Idol of Blood (18 page)

“You have your methods of persuasion. I have mine.”

“Your communication skills are sorely lacking.” Ume calmly removed her gloves and laid them beside her on the bench, keeping her unsmiling eyes on him. “You haven't answered my question. What is your business in
Soth
Szofl with Pearl?”

Pike raised an eyebrow. “I might ask you the same, among other topics of interest. Such as how you know the boy calls himself Pearl.”

“Nesre told me.”

“I highly doubt that. He considered the child a nameless thing and used methods even one such as myself would balk at to condition him never to speak.”

Ume used every ounce of the courtesan's restraint not to show how this affected her. “And you, who have made a career of hunting phantoms, what do you consider him?”

“As Nesre did, I consider him a means to an end. A necessary evil. I acquired him to obtain the whereabouts of MeerRa. He's robbed me twice of my bounty through his trickery, so I am now employing his skills to recoup my losses.”

Ume couldn't withhold a derisive snort. “By setting him on Szofl's throne.”

Pike shrugged. “Things have taken a rather more public turn than I'd expected. I've adapted. When the favor of the masses turns against him, as it no doubt will, I'll revise my strategy.” He rested the heel of one boot on the opposite knee and wriggled slightly as if he needed to adjust himself, obviously ill at ease in his courtier's clothing. “Your turn, Maiden Sky. Why are you here?”

“No.” Ume gave him a curt gesture of negation with her chin. “You haven't finished. How did you happen to get your hands on Pearl? And how are you inducing him to do your bidding?”

Pike smiled. “MeerZarafet and I have an arrangement. That is all you need to know. That, and the fact that I could simply instruct him to dispense with you if I consider you a threat. So I suggest you answer
my
questions.”

That didn't bode well. If Pike was controlling Pearl somehow, it was what the Hidden Folk had feared.

Ume gave him a slight sideways nod of her head as if conceding his point had merit though she didn't concur. “You've made your living exploiting the paranoia of the Deltan subconscious, born of their guilt, collecting your bounty for hunting down anyone the former templars put a price on. But there are other parties concerned with the fate of the Meer. I represent their interests.”

Pike laughed heartily, letting his foot drop back onto the floor. “You would have made an excellent court solicitor, Maiden Sky. I suppose Lord Minister Merit of Rhyman put you up to this. Found his little prize missing and employed you to find him.” His amused expression turned more serious. “Since I have no intention of turning the boy over to you, and I can't have you running back to the Delta to send an army after me to retrieve him, we have a bit of a problem.”

Ume nodded with equal seriousness. “I see the difficult position you're in. You could kill me, but Pearl would see it. That's what he does. Sees things. I doubt he'd be pleased.”

“Pearl does what I say. It wouldn't matter. He can't harm me.” It wasn't delivered with smugness, merely offered as a calm statement of fact. Pike was a practical man.

Ume could be practical too. “To be perfectly honest with you, Lord Minister Merit doesn't even know I'm here. I came because I wanted to see Pearl for myself. When I saw him in Nesre's cage, I was quite moved, because Pearl looks remarkably like his father. You know that I had a history with Alya.”

“Of course. It's why Nesre sent me after you. Stands to reason that if you were associated with one Meer, you would ally yourself with another, given the chance, and Ra was known to be in your corner of the world. Yet you've persisted in your claim that you know nothing of MeerRa.”

“I don't. But perhaps you're right. Perhaps if I'd met him, I would have been drawn to him as well. We'll never know. All I am certain of is that once I knew of Pearl's existence, I felt compelled to be near him. I tried to ignore it, leaving the Delta for the north to get as far away as possible. But it was useless to resist whatever Meeric influence it is that Alya imprinted upon me. I returned to Rhyman to see Pearl for myself, to understand this obsession, but found him gone. And something drew me to
Soth
Szofl.”

Pike's doubtful expression turned to one of disdain. “You realize he's only a child. And a neutered one at that.”

Ume took umbrage, no playacting necessary. “It's nothing tawdry like that, you swine. It's devotion. I can't explain it to one such as you, who have probably never felt a sincere devotion to anything in your life but gold coin. But Meeric power is real, and Alya marked me with his.
As
his. And whatever it is that makes one a Meer, that power is inherited.” Ume managed a deep blush of humility. “I am Pearl's slave, and I must serve him in whatever capacity I can.
That
is why I am here.”

Pike studied her shrewdly, obviously looking for some sign that she was trying to pull one over on him. He was nobody's fool. But what she'd said held enough of a grain of truth that she managed to meet his sharp gaze unflinchingly. She
was
devoted to Pearl, just not in the way she'd claimed.

“I left Cree.” She lowered her gaze as though ashamed as Pike continued to regard her with suspicion. “She couldn't understand. I have no one else. I want only to remain at Pearl's side, as Alya would have bidden me. I wish to serve my Meer. I ask nothing more than that.”

After a moment more of scrutinizing her, Pike nodded, thoughtful. “Perhaps our Meer does have a use for you.”

No one had been allowed near him before now. Pike had been afraid Pearl would conjure a
vetma
for someone who had not been thoroughly vetted if anyone besides Pike himself were alone with him.

But today, Pike sent him a personal servant. Because of Pearl's delicate looks, the people of
Soth
Szofl had assumed MeerZarafet was a girl, and Pike had chosen not to correct them. The servant, appropriate for such a deity, was a handmaiden. If she was to dress him, she would know what he was, would see that he was merely a mutilated boy, but Pike seemed unconcerned about this.

“MeerZarafet, I give you Ume,” he said as he ushered her into Pearl's chambers. “She served in
Ludtaht
Alya in the days before the Expurgation.”

Pearl studied her with interest. She had known his father. Ume's hair was covered in a concealing headscarf of the style worn in Szofl, but from within it, she looked back at him through a pair of warm golden eyes like a huntress cat. They were bright with moisture, as if she were moved to some depth of emotion.

“
Meneut
.” Ume bowed low, and seemed to tremble at the sight of him. “I am honored to serve you.”

“Ume will be very discreet,” said Pike. “But don't conjure anything for her. She's here to do your bidding, not to seek favors of you. And your will serves mine.”

Pearl gave him a nod from his seat before the vanity, turning back to it. He'd been drawing, and Pike had interrupted. The paper and drawing implements were tucked into the vanity drawer. There was nothing disobedient about his drawing them; he couldn't have drawn them if there were. But he knew Pike would question him, and these presaged something he couldn't name and didn't want to.

Pike noticed nothing amiss and took his leave, and Ume stood in waiting. Her eyes on him were a bit intense, but Pearl decided she wasn't the sort to tell tales of him to Pike. The Meerhunter might have meant for her to be, but she wasn't here as Pike's spy. Pearl would have sensed it. He opened the drawer and took out his drawing once more.

“Your father liked to draw,” said Ume. “He drew me once.”

Pearl paused with the pencil in his hand and turned his head. She had known Alya more closely than he'd assumed.

“You look very like him. Though he was quite tall, and his hair hung past his waist. But I expect you'll favor him in that as well as time goes on.”

Pearl wanted to ask her questions. He'd never seen images of Alya in the flow, and hadn't even known of his existence until Ra had told Pearl he was MeerAlya's son. But questions meant words, and he had his drawing to finish. Pearl turned back to it.

He could feel Ume's eyes on him. She'd been hoping he would ask her questions. It distracted him from the drawing, and Pearl hunched over it, trying to shut everything out. He had an image fixed in his mind from the last vision he'd seen in the platinum reflections, a dark creature climbing over the rooftops of the revenant buildings, but he didn't want to draw it. Seeing the mad face made him feel ill.

Instead, he concentrated on the details of a decorative pillar, intricate scenes, carved in soft jade and beryl, of vengeful demons destroying armies of men, and of gargoyles engaged in sexual congress with human partners. Beautiful in their artistry, but terrifying in their graphic depictions. Even so, these didn't disturb him as much as the mad face of the creature climbing over them.

He'd forgotten Ume was there until she spoke. “May I see what you're drawing?”

Pearl raised his head and evaluated this request. Was it a
vetma
? He decided not, and nodded, moving his arm away from the paper. Ume stepped closer to the vanity and peered over his shoulder, and Pearl watched her face to gauge her reaction. Her catlike topaz eyes widened, but she didn't recoil.

“That's fantastic,” she said in a soft voice. “I mean, both the subject matter and your skill. I'm in awe.”

Pearl wasn't sure how to respond to this. He blinked up at her through the hair that had fallen over his eyes, and she smiled such a genuine, lovely smile at him—fondness mixed with pride—that it nearly crushed his heart. It was the sort of smile a mother gave to her child. Overwhelmed with sadness that he couldn't explain, Pearl felt his eyes welling with tears, and he tried to look away before she could see them. Ordinary people found them upsetting, he knew.

But Ume's eyes were shrewd ones, and she caught him brushing away a sliver of blood on the tip of his finger.

Ume crouched by his chair and laid her hand on the edge of the seat, but respectfully didn't touch him. “Can I do anything for you,
meneut
? I didn't mean to upset you.”

Pearl shook his head. She was worried that he was upset instead of being upset by his tears? She'd known another Meer, of course, so perhaps she'd seen them before. Though he couldn't imagine someone as great and mysterious as MeerAlya having cause to weep.

She lifted her hand and fleetingly touched his hair before drawing back. “Pearl,” she said, very quietly, but distinctly. Pearl gazed wide-eyed at her. She knew his name. “I've come here from
Soth
Rhyman, from the House of UtMerit. I'm a friend of Ahr's. I don't know how you came to be here with Pike, but I know you aren't here of your own free will. And something has happened to erase you from Ahr's and Merit's memories. I don't know how I can, but I want to help you. I mean to free you. Somehow.”

Pearl studied her kind eyes, hope fluttering in his chest. But Pike wouldn't allow it. Pike would take her away if he knew. He shook his head again, this time emphatically, and pulled a piece of scrap paper out from under his drawing, writing a message on it.
I must obey the master.

The words seemed to anger Ume. “He is not your master. You have no master. You are Meer.”

Pearl regarded her a moment and wrote again.
The Meer have always had masters.

“Well, you shouldn't,” said Ume. “No one should. No one has the right to own anyone else. Your father would be heartbroken if he knew how you'd been treated by these selfish men. I'll find a way to break his hold on you, Pearl. I promise. By MeerAlya, I promise.”

He felt that she meant it. She believed her words, no matter how improbable they might be. And he wanted nothing more than to leave
Soth
Szofl and return with her to Rhyman. But across the ocean, beyond the Delta, the terrible darkness was roiling from the peak of Munt Zelfaal through the waters of the Filial and into the Anamnesis, poison seeping into his veins from a thousand leagues away, and he had no desire to go near it.

He went back to his drawing. Perhaps if he could convey the darkness there, Ume would see it too and want to stay away. He couldn't afford to be enticed by the promise of freedom when there was no freedom from this vision. Even so, he couldn't help but be glad of Ume's quiet presence. It was comforting to know there was someone here who saw him, who knew him as Pearl. And for the first time in his life, he felt connected to someone. Ra and Ahr and Merit had cared for him, and they were dear to him too, but Ume had known Alya.

Still at his side watching him draw, Ume made a little gasp of recognition. Pearl had focused on the crags of the mountain at the base of the drawing, dark and foreboding beneath the city among the clouds.

“Munt Zelfaal,” she said. “I used to live near it. What is that place on top of it?”

“
Soth
AhlZel.” He'd forgotten not to speak. He'd also forgotten that he couldn't hear the stories in this place, because they were suddenly bursting through like winds of howling madness into his brain. He knew exactly why he'd drawn it now, and exactly why Pike could not see these drawings. The creature prowling the menacing towers was Ra.

Twenty-One: Deluge

The rain, increasing steadily for days, was now coming down in torrents. Rem shouted to Geffn as they ran through the downpour, but his words were swallowed in the flood. Geffn nodded with his head down against the wind. Rem knew they couldn't hear each other. It was more of an acknowledgment that they were acting together. There were canvas tarpaulins in the hayloft for frost, and if they could stake them to the ground and stretch them over the crops, they might save some. Peta and the others were sandbagging the well around the mound door, for in the few short hours of this unseasonable rain, the Filial had risen dangerously.

They ran together through the doors of the barn, two ends of a tarp between them, and stretched it across the first parcel where the tomato and kerum plants were already sagging under the weight of water. They hammered the stakes in furiously, but it was hard work for two. Geffn had already lost hold of the tarp twice as the wind whipped it from his hands, and had to chase it as it tore stakes up out of the ground while the wind dragged it back from where it had come.

“Damn it!” he bellowed into the din as it upended for the third time. The rain was painful, beating into his already sodden clothes like tiny fists.

As he tore after the rebellious tarp, he saw it catch on something and swing peculiarly forward once more, as though propelled of its own accord. The end of it came toward him, and Jak dashed from under it and grabbed one of his stakes, dragging the far corner out to the edge of the parcel.

“Welcome home!” Geffn shouted, and attempted to grin at Jak through the slashing rain.

The three of them made faster work of the staking, and together they blanketed as much as they could cover with the remaining strips of canvas.

When they returned beneath the mound, they found Peta standing in the entryway looking up at the ceiling.

“What is it?” Rem followed her gaze, his tone worried. “It's sound against water.”

“I don't think we've ever had such water.” Peta turned and saw Jak among them, and her look grew visibly relieved. “Jak.” Her voice wavered as they embraced, “I was terrified at the thought of you alone in that rabbit hole of a mound. Thank sooth you've come home.”

“I laid the stones of Mound Ahr with him myself,” Jak objected. “It's well made.”

“Are you here to stay?” asked Rem.

Mell appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. “Jak!” She joined the embrace, and Keiren followed from the interior of the mound.

“With reservation,” said Jak from within the hub of their embrace. “I mean to open some serious discourse on the question of fidelity. What does it mean, for instance, to write a name into the moundhold? What do we owe our moundmates?”

“You're back.” Keiren grinned and slapped Jak's shoulder. “We haven't had a decent argument here since winter.”

Jak undressed later by the flickering lamplight, peeling off garments that seemed to weigh a dozen pounds each with so much water in them. Naked before the wardrobe, Jak looked at the red wheals the rain had beaten into the tanned skin. How old it made Jak look, bruised and wet. Jak was often startled these days to find a body that was no longer twenty, as though one could stand at the doorway of adulthood forever, unchanged. Of course, some did. Take Ra, for instance. Jak was thirty-two, but to Jak, at this moment, this body appeared ancient.

Having left everything at Mound Ahr, Jak lay down on the uncovered tick, stomach against the mattress and arms stretched out across its width. The frame beneath the mattress had been made by Jak's own hand before the chaos of Ra's coming. It was a work of pride and patience, representing the uncomplicated serenity of Jak's life before, without the entanglement of love—without the sting of memory. Jak had been self-contained and content, and pleased to be so. Nothing else had been necessary. Only Geffn's grievance had marred the calm of Jak's conscience then.

It was like being adrift at sea in a solitary, isolated vessel to lie upon this bed. All that Jak owned was here. All that Jak
was
, was here. Let the rest be forgotten.
How dare you forget me?
reproached a voice in Jak's head. The rain poured in sheets over the window above and the hiss of it lulled Jak to sleep.

Inside her temple, Ra sat before a divining pool with a surface as still and flat as a sheet of marble. It was a room Ra had never seen Shiva enter. Small and dark. And cold. Young Ra had often come here to escape the oppression of his mother's dislike, wondering at what might have come from the obsidian depths. Perhaps it had been used early in Shiva's reign, before she'd perfected her cool, unaffected conjuring. Since Ra's time, one had only to come before Shiva and, should she choose to bless, the thing desired would be instantly material. She conjured as though it bored her.

Ra disturbed the plane of the dark pool. Was it only water, a replica of Ra's making that held no potency, or had she resurrected the cold, magical womb of Shiva herself? She thrust in an arm. The substance was bitterly frigid. Such water ought to have been ice, was colder than ice, but defied the laws of harmony with its liquid state. A stabbing pain gripped her arm, and then all feeling left it. Ra drew it out, limp. It was an appealing shade of blue.

The renaissanced Ra, pathetic rabbit, had formed herself of the chemical of spirit, invisible elements in air that had willed themselves into being. She'd stood naked in the snow, too stupid in her deliberately empty state—designed to make her innocent, which it had not—to think of simply conjuring warmth.

Someone else had been a rabbit
. Ra's stomach burned with a fleeting twist of misery.

The same chemical alliance had brought forth the majestic mountain city she had lately resurrected. All things imagined were birthed of these same unions. Shiva's pool, deceptive water, consisted of such elements. She was Ra. She commanded them. She would create.

“Minions!” cried Ra as she plunged both arms into the darkness. “Come forth and worship me!”

The water changed from cold to heat, boiling between her fingers and solidifying as she compressed the heat within her hands. She was crushing the very molecules of liquid and air, and from this pressure, something fused. She drew this more dense matter from the murk and let it fall heavily to the tile, its weight multiplying in the lesser medium of air. Like her frozen arms, it was blue.

It was a child.

Ra began to laugh, the small, domed room echoing with the force of her mockery as though a thousand Ras had joined her.

The heavy autumn storm hadn't let up. Geffn rose early out of habit and found the sky as dark as it was in winter at this hour. He dressed and set out for the kitchen to start the morning's kerum, pausing as he passed Jak's door. It was open just an inch, and through it in the gloom, he could see Jak sprawled facedown on the bed, uncovered in every sense of the word. He returned to his room and took the quilt from his own bed, bringing it back with him.

Standing beside the bed, he observed Jak a moment. In this position, his former mate was as sexless as Jak had ever desired to be. Broad muscles defined the back, equalized the hips and waist, and flattened the buttocks in a tight, smooth slope that could have been carved by Deltan artisans. Jak was wiry but fine, an asexual archetype of the human body.

He laid the quilt over this perfection and watched it fall in a drapery of black and pale rose over the well-defined anatomy. Jak had made this quilt. It was a handfasting present. He tucked it up around the cool shoulders, letting one hand linger for a moment. That this body, this quintessential vessel of human divinity, had been violated and tormented, was, when he allowed himself to think of it, more than he could bear. His organs and his entrails felt it like knives digging into them, a merciless carving out. His eyes and his throat were painful swellings beneath the knifepoints.

So many things made sense to him now: that Jak had spent so many days in this mound as a child, instead of her own; that she'd been a quiet, altogether different person in the presence of Kol; that she'd hated to go home. Geffn had known little of Kol, except that Jak had never referred to him as her father. He ought to have wondered. He ought to have known.

He smoothed a crescent of Jak's hair behind one ear, and Jak stirred. Geffn stepped back and tried to slip out quietly, but Jak's head lifted, and the gray eyes observed him at the door.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. You looked cold.”

“Geff,” Jak murmured sleepily. “Come here. I miss you.”

The words drove a swell of relief over him. The loss of their friendship had been worse than the loss of his idyllic love. He came to the bedside, and Jak lifted the blanket and patted the bed.

“Keep me company. Lie with me a moment the way we used to on the moor. I feel so old.”

Geffn smiled, amused. “You're not dressed.”

“I don't care—if you don't.” Jak gave him a coy look. “You'll be a gentleman, of course.”

He laughed. “Of course,” he answered, and climbed under the quilt next to the warming body.

Jak's arms enveloped him, and he felt the warmth against his back, the strong arms across his chest as Jak drew close behind him. He crossed his arms over Jak's and let their fingers lock together. The sharp chin rested on his shoulder, head against his cheek. He closed his eyes and breathed in the familiar scent. He'd missed Jak also.

“Why on earth do you feel old?” he mused.

“My youth is gone,” said Jak with a rueful laugh. “Things aren't where they used to be.”

Geffn turned halfway and nudged Jak's ribs in protest. “That's ridiculous. You look better now than you did at twenty.”

Jak laughed. “You're a liar, but that's sweet.” Geffn felt the quick press of Jak's lips against his cheek. “And you're so young, still.”

“Sooth,” protested Geffn. “I'm only two years younger than you. Stop talking like an old…person.”

Jak hugged him again. “You've always been so conscientious about it, even when you hated me for hurting you. You don't know how much it means to me that you accept who I am.”

Geffn smoothed his hand over Jak's forearm. It hadn't been easy for him to lose the pronoun he associated with his lover. He'd thought at first that respecting Jak's wishes would keep his mate from slipping farther away. But more than that, he respected Jak above all others. Jak could have said,
I am a partridge, you must now call me Bird
, and he would have done so. Only Jak had ever understood how lost he felt, how inadequate in the shadow of his dead brother, Pim, who could do no wrong simply because he was gone. He'd tried to fill his brother's shoes, but Jak had always insisted that he owed nothing to Pim, that Rem and Peta were sad fools tormented by a ghost if they couldn't see him for who he was. Jak had valued Geffn as no one had.

He had always desired Jak, ever since he knew what desire was. He'd loved Jak's body, loved the woman as much as the soul. But when Jak had said, “I am no longer ‘she',” he'd honored that and tried—
how he'd tried
—to treat Jak without regard to gender. The hesitation he'd felt before in intimacy became a solid barrier between them. He would kiss Jak's breasts and be rejected for focusing on their symbolism. He would try to enter Jak's body, and Jak would turn away, disappointed that he couldn't separate passion from the need to “pierce and invade”. He understood now that those infractions had nothing to do with gender or its lack, and he ached to think he couldn't have recognized it, couldn't have avoided his unwitting torment of the one he loved.

He was becoming uncomfortable with Jak so close to him. His body had responded to the once-familiar touch, and Jak wouldn't be pleased. He needed to escape before either of them were embarrassed.

Geffn stirred. “I'd better get the kerum started.”

“Why?” murmured Jak against his shoulder. “No one will be up for hours.”

He cleared his throat and pulled away from Jak's embrace. “
I'm
up,” he admitted grimly. “I think I'd better go.”

Jak's arm slid down and rested on his waist. “Is it wrong of me to wish you'd touch me? Would it be terrible?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Jak…”

Jak's arms loosened and pulled away. “I know. I'm sorry, Geffn. I didn't mean to be cruel.”

Geffn kept his eyes closed. “I would give anything to make love to you.”

Jak moved over and lay on the mattress against folded arms, and Geffn rolled onto his back, breathing out his regret. He opened his eyes and found Jak looking at him thoughtfully.

“Do you want to?” Jak whispered with a nostalgic smile. “Should we?”

He wasn't sure whether this was a proposition or simply a fond recollection of their first time together, when Jak had said those same words to him before finally letting him in. He reached toward Jak's mouth and attempted a gentle kiss, shocked to find himself being kissed back, passionately. Jak moved closer, stretching over his chest. He was painfully aware of Jak's nakedness.

“I want you to,” whispered Jak. “But it's unfair.” The dusty head rested against his pounding heart. “Shit, what's wrong with me? Why do I do these things to you?”

“Unfair?” Geffn pushed back the gentle curve of hair. “Why? Because you're not in love with me? Because it would only be an act of comfort and nothing more?” He kissed the top of Jak's head. “I know all that, Jak. I'm not a hotheaded youth anymore. Our union is over, but if you want the comfort of my body, I'll give it to you.”

“Again,” said Jak, one hand stealing down over his hardened cock. “Seducing you.”

“It's not seduction.” He pulled his shirt over his head and drew Jak close. “I
want
to touch you this way again, even if it's just once more.”