The Warlord and the Bard

by Eric Alan Westfall

  Given the drop and loop ride his emotions had been on these last minutes it was not surprising Niallan was still uncertain, invitation or not. He looked like a puppy that had just pissed a flood on the floor and wondered whether he was going to be beaten or forgiven.

  With Niallan I preferred the beating, but forgiveness was the...temporary...order of the night.

  Another stroke of his face. This time he pressed his cheek into my palm. A born and bred, carefully honed from an early age, royal and imperial ability to lie, came to my aid. “Let’s put this behind us, Niallan. I forgive you.”

  “Th...thank, you, uh....”

  Still so confused. Now he didn’t know what to call me. Was the DarkFire I allowed him to use when I was using him still acceptable? My lord? Your Highness? Something else short of the formality of the Great Court?

  “It’s still ‘DarkFire,’ Niallan. Though still only in private.”

  Inside my head I heard the despair, even the loneliness, etched in those meaningless words, since he would never again be private with me, and there was no one else to say my name in any way close to the way I wanted it said, the way I knew I would never hear. Niallan, of course, heard nothing of that. He was not capable of it. He was far too young, barely past thirty, too self-centered, too unschooled in the ways of power, to read voice and stance that well.

  A tiny thumb-stroke across his cheekbone, and then I walked back to the bed, and sat. It was my turn to sprawl, resting my hands on the crumpled, well-used, but unfortunately not completely used sheets, leaning back, spreading my knees, letting him see the thick cock that I made half hard, though the brief fantasy needed for that had nothing to do with Niallan. I was taunting him, actually, with a view of what, if he had a scintilla of sense, he would understand he’d never enjoy again. No matter what he had just heard me say. And Niallan had very much enjoyed that cock, however I chose to employ it on whatever part of his body I chose to use.

  Taunting him was cruel, but I deserved to enjoy some cruelty out of this.

  Niallan did not in fact have that scintilla.

  The mostly fearful expression had faded, replaced with one of tentative arousal, a sudden hope, perhaps even belief, that his looks, his cock sucking skills, his screwable ass were going to get him out of trouble yet again. Niallan still wasn’t quite getting the full message.

  The message that we, though there had never really been a “we,” were over. But then, I didn’t want him to get the message tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough. After he had done what I needed him to do.

  “Do you understand the message for your friend, or, well, just remember it?”

  A very firm nod, accompanied by the slightly distracted look Niallan gets when trying to do two things at once, like looking at my cock and saying something reasonably coherent. If I pushed him much harder even he would realize something was wrong. I let it go.

  “Then be sure you deliver the message in person. No linking, no letters. It’s more direct that way. A personal touch. I want him to know how close he was to disaster, but that I am willing to forgive him as well.”

  He didn’t even question me, just nodded again. The damned fool.

  It has always been the tradition of the High Houses that a man who ends a relationship with a paid-for lover, male or female, gives a final gift, with the value depending on the nature of the parting, and the quality of the services rendered. This parting was not a good one, but Niallan had provided quality services—frequently. I would not be so crass as to offer him money and brand him the whore he in reality was.

  I would let him live. That should be gift enough, though I doubted whether he would ever understand what a gift that was, since his “friend” and all of his “friend’s” friends, the ones who had set this up, will quietly disappear. Appointments to distant worlds and odd accidents; the rare but not unheard of disappearance between entering a Gate-Road between the stars, and never arriving at the exit Gate; illness; a desire to spend more time with family, secluded at an estate, all of the usual methods.

  I stood up straight, let my cock go back to its customary length, and pushed the long unicorn-tail of hair over my shoulder and down my back again.

  “Link with your family. No, no, not now,” I said as he started to get that glazed look he had whenever he exercised the small link-Gift he possessed. “In a moment. You can tell them they are invited, to meet us there at midnight.”

  No one in his very much Lower House and Family has ever been invited to the Summer Ball. They have probably never even seen one of the invitations. Not surprisingly, Niallan squealed. Had I ever found that appealing, or simply endured it for the sake of good fucks?

  A flicker of greed went by his eyes. I recognized it; understood the question he was trying to figure out how to ask. Just how far did my largesse extend? How many of his relatives would now owe him a debt he would not hesitate to collect at some point or another?

  “Your parents, of course. You have a younger brother?” I knew the answer, knew how much he disliked the younger brother. The best reason to include him on this list, after Niallan admitted that he did. “And your sisters.” Three beautiful harpies.

  “But, dear Niallan,” and once more I gagged internally at having to use that word, “will they have enough time to get ready?”

  We both glanced over at the clock. A quarter to thirteen. A little over three hours until midnight. Niallan understood the question...would his family have the right clothes for an occasion like this, and if not, how in the multiple Hells were they going to get them in time...and simply said, “We will be ready.”

  It needed no great expertise in body language to read “between” that line. He already had his clothes, and if the rest of them could not do as well in what little time they had, then to the Hells with all of them, Niallan would arrive alone and make his own attempt at a grand entrance.

  “Go home and change; tell your family they’re invited. I’ll meet you there at midnight.” I planned on getting there at least by fourteen. The two hours until Niallan’s arrival would give me a chance to do whatever the House and Family required of me in the way of social deceptions, as well as getting a head start on drinking.

  Once he understood he was invited not merely to a party with the High Houses and Families, but this party, a Royal and Imperial party, Niallan’s near-death experience seemed to vanish from his awareness. I put up with his exuberant hug and a sloppy kiss, but only on my cheek. Anything so long as it got him out of the Palace before my personal control, not the monitor’s control, shattered, and I killed him anyway.

  The door was not closed behind the running Niallan for more than a few seconds before things in my room began to break.

  I carefully walked back to the window, suspended the ward, let the monitor conduct its cold analysis of the gardens several stories below to be sure no one was there, or at least no one I cared about hurting. Then, scorning Power, I hurled a massive chair through the recently-repaired window, sending snowflake shards of glass fluttering down to the ground around it. The bed came apart next. And more chairs, either out the window or smashed into kindling for the fireplace. Glasses and the bottles of meradir, of course. Clothing, curtains, pillows, and rugs were shredded with fingers and the very sharp blade of the war knife. Everything movable was smashed, torn or broken, which included several items the Palace mages had sworn could not be broken. At last, with the room reduced to its component parts, I sat down in the remains of what had been a comfortable bed. Only then, and only after a careful mental sweep of the room to be sure nothing was left which could be destroyed, did the monitor allow me the luxury of crying.

  But not for long.

  The gulping sobs stopped; the tears dried. I raised my head.

  Forty years.

  That was how long ago the prophecy had been obliterated from public records, but apparently not well enough, back when I was fourteen and my childhood had just been ripped away.

  My memories are glitter
ing, faceted memory crystals, creating their own diamond brilliance, scattered in piles and heaps in a vast cavern somewhere inside me. It expands when more of them are dumped in. It never contracts because no memory is ever lost or destroyed. The cavern crystals require no labels, no order. All I have to do is think of a date, a time, a place, anything at all to trigger a particular memory and the crystal appears in my figurative hand, ready to open.

  The crystal for that day is in my hand. Goddess damn. I throw it as far and as hard as I can, letting it drop, bounce, disappear among its identical brethren. I did not open the memory, did not experience it again, but even the contemplation of the possibility I might, was enough.

  I felt the renewed eagerness of the Sword, and the barest shivering of the Rage behind the sealed doors. Perhaps I should be grateful. At once every forty or so years, I will have to deal with someone attempting to fulfill the prophecy, someone attempting to use it for some gain, only another ten or fifteen times before I die. That does not, of course, count having to deal—again and again and again with whatever it is that has taken the place of my soul—with that first attempt to fulfill it.

  I glanced around. There didn’t appear to be any intact clothes in the room, and I had at least implicitly promised my aunt I would behave. Unfortunately, that precluded showing up at the party naked. I stood, linked with my most recent valet—for some reason they tended to ask the Chief Steward for a transfer fairly quickly, sometimes begging to work in the stables. He had carefully absented himself at the first sound of shattering glass, not merely from the vicinity, but from my wing entirely. I think he may have been on his way to Heran when I stopped him. I gave him instructions and unlinked.

  Being a prince has decided advantages, since replacement clothing, of a quality more than sufficient to meet Aunt Sylvara’s exacting standards, was readily available only a short while later. Halfway through dressing, though, I stopped and sat on the bed.

  Why just coach an infatuated Niallan to say those words to me? They can’t have known only the “seven times” part, and they had obviously concluded the prophecy was sex-based. Just as Jhadrek had. Jhadrek and the two guards...and the repeated rape of a fourteen year old boy about whom there was a prophecy. Once again I wrenched my mind away from that line of thought, viewed even the words that described the...event...through the lens of the monitor, the cool distance that made all that happened something that had happened to someone else.

  Except that now, like a bard’s quasi-magical refrain, I couldn’t get the words, the stupid, Goddess-lost, pain-bringing, murdering words out of my mind.

  “Seven times said. Seven times heard. Touches three. One. Then the other. Then two as one. Then One. Then two. And love.”

  Goddess, how I hate that final fucking word.

  I cannot forget any of them, of course. Can never forget any of what happened. The best I can do is to avoid calling up that memory crystal, opening it, experiencing it all again.

  But I want to forget.

  So I decided that plan or no plan, I would forget...many things...at Aunt Sylvara’s party. Or at least blur them through a liberal application of alcohol. Even if only for a little while

  Jerril

  He is back again, back from wherever it was his thoughts took him just now. It was not a good place. Is he even aware that in those lost minutes his goblet was refilled twice?

  DarkFire

  The alcohol has worked. The memories are of course not gone, just blurred through a thick fog of liquor. A fog I will have to work hard to maintain. One of those lost, blurred, memories is who I am. Well, no, not who I am in a general sense. I’m the fucking prince, aren’t I, no matter how drunk I may be? I extend my hand, checking again for trembles, wait for the refill of the goblet, gulp only half of it for some reason. What’s gone is who I am tonight, who I decided I was going to be. With a mental riffling through the possibilities, I at last find the right persona: Warlord.

  I wrap the persona about me like a long and warm winter cloak regained on a cold night after being momentarily discarded, settling into it until it is comfortable on my shoulders. There is—consciously to the few people who know me well, subconsciously to everyone else—a recognizable difference in me between when I am the Heir Presumptive and when I am Warlord.

  I will never be a languid prince, prancing about, so when I am wearing the Heir Presumptive persona, my face, my stance, my walk, lets everyone know I am not only second in line to the throne, but well aware of it, and that I have all the arrogance that goes with being a dar Andrae of that rank. Plus the ability, Goddess forbid, to rule if I had to, so don’t fuck with me. As Warlord, there is no mistaking my carriage, my voice and how I use both, as anything other than those of an extremely talented warrior, who has a vast amount of experience with death, whether ordering it in battle, or doing it himself. The highest-ranking military officer in the Kingdom and Empire. And one who actually deserves that rank even if it is, for all practical purposes, hereditary to the second son or daughter. So don’t fuck with me.

  Hmm. In drunkenness there is truth. Each of my personas, if described aloud, would end with “don’t fuck me with me.” Though the description of the Bearer of the Sword of Souls would more likely end with an almost roar of, “So don’t fuck with me or the Voices I command.”

  So. The Warlord persona. Perfect. I am in the mood for mayhem, and since I cannot indulge in a destructive spree, the very least I can do is set the nervous little birds fluttering, and trying desperately to decide whether they will be safer by freezing and hoping I will just stalk by, or taking wing in hopes of getting out of my reach. I take a few steps toward the stairs. Stop.

  Goddess damn it. I can’t. My stupid plan, the one I assured Alain would work, requires me to appear to be at least slightly love struck. Fortunately, even had the “spell” worked no one would believe I would ever display my “love” with any kind of drama in so public a place as the Summer Ball.

  A moment only to swirl off the warded warrior’s cloak with the crossed-blade Warlord’s insignia at the collar, and swirl on the far more flamboyant cloak of the newly-in-love Heir Presumptive gracing a ball with his presence, and enduring the ball for the sake of his flamboyant, Lower Family, hair’s-breadth-from-irredeemably-crude “love.” How the taste of the Royal and Imperial Family has declined in recent years.

  I focus outwardly again, and my eyes and ears begin to take in the sights and sounds...primarily the sounds...of the Ball. My wince is only internal. The Heir Presumptive does not display emotion publicly, especially not at a party attended by all of his immediate family, a great many of his other relatives, some more distant than others but still close enough in Aunt’s discriminating view to warrant the invitation, and a select, very select, segment of the nobility currently on the Throne World. Princely precept number something.

  Displaying drunkenness is only marginally more acceptable, which is to say, not at all.

  Niallan, however, has no such qualms about emotional displays. His first attempt to drape himself over me was just after his arrival, before midnight, of course, with his family hovering behind him and trying to cover their awe with a false arrogance and an even more false showing of fashionable boredom.

  I unfortunately had to allow it, at least for a while, or the plan that did not involve Niallan’s obvious one for my cock and one of his convenient holes, might come apart. Still, given my reputation, a slight degree of distance will not raise any suspicions in whomever in this crowd set Niallan up. Indeed, it may even enhance the belief of the actual traitor that Niallan was successful. After all, it could only be compulsion that would make me bring someone like Niallan to the Summer Ball, particularly accompanied by his family. And if I am seen to be a bit uncomfortable with the reactions of the nobility, of my family, then “forcing” myself to put a modicum of distance between Niallan and me, may be seen as a desperate effort to balance the command of the “spell” and my duties to House and Family.

  Bu
t still, an infatuated prince, newly in (bespelled) love, would certainly want to give his beloved a gift. And with Niallan having successfully worked that spell, the traitor would know Niallan would make sure the gift was a valuable one.

  It is. A neck chain woven from numerous strands of finely carved solid gold, supporting a gold medallion, in the center of which is a large, bright purple tere gem, surrounded by blindingly yellow diamonds and emeralds. It is extraordinarily gaudy and precisely the kind of gift Niallan would demand. It is also known to have been a gift to the Family less than a century ago.

  Giving it away in such a public venue, making a point of presenting it to Niallan on his arrival, having him turn and duck his head so I could buckle the clasp at the back of his neck, was fucking with Father’s mind in a way I can not help but enjoy. He will get over it once he knows the truth, but for a while I can enjoy this gift to myself. He was not present to see the little display, but he would have been told about it immediately after. No one who watched the presentation was courageous enough to actually voice-link with the King-Emperor and offer to let him sense-link, so he could watch the scene through the linker’s eyes and ears

  Anger under control, Rage under control, the Sword sullen but quiet, and still I wanted to hurt someone. Instead, I let Niallan have his moment, his last moment, disgusting not only myself, but those around us who did not have to watch but of course did, and the others with whom they would immediately share what they saw. It is, after all, quite a social coup for the beautiful—the extraordinarily beautiful—son of a scheming, second-rate Lower House and Family to be attached to the Heir Presumptive, no matter how Niallan’s very mercenary parents and relatives previously viewed with not-so-subtle distaste the eldest son’s preferences and prior liaisons. He eventually wandered off, believing it was entirely of his own volition.

  He will not be ostracized, no matter how offended they are by his presence. The High Houses cannot afford the risk that I might be so infatuated with Niallan that an insult to him will be taken by me as a personal insult. Insulting any dar Andrae is never a wise idea; insulting me in any persona is simply dangerous. An insult to the Warlord or Bearer is potentially fatal. So they will talk with him, laugh at his rarely funny jokes, admire his outrageous clothes, and compliment him on the way the disgustingly vulgar medallion—chosen precisely because of it would clash with everything Niallan has on—goes so well with his coloring and his elegant clothes. And all the while they will quietly, delicately, sharpen the stilettos and pick out the precise place to plunge them into his back., when the time is ripe.