“What do you mean?”
Kjieran angled a look at him. “When I place my attention where those memories ought to be…all I see is you.”
Darshan frowned. He considered Kjieran’s last comment as well as his earlier one. In truth, the entire Dreamscape felt different. Perhaps, as Kjieran had said, they were both weaving the dream that day.
Darshan’s dreams had often ridden a heady edge—desire at war with betrayal, lust and fury courting one another with explosive disapprobation—while the dream now felt oddly peaceful, as if their two minds had finally achieved an equilibrium.
“The Goddess said I would be able to find the Returning…” A furrow twitched between Kjieran’s brows as he strolled. His thoughts had clearly traveled elsewhere.
But Darshan halted, rooted by the word. “Goddess?”
Kjieran turned back to face him and pushed hands into his pockets. “I dreamed of her, there before the end.” He looked Darshan over. “I assumed you knew.”
Talk of goddesses immediately roused Darshan’s possessive will. “What did you assume I knew?”
Kjieran’s colorless gaze became distant again. “I felt you so strongly in my thoughts there at the end. It seemed that you must surely know my mind completely.” A contemplative thought hung in the silence. He gave him an apologetic glance. “I thought you knew that I’d come to you under false pretenses; that I never stopped serving my king. A truthreader’s oaths to a liege are as binding as the pattern you worked to seal me to yourself, my lord.”
Darshan felt that old betrayal come surging towards the surface anew, but the aether of Kjieran’s dreaming slowed its ascent. Where he usually found a dagger of sharp censure ready to hand, now it had to drive through Kjieran’s own rationale. By the time it reached Darshan, Kjieran’s viewpoint had dulled its edge.
Darshan started walking again, his mind pensive now, mulling over the changeling dream and the new ideas he was suddenly able to recognize and understand. As they rounded another hill, a new vista opened with a new shift of perspective, much like what Darshan was experiencing just then. “The landscape of your dreams colors my understanding.” He cast his acolyte a sidelong eye and clasped hands behind his back again. “I see grave purpose in your choices. I did not see this before.”
“That’s true.” Kjieran agreed quietly.
“This causes me conflict.”
Kjieran glanced to him. “I understand that, too.” The look in his eyes showed that he did indeed understand the implications, yet the smile twitching on his lips betrayed an uncharacteristic amusement at it.
Darshan frowned at him.
Kjieran returned his smiling attention to the view. “If I have any say in the Returning, I would like to find my new life here.”
Darshan considered this for a time. “Do you have such say?”
“I don’t know.” Kjieran flashed a wry smile. “For all we understand about the Returning, much of it remains a vast unknown. If anyone could’ve spoken on such matters, it would’ve been Isabel van Gelderan.”
The name pulled a pause in Darshan’s step. “Why?”
“She’s Epiphany’s Prophet.” Kjieran pushed his wind-blown hair from his eyes and lifted his face to the sky. He wore a soft smile, as if drinking in the pleasure of the sun’s warmth. “Some legends speak of Cephrael as choosing the time you will die and Epiphany the time you’ll Return. Others speak of both of them as manning the gates of Annwn, the Extian Doors, portal to the Returning.”
“Epiphany…” Darshan explored the patterns of Her name. “Is She the goddess you spoke of just now?”
“Yes.”
“And She spoke to you?”
“I saw her there, at the end.” Kjieran’s expression seemed nearly beatific as he recalled that moment. Then he focused back on Darshan. “Didn’t you see Her also?”
Darshan gave a rueful grunt. “Apparently the goddess found my presence unsuitable.”
Kjieran dropped a smile to his toes at this.
Darshan looked him over circumspectly. “You seem different as well.”
“I suppose I must.” Kjieran exhaled a measured breath. “Through the time I’ve spent in your dreams, I’ve come to understand you better also, my lord.”
“Have you?”
Darshan was feeling a pulsating dissatisfaction that intensified with every step they took down the hill together. The old Kjieran had often roused feelings of betrayal, but this Kjieran, with his dazzling eyes and ready grins, only roused Darshan’s desire. He clenched his jaw and looked back to the view. “I feel like you’re holding me hostage.”
Kjieran burst into laughter. “I’m holding you hostage?” He shot Darshan a quick, flashing smile that only made Darshan ache all the more.
He regarded Kjieran beneath a brooding malcontent. “Because you chose death over an eternity with me.” It was the first time he’d ever spoken this hateful truth.
Kjieran stopped walking and turned to face him. His crystalline eyes offered apology and something else that Darshan couldn’t decipher, yet which drew a taut thread through him. They stood barely a hand’s width apart, yet Darshan felt as if Kjieran was entirely out of his reach. “I wouldn’t make the same choice today, my lord.”
A puff of disbelief escaped Darshan. “I’m meant to trust this now, when you dissembled before me for so long?”
Kjieran gave a sudden grin that he quickly smothered as he dropped his gaze, but Darshan suspected the smile had merely gone underground. He looked him over speculatively. “You hide your thoughts from me again. Go on then, speak your mind.”
A shadow of that smile returned as Kjieran looked back to him. “I was only thinking…would you ever have imagined that someone in your temple didn’t serve you wholly?”
Darshan’s gaze darkened as he took Kjieran’s meaning. “You are a vexatious spirit.”
A broad grin split Kjieran’s face. He started walking again, inviting Darshan to follow with an amused glance. “My lord, you must admit the truth in my statement. You’re utterly blind to the idea that anyone could be other than as you assume them to be. You cast compulsion with your gaze and mold the world to your intent and make everyone in it take the shape of your expectations.”
This truth, so boldly stated, gave Darshan pause. He stared hard at Kjieran.
Seeing that his words had hit the mark, Kjieran laid his hand on Darshan’s arm and said more gently, “You’ve never given any of us the chance to be other than as you decided we are.”
For a long moment, Darshan held his gaze in silence, with each inhalation feeling that spear of truth penetrating more deeply, with each exhalation feeling pierced by painfully acute threads of promise.
“And what if I did?” Even as he said the words, he couldn’t quite believe they were crossing his tongue. “What if I walked through the world and looked with different eyes…would you walk with me?”
Kjieran opened his mouth to respond but then simply stood there, grounded by surprise. He searched Darshan’s gaze, gleaning meaning and understanding through their shared dream. “I…would try, my lord.” He pushed a hand through his hair and blew out an explosive breath. “Lord and the Lady…” he lifted a momentous look back to Darshan. “I have no idea how to go about finding you in the waking world.”
Darshan felt those threads of promise disintegrating.
Kjieran reached for his hand. “But let us try at least. When you wake, reach out to me—perhaps in the way you contact your brothers?”
Darshan considered him deeply; likewise what he was committing himself to doing. “Very well. I will call upon you, Kjieran. Do not disappoint me.”
Kjieran held his gaze with large eyes. “I very much hope not to, my lord.”
*—*
Darshan rose from his bed and walked outside beneath a shadowed gallery where a storm was lashing the stones. It seemed he summoned storms with his dreams even when they weren’t tumultuous.
And before the dream…he hardly remember
ed stumbling out of Shadow, or crawling into bed with the flesh of his shell still smoking from exposure to Mithaiya’s sun.
And how is the little drachwyr faring, I wonder?
Was she still drinking in her mother sun’s light, repairing the damage he’d done to her? His claws of deyjiin had dug in deep and drained her badly. In retrospect, perhaps he shouldn’t have barged into her territory issuing demands. A little of Pelas’s favored diplomacy might’ve served his purposes better.
Beyond the rain-swept portico, the storm was making night of the day. Long sheets of rain charged across the land, while charcoal clouds blanketed the distant mountains.
The wind tore at Darshan’s singed and tangled hair but caressed his bare flesh, leaving the impression of a damp kisses while electrically charged particles tingled his skin. The latter had taken on a bronze hue since his unexpected foray to Mithaiya’s molten planet, but otherwise his shell had healed well.
He couldn’t say the same about his hair.
A subtle smile lifted one corner of Darshan’s mouth. The little drachwyr had gotten the better of him, no doubt. He admired her for that.
‘The moment you step out of that temple of yours, you’ll be far out of your depth.’ Shail’s warning held new meaning for him now. He’d never imagined there would be others on this plane who could challenge him.
Darshan walked to the edge of the gallery and leaned a muscled shoulder against a column, his gaze seeing not the storm-washed world but the bright day he’d left behind in Kjieran’s dream.
For the first time, he’d woven a dream of equal sharing with Kjieran van Stone. He’d shared his acolyte’s thoughts, felt Kjieran’s purpose—a purpose so strong and unwavering that the truthreader had clung to its mast amid the raging waves of Darshan’s fury and weathered the storm all the way to his tragic end. Kjieran had saved the lord he was sworn to while with every breath betraying and defying the lord he was bound to.
These were undeniable truths.
Whereas before he’d been tiptoeing around this admission, now he knew it definitively. He could no longer say Kjieran had no purpose save to die. Purpose had driven Kjieran as desperately and willfully as a row master upon a slaver’s galley.
The wind whipped Darshan’s charred hair into his eyes. Tangled strands bound his face and blurred his vision, like these truths now bound and blurred his thoughts. Nay, not merely his thoughts—his entire view of the realm’s existence.
For if Kjieran van Stone could so prove himself possessed of purpose, could not other creatures of this realm potentially as well? Was it possible that he’d been drawn to Kjieran because he’d sensed within him a purpose as singular of will as his own?
Indeed…possessed of purpose and an immortal soul.
Darshan walked from gallery to storm-swept terrace, letting the whipping rain sting his skin and echoes of lightning dance in his core where a hollow feeling had begun spreading, a reminder of things as yet unsettled.
This game was not so simple as it had once appeared to him. The stark clarity of singular purpose had become diffuse in the light of varying perspectives, and now a host of indistinct truths lingered on his periphery.
‘If you ever left your ivory tower, perhaps you’d see the truths you’re so plainly missing.’ Pelas’s words.
Darshan exhaled a slow breath. Perhaps you’ve the right of it after all, brother.
Reaching the end of his terrace, he stepped up on the marble wall and stood with feet spread, braced against the wind. A simple thought drew the lightning, and a jagged streak speared down from the charcoal clouds, splitting rain into sizzling vapor as it leapt for his outstretched arms.
The flash turned the world into negative, even as its force charged through his shell, leaving thorny black streaks in his flesh to mark its passing. Raindrops exploded into ozonic mist, and steam rose from his skin. A tidal wave blasted through the currents.
As the lightning’s effects were fading, Darshan lowered his arms. That hollow feeling in his core remained, unaltered by the elements; its cause was not a lack of energy but of conviction.
He stepped backwards off the railing, landed with a splash and returned to his chambers. Time to follow through on his promise and find out if Kjieran would make good on his.
As he walked beneath the gallery, Darshan sought Kjieran the way he would seek his brothers. He first found the threads of binding that linked their souls. Then he sought Kjieran’s awareness across that ethereal connection.
But unlike when contacting his brothers, Darshan couldn’t sense any awareness on the other end of the cord. This troubled him, but he cast forth the calling nonetheless.
Kjieran…?
His feet slowed, expectation dragging his steps, yet he regained his chambers without a spark of recognition from Kjieran’s end.
Now he felt foolish. How many times had he sought Kjieran’s awareness right after his acolyte’s death? How often had he called to him? How many nights had he sought him, only to dive instead into tormenting dreams? And in every foray, he’d found only emptiness, absence…death.
Darshan exhaled a slow breath and forced himself to accept the obvious truth: no sentient life remained beyond the dark cloak of death. Kjieran was a ghost haunting his dreams, nothing more.
He braced a hand against a column and lowered his head. Rainwater dripped into his eyes while his hair made a dark cast of his shoulders. How could he still feel so hollow when loss bound his chest and throat so tightly?
Abruptly he straightened and pressed on, crossing the gallery back to his chambers. He’d already decided upon his course of action and would continue forward, with or without Kjieran beside him.
He opened himself to the hundreds of bonds linking to his consciousness and cast a thought across two of them, as the plucking of dual harp strings, to summon his acolytes.
They were waiting for him when he re-entered his bedchamber, two men kneeling with downcast eyes and long hair of blonde and brown, their bodies well proportioned, hands pressed to their knees.
These two must’ve been the ones who’d tended to him while he was unconscious. They’d stripped him of his burned clothing and bathed him in his sleep. He almost smiled upon imagining their expressions when they’d found him.
Darshan looked them over speculatively. “Come. I have need of you both.”
He strode into his dressing chamber and assessed his form before the tall mirror. His shell had healed well from his foray to that burning planet, but his hair…in places it had simply melted, fused into thick and tangled cords, while other sections had been singed away. Even sopping wet from the rain, he could tell it would not recover.
“It must be cut.”
One acolyte fetched a chair for him while his partner went for scissors. The former stood behind him and drew the mass of tangled hair behind Darshan’s back. Then he held his hands beside Darshan’s neck, just above his shoulders. “About here, my lord?”
Marveling at the sorry state of his hair, Darshan determined that Mithaiya had surely taken the point in their tête-à-tête. A subtle smile touched his lips. “I think…a little higher.”
They cut his hair above the line of fracture, shorter in back and longest in front, so that when he lifted his head to look at himself, uneven damp strands fell around his cheekbones while the foremost strands clung to his jaw. Then his acolytes brought him the clothes he requested. In the last, he stood before the mirror in another of Pelas’s gifted coats, this one a damask of burnished gold, worn over an embroidered white shirt whose long cuffs skimmed his knuckles.
Darshan pushed both hands through his hair to sweep the long strands back from his face. Then he stood there staring at his reflection. With his raven hair cut short and wearing the garments of an Agasi nobleman, he hardly recognized himself.
Yet it seemed appropriate. A new image in honor of the new vision—a truer vision?—he was determined to gain of the world.
Part of him wished that Kjieran could’v
e seen him, could’ve perhaps adopted this image to replace the one of the Prophet Bethamin, which memory his acolyte associated with so many moments of despair. Though he wasn’t sure that this version of himself was that much of an improvement over the old one. Neither were a true expression of his real form.
But you look quite handsome.
The voice speaking into his mind halted both Darshan’s breath and his thoughts.
His first impulse was that he’d imagined the voice. Next, he suspected Pelas was playing a trick on him. Even so, his heart beat faster. Hope drove him to speak, despite his suspicions. Kjieran…? Is it truly you?
How many voices do you have in your head, my lord? Darshan heard Kjieran’s amusement, felt his smile. These were common impressions when speaking to his brothers across their bond. He stared at his reflection and was startled to find such emotion revealed in it.
For the first time, he admitted to himself that this was no haunting but a continued thread of connection to the Adept he’d bound to his soul. Yet it puzzled him almost to the same degree of intensity.
Kjieran, I called to you, but you didn’t answer me.
I heard you, my lord, but…I couldn’t find you. I had nothing to lead me to you, only a voice out of the formless void.
Then how—?
Just now, when you were thinking of me…you were sharing your thoughts, sharing what you saw—whether or not you meant to.
Darshan’s brow furrowed slightly.
I don’t know how to explain it, my lord, but when you shared your thoughts with me, it was like a window of light opened into the dark void. When I looked through it, I found you on the other side.
Darshan considered this idea. This is not how I communicate with my brothers.
Bindings take many forms, Kjieran offered. Ours feels to me less like a line strung between us and more like a mutual, shared space we can both access from opposite sides.
Darshan thought on this but reached no immediate conclusion. There are things I would better understand, Kjieran—the nature of our dreams, for example, and the nature of the binding I worked upon you. Who could answer such questions?
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