10
It was decided that they were too tired to celebrate Lucien’s birthday that night. Math guessed it would be at least a day before he could even tell whether he’d be able to fulfill Mikah’s request, and if he thought it could be done it would take him several days to do it. They were invited to rest, enjoy the house and garden. Maybe there would be time for a party tomorrow night.
“You have the run of the house,” Math told them. “Anywhere you ought not to go, you won’t be able to go. Except for you, master Farach -- I’d appreciate it if you’d avoid anywhere that begins to give you a headache or spit sparks.”
They were shown to their rooms, widely scattered through the enormous house. Uki led them on a rambling route, dropping them off one by one. Kastor was given a small, oddly angled corner room. The ceiling sloped at one end, and the two windows were small, but the furnishings were marvels of simple luxury. There was a bath waiting in a copper cauldron by the green-tiled fireplace. The floor was covered by a thick carpet, dark red with abstract green swirls. The bed was in the Semnian style, like everything else, a high platform with too many mattresses on it, but a Kyri-style sleeping pad had been left rolled at the foot of the bed in case he wanted to sleep on the floor. All his baggage was stacked just inside the door. He wondered how Uki had known which things were his, then answered himself: magic. Probably the same method that had told her he’d be happiest in a small room with a tent-like ceiling. Somehow she’d missed learning that he liked it cold, though; between the fire and steam from the bath, the place was stifling. He opened a window.
Kastor took a long time bathing. He was in a dreamy state of vague consternation, thoughts skidding and colliding without ever really becoming clear. Wine and fatigue didn’t quite account for it. The problem, he decided at last, was that everything had suddenly gone huge and portentious, what with gods and Forges, and left him behind. His own not-demon-but-strange origin and all his past now looked as mundane and absurd as his big bony feet propped on the edge of the tub.
So Mikah was going to go into this Forge place, and he was going to have to confront the gods. That sounded awesome, but dangerous? Well, Math and Mikah had both acted as if it were almost certain doom. Kastor wanted to ask Mikah about that privately. He wanted to know if Mikah was going to get himself turned into an olive tree or something. Not that he’d ever really doubted Mikah would vanish from his life at the most inopportune moment, but still, he wanted to know.
Kastor dried himself, put on his spare clothes, left his dirty clothes outside the door, and climbed into the high bed. It was a strange way to sleep, but he wanted strange. He was afraid that if he slept on a felt pad on the floor, he’d dream he was a child in his mother’s wagon again, and wake up homesick. The soft mattress smothered him; he felt as if he were buried in the earth. It was oddly comforting.
A few moments after he blew out the candle, cats began to arrive. They came in the open windows in a parade of meeping and mratting, paced around the room, walked on his stomach, and eventually curled around him until he was carpeted by purring warmth. It was annoying, but somehow he felt it would be rude to throw them out -- not to mention probably futile. He was certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, right up to the moment when he realized he already was.
He dreamed of a jungle. He’d never seen one except in book illustrations, so it was a jungle of black lines on white, blotty like an old woodcut. He hunted desperately through paper vegetation, trying to stop Mikah before he did something irrevocable. At last he found the Mara standing on the edge of a cliff. Kastor ran and caught him by the braid before he jumped.
What are you doing? he demanded angrily. You know I won’t let you leave me, not when we’re just about to get everything sorted out!
This is bigger than we are. Mikah held out for his inspection a hoop of bone. It was just polished bone, inert, ordinary but for its strange circular shape, but it was also repulsive in a deep, visceral way.
Get rid of it, Kastor advised.
Mikah shook his head sadly. Holding the bone hoop away from himself with one hand, he embraced Kastor one-armed, resting his cheek against Kastor’s with a weary sigh. He pulled away. He stepped into space and was gone.
Breakfast was huge, delicious, and cheerful. Kastor made an effort to include himself in the general conversation, but he didn’t do very well. Math wasn’t present, but everyone else was, and they all had a thousand things to talk about. Only Kastor couldn’t think of anything to say.
They teased him for it, for what they percieved as his natural grouchiness reasserting itself after an unusually long period of fair weather. He took it with as good a grace as he could manage. As soon as he’d eaten his fill, he excused himself from the table. A glance back at Mikah went unnoticed. He’d half hoped that the Mara would follow him, so he could ask his questions, but he wasn’t surprised that Mikah would rather talk and eat. Kastor went out into the courtyard, past a fountain and a number of potted trees, into the least intentional-looking of the paths beyond, and set to wandering.
The garden was beautiful, but too tame for his taste. He chose turnings by their slope, heading steadily uphill. As he’d hoped, the land grew wilder as it grew steeper. Morning warmed to noon. He found himself so far from the house that he couldn’t even find the smoke from its kitchen chimneys. Finally feeling as if he was alone, he climbed atop a broad, flat boulder, sat crosslegged on the sun-warmed rock. For a while, he just stared out over the valley, thinking nothing. After what felt like an hour, his hands wanted to be busy, so he got out his two small knives and practiced throwing them at the trunk of the nearest tree. He’d been neglecting his skills. The balance of these knives was different from the old ones, and he had to teach his hands to adjust.
He had got them hitting point-first about half the time when something flashed down in a flurry of black wings and snatched his last missed throw off the ground.
“Hey!” Startled as much as angry, he set off in pursuit -- though he took the time to pull the other knife out of the tree before following.
He chased the raven across uneven ground, forcing himself to more exertion than he had in far too long. Even as he was annoyed to have his knife stolen, he was pleased to find that his legs could still leap and scramble, finding sure footing on tumbled rock without his conscious intervention. He enjoyed the feeling of muscles warming, blood singing in his veins. The bird labored with the weight of the knife, so it never got too far ahead, and all in all the whole thing was more comical than irritating.
The raven swooped down into a wooded cut, lost to sight. Kastor bounded down the slope, leapt a narrow stream, and caught up just in time to see the raven drop his knife into the hand of a thin figure dressed in bottle-green.
Kastor slowed to a walk as the raven-tamer saw him. It was a man about his own age, maybe a few years older, of obvious Kyri lineage; his face was built on the same long-nosed, long-jawed model as Kastor’s, but even more so, giving his emaciation a certain craggy dignity. His deep-set eyes were dark brown with flecks of gold, and seemed to hold a kind of gravity, a kind of snare, which must have had something to do with magic. The man gave off magic like a furnace gave off heat. Kastor’s skin was crawling with it.
“Anei,” the man said.
Kastor nodded cordially. “Anei. That’s my knife your bird stole. I’d like it back.”
“You’ve spared me the trouble of finding you to return it. The foolish thing brought me the wrong knife.” The man handed it over. “At least it recognized that I wanted a knife.” He turned to call over his shoulder. “Rys! Stop skulking, it’s only Mikah’s man, he won’t hurt you.” He turned back. “I’m afraid the rumors didn’t give your name.”
“Kastor. And if you’re calling for Rys, you must be Cad.”
With a slight smile, the man bowed. “Cadogan. This is Emrys. I said,” he raised his voice, “this is Emrys, come out, you coward, sometimes you embarrass me.”
There was a flicker of red in the trees. A voice called, “Busy!”
“Scared, more like. Kastor, help me with this.”
Kastor shrugged. He called to the place where he’d seen something red. “Um, hello, Emrys? I’m really not in any way hostile, and you’re making me very curious. Would you please come out?”
Some grumbling. A bit more movement. At length, a young man in a red shirt stepped out of the undergrowth, slouching in an elaborate sulk.
At first, Kastor thought he must be a Mara. Surely not all Mara were golden; it must be possible for one to have dark auburn hair that sparked scarlet in the sun, skin almost as pale as Kastor’s but with a peach-blossom flush to it, eyes of complicated green like lichen. Nothing but a Mara was so perfect. Emrys was definitely not human; the tilt of his eyes and cheekbones was an alien geometry, and his ears had angles on the top curve, almost pointed.
Emrys glared at Kastor as if affronted. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re a halfbreed too? It would’ve saved anxiety.” He put his arms around Cadogan from behind and peered over his shoulder.
Cadogan gave a snort of laughter. “Now, how was he supposed to know you’re birds of a feather, before you showed yourself?”
“Excuse me,” Kastor said, trying not to flush at the way Emrys’s hands were burrowing into Cadogan’s shirt. “This might be a rude question, but you two seem so... comfortable...” Blatant, was what he meant. “Are you a couple?”
“Correct,” Cadogan answered easily. “Like you and Mikah. You can’t have thought you were the only one? How lonely.”
“No, I didn’t think that, but --”
“Cad’s mine,” Emrys put in, “and don’t you even think about stealing him.”
“Um -- I --”
Cadogan shook his head, sighing. “No manners, this one. Come, sit with us, tell us all about our prodigal. Does he remember us?”
“Do you mean Mikah?”
“Of course.”
“Yes, he was asking about you.”
“What has he been up to?” Cadogan’s dark eyes narrowed, and the aura of magic around him became almost visible. “And what have you come from, to be made of cold iron and have eyes like a cold child?”
Kastor wondered if he ought to be affronted by this strange insight, but he wasn’t. Cadogan seemed to be a person who simply understood things, like Nhedra. Kastor sat beside him on the grassy bank of the stream and told him everything.
He was astonished at his own honesty. It crossed his mind that Cadogan might have put some spell on him, to make him talk so much. He didn’t think so, though. He thought it was probably just the way he listened, with his whole attention, utterly patient and utterly interested. Emrys had no attention at all, but the way he busied himself with making lines of pebbles around himself removed him from the picture entirely, so that Kastor didn’t need to worry about his reaction. He even told his private troubles; Cadogan had seemed to assume that Kastor and Mikah were as much a pair, as solidly together, as these two were, and he felt he had to refute that. Cadogan just listened and listened and listened.
Eventually, Kastor ran out of story, and they were silent. A raven, possibly the same one, landed and stole one of Emrys’s pebbles.
“It’s difficult,” Cadogan said at last.
“What is?”
“To give yourself over to something you know won’t support your weight. I had enough trouble trusting this flighty thing, and even he isn’t about to go irritate the gods. I hope.”
“No intention,” Emrys agreed.
“May I ask your stories?”
“Mine is short,” Cadogan said. “I was a shepherd of the Maer clan. My family sensed magic in me and wanted to apprentice me to a seer, but the seer had a grudge against my father, so I remained a shepherd until Rys came around and lured me away. I followed him, tried to keep him from getting himself killed -- he’s very creative about getting into trouble. At last we discovered this place and were welcomed. Math was kind enough to tutor me. In time I might make a passable mage.
“As for my lovely scatterbrain here, he’s half Mara. His immortal father kept him as a sort of pet until he became difficult to control, then abandoned him. He’s not nearly as silly as he seems, but he’s been in a mood lately.”
“He’s tired of being talked about in the third person,” Emrys said.
“Sorry, love.”
“Forgiven.” He looked Kastor in the eye, all flightiness suddenly dropped, revealing a frightening intelligence in his lichen-mottled eyes. “So if it falls out the way you fear, will you be glad you kept your distance? Will you look back and think, well, he’s been turned into a rock, but at least I never told him how I felt --?” He shook his head. “I know Mikah. He’s a pain. He thinks he can get what he wants for a smile and a joke, and gets fizzy when he can’t. I wouldn’t blame you if you sent him packing.”
“I’m not going to send him packing.”
“Thought so.” He leapt to his feet. “Bored now. Nice meeting you.” He strode away into the trees.
Cadogan watched him go with a small smile. Kastor’s heart suddenly siezed with envy. They seemed to happy, so sure of each other.
“I hear there’s going to be a party,” Cadogan said at length.
“Might be. Depending on how busy Math is.”
“He’s never too busy for a celebration. Would you mind terribly if we showed up? We haven’t seen Mikah for -- hmm -- almost five years now.”
“I’m sure you’re welcome.”
“Then I’ll see you tonight. Owarran.” He clapped Kastor on the shoulder in farewell, then followed his lover into the wood.
Kastor sat there alone for a time, watching the raven play with pebbles. The circle Emrys had made was gradually dissolved, until the stones lay as random as if they’d been undisturbed. But their random pattern was not the same as before the half-Mara had touched them.
There’s some kind of deep metaphor in there, I’m sure. That Emrys kid was scary. And right. If Mikah gets himself killed, or unmade, or something -- or even if he just tosses me aside again -- I’m not going to go to my grave relieved that I kept him at arm’s length. It’s going to hurt either way. I might as well just brace for impact.
But it wasn’t that simple, of course. Now, alone, he could imagine setting aside his pride, his anger; but he knew that when it came down to it, Mikah would say something casually unforgivable, and the conversation Kastor wanted wouldn’t happen.
When he returned to the house, the shadows of afternoon were lengthening. A chill came as the sun fell. Apparently it wasn’t eternally balmy here, just a bit warmer than it should be. He didn’t linger by the courtyard fountain, but went straight for the line of doors -- now closed -- and put his hand on a latch. And paused. He’d heard his name from inside, mentioned as if in passing by Mathonwy’s voice, and Mikah answered:
“That’s really beside the point.”
“This isn’t going to be as easy as you think.” Math sounded stern. “Everything has to fall in place just right. Do you even know what you promised these people?”
“It’s not my promise, it’s what I saw happening. It’s not something I do.”
“In this case it might be.”
“Then I’ll find myself doing the right thing. I probably can’t escape it.”
“You will, if you try hard enough, and then this will all have been for nothing. Just try to listen to me, Mikah. You can’t go to the Forge with personal business unfinished.”
“Isn’t it about time for guests to start arriving?”
A sigh. “I suppose so. You’re an infuriating thing, you know that?”
“So everyone tells me. Who’s going to be here?”
Kastor let them talk about inconsequentials for a minute before he opened the door. The big room was changed. The space outside the ring of benches, which had been empty before, was now full of tables, which Uki was methodically filling with food and drink. Math was leaning by the mantel, and raised a hand in greeting at Kastor’s entrance. Mikah’s golden head was visible over the back of a bench, but he didn’t turn.
“Have a nice walk?” Math asked cheerfully.
“Very pleasant. I met Cadogan and Emrys, and one of their ravens. I hope you don’t mind, but I told them they could come tonight if they wanted. They were looking forward to seeing Mikah.”
“Everyone’s invited,” Math assured him. “It’s a celebration in the manner of your countrymen -- everyone’s welcome, and can wander as they please, and leave whenever they like. I expect the guest of honor will bug out fairly quickly; he doesn’t strike me as the gregarious type. Mikah, I’m sure, will drink and hold forth in elaborate lies for an admiring audience until dawn.”
“Maybe,” Mikah said. “Maybe not. Maybe you don’t know me so well anymore.”
“Anything’s possible.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Shut the door, Kastor,” Math said with a gentle smile.
Recollecting himself, Kastor hastily came in and shut the door, cutting off the chill draft. He came to perch on a bench. When he did, he saw why Mikah hadn’t looked up. The Mara was bent over the task of repairing Kastor’s armor. He had the jacket piece across his lap, and was murmuring to it almost inaudibly. He pressed his fingers across a rip, running them back and forth along it. Gradually, the rip faded to a scratch, then smoothed. Without pause, he moved to the next cut. Beside him on the bench, the bracers were set aside, perfect as the day they were made.
Math gestured to these. “I hope you don’t mind having enchanted armor, Kastor. He’s working his blood into it.”
“It would’ve been petty to clean it off,” Mikah said. “It was already spilled.”
“What will that do to it?” Kastor asked.
“Not much. Make it tougher. It might heal itself, but I’d go on carrying a needle and cord just in case.”
“Thanks, Mikah,” Kastor said.
Mikah snorted. “Stop interrupting me.”
“Just out of curiosity,” Math said, “what do you know about those swords of yours? How did you get them?”
“I robbed a grave,” Kastor said bluntly.
Math didn’t seem to find this abhorrent. “Was it difficult? Guarded?”
“Something dead that fluttered around stinking. I had a charm against it. I was looking for something else, but I found the swords, so I took them. No one else seemed to be getting any use out of them. They destroyed the fluttery thing easily. They stay sharp, and they cut things that are notoriously difficult to cut -- demons, for choice. They do a fine job against demons. Other than that, nothing interesting. They don’t sing or shoot flames or anything.”
“Do you know their names?”
That sounded as if Math recognized them. “Not their proper ones. Do you?”
“That depends. Have you named them?”
A bit embarrassed, Kastor looked away and muttered.
“What was that?”
“I named them Reason and Patience.”
Math laughed. “Perfect. That will do as well as their old names. Better.”
“What were they --”
“No, I think I’ll let them keep these names.”
Mikah put in, “You’re always naming things Patience. You named that horse Luwedd. Why don’t you just change your name to Patience?”
“Someday, maybe.”
Magda, Tanner, and Lucien came in then, flushed from the wind. Magda was carrying a book, had silverpoint pencils tucked behind both ears, and looked excited. She said, “Kastor, Mikah, you’ll never believe all the things I found! Look, I drew them! Master Mathonwy, you will let me come back someday, won’t you? I don’t think I’ll ever finish studying this place!”
“It’s very interesting,” Lucien seconded.
“I’m starving,” was Tanner’s contribution.
Math directed them to help themselves to whatever they found, and before they’d finished collecting mulled wine and plates of food, the first guest arrived. This was a strange creature of indeterminate sex, skin composed of silvery scales that took a faint pink sheen where the light struck them, eyes overlarge and slitted, head crowned with drooping spines instead of hair.
“Rei Azan,” Math greeted it.
“Am I early?” The creature’s voice was surprisingly human, very beautiful, as if it were singing every word. “Let me convey my congratulations. I brought a gift.” From the sleeve of its silver-gray robe it drew a small parcel wrapped in bright-patterned silk. It approached Lucien, but instead of handing him the package, it set the gift on the table near him and backed away bowing. “Forgive me if I don’t offer my hand. I think we would injure each other.”
Lucien nodded, awestruck. “You’re dragon-kin, aren’t you?”
“Well spotted.” Rei Azan laughed, like glass bells shattering.
“Thank you for the gift. I didn’t expect...” Lucien unwrapped it. The silk unfolded endlessly, until its near-invisible gauze was trailing on the floor. Nestled in the center was a gold ring set with a white opal. Lucien held it up uncertainly. “This is -- lordly. I feel I should refuse. We’re strangers, after all.”
“Not in a thousand years does such a strong Null surface. Take it, Lucien Farach, and remember me.”
Lucien made a courtly bow. “Then I thank you, Rei Azan.”
The dragon-kin clapped its hands. “That’s done. Now I eat.” It located a bowl of yellow-pink objects which may have been chunks of candied ginger -- except that the crunch they made as it nibbled them sounded like gravel breaking.
The next arrival was a pair of pisgies, kin to Uki from the way they greeted her. A somewhat smaller, leaner pisgi trailed after them a moment later, carrying a tiny brown infant in her arms. The pisgies gave Rei Azan a wide berth, and tore into the feast like wolves without even greeting their host. After that, Kastor lost track of the guests; they came in groups, or singly but in close order, some mind-bendingly strange, some as ordinary as dirt. Women with wings, farmers with muddy boots, flocks of children feathered and scaled and furred. An unusually high proportion of the guests were androgynously handsome young men and women, similar to Emrys.
Or, Kastor realized, to himself. They saw it as well. They behaved as if they had come to see him, and the feast and the birthday were incidental. Few were put off by his confused near-speechlessness; there was a patience about them, as if they knew he’d come around in time. No hint was given of what he was to come around to, and he didn’t think he could put it into words well enough to ask. Some were fair, some dark, some broad but most slender, and though their coloring fell mostly within human norms, he saw one woman with hair of palest blue, and a man whose eyes glowed scarlet. He couldn’t keep track of their names, only gathered the impression that they were widely scattered in origin; Kyri, Semnian, Nestrian, Darathi, or just plain foreign.
Emrys and Cadogan arrived fashionably late, presented Lucien with a handsome bow and a quiver of black-fletched arrows, and went straight at Mikah. He greeted them like old friends, with much laughing and hugging and back-thumping.
Kastor stood by the wine table and got progressively drunker and more bewildered.
At one point, Tanner, flushed and bright-eyed and smelling of ale, came to tug his arm. “We’re getting up games in the courtyard. They’ve got one where you blindfold yourself and someone has bells on and it’s a shitpile of fun, what are you standing around here for?”
“I’m not good at crowds.”
“Well, come watch anyway.”
“No, I --”
“Do I have to knock you over the head and carry you? Come on.”
He let himself be towed out into the courtyard. It was full dark now, and there were colored lights swimming in the fountain, torches high up on the house walls burning green and blue and pink. He felt he’d wandered into some fey realm of endless revelry, and would never be allowed to leave. The thought made him claustrophobic. He perched on the edge of a huge granite pot, leaning back against the budding linden tree it contained, and watched the games. Tanner had discovered the company of the handsome-androgynous crowd. She was popular with them; she fit right in. She was browner and more muscular than most of them, but there was something in her face that resembled them nonetheless. Maybe it was just confidence. Lucien was there too, and they treated him as a kind of treasure, to be handled carefully and plied with dainties and drink. From the redness of the tip of his nose, he was already quite drunk. He let himself be blindfolded and spun around. The androgynous youths fastened bells to Tanner’s ankles. A girl with hair the silvery color of paper ash clapped her hands and announced: “All run all run all run now!” The crowd broke into chaos.
Peals of laughter, tangles; some factions were trying to hinder Lucien as he chased the bells, some trying to thrust Tanner into his path. Kastor found himself smiling as he watched them. He didn’t want to join in, but he felt their revelry as a kind of warmth around him.
A bottle emerged from the shadows behind him, followed by Emrys. The half-Mara refilled Kastor’s cup, then took a drink straight from the bottle. “Loud, aren’t they?” Emrys said.
“Yes.”
“They hope you’ll stay.”
“I don’t understand why.”
“There aren’t a lot of us in the world. One more is always an event. This party is as much in your honor as his.” He aimed the bottle at Lucien, whose flamelike hair was less a beacon than usual among this bright crowd. “Most of that lot aren’t sensitive enough to know how many new fireflies they’ve caught. But you’re not going to stay, are you?”
“No. I told you what we have to do.”
“Do you think you might come back, after?”
Kastor studied his face, trying to see why he sounded so much as if he wanted the answer to be yes. “Would it do anyone any good?”
“These butterflies aren’t the only ones like us. Cad and I, we keep to ourselves, we don’t need to run about shouting. There are more shy ones out in the valley. I think you’re one of the shy ones. You’d be welcome nonetheless.”
“I like long horizons,” Kastor said regretfully.
“Ah.” Emrys nodded sympathetically. “Cad pines for the high plains sometimes. We’ll leave here soon. But we’ll always return. I hope we’ll see you here again.” He turned back to the shadows, slipped inside like a thief.
Kastor turned back in time to see Lucien catch Tanner. He grabbed her around the waist, laughing. They were both laughing, everyone was. She pulled off his blindfold. He kissed her. They broke apart still laughing, blushing with wine. Kastor wondered if they’d remember it tomorrow. He went inside.
The crowd had dispersed a bit. There were sounds coming from other rooms. He took a fresh bottle from the seemingly endless supply, and went rambling. He passed a room in which Magda was having a quiet and apparently very absorbing discussion with a handful of furry children. He followed a thread of song into another room, where Cadogan sang an ancient Kyri ballad in a perfect, mournful baritone, accompanied by Emrys on a bone flute. The harmony gave Kastor pleasant shivers. He leaned in the doorway for a time, listening. Mikah was part of the audience, as was the dragon-kin. When the song ended, Kastor left. He didn’t think anyone had noticed he was there.
Shortly he discovered he was lost. It didn’t seem to matter much. He noticed belatedly that all the cats seemed to have vanished. All, that is, but Yakov, whom he met in a dark hallway. The werecat was in his human form, dressed this time but stubbornly barefoot, deeply involved in eating an entire roast chicken. He barely looked up from his feast.
Kastor nodded a greeting and continued wandering. The next time he found himself in a lit hallway, he stole a candle. He climbed every stair he could find. At last he could climb no further; he had found the highest point in the house. He recognized the tower from the inside by its row of arched windows, unglazed and unshuttered; he’d assumed this would be the wizard’s workroom, but the rectangular tower was empty. Dry leaves skittered on the floor. It was cold in here, but the wine warmed him. He settled down with his bottle.
He must have dozed off, because he didn’t hear the footsteps until the moment before the door opened. He composed an excuse for his wandering, expecting it to be Math who opened the door. But it was Mikah.
“The trick to findin anything,” Mikah said with the exaggerated care of the very drunk, “is to look in the las place firs.”
“You’re tanked.”
“So’re you.” Mikah kicked the door shut behind him and came into the circle of candlelight. He set down an unopened bottle with a satisfied clank. “An we’re going to get drunger, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don tell me you want to be sober for this connersation.”
Kastor’s heart lurched. He remained seated only by an act of will. “What conversation?”
“You know damn well what.”
He knew. He shook his head frantically. “No, Mikah, not now, not with wine behind it, not with wine talking.”
“Damn. Damn. Fine.” Mikah pushed the bottle away. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He gave a sudden groan. “Oh hell, whole hangover in ten seconds, that was a bad idea. Your turn.” Mikah grabbed his hand.
A pulse of -- something -- rocked through him, and in its wake his head cleared. He was abruptly sober. He found he regretted it. He pulled his hand away. Mikah looked at it mournfully as it retreated.
“Oh. I was afraid it might start like that. Must I toil uphill, my cruelty?”
“Speak plain, Mikah. If you want to talk to me at all, you’re going to have to stop hinting and dithering.”
The Mara shook his head. “I don’t want to talk. I want to listen.”
“To what?”
“I want you to tell me exactly what I did wrong.”
“I thought you said you knew.”
“Do you really want to hear my side?”
“Yes, if you think you have a side.”
“You really want to hear my story about you.”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” Mikah sighed. He rubbed his eyes. When he looked up, his face was weary, hopeless, human.
And a thousand times more beautiful in that honest weariness than in all his glittering. Kastor felt a sharp pain lance through his chest, and realized he was holding his breath.
“Once upon a time,” Mikah began, “I needed to hire a thief. I heard of a man who could steal the High Priest’s knickers in the middle of mass and no one the wiser -- yes, that’s what they said about you, Kastor. So I went to the place where I heard this thief could be found. I was thinking about the book and about gold. I met the thief, and the way he talked to me, I remembered something I’d been ignoring. I remembered how, among my other predictions and scryings, one source had told me I’d learn to love before this was over. It doesn’t come naturally to us, you know, we’re not social animals. It’s a skill. I’d always been curious. And this thief -- scalpel eyes, scalpel smile, I’ve always been fond of wormwood wine. You helped, when you wouldn’t take money, when you said what you wanted in exchange was me. Obviously I couldn’t agree. I don’t belong to me, anymore, I belong to this task. But one night, heart and soul for one night, that much I could promise.”
Kastor interrupted. “And you didn’t think how that would sound to me? Thinking you were human? Thinking I’d been courting a man, not a --”
“You wanted to hear. Let me talk. So you brought me the book. I realized then that I didn’t know the trick yet, I still thought love was a trick -- so I made a potion and I drank it -- oh gods, it was terrifying. I’d been wrong about what it would be like. It wasn’t all sparkles and skipping. It wasn’t even sex. It was a deep red river of beautiful pain, and I drowned. When the potion wore off in the morning, I was so relieved to be free of it. I thought I was free of it. I didn’t remember how such a spell can’t create something from nothing, can only inflame what’s already there. I ran away.”
“Ran? You laughed at me!”
“Have you never laughed at death?”
Kastor opened his mouth for an angry reply, but didn’t have one. He didn’t want to be remembering this right now. He didn’t want to be talking about this, and he couldn’t think of anything he’d rather talk about. All he could produce was a distressed look.
Mikah went on, “I had work to do, I had that horrible book to study, I had to get busy with all the wards and precautions it would take to read it safely, but I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t think. Your face kept coming back to me. The things we said, the things I said to you that were the potion talking, the things you said to me that weren’t. The things I said when I left, the way I put on scorn like armor and laughed at you for your pain -- I don’t remember what I said. I know I told you what I am.”
“What do you expect when you deal with Mara?” Kastor repeated. He couldn’t put the venom into it that he wanted to.
“And the way you smiled at the last, that rusty razor smile, as if I’d just confirmed something you’d always suspected. That wouldn’t leave me. I realized that it had never really gone away -- that red river -- only subsided from flood tide, but it was still running in me. I didn’t like it. I thought maybe if I talked to you -- but when I went back you were gone.”
“I couldn’t stay. It reminded me -- it reminded me too much.”
“So I counted it one more lesson learned and went about my business. I couldn’t afford time to chase you. I had to understand that book. All the time I felt you getting farther away; it felt like a little cut that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I was so glad when my studies told me who I needed, when one of the roles fit you perfectly. No, don’t ask that now, it’s irrelevant. I found you so easily -- it turned out I’d set my mark on you without knowing it. I thought, finally, we’ll get this sorted out. But you looked at me with such a wolf look, such a how dare you, and how you greeted me: Not you again.” He looked away with a little shrug. “So, all right, he doesn’t need me to level with him, he’s got it all figured out, I’ll just find other things to be interested in. Thinking -- act normal, act normal. Of course I overcorrected, and ended up acting like an ass. I didn’t know it was fear that made me cruel.
“In willful ignorance, my unbelievable unforgivable ignorance, I opened a door that couldn’t be closed, and mocked you for seeing the truth. That’s my crime.”
Kastor took his time formulating his answer. “No,” he said at last. “It’s simpler than that. You broke my heart. That’s all.”
“It’s the same thing. I just can’t speak plainly to save my life.”
“Try.”
“I want you to forgive me. I want you to accept my apology and forgive me and hold me and be happy.”
“What apology, Mikah? You haven’t apologized.”
“I don’t know how,” Mikah said helplessly. “Kastor, I’m sorry! I know how I should have done things differently, but things can’t be undone, and I’m all spinning with regrets. I’ve wasted so much time. You gave me something honest and I broke it, and I’m so stupid.” He reached out to touch Kastor’s cheek with his fingertips. “Kastor my loving lost and lost to love, my faltering...”
Kastor turned away, blinking fast. His voice came out thick. “I forgive you.”
“And do you... is there anything left?”
“After you walked out on me, I ran as far and as fast as I could. I took guard jobs, walked hundreds of miles, but it still wasn’t far enough. Would you believe, I gave up thieving because it reminded me of you? I gave up eating, too, unless someone handed me something. I gave up talking. I drank constantly. I was a wreck. I caught a fever and almost died, but it couldn’t burn you out of me. Eventually I scraped myself off the ground and determined to live like a normal person. And then you walked right back into my world like you had a right to be there, and shattered everything. You’re asking me if there’s anything left? Mikah, you can be so dense sometimes!”
Mikah’s eyes were huge. “You fear, if I leave you again, you’ll suffer again, destroy yourself.”
“Yes.”
“But then, if I don’t survive this quest -- oh hell. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should’ve let you go on being angry.”
“It was already too late. If you hadn’t found me tonight, I would’ve talked to you tomorrow. If it helps at all, I think it would be different now. I don’t know how it would be different. I don’t see how it does any good to worry about it.” He sounded calm, now. Kastor realized he had let go of his fury, and in the hollow where it had been was a well of strength whose limits he couldn’t encompass. It didn’t matter what happened. He said it out loud: “It doesn’t matter. I love you, I can’t undo that and I don’t want to anymore, and that’s going to be true whether we have forever or a single day. I owe you an apology as well. For my blind hunger; for my idiot pride. Forgive me?”
“My bittersweet, I forgive you everything.” He held out his hand. When Kastor took it, he stood and pulled him up. This became an embrace, as easily as if they’d never been wary of each other.
They held close for a time, not speaking. Kastor kissed Mikah’s hair, his ear, the corner of his eye. Mikah pulled him toward the door.
“Not back to the party,” Kastor said.
“No. My room is closer than yours. Forget the wine,” he added as Kastor looked back. “We have better things to be drunk on.”
In late morning, they lay quiet together. Kastor said, “We should get up.”
“Absolutely. I’m famished.” Neither moved.
Kastor went on tracing the scars on Mikah’s arm where it lay across his waist. They were faded almost to nothing. “It seems silly now, but I’m scared that as soon as we leave this room, things will go back to how they were.”
“It’s not silly. We’ve both proved stupidly stubborn. But we don’t have time to play games anymore.”
“How long until Math finds out what you want to know?”
“He said three days. That’s how long the ritual takes.”
“Let’s just stay in your room the whole time.”
Mikah laughed. He propped himself up on one elbow to kiss Kastor’s nose. “You want me to starve?” His hair, still kinked from its braid, pooled on Kastor’s chest, tickling. Kastor took up handfuls of it, pressed it to his face, inhaling deeply. Rain and stone.
“That’s all the food I need,” he said.
“Want to know a secret?”
“Of course.”
“You know why I kept telling you your hair looks terrible since you cut it?”
“Why?”
“Because I remembered how it looked before, when we were lying like this, and our hair swirled together like fire on black water, I wanted to see that again.”
“If I’d known that,” Kastor smiled, “I would’ve made it grow extra fast, just for you. Here, let me try.” He squinched his face up, miming concentration, until Mikah poked him in the ribs.
“You’re hopeless. Let’s go see if the mob left any food in the house.”
There was, they discovered, plenty of food left. Their friends were still lingering over it. When Kastor and Mikah came in together, wearing last night’s rumpled clothes, Tanner cried, “Ha!” She thumped Lucien on the ribs and held her hand out. “Pay up.”
“Che ghanhar,” Kastor groaned. “You had a bet going?”
“How mortifying,” said Mikah, sounding pleased.
Magda glanced between them, confused. “How do you know they made up?”
Lucien explained, though he blushed: “First of all, when have you seen Mikah walking around with his hair down? Second, there’s teeth marks all over Kastor’s neck.”
Kastor covered his neck with his hands. “No. Aw hell.”
Magda turned bright pink. “I wouldn’t have noticed.”
Kastor turned to leave. Mikah caught his arm. “Where are you going? I thought you were hungry.”
“To get that scarf thing.”
“Nonsense. If you’re feeling singled out, my madness, you may mark me similarly.”
“I’m too hungry, I’d bite off chunks.” Kastor plopped down next to Tanner and reached for a round of cheese. “Besides, I just remembered we’re not the only gossip-worthy event around here. All those oddly pretty people got Tanner and Luce playing a catching game in the courtyard, and it worked like it was supposed to. Or were you too drunk to remember?” He shot Tanner an arch smile, and was surprised to see her grinning broadly, looking like a cat full of bird. Lucien was studying the ceiling.
Mikah crowed with delight. “What a marvelous place this is! Are you lonely, Magda dear, or does the garden keep you adequate company?”
“Master Mathonwy has allowed me the run of his library,” she answered. “Though I’m quite certain my happiness is of a completely different kind from yours. I’m so glad you’ve stopped being angry at each other. I hated to see you so unhappy.”
“So did we,” Mikah said, almost serious. It seemed to embarrass him, though, so he feigned indignance at Kastor the next moment: “Are you going to eat all the cheese, you greedy creature?”
Kastor cut off a tiny sliver for him. Mikah left him the sliver and took the round. Breakfast proceeded in this manner.
When they were finished, Tanner said, “Uki told us Math won’t be around for the next three days. We’re to relax and amuse ourselves. We’ve been invited down to the island, to visit some of those oddly pretty people, as you put it. Magda says she’d rather stay here and absorb knowlege, but Luce and I are going.”
Kastor and Mikah exchanged a glance. Mikah spoke for them both. “I think we’d rather be still, for a time. Things will be busy soon enough.”
“Whatever spins your pinwheel, mate. Me, I’d rather not have time to brood.” She and Lucien left arm in arm.
Magda got up as well. “I’ll be in the library, if you need me.”
This left Mikah and Kastor alone. They looked at each other for a while, each privately weighing options, until they reached the same conclusion. Without having to speak a word, they went back to Mikah’s room.
When Kastor looked back on those three days, he would wonder if he had a hint of precognition in him. He knew, so deep in his bones that he didn’t have to speak it to himself, that he had to live every second of this time as fully as possible. Even when his sleep-charm failed him and he could stay awake no longer, he refused to retreat from Mikah even in his dreams. He slept in Mikah’s arms, with his face buried in Mikah’s hair, and dreamed of Mikah.
They didn’t spend every moment in Mikah’s room. They wandered the gardens and the heights, went down to the lakeshore and waded in the unseasonably warm water, explored the house, played with the cats. They talked endlessly, a lifetime’s worth of talk distilled into an intense exchange of short, loaded, metaphorical sentences. They made no sense and understood each other perfectly. They didn’t talk about the future or the past, only the present. They described each other in flights of sudden poetry, described their own feelings in phrases which labored to rise above the cliches on the subject, and didn’t care whether they sounded stupid or not.
The others avoided them. It wasn’t embarrassment, exactly, Kastor thought; rather, they sensed that the lovers occupied some space that no one else could enter, and didn’t bother trying. Lucien and Tanner appeared to be pursuing some kind of courtship, but it was a much easier sort of thing, and admitted -- even reveled in -- company. They showed each other off to everyone. Kastor and Mikah couldn’t do that. Every second spent on someone else was a second robbed from their precious three days. They were magnificently selfish.
The evening of the third day, Uki knocked on their door and called through that Mathonwy had finished his work, and they were to come down. They answered that they’d be there in a moment, but it was half an hour before they could bring themselves to leave the room. They spent too long staring at each other, sharing anxiety, the fear of impending regret that was worse than the regret itself.
“Are you thinking of changing your mind?” Kastor said.
“It’s too late for that now,” Mikah said. “Everything’s in motion.”
They went downstairs.
Everyone else was there already. Mathonwy leaned against the mantle, toasting his back at the fire. One of the row of doors was open, admitting gusts of fitful warm wind. There was a smell of rain in the air.
“There’s my client,” Math said, with a rind of a smile. He looked old, worn, wearied. Whatever ritual he’d been at for three days, it had taken a lot out of him. “Have a seat. I’ve good news for you, if you like that sort of thing.”
“You’ve found the Forge?” Mikah pulled Kastor down next to him. They sat with hands entwined; they’d given up any shyness about public affection.
“If you still want it,” Math said shrewdly. “Consider whether you want the answer, Mikah. Don’t think you have to go through with this just because you’ve already begun. There are other ways.”
“I told you before. When someone has been the only constant in your life for so long -- even with your age, Math, you can’t imagine it. I simply can’t abandon my brother to his fate. Tell me how to find the Forge.”
“You don’t. It will find you. Specifically, prayer will call it to you.” Math looked pointedly at Magda, who only looked bewildered. “The Forge is not an object. It’s the state of recognition that a thing must be remade. My divinations tell me that the gods have been following your progress with interest, Mikah. They have never seen anything like this. The Mara are like children; curious, selfish, bright and fine and without future or past. That’s why you were given the power of forgetting. But you haven’t been forgetting, have you, Mikah? You’ve been growing up. Mara aren’t supposed to grow up.”
“Don’t tell me they’re angry with me for wanting to save Stiaan.”
“On the contrary. They’re very curious to see how this will turn out. It sets a precedent. Once you’re ready, pray. The Forge will come to you.”
Kastor swallowed hard. “Pray to who?”
“Whomever you know best. The purpose of the prayer is more important. If you’re just calling out, ‘Oh gods, let’s get this over with,’ it’s not going to work.”
“Then it only remains to get the hedzaii’ha away from Stiaan.” Mikah looked to Kastor, his pain at his decision plain on his face. “We leave tomorrow.”
“You can take the low path,” Math said. “That will speed your journey.”
“I’m not sure I want my journey speeded.”
“How many do demons and rogue Mara kill every day you wait?”
“I know. We’ll take the fast way.” He looked about to cry. He stood. “Excuse me.”
Kastor followed; he couldn’t do otherwise. Mikah went back to his room. He blew out all the candles and threw open a window. The wind carried spatters of rain now. Mikah leaned out, let the wind lift his hair around him. Kastor came up behind him, embraced him, let himself be enveloped by that pale cloud. For all his trying over these few days, he’d never been able to convey to his satisfaction how precious Mikah was to him, had given up on words, but now pain was etched into every tense line of Mikah’s body, and he tried again.
“I would climb a rope of thorns to heaven to steal you a star, if that would cheer you. Tell me why you’re so unhappy, Mikah. Let me help.”
Mikah whirled and hid his face in Kastor’s shirt. His shoulders jerked once, and then again, and then he was sobbing like a little child. Kastor could only hold him and murmur soothing nothings while lightning rolled mumbling overhead and the rain came down in earnest.
When Mikah had subsided to sniffling, Kastor asked once more. “What’s wrong, love? Please tell me.”
Mikah pulled back a little, shook his head, dragged his sleeve across his eyes. “I’m scared. That’s all. It’s going to go so fast now, and we have to do it all exactly right. We can’t let ourselves be distracted by fear for each other. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if I can lead you into danger.”
“But you have to. It’s what I’m for.”
“I know. I know. It’s so unfair. And I feel horrible for placing my brother above you, and horrible for placing you above him, and I don’t even know who I love more.”
“It’s different. Family’s different.”
“See? I’m so new at this. I’m so incompetent.”
“You’re not. I understand what Stiaan means to you. If it were my mother, or my son, I wouldn’t know who to put first either. Life is full of those kinds of nasty choices. You made your choice before you met me, you committed all this time and energy to it, you’ve suffered for it -- I could never take that away from you.”
“Even if it takes me away from you?”
Kastor set his teeth in his lip, eyes wincing shut in sudden pain, but he nodded.
“I don’t deserve you,” Mikah said.
“You deserve better. If we survive this, I’ll be better and better, I’ll be so good to you...”
Mikah pressed his fingertips to Kastor’s mouth, silencing him. “No future. We agreed. Only now.” He left the window open, with rain spattering the sill, and pulled Kastor toward the bed.
They made love with a singlemindedness approaching fury, that night. There was nothing like rest, nothing like ease, not a single moment wasted to inattention. Kastor knew now that Mikah expected to die. He weakened, several times, enough to try to persuade him to give up this quest, but it was too late; he’d given his true answer before, and now he was only wild with the fear of loss. He wanted, desperately, for Mikah to turn away from this path and stay with him -- wanted it but didn’t will it, and that made all the difference.
“I love you too much to make you stay safe,” he explained near dawn, when the weakness had passed.
“Beside your strength, all my power looks like empty wind,” Mikah replied. “No regrets, my aurora, my angel of winter. No regrets.”
“No regrets,” Kastor agreed, and they both knew it was a lie.
When the sky was too bright for morning to be denied any longer, they rose and dressed. Kastor put on his armor and his swords. Mikah braided his hair. They went down to meet the others, not holding hands for the first time in days.
Everyone was waiting on the front walk. The horse and mule, looking fat and sleek, were already packed. Kastor noticed that Tanner had a different sword, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The sky was still spitting rain. In the gray light, the flowers of the garden glowed so brightly they hurt his eyes. He knew he would remember that moment for the rest of his life: the bright garden, the silver sky, the smell of wet earth and horse, Mikah’s warmth still on his skin, and the sensation of leaving.
Mathonwy was there to see them off, looking a little recovered from his ritual. Uki was beside him with a tray. He said, “I like to give people presents when they’re setting off on a journey. Yours is a hero-journey, so you get hero-gifts. Jennet’s already got hers: the sword Dawnstar, which used to belong to my friend Hugh, of whom she sometimes reminds me. Lucien, this is for you.” He took from the tray a fist-sized stone, translucent white. “It’s not magical; it provides light by pure alchemy, and won’t be affected by your countermagical nature. Warm it in your hand to make it glow.”
Lucien took the gift with a bow. “Thank you, Master Mathonwy.”
“Magda, this is only a trinket, but I expect you’ll find it convenient. It’s a little thing I made for my own use, but I want you to have it.” He gave her a tiny, glittering pen of blue-enameled gold. “It never runs out of ink. Unless you hand it to Lucien, in which case, ink everywhere,” he added, but couldn’t get a laugh out of any of them.
“I’ll come back and visit someday, I hope,” she said, and embraced him as if he were family.
“Kastor, I was at a loss what to give you. You’ve got magic swords, magic armor -- what was I to give you, a tin of magic boot-blacking? One of the party guests solved it for me. Rei Azan painted this from memory. He’s got a perfect memory; dragons do. He said the scene simply caught his eye.” He offered a plate of ivory, smaller than the palm of his hand.
It was hinged; a diptych. Kastor opened its tiny golden latch. Inside, a miniature painting glowed in deep, true color: Mikah perched on the edge of a chair, rapt in attention to something off to the left, and Kastor leaning in the doorway behind him, looking down on Mikah with an expression of wistful tenderness. It was executed in perfect chiaroscuro, candlelight and shadow linking them into a composition that made them a single figure, though they weren’t touching. Kastor didn’t remember the dragon-kin even glancing up when he’d listened to the duet that night, but somehow he’d evoked the whole atmosphere. He made me beautiful, Kastor thought, fighting down a lump in his throat. I didn’t know dragons understood love, but he couldn’t have painted this without seeing into my heart. Is this what Mikah sees in me?
He choked out, “Thank you,” and no more.
“And finally, Mikah, all I have for you is this. You left it with me a long time ago, many forgettings ago. I thought you might want it back.” He offered an iron box, a handspan in length, its lock sealed in wax.
“I don’t remember it.”
“You told me at the time that you would want to leave it with your brother someday. Something about how it would take him a good long time to open it, by which time the contents would be ready to be looked at. Perhaps a gift or message for when the artifact you’ll remake has healed him?”
Mikah managed a bit of a smile. “For the son of Arneth, you’re awfully confused by time magic.”
“I suppose that does count as time magic, after all.”
“Thank you for everything, Math. Everything.”
“Don’t get sentimental on me, or I’ll go all blubbery. I need a promise from all of you that you won’t speak of this place. You will all be welcome here whenever you want to come. Kastor, perhaps someday you’ll consent to work for me.”
“I don’t know,” Kastor said. “But you have my oath. Hand and hoof.”
The others gave their word as well. Math nodded, satisfied. “I wish you luck and strength.” He raised a hand in farewell, went inside, and shut the door.
The five travellers turned away from that friendly house to resume their journey.