CHAPTER XXVI

The sound of Snow’s hooves was soft, near to silent on the thick cushion of fallen needles beneath the pines, rising to a muffled hollow thud like distant drums when Ghu set the white stallion to a canter through the pillars of the trees, impatient, dreading. Riding to have it over.

The sanctuary of the Mother, the cold springs. The birth of the Wild Sister. He had never been to this place, and knew every tree, every stone, every singing bird. Evening Cloud whinnied to his stablemate. Ahjvar was sitting by a fire, leaning against one of the great pines, unsheathed sword within reach, shoved upright into the pine mould, dull silver in the sun. Not sleeping, but open-eyed. Waiting. He thrust himself to his feet as Ghu reined Snow back to his flowing walk again. Jui and Jiot coursed up to Ahjvar, tails wagging, and he gave them a hand to sniff, absent of attention. That welcome taken care of, they coursed on by to drink noisily from the nearest of the sacred springs, Jui wading right in to wallow, joyously irreverent.

Ahjvar simply stood, waiting. He looked exhausted, gaunt, eyes hollow, dark-ringed, but there was a calm to him, a peace.

What he had feared, when Ahjvar had said he would not follow to the mountain. What he had known. Ghu dismounted and looped the stallion’s reins up, left him loose to wander to the water or his fellow as he would, but stood still himself, to have a moment to watch Ahjvar, to hold him whole in sight. To not cross to him, not hear the words said.

Ahjvar came to him instead and fell to his knees at his feet.

“I’ve been wrestling dreams.” Head bowed, voice low, hoarse.

“Ahjvar . . .”

“I’ve found my way through them. I can wake myself. Wake myself up knowing I dream, not reaching for a weapon, not trying to choke—I’ve done it, three times, four, I don’t know, but one, one was very bad. I’m still dreaming, but I have broken them. I know them. I do not think—I do not think I will wake trying to kill long-dead enemies any longer. I do not sleep easy, or quiet, but . . . I wake and I can sleep again. Even—even when I dream I am burning, even when the Lady takes me in the well, I can make myself wake and know I am dreaming.” Almost a whisper.

“Ah, Ahj.” Ghu hardly dared to touch him, to set a hand to that bowed head. But he did. The bright pale hair was finer than one would think from its unruly wildness, warmed in the bough-broken sun, golden light on gold. All his resolution—he held it firm. He could not deny and would not plead. He should take what warmth there was in knowing he had, after all, been able to give that gift of time, that Ahj did not die in flight from the haunting of his own mind, but went to his road, long though it might be with the murders he carried, with some small peace.

“If I can sleep, even brokenly, I don’t think I’ll dream when I’m waking. I don’t think I need you sleeping by me for fear I’ll wake mad and trying to kill. Or that I need you there, to stop me killing.” Ahjvar dragged a deep breath. “But I think, I think there is no one I would want there by me, but you. I—would give you that.”

Abrupt words, dropped heavy between them. Ahjvar would not look up. Shaken, Ghu went to his own knees in the needles and moss, hand on his shoulder, hand on his jaw, in the coarser hair of his beard, forcing Ahjvar to meet his eyes.

“Ahj—Ahjvar—”

“I want that. You.”

“Not men, you said.”

“No. No. A man.” A rush, words desperate to be spoken. “I—I find you are become my—exception.”

And however much Ghu might have wanted that—to hear it chilled him.

“Did I do this to you, wanting you? I change things. I know I do. Not intending, but—the dogs are not what they were, because they’ve come to follow me. Father, Mother forgive me, Ahjvar, I did not mean to—”

A gaze so raw—naked, burning as flame. Blue should be cool as the sky overhead, not hold the sun’s hot heart. It took all words away. But the corner of the mouth turned in that faint, amused shadow that was not quite a smile.

“Gods, don’t think that of yourself, Ghu. You wouldn’t change someone against their nature. I know you would not.”

“Not knowingly. But unknowing—” Old Great Gods above, he feared it. And was kindled none the less to fire, to have Ahj look at him so.

“No. No. If you could shape a person’s will all unknowing to what you wanted, to what served you, you would have had Zhung Musan at your feet swearing fealty like Daro Korat, so much bloodshed spared. Hah, you would have had me at your feet long before this. True?”

He couldn’t help it. That made him laugh.

“Ghu, love without desire, you know you have had that of me for years, but I have been—I have been seeing you all too unsettlingly in the body for—when I think—since before Deyandara came and we set out for Marakand. Last spring. Noticing you, since you grew up—in ways I would not have expected and could not let myself think on, could deny and bury, because—you know why. Because I couldn’t feel such things without seeing, feeling, Miara dead under my hands.” He swallowed. “And you had not begun to take on any touch of your godhead then. So don’t think that you’ve drawn me to you against my nature, ever. Two lovers only, in what, almost a century? That’s not any great history either way. Who’s to say whom I might not have loved in my natural life, woman or man, if I had not been thrown all into damnation by Hyllau? You haven’t forced me to this, not you. Never.” Another nerve-ragged breath. “And I would not care if you had.”

“You should.” Ghu should. Ghu should care for both of them, if Ahj would not, and—and what could he know, but what Ahjvar said?

He gives himself to you. How do we deny that? Father Nabban would not have left Ghu to hold the stolen curse, if he saw harm in it for Ahjvar. The Father would not condone, if Ghu witting or unwitting had through that bond shifted his friend’s love for him from one course to another he might not have chosen on his own. Surely not.

“I am not always sane; I am not safe, even if I have broken my nightmares, and you are my safety, and my still centre, and all my trust. I am who I am now, where I have come to now, not who Catairlau was or might have been. I am yours, soul and body. Whatever you want of me. Take that. It’s all I have to give you.”

“No. You’ve given me everything I needed, all these years. You gave me—a place to grow into myself. I would not be the man I am if you had driven that boy from your wall and your hearth.” He added, because it was true, “Nabban would not be—what it will be. What I will be.”

“Damn your gods.” Ahjvar turned his mouth against Ghu’s fingers, eyes shut.

“Don’t. They haven’t damned you.”

Trust himself? He did not know. But Ghu slid his hand around to wind into the tangled fall of Ahjvar’s hair, kissed him, hesitantly, hardly more than a brushing of the lips, as he had kissed him in the burning tower of Dinaz Catairna.

A moment. Ahjvar leaned in and opened his mouth to him.

Daylight, still, and he did not think the Mother, had she been there, could have minded what they did in that sacred place beneath the pines. His place, this was, now. She was gone. What she had been in her strength was growing anew in himself. If he reached for it, it was there. The river. The rivers, the three great, the countless lesser, the lakes, all the waters of the land. The Father held on a little longer, withdrawn into himself on the mountain, waiting, but this, this was already become Ghu’s place, water and pines. So where better? The horses dozed, hip-shot and nose to fly-flicking tail. The dogs slept in a patch of sun. Sun found and lost and found them again, moving above the pines. Ahjvar . . . simply slept. Deep and still and beautiful. Ghu closed his eyes himself. Not to sleep. To listen, in this small place. To the wind in the pines, the springs and the streams that chimed over the rocks, through the ferns. Birds, spring birds in wild carolling. The man breathing slow beside him. That, most of all.

“Did you find your god?” Ahjvar, woken, speaking out of long, easy silence.

“I did.”

“And?”

“We—spoke. I see my road. That’s all. For now.” He rolled to his side, pulled closer yet to Ahjvar. “I thought—I thought you had come here to find some quiet.”

“I did.”

“I thought you would ask me to let you die.” Ghu traced the line of neck and shoulder, collarbone, the delicate hollow of his throat, awed anew. That solidly-muscled chest, that unsunned skin a palest brown no darker than his own hand, which showed a warmer sunlit tone against Ahj’s Praitan earthiness. The cold blanched silver of old scars, crossed and recrossed. Ahjvar had taken no care to avoid his enemies when he sought and dealt death in the Five Cities. Knives mostly, and the crossbows of house guards. Only the newest, from Marakand, were purpled still. Spears and swords, those. Ahj did not speak of what had happened when he went to murder the Voice of the Lady, but they had not taken him easily. Fingers combed through thick and curling golden hair, followed the narrowing line of it, flattened over those most livid scars, two of them crossing the last ribs and biting below, deep and knotted. Slid over to his hip. “I thought you had come here, to—wait, and ask for death.”

Ahjvar turned to face him, arm over him, and it seemed a wonder again that they could lie pressed body to body and Ahj not be merely lost in desperate need to have an anchor in the night. A greater wonder that his hands could touch, careful and wondering, and find a way over Ghu’s own skin in turn, caress muscle and bone beneath, grip hard in urgency, demand and make and give a closeness that had no root in fear, that wanted Ghu for life and breath and heat of desire, not for a wall against terror in the dark.

“If I hadn’t been able to fight the dreams at the last, I would have. You don’t need me to take Nabban.”

“Not to be my rihswera?” Ghu asked. A king’s champion. Teasing. Neither to be my champion nor my lover, he had said after the battle at the Orsamoss.

“I will be, if you will it, but need me for that, no. You don’t. You have Yeh-Lin for a weapon and the Kho’anzi for the shield of a lord’s name. You have the place of the gods to fill. You don’t need me to face the bloody lords who destroy this land and this empress who thinks she’s been made a goddess, or whatever drives her to oppose the will of the gods.”

“I need you to see me,” Ghu said soberly. “No one else does. To know me. To remember me. No one else ever will.”

“I do know that. I saw it, in the castle. I don’t know how long I can give you. But what I said before: I will try. Each day. That’s all I promise.”

“As long as you will. No longer. It’s enough.”

Later, they went back down to the ruin of the shrine in the slanting afternoon sun, walking, horses and dogs following. Ghu dipped his hands in the pond above the terraces and stood a long time by the grave, but if he prayed it was without words, eyes open. Inside the enclosure, he walked a circuit of the fence, still silent. Ahjvar trailed him, not certain what he did. His path took him spiralling in to circle each of the springs, then the stone and the dead tree.

He hurt. Ahjvar could feel it. Deep, deep hurt, he and the goddess within him. No. Not two. What she had been was within him, growing to something new. Ghu was god, in this place, and not a child whose hurt could be eased by a kind touch and a word. Ahjvar put a hand on his back anyway. Thought of the acorn, found again in the pine mould, and took all three from his purse, held them out in his palm. After the dead, the dead tree was somehow the deepest wound in this place, as if it, rather than the hot springs, had been the sign of the goddess here. Zhung Musan’s soldiers had not only stripped its bark away but hacked great gouges in the exposed roots. He didn’t recognize its species, bark or form or stillborn buds; it might send up suckers in new life, but it might not.

“These wouldn’t grow, would they? Too harsh a winter.” Almost a profanation, to speak, but Ghu looked at him, blinking some—some humanity—back into eyes distant as the night sky. He took one, rolled it through his fingers.

“They might, here. The springs warm the air. They might, with a god’s blessing. But do you want to plant them?”

“They’re in my mind,” Ahjvar said. “I shouldn’t need to carry them. Better they send down roots and live.”

Ghu abruptly pulled him close and kissed him, hard; clean fire of warmth and light, a hearth of life and he could have let all thought go and lost himself, drowned in that, but for the hand clenched over his and the acorns held between them.

“Yes,” Ghu said, turning him loose. “Do. And the forest is called in. This place will be holy again, someday.”

Ahjvar paced off distance enough for a full-grown cork-oak to be content at three points around the black stone, dug with his dagger and planted an acorn at each. Ghu had leapt to the top of the boulder and perched there cross-legged, watching, looking more like some ragged and wild forest demon playing with human form than any god.

“Or at least,” Ahjvar said, sitting back on his heels, the last acorn pressed down near where the young priestess had lain, “there will be an exotic treat for the local squirrels to dig up.”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Ghu’s smile flashed. “Browsing deer, now—”

“Ghu, do the deer in this forest eat meat, or was I hallucinating?”

“Hallucinating what?”

“Deer with fangs.”

“Oh, those. No. I think they fight with them.”

“Ah.”

“And grub up seedling trees, probably.” He vaulted down, solemn again, and walked a circuit of the ground Ahjvar had claimed for his planting. He had cut three symbols into the earth, wounded with fire and blood and pain as it was, one for each tree that might be; they were oaks, but he had made the sign of cypress for healing, elder for rebirth, and elm, which was for peace, and holiness, and godhead.

“Priest of Nabban,” Ghu said, coming back to where he had started. Ahjvar had not told him what the ghosts had called him. “Be that, for me, and rihswera too, if you will. The tree and the sword. Come. We’ll take the main track down. Still a few hours till sunset.”