04c Dreams of Fire and Gods: Gods (18 page)

“Sek! Why did you wander off like that?”

The horse snorted at him, unconcerned.

When Koreh attempted to step in front of him, his foot landed in water. Not very deep—Koreh just pulled it back and wished it dry again. But he noticed they were standing at the edge of a small, shallow pond, perhaps no more than twenty or thirty feet across. The water was clear but completely still. Even the ripples caused by his foot dissipated quickly.

Seffni came up beside them and glanced at the mirror-like surface of the pond. “What is this place?”

Koreh shrugged. “No place. Just a lonely patch in the forest.”

But he was fascinated by the play of light across the surface of the water. Like the river in which he’d seen Sael’s face decades ago, the water was shimmering oddly, as if lit from within, though the mud and leaves on the bottom of the pond remained dark. Koreh leaned closer and saw what might have been a reflection of the trees over his head, except they appeared to be birches and aspens, while Koreh and his companions were in a forest of white pine. The sky above the treetops also looked very different—overcast, as it was where Koreh stood, but with a somewhat bluish tint, like Koreh remembered the cloud cover in Harleh Valley.

Then a head and shoulders came into view, looking up at him from the depths of the pond. The face was in shadow, but Koreh knew instantly it was Sael. His pulse quickened. He tried to speak, but as he opened his mouth, the figure in the pond said in a whisper, “Koreh.”

He answered, “Sael?”

S
AEL
fell to his knees in the mud near the water’s edge and called out again, “Koreh!”

He didn’t dare touch the water for fear the image would dissolve again. But he could still see Koreh’s shocked face looking up at him. It was impossible. But he knew this was no trick of the light. Not this time. It was too clear.

“Your Lordship!” his guard exclaimed, and Tanum asked, “What are you doing, Sael?”

“Didn’t you hear?”

“I heard nothing.”

“Can’t you
see
him?” Sael asked, exasperated.

His sister-in-law leaned forward to peer over his shoulder into the water. “See what?”

“You can’t see his face?”

“I don’t see anything but water, leaves, and mud.”

This frightened him. If Tanum couldn’t see Koreh, then perhaps it was all a hallucination. He so desperately wanted Koreh to be alive. Had it driven him mad? “Koreh!”

“You’re starting to worry me, Sael. There’s nothing there.”

Another head and shoulders came into view behind Koreh’s. It was difficult to see the features, though the man seemed familiar. “Koreh! Can you hear me?”

“Go find Master Geilin,” Tanum ordered her guard.

“W
HY
did you call Sael’s name?” Seffni asked, looking past Koreh at the water.

“Can’t you see him?”

“Sael?” Seffni scoffed. “In the water?”

Koreh frowned at him. “He’s not
in
the water, you idiot! He’s on the other side!” He’d never spoken to Seffni in that tone before, and the older man looked stunned. But Koreh didn’t have time to mince words. “Do you remember how I said I was searching for a way through the mist?”

“Of course.”

“I think we’ve just found it.”

Seffni looked skeptical. “It’s a bog, Koreh.”

“Tanum’s there with him,” Koreh said.

“What?”

“I saw her just a moment ago, looking over his shoulder.”

Seffni stared at him blankly, apparently no longer comprehending what Koreh was telling him. But Koreh had an odd feeling in his gut—a sensation of urgency, as if this momentary connection between the worlds was fragile and couldn’t last much longer. The moment a leaf fell into the water on either side, or someone decided to touch the surface with his or her hand, it would fade, as it had in the river.

He reached out and took Seffni’s hand, while Sael’s voice asked from far, far away, “Koreh, where have you gone?”

“Do you trust me?” Koreh asked Seffni.

Seffni looked at him, understanding gradually coming into his eyes. He took a deep breath and gave Koreh a curt nod. “I do.”

“Then come on!”

They jumped together, Koreh remembering just as they struck the water that, in their haste, they’d left Sek behind.

They were immediately engulfed in darkness, though the water wasn’t particularly cold or unpleasant. Koreh’s legs touched bottom, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake. Perhaps this was nothing more than a pond, though it hadn’t looked deep enough to submerge himself in when he’d been looking down into it. But when he looked up, he saw a circle of light high above him. If it was the surface of the pond, then it was certainly more than a few feet above him—it looked to be several fathoms away.

Koreh kicked off the sludgy bottom and propelled himself upward, Seffni’s wrist clutched tightly in his left hand. He swam toward the light, but maddeningly it seemed to be drifting farther away, as if he were trapped in a nightmare where safety remained forever just out of reach. There seemed to be a current pushing back at him, and his legs grew weary from kicking against it. It was also difficult to swim without kicking Seffni.

At first, breathing didn’t concern him. He’d spent so much time moving through the earth that he’d grown used to being without air, and he knew he couldn’t suffocate—especially in a world populated by the dead. But as he swam without seeming to make any headway, Seffni began to pull and thrash around. Koreh assumed he was panicking, thinking he wouldn’t be able to hold his breath much longer.

If he’d known they would be underwater for this long, Koreh would have warned him, but it had looked like a quick jump. Now they were stuck going forward. Koreh had no idea how to turn around in this darkness. Even if they went down again, he wasn’t sure that would take them back to where they’d jumped in.

Koreh kicked harder and paddled with his free arm in a desperate attempt to fight the current pushing against him, and suddenly he felt something like an invisible membrane tearing, and they were through. They shot upward through the water, and the circle of light above them no longer appeared to be moving away.

But just as suddenly, his body betrayed him. His arms and legs were overtaken with exhaustion and the lungs that had been content to remain dormant now demanded air. His chest was shot through with searing pain, as he struggled against the urge to inhale. Seffni was thrashing about wildly, and Koreh realized with horror that the man truly was drowning! Frantically, Koreh clutched tightly to Seffni’s hand and swam upward, until the light grew to fill his vision and a strong undertow grabbed him, not dragging him down but lifting him up, faster and faster….

K
OREH
had disappeared from Sael’s view, and Sael was desperately calling out for him to reappear when a large shadow blotted out the sky on the other side and the center of the pond began to bubble. Mud and leaves boiled up from the bottom. Sael cried out in dismay as his guard grabbed him under the armpits and yanked him back from the water’s edge.

“No—”

Suddenly, the center of the pond erupted like a geyser. Water spewed up fifty feet into the air and rained down upon him, the guard, and Tanum. Tanum gasped in shock, while the guard snarled something generally not permissible in the company of nobles. But Sael saw something in the water—a hand! The hand breached the surface, clutching at the air, before slapping down again into the water.

“Let go of me, you fool!” he snapped at the guard. “There’s somebody in the water!”

The guard released him but stood there looking at the pond in surprise. Sael scrambled back to the water’s edge just as the hand shot up again not far from him, and this time he grabbed it. A man’s head followed the hand up out of the water, while water from the geyser continued to rain down on all of them. The head was covered in jet-black hair, plastered down over the man’s eyes, but as he lifted his face to spit a spray of water out of his mouth, Sael knew….

It was him.

“Koreh!” Sael shouted, too stunned to be happy or feel any other emotion at his lover’s apparent return from the dead. The chaos of the moment made it all feel dreamlike and unreal.

“Help me get him up!” Koreh sputtered, water lapping at his mouth.

Sael had no idea who the “him” he was referring to was, but he stepped into the water with the guard following after him. Together they grabbed Koreh by his arms and dragged him up out of the water and toward the bank. He was stark naked and slippery, so Sael had to grab him by the armpits to keep hold. But to Sael’s horror, he saw that Koreh’s left hand was clutching someone else’s hand—and that person wasn’t moving. The guard left Koreh in Sael’s arms and waded farther into the water to grab onto Koreh’s companion. Sael worried that there might be a drop-off there. How else could two grown men have suddenly come up out of a pond that had appeared just a few feet deep moments before? But the guard had no trouble maintaining his footing, no more than waist deep in water, as he lifted the man up.

Sael dragged Koreh the remaining distance to the bank. He wasn’t strong enough to lay Koreh down gently on the grass at the water’s edge. Instead, they both fell over onto it, with Sael half on top of Koreh. He rolled off quickly and tried to see if Koreh was hurt, but the young man pushed Sael off him and scrambled toward his companion. The guard set the man—naked, as well—onto the grass more gracefully than Sael had managed. But when his pale face lolled back, Tanum screamed and ice shot through Sael’s veins.

It was Seffni. And he was dead.

“This isn’t possible…,” the guard gasped.

“Roll him over!” Koreh ordered the confused guard. He pushed the man out of the way and rolled Seffni onto his side. Water poured out of Seffni’s mouth. Koreh grabbed him around the waist and lifted him up so his head was lower than his chest and still more water bubbled out of his slack mouth.

“Put him on his stomach,” the guard suggested. “Then you can pump it out of him.” Sael knew he was referring to the way drowning victims could sometimes be rescued by pressing rhythmically on their backs to force water out of their lungs and draw air in. It wasn’t very effective, but sometimes it could bring a man back from the brink of death.

Tanum was so pale, Sael thought she might faint, so he climbed to his feet and rushed to her side. She didn’t faint, but she gripped his arm tightly, never taking her eyes off Seffni, as Koreh rolled him onto his stomach. “He’s already dead!” she sobbed. “He can’t die now, if he’s already dead!”

Sael didn’t know what to say. His joy at seeing Koreh alive had immediately been quenched by the sight of Seffni’s half closed, sightless eyes. It was impossible for Koreh to have come out of a pond less than a few feet deep, and it was impossible for Seffni, who had been cremated weeks ago and entombed in the Menaük family crypt, to have surfaced with him as a newly dead corpse.

Suddenly Seffni’s body spasmed, and he let out a huge racking cough. Tanum gripped Sael’s arm so tightly he thought she might break skin with her nails.

“That’s it!” Koreh said, delighted, pushing down again on Seffni’s back. “You said you’d come with me. Now, come on!”

Seffni coughed again until his face turned red, with agonized gasping breaths in between bouts of it. “You didn’t… tell me… you were going to drown me!”

He thrust a weak arm out and thrashed it as if trying to push Koreh away from him. Koreh climbed off his back and rolled him over. Seffni looked up into the eyes of his widow. “Tanum” was all he managed to choke out before another coughing fit took him. But at the sound of her name on his lips, Tanum released her grip on Sael’s arm and collapsed to her knees at Seffni’s side, most likely ruining her satin dress.

“How…?” Tanum asked, tears streaming down her beautiful face.

Seffni managed to raise his hand to touch her cheek, and she gripped it in her own hands.

“You’re not a hundred years old,” he said softly.

“You can’t be alive. You can’t be….”

“His color is returning, Your Ladyship,”
the guard told her as he knelt to feel Seffni’s wrist for a pulse.
“And his heartbeat is strong.”

She burst into sobs then and laid her head on Seffni’s bare chest.

Sael watched all of this, barely comprehending, and then followed Koreh with his eyes as he left Seffni’s side and came to stand in front of him, soaking wet and pink with exertion, his crystal-clear blue eyes growing misty as he gazed at Sael.

When Sael spoke, his voice was choked and uneven. “Where… where have you been?”

“Searching for you.”

Koreh stepped forward then and folded him into a tight embrace, and Sael could no longer stop the tears from coming. He clutched at Koreh, feeling the warmth of his body, despite the water soaking his hair and trickling down his skin. Koreh wrapped his strong arms around his middle. Sael tried to say something more, but he couldn’t stop sobbing long enough to get the words out.

K
OREH
breathed in the sweet rosemary scent of Sael’s hair as a slight breeze blew the pale, gossamer strands up to tickle his face. In two worlds and almost a hundred years, he’d never smelled anything so wonderful. He pressed his face against the side of Sael’s head and kissed the bare skin on his neck, closing his eyes to block out all but the feeling of Sael in his arms once again.

Unfortunately, the moment couldn’t last forever—not in this world. Koreh was dimly aware of the sound of footsteps approaching. Then a familiar voice whispered, “By the gods….”

Koreh opened his eyes again to see Geilin, with another soldier standing behind him.

“Koreh,” Geilin said. His eyes regarded Koreh with affection, but almost immediately this was replaced by a look of suspicion. Geilin cleared his throat and asked, “Who is buried under the road near gü-Khemed?”

Koreh was confused for a moment, until he realized he was being tested to see if he really was who he appeared to be. He supposed he couldn’t blame Geilin for needing to be certain. “One of Seffni’s guards—the one who betrayed you and Sael to the emperor. I don’t know his name.”