Land of Night (30 page)

Liall looked almost frightened. “Scarlet!” Liall snapped, silencing him. He took a deep breath and reached for Scarlet. “These are forbidden things, my t'aishka. You must never mention them outside of this room, to anyone else. Do you promise?"

Scarlet sensed how right Liall was. No one must ever know what he had discovered in the temple ruins. Who could be trusted with such knowledge? “I promise,” he said.

"Good.” Liall pushed Scarlet's black hair out of his eyes. “How do you feel?"

"Well enough, now.” Scarlet spared him the knowledge of how Melev had pressed him and tortured him in that odd no-space between worlds. He looked miserable enough. “Oh, Liall, I'm so very sorry I lied to you about the withy magic. I shouldn't have. I should have trusted you."

Liall pulled him close. “No. I am the one who should apologize. The truths I withheld from you are far worse. No more. I will never keep anything from you again."

Scarlet clung to him.
Deception,
he thought, suddenly remembering the cryptic, ruddy-haired Fate Dealer in Ankar, and the cards the Fate had read for him:
Be on your guard. You will be told a lie or you will fall in love with one, and you will follow it to the ends of the earth.

Well, he was at the end of the earth, no doubt, and if Liall had told him he was an exiled prince when they first met on the Nerit, Scarlet would have laughed at him. If Scarlet had shown Liall the withy magic when they barely knew each other, Liall would have left him entirely alone, and Annaya might be dead. Perhaps not all lies were an evil, or else they'd both be damned by now.

"I don't want to keep anything from you either. Liall ... I saw Cestimir in that place,” Scarlet said haltingly. “The stone circle."

Liall drew back and looked as if he might weep. “You did?"

"In the Overworld, I think. That must have been what it was. He looked happy."

Liall covered his face with his hands and sat for several moments like that before his hands dropped in a useless gesture. “I wanted so much to save him,” Liall said. “Like Nadei. But I failed both times.” He drew Scarlet to him again, hugging him fiercely. “All this time I have been trying to shield you so much. I failed to see you did not need protecting. I have been a fool."

Scarlet was too heartsick over Cestimir to be glad that Liall was finally seeing things right. It was only a tiny glow against the heavy pall of sorrow over his heart. “It doesn't matter now.” And truly, it didn't. Liall's secrets had been needlessly withheld from him so long that they had lost their importance. He hoped Liall felt the same way about his magic. Scarlet wanted to end that difficult part of their lives together with no more words, like closing the pages of a book. Story over. Tell me another one, mum, this one's played out.

Carefully, he pulled away from Liall. “I've got something else to tell you,” Scarlet said, and watched how Liall's face went still and cold in that way he had, the old walls rising up between them.

Liall's mouth trembled and he bowed his head. “T'aishka, please do not leave me.” He drew in a shuddering breath. “I will beg if you like."

"It wouldn't do any good, you fool,” Scarlet said impatiently, “for I'm not going anywhere."

That took a moment to sink in. “Oh,” Liall said thinly. “Forgive me. There is still a part of me that believes I do not deserve your love or your loyalty. It is very easy for me to believe that you would wish to depart."

"Well, I don't,” Scarlet scolded. “Now stop that, you want-wit, before I clout you one."

Liall smiled a little. “Speak on, then, my lord."

"I just wanted to tell you that I've been wrong. I was out of my element here, and instead of turning to you, I got angry. I was angry that I had to depend on you. It made me feel weak and it made me take risks to prove myself, when there was no need. You'd never asked it of me. This place is ... so foreign. I can't learn it all in a day. You'll have to teach me, Liall. Please?"

Liall leaned forward and cupped Scarlet's cheek, drawing him in for a brief and loving kiss. “I will. And I want to tell you the truth about Nadei,” he said, his voice very soft. “I want you to know why I lied to you, why I tried so very hard to deceive you and keep you ignorant of my past."

Scarlet blinked.

"You were not expecting me to say it in that way,” Liall murmured. “Have I never admitted fault to you before? I want to tell you everything now."

"Now?"

"Yes."

Scarlet nodded slowly, greatly troubled. “All right. If you're sure. I want to get out of this bed, though."

Liall helped Scarlet into a heavy robe, and they moved out of the bedroom and into the den, sitting side by side on the large couch.

Liall sat stiffly, not looking at Scarlet. It was harder than he thought to begin. Where to start? How do I say to him the things I cannot admit even to myself?

Liall formed several sentences in his mind, discarded them all, and finally looked to Scarlet helplessly. “It is difficult for me to talk about him,” he admitted. “I know that no one believes it, but I did love Nadei very much."

"
I
believe it."

There was an ache in Liall's hands, and he looked down and saw that they were clasped together so tightly that he had bruised his knuckles. “You remind me of him a little,” Liall said softly. “Of his good qualities. You are cocksure and you are stubborn and you are proud to a fault. Those were the things I loved about him."

Liall took a heavy breath before continuing, steeling himself. “He was my brother,” he blurted. “My elder brother, but only by two years. By the time we were youths, our age difference was invisible. I believe that is when it began. Someone mistook me for the elder once, because I was a little taller than Nadei, and I think someone must have whispered something to him later, that perhaps I was getting too big in other ways as well, that perhaps I had begun thinking of myself as more suited to the kingship than he. Royal courts are full of gossips and mischief makers."

Scarlet nodded solemnly at that.

How well he knows, Liall thought. I hope that one day he forgives me for bringing him here.

"It was never any one thing,” Liall tried to explain, frustrated that he did not have a clear-cut scenario to present. “Like most family stories, ours is messy and incomplete. As boys, we were very close. He was the elder, but I protected him. I covered for him when he made mistakes, and I sheltered him from criticism and harm. We never had a true falling-out, and nothing was ever said, but in those few years before we became men, when bonds between brothers are so important and so fragile, we developed a rift. Nadei wanted fiercely to be king, and I never wanted it at all. I saw what power had done to my mother and I wanted no part of it, but none of that mattered, because Nadei believed I wanted what was his. It changed him."

Liall fell silent for a moment, gazing into the past, until he felt Scarlet's hand on his.

"What happened?"

Liall shrugged as if it were a light matter, when it was anything but. “He ceased to be my friend. We rarely spoke. He cultivated his own circle of followers who found favor with him by denigrating me in small ways. Not that I was not equal to their games, but ... I did not wish to play. They bored me with their intrigues and their gossip. I was even thinking about leaving Rshan, like the journeyman princes in the old days, when my mother betrothed me to Shikhoza."

Scarlet stiffened a little. Liall could not blame him. Shikhoza had gone out of her way to make Scarlet feel like the illiterate country lad he was, someone who would be better occupied tidying royal beds than sleeping in them.

Liall gripped his hand. “I know she has behaved terribly towards you, but I want you to remember that she was not always like that. She was enough to make me give up my plans to leave Rshan, at least for a while. But then ... well, I suppose she recalled who she was, and all the things she would never have as the wife of a lesser prince. Nadei was not very kind to her either, and then there was Vladei, who had sued very hard for Shikhoza's father to let them marry, but the old man never thought Vladei would be worthy of her. Once Vladei realized he could not win Shikhoza back, he turned on her. He made her life a hell inside the Nauhinir, and she, in her turn, decided to make mine one."

"What did she do?” Scarlet whispered.

Liall smiled a little, only because if he did not, he would weep. “She became Nadei's mistress behind my back, though she hated him in her heart. I thought at first it was because she hoped he would marry her and make her queen, but I should have known she was subtler than that. No. She knew I loved her, so she slept with Nadei to make me hate him. She did want to be queen, you see, but not to Nadei. To me. Perhaps she did have some feeling for me after all, or maybe she just knew that Nadei was too susceptible to what others thought of him. He was easily swayed by opinion and gossip. In a king, that is a fatal weakness. She wanted me to take the road so many princes take to power: the quiet assassination of a rival."

Scarlet seemed to have stopped breathing. “Did you do that?” he quavered. “Liall, please tell me you didn't."

Liall nearly became angry then. “No. What do you think of me? I laughed at her plots. I would never hurt Nadei.” Then he realized what he had said. “I mean,” he stammered. “I would never have ... it was not intentional. There was,” he had to stop and take another deep breath, “there was a bear hunt. Nadei and I rode for the silver and blue, as always, and we killed the beast together, but there was some dispute over whose spear had actually ended the snow bear's life. To this day, I swear I saw my own spear strike the bear in the throat and Nadei's bounce off its flank and skitter up under its ribs. A severe blow, but not the killing shot. Credit for the kill, the blood honor, went to me, but Nadei loudly disputed it all the way back to the palace. When we were home and in the hall, he was still angry, still crying foul and saying I had cheated and lied to get the blood honor, that I had bribed men to say it was my spear that felled the bear, and that I had dishonored the hunt forever. I tried to laugh at him and make light of it, like I had been doing for years but ... damn it all.” He ground his fist into his palm, not seeing how Scarlet shrank from him.

"Suddenly, I was just so damned
tired
of him. He wasn't a man ready to be king, he was a boy who imagined slights everywhere. I shouted at him and told him so before witnesses in the hall, when I could stand his insults no more. My mother was there and heard everything, and I think by then even she knew that we needed to have it out between us, so she did not interfere or send guards to pull us apart."

It was the next part that made Liall's voice stopper in his throat. He tried to speak past it and could not, then Scarlet's arms were around him, and suddenly he could say it:

"We fought. I had been with the army in the Tribelands. I was a younger prince, not the heir, and could bear the risk of battle if I wished. Unlike Nadei, who was never allowed to be put into harm's way. I was a trained soldier, so I was better with my fists. I won and he took it badly. He came at me with a knife,” Liall said into Scarlet's shoulder. “I am battle-trained. He came at me and I turned the blade on him and drove it into his side, but ... but too high. It pierced his organs and he died within a few minutes, right there on the crown dais, with my mother screaming his name."

Scarlet's arms tightened around Liall. “I'm sorry."

"I did not mean to do it,” Liall vowed. “I swear I did not mean to. It happened so fast, I..."

"Quiet. I know. I should have known."

Scarlet held him for a long time while Liall inhaled the scent of Scarlet's skin and listened to the sounds outside the room: a clink in the dining nook, the soft fall of footsteps echoing on stone, wind on the casements, servants going about their duties, Nenos giving orders in his gentle voice. These were sounds that he had grown up with and thought never to hear again. Like Scarlet's trust, they were gifts he had been given back, and now he must take care to guard them.

"Liall, what's going to happen now?"

"I honestly do not know.” Liall kissed him and got up heavily. “I have to speak to Alexyin, find out what he plans to do. He was the queen's advisor and—"

Liall turned sharply when he heard Scarlet gasp. Scarlet had turned to look at the large casement that dominated the room, and now he rose and moved toward it, gripping the edges of heavy drapery in each hand. The storm had broken and the sky cleared to show a black dome glittering with stars, and Scarlet stood gazing out, his head tilted back as he stared in stunned awe. His chest rose and fell slowly, as if he scarcely dared to breathe.

"Is this magic?” Scarlet asked at last, his voice daunted and overcome with wonder. He had been told countless times that there was no magic in Rshan.

They will call this an omen, Liall thought, and moved to stand with Scarlet, tilting his head back to watch with Scarlet as the opalescent streams of light chased each other across the indigo canvas of sky.

Scarlet watched, wide-eyed and awed into silence, and Liall smiled to see his admiration. Colors, colors, colors. One after the other in a vast cascade sparkling above the land, like a shimmering silken veil that descends and descends but never seems to touch the ground. The
ostre sul,
the lights in the darkness, which Liall had seen it more times than he could remember, but never like this, never with such a man beside him, who artlessly accepted a flawed world as the price of living, and committed his whole heart to love while still reserving his selfdom. Unlike Liall, Scarlet had always known who he was. Liall had been the one who was lost and needed convincing that he wanted to be found at all.

Who was the man Scarlet loved? Was he a displaced prince or a bandit Kasiri? Or, as Scarlet had once accused, was he like Cadan, a dark soul only needing the right set of downfalls to turn him into a brigand and murderer? Liall realized then that he had tried so hard not to be Prince Nazheradei that he had misplaced himself. Some part of him had been fast asleep since his exile from Rshan, perhaps only waiting for the right catalyst to rouse it or the right soul to share a life with. He no longer had to fear his own dreams.