The gasping youth, red-haired and nearly beardless, could comprehend neither the storm of violence in which he’d landed nor the dark, powerful man threatening him—a man who smelled of both destruction and ripe, sexual sweat. Erik drove his sword’s point a sliver closer to the lad’s jugular, and the steel sparked a confession.
“Alderman Tretton! A b-bounty! He said there was a bounty on the hammer of the king! I’m s-sorry! I’ve never been sorrier! Please, I’m only following the orders of the Twelveswatch. I’m betrothed, I have a child—”
CRACK!
A pommel to the lad’s head ended their discussion; but at least Erik hadn’t killed or horrifically maimed him as he had the others. Shouts sounded in the tavern beneath them. Erik rushed around fetching boots, pants, his flask—but no, he felt no urge for drink, not now that he must defend his queen. Lila was dressed in a moment, fully hooded and prepared for flight. She helped him into his shirt.
“A bounty? I thought—” she began.
“That Magnus would leave us be? Forever? You forget that Magnus’s judgment is as bitter as the Long Winter in which he was born. We have been judged, it seems, and found wicked.”
Erik shrugged on his cloak and hood, then slid his sword into its sheath; they would draw less attention if his steel weren’t flashing. Lila was not quite panicking, although she was clearly vibrating with worry; her mouth trembled, trying to give shape to unformed questions. Feeling impetuous and enflamed by the red, fluttering petals of her lips, Erik, the eternal sword, ruler and repressor of emotions, succumbed wholly to desire and kissed his queen. They were hot, dripping, hungry kisses; he grew hard against her leg. When they pulled apart, Lila felt breathless. She had forgotten her questions.
“We are fugitives now,” he said. “If word of the bounty has spread, we are now the most wanted criminals in all Geadhain.”
Lila was weak with shock and giddiness, but she smiled as they dashed out of the ruined apartment.
V
In their wake, the fugitives left a trail of unconscious and slumped men, bleeding noses, and broken limbs. When it had become evident that the fugitives would not be easily or quickly caught, the Twelveswatch intensified their efforts. Soon, the clanging naval bells atop the ancient watchtowers woke every man, woman, and child from their beds. Carthacians were unfamiliar with such disruptions, and they stepped timidly and sleepily out into the streets wearing their nightgowns and long johns. Rubbing their puffed eyes, they chattered about what in the king’s name had woken them at such an unkind hourglass. A fire? Where, then, was the smoke? A burglary? If so, then Carthac’s treasury must have been beset by privateers, given how many of the Twelveswatch had been called into action. They received no answers from the frequent patrols of cloaked, steel-baring men sweeping the roads and alleyways.
Foolishly, by rousing the rabble, the authorities had raised a clamor that allowed Erik and Lila to camouflage themselves during their brief scurries through populated areas. A phantasmal disguise from the queen would have allowed for a perfect escape, yet she still believed in caution when it came to using magik, unable as she was to foretell whether it would bring harm or aid. She needed time to test her Will, to see whether her connection with Erik—their feelings, she thought lightheadedly—would act as a counterweight to her instability. She felt as if she were a different woman from the one who had been haunted by a dark spirit for weeks. Occasionally, Erik glanced to her, or stopped to give her a rough, bearded kiss and some wanton caressing, and she knew that whatever reckless desire filled her filled his veins as well. Everything about their predicament was unsafe, undignified, and unseemly for a queen, yet still it seemed as if she was behaving like herself—not a woman-slave of the Arhad, not a gawking bride to an ancient king, but her real and buried self. And from what she could tell thus far, she liked this new Lila, even if her actions were unpredictable.
For hourglasses, they played cat and mouse with the Twelveswatch, while slowly creeping toward the Order’s basilica. There, Lila felt they would find sanctuary among the women who distanced themselves from politics and wars. If they were given no welcome, she and Erik could always take refuge in the catacombs under the building. Leaving the city without magik and a devious plan would not be possible, and they would need time for her to construct them. One mercy was that the Twelveswatch appeared unable to deal with this level of emergency; they never patrolled in groups larger than four, and Erik alone counted as an army. While not prone to fawning, Lila found herself nonetheless marveling at the strength and viciousness of her lover. Astonishing that a man, one without magik or supernatural strength, could train and discipline his body until he had become a weapon.
She watched Erik dispatch one of the first patrols they encountered, a trio of the Twelveswatch, so fast that only sands later did she realize what he had done. After asking her to stay back, he had tiptoed through shadows, almost running, and then disabled two men with quick chops to the base of their skulls; they dropped like ragdolls onto the street. As the final member of this Twelveswatch patrol sauntered on, Erik kicked his knees out from behind, then smashed his face into a brick wall while he was still laughing at the joke he’d just told. Erik was a master of restrained brutality—he did not want to kill these men. If he were set on murder, or if he chose to use his sword…She shivered thinking about how red the streets would run.
Roughly twenty assaults later, her awareness had become smudged behind a grease of blood; she had grown desensitized to the cracking, meaty, pounding sounds and stifled whimpers. She knew whenever violence was imminent, for Erik would pause then skulk off. From somewhere up ahead would drift the notes of his violent music, and then he would return to her hiding place, usually wild looking and spattered in crimson. “Come!” he would hiss. Lila often kissed him. This new or true Lila was a warm and daring woman.
As they ran from their latest escapade, leaving behind a groaning heap of men and swords, she remembered a book. It was one of the millions in the Court of Ideas, an overwrought romance she’d once read in an afternoon. She had laughed at the contrivances and clichéd characterization: besotted women who fell over themselves, men who were uncompromisingly cold, but somehow harbored secret, hidden flames. She hadn’t believed that people could reach such emotional heights, where the fires of passion transformed the metal of the soul into wondrous alloys. She had thought she might never feel anything again—and certainly not so soon—but perhaps she had wanted Erik for longer than she knew. Indeed, most of her ignorance and misconceptions about love and romance had come from marrying Magnus, a man of ice, always cultured and cool. Her time with Magnus had been a dream, and it possessed the consistency of vapors and illusions when she dwelled upon it.
With Erik, however, life was raw and terrifyingly tangible. The moments they stole, the warmth of his mouth, the exhilaration of their fear, the threat of his mortality…This last thought pricked her heart with a thorn. They would worry about his longevity later—if this delicate dream didn’t shatter, if they managed to evade the Twelveswatch. I think I might love you, Erik. Real love. The passion of a woman who knows herself, not the starry-eyed wonder of a girl beholden to a king.
“A moment, my queen,” said Erik, interrupting her reverie. “There are men up ahead. I need you to be both silent and patient.”
As you have so dutifully been with me. The sentiment choked her, and she nodded, though she said nothing. Erik darted into the shadows, leaving her alone near the back steps of a noisy alehouse that stank of piss. She hunkered down behind a stack of kegs, and was not so dainty as to shriek as rats ran over her feet. Angry at her uselessness, she made the rats squeal with her kicks. With her magik, she should have been able to protect Erik as much as he was protecting her. She debated testing out a spark of her power—something small, a bit of flame, perhaps, like the one she’d managed back at the Order—when the clang of swords and a grunting scream from Erik jolted her. Damn his rules, and damn the man if anything happened to him.
Bolting from her cover, she raced down the narrow alleyway, as mad as a horse in a thunderstorm. She quickly came upon her protector. He was alive, thank the Sisters Three. The same could not be said of what lay near him in a twisted pile of shadows. Death had finally come to the Twelveswatch, she saw, appraising the jutting, gnarled hands and grotesquely crooked legs. A red, sparkling spray decorated the walls of the alley, and a ghastly iron stink farted up from the bodies.
Erik, strangely calm, leaned against the wall, his sword hanging limply from his hand. When she whispered his name, he dropped the blade, clutched his side, and stumbled toward her. As he stepped out into a flash of moonlight, he winced, and she saw he’d left gory handprints on the bricks. Lila ran to him.
“What happened? What did they do to you?”
“Two groups.” Erik huffed. “Eight men. The second patrol spotted me creeping upon the first. One of them had a knife. I thought he was down, and then—”
Erik clenched his teeth in agony. Lila slung his heavy arm over her shoulders and helped him lean up against the wall, so that she might examine his wound. Eight men? She was amazed he still lived. Even more astonishing was Erik’s composure in light of the fact that the dagger remained embedded in the lower left side of his stomach. Crimson circles seeped into his tunic. The blood looked so dark that despite Lila’s limited medical knowledge, she was certain it came from an organ. The wound would be fatal.
“Erik!”
“If you pull it out, I’ll bleed faster.”
Lila hesitated, unsure, a thousand terrors suddenly in her heart.
“You have to pull it out,” he said. “And you have to heal it.”
“I’m not sure—”
Erik grabbed her hand and brought it to the rough bristle of his face, caressing himself with it. Her touch acted as a medicine on the knot of burning, numbing pain in his gut. “Then I die,” he whispered.
“No. No!”
“Do it now, Lila. Remember the promise we made; remember your strength, my queen.” After kissing the hand he held upon his face, he lowered it to the hilt of the weapon lodged inside him. “Remember that we still have to answer the question for each other. If we can love whom we choose—”
Unable to finish, he coughed, then spat out a wad of bloody mucus. Lila felt warm red syrup pulse against her fingers. In a speck, Erik’s impressive discipline would crack, and either delirium or shock would seize him. Do it. Answer the question; be the woman he sees in you, she demanded. Suddenly, as she stared into the black shadow of death on her lover’s face, the breath of their journey rolled out in a storm cloud of emotion that flickered with bright and dark memories. She saw a thousand dreams in one speck: the stables, their crossing of Geadhain, a hand steadying her on a sheer black cliff, the horrors of the Iron Mines, their beautiful sexual torments, and, finally, their salvation. That they had passed through the world’s gauntlet unscathed was thanks to their need of each other and a force that had to be love. Lila knew the answer to Erik’s question.
She spoke quickly. “You asked if we could love each other, Erik—but we already do. No other power could have brought us through such pain. I shall bring you through this pain, too. This will hurt, and terribly. Hold onto something, my knight.”
The bells and shouting seemed to dim. They could have been adrift on the sea, they felt so alone.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, my queen.”
Erik gripped the stones behind him. He tensed, breathing quickly, as he readied himself for the pull and the rush of pain. Fate had decided that each would be granted an agony: as Lila swiftly extracted the metal, she sliced her other hand, the one not holding the dagger, and which was bracing the wound. More blood and pain, she thought: so had their story been written. With wet heat pumping against her hand, she fingered the squelching spot until she managed to touch skin, on which her magik could work. Attuned to his every shudder and flinch through her wounded, blood-soaked hand, she was bound to him in suffering and need.
The reknitting of Erik’s flesh would be an agony for him. She pulled her tall knight down by his tunic and kissed him as her Will—golden and true, as Erik remembered it—wrapped them in tingling, tinkling light. When the twisting began in his belly and his muscle tissue writhed like a mass of disturbed earthworms, Lila’s mouth swallowed the intensity of his shriek. Something was pulled from Lila, too, something then lost amid the shining transfer of pain that heralded the rebirth of this man’s heart, body, and soul. She felt the mystery—an intangible, glowing essence—leave her flesh and enter Erik’s body through the gash in her hand.
This magikal covenant of their bodies brought Lila screaming to tears as well. Erik drank in her suffering and wails, just as she had done his, and like souls on fire, they embraced in a rapture of agony, bliss, and love.
The sublime experience ended coldly. Suddenly, light, heat, and pain were gone. Again, they were themselves—less wounded, although still sore. Erik’s hands came off the wall, and he bowed and kissed Lila’s hand.
“My queen…” said Erik, glancing up and smiling in a broad, handsome show of teeth and beard she had seen but once or twice. “You saved me.”
“It is what we do—save each other,” she replied.
“Yes.”
The knight stood, nodded his head in recognition of her service, then fetched his blade from the lake of the dead into which it had fallen. I shall bear some of our burden. I trust myself now. I shall conjure a little phantasm for us both so that he might rest and not fight, thought Lila, as he walked back toward her, his clothing torn and filthy with blood. Undisguised, he would be recognized the moment he was seen.
“What did you say?” asked Erik.
“Nothing. I said nothing at all.”
“Then my ears play tricks,” he said frowningly, wondering at the echoing sound of words he’d not quite heard her say, at her lips that had not seemed to move.
A flutter disturbed his chest, and he felt a bit heavy for speck, as if he were happily drunk. Then the heaviness passed, and he felt jubilant and agile as a circus performer as he began walking, his queen in tow. Give him a tightrope and he’d dance down its length. Queerer even than this sudden euphoria was the taste of brandy on his tongue. Brandy and perhaps…yes, the oils with which Lila anointed herself. “I feel off,” he said.
Once they had reached the other side of the carnage, they paused. Lila looked him over. The bright light of the moon allowed for a careful inspection, but she wasn’t sure what she should be searching for. Erik’s dark, hard abdomen showed no tears; neither did the tanned hand she used to examine him, though she swore it had ached moments ago. All done, she glanced up and locked gazes with him. Had a man’s eyes ever been so black? she wondered. A deep and timeless devotion shone in his onyx stare, which spoke of mountains that stood untroubled by the ages and black seas that swept in perpetual, ancient beats on the farthest beaches of shale and salt. Erik’s gaze spoke of eternal things: love, honor, stone. Swept up in a rush of calm foreign to her recent fretting nature, Lila found herself daydreaming about undying forces. I am a drum in the earth, the beat of the oldest heart. I am the wind, and I am the harp. I am music eternal. I am love. I am the mountain. Hear my promise; surrender to my arms. Dance, lover, dance, and never know fear…
“A beautiful poem,” said Erik. “Is it yours?”
“But—” The words had not been spoken, only thought.
“I shall be the drum, the beat, the wind, the harp, the mountain. You will never know fear, my queen, or loneliness, or the coldness of not being loved.”
“Erik...” she murmured.
A little surprised, horrified, and delighted, Lila gasped and shook her head. Realizations clicked and shattered the locks barring her from what she knew. She had opened a door. Magnus had left the house of her soul, and she’d invited another to enter. On the bridge of death, she’d bled into Erik and he into her, while each prayed for a life with the other. Magik…the F
uilimean…Somehow, the wonder of an Immortal and of blood promises did not end with Magnus. The gift of the Brothers’ eternal blood could be passed from king to woman to man, it seemed. Erik, a close observer of Immortals and their odd silences (during which much that could be heard by no other had passed between King and Queen) now knew whence the brandy and warmth—Lila’s magik and soul—had come. When her poem had echoed in his head—the second time he’d heard her voice without her speaking—he’d understood completely and swelled with joy at this new miracle.
You see? It is really quite simple, my queen, said the warrior, his lips smiling, but not moving in speech. He pressed her to his chest so that they could feel each other’s heartbeats, synched and resonating through their ribcages in a single throb. Lila could not say which beat belonged to her. You welcomed me in. At last, you welcomed me in. Indeed she had, and now the elemental calm, the silence of the gentle, empty escarpments of the North, and Erik’s temperance and honor were all a part of her. With a whimpering laugh, she leaned in and kissed her knight.
“Halt! Drop your weapons! Raise your arms, and step forward, slowly!” cried a voice.
Feast of Chaos (Four Feasts Till Darkness Book 3) Page 13
