia. Jon saw her, and stared, and went to her without a word into the embrace of her arms, her cloak. Rosie guessed, from the stark expression on Ginny’s face, that she somehow already knew everything.
“I sort of knew,” Lucas said suddenly, his voice a rough whisper. “I knew, the moment we opened the Gates, that it was the end for Lawrence.”
“He forced you,” said Rosie. “We all saw that.”
“I was scared of him.” Lucas’s black lashes swept down to veil his eyes. “I shouldn’t have been. I wish . . .”
“It had all been different. Yes, I know.”
The rocks stood solid against the sky, as if nothing had happened. Rosie reached out with her Aetherial senses; yes, the Dusklands were returning, like mist, which could be torn away by the wind and just as easily return. Letting herself blend into them for a second, she saw that the Gates were closed except for the narrow aperture of the Lychgate. Turning as she returned to surface reality, she saw Matthew walking tiredly up the hill, and a few yards behind him, Comyn, Phyll and a trailing handful of Vaethyr—the stricken remnants of the stag hunt.
“Matt?” said Rosie, going to her brother and touching his arm. “Where are you going?”
“To look for Faith and Heather, of course.”
“But there might be dangers, Aelyr predators seeking to brand you . . .”
“If there are, they’ll have the sense to leave me the hell alone,” he said savagely. “At least until I find Faith.”
He was in front of her, human; she saw the beginning of the change to his Otherworld self, a hint of striped tawny fur and liquid, animal eyes; then he was gone into the Dusklands, into the Lychgate. Rosie let him go. She lacked the energy or will to do otherwise.
When Comyn came limping up the hillside and into the dip where Rosie was with the others, Lucas went and blocked his path to the rocks.
“Well?” said Comyn, his voice gruff. “After all we endured last night, Lucas, are you going to prevent us inspecting the Gates for ourselves?”
“I’m asking for some respect, Uncle,” Lucas said. His voice was emotional, but clear and assertive. Everyone turned to listen. Rosie looked at her brother with astonished pride. He was suddenly no longer a colt but a handsome, self-assured man. “I’m asking you not to enter the Lychgate yet. The Gates will be sealed until tonight. Then there will be a simple, quiet procession in tribute to Lawrence.”
“Quite rightly so, but the Night of the Summer Stars—”
“Is not until July, two months away,” said Luc. “Yes, it will take place, but it will be a restrained event. D’you think I’m going to throw the portals wide open,
after what happened last night?” Comyn began to grumble, but Lucas stared him down. “What, did you expect to push me around, Uncle Com? I’m not a child. You don’t control me!”
“Obviously.” Comyn’s lips thinned, the expression of an old hand impatient with the self-delusions of a novice. “But neither are you initiated. None of you younger ones are. You can’t go in there unprepared. No fault of your own, but there are procedures, trials, traditions.”
“Really?” said Rosie. Approaching Comyn, she pulled up her sweater to show the spiral on her ribs “It all seemed pretty haphazard to me, as if the Aelyr are going claim their own whether you want them to or not.”
Lucas undid buttons to reveal the long-healed silver scar on his breastbone. “I’ve had mine for ages,” he said. Even Jon turned to Comyn, one thumb pushing down edge of his jeans to show a red-raw burn on his hip.
“Will this do?” said Jon. “I think you’ll find we’ve all got them. We didn’t get our ceremony, but they branded us like cattle anyway.”
Comyn surveyed their wounds and was satisfyingly lost for words. Finally he said, “So you understand, Lucas, that we all belong to the Spiral as much as we belong to Vaeth. The Gatekeeper’s duty is to let us roam freely and not hinder us.”
Lucas inclined his dark, tousled head. Rosie noticed that he and Iola had joined hands. She smiled. A ghost of hope pushed through the heavy glacial mass of her heart, a tiny ray of sunlight. “I’ve no intention of hindering anyone, Uncle Com. You’ve got what you wanted, the Great Gates open and a new Gatekeeper—but before you say one more word about duty, remember that the fact we’re standing here alive this morning is only because Lawrence sacrificed himself. He went into the Abyss to save us. Whatever he did wrong, he’s paid for it.”
Comyn stood like a wounded bear. “Finally did the right thing by destroying a demon of his own making,” he growled.
“He did the bravest thing I’ve ever seen!” Rosie exclaimed. “And so did Sam. Lawrence was trying to protect all of us. He threw himself on his sword so we could have the precious Gates back, and he did it to save his sons—but Brawth took one of them anyway.”
“Rosie’s right,” said Lucas. “I believe we could have helped Lawrence and avoided all this, if you’d given us time, Uncle, but you didn’t. I don’t believe that Brawth was ever Lawrence’s fault at all. It was more than that. It was real, it was always real. It was the shadow giant from the beginning of time. Lawrence was wrong; he blamed himself but he shouldn’t have done that. His fylgia did not create or wake Brawth. Just the opposite—his fylgia attached itself to Brawth in order to hold it back. That’s what I believe and always will. Everything Lawrence did was to protect us! Now my duty is to guard the Gates as best I can to protect both Vaeth and the Spiral. And that’s what I’ll do, with Iola’s help, as Lawrence taught me.”
In Elysion the storm had spent itself in a last surge of wind. Faith was hypersensitive to its moods now. She’d felt the wrench of the Great Gates opening, seen in her mind’s eye a great statue detach itself from the wall of the Abyss and stride towards the outer realms, churning the skies of the Spiral to chaos in its wake. And she and Ginny had talked and sung and played games with Heather, while a hurricane threatened to tear off the cottage roof above them.
The world hadn’t ended. They’d been spared.
Afterwards, Ginny headed for the portal, but Faith took Heather to the waterfall pool, where she felt safe. She looked up past the lush gardens of the cottage, up through the knotted woods of the valley, through all the rich greens and moist shadows, to the high land above. The sky was still wild, moodily violet and ragged with cloud.
“Mummy,” said Heather, “he’s found us.”
As she spoke, Faith felt a shiver of awareness. She was sensitive, but Heather was always ahead of her. Seconds later, he came into view, a man-beast with a lion’s mane of hair, running disheveled down the steep path towards her. Holding her daughter close, she stood her ground. Waves rippled through the fur like the wind through wheat and the beast was gone, morphing into plain human shape.
Matthew.
“Shall we hide in the water?” Heather asked.
He appeared ordinary, unkempt. Something in his demeanor made him seem raw, vulnerable and boyish. At Heather’s words, he looked simply aghast. “Faith,” he said, halting feet from her and holding out a hand, as if to a shy fawn. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.”
“I know, Matt,” she answered.
He frowned. “Is it really you? You seem different.”
“Yes, it’s me,” she answered. She was barefoot, in an ankle-length dress of teal cotton that clung to her slim body; her form was human, apart from blue-green tendrils among the brown fall of her hair.
“You look beautiful. And Heather . . . god, she’s grown.” His voice cracked. “I don’t know what to say.” He dropped to his knees in front of her and started sobbing, incoherent. She stood and watched. She felt strangely detached from this display, curious as a mermaid might be when confronted with emotion for the first time.
“I’m sorry for everything. For the way I treated you, taking you for granted, not loving you like you deserved. I wish I could take it all back. I love you, Faith. I never told you, because I was a contemptible ass. You’re my whole life.”
“But I’m not the same person.”
He looked up, blinking, as if he couldn’t believe her lack of reaction. “You’re still my Faith. Aetherial, human, I love you. Please. I don’t expect you to forgive me. How can you? But I had to tell you I’m sorry. So much has happened. Sam made me see . . .”
His head dropped and sobs shook him. A thread of pity tugged her heart. Her throat began to ache and her eyes to burn. She reached out and stroked his hair. Her tears dropped onto him. Her arms crept around his head and his around her hips and they clung to each other, one of his arms enfolding their daughter too. Heather hugged him back without inhibition, her blond head pressed to his.
“Come on, get up,” Faith said after a while. He obeyed and stood shakily before her. He’d lost weight. Every shred of mocking arrogance had gone out of him.
“I know I can never make up the time I wasted, but I want to try.” He took her hand, his fingers slippery with tears. “I need to explain—about the changing—and why I was angry—so much to talk about, if you’ll listen. Will you come home?”
The words cut her in half. The old Faith would have traded her soul to hear them . . . but the old Faith hadn’t known how to embrace a relationship of equals. “Matt, you don’t know what you’re asking. I’ve changed. I’m not afraid of you anymore.”
“Thank god! I don’t want you to be!”
“You will never bully me again. And if you ever frighten Heather again, I will kill you.”
Anguish passed over his face. “And you’d have every right, but I won’t. I’ve changed, too. Let me prove it.”
“You don’t know me,” she whispered.
“I know. I never did. All I want you to be is the real Faith. As for the real me—I’m a hopeless idiot, but I’d give my life to make you happy.”
Faith looked back at the cottage and the tumbling waterfall. She let her hand slide into Matthew’s palm, tight and close. “Come on, Heather. The game’s over now.”
When night fell, there was a procession in the dark. Lawrence and Sam had been placed on makeshift stretchers of poles and canvas, their bodies draped with black cloth embroidered with silver moons. Rosie and Matthew, Faith and Jessica were pallbearers for Sam; Lucas, Auberon, Virginia and Jon bore Lawrence. Together they carried father and son home to the Spiral.
Behind them came Iola, bearing a lantern; and trailing some way behind, Comyn, the Lyons, the Tulliver clan and a long procession of Vaethyr from the hunt. Everyone paid their respects. Lawrence, for all the conflict, had been the pivot of their existence.
Their clothes were somber. No one spoke. They were shadows drifting through the darkness. Instinctively they blended int
o the Dusklands so that a human eye would see no more than ghosts. The night shone more deeply and the grass became netted with silver webs. Freya’s Crown appeared in its true form, a silvery dolmen majestic against the sky. The Lychgate that Lucas had opened was narrow but distinct; the mouth of a burial chamber.
Jon hesitated. Ginny spoke softly to him, and after a moment he found his courage. The procession passed into the labyrinth.
On the far side were clasped trees, a winding path and forests moving softly like the rush of the ocean. Rosie was glad to find Elysion as she remembered. It was dark this side, too, as if the Spiral had sunk into mourning ready to receive them. Physically, no one shifted out of human form.
The path forked and they followed an unfamiliar branch through the forest, which took them far from the valley where—assuming the landscape played no tricks—Ginny lived. No one said which way to go. They simply knew, as if their ancestral memories had awoken with the Gates.
The ground rose. The forest cleared. There was a rugged hillside studded with rocks and low-growing vegetation. This plant cover was in bloom, each flower a tiny blue star. Their blue-lace shimmer lay in drifts up the sides of a big oblong stone lying on its back. It was a big, solid block of lapis lazuli. Rosie was beginning to know the runes carved in it; symbols for Elysion, Sibeyla, Naamon, Melusiel and Asru, other symbols that meant source, and mirror, and rebirth.
There was another beside it. Farther on, another. Rosie saw lapis biers set at irregular intervals all along the undulating hillside until it curved out of sight. All appeared to be empty.
Here they laid Lawrence and Sam side by side. Auberon turned back the black cloth, uncovering their faces. Their sculpted features pointed impassively at the stars. Exposing them to crows and vultures; that was how it felt.
Jon took Iola’s lantern and placed it on the dais at his father’s feet, then knelt on the ground, face hidden behind his long veil of hair. Candles were lit around him. The company stood all around the biers, watching over Lawrence and Sam in silence. That was all. No words, no ceremony. They simply stood and watched until night began to fade. This was the Aetherial custom.
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