Polyphony

by Lee Benoit

  It was still early, and their Alperai hosts were calling for more entertainment from their guests, entertainment their guests were obliged to provide. Joh accompanied himself on the hardan and brought everyone to tears with bawdy songs of his homeland, translated into the language of the towns, which most of the Alperai seemed to understand. They couldn't have come from far-flung areas like Devi and Adiún had, Matti reflected, if so many knew the trading language that had sprung up since the Norvander arrival. Matti busied himself by setting narrow braids into the hair at Devi's temples, nipping his shoulder when his laughter at Joh's song caused him to shake the braids loose.

  When the song was finished, Joh called Adiún to join him in some simple acrobatics enlivened with put-on attempts to overbalance each other. The few children among the Alperai roared.

  Mari sang, then Mari and Joh. Kino, usually such a showman, remained seated, holding Martiyyo possessively. Matti wondered what had happened while the rest of them were hunting to make the ebullient Kino glower so. It was Kino's reticence more than a real desire to perform that had Matti rising with the hardan, leaving Devi in Adiún's arms with a kiss.

  Without Kino, and with Devi's demur to tell another tale, the evening ended soon enough, and Matti retired to their tent with his friends. It didn't take much conversation to get the story from Kino that some of the Alperai had sneered at Martiyyo while everyone else was away from the camp. "I'm afraid I... had words with the chief." Kino looked troubled.

  Matti reached over and pressed Kino's hand, smiled at Martiyyo. "He's no mab rhi at all if that rattled him."

  "Or if he can't keep a civil tongue in his head," Devi added.

  "Or if he won't enforce rules of hospitality," Adiún growled. Kibi's ears perked up at the sound, and he gave an interrogative little groan that made everyone smile, and defused the situation.

  To Matti's surprise, it was Sauda who spoke next. Even more surprising, she spoke to him, her dark eyes intent in the low light. "You have magic. Cast your cards. We need more than mummery and a good day's hunting to set our path."

  Murmurs of assent chased around the small space, and Matti reached into his pack for his cards.

  "Shall I?"

  Later, he'd be unable to explain what he did next. Rather than shuffle and cast a pattern as Jürn had taught him, he lay the cards down and stirred them exhorting each companion to draw one and lay it face up. Kino and Martiyyo pulled the warrior of staffs and the youth of vessels, and laid them side by side. Matti smiled and said, "A strong couple."

  Next, Sauda and Mari drew the warrior of vessels and its queen, which seemed to Matti most apt indeed.

  Matti held his breath as Adiún and Devi lifted, unerringly, two eights: five-pointed stars and vessels, the two cards Matti had made just for them. He nodded and looked at Joh.

  "With me," he whispered. They drew at the same time, and Matti gasped. He'd drawn the moon to Joh's sun. Well.

  "Aren't there two more?" Joh prompted.

  Matti nodded again and took his time laying the drawn cards into a pattern unlike any Jürn had shown him, with Kino and Martiyyo's cards side by side; likewise, Mari and Sauda's. He set the sun, moon, and eights in a cross pattern balancing the other four, with a space in the middle, then paused, unaccountably reluctant to continue. The next two cards, he suspected, would reveal the principle that would anchor all of them, and their direction forward.

  He gasped when his strange two vessels card emerged, showing the many figures surrounding them. Partnership, union, the melding of minds and bodies. Love.

  "Our anchor," he announced. He didn't explain its significance; they'd understand in time. "Last card. Guiding principle. Ready?"

  "Just do it, chavvie," Kino chided with a nervous laugh before muttering, "and he calls me a showoff."

  It was still hard to draw that last card. Would it show a home and prosperity? Destruction? A parting of ways? Matti mentally girded his loins and stretched his hand over the remaining cards.

  He waited until the familiar settling of his mind came, an opening up that he imagined Devi felt when he tranced with his stories. This is little different, he counseled himself, letting his fingers point the way. He tugged a card, the card, out from under another, waited a moment to be sure, and turned it to lay across the two chalices card.

  Six of blades. "Six of blades," he said, and stared at it for what felt like a very long time.

  "Well?" Adiún was many things, but patient wasn't one of them.

  Matti drew in a breath. "Calmer waters after a storm. Better times ahead. Leaving behind a troubled past. Harmony..."

  The company seemed to release a collectively held breath. Matti forced himself to finish.

  "And journeys over water."

  ***

  Matti went with Devi and Adiún to meet with the mab rhi. The full moon was high in the bright autumn sky. No one had mentioned the reading from the night before, just breakfasted in silence and glanced from their porridge to the mab rhi's hearth and back. The man himself had come to collect them, singling out Adiún and Devi by name and nodding shortly when Adiún jerked his head for Matti to follow. Kibi trotted beside them.

  "The moon is full today, and has risen," the man intoned, once they had reached the edge of the redoubt and were out of earshot of anyone else.

  "You ask to remain among us." Devi and Adiún nodded. Matti wondered how he had failed to notice the urban cant of the man's speech. This was no countryside rebel who held their futures, or at least their winter, in his hands.

  "I have decided. You may shelter among us for the winter, and longer if you choose."

  Adiún bowed his head gravely. "My friends and I thank you, Itron."

  The mab rhi made a warding gesture with his hand. "You misunderstand, Adiún Hunter. You and Devi Story-father are welcome. You are sons of our people." The man's glance fell on Devi, and Matti saw his fingers twitch as if he wanted to touch Devi, hold and keep him. He almost missed what the mab rhi said next. "Matti, cousin to our people, you are also welcome. You all bring skills and will strengthen our band if not our blood."

  Well, the thought rose giddy and nauseous, at least he's noticed we're not likely to father any hearth children. The implication of the mab rhi's words had hit his friends as well; he could see shock in their faces.

  Adiún took a breath. "Though it pains me to say so, Itron, you are the one who misunderstands.

  Sauda and the others, they are more than friends."

  He waited a moment, and Matti saw that the older man had not been swayed. "Lovers are thick on the ground for young men. Even here." He swept his arm back, to encompass the redoubt.

  Adiún's nostrils flared. "Lovers they are, but more still, Itron. They are our family. My hearth is theirs, and if they are not welcome here, my hearth will be cold and dead."

  Before the mab rhi could speak, Adiún turned to Devi, grasping him by the shoulders. "There is no home without you," he said, and Matti realized he'd needed to hear those words, too, even if they weren't meant for him just at the moment.

  Matti chanced a glance at Devi. His eyes were down, but the color in his pale cheeks was high.

  Adiún spoke for both of them.

  "It is impossible," the mab rhi said. There was no regret Matti could hear in his voice.

  "Norvander scrutiny would not be kind if we were raided, and it would go badly for all of us. The resistance, well, we are intent on reclaiming Alperai lands for Alperai."

  The words "Alperai alone" were implied, but not spoken.

  Adiún's voice dropped to a growl. "The fact remains, they are family and we will not be parted from them. Better men than you -- and worse, if you must know -- have tried."

  "They are strangers. The whore is one of the Norvander dogs. And his lover is most... abrasive."

  The mab rhi spoke harshly. Kibi whined.

  Just when he'd thought the conversation couldn't get more uncomfortable, Devi spoke. "I also am a whore, by your reckoning."
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  "But not an invader."

  Adiún snorted. "Itron, that boy is no more an invader than Kibi is. They enslave their own, and you want good people to go back among them?"

  "I will not have foreign threats among us. I must think of our security."

  Matti couldn't keep quiet. Speaking slowly, making sure this man understood his foreign accent, he said, "You are worse than a slaver or a press gang, to turn us away. I go with my family."

  He turned to walk away, but some bloody-mindedness made him turn back and say, with the rigid politeness of the brothel where Gydha had found him, "Thank you for your hospitality, Itron."

  He heard, through the red throb in his ears, Adiún's voice, and Devi's, but he couldn't make out their words.

  They stayed another night, and by morning they were gone, racing away ahead of the advancing season.

  Epilogue

  Devi's Second Dream

  Hands, light and dark, heavy and light, mapped him. "The map is not the territory," was a line he remembered from an old story, and he wondered if it was so true after all. In the mapping, the territory of his body came alive, became real. Devi followed where the exploring hands led. They flowed like rivers, rolled like sea, and he welcomed them all like a coastline, curved and bent like a riverbank. They rushed down toward the delta, up toward the high tide line, and didn't stop once they got there. Though some of the hands held him still, and mouths trapped him, he was not afraid. They were water and air, blood and breath. They were the way home, and Devi followed eagerly, through his dream and into a strange dawn-lit room, where he awoke to find himself close to climax. He shouted, or would have if Matti's fingers hadn't pushed between his teeth where he might hurt them if he lost control.

  His own release out of the way, he turned his first waking energy to showing his gratitude to his lovers. He was unashamed of touching Matti everywhere, and proud of his discovery of a new "spark spot," as Joh called them, on the back of Matti's thigh, just under the compact curve of Matti's rear end.

  Adiún was as easy to please as he'd ever been, and Devi loved how wild he became when Matti used his mouth and Devi fucked him. They took turns with that, now, all of them, and Devi had stopped having nightmares about brothel rapes. How could he, when his dreams were so crowded with light and love, and worries were banished to daylight?

  Devi came back to himself slowly, the taste of Matti's spare, seedless spending bright on his tongue. The room smelled of seed and salt air.

  For all that the month since leaving the Alperai redoubt had been a long one, full of hard travel and harder decisions, Devi cherished it. The winter could last forever, as far as he was concerned.

  The most difficult decision had been which way to walk once they left the Alperai redoubt.

  North was no option, for that way lay the Norvanders. Likewise the cities were closed to them, as they'd learned in Keoded. Westward lay Matti's people, who would not welcome him back even if they had not become the creatures of the Norvanders. South? No, Adiún and Devi's people were beleaguered with bad harvests and worse visitors. Further south lay Joh's homeland, which was forbidden them by the nature of Kino's and Joh's leave taking, which even Mari wouldn't talk about. Sauda's people lived still further south, but would shun them for their love of like bodies.

  The only way home, it seemed, lay east. Rumors of a land over the sea were confirmed when they reached the eastern coast just as the first frosts rimed the grasses. A seaport lay there, clinging to cliffs and rock jetties far more rugged than the village he and Adiún had left behind.

  It was a surprise, but a welcome one. Alperai and others, though none so exotic as Sauda or Joh, readied to embark for the eastern land, called Ekialde by the natives. Shops and stalls, rough and tumble as the shipyards, were well-customed. It was no great thing to find work performing in inns, hunting the countryside, and, in Matti's case, translating for an outfitter in exchange for her promise of help securing passage for them at the spring thaw.

  They must have dozed again in the soft aftermath of their loving, because Devi's eyes popped open when he heard Adiún's voice. "Morning, Devi-love." Adiún's eyes were heavy with sleep, bright with love and banked lust. Matti stretched beside him, warm and pliant, while Joh snored gently on the far side of the bed.

  Devi smiled. He didn't know what would happen come spring. He didn't know if this place was safe from Norvanders. He didn't even know where his next meal was coming from, but he smiled.

  Whatever happened, it would make a good story.

  END

  Polyphony

  Copyright © 2009 by Lee Benoit

  All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680

  Printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN: 978-1-60370-649-0, 1-60370-649-6

  Torquere Press, Inc.: Single Shot electronic edition / March 2009

  Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680