To Walk in the Way of Lions

by H. Leighton Dickson

  Gloveless hands slipped to her chin, gently cupping her jaw as one might cup an egg or tiny bird. His thumbs caressed her cheeks, stroking the silver hairs downward, with the pelt, and he marveled at her softness. He bent forward, leaning in to kiss first one brow, then the other. She closed her eyes as he kissed first one lid, then the other. She held her breath as he kissed first one cheek, then the other. His lips moved to hers but did not touch, hovering for a heartbeat, two heartbeats, waiting for her, waiting…

  There.

  He released her and sat back, exhaling a deep cleansing breath.

  “That... is how I would kiss you,” he said, smiling at her. “If I loved you.”

  Ursa sat very still for some time, weighing him in the ice blue measure of her eyes, before pushing to her feet. “I must go release the Scholar.”

  And she turned on her precariously high boot heels and marched off, leaping and leaping again down the rounded sides of the bluff.

  Once again, Sireth sighed. “Oh Petrus, I am such a fool. What in the Kingdom am I to do now?”

  Naturally, the only answer was the howl of the wind as the clouds began to block out all traces of sun.

  ***

  Kirin smiled as he watched the leopards, sitting round the small fire, drinking tea, chatting and laughing amongst themselves. Wing, Luke and Oded. He was sure those were their names. Only three of them left now. Just three from eight and he felt his heart sink at the loss. He rarely lost those under his command, but then again, his was rarely a battlefield or combat zone. No, he was more diplomat than soldier. Both stations required trust, intelligence, strategy and skill. Fortunately, he had those in abundance.

  He smiled as he watched Ursa storm down from the bluffs – odd, the Seer was not with her – and she cast about looking for the Scholar. He himself had released the pitiful creature. She had stood in the same position for almost an entire day. Her muscles were bound to be aching from the trial. He knew she had headed straight for the hot springs, and while he hated even the suggestion of getting wet, he did know for a fact that, if a cat could put up with the indignity, hot springs could do more to sooth sore muscles than anything. He would have to tell Ursa or she would never forgive the tigress for her ‘failure’ and she would spend the rest of the journey cleaning tack.

  He did not smile however, as he looked up at the clouds directly overhead. The little canyon was boxed in all three sides by cliffs, which obliterated most of the sky above, but he could tell there was a storm coming. Judging from the color and cloud, it would hit sometime tonight, and he was glad they had set up the tents. Kerris himself had warned him of the oncoming gale – there would be lightning and he would need to get his brother nestled deep in his bedroll before it struck. This storm was expected, therefore could be controlled. Kerris was, in his heart of hearts, a co-operative cat.

  And so he turned on his heel, preparing to find his brother and usher him to safety when a shadow slipped out of the darkness of the cliff.

  Fingers reached up to remove a dark hood and the Captain of the Queen’s Guard caught his breath.

  For standing here, right here, in an oasis born of sulphur, hot water and rock, in the easternmost reaches of Hiran, stood the Empress.

  ***

  He looked up from the wound of the Major’s Imperial grey, to the clouds closing in overhead, and sighed. It seemed that the fates had targeted him somehow, ever since the misfortunate hour of his birth. He rarely had more that two weeks before some trouble or another would find him and leave him broken and in desperate need of repair. But this journey? It was unnatural the way the fates were chasing him. He couldn’t even begin to count the lashes.

  First is Luck. Second is Destiny. Or so the saying goes. Kirin was first-born, the chosen son, but obviously the one destined for great things. He was second born but the lucky one. How could they have ended up so backward, so that an entire school of philosophy was turned on its ear, just for the house of Wynegarde-Grey.

  But, he thought with another sigh, perhaps it was simply the way of things.

  He rubbed the great chest, wiped the rest of the healing linement off on his trousers and turned to leave, all but bumping into the Scholar as he did so. Her hair was wet, and she was barefoot, wearing a simple shift and blanket and he knew at once she’d been swimming.

  “Sidala,” he said happily, reaching for her elbows to move her out of his way. “The pools or the springs?”

  “Um, springs,” she said, and it seemed to him that she was a little befuddled. Or perhaps concentrating.

  “Ah yes, good for the bones. How was your first exercise?” She did not seem like she was getting out of his way anytime soon. He was certain he could distract her and make his escape.

  “Oh, terrible. I feel terrible. I ache all over. She is so cruel, that woman. She’s a horrible, terrible, cruel woman. I really don’t think I want to be a soldier. Not at all.”

  “Yes, yes. I feel the same way. Listen, I need to find my brother –“

  And again, she stepped into his way, and again, there was something in her eyes, something strange that was not often there.

  “Sidala?” he asked point-blank. There was simply no getting around her. “What can I do for you?”

  “I…I…”

  “Yes?” He glanced up at the sky. It was getting darker now, becoming difficult to tell cloud from night. The wind had picked up and it smelled of rain. He needed to find Kirin.

  She took a deep breath, clenched her jaw to stop her chin from trembling, and looked up at him. “I want to court you.”

  She said it, just like that. No preamble, no smoothness or skill to commend her request, just a simple, “I want to court you.” He had never heard such a thing. In fact, for the first time in a long time, he was speechless.

  She threw her hands in the air. “I know, I know, it’s not the ‘way things are done,’ but I’m so tired of the ‘way things are done’ and I really, really like you, and we get along so well, and you don’t mind that I think too much and I don’t mind that you drink too much, and we both fall into trouble far too much for our own goods, I mean, good, but it just comes down to the fact that I don’t really care about rules or “the way things are” and I just want to…I just want to, you know…court you…”

  He was sincerely speechless. He honestly had no idea what to say. What might be a good thing, what might be a convenient thing, it didn’t seem to matter. Words, normally his allies, had deserted him too. Curse those damned fates.

  “Sidala,” he said finally.

  “Fallon Waterford. That’s my name.”

  “Sidala, please…”

  “Fallon. Say it. Say my name.”

  “Names…ah, are personal things…”

  “I said I want to court you, Kerris Balthashane Wynegarde-Grey. I think that’s very personal!”

  The winds were plucking at her wet hair, drying it in pieces, leaving it damp in others. It exaggerated the stripes. He could hear thunder in the distance now, feel the whispering voices begin, and he blinked to bring him back to this place.

  “Can we talk about this later, sidala?”

  “I know you have bedded Sherah. I want to learn these things too! I am a woman, not a child.”

  “I know, I know but…”

  “Why can’t you teach me?”

  The wind was strong now, causing her shift to dance about her slim straight body. She was right – she was a woman, not a child. He could not help but notice.

  “I…I can’t…”

  It was as if he had hit her, the swift change in her expression.

  “You…can’t?”

  “It would be wrong. You are so young—“

  She stamped her foot. “I am not ‘so’ young!”

  “Sidala, please, and you are pure, whereas I am far from it…”

  “You are a lion. That’s plenty pure.”

  “Oh my. Oh my.” He took a step backward, slapping a hand to his forehead and searching the skies a
s if for help. But there was no help from the skies, only darkness and thunder and cruel whispers. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Her chin finally won out, and the tremor in it was released, causing her lips to tremble with it. She took one, two, three steps back and a single tear fell down her cheek, creating an entirely new stripe along her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed out loud. “I’m so sorry. I’m hopeless, aren’t I?”

  “No, please, that’s not what I meant either—“

  “Am I so ugly? I thought that maybe my markings…”

  “You have lovely markings, sidala. And you are far from ugly—“

  “So what is it, then? Why is it so impossible for you to even consider a-courting me? Why?”

  Thunder again, much closer now and a flash of sheet lightning, making black clouds momentarily white. Call me, they crooned. He swallowed.“I need to find my brother…”

  And she did a thing that he had not expected, which should not have surprised him, for this entire meeting had been most unexpected. She stepped forward and lifted her chin to his face. Her emerald eyes were flashing. It set his blood racing.

  “You want me to think for myself but you, you have to ask your brother permission?”

  He could feel the lightning, calling him, wooing him, urging him, whispering and promising and he swallowed hard again to shut it out, but there was a beautiful young tigress in front of him and the voices were deafening and his head was spinning.

  “Oh blast,” he muttered, and grabbed her face in his hands and kissed her.

  ***

  The Empress was standing in the shadows of the ravine, her golden eyes fixed on his, a small intimate smile playing on her lips.

  She was glorious.

  But she was the Empress. He dropped to his knees in the most formal of bows, elbows to the hard, hard ground, when he noticed her feet, tiny and slippered in braided gold. Beautiful feet.

  “Captain,” she said.

  “Excellency. Why are you here? How did you get here? Where are your guards? I…I do not understand.” Too many questions spinning around in his head. It was impossible, yet she was here.

  A hand touched his forehead. It was cool like the night. Her hands were bare, most unusual, and her pelt gleamed blue in glimpses of moonlight. “I have missed you,” she said.

  She could slay him with a word and he struggled for control. The Empress. His Empress. Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu. Lyn-ling. Here in Hiran, in the Dry Provinces.

  “Why are you here?” His voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Does it matter? I am here. It is enough.”

  This was a dream. It had to be. He rose to his feet, all the while, caught up in those great golden eyes. He was shaking.

  She reached out a dark hand to stroke his face and his head spun yet again. Light-headed, yes that was it. He was light-headed. Drunk with her, the sight of her, the sound of her, the feel of her bare hand on his pelt. He barely heard the thunder, barely saw the flash of lightning as he did something that he had been waiting his entire lifetime to do.

  He pulled her to himself and kissed her.

  ***

  Tonight everything changes It is the way of things All is not Alchemy but Alchemy is everywhere Even killing her will not change what is to come It was yours to choose and choose you did What will happen now cannot be stopped Be prepared my friend for trouble It will not rest now until you are dead

  Sireth opened his eyes. “Petrus?” He leapt to his feet. “Petrus! Petrus!” he cried out, and his voice echoed throughout the ravine, only the wind and the cracking of the thunder drowning it out.

  ***

  Something was wrong.

  Despite the racing of his heart, the taste of her lips on his tongue, the smell of her, orange and lotus and incense, the feel of the silk crushing under his hands, something was definitely wrong.

  She was taller than he remembered.

  He opened his eyes.

  ***

  Path the falcon changed her course, angled her wing and headed back to the ravine.

  ***

  She was tugging at his clothing, pulling his tunic from his shoulder, and his own hands were everywhere, throwing the blanket to the ground, under the shift, across her ribs, and she was kissing him back with a passion he had not thought possible from one so…so… scholarly, but the thunder roared again, and he needed help but none was coming and he lost himself to the elements and remembered nothing for some time.

  ***

  The Alchemist was smiling at him.

  He stepped back, breaths coming in short, sharp gasps.

  The Alchemist.

  Not the Empress.

  “Sidi?” she purred, her long speckled fingers reaching for him in the darkness.

  “Forgive me, sidala, I… I thought…”

  He thought, but he had not known. He had been lost, somehow, lost in the want of her, the illusion, and it terrified him to know he could be so easily lost.

  “There is no honor,” he uttered to himself, remembering those words from what seemed a lifetime ago. “There is only desire, and the sorrow that it brings.”

  “Sidi?” she asked again, stroking his face, his cheekbone, his jaw, and he looked at her with new eyes, wondrous and dangerous and new. She was so beautiful. Her golden eyes called him, captured him, bound him and he felt the urge to utterly and finally surrender to her. Everything he had always wanted but had denied himself, she offered freely. She could be his own, the place he belonged, his home.

  And this time, without veil or illusion, he pulled her to himself, Sherah al Shiva, tangling his hands in her long wild hair, and kissed her.

  The lightning laughed at them all.

  ***

  Wing, Luke and Oded had retired to their tents. There was no one around the campfire and Major Ursa Laenskaya was furious. She stood perfectly still, fists clenched, highlights from the flames lighting up one side of her white doeskin, and she looked around for someone to blame. She saw shapes in the distance, shadows moving together and she marched straight up to them and grabbed the lion’s shoulder, throwing him aside with impossible force.

  “You idiot! You spoiled, insignificant excuse for a lion!” The lightning flashed, revealing not silver but gold.

  “Captain…I,” she gasped, stunned. “Forgive me…”

  The Captain released a sharp breath, shook his head as if to clear it, while the Alchemist pressed herself into the shadow, tears streaking down her face. The roar of thunder now, shaking the air all around them, the wind howling like an angry dog, and finally the lightning, a night-shattering fork of lightning brought the Captain immediately and utterly to his senses, and bolting off into the darkness.

  ***

  “Kerris!”

  It would be high, he knew it, and he raced up the rocks for higher ground. Lightning was flashing all around now, accompanied by her furious lover, thunder, but not a single drop of rain anywhere. The sand whipped into his eyes as he tried to see in the darkness, waiting for the next flash to light up the night sky.

  It came and he saw them. His tunic was askew, fabric and hair alike whipping in the rushing windstorm and it was then that Kirin knew he was too late. Hands stretched out at his sides, palms down, sparks rising and leaping into them like fish in a fountain, face raised to the sky. The Scholar was taking step after step toward him, her unbridled curiosity leading her closer to death.

  “Sidala!” he cried as he flung himself toward her, but the wind snatched his words from his lips and she continued, spellbound, her own hair and shift snapping like dogs on the bluff. He saw it even as he ran toward it, knowing it could also mean his own end, the inexorable raising of the grey hands, those blasted cursed other-worldly hands, slowly, ritualistically to the sky, calling the lightning into them. Calling the lightning home.

  And the lightning came. Flash and crack, for they were now one, and the heavens split open with fire, a single bolt that rent itself in two,
a sister for each hand, and the arc hit and time slowed to a standstill.

  Kerris’ back arched, arms flung wide, glowing with unnatural light. The bolt pulled him off his feet, slowly, ever so slowly lifting him off the ground and held him for a heartbeat in mid air. And for Kirin, almost there but not quite, he could feel the sensation - the heat and the cold, the numbness and the burning pain, held fast to the ground by forces he had experienced once before, but that were his brother’s life blood. In that burning, freezing, numbing, painful moment, everything hushed, silenced, stilled, as if the elements held their collective breath.

  The Scholar reached out and touched him.

  And the elements stuck back, sending her literally flying backwards across the rock and into the path of the Captain, and together they tumbled down the bluff and into blackness.

  ***

  She awoke with a start, heart thudding uncontrollably in her chest. It awoke the maidservant sleeping at her feet, who rose silently to light an oil lamp near the bed. The light cast everything with warmth and gold, but still the Empress shivered.

  “Excellency” asked the servant girl, a fine-boned ocelot from Sahood.

  “A dream, that is all,” whispered Thothloryn Parillaud Markova Wu, and she clutched her embroidered coverlet up to her throat. “A most terrible dream. I had been betrayed.”

  “Betrayed? Excellency, no one would betray you.”

  Golden eyes flashed. “It was a dream.”

  “Shall I call for a diviner, Excellency?”

  “No. The star?”

  The girl shuffled to the window, for her skirts were thick and long. She peered out, then glanced back. “The same, Excellency.”

  The ebony head nodded. “My soul is disquieted. I must pray.”