“Archer. Everybody calls me Archer.”
“When he talks to me of you, Roman calls you William.” There was a distinct pause before Heron went on. “Archer, then. Whatever you might think of me, you must know that I would never hurt you, if only for one reason. There is nobody I care for more than Roman, and to harm you in any way at all would inevitably hurt him, too. His love for you is quite absolute, and I don’t suppose that will ever be a source of joy for me, but I respect it.”
Archer eased his weight from foot to foot and searched his mind for any rational reason to resist Heron, but came up with nothing. So rather than stand there like an idiot doing a perverted version of the stationary waltz, he looked up.
Chapter Four: Déjà vu
Archer awoke in a warm bed, floating in a feeling of thoughtless peace. He felt ... very strange. As he bobbed up into full awareness, the mood stuck with him. He rolled in towards Roman, draping his arm lightly over his lover, who stirred slightly.
He reminded himself of Giffen’s warning-cum-death-threat, but it still didn’t puncture his peaceful feeling. Archer smiled to himself. He could just stay here all day. There was a slight itch at the back of his neck that he rubbed lazily. Probably another damn stealth pimple -- you’d think he’d be old enough to see the last of them by now.
Of course at that very moment, Roman sighed and stretched as a precursor to getting out of bed. Archer groaned.
“Tell me, is there anything real urgent we need to be doing?”
Roman raised one hand to toy with the overgrown ends of Archer’s tangled hair. “Much as I hate to disrupt your plans, I think we should find out what Heron is after and see what we can do about it. As much as I enjoy seeing my old friend venture out of the Underhill to visit us, I haven’t forgotten Giffen’s warning.”
“So why is nobody paying it all that much attention?”
Roman rested his head back on the pillow. “There’s one other seer, you know.”
“The elf. He never comes out of the Underhill.”
“Vavasour, yes. His sight is a little more reliable than our Giff’s -- but they have never contradicted each other until now. When push came to shove, Tania decided that Vavasour is the stronger seer and more neutral when it comes to the rest of us.”
There was a thoughtful silence, which Roman broke as he slipped away from Archer’s arms.
“As much as I can’t fault Tania’s reasoning, I don’t want to prolong dear Heron’s visit. Just in case. Besides, it cannot be so easy for him to see the two of us together.”
“Because he loved you?” That wasn’t something Archer would generally say out loud, for fear of the answer. But today it just slipped out.
Roman turned to him solemnly. “Maybe to some extent, but that is a matter long put aside. I was thinking more of Heron’s loss of his own life partner. He had a human mate before we met, magically bonded as we are. But she was lost, an accident. He is the only partner known to have survived the loss of his bonded lover -- and it was by the narrowest of margins.”
Well, now, there was a tale nobody had ever bothered to tell Archer before. It almost inclined him to give the old stick another chance.
And it was with these intentions that he got out of the warm bed and collected his clothes, which were draped on the armchair.
He stood for a moment, holding his jeans. Something didn’t seem quite right about ...
“Whenever you’re ready?” Roman inquired wryly as he tied his shoelaces.
Archer smiled a reply and hurried up.
* * * * *
The happy-go-lucky feeling popped the instant Archer laid eyes on Heron. As soon as he saw the faint smirk on that all too perfect face, Archer felt a totally irrational rage stir within him. The force of the change scared him, but he couldn’t help it. Just looking at the elf, he knew the bastard was up to no good.
Heron was full of Underhill manners, bowing to both of them as they entered the library. “I thought we might go out into the estate. The grounds seem ... pleasant.”
‘For merely human lands’ seemed to be the implied caveat. Archer clenched his teeth over the numerous but unhelpful things he felt like saying. Roman was right. The sooner they did what Heron wanted, the sooner he would be gone. And Archer sure didn’t want this guy sniffing around Roman any longer than he had to be.
Heron led the way, and Archer hung back. After a moment’s rather telling hesitation, Roman dropped back to join him.
“So, what is a pattern-master, exactly?” he whispered to Roman.
“You could have looked into that a little earlier than now.”
“He makes new spells, right?” Archer said defensively.
“It means he is a theorist capable of discovering new ways to employ our innate potentials.”
“And other than the fancy words, isn’t that what I said?”
Roman just shook his head.
Heron stopped at the far end of the lawn, where an island of poorly tended grass poked into the trees to form a small natural amphitheatre. He looked around and seemed satisfied.
“So, what exactly am I signing up for?” Archer experienced a stabbing unease. It felt like he was in the wrong place, or time.
Heron just looked around, nodded, and turned to them.
“I had hoped to work with the remains of the ward that surrounded the old chapel, but apparently this spell has already faded away. So we will concentrate upon the most crucial issue.”
Archer’s eyes strayed over the foliage that surrounded them. He realized Heron had stopped talking and looked back to find both Heron and Roman watching him. Heron began to speak again, now he had his audience’s attention. It was rather like being back in primary school -- not an experience Archer had enjoyed much the first time round.
“Which is to see whether a ward-like structure can be sustained for any length of time without the influence of a human spirit, what you might call a ghost.”
Roman frowned. “How can sheer power, fire, replace a controlling intelligence that keeps a ward in place?”
Heron airily waved a hand. “This spell is intended to create a structure that will reflect and cancel out an existing ward -- destroy one, in fact. The original caster -- in this case, Patrick -- provided the intelligence and design of the ward, which we need only echo. What we lack is the way an embedded spirit energizes a ward from within, for our counter-ward must also have a source of power. The only reasonable substitute that can be imagined is the mystic flame, which can leave a caster’s body but is imbued with his or her own life force.”
“Ah, but the sheer amount required would be more than most casters could ever produce ...” Roman seemed to understand, at least, and Archer was beginning to get the point.
They wanted him to generate the flame, a lot of it. Well, that was pretty much the only use the Society had ever had for him.
“And of course, Roman,” Heron added with a conspiratorial smile to his old lover, “your young man is something of a prodigy. But perhaps the exercise might be of use to him, as well. In helping develop his ... control.”
Which was exactly the kind of comment that did Archer’s control very little good. “Just tell me what to do,” he snapped.
As he paced the ground slowly, Heron was the very image of a wizard. He chanted under his breath and formed a shimmering, gossamer construction that was rooted in the ground at his feet and fanned up into the sky like a fluted blossom. The tightly woven strands of the construction channeled Heron’s power, dissipating it very slowly from the tip of each fragile petal.
“Let us see,” Heron said, “whether the power of flame can make this fragile fancy a more enduring structure.”
He turned not to Archer, but to Roman, and gave a nod.
Archer clenched his teeth and ignored them both. Although intricately made, this pointless spell was of a fundamentally simple design. It took in power at the base and fed it, by slow diffusion, from Heron’s own body up into the open sky. Curren
tly it did nothing but possess a pleasing form, barely visible even to those with magical gifts.
Archer stepped forward.
“Perhaps you might explain to your young man ...” Heron began.
Archer reached forward to the nexus where the main stem of the construct divided into its many paths. He sliced his palm downwards into the structure, feeling it part around the intrusion with a smooth, intimate surrender.
The flame welled up from his centre like a warm, wet tide. It slipped into the spellflower as if it were part of his own body. He felt Heron’s reaction, for the flower was part of him, also. The fire rose up within them both. The structure flushed from base to tip. The petals firmed and swelled, straightened and spread out from the base. Several of them fell down like veils over all three men.
Then, at the very heart of the flower, sparks caught, flames budded in a golden compromise between Heron’s silver structure and Archer’s feral ruby fire.
He felt Roman grasp his shoulders. “Archer, enough,” Roman hissed.
The spellflower continued to draw the heat from him, ever faster. Archer’s vision dimmed, and his skin felt cold as the power bled out of him.
“I ... can’t”
Giffen was right. He was going to die here. Once he had joined his flame to the empty vessels of the construct, the fire rushed to fill it, accepting the spell space as part of Archer’s own body -- and he could not cut it off.
He could hear Roman shouting something to Heron, wondered if he should try to pull away ... but then, just as he felt he could give no more, the fire lurched within him, roared and redoubled and poured forth. Joyous heat filled every part of his body, and fire bred more fire in a deluge from the pit of his stomach.
With a deep, splintering roar, the spell flower filled and burned and burst in every cell and vessel, spewing forth a billow of coruscating smoke and fire with a sound like an immense cannon shot that echoed off the surrounding hills.
Archer saw not with his body but with his inner sight as the flame outgrew its shell and threw itself into the freedom of oblivion until all was still and cold and quiet.
It was dark, his body heavy; he couldn’t move. Archer shook off the weight upon him, spitting out grass and mud. The weight was Roman, who had him pressed to the ground.
“Are you ...”
“Fine,” Archer replied, blinking as he looked around a world so suddenly dark beneath a cloudy sky. This was becoming something of a habit.
No remnant of the spellflower remained. They both turned to see Heron still standing, quite unruffled except for a faint flush marking his normally pallid cheeks.
“Heron?” Roman enquired uncertainly.
Heron looked away from the now vacant sky, directly at Archer, with a piercing gaze like he was seeing him for the first time.
“Your young man looks a little feverish; perhaps we should adjourn for the moment.”
“Adjourn, Heron? I am not sure we should proceed at all. Archer doesn’t seem to have the ability to control how much the construct draws from him.”
“It is not a matter of control ...” Archer began.
Roman stooped beside him, but his attention was entirely on Heron, who regarded them both coolly. “You are quite right to have concerns,” Heron said with a benevolent smile. “And I did not foresee either the way the construct would act as a vacuum to draw flame, or the sheer capacity --” His eyes flickered as he cut short his words. “But I do think young William here should take some rest. I believe the draw on his flame has caused some changes in his inner structures. He should be given some time to adjust.”
He bent to Archer with an expression of rather patronizing concern. Archer felt ... fine. A vague fluttering in his stomach, but other than that ...
He struggled to his feet and took a deep breath. “That was a rush,” he said. “I’ll go again, whenever.”
“I’ll need to give the matter more thought,” Heron said. “Roman, perhaps you might discuss a few adjustments with me, as a person intimately familiar with the young man’s capacity.”
“Well, perhaps I might be involved in that little chat, as someone even more intimately familiar with, well, me.”
Both elves looked at him rather blankly, as if utterly unable to see what point he was making.
“Whatever,” Archer said, throwing his hands in the air. “Why don’t you two just let me know what I can do, when you’ve got it all worked out.”
He rubbed his aching jaw as he left them. What had possessed Roman to tackle him like that? It wasn’t as if his own fire was going to hurt him -- or Roman, for that matter. He would have to intend the fire to burn before it could become tangible and harm anyone, transforming its mystical strength into physical flame. Of course, if the two of them pissed him off any further, he might just be tempted.
He felt the root of his own fire inside him, full and swollen from such ample expression. It had never occurred to him before that the only limit to his fire was how freely he released it. He wondered what his real limits were.
An even greater mystery was why he had left Roman alone with Heron, again. Archer stopped to look back at the screen of trees that now hid the two elves from sight. He turned and looked to the rear of Scott House, with its dry fountain and row of columns.
Something felt ... off, but he just couldn’t put a finger on it. It seemed a little too commonplace to contemplate death, emit truly astounding amounts of magical fire, be royally patronized by your lover’s ex -- and your lover -- and then just wander off to make a sandwich.
Archer knew he needed to talk things over a bit, work out what the hell was going on and check his unreliable moral compass against someone less inclined to getting things all wrong -- and hopefully have someone tell him there was no need to be jealous, because Roman was crazy in love with him. Given that Veleur hardly spoke, Wolfy wasn’t the sympathetic type, and Peter would be too much like going to confession -- that pretty much left Bear.
* * * * *
Bear’s nickname was almost a little too suitable. He was a big man, with a wide face almost surrounded by perpetually tangled, curling hair and a short, dense beard. If you dressed him up in denim and propped him up at the right sort of bar, you’d be beating the eager cubs off with a bat, or rather Wolfy would be. Bear radiated an aura of benevolent solidity in all that he did, which at the moment was leaning back on the sofa, watching the TV. Wolfy was brewing up coffee in the kitchen.
Not typically the most sensitive of women, she took one look at him and passed over her own fresh cup of coffee with ample milk and sugar, which was how they both took it.
“Take that one for Bear,” she said.
It was funny. Just like with Giffen, Wolfy and he were not friends -- but he knew he could depend on them both when he needed to.
As Archer came through the door with a mug in each hand, Bear looked up and patted the sofa beside him.
“Come tell Uncle Bear all about it.”
Archer had to laugh at that. He settled down gingerly on the cushions and passed Bear his tarry black coffee. “Where should I start, man? I’m not sure whether to worry more about what that damn elf is doing with Roman, or what he’s planning to do with me.”
Bear nodded sagely, sipped his coffee, and grimaced. “She never makes it strong enough,” he said with a sigh. Then, turning to Archer, “Do you really think Heron is some kind of threat?”
“Rationally? I ... don’t think I should. He’s a seelie elf, confidant of the queen, trying to save Ireland, yadda yadda.”
“But?”
“It’s what I feel. I know my temper gets me in trouble and I can’t trust my emotional reactions to things, but I can’t help feeling them anyway. And no matter what some high and mighty Underhill elf might say, I trust Giffen; I know him. He said Heron coming here would lead to trouble.”
“But not that Heron had any ill intent.”
Archer made no reply to that.
“And as for the other thing, you
must trust Roman at least as much as Giffen.”
Archer scrunched back on the sofa and looked up at the television. It was some kind of show-jumping event. Men in poncey white trousers, on horses with meticulously braided manes.
“I know your place in this house isn’t the easiest, Archer,” Bear said. “You don’t always get a lot of respect. But I do know that you give your all for the Society and how much you feel for Roman.”
Archer felt his face flush. “Oh, yeah, I’m a peach.”
Bear just chuckled to himself. “Sometimes doing the right thing is harder for you than it might be for other people. But you do it, and for that you have my utmost respect.” Bear reached over and rested his thick-fingered hand on Archer’s forearm. “And I know you’ll do the right thing here, too.”
In a rare flash of insight, Archer realized Bear was speaking as much for himself as for Archer.
“You don’t like him either, do you?”
“For everybody’s sake, we’re going to give Heron the benefit of the doubt.”
Archer took a deep breath and watched a big white horse jump daintily over a big white fence. “Do you really think he will be able to bring down the Irish ward?”
“They say that if anyone can, he can.”
“Wouldn’t that be something.”
Bear was silent, normally a sign he wasn’t saying what was on his mind. “Oh, come on, Bear. How could that be a bad thing?” Archer pressed. “Magic back in Ireland, the land where many of the old arts started out?”
“It’ll open a frontier, and I think there will be plenty of people ready to rush in when it opens up to magic and people like us again. Sometimes I think the Society is so focused on tearing down the wall that nobody’s thought about what’ll happen next. But I bet the unseelie have, and the League of Maewyn and all those other dedicated groups who want to tell people how to live their lives.”
Bear had obviously been giving this some thought, but frankly, Archer had enough big, scary things to think about without adding that to his plate.
Chapter Five: Where There’s Smoke
Maewyn's Prophecy: A Heart Aflame Page 4
