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“Perhaps. Who can know for sure?” Galen coughed, and drank. His voice was a croak. “You’re not happy, Faunos. You’ve not been happy in years now.”
He might have denied it, but the words would have been far from truth, and Galen knew him too well to believe lies. Faunos set down the gem and passed his hands over his hair, where the ropes of pearls suspended between the diadem’s wings stirred in their gold settings, and the lapis lazuli was warm across his brow.
“The truth? I’m lonely,” he said simply, honestly. “How could I not be? My father's things remind me that I had kin. They might still live somewhere, wondering what's become of me. But those times will never come again, and there’s no changing what is.”
“Not tonight,” Galen said softly, “but the future is an open book, boy. Not even the oracles know what will be in a year, ten years, a hundred. They cast the bones, read the runes, and speak in riddles to conceal the fact they’re guessing at the meaning of glimpses they’ve stolen through the curtains of time.” He paused and smiled sadly. “I know what you want.”
“Do you?” Faunos wondered how Galen could possibly know.
He gave a rasping laugh. “I’m a eunuch, not a corpse! I had lovers, when I was young. I know what it's like to be ravenous for companionship, to long for a warm body, a boy or girl who’ll lie down beside you in the night, take your loving and offer love in return. You’ve never had this, I know. It's natural that you should desire it … but I’m still sick with fear when I think on it. And yet look at you now. Look at you! Ripe with young manhood, beautiful as your father was, and hungry for everything you can’t have. Well, not safely.”
“I’d come back,” Faunos whispered. “All I want is a night, Galen, just one night in the gypsy camps. I hear their music, I can smell their spice, their joss, on the wind. I see their lights, where the boats are pulled up on the beach. It isn’t far. You don’t hear them? Wild music and laughter.”
“Oh, I hear them,” Galen admitted. “I know when you go out at night. You lie on the sand and watch the stars … and you wish to all the gods that you’d been born a common man. Don’t you?”
“Yes.” Faunos looked down at himself, along the fair, slender limbs that wore his father’s jewelry so well. He was tall and lean, his muscles were hard. He was a man grown, in every way, and he needed what any man needed. He looked up into Galen’s dark eyes and shook his head. The words escaped him, and Galen did not press for them.
He had set the plate of cold fish on the fire to warm for supper, which meant he was better, ready to eat. Faunos watched him finish the food, drink a little wine, and then Galen settled to sleep again, as if he knew --
As if he knew Faunos had to go out. Faunos was sure he did, just as certainly as they both knew the danger. Hands trembling just a little, he took off the ancient jewelry, piece by piece, and set it back into the silk and goatskin.
The Eye of Helios still shimmered as he set it back into its pouch. The box closed, locked, over it, but his palms continued to feel the vibration, the warmth, right through the wood, though it was locked away from light and heat. Fear haunted him as he thrust the box into its sack with the most precious books.
The danger was not only to himself, and he knew it. He would never talk, no matter the tortures and trickery -- and Galen had described them to him in merciless detail. A few survivors had limped out of Vayal, found innocent of supposed crimes and released. They told terrible stories of a dark place, confinement, pain, fear, wyrd herbs and the face of an inquisitor that soon took on the aspect of demon, goblin.
Faunos would never divulge to the witchfinder or the inquisitor where to find Galen or the books, or the Eye of Helios. Like so many others, he would perish before spoke. But his very silence meant he would die in the vaults beneath Vayal, and on that night the light of ancient Zeheft would be extinguished.
The shepherd’s house was silent, but for the crackle from the brazier, the whisper of a breeze beneath the eaves, the endless murmur of the sea, the old man's steady breathing. Faunos stood at the door for a long time, watching his old teacher sleep while guilt tormented him like an open wound.
He should stay. He should pick up his books and study – think of the future, both his own and that of Zeheft.
And yet when his feet took him to the corner where he had dumped their bags, he did not resist. His hands picked up a cloak, swung it about his shoulders and clasped the brooch. The pure instinct of the young animal guided him, and he followed, for what might have been the first time in his life.
The cause for which he worked and studied was not his own. It was Galen’s, and Faunos had not the heart to tell him it was lost, and had been lost for a generation. Zeheft was gone. The gods had destroyed it, like Nefti and Kush -- in their eyes, the Zeheftimen were no more worthy than their cousins had been, despite the heritage of Diomedas in which they took such pride.
It would surely be better, he thought, to get away from Vayal and Zeheft. Better to ship out with the wandering people and keep going, seek a new home in Jaymaca, or with the Keltoi, where no one knew or cared what the kings of Zeheft had ever looked like, or what Power they had ever wielded.
Without a sound, careful not to disturb Galen, Faunos thrust his feet into his sandals and laced them to his knees. He was bare, save for the fresh linen wrap he had tied about his hips an hour before. With a little luck he would pass for one of the wanderers.
Many of the water gypsies had the look of the Keltoi, like himself; many more had been born Zehefti, and had the same accent. He had been taken for an easterner more than once, and no harm came of it. Keltoi traders and mercenaries were common enough, scattered across the Empire.
With a soft curse he gathered the cloak and stepped out into the night air. From the headland above the ruins of the old town he could see the wanderers’ fires, and his heart quickened in a curious blend of anticipation and fear.
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