Idol of Blood

by Jane Kindred

  He felt that she meant it. She believed her words, no matter how improbable they might be. And he wanted nothing more than to leave Soth Szofl and return with her to Rhyman. But across the ocean, beyond the Delta, the terrible darkness was roiling from the peak of Munt Zelfaal through the waters of the Filial and into the Anamnesis, poison seeping into his veins from a thousand leagues away, and he had no desire to go near it.

  He went back to his drawing. Perhaps if he could convey the darkness there, Ume would see it too and want to stay away. He couldn’t afford to be enticed by the promise of freedom when there was no freedom from this vision. Even so, he couldn’t help but be glad of Ume’s quiet presence. It was comforting to know there was someone here who saw him, who knew him as Pearl. And for the first time in his life, he felt connected to someone. Ra and Ahr and Merit had cared for him, and they were dear to him too, but Ume had known Alya.

  Still at his side watching him draw, Ume made a little gasp of recognition. Pearl had focused on the crags of the mountain at the base of the drawing, dark and foreboding beneath the city among the clouds.

  “Munt Zelfaal,” she said. “I used to live near it. What is that place on top of it?”

  “Soth AhlZel.” He’d forgotten not to speak. He’d also forgotten that he couldn’t hear the stories in this place, because they were suddenly bursting through like winds of howling madness into his brain. He knew exactly why he’d drawn it now, and exactly why Pike could not see these drawings. The creature prowling the menacing towers was Ra.

  Twenty-One: Deluge

  The rain, increasing steadily for days, was now coming down in torrents. Rem shouted to Geffn as they ran through the downpour, but his words were swallowed in the flood. Geffn nodded with his head down against the wind. Rem knew they couldn’t hear each other. It was more of an acknowledgment that they were acting together. There were canvas tarpaulins in the hayloft for frost, and if they could stake them to the ground and stretch them over the crops, they might save some. Peta and the others were sandbagging the well around the mound door, for in the few short hours of this unseasonable rain, the Filial had risen dangerously.

  They ran together through the doors of the barn, two ends of a tarp between them, and stretched it across the first parcel where the tomato and kerum plants were already sagging under the weight of water. They hammered the stakes in furiously, but it was hard work for two. Geffn had already lost hold of the tarp twice as the wind whipped it from his hands, and had to chase it as it tore stakes up out of the ground while the wind dragged it back from where it had come.

  “Damn it!” he bellowed into the din as it upended for the third time. The rain was painful, beating into his already sodden clothes like tiny fists.

  As he tore after the rebellious tarp, he saw it catch on something and swing peculiarly forward once more, as though propelled of its own accord. The end of it came toward him, and Jak dashed from under it and grabbed one of his stakes, dragging the far corner out to the edge of the parcel.

  “Welcome home!” Geffn shouted, and attempted to grin at Jak through the slashing rain.

  The three of them made faster work of the staking, and together they blanketed as much as they could cover with the remaining strips of canvas.

  When they returned beneath the mound, they found Peta standing in the entryway looking up at the ceiling.

  “What is it?” Rem followed her gaze, his tone worried. “It’s sound against water.”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever had such water.” Peta turned and saw Jak among them, and her look grew visibly relieved. “Jak.” Her voice wavered as they embraced, “I was terrified at the thought of you alone in that rabbit hole of a mound. Thank sooth you’ve come home.”

  “I laid the stones of Mound Ahr with him myself,” Jak objected. “It’s well made.”

  “Are you here to stay?” asked Rem.

  Mell appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Jak!” She joined the embrace, and Keiren followed from the interior of the mound.

  “With reservation,” said Jak from within the hub of their embrace. “I mean to open some serious discourse on the question of fidelity. What does it mean, for instance, to write a name into the moundhold? What do we owe our moundmates?”

  “You’re back.” Keiren grinned and slapped Jak’s shoulder. “We haven’t had a decent argument here since winter.”

  Jak undressed later by the flickering lamplight, peeling off garments that seemed to weigh a dozen pounds each with so much water in them. Naked before the wardrobe, Jak looked at the red wheals the rain had beaten into the tanned skin. How old it made Jak look, bruised and wet. Jak was often startled these days to find a body that was no longer twenty, as though one could stand at the doorway of adulthood forever, unchanged. Of course, some did. Take Ra, for instance. Jak was thirty-two, but to Jak, at this moment, this body appeared ancient.

  Having left everything at Mound Ahr, Jak lay down on the uncovered tick, stomach against the mattress and arms stretched out across its width. The frame beneath the mattress had been made by Jak’s own hand before the chaos of Ra’s coming. It was a work of pride and patience, representing the uncomplicated serenity of Jak’s life before, without the entanglement of love—without the sting of memory. Jak had been self-contained and content, and pleased to be so. Nothing else had been necessary. Only Geffn’s grievance had marred the calm of Jak’s conscience then.

  It was like being adrift at sea in a solitary, isolated vessel to lie upon this bed. All that Jak owned was here. All that Jak was, was here. Let the rest be forgotten. How dare you forget me? reproached a voice in Jak’s head. The rain poured in sheets over the window above and the hiss of it lulled Jak to sleep.

  Inside her temple, Ra sat before a divining pool with a surface as still and flat as a sheet of marble. It was a room Ra had never seen Shiva enter. Small and dark. And cold. Young Ra had often come here to escape the oppression of his mother’s dislike, wondering at what might have come from the obsidian depths. Perhaps it had been used early in Shiva’s reign, before she’d perfected her cool, unaffected conjuring. Since Ra’s time, one had only to come before Shiva and, should she choose to bless, the thing desired would be instantly material. She conjured as though it bored her.

  Ra disturbed the plane of the dark pool. Was it only water, a replica of Ra’s making that held no potency, or had she resurrected the cold, magical womb of Shiva herself? She thrust in an arm. The substance was bitterly frigid. Such water ought to have been ice, was colder than ice, but defied the laws of harmony with its liquid state. A stabbing pain gripped her arm, and then all feeling left it. Ra drew it out, limp. It was an appealing shade of blue.

  The renaissanced Ra, pathetic rabbit, had formed herself of the chemical of spirit, invisible elements in air that had willed themselves into being. She’d stood naked in the snow, too stupid in her deliberately empty state—designed to make her innocent, which it had not—to think of simply conjuring warmth.

  Someone else had been a rabbit. Ra’s stomach burned with a fleeting twist of misery.

  The same chemical alliance had brought forth the majestic mountain city she had lately resurrected. All things imagined were birthed of these same unions. Shiva’s pool, deceptive water, consisted of such elements. She was Ra. She commanded them. She would create.

  “Minions!” cried Ra as she plunged both arms into the darkness. “Come forth and worship me!”

  The water changed from cold to heat, boiling between her fingers and solidifying as she compressed the heat within her hands. She was crushing the very molecules of liquid and air, and from this pressure, something fused. She drew this more dense matter from the murk and let it fall heavily to the tile, its weight multiplying in the lesser medium of air. Like her frozen arms, it was blue.

  It was a child.

  Ra began to laugh, the small, domed room echoing with the force of her mock
ery as though a thousand Ras had joined her.

  The heavy autumn storm hadn’t let up. Geffn rose early out of habit and found the sky as dark as it was in winter at this hour. He dressed and set out for the kitchen to start the morning’s kerum, pausing as he passed Jak’s door. It was open just an inch, and through it in the gloom, he could see Jak sprawled facedown on the bed, uncovered in every sense of the word. He returned to his room and took the quilt from his own bed, bringing it back with him.

  Standing beside the bed, he observed Jak a moment. In this position, his former mate was as sexless as Jak had ever desired to be. Broad muscles defined the back, equalized the hips and waist, and flattened the buttocks in a tight, smooth slope that could have been carved by Deltan artisans. Jak was wiry but fine, an asexual archetype of the human body.

  He laid the quilt over this perfection and watched it fall in a drapery of black and pale rose over the well-defined anatomy. Jak had made this quilt. It was a handfasting present. He tucked it up around the cool shoulders, letting one hand linger for a moment. That this body, this quintessential vessel of human divinity, had been violated and tormented, was, when he allowed himself to think of it, more than he could bear. His organs and his entrails felt it like knives digging into them, a merciless carving out. His eyes and his throat were painful swellings beneath the knifepoints.

  So many things made sense to him now: that Jak had spent so many days in this mound as a child, instead of her own; that she’d been a quiet, altogether different person in the presence of Kol; that she’d hated to go home. Geffn had known little of Kol, except that Jak had never referred to him as her father. He ought to have wondered. He ought to have known.

  He smoothed a crescent of Jak’s hair behind one ear, and Jak stirred. Geffn stepped back and tried to slip out quietly, but Jak’s head lifted, and the gray eyes observed him at the door.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. You looked cold.”

  “Geff,” Jak murmured sleepily. “Come here. I miss you.”

  The words drove a swell of relief over him. The loss of their friendship had been worse than the loss of his idyllic love. He came to the bedside, and Jak lifted the blanket and patted the bed.

  “Keep me company. Lie with me a moment the way we used to on the moor. I feel so old.”

  Geffn smiled, amused. “You’re not dressed.”

  “I don’t care—if you don’t.” Jak gave him a coy look. “You’ll be a gentleman, of course.”

  He laughed. “Of course,” he answered, and climbed under the quilt next to the warming body.

  Jak’s arms enveloped him, and he felt the warmth against his back, the strong arms across his chest as Jak drew close behind him. He crossed his arms over Jak’s and let their fingers lock together. The sharp chin rested on his shoulder, head against his cheek. He closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar scent. He’d missed Jak also.

  “Why on earth do you feel old?” he mused.

  “My youth is gone,” said Jak with a rueful laugh. “Things aren’t where they used to be.”

  Geffn turned halfway and nudged Jak’s ribs in protest. “That’s ridiculous. You look better now than you did at twenty.”

  Jak laughed. “You’re a liar, but that’s sweet.” Geffn felt the quick press of Jak’s lips against his cheek. “And you’re so young, still.”

  “Sooth,” protested Geffn. “I’m only two years younger than you. Stop talking like an old…person.”

  Jak hugged him again. “You’ve always been so conscientious about it, even when you hated me for hurting you. You don’t know how much it means to me that you accept who I am.”

  Geffn smoothed his hand over Jak’s forearm. It hadn’t been easy for him to lose the pronoun he associated with his lover. He’d thought at first that respecting Jak’s wishes would keep his mate from slipping farther away. But more than that, he respected Jak above all others. Jak could have said, I am a partridge, you must now call me Bird, and he would have done so. Only Jak had ever understood how lost he felt, how inadequate in the shadow of his dead brother, Pim, who could do no wrong simply because he was gone. He’d tried to fill his brother’s shoes, but Jak had always insisted that he owed nothing to Pim, that Rem and Peta were sad fools tormented by a ghost if they couldn’t see him for who he was. Jak had valued Geffn as no one had.

  He had always desired Jak, ever since he knew what desire was. He’d loved Jak’s body, loved the woman as much as the soul. But when Jak had said, “I am no longer ‘she’,” he’d honored that and tried—how he’d tried—to treat Jak without regard to gender. The hesitation he’d felt before in intimacy became a solid barrier between them. He would kiss Jak’s breasts and be rejected for focusing on their symbolism. He would try to enter Jak’s body, and Jak would turn away, disappointed that he couldn’t separate passion from the need to “pierce and invade”. He understood now that those infractions had nothing to do with gender or its lack, and he ached to think he couldn’t have recognized it, couldn’t have avoided his unwitting torment of the one he loved.

  He was becoming uncomfortable with Jak so close to him. His body had responded to the once-familiar touch, and Jak wouldn’t be pleased. He needed to escape before either of them were embarrassed.

  Geffn stirred. “I’d better get the kerum started.”

  “Why?” murmured Jak against his shoulder. “No one will be up for hours.”

  He cleared his throat and pulled away from Jak’s embrace. “I’m up,” he admitted grimly. “I think I’d better go.”

  Jak’s arm slid down and rested on his waist. “Is it wrong of me to wish you’d touch me? Would it be terrible?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jak…”

  Jak’s arms loosened and pulled away. “I know. I’m sorry, Geffn. I didn’t mean to be cruel.”

  Geffn kept his eyes closed. “I would give anything to make love to you.”

  Jak moved over and lay on the mattress against folded arms, and Geffn rolled onto his back, breathing out his regret. He opened his eyes and found Jak looking at him thoughtfully.

  “Do you want to?” Jak whispered with a nostalgic smile. “Should we?”

  He wasn’t sure whether this was a proposition or simply a fond recollection of their first time together, when Jak had said those same words to him before finally letting him in. He reached toward Jak’s mouth and attempted a gentle kiss, shocked to find himself being kissed back, passionately. Jak moved closer, stretching over his chest. He was painfully aware of Jak’s nakedness.

  “I want you to,” whispered Jak. “But it’s unfair.” The dusty head rested against his pounding heart. “Shit, what’s wrong with me? Why do I do these things to you?”

  “Unfair?” Geffn pushed back the gentle curve of hair. “Why? Because you’re not in love with me? Because it would only be an act of comfort and nothing more?” He kissed the top of Jak’s head. “I know all that, Jak. I’m not a hotheaded youth anymore. Our union is over, but if you want the comfort of my body, I’ll give it to you.”

  “Again,” said Jak, one hand stealing down over his hardened cock. “Seducing you.”

  “It’s not seduction.” He pulled his shirt over his head and drew Jak close. “I want to touch you this way again, even if it’s just once more.”

  Jak pressed the softness of the breasts from which he’d been banished against his bare skin, peeling him out of his morning pants, and stretched one leg across him.

  “Tell me what to do,” said Geffn. “Tell me what not to do. I want to please you.”

  “Do what you feel. Show me how you feel.”

  Geffn reached up to Jak’s mouth once more and pressed Jak against him as they kissed. It was enough to taste that mouth again, to feel the softness of the tongue, to be robbed of breath. Jak straddled him, and the wetness and heat of Jak’s arousal pressed against his thigh. He let go of the p
leasant mouth and put his hands beneath Jak’s hips, raising them with Jak’s knees braced beside him. There was more he wanted to taste.

  Jak settled over him, filling Geffn’s mouth with the musky sweetness of cunt, and he kissed it as he’d kissed the other lips. Jak moaned and pressed in deeper, making Geffn’s mouth curve upward into Jak with an invisible smile. He held Jak to him with his hands against the hard buttocks, and Jak gave another stifled cry of pleasure, rocking forward against his mouth with feet in the air and only Geffn’s hands for support. Geffn thrust his face upward to meet Jak’s involuntary bobbing against his tongue, the delicate taste of Jak overwhelming, the opened core of Jak like drinkable silk.

  Geffn moaned with unbridled enjoyment, and Jak gave a sudden jerk. He looked up the steep slope of Jak’s body, eyes flitting over the hard peaks of the petite nipples and the glistening of sweat on the soft cups, and sought Jak’s face with concern. Jak, with both hands grasping the dusty hair, was trembling in the blush of orgasm. He went at his attentions with greater enthusiasm, and Jak, eyes wide, brought down one arm and bit it on an unstoppable groan.

  As the tight body went weak, Geffn wrapped his arms around the firm waist and slid Jak down to his chest.

  “I’ve missed you too,” he said with a grin.

  Jak’s face was delicately pink, and Geffn realized he was seeing true embarrassment in it for the first time he could recall. He drew his friend down beside him and delivered a light kiss that made Jak whimper at the unexpected taste.

  “Sooth,” he swore, pressing close. “Don’t be embarrassed about feeling pleasure. Gods, I thought I’d never see it. You’re beautiful.”

  Fingers threading through Geffn’s hair, Jak let out a quiet laugh. “Fucking sooth, Geff. If only I’d told you to do what you felt years ago.” When Geffn smiled, Jak stroked the long fingers along the side of his face. “I want to give you the same. If you want to—in the traditional way. I wouldn’t mind having you inside me.”