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A fever burns in his breast, sickens his belly, and Soran struggles. Duty has always bound his hands, as if he were a slave to the office -- bondsman to his great father, beneath whose wrath all the Empire trembles. But if Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan fulfils his duty tonight, everything he desires will be delivered into the hands of the one he despises. And Faunos will surely die. Druyus will find a way to have him, and break him.
The stallion runs like the wind, foam-flecked, eating the miles eastward from the City of the Sun. Soran has only to give him his head and let him go. The horse lives to run, and is rarely granted the gift. The moonlight is near as bright as day; the highroad is like a white ribbon, following the backbone of the dolphin shape of the island.
And Soran’s thoughts are far from the horse, the road, the duty which binds him. He is back in a pavilion on the beach, with the soft sounds of the ocean, the music of a blind harper, and a sublime creature beneath him who seems less mortal than godling. Was his father one of the spirits of wind or lightning or rain? To be sure, his mother was a mortal woman, but his father must have been air or storm or starlight.
Soran has seen nothing like him, save the effigy in the Temple of Apollonos, who is the brother of Aphrataya, goddess of love. Apollonus is the patron of passion, of lust and desire, and the sculptors cast him in a form so like that of Faunos, Soran is captivated.
Enchanted? Still, he is uncertain, and only reason whispers to him, over and over, that Faunos is innocent. Even if the witchboy who was seen in that pig-pen of a village is actually Faunos -- and the birthmark insists on it -- then, witchboy or no, Faunos called upon no fraction of his Power.
And why he did not leaves Soran deeply disturbed. Everything he has been taught tells him, the Power is monstrous, dangerous. Faunos might have killed him, addled his wits, calcified his limbs, turned his belly to molten lead. Yet here is Soran -- confused, aching and sore at heart, but vividly alive as he brings the stallion in to the stable beside a tavern.
He shouts for the stablemaster and drinks ale to slake his thirst while the harness is changed to a long-legged black racer, the fastest animal in this stable. The stallion is spent now, and hangs his head, sides heaving, while the tall black gelding is envious and eager to run.
In minutes Soran is back on the road, and his thoughts are a hot, dark maelstrom of duty, desire, reason, superstition -- despair. He can make no sense of this, and feels himself caught up in the hands of Fates, gods, demons, any or all of whom will make him their pawn, their chattel, trade him for gain and leave him for dead, when it pleases them.
The highroad arrows into west, on the shoulders of the hills. On his left hand, he sees the firefly lights of the water gypsies’ camps, and his belly churns once more as memory takes him back there. He wants no more than to throw down the amulet of the witchfinder, curse the whole line of kings that has led to Azhtoc, and vanish with the tide, like the gypsies.
Three times, he changes horses at taverns lately overflowing with fugitives seeking the refuge of Vayal. The closer he runs in to Zeheft, the more fugitives are on the highroad, and at last he must cut speed and thread through the tangle of wagons and carts, to find the physician’s house.
The moon is high, two hours before midnight. The soldiers who will burn Zeheft are just hours’ march from the ruins, and by dawn nothing of the old city will survive. The night is full of the squeals of rats, jackals, foxes, all gorged on the bounty of Volcos.
The village squats in a valley with the bay to the south, and Zeheft lies over the hill. Soran knows it well enough; he has been here many times before, on his way to and from the old city. He has never liked the place, nor the people. They are mean spirited, grubbing for money in the shadow of the grandeur that was once Zeheft, and hating the Zeheftimen for the greatness of their ancestors.
Too many of the old folk here are tricksters, while the young seem mostly to be thieves and whores. Life is hard, this far from Vayal. People do what they must to survive, but the process has soured them, and their revulsion for the people of Zeheft divides them from a market that would have lent them prosperity. Proud Zeheft would have traded with them, but dread, hate, superstition, are cruel taskmasters.
The native pride of the Zeheftiman is part of Faunos’s allure -- Soran knows this now. He feels it, deep as his heart, and he realizes in this instant, what a gift he was given. Faunos set aside the pride of his people, used no fraction of the Power to damage Soran, and when he was given leave to go, he chose to stay. He withheld nothing of himself, not the delight of his mouth, nor the haven of his loins.
“He wanted me,” Soran whispers as he brings the horse through the deserted village, and sees a cluster of people at the physican’s house. “And what becomes of him now? It will be the vaults, and Druyus, and if the priest can conjure his way with slick words to Azhtoc, it will be the whip, the irons set to heat in the fire, sharps to pierce, weights to punish, salts and acids, venoms, and torments Soran refuses to think of.
The voices of old teachers haunt Soran tonight. Their lessons whisper in his ears -- tales of the wicked priest-kings of the lineage of Diomedas and Aeson and Dianos, whose magic was said to be dark as pitch, whose sons were possessed by evil, and who would bring the New Kingdom down in flames if ever they rose up out of Zeheft.
They must be extinguished, and the Power with them -- all his life, Soran has believed this. But now he has lain with one of them, loved with one of them. He remembers the suppleness and warmth of young human flesh, hard with muscle, taut with sinew, pulsing with life, gloriously male --
And it was just a young man sighing beneath him. Prideful at first, frightened of him, until the art and skill of one who could recite the Book of Aphrataya overcame both pride and fear. Pure, raw desire will chase out both, and at last it was a lover in Soran’s arms, contradicting everything he has ever understood.
The priests, teachers, and especially Azhtoc, would call him a fool for these thoughts. Questions are almost forbidden, and always answered with vague quotations from scriptures so old, their translations are tangled. Tales from the time of the Ice are lately raveled up with the histories of Vayal and the spirit tales of Zeheft … nothing makes sense any longer.
How shall the eons of our past make any more sense than the maelstrom of our present, when the Library of Vayal is sealed like a tomb? Priests toil there, copying books they can not even properly read, while the originals, hand-scribed on papyrus and vellum, are so incalculably old, they are falling away into dust as they are copied. The languages, like all the tongues of men, are drifting like the currents and tides of the sea … what do they mean, these scriptures from the great, glory days of mankind?
No mortal knows, but priests pretend to. Even Mahanmec Azhtoc visits the Library on rare occasion -- usually when the Oracle has spoken only gibberish rhyme to him, and he must seek wisdom elsewhere. He would flog Iridan to bloody tatters if only he could fathom how to do it … but how will he set the steel-tailed whip upon the very air? The Oracle speaks in riddles, endless riddles, to the chagrin of kings.
As a young boy, Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan visited the library with his great father. Forbidden to touch the books, for an hour he watched the scribes, the keepers of knowledge no one understands, and he left the Library sure of only one thing.
Everything a man could ever need or desire to know, every secret, every shard of wisdom, is stored in those vaults where the face of Helios never shines. And Faunos’s secrets, his magic? Is the Power of the scions of Diomedas explained there, too?
A chill pervades Soran as he brings the horse to a halt by the physician’s house and watches the old man and his ancient wife prostrate in the dirt. He has no desire to know the secrets of Diomedas, nor to pry into ancient high magic that is too great for him to comprehend, much less master. Yet he marvels now, that he has seen it, felt it, at firsthand. He and the witchboy were as one body, fused and whole, when the Power began to burn bright in Faunos … and Soran recalls an odd lightness, as if they were coupling in a dim, warm ocean. Rapture, sweet scents -- these are his memories; and such pleasure as can make a man mad with longing. Or tear out his heart, never to be returned.
But he recalls no evil, no darkness or vileness of purpose. He remembers only joy such as he has never known before -- he sees Faunos’s face again, suffused with the pure, vital lust of the healthy young animal, glorious heat and painful longing.
And then he glimpses the face of Druyus, wreathed in shadows in his lair beneath Vayal, and he squeezes out the ugliness of the memory. Better that Faunos should die, quick and clean, like the gazelle or the cheetah, at the climax of the hunt. He will take the lifeless body back to Druyus to be examined for what it can tell.
To let Faunos live and go free would be the worst kind of treason. Not even the seventh son of Azhtoc would be absolved. But there are ways which not even Azhtoc and Druyus can deny. Death can also be kind.
Fury coils like a serpent through Soran’s belly as he glares down at the physician, the wife, the meddling, hateful, superstitious neighbors who must send for the soldiers. Grim with determination, he sets aside the lover and becomes the witchfinder.
The stallion runs like the wind, foam-flecked, eating the miles eastward from the City of the Sun. Soran has only to give him his head and let him go. The horse lives to run, and is rarely granted the gift. The moonlight is near as bright as day; the highroad is like a white ribbon, following the backbone of the dolphin shape of the island.
And Soran’s thoughts are far from the horse, the road, the duty which binds him. He is back in a pavilion on the beach, with the soft sounds of the ocean, the music of a blind harper, and a sublime creature beneath him who seems less mortal than godling. Was his father one of the spirits of wind or lightning or rain? To be sure, his mother was a mortal woman, but his father must have been air or storm or starlight.
Soran has seen nothing like him, save the effigy in the Temple of Apollonos, who is the brother of Aphrataya, goddess of love. Apollonus is the patron of passion, of lust and desire, and the sculptors cast him in a form so like that of Faunos, Soran is captivated.
Enchanted? Still, he is uncertain, and only reason whispers to him, over and over, that Faunos is innocent. Even if the witchboy who was seen in that pig-pen of a village is actually Faunos -- and the birthmark insists on it -- then, witchboy or no, Faunos called upon no fraction of his Power.
And why he did not leaves Soran deeply disturbed. Everything he has been taught tells him, the Power is monstrous, dangerous. Faunos might have killed him, addled his wits, calcified his limbs, turned his belly to molten lead. Yet here is Soran -- confused, aching and sore at heart, but vividly alive as he brings the stallion in to the stable beside a tavern.
He shouts for the stablemaster and drinks ale to slake his thirst while the harness is changed to a long-legged black racer, the fastest animal in this stable. The stallion is spent now, and hangs his head, sides heaving, while the tall black gelding is envious and eager to run.
In minutes Soran is back on the road, and his thoughts are a hot, dark maelstrom of duty, desire, reason, superstition -- despair. He can make no sense of this, and feels himself caught up in the hands of Fates, gods, demons, any or all of whom will make him their pawn, their chattel, trade him for gain and leave him for dead, when it pleases them.
The highroad arrows into west, on the shoulders of the hills. On his left hand, he sees the firefly lights of the water gypsies’ camps, and his belly churns once more as memory takes him back there. He wants no more than to throw down the amulet of the witchfinder, curse the whole line of kings that has led to Azhtoc, and vanish with the tide, like the gypsies.
Three times, he changes horses at taverns lately overflowing with fugitives seeking the refuge of Vayal. The closer he runs in to Zeheft, the more fugitives are on the highroad, and at last he must cut speed and thread through the tangle of wagons and carts, to find the physician’s house.
The moon is high, two hours before midnight. The soldiers who will burn Zeheft are just hours’ march from the ruins, and by dawn nothing of the old city will survive. The night is full of the squeals of rats, jackals, foxes, all gorged on the bounty of Volcos.
The village squats in a valley with the bay to the south, and Zeheft lies over the hill. Soran knows it well enough; he has been here many times before, on his way to and from the old city. He has never liked the place, nor the people. They are mean spirited, grubbing for money in the shadow of the grandeur that was once Zeheft, and hating the Zeheftimen for the greatness of their ancestors.
Too many of the old folk here are tricksters, while the young seem mostly to be thieves and whores. Life is hard, this far from Vayal. People do what they must to survive, but the process has soured them, and their revulsion for the people of Zeheft divides them from a market that would have lent them prosperity. Proud Zeheft would have traded with them, but dread, hate, superstition, are cruel taskmasters.
The native pride of the Zeheftiman is part of Faunos’s allure -- Soran knows this now. He feels it, deep as his heart, and he realizes in this instant, what a gift he was given. Faunos set aside the pride of his people, used no fraction of the Power to damage Soran, and when he was given leave to go, he chose to stay. He withheld nothing of himself, not the delight of his mouth, nor the haven of his loins.
“He wanted me,” Soran whispers as he brings the horse through the deserted village, and sees a cluster of people at the physican’s house. “And what becomes of him now? It will be the vaults, and Druyus, and if the priest can conjure his way with slick words to Azhtoc, it will be the whip, the irons set to heat in the fire, sharps to pierce, weights to punish, salts and acids, venoms, and torments Soran refuses to think of.
The voices of old teachers haunt Soran tonight. Their lessons whisper in his ears -- tales of the wicked priest-kings of the lineage of Diomedas and Aeson and Dianos, whose magic was said to be dark as pitch, whose sons were possessed by evil, and who would bring the New Kingdom down in flames if ever they rose up out of Zeheft.
They must be extinguished, and the Power with them -- all his life, Soran has believed this. But now he has lain with one of them, loved with one of them. He remembers the suppleness and warmth of young human flesh, hard with muscle, taut with sinew, pulsing with life, gloriously male --
And it was just a young man sighing beneath him. Prideful at first, frightened of him, until the art and skill of one who could recite the Book of Aphrataya overcame both pride and fear. Pure, raw desire will chase out both, and at last it was a lover in Soran’s arms, contradicting everything he has ever understood.
The priests, teachers, and especially Azhtoc, would call him a fool for these thoughts. Questions are almost forbidden, and always answered with vague quotations from scriptures so old, their translations are tangled. Tales from the time of the Ice are lately raveled up with the histories of Vayal and the spirit tales of Zeheft … nothing makes sense any longer.
How shall the eons of our past make any more sense than the maelstrom of our present, when the Library of Vayal is sealed like a tomb? Priests toil there, copying books they can not even properly read, while the originals, hand-scribed on papyrus and vellum, are so incalculably old, they are falling away into dust as they are copied. The languages, like all the tongues of men, are drifting like the currents and tides of the sea … what do they mean, these scriptures from the great, glory days of mankind?
No mortal knows, but priests pretend to. Even Mahanmec Azhtoc visits the Library on rare occasion -- usually when the Oracle has spoken only gibberish rhyme to him, and he must seek wisdom elsewhere. He would flog Iridan to bloody tatters if only he could fathom how to do it … but how will he set the steel-tailed whip upon the very air? The Oracle speaks in riddles, endless riddles, to the chagrin of kings.
As a young boy, Soranchele Izamal-xiu Ulkan visited the library with his great father. Forbidden to touch the books, for an hour he watched the scribes, the keepers of knowledge no one understands, and he left the Library sure of only one thing.
Everything a man could ever need or desire to know, every secret, every shard of wisdom, is stored in those vaults where the face of Helios never shines. And Faunos’s secrets, his magic? Is the Power of the scions of Diomedas explained there, too?
A chill pervades Soran as he brings the horse to a halt by the physician’s house and watches the old man and his ancient wife prostrate in the dirt. He has no desire to know the secrets of Diomedas, nor to pry into ancient high magic that is too great for him to comprehend, much less master. Yet he marvels now, that he has seen it, felt it, at firsthand. He and the witchboy were as one body, fused and whole, when the Power began to burn bright in Faunos … and Soran recalls an odd lightness, as if they were coupling in a dim, warm ocean. Rapture, sweet scents -- these are his memories; and such pleasure as can make a man mad with longing. Or tear out his heart, never to be returned.
But he recalls no evil, no darkness or vileness of purpose. He remembers only joy such as he has never known before -- he sees Faunos’s face again, suffused with the pure, vital lust of the healthy young animal, glorious heat and painful longing.
And then he glimpses the face of Druyus, wreathed in shadows in his lair beneath Vayal, and he squeezes out the ugliness of the memory. Better that Faunos should die, quick and clean, like the gazelle or the cheetah, at the climax of the hunt. He will take the lifeless body back to Druyus to be examined for what it can tell.
To let Faunos live and go free would be the worst kind of treason. Not even the seventh son of Azhtoc would be absolved. But there are ways which not even Azhtoc and Druyus can deny. Death can also be kind.
Fury coils like a serpent through Soran’s belly as he glares down at the physician, the wife, the meddling, hateful, superstitious neighbors who must send for the soldiers. Grim with determination, he sets aside the lover and becomes the witchfinder.
Turn page to Chapter Seventeen...
Return to Chapter Sixteen...
