by John Tristan
Now there was a twitch of feeling in her carved-marble face. “I’m sure you are.”
Amon straightened up, and Caedian stepped forward so they were side by side. The elf was almost smiling now, despite everything.
“Shouldn’t you be going now, Mother? I am sure you will wish to make an early appearance.”
She shook her head. “You will be the death of me, my dearest.”
“What about Seoras? Who was the death of him?”
Her eyelids fluttered, as if she was about to weep, but her face remained stony. “Seoras sought out his own death, in the darkest places of our domain.” She glanced at Amon for a moment, then back at her son. “It would break my heart if you followed his path.”
Before Caedian could respond, she swept herself into the moving room, her bodyguard-cum-servant behind her. The doors shut, though the wall remained open. Caedian counted until five under his breath and then let out a long and shivery sigh. “Well,” he said, in a watery kind of voice, “I suppose we had best follow her.”
Amon lowered his head. “Let me get my boots on.”
Chapter Fourteen
The moving room had been climbing gradually upward for almost half an hour now, Amon was sure of it; either that, or time had lost its meaning and become a kind of formless molasses.
If he was honest with himself, gauging the possibility of one against the other wasn’t as easy as it would be in normal circumstances. The world seemed to have turned itself sideways and skewed, like a hall of broken mirrors. He glanced to the man standing a little in front of him wearing a coat of white fur over his lean, wiry shoulders, staring straight ahead with his eyes fixed on the ivory doorknob.
“How much longer?” Amon dared to ask after a while.
“We are nearly there.” Caedian’s voice was high and strangled—whether with grief or with nerves, or both, Amon could not quite tell. His face was near as stony as his mother’s.
“What shall I do, when we get there?”
The question seemed to steady him. He bit his lip for a moment, then nodded to himself. “Follow my lead. Do not speak unless you are spoken to. Don’t answer any questions, should you be asked, especially about Seoras—let me speak instead. And stay close, whatever you do.”
“You make it sound like we’re going into a pit of vipers rather than a memorial.”
“Ha,” he said, and nothing more.
The moving room shuddered to a halt—the long slack of the rope-vine that drew it upward finally running out. With a deep breath, Caedian stepped forward and turned the ivory knob. “Are you ready for this?”
“I suppose I’ll have to be...m’lord.”
Caedian smiled at him and opened the door.
If Amon had not been inured, at least a little, to elf extravagance by the size of Caedian’s quarters, the sight of this chamber might have shocked him into sheer insensibility. As it was, his jaw dropped, and he had to force himself to snap his mouth shut so he would not look like a mouth-breathing yokel. Not that he wasn’t a yokel here, but for Caedian’s sake he would try to play the honored guest.
At first glance the chamber seemed a cave carved deep in the rock of the earth, smooth and dark, following the curve of some ancient river. Then he saw they were inside one of the great Tree’s massive branches, hollowed out to serve as this great room. Soft green grass carpeted the room, shot through here and there with bright little flowers and polished stones. Pillars of gold and jade jutted up from the stone strips of the floor; the high ceiling dripped with thick lightvines and massive glowing fruits.
A woman in white was standing by a little golden pillar in front of them. When she got a look at Amon, her soft smile turned brittle, and she walked up to Caedian with quick little steps, her wooden-soled shoes clicking on the stone floor. “Lord Caedian. Our heart aches for your loss. Shall I direct your servant to—?”
“He isn’t my servant,” Caedian said.
Her brittle smile trembled. “A...a guest, my lord?”
Caedian’s expression was a nasty little masterpiece, all imperious surprise. “What else would he be?”
“B-but—” The woman in white blinked, reduced to near tears in her helplessness, and dropped her voice to a fluting whisper. “H-how do I announce him, m’lord?”
“His name is Amon Vraja.” He touched Amon’s arm, very lightly. “And he is my guest. What more do you need to know?”
The woman gathered herself, gave a brisk nod and cleared her throat. When next she spoke, it was no longer in that fluting whisper but in a firm, clear tone that rang out across the massive room. “Lord Caedian and his guest, Amon Vraja.”
A whisper of interest rose from the other mourners like invisible smoke. It permeated the room, snaking into Amon’s ears—it was not quite disapproval, he thought, though it teetered on the brink of it. The elves and their servants who had gathered here were more curious than shocked by his presence.
“Come on,” Caedian said under his breath, and he pulled him deeper into the chamber. They went past the white-clad humans standing in attendance with their eyes averted, past wooden tables heaped high with food, past tall elves listing forward with cooed condolences.
Liléan sat in an empty circle of stone, one long-fingered hand resting on what looked like a great wooden egg. It was pale and smooth against the dark of her skin, with a lid of beaten gold festooned with chips of glass or diamond.
Amon knew instantly what it was. His mother had been interred in similar style, though not nearly as grandly. Her crypt had been beaten steel, suiting a warrior. Her resting place lay outside the canopy of the City, as did all those of its old heroes; he had never seen it, but he had trusted Zoran’s word on her last resting place.
When Zoran had died, there’d been no grand crypt waiting for him, nor even a sky burial on the edge of the Verdancy, which any in the City could hope for as their final reward. His body had been taken by men in plague masks, once they’d managed to keep Amon subdued. In those days, they still feared halfdeath would be a plague, carried on the air rather than in the blood. They might have burned Zoran’s body, or dissolved it in acid—Amon never knew.
Caedian took a few halting steps forward. His mother looked up, her eyes faraway. “Caedian,” she said.
“I want to see him.”
She stood up, her body blocking Caedian’s path to the coffin-crypt. “No, Caedian.”
“I deserve that much.” He was looking past her, not meeting her eyes—not out of shame, but because all he could see was that wooden egg. “We came into the world together, Mother.”
“I know that best of all.”
“Let me see him.”
“Caedian, my dearest—”
“I know. It will not be a pretty sight.”
“It is worse than that. You will not recognize him.” Her voice was cold now. “He was burned alive.”
That snapped his eyes away from the coffin-crypt and locked them on to hers. This time, he spoke in a whisper. “Let me see him. One last time.”
She gave an infinitesimal nod and stood aside. Caedian’s fingers curled into claws at the edges of the egg’s beautiful lid. He lifted it; Amon could see by the way his muscles moved under his white fur coat that it was heavy, causing even an elf to strain.
Then it stood open on golden hinges. Caedian looked down into a shadowed hollow. From where he stood, Amon could see nothing except a faint suggestion of a husked shape within the crypt, but he could smell something: a dry, unpleasant kind of smell, overlaid with faint top notes of meat and burned hair.
Caedian looked down into the hollow for a long while. His mother came up behind him and laid her hand on his shoulder; he did not move, nor acknowledge her presence. After a moment, she withdrew it. “You will see him again, in the Great Mother’s light.”
“He will be hung from a high branch,” Liléan said. “The entire City will look up at his resting place.”
Now he shrugged off her touch, moving with strange and stilted grace, as if he were a sequence of cunning sketches rather than a real and living being. Without a word he walked away from his brother’s beautiful crypt and took Amon by the arm, near-dragging him along. Liléan watched them go, expressionless, her hands hanging like limp flowers at her side.
Once they had passed out of her earshot, Caedian spoke. “We have to go.” It was said in an almost voiceless whisper, but Amon heard it clear enough.
“Go? Leave the memorial?” Amon wrinkled his forehead. “But—”
“We have to go,” he repeated, in a kind of flat tone that chilled Amon to the bone more than any rage or tantrum. “Please.”
It was the please that clinched it. Amon stood up straight and gave him a nod. “All right. Let’s go.”
Caedian moved away from the line of elves, and Amon followed, ignoring the murmurs that started up behind them. They made their way toward the white, small door in the wall that would lead them back to Caedian’s home.
Caedian walked like an automaton, grim and unspeaking, his legs moving up and down as if some other force was in control of them. Still, he managed to make it to his moving room. Once he wrenched the door closed, Caedian slumped against the wall and slid to his haunches. All the mechanical motion had gone from his limbs, as if some inner spool had run out, and he hugged his knees like a lost child.
Reflexively Amon kneeled down in front of him. “Caedian,” he said.
He didn’t respond. He was shaking, Amon saw, shivering from head to toe, as if he’d just emerged from icy water.
“Caedian,” Amon said again—there was a strain of panic in his voice now. “What’s wrong?”
The elf looked up, his purple eyes big and blank. “That was not my brother.”
Chapter Fifteen
For a moment Amon was dumbstruck. “What?” he finally managed.
“The corpse they paraded out for us.” Caedian voice was flat and toneless. “That was not my brother.”
Amon opened his mouth. He snapped it shut with an audible click of his teeth, then shook his head. “He was burned—”
“Beyond recognition. I know.” He shook his head. His shoulders were starting to shake; the next time he spoke, his voice was threaded through with a kind of horrid, hysterical laughter. “But I would know him anywhere, no matter what. We came into this world hand in hand.” His breaths came so fast it sounded as if he had been running. “That is not my brother, Amon, I swear it.”
Amon was silent. What could he say in response? It sounded like a nightmare, like some sleep-wrought horror that should have been dispelled by the bright leaf-light of day...but Caedian’s eyes were not those of a man coming awake. They were utterly lucid, and utterly frightened.
Caedian leaned his head back against the wall of the moving room and laughed; a kind of laugh that was equal parts tears and madness, a kind of laugh that could dissolve into screaming. For a moment Amon was lost, completely lost—What do I do now? he thought—but when the first real tears trickled down Caedian’s face he moved on instinct and put his arms around him.
Instantly, the crazed laughter stopped, and Caedian went very quiet. Amon thought that he would rage and yell now, accusing Amon of...of all sorts of things, but that would still be better than that horrid, eerie laughter.
He did not rage. He did not yell. He allowed Amon to hold him for a moment, without moving, then snaked one cautious hand up and placed it on Amon’s waist.
His touch was very warm. The palm of his hand felt almost feverish through Amon’s borrowed clothes. His face was very close to Amon’s cheek, though not quite touching it. If he darted his gaze just right, Amon could see the shadowy curve of his neck and the fluttering movement of his heartbeat pulsing there.
He forced himself to breathe slowly, deliberately, trying to keep his own heartbeat under control. Caedian’s scent was all around him, soft and insistent—like a slipsilk blanket stretched to encompass Amon’s bulk. Some instinct had knitted the rhythm of their breathing together; when Amon breathed in, Caedian did, until there seemed to be only one breath between them.
Amon dared to reach one hand up to stroke Caedian’s hair. When he reached the softness at his nape, Amon let out a low, involuntary groan. Their breaths mingled—he leaned in, and tasted Caedian’s mouth.
The moving room came to a slow, syrupy halt. For a moment neither of them moved. Then Caedian tensed his limbs and Amon almost leaped backward, stepping away so that the elf could open the door into his chambers. Now it would come, Amon thought, now there would be the recriminations, but instead Caedian stepped into his quarters like a man dreaming.
When he turned to face Amon, his face was in shadow. “Aren’t you coming in?”
Amon remained still, standing in the moving room like a man expecting to be dismissed. Then he took a hesitant step forward. Caedian shrugged off his white fur coat; it pooled around him on the floor. Still moving with that dreamy slowness, he kicked off first one shoe, then the other, sending them to opposite corners of the room.
Amon stepped closer. With him still in his boots and Caedian barefoot, the elf barely came up to the hollow of his neck. “My lord,” Amon said, in a voice he did not recognize as his own.
“Don’t,” Caedian said, and now the tears were falling, gleaming on his skin like diamonds in the dark. “Don’t. Call me by my name.”
Amon hitched a breath. “Caedian...”
“Amon.” He reached out to him, brushing the tips of his fingers against Amon’s cheek. “Will you stay with me, please? I want to—to be with you. Will you...?” He swallowed, leaving the last question unasked, a silence trembling in the air between them.
Amon stepped forward, haltingly at first. Reason held him back, but all his instincts were roaring out that Caedian wanted him. His heart was beating very fast; he could feel it in his lips, in the hollow of his belly. Was this—this unlikely desire—the lie that he had sensed before?
“Please,” Caedian said again, a whisper with the rising tone of a question.
In the end, there was no answer he could give save the strength of his embrace.
They half fell together, kneeling on the still-warm softness of Caedian’s coat. Amon cradled Caedian’s head in one hand, the silk-soft feel of his hair slipping like water through his fingers. Caedian leaned in to the touch and put his arms around Amon’s waist, pulling himself close so there was almost no part of them that was not touching. He kissed the line of Amon’s jaw with hungry indelicacy; Amon could feel the press of his teeth, strangely sharp.
The dark pulse of his desire was in him now, larger than the beat of his heart; blood rushed in his ears like a whisper, wordless and urgent. He fought it down, breathing hard. The hand he had tangled in Caedian’s hair was trembling; the other was fisted and motionless at his side. He held himself still as Caedian’s hands undressed him, revealing the broad expanse of his chest, hairy and black-veined.
Caedian swept his fingers over Amon’s chest in a careful caress. His eyes seemed very large, the black of the pupil near-swamping the bright purple of the iris. His hand traveled downward along the trail of dark hair to the belt of the slipsilk kilt. “May I?” He spoke soft and unsure. “I want to see you.”
Amon nodded, not trusting to his voice. He lifted his hips and let Caedian slip the kilt off of him. He was nearly naked now, shirt hanging loose off his shoulders, the kilt discarded beneath them. He screwed his eyes shut, blood rushing like fire in every vein. No one had seen him naked before, not since he’d grown to manhood. “I’m
sorry,” he said, not quite knowing why.
“Shh.” Caedian took his clenched fist and unfolded the fingers one by one, then guided Amon’s hand to the laces of his shirt. His mouth was half-open; he licked his lips, leaving them wet and shining. “Don’t you want to see me?”
Amon felt a growl build low in his throat, a throb almost below the level of hearing. He yanked hard at Caedian’s shirt, not bothering with the laces. It came apart with a sweet and satisfying rip. He tore at Caedian’s trousers, then—one more pull, one more twist, and the elf would be naked before him. The thought near-dizzied him; it filled his whole mind, a bright obsession.
Between his legs Caedian was nearly hairless, with only a pale shadow where Amon had a thatch. His thighs were corded with muscle; between them he was all hardness and heat. Amon felt an echo of that heat at the base of his own spine and nestled just under his ribs.
For a moment—one narrow space between hard breaths—he had to stop. Had to look, to let his eyes rove over every inch of Caedian, from the dark gold of his neck to the white shadow of hair at the juncture of his loins. Then he took Caedian’s thighs in his hands and spread them apart so that the hollow between them presented a perfect target.
He slid between Caedian’s legs, marveling at the feel of the two of them fitting together. One hand still held Caedian’s thigh, squeezing and fondling; the other fisted in his hair and pulled back his head so that Amon could bend down and feast with hot tongue on the curve of his neck. Amon’s thoughts were wild and wordless, but deep inside there was still a cold, sad whisper: Cherish this, cherish this, take all that you can because you will never have more.
Caedian ground his hips against him, and pressed one hand’s fingers bruisingly deep into Amon’s biceps. The other hand was between the elf’s own legs, groping toward his pleasure until—breathless, shivering—he stopped, his hand slick and slackening. The last shudder of his spasm drove Amon on; he rocked his hips, pressing his hardness between Caedian’s thighs. A moment later he was coming, hard, a brief hot starburst that rose from between his legs to blur out the world behind his eyes.