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"Gave?" Duncan stared down at the Children of Chaos, playfully terrorizing each other on the priceless Turkish rug before the Villancourt's warm fire. "Money?" he added to the question when Adam did not answer.
.. ..
"It seems Richie won't be returning to Seacouver any time in the near future," Duncan MacLeod sorted through the mail, seated like a corporate king at Gina Vallincourt's enormous mahogany desk. "He stayed a while in Alameda with Alexa and helped the Kuehls set up their new trucking business..."
Adam looked up from his limber sprawl at the green marble hearth where he alternately played "attack of the Teddy Bear" with his baby brother, Sean, and read from the old leather-bound book balanced on his lap. "Alexa told me their budget was 'slim to none.' I even gave Richie some money to see he got her home all right."
"Well, you don't have to make it sound like I'm the stingiest person you know. And then the dreadful bear snuck around the dark, bony knee and......Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!" Teddy dive-bombed Sean mid-belly and the baby rolled over backward, kicking and giggling and doing his best baby imitation of Teddy-wrestling.
"Well, however it sounds. I can't even get you to pay for your own beer most days."
"So how is it they're setting up a business with no money?" Adam didn't even rise to the gibe. He was too busy fending off Sean's answering rally which mostly consisted of Adam laying on his back with Sean perched on his belly on Adam's large hands and kicking and spitting and squealing with wicked abandon.
"It seems Ram left them a house gift at the local bank, enough for a fleet of five semi's. More than enough to see to the boys' college fund..."
"Uh!" Adam slumped back as if he'd been shot, conceding total defeat to his sib, who curled up on Adam's chest, popped his favorite thumb in his mouth, and snuggled in for a nap. "Boys?" Adam asked softly.
"Lucille said Alexa delivered a healthy baby boy two days after Thanksgiving," Duncan replied.
"Oh," Adam sighed softly. He'd been too swaddled with baby, too much set away from the world, to believe that anything else, that the entire world, in fact, was going on pretty much as it had done. But so it was. It was a strange sensation. He placed his sleeping brother gently in a nest of pillows a safe, but warm distance from the hearth and strode over to the windows of Robert's study to gaze at the grey sky and the pristine powder of the latest snowfall. "Lucille?"
Duncan stretched his neck and shoulders. "As I said before, this is a letter from Sweet Lucille filling us in on all the Seacouver news since we left."
Of course, Adam thought, There was another life before we came to Paris, other ways, other people. But it all seemed more dim and distant than either time or mileage would explain. He could just barely remember the brittle uneasiness of his former self, that other life, darker, colder than this January storm. "So you said Richie was staying in Alameda?"
"No, Lucille said he took a small shipment of parts west of Albuquerque and fell in with a group of what Sweets calls 'good ol' boys' and they got to talking about racing, cycles and cars, and the next thing Richie knew he was taking one of their cars out for a spin. They were so impressed, they hired him. Let's see..." Duncan looked for the place in the letter, Lucille's descriptions being so much more colorful than his own...
...then he takes the semi back to the Kuehl's, says his 'byes, and off he goes to this address west of town that takes him three stops asking directions...it's some place, hell-and-gone, out in the middle of the desert, and Rich begins to think he's done something too stupid to live, when, God Bless and pass the grits, here's the place and a big sign which says simply, Unser Brothers.
"Richard Ryan is driving for the Unsers?" Adam leaned his back against the cold panes. "Hard to believe."
"Well, if you find that hard to believe, try this..." Duncan shuffled through Lucille's thick sheaf of "news," and found the page, "Joseph Dawson got married."
"What?" Adam did not believe. Three long strides brought him across to the desk and he reached for the proof of such an outrageous suggestion. He read through the pages twice, shaking his head. "Damn that Crane!"
"Crane? Lt. Crane?"
"Oh, yeah. He was at the Inquisition at Watchers' Central. Little bugger said nothing at all about this. I even asked him how Joe was doing. Damn him!" Adam paced over to check on Sean. He wasn't used to being so out of touch. He was surprised it didn't bother him as much as he thought it should.
"I guess he met this woman when he went to take care of the funeral arrangements for Ram," Duncan had long since decided not to avoid mentioning Ram's death in Adam's presence. "She was in the accident as well, a chaperone on the school bus, so Lucille says. No family, terribly injured...I guess she was in coma when Joe met her. Joe took pity on her and married her in the hospital and took her home with him. So I take it from what Lucille says, this is more of an adoption than a true marriage."
"...and Anne got married," Duncan added, more with a melody of acceptance than moodiness.
"No!" Adam's long fingers fluttered up in exasperation, strobing the firelight. "Who?"
"Lucille says one of the doctors, the one that worked on..."
"Palmer," Adam said the word as if it were low malediction. The butcher with the big, stupid paws that had murdered his mother.
"Turns out he is Mary's father," Duncan sighed quietly.
"Is it only my imagination, or does this all sound like 'As Seacouver Turns?'" Adam laughed.
Duncan's laugh was cut short by the strident bell of the phone which woke Sean. "Mac," he answered the ring as Adam went to comfort the rudely awakened younger MacLeod. "I'll be right down."
They were still having trouble with errant Immortals coming after Sean and his dad. Some obsession with the inequity of Duncan's dynasty, the first such since the dawn of time. It seemed there were those who could not bear the idea, even if only in rumor, that a second generation Immortal was alive in the world. Duncan did not understand the rabid feelings his son engendered in some of their race. He supposed they were afraid that Sean would be more powerful somehow, that because of his heritage, he would be The One to destroy them all.
But, as Duncan understood it from Ram's stories, Sean was no different than the other Immortals-- in his case, pre-Immie--except for the fact he would know his father.
Robert met him in the garden and they joined the guards to meet the intruders at the western wall.
Duncan MacLeod padded into the Villancourt study on wet, bare feet, toweling his hair dry and muttering.
"Rough day at the office, Dear?" Adam glanced up from his current task, sorting photographs and placing them into some brushed metal frames which Gina had given him. "Here," he offered up one for the Highlander's inspection.
Duncan draped the towel over his shoulder, tightened the belt on the terry robe and took the portrait of Sean into his hands. It did not escape him that the babe was already beginning to look like Dr. Burns, wild red hair and all. "A pink frame?" he handed the photo back to Adam.
"Copper," Adam corrected him, "to go with his red hair."
"Right," said Duncan, lowering his sore frame down near the fire and Adam's back, "and where is the little sprite?"
"Downstairs having cocktails with Mme Villancourt and her literary club," Adam's long torso stretched forward and he retrieved a stack of black and white lithographs, all of the same picture, laying them out, side-by-side, rejecting this one and that, setting the final candidates in order. "We were not invited," he added.
Duncan stretched and yawned, "For which we can only be grateful, but I'm sure Sean is having a fine time."
Adam waited while he sorted through the prints. Simply one of the small aspects of their friendship, he wasn't even aware of waiting, just a hesitation, like a dance or the inertial moment of pause before an object falls, a weightless, nearly invisible instant. Then Duncan's hand was on Adam's right shoulder, the broad thumb pressing gently against the tight margin of his neck.
Adam didn't wonder why the touch no longer distressed him. He didn't think about it at all, any more than he thought about breathing. They had come to a certainty between them which was beyond discussion, beyond question.
"So, what is that?" Duncan peeked over Adam's shoulder and studied the lithographs.
Adam's head turned sideways towards him and Duncan could almost see the cog and wheelwork of the Oldest Immortal's intricate thought processes. "Well, let's have a look," he suggested.
"Turn around," Adam said.
"What?"
Adam moved his very long index finger in a tight circle in the air. Duncan slid around, facing away from him, taking the warmth from the fire on his other side. He watched the lithe, long shadow move round the room, resetting the fire, gathering up a lamp from the desk, retrieving a warmed bottle of lotion from the hearthside. Then Adam plugged in the lamp and placed it on the floor beside Duncan, handing over one of the print "rejects," for his inspection.
"What do you think it is?" Adam knelt behind him and peeled the robe down from his shoulders, taking back the print long enough for Duncan to pull his arms up out of his sleeves. "Well?" Adam repeated as he began to work on the impressive musculature of his friend's back.
The warm lotion was perfect, both in substance and intention. Another small portion between them which spoke to what Ram had called, "...the word between us, when there is no word."
Duncan studied the small print. "It is a lithograph of two men lying down on the edge of a pond or lake. Clouds building in the background. The work is fussy and precise...and off-center to the left."
Adam drove a knuckle into the knot beneath Duncan's right shoulder blade.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry," Adam murmured. He leaned around Duncan and adjusted the lamp. "Try again."
"Oh," Duncan looked again. "Okay, the one on the right is a boy..."
Adam put some more lotion onto his palms and began smoothing Duncan's shoulders. "You know, Duncan, you've been playing at warrior far too long."
"What? Oh, not a boy, a girl on the right."
Adam laughed softly as he walked his thumbs down the plumb-line rectitude of MacLeod's strong back.
"Well," Duncan grumbled, "the short hair, the muscling of the upper arms, the spare frame...Wait a minute, this isn't--?"
"I don't know, " Adam admitted, "I suppose it could be Mother, but I doubt it. I'm fairly certain she carved the stone, though. The man on the left is Malak."
"Your teacher? The one with the pancake recipe and the philosophy of moment?"
"And I thought you weren't paying attention," Adam's undertones developed into a chorus of self- satisfied good cheer. "What was that you said about being off-center?"
Duncan heard the "teaching tones" in this last question. A clue. He rounded his loosening shoulders and stretched. In the time before he knew better, Duncan might have imagined Adam's hands would feel bony and spare, but the Immortal's touch was strong and sure and incredibly pleasurable. Duncan chose in this moment not to think too deeply about how Adam had come to know as much as he did about the intricacies of carnal sensation. He chose instead to focus on Adam's ability to lose himself, to completely occupy his consciousness with another's concern. This must have been a dreadful curse for Adam in his younger life, in the time before he learned sarcasm and cynicism and the myriad other defenses that kept him from losing his own identity.
Duncan shook his head. Some of Sean Burns lingered yet in the high vaults of his thick skull. "I was just saying the picture isn't balanced, Adam." He brought it closer to the light. "That's odd. The shadows are offset in the opposite direction...oh, I see...Malak is looking at Ram's--or whoever that is--reflection, and she is looking at his. They've switched each other's shadows! Souls? What does it mean, Adam?"
Adam helped him back on with his robe and finished toweling his hair.
At which point, two of the Villancourt's servants brought in the late dinner and the outside world, the one that took them to be lovers. But then, Duncan thought, they might as well be in the narrow perspectives of that infinite scheme whereby two solid objects may occupy--impossibly--a single space.
Over coffee and a chocolate cheese cake that was obscenely wondrous, Duncan asked again about the odd print.
"The stone is in that red box with the chipped paint. I found it in the basement of the Lyons Archives with that large box of Ram's journals which I shipped to Seacouver and then back here..."
"And back to Seacouver next month if not sooner," Duncan finished.
"Really? Why? I thought you said we were safe here."
"You're too hard to hide, Adam."
"Me?"
"Sooner or later, it will be discovered that the late Dr. Piersen is not so late after all...and then it won't take very long for connections to be made to your research project and then we'll have every Immortal on the planet coming after the head of The Oldest Immortal. It will be easier to hide you in Seacouver. Crane and Dawson already know who, what you are and they have managed to keep it secret. Lucille does not know, but I am sure she suspects given what she knows about Ram."
Adam got up from the dinner table, the large study desk, and went to see to the fire. "So, did I have a funeral?"
"Of course," Duncan watched the Old Man turn into the little boy version of himself. "A lovely ceremony. Several hundred people attended, mostly Watchers...I might have guessed what you told them by the odd way they reacted to me. I thought at the time it had to do with my being an Immortal. I buried you next to Tessa," he said.
Adam jerked around and his jaw dropped. "You're kidding!"
"I thought about sending you off to Greece, to be with Alexa, but then I thought that would be too elaborate."
Adam laughed, "Did you bury anyone I know?"
"I don't think so," Duncan answered. "It was the bastard that kept me occupied on the far side of the Latin Quarter while you were being besieged on the barge."
"Fitting," Adam snorted. He wasn't particularly happy they would be returning to the place where his mother died. He wasn't ready yet, less ready now that he knew her better than he ever had while she still lived.
"You were going to explain the print..." Duncan prompted as he stacked the dishes on the tray and carried them to the door.
Settling on the sofa, Adam retrieved the leather bound book he'd been trying to read earlier when Sean and the Teddy wrestling interrupted. "I cannot decide about this story, and what it means, but it goes with the picture...at least, I think it does."
"Oh, well, then," Duncan let himself down to the deep rug and leaned back against the couch, "that explains it all."
"You know, Duncan," Adam leaned forward and rapped the Scot's head with his knuckles. "I'd be the last one to suggest this, but aren't you starting to sound like me?"
"And I am sure I would be the last to suggest this, but aren't you starting to sound like Ram?" Duncan drew up and rubbed the top of his head.
"I suppose I could do worse," Adam said quietly.
MacLeod did a very slow take to his left over his shoulder, ending in a shocked stare Adam's direction. "You have changed! I never thought I should live long enough to hear you say something nice about your mother." Then he thought a moment, "We don't have to go back to Seacouver, Adam. There are other options."
Adam was silent for a time, drinking in the words and wordlessness between them.
And he waited, all unknowing, for the next breath, the next touch.
Duncan rested his hand on Adam's thigh and rested his head down on his hand, contemplating the fire and wondering if Malak would consider this a perfect moment.
Then Adam loosed the moment, let it slip past him, and began on the story of the odd print...as if anything his mother did would be anything less than odd beyond belief.
Adam put the book down a moment and leaned far forward to lift an ancient miniature oil painting out of the stack and give it to Duncan.
"This is Malak?" Duncan asked, surprised at himself that he'd made the mortal mistake of thinking about an elder teacher as being, well, "older" looking. The man in the portrait appeared to be younger than Adam, a fair, blond man, barely out of boyhood, with the aura of the angelic about him despite the fact he was pictured in full armor and had the bearing of a general.
"Yes, it is," Adam answered. "Why Ram has his portrait in her collection is beyond me."
"Perhaps she loved him," Duncan waxed romantic. The fire, the snow outside, the entire Villancourt household rather ran to romance.
"No," Adam replied as if this were a certainty akin to sunrise. Evidently the answer held some greater import for him.
Duncan thought better of prying and then did so anyway. "So, what were they like when they were together?" he asked. Duncan did not often think of men as beautiful. Sometimes he thought of Adam this way, but here was a man, this Malak, whom many would find beautiful and not even think twice about the less-than-masculine nature of the adjective.
Adam shook his head and opened the book again. "I have never seen them together," he paused as if he might not go any further into the subject. In times past, that would have been so, but he felt at ease with the Highlander. Having trusted him with his essential truth, all the rest was easy to tell it seemed.
"The day I had lived two decades, my last birthday as a child, my mother called me to her rooms," Adam began.
Duncan turned all the way round to face his friend. He could hear the moment in Adam's tones, could feel the tension between the words.
"I thought she meant to give me a gift, or a position in the army, or a congratulation of some sort....something in my honor, anyway, given the anniversary and my ascent to manhood." Adam's green eyes unfocused and he was lost briefly in a memory almost a million days old.
"I take it there was no such honor," Duncan prompted gently.
"No," Adam sighed, "no, there wasn't."
"She killed you."
"How do you know that?" Adam leaned towards the Scot. "How?"
Duncan reached up and framed Adam's face in his hands. "Ram told us, Joe and me, when we were up at the cabin. She was talking about the one thing she had done in her life which was unforgivable."
Adam drew back, "Oh, well, at least she felt guilty about it."
"The Council made her do it, Adam. She had no choice."
"Right," Adam snorted. "So she took me in her arms--something she almost never did--and plunged a dirk, hilt-deep, into my heart. I died so fast I don't even remember hitting the ground."
Duncan tried to imagine what that would be like. He couldn't put his foster mother, Mary, into that scene. She would have killed herself first he was sure. What an awful and exaggerated coming into manhood. Duncan could remember his own First Death being a hellish trial of separation and self-loathing as it was. He could not think how he would have managed his way through it had it been his own mother sent him there. "I am sorry, Adam."
"You really don't have to make yourself the surrogate apologist for all my past injustices, Duncan. It certainly wasn't your fault," Adam paused and flipped through the book, tearing some of Ram's pages, almost by accident. "Well, when I woke up, still alive," he took a long breath in and let it roll out in a sighing wave. "I asked for her. Can you believe that? I actually wanted to see her, wanted to know she forgave me! I'd forgotten that."
No doubt, Duncan thought. He let Adam's thoughts wander in silence and tried to remind himself not to feel somehow vindicated in his own guilt regarding Ram's death. Ram who would never wake and ask forgiveness of anyone again.
"But I never saw my mother again," Adam held the book up to his prodigious nose. It still smelled like her.
Duncan's brows arched.
"Well, of course, five thousand years later at HQ Watchers' Central..."
"You didn't see her anytime between?" Duncan was astonished. He had always assumed that Ram had kept close, too close, watch over her son.
"No. That's why I didn't recognize her. How stupid do you think I am?"
Duncan chuckled but did not answer.
Adam made a face, "Well all right, maybe I am about some things."
Duncan's brown eyes squinted and he put his hand up to his ear. "It must be the acoustics in this study. I keep hearing you say things you would never say."
"What? Do you think I can't admit when I'm wrong?"
"There it goes again," Duncan said.
"Oh, stop!" Adam swatted him with the book nearly breaking its old back.
"I think you were going to tell me about this Malak story," Duncan commented. "But that was so long ago, I've forgotten now."
"Well, I am," Adam replied indignantly. "Let me finish the answer about Malak and Ram...the day I woke up, my birthday, the second decade of my life...I opened my eyes to see, for the first time, my teacher, Malak, sitting on my bed with a large plate of perfect pancakes and a smile like the coming of a new day."
"Oh, I see," Duncan nodded and looked back at the miniature, trying to picture that day.
"He told me I was to begin training as a holy knight and he was to be my teacher in all things worth knowing," Adam grinned, "and he assured me that the one thing he really knew well was how to have fun and that, if I would eat my breakfast and get into the bath he'd drawn and be quick about getting dressed, then we would begin that very moment."
"It was a perfect moment, Malak told me," Adam added, "though I did not at the time know what that meant. But he was so jolly and bright, so enthusiastic and friendly, so...loving...that I forgot how miserable I was, forgot how alone I felt, forgot I had died on my most important birthday...."
"He was my guardian, like an engel or a seraph, a burning wonder. Malak made me a new life out of my sad death, and with his help, I never looked back....until now."
"And now?" Duncan pushed up and went to tend the fire.
"You remind me of Malak," Adam said suddenly.
"I'm honored," Duncan sketched a bow.
"You should be," Adam grinned. "I wonder where he is now. I do miss him, but it's my own fault."
"Your fault?" Duncan returned to the couch, took the old book out of Adam's nervous hands and glanced through the strange, angular "writing" of the journal.
"In our second millennium together, we had a fight and I left his care and keep to make my way on my own. Then I fell in with Cronos and the Horsemen, and well, you know the rest..."
"And you haven't seen him since then?" Duncan handed the book back thinking they were never going to know the meaning of Ram's odd lithograph with the reversed reflections.
"Well, I have thought I saw him, but, no...not really," Adam found his place in the old book.
Duncan shook his head, "I can hardly think what it would be like to have a friend that long, let alone to lose one like that. I am sorry, Adam. Were you lovers?" Duncan might have swallowed his tongue then and there for the unthinking, stupid remark. What could have possessed him?
"No," Adam answered without any hint of distress. He leaned forward and ran his long fingers through the Scot's short, dark locks. "That was one of Malak's most interesting features. He never had sex."
"Excuse me?" Duncan tried not to respond too enthusiastically to having his head rubbed. "Never?"
"No, never. Not with anyone. Not even," Adam ducked his head, "with himself, as far as I know."
"Well, it couldn't have been for lack of offers," Duncan mused, looking again at the tiny painting.
"Oh, he was most clever at turning aside the inevitable propositions. And, yes, there were many...myself included," Adam sorted out the stray tendrils at Duncan's temple.
Duncan just waited, saying nothing, though his brain was yammering away at a breakneck speed.
"And, no, that's not why we had a fight. Malak treasured his celibacy, his integrity of self, above all his other wondrous attributes, and they were legion. But as much as he maintained this charism of innocence, his singular vow to himself and to God, he never denigrated those who did not, never held his way out as superior or preferable. He made it clear to me how much he loved me, and how much I would be his downfall, but that he felt too highly of me to have our special relationship be the breaking of his vow..."
"Or something like that..." Adam muttered, "in any case, he made me feel like the Crown of Creation, and I never felt the slightest unease about having attempted to push our friendship beyond its bounds again."
Duncan wrapped his broad hand around the fingers at his temple, "By which you mean me to understand what?"
"You said you loved me, Duncan," Adam said easily, "but I could not reply at the time. I couldn't make myself tell you how very much our friendship means to me, how much I have changed because of it. I feel--"
Duncan gave Adam the silent time to frame his words, to set the moment.
"My mother lies dead now, not myself, but I am somehow alive again, and you and that morning with the pancakes, and Sean, and--" Adam swallowed hard. "I would weep, but I don't think I have been this happy, this at peace, since Malak woke me on that first morning...The First Day of the World.
"My world," he amended.
"And you still can't say it," Duncan commented matter-of-factly.
"No," Adam replied. "But it really has everything to do with something in me, and nothing at all with anything about you."
"I understand," Duncan said. "You could offer me your life so I could fight Kalas, but you just can't give up your heart."
"If I could do so with anyone, Duncan..."
Duncan smiled and shook his head, "I understand, Adam...I really do."
"Listen, it's getting late," Adam pulled his hand and his thoughts away from the sudden intensity between them, "do you want to hear this story, or what?"
Duncan shrugged, "You decide."
"The story takes place after Malak led the Danaan armies in a campaign against the savages in the Sothern Drifts..."
Duncan tried not to think what Adam meant by "savages."
"He had gained them victory after victory by his wit and his skill and his exceeding bravery--or so Malak always told me, and I don't think he was lying. He wasn't prone to bragging at all. Anyway, according to Ram's story, Malak was too successful, too young, too incredibly full of himself and his prowess, to be bearable to the rank and file Generals of the Privy Council to the King. So while Malak was away at war, they conspired against him, to hit him at his weakest point, to bring his pride to the downfall it deserved."
"Nice folk," Duncan commented lowering himself down to a more comfortable position.
"Well, it seems King Ithuriel was having problems..." Adam cast about for a proper term.
A long time elapsed. "Problems?" Duncan rolled onto his stomach, moved the knot from the robe's belt off to the side, and rested on his elbows.
"Of a familial nature," Adam supplied.
Duncan stared, "Come again?"
"As in he didn't have any," Adam explained.
Duncan pushed up to sitting, "What?"
"Well, I don't understand it exactly..."
"And I don't at all. Adam!"
"It seemed the royal jewels were less than functional," Adam tried again.
Duncan thought a moment, then broke out in hilarious laughter. When he'd caught his breath, he said, "Oh, you do have a fine turn of phrase, Adam. You mean the King was impotent."
"No, just sterile, evidently. Which made his claim on the Throne shaky at best, what with no offspring. The problem being that Malak, by some legality I do not understand, was next in line for the Throne, and this had the Privy Council nearly nauseous at the prospect, so they decided to kill the same bird with two stones, as it were."
"You've lost me again."
"Sorry, Duncan. The Danaans only breed with the King. Various candidates bed the King, one each season, for a full turning of the moon. Then if they conceive, they remain the King's Consort until delivery and through the raising of the children..."
The Highlander's lush brows lifted.
"They are prone to multiple births, or were, hard to say. In due time, however, Ithuriel had bred no children, well into the second century of his reign, and it began to look as if Malak would take the throne when he returned from the campaign. But the Privy Council suggested a trick or some magic whereby they could forestall Malak's ever attaining the throne, and improve Ithuriel's chance at having an heir, into the bargain."
"So what was their plan?" Duncan had to confess to a secret interest in the lowliest court intrigue even though, as a warrior, brave and true, he should have found such to be little more than silly fare.
"Well, that's where the story rightly starts," Adam turned through several pages, found his place and began.
Glorious Malak, Champion and Victor, Lord of the Drifts, rode his dark destrier into the broad, alabaster of the Holy City's main roadway, banked either side with flowers and song and the grateful, good cheer of his adoring throng. Clearly the Lord Victorious was beloved among the Danae. His retinue reined their mounts in and faded behind him and let him proceed forward into the glory which was his due, the fruits of his long and difficult labors on their behalf, the great victory which he brought this day to present at the King's feet in the form of the enemy's head.
Dismounting at the Great Hall's gate, he patted the fierce forehead of his favored horse, because he was correct and kind, because he was, in every way, the Perfect Knight, inviolate of soul, of heart, of flesh. Into the Great Hall, the Holy Host rose, one and all, save the King, as Malak entered with the head in his hands, the trophy of their continued dominion and success against the World of Men. This he placed at the foot of the Throne and offered up himself, once again, life and limb, honor and service, to his liege and lord, the King, Ithuriel.
The King, in accordance with such a tribute, dismounted his throne and descended to Malak, lying prostrate on the lowest step. The Monarch lifted Malak's head and bid him rise, much to the delight of the assembled throng, as they showed by their loud and lauding voices.
And in this perfect moment, Lord Ithuriel announced to the entire hall, that from this day Malak would be honored in a higher post, befitting his great devotion, his undying affection for his people and their king.
"You stopped," Duncan thought Adam might have forgotten he had an audience and was reading on to himself. Or maybe he'd thought Duncan had fallen asleep.
"I've worked on this next part quite a bit, but I still can't make sense of it. What I can get is this: there follows some ceremony, a "manifestation" is as close to the term as I can come, some elaborate liturgy and such whereby Malak receives the honor which the King promises."
"But then, something, an evil magic, or a spell cooked up by the Privy Council, or something like that, strikes Malak down, and when he recovers, the nature of the Council's treachery is revealed."
Malak woke slowly. He was not on the battlefield, nor in high camp, the bed was too soft, the linen far too clean. But he surely felt as if he'd been sorely assailed, as if his body were torn apart and then put back together again, but not with any skill or accuracy. Nothing felt right. He did not feel right.
He rolled away from the window and its exuberant rays of morning sun. They'd caved in his ribs or something very like, the entire upper portion of his chest was swollen and tender. Malak wondered who would have the audacity to thrash him so thoroughly in his homeplace on the day of his triumphant return. He could not help but think the Privy Council was behind this somehow. While Malak adored King Ithuriel, he had little to no good thoughts about the Royal Advisory Council, even if his own brother, Marak, were one of the generals who sat in that privileged chamber.
And just as he thought of his brother, who should storm into his bedchamber, but the ursine carcass of that selfsame brother, roaring a "Good Morning" that was laced with more than a little derision and not a great deal of blessing.
"T'isn't," Malak mumbled from under his pillow.
"Oh, but Brother, you are elevated to highest position in the Host, save that of Monarch."
"And what," Malak peeked out from under the pillow to squint up at his bulky clutch-mate, "Would that be? Royal Whipping Boy?"
"Oh, no, Brother," Marak was far too jolly to stand, "We, the Council members and myself, have changed some of the laws to accommodate you. You are now the Royal Consort."
Malak loved his brother despite their political differences and never so much as when he was making his jokes. Laughing and gasping, Malak pushed up in bed and reached for the soft robe draped at the bed's foot. This wasn't his room in the Keep, far too ornate. Ah, well, perhaps part of his new office. He'd have it field-shape soon enough.
"You can stop staring, Brother Marak," Malak grumbled at his brother who was standing with his arms folded over the enormous barrel of his chest, looking as if he would explode with some clandestine mirth.
"You are quite a bit different than I would have imagined," Marak commented lightly. "A little on the, um, plain side, I fear."
"And you are no one's idea of the perfect Dana either, unless your fancy tends towards bears," Malak retorted. It was good to be back, trading quips with old Marak. He was surprised how much being out on campaign had given him an appreciation of hearth and home.
And so might things have continued, the siblings and their verbal bout, but that Malak reached down between his legs to tend an itch and...
Malak didn't stop screaming until much later into the day, almost to evening, and then only because the Bear grew tired of his brother's howling and cuffed him hard enough to send him out of consciousness.
"They castrated him?" Duncan's broad face screwed up in disgust.
"I thought the same thing when I first got to this part, but no, somehow he has been turned into a woman, or more accurately, a female Danae....I am prone to think this is some esoteric commentary or satire on Ram's part. You can see she doesn't like Malak at all," Adam looked up and waited for Duncan to ask something else.
"But Ram was king, so making him female won't keep him from the Throne," Duncan reasoned, "I don't understand the plan."
"You are absolutely right, but treason will."
"Treason?"
"As King's Consort, he cannot refuse Ithuriel's...attentions," Adam waited for Duncan to make the connection.
"So, he'll have to forego his vow of chastity," Duncan added.
"But Malak IS his vow of chastity, as much as he is a Knight, as much as he is a Danaan," Adam explained.
"Really? It means that much to him?"
"Yes, Duncan. I do not explain this well, but Malak's purity, like Samson's hair, it is his identity, his power, his integrity. It is essential to Malak's nature that he be...inviolate."
"Which leaves him only the option to refuse the King, commit treason, and...I assume the consequence of that choice would be death," Duncan shifted his weight.
"Exactly," Adam agreed.
"But didn't you say that Malak loved the King?" Duncan asked.
"And so he does, Duncan," Adam paused. "He would suffer to any degree for the king. He would labor long. He would die for him..."
"...but he cannot make himself surrender to the King, no matter he loves him."
Duncan said nothing, but he wondered if Adam had heard what he had just said as clearly as he had spoken it.
Malak sat uncomfortably at the enormous table in the King's chambers. He could not develop any appetite for the obligatory dinners with Ithuriel. He had been in this awful travesty of a body for nearly a fortnight, half-way through the moon's turning and the King had been nothing but charming and attentive, had never pressed the issue, had made no demands.
Malak was beginning to think he would somehow maneuver his way out of what was an impossible situation. Two more weeks and he could return to his former frame and gender, return to his place at the head of the armies. He had yet to succumb to the Monarch's exquisite seductions and perhaps he could continue, always stopping short of outright treasonous refusal.
It was however, his suspicion that Ithuriel was not more aggressive in his approach merely because, as a woman, Malak was ugly. This did not comfort him somehow. He made a very disappointing woman, plain but not distinctively so, nor ordinary either. This new flesh was spare and small, weak and angular.
Malak had never been particularly vain, but he had always taken his fair golden looks for granted. These were not the worst of the things he missed, but it all combined to make him feel dispossessed inside what used to be his own flesh.
The Privy Council had reversed the tradition of taking the Consorts from the population in the City, proper, the artisans and tradesmen, historians and such, and suggested instead that the next Consort come from the ranks of the Warriors....what better warrior than Malak. This was cold comfort that they thought so highly of him, or feared him, hated him, so much.
"Malak," the King approached him and sat casually in a nearby chair. "It seems we have yet to find a suitable repast to tempt your palate."
Malak set his features in some calm pose and merely gazed back on his lord. He was grateful Ithuriel did not call him by another name, which was the custom, but he was never pleased that every- thing Ithuriel said seemed to mean something else as well. Not that the High Lord ever said one disrespectful, nor profane thing to Malak, just the endless intimations.
Malak hoped they wouldn't soon be discussing "sated appetites," or "unfilled hungers," or some other thinly veiled sexual innuendo. "I am not hungry, Lord," he replied.
"I know this is difficult for you, Malak," the king began.
Malak found himself more displeased with this suddenly direct approach than he had been with the double entendre. "You have no idea," he finally decided to show respect for the king's forthrightness with his own.
"You will get used to this in time, Malak," Ithuriel began, gently.
"Never!" Malak regretted his graceless retort. His new voice had a disturbing ability to turn strident with the least bit of ire behind it.
"All right, all right," Ithuriel said quietly. "Perhaps you will not, but surely there is something we may do to ease your very obvious distress."
"You could let me return to my rooms to fast and meditate for the next two weeks," Malak tried to keep a reasonable and pleasant tone in his words, "then you can let me return to the armies where I will serve you with my honor, my power, my life for all time."
Lord Ithuriel took a long and sonorous breath, in and then out very slowly. "I wish I could, Malak, but I cannot. I am bound by the same Canon, which you now so flagrantly disregard. I will take you to my bed. I will get you with child. There is no choice in the matter."
"Then I choose to die, Lord," Malak said in all seriousness.
Ithuriel laughed softly, "Have I hurt you in any way, Malak? Have I embarrassed or assailed you? Have I been anything but attentive to your every need, your every desire?"
"You have been kind, Lord," Malak hated this. On the battlefield, you knew your enemy, and he did not stand at your side.
"How often have you pledged your life in my service, before the entire Host, before God, Himself?"
"Often, Lord," Malak answered.
"Were you lying, Malak?" Ithuriel asked.
"I did not lie, Lord. My life is yours," Malak did not fail to notice Ithuriel had risen from the chair and was wandering ever closer towards him.
"But you made exceptions when you vowed then?" Ithuriel placed his hand on Malak's shoulder and Malak's every muscle went rigid.
"I made no exceptions, Lord," Malak answered.
"But you make exception now, is that it?" Ithuriel just brushed Malak's right ear with his lips, almost as if the gesture were happenstance and not intentioned.
"I make this one exception, yes, Lord," Malak answered almost identically with the way he had answered the previous thirteen dinners with the lord.
"So," Ithuriel continued in tones of light, seemingly indifferent, conversation, "You swear undying fealty and then you decide that your bond is only in force so long as the terms suit you." With great tenderness, Ithuriel slid along the neckline of Malak's robe and the tips of his fingers just grazed the top of Malak's left breast.
Malak's rigid posture dissolved beneath the caress and his breathing caught in a ragged, noisy gasp.
Ithuriel moved away from his new consort, "I forget myself, Malak. I hope I have not hurt you. Good night." Then the King left the room without another word.
He should have come to war with us, Malak thought. Such a master tactician should never be left at home. Then Malak reached for the small dinner knife and with no other thought raised it high in the air and drove it suddenly through his left forearm.
Duncan rolled onto his back and folded his hands behind his head contemplating the reasons Ram might have had to write such a story. He thought about what she had told him that dreadful night, five seasons into the past now, when Sean had been conceived. "Was Malak a Danaan?" he interrupted Adam's reading.
"Yes," Adam replied, "he could not have been an Immortal."
"No?"
"I have the dubious distinction of being the first such," Adam's chilly answer startled the Highlander.
"So you really are the Oldest Immortal and not just the oldest surviving Immortal."
"Yes, Duncan, I am the oldest, the alpha, if you will."
"Oh, don't take on airs, old man, you didn't exactly earn the title by hard work or wit."
Adam groaned, "If you don't think it has taken every bit of hard work and wit to survive each day and the next day after, then you are sadly mistaken, boy.
"Sometimes," Adam continued, "it is almost more than I am worth to take the next breath."
"So," Duncan chose to ignore the self-pitying tones, "you knew all along where baby Immortals came from and what those strange swords were about and who your mother--"
"No," Adam placed the book beside him on the couch and moved his long frame into a graceful series of stretches.
"No?" Duncan asked, certain the old man must be joking.
"My mother killed me, Duncan. The person whom I had turned to for love and nurturing, for wisdom and approval and...my very life, took my life, coldly, indifferently, without so much as a warning. Everything I trusted to be true proved suddenly false and I collapsed into myself, away from the incomprehensible and unreal world...." Adam's voice faded away into the winter's night and the soft fall of the new snow.
"Until the next morning when Malak came to ransom you..." Duncan began.
"That was not the next morning, Duncan. It was more than a year later."
"Oh," Duncan rose and, moving the book aside, settled down beside him on the couch. "Oh, Adam, I had no idea."
"As I have said, I was born that day, and all that came before disappeared into some hidden place in my memory where it could not hurt me anymore. Something very similar happened after my encounter with Cronos..." Adam moved away from the Scot. "For a time I forgot my life with Malak as well."
"And you remember it now?" Duncan could see his proximity was making Adam uncomfortable. He removed himself from the couch and went to play with the logs and the fire. "Why do you remember now, Adam?"
"Maybe I finally just grew up," Adam laughed as he made the ridiculous assertion, "maybe, given five millennia, I have finally become an adult after all."
Duncan snorted, "Damn it, Adam! I wish you gave yourself more credit for how wonderful you are."
Adam was as surprised by the statement as he was by the anger with which it was delivered.
"Or do you just enjoy making those of us who prize you out to be fools?" Duncan really was angry.
"I remember now because I have Ram's journals, and Ram herself come back, if only for a brief time, but..." Adam wondered why he hadn't thought of this before now. "In the face of my shattered faith and the whole perfidious world, I have found something to believe in..." He left the thought hanging with the preposition, as out of place as he was, it seemed.
"And too bad that something isn't yourself," Duncan was not about to be swayed by the implied compliment on Adam's part.
"Yes," Adam finally agreed grudgingly, "you are too clever for one so young, Duncan."
"It doesn't take cleverness to see what is right in front of you, Adam."
"No, Duncan. It only takes courage," Adam murmured, "sometimes more courage than there is in the entire width and breadth of Creation."
"Well," Duncan returned to stand in front of Adam, holding one of the frames. "Brave this one out, Death on a Horse." He thrust the frame into Adam's graceful hands.
It was the baby photograph of Sean with his wild red hair. Adam looked up at the Scot and shook his head. "I don't understand."
Duncan leaned over him, "D'adahm, tell me again how you are so flawed you cannot love."
"Oh," Adam breathed out the sound rather than spoke it. He hugged the picture over his heart and his eyes filled up suddenly. "Oh," he breathed again. "You are a wicked, wicked man, Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod."
"And don't you forget it," Duncan sat again on the floor at Adam's feet and waited for the story to continue.
Malak wandered through the mews. He was not a prisoner. No one would impede or even bother him. But still he felt like a thief, sneaking about the stalls in the dead of night, worrying if someone should cross his path, even at this late hour. He really could not stand to be seen by his men in this form, could not bear what they must be thinking about him. He had been wrong to think he could return to his post at the end of his month with the King. Those who respected him in the past would do so no longer. Those who hated him to begin with would use this unfortunate sojourn as Consort to their best advantage.
Nor did it matter he was still as chaste as the day he returned from the Drifts. Well, nearly so. Damn Ithuriel anyway, Malak cursed silently as he entered his destrier's stall. "Easy there, Dragor," he called softly to the stallion, settling his own anger, knowing it had upset the stone horse.
The King could be nearly irresistible at times and Malak was becoming more and more tempted each time they met, but tomorrow was their last dinner together and he had remained stolid in his refusal. Almost, he thought, if one did not count this embrace, or that long kiss, or the gentle massage each night before bed...
Much longer and he knew he would forget how to say "no." It was only God's Dear Grace he had not succumbed to his lord's exceedingly sweet attentions...that and the fact the month was very nearly over. When the sun rose it would shine upon his last day as Consort Designate. Malak reached for the stallion, imagining the moment when he would once again mount this fine steed and ride away to find some other place, now his life here was nearly over.
He was too lost in his own complicated emotions to notice the twitch beneath the great stallion's dark hide, the building flush in the flaring nostrils. Malak's usually fine instincts deserted him utterly and he was barely aware of a rustle to his right as Dragor rose to strike the strange woman who had so impertinently intruded into his sleep and his stall.
Malak came to face down in the straw bedding, Dragor squealing and roaring high above him, readying another strike. Damn! He rolled as quickly as his pounding head allowed, just beyond the hooves' dreadful blow. What could be wrong with his war horse? Who had been messing with him to bring him to such frenzy when Dragor had known and served Malak well, his entire life?
Ah, but he doesn't know me in this awful guise, Malak reasoned as he cowered in the corner with no place left to retreat. Now that would be the final indignity, to be done to death by my own mount. "Dragor!" he called out, but the damnable warble of his new voice sounded unfamiliar even to himself.
Dragor whirled towards him and dove, teeth bared, ears skinned back, nostrils big as fists.
Malak stared at the bright eyes, with nothing left to do but wait and watch for his death to come to him.
But neither Death, nor Dragor, made it quite the distance.
The stone horse fell, great gouts of blood burbling from his nostrils, the light going out of his eyes and Ithuriel's gild blade still buried, hilt deep, into the last of the great horse's heart.
"Holy Misras!" Ithuriel yelled and knelt by Malak, sorting through the bloody mess of his scalp and the deep wound there. "Where else are you injured?"
"I am all right," Malak whined, "It was just stupid, stupid! I never thought he wouldn't recognize me. What an awful waste! I can't believe I was such an idiot! Such a bloody fool!"
"Be still, Malak," Ithuriel scolded and coaxed as he eased Malak's robe off his injured shoulder. "It is fractured, Beloved. I cannot set it here and moving you is going to hurt a bit. I am truly sorry."
Ithuriel did not exaggerate. Malak appreciated the care with which the King lifted him up, but it hurt anyway, no matter the care.
And what hurt more was being carried through the gathering of the men who had served under him in the arms of the man they thought was plowing him nightly. Bloody and disheveled, beaten and helpless, Malak thought he had never been so miserable in his entire life.
"Poor Malak," Duncan commented.
"Well, he was very young then," Adam rubbed his eyes.
"Do you think this really happened?"
"No."
"Just like that: 'no'. No, maybe or it might be an allegory or..." Duncan did not often hear Adam sound so certain.
"I just think Ram hated Malak and she wrote this story as a kind of revenge. Maybe she was jealous of him because of me."
"Or maybe it's just a comment on the disadvantages of being female," Duncan wondered aloud. "She certainly makes it sound like the worst curse."
"And you think otherwise, Duncan?"
"Can't be that bad," Duncan answered, "the women I've known seemed to enjoy their gender."
Adam pressed his lips together to keep from laughing, then he said, "I am sure you gave them every reason to enjoy."
"I've not had any complaints," Duncan blinked his dark eyes fetchingly which set Adam off in hysterics.
More soberly, Adam amended the comment, "Save one, Duncan."
"And she forgave me, Adam."
"And someday, Duncan, so will I."
Malak drifted in and out of consciousness as the moon completed its turning and the month ended. They buried his destrier in a field of honor, choosing to overlook the last lapse of his brave life. Ithuriel did not attend the funeral, but he allowed his own bright blade to be buried with the beaste which was a high honor indeed.
Ithuriel remained with Malak and nursed him through the delirium, repairing the wounds, setting the shoulder himself, staying by the Consort's bedside day and night without any rest, until the mind storm had passed and Malak was out of danger.
Malak was not unmindful of Ithuriel's devotion to him, not ungrateful for his lord's care and attention. Someday he would return to this Keep and find a way to reconcile this unfortunate conflict with his Monarch, the man who had saved his life and his honor, though none but Malak would ever know this latter.
In the second week after his injury in the mews, Malak walked stiffly into the King's chambers to have his last dinner with Ithuriel, the meal which had been so long delayed, Malak's last meal as a woman.
"We are glad to see that your injuries are healing, Malak," the King greeted him jovially. "Please, sit here beside us."
Malak let himself down carefully in the offered chair. "I have to tell you that I am indeed grateful for all you have done for me. I am sorry that I could not give you what you required of me, Sire."
"We have spoken at length with your clutch-brother, Marak, about this vow you have taken. We understand from your own words and from his, that this is a matter which you hold sacred."
"Thank you for understanding, Lord."
Ithuriel took both of Malak's slender hands in his own, "We are also understanding of the fact that you in no way either love or desire us."
Malak's head tilted, "But that is not so! I do love you, Lord, and, truth to tell, were I to stay in your presence much longer I should surely have succumbed."
"Really?" the King smiled gently at the Consort.
"Oh, yes, Your Majesty, I can honestly attest that you have comprised the sorest temptation to break that vow," Malak admitted.
"It was explained to you that the Canon had been changed as regards the Consort, Malak?"
"Yes, Sire....that the Warriors would also be candidates henceforth."
Ithuriel's grip tightened ever-so-slightly around Malak's hands, "There was another change."
"Yes?"
Ithuriel again tightened his hold on Malak's hands, but he needn't have bothered. The words he said next, so stunned the Knight that he could not move, held or no. "This second change has to do with the tenure of the Consort, being amended to extend through brooding and child-rearing, during which time the Consort becomes in matters politic, Prime Advisor to the Throne."
Malak did not think he had heard rightly. "But the Consort, if not brooding...?"
"Remains until such time as..." Ithuriel began, but he never finished.
Malak pulled against Ithuriel's encircling grasp. On the field, you knew when the battle was over. You did not return to your tent only to find the battle being met there, at the end of your resources, your energies. The injustice of it, his expectation of freedom, this stupid, weak flesh all conspired to unnerve and undo him. The Privy Council had trapped him into a most heinous form of what could only be termed "slavery."
No, there were other terms, none of which Malak wished to consider in this moment.
"Adam!" Duncan rolled away from the fire as the narrative ceased. "You can't stop there! What happened?"
"Exactly what you think happened," Adam answered. "And if I don't take a quick break here, something else is going to happen that will be the end of this velvet couch."
Duncan got up, walked the kinks out of his large frame, and headed out of the Villancourt study to check on his son. The night light lit the nursery in a soft glow of pale greens, Gina Villancourt's design. The entire room was draped in moss gauze and lace over white and gild furnishings something like a renaissance vision of a Turkish seraglio. In spite of this, or because, the room attained a wombish, primal sea feeling. In the center of this elegant tidal pool, Gina drifted with Sean curled in her arms. Duncan lifted his son carefully up and tucked him into his crib without waking either the baby or their generous hostess. He laid a soft comforter over Gina who was snoring quietly on the gold-railed day bed.
Duncan did not begrudge her time with Sean. He well understood the incredible power of baby lust and, should anything happen to Adam and himself, he had named the Villancourts as Sean's guardians. They had stood up for him as Godparents at Sean's christening in Darius' old chapel.
He returned to the study to find Adam snoring on the couch. Duncan felt the same warm tug at the base of his heart as when he watched Sean sleeping, a pleasant, tender emotion, laced just a tiny bit with the sweet sadness that these moments would be gone all too soon. He pulled a quilt from the love seat near the fire and brought it back to drape over the slim body of his young/old friend. Life had washed him into some very strange backwater, absolutely unique, entirely agreeable, blessing him with an array of sensation and emotion which was stunning, if not a bit frightening, at times.
"Don't tell me you've sunk to watching me while I sleep, Darling," Adam roused and stared down at the quilt chuckling. "Quite the doting Daddy aren't we."
"Go back to sleep, Adam," Duncan grumbled good-naturedly.
"No," Adam lifted the ancient journal from the floor and opened it. "I was just napping till you got back from perimeter patrol."
"All right," Duncan poured them both a brandy and fed the fire again. "Tell me what happened with the ill-fated Malak and the not-so-good King Ithuriel."
"As I said, Duncan," Adam re-assorted his very long limbs across the divan, "the obvious. Malak did not surrender, but that really made no difference. Ithuriel was as gentle as he could be, but that made no difference either. Held or bound or drugged, Malak was, nightly, a most difficult bed partner, but willing or no, he was the King's Consort, and in the Canon of the Danae, that was his duty, her duty. There was nothing personal involved."
"In a pig's eye!" Duncan rocked the golden liquid around the wide bowl of the snifter.
"Pardon?"
"It's all personal. Ithuriel obviously cares for Malak. Malak would be devastated. They are weaving a gigantic tragedy between them. How more personal could it be, Adam?"
"But that is the mortal, the human, perspective, Duncan. The Danae are not like us."
"Right," Duncan sipped his brandy. "Oh, Adam, they are more like us than we are like ourselves."
The angular planes of Adam's features lifted in a full-face, questioning "huh?"
"Oh, you know what I mean," Duncan grumbled. "So did Malak finally get pregnant, or what?"
"Not at all pregnant and more of the 'or what,'" Adam replied and picked up the story again, a full season into Malak's travail.
"Well?" Marak entered the Consort's sitting room. The woman said nothing as he entered. She sat in the deep window and traced the glazing with her sensitive fingers. Her pale, grey eyes gazed blankly out across the courtyard of the Great Tower like the hostage princess of some fairy tale.
"They had fairy tales five thousand years ago?" Duncan interrupted.
"It's a 'singing dog' thing," Adam explained.
"Meaning?" Duncan finished the last of his brandy and set the crystal aside.
"The wonder is not how well the dog sings, but that he can sing at all," Adam elaborated.
"Adam!"
"I never said my translations were either inspired or precise. They just are. As best I can do them. And I am the only living soul who could."
"Good dog."
Marak could not help noticing how very thin the woman had grown in the hundred days since her triumphant return from the Sothern Drifts. The spareness lent an elegance to the features that would never be beautiful, but were nonetheless compelling. Marak almost understood why the King was still fond of this woman even after all the bother she had been.
"Lady?" Marak addressed the Consort again. "Is there something you require?"
She turned slowly and caught him in a liquid, luminous stare. The straight, overly-definite jawline set in an expression of utter disdain.
"All right, Lady," Marak bowed his head, "I admit...a stupid question."
"One must consider the source," she replied in a poor parody of their earlier verbal parries.
"It is over, Malak," Marak began, "Why do you not just surrender gracefully and make the most of the situation. As Prime Council, you could have a major influence on..."
"I am not so starved that that feeble morsel appeals," she replied. "I persist because you will not let me go," she addressed the earlier question. "I will never surrender."
"Believe it or not, Lady, there are many who envy your new position, who look upon Ithuriel with great reverence and..."
"Then I should be only too happy to abdicate," the Consort replied in tones which suggested she would never be happy again.
"It will end when you are gotten with child," Marak stated the obvious.
"Then, given My Lord's surpassing sterility, it will never end," the Lady slid down from the window sill and passed by Marak as if he were not there.
"Perhaps My Lady does not conceive because she takes no pleasure in the act," Marak suggested.
She took him back into her sphere of attention. "Is that what the old fart sent you here to tell me?"
Marak gasped at the blasphemy. "Malak! You forget yourself!"
"Believe me, Brother," the woman sighed, "there is nothing left of me to forget."
"God Damn It, Malak!" Marak grabbed the women by her stiff shoulders. "Stop acting the child!"
The look on her face made him release her immediately. Dear God, he thought, I have seen you in the thick of the bloodiest battle and never have I seen you in such devastation. "Just surrender, Malak. Your life will not be as you may have envisioned or wished it would be, but it cannot continue like this. You are destroying yourself. You are destroying the King. They will make him give over the Crown if he does not produce a next generation. You are his last hope. He needs you to be his champion in this, as surely as you took his cause into the wars. Look outside yourself, Brother. See our needs, as desperate as your own. Help us!"
The long lashes closed slowly over the sea-mist eyes.
"Talk to me, Lady," Marak's deep voice barely crested a whisper.
"And say exactly what?" the weariness made her voice soft and hoarse.
"That you will stop this useless resistance, the fighting, the self-mutilation. That you will surrender to this with some measure of grace, some element of honor."
Marak paused, uncertain how to proceed, "Ithuriel tells me that you are naturally...passionate, that you respond..."
"One more word, Brother," the woman's hands flew up in front of her, bent into claws and aimed for his face.
"Look," Marak peddled backwards, "All I am saying is: your vow is broken, your chastity is gone. I am sorry, but that is the truth and you know it. By whatever ill fortune, that part of your life is over. Do not destroy yourself in the present merely because you cannot return to the past. It is clear you could obtain great pleasure in your congress with the King and no small measure of power into the bargain..."
"...and all you have to do is behave yourself as if you were a creature of reason, if not wisdom."
"Are you finished?" the Consort asked.
"If you agree to take up your responsibilities in a civilized fashion, then, yes, I am finished."
"And if not?" the Lady asked, but her indifference to anything he might say was all too clear.
Marak turned away from her dead and deadly stare. He could not bear to look at her and tell her what was coming if she did not agree. "You have put the King in such despair that you have, in effect, handed him over to the further plotting of the Council against you," he began.
He heard her smirk behind him, a sort of a spitting sound. "Just let me finish with this," he begged, "You will accompany me to the eastern wing, second level, which houses the chambers of the Privy Council Generals, myself and the other nine. They have convinced the King that they can teach you the duties of your office without doing you any serious bodily injury...by which, I suppose, they mean that they will not kill you."
"But, Dear Brother, if you ever listened to me, hear me now. These men fear and despise you. They will--they will not be kind. If you think you have suffered up to now, as gentle as the King has been with you--" Marak fell to his knees on the floor, still facing away from the Consort. "I am begging you, Lady, with everything that I am, anything that I may ever be, please, please do not refuse the King again. Please do not let the Council mete out their hatred on your flesh, for surely they will mark your soul."
There followed a long silence which gave Marak hope that all would be well at last.
Then the Consort laid her narrow fingers lightly on his shoulder and told him to send someone else at the appointed time. She asked only that he not be present in the Council Chambers when the time came to take her there.
"Well?" Adam paused.
"Well, what?" Duncan looked back from the window where he was watching the darkness and the snow for any signs of trouble.
Adam turned his head slightly and listened with the "radar" his Immortality had gifted him. No, he sensed no other Immortal save Duncan and Robert and Gina and--damn, but he was loud--Sean. "Well, I thought you would find this part interesting."
Duncan thought a moment, then a broad grin crawled across his visage. "Oh, I see. I take it you don't agree with Malak's choice to hold to his ideals, no matter the consequences."
"Something along that order, yes," Adam replied. "More than anything else about this story, this part proves it can't be true, or at least not true about Malak. He would never succumb to such an impractical course of action."
"Your teacher would have just become a gracious mistress to the King and let it go at that?"
"No," Adam argued, "He would have pretended to go along with the plan from the start and then Malak would have killed the King in his bed."
"Just when the moment was perfect?" Duncan asked.
"Exactly!"
Marak stood and bowed stiffly, giving up on any further argument with the Consort when it was so very clear she had her mind made up. "I am sorry I could not dissuade you, Malak. I hope--" He could not finish. He hoped nothing at all. There was no hope.
"Don't look so stricken, Brother Marak," the Consort said in light and loving tones. "After all, what could happen?"
Marak shuddered to think.
"In any case," she continued, "whatever happens, it will not kill me."
"Kill me, Joe," Set leaned her elbows down on Joe Dawson's shoulder and nuzzled his ear.
The way of the request had fast become a ritual, a liturgy, between Mr. and Mrs. Dawson. In the first weeks of their blissful weddedness, Set's brain injury and abject memory loss had severely limited her comprehension. Set's concept of sex was that the esteemed Wizard Joe killed her and somehow brought her back to life. Of course, she did not think so now, three months later, a little over one hundred blessed days.
But she would make the request and then Joe would explain, once again, what sex was and how it was different from death...
...and the more Joe explained, the closer he would come to demonstrating the principle.
...and they always ended making love, or as Set would have it, "getting killed."
Not that she was the first to think so. Petit morte was, after all, a relatively ancient expression for coitus, or more correctly, for climax.
Joe Dawson did not rise to the bait this day, though. He was too intent on the stacks of bills and notices, the runs of numbers marching across the computer screen in his office. He was convinced he could sort these standing on his head by now, but that would be the most balance any of this displayed. They were going under, big time. Way under, or more like "over and out."
On our asses, on the sidewalk, Joe thought. Even getting the second job at the Blues Bar uptown didn't begin to defray the building debt. Bankruptcy loomed before them with nothing to prevent it. Joe was definitely in no mood for killing anybody today.
"Joe?" Set stared at the scrying crystal with the bright, delicate runes that danced all by themselves except for the times the Wizard made them stop or whirl or disappear entirely. They vexed him terribly, these sigils of light. She wanted them all to darken and leave off their torment of her dear husband.
"Lunch?" She asked.
Joe made a noise between a cough and a groan. "Can't you see I am busy, Set?"
Set didn't think he meant her to answer, but she did not want to be rude so she settled on an encouraging nod of her head.
"Well?" Joe jerked around and stared up at her.
Set stepped back, nearly stumbling. Her left hip, injured in the auto accident, didn't do reverse very well. She shook her head, desperate in her sudden confusion and the unexpected wrath of the Wizard. Both her palms floated up in front of her and her lush lower lip began to tremble.
"Oh, Set," Joe reached out his arms, "I am sorry. I know you mean well, but you let me sleep too late this morning and I have to meet with the bankers in about two hours and the books are a mess. Please, just let me get this finished."
Set dug her upper teeth into her lip and her blue-grey eyes blinked wide. She would do battle with the bounders, the bankers, but she was still too injured, and from what Joe said about them they were a formidable force. Here he was, readying for war, and she had not only been of no help, but had made matters all the worse simply because she was too stupid to do otherwise.
Joe needed a magic. She needed to find him a magic. Something with money. Money was the only weaponry which could prevail against these troublesome banker bastards.
Set staggered as the room disappeared into the sudden flare of a light that was at once blinding and illuminating.
...and the magic appeared before her.
"Set?" Joe watched as his wife lurched backward and then steadied. The lunch crowd was mostly comprised of hospital personnel these days, people he and Set had come to know during her long stay in the hospital after the accident. He thought to call out for help, but in the next instant Set came towards him as if nothing had happened. She proceeded to dig her slender hand into each and every one of his pockets.
"Set? Set, what are you doing?" he asked.
"Magic, magic," she said like a chant, or high mass. "Magic, magic, magic."
He watched her shake her dark curls, think about something so hard it wrinkled the scar by her nose, and then turn on her good leg to exit his office, off on some mission. Magic is right, Joe thought. If we manage to hold onto anything in the realm financial, it will be a magic indeed.
And all he had to contribute to the endeavor, it seemed, was a half-dozen empty pockets.
"Gentlemen," Malak strode into the Privy Council Chambers and the nine generals jumped to attention as if she were God Himself. Not a one among them had considered she would take them up on their threat. They doubted even Marak took them seriously.
God in Heaven! They were not the Monarch. They had no experience in the matter of an Audience with the Kyr, which had been the ceremony in times long past whereby a female Danaan chose a mate out of a collection of suitable candidates.
The Consort strode past their sudden, deep bows and settled in a large chair at the head of the thick table where they plotted and planned and argued the destiny of the Host.
"Please, be seated," she told them, floating her elegant fingers in the air before her, indicating the empty seats. "You will have to excuse Council Marak. He will not be joining us."
The generals assorted themselves around the table, each vying for a spot as far from the Consort as possible. This was ironic in the extreme given that, while Malak was general of the armies, each of them had at one time or another sought to be closer to him than his damnable vow would allow.
The Consort waited in silence just long enough to make them truly uncomfortable and then addressed the Nine. "My brother informs me that you wished to take up the matter of my instruction as pertains to my duties to the King."
They shifted nervously and glanced at each other as if this were news to them. Damn Marak! He would have the nerve to put this in motion and then leave them holding the bag. What could they have been thinking? Malak was still Malak, after all, and not one of them could ever best him in the past.
"Is there something amiss here, Gentlemen?" the Consort asked sweetly.
Even her voice compelled them into unfamiliar territories of abject distraction and distressing mindlessness.
"Perhaps if we had something to eat and a bit of that ale Marak brought back from Ice Mountain," the Consort let the suggestion drift around the stuffy, suddenly too-hot atmosphere of the chamber.
When no one moved, Malak reached beneath the table and gave the nearest general's thigh a suggestive squeeze and its owner couldn't move fast enough to answer His Lady's request.
"Dawson, you old devil," Mark Palmer lumbered into the office.
Oh, shit. What now? Joe never looked up. He lifted his right hand, as much in a gesture of dismissal as of greeting.
"Mike asked me to give you the message that the auditors have rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon."
Joe glanced around at the sound of the temporary reprieve.
"Some last minute records request came up," the Bear said amiably. "Something about the new construction bonding at the hospital." He pulled a chair over and sat down by the owner of "Joe's."
Dawson reached over and slapped the Bear on his wide back. "Thank you, Palmer."
"It's the least I can do, Buddy. Sounds like a real mess."
"Looks worse than it sounds then," Joe commented.
"Well, your dear Lady said you needed to talk to me about something that was worrying you," the Bear paused, "No, she said 'Bear, the Wizard is needing some words with you.'"
"Did she say what about?" Joe stacked the paperwork and began setting it back in the portable files.
"Well, now that's the puzzler, isn't it?" the Bear stretched his enormous frame in the chair, teetering it on its back two legs. "Something about killing I think she said. Does that make any sense?"
Joe stopped stacking. "She knows I'm worried about..." he paused wondering if he shouldn't just let the subject drop.
"Yes?" the Bear prompted.
"It's about her seizures," Joe began again, "Is it a serious sign if she passes out sometimes?"
Palmer leaned forward, concern recarving his entire broad muzzle. "Geez, Buddy. How long's this been going on?"
"Since I brought her back from the hospital, Palmer."
"She having convulsions?" Palmer thought a moment, "Her last labwork showed good levels on her meds. She's not skipping doses, is she?"
"Oh, no," Joe replied, "nothing like that. It's just...when she says 'killing' she means sex."
"Excuse me?"
"Well," Joe scratched his beard under his chin, "You know, when we're, that is...when we make love she passes out cold."
The Bear's dark eyes got very large. "You're kidding!"
Joe shook his head, "No, I'm not."
"Every time?"
"Yes, Palmer."
"Damn!" the Bear said, studying Joe up and down. "You haven't told this to Dr. Lindsey, have you?"
"Anne? No, I haven't talked about this with anyone, not even Set."
The Bear sighed, "Oh, thank heaven for that."
Joe stared at him, "What?" This must be serious.
Palmer started shaking his head and laughing, "You have no idea how hard it is to impress a wife who used to be lovers with an Immortal Scot of MacLeod's talents. The last thing I need Anne to know is that Set's husband, besides being the Blues Genius of Seacouver, brings his wife to such strong orgasm that she passes out..."
Joe had started laughing at the first part of the statement about Duncan. When the Bear got to this last, he set off in gales of hilarity which threatened to choke him.
"...every time," Palmer added with no little honest awe. "I'd never hear the end of it. Geez!"
"So," Joe said when he had finally caught his breath, "I shouldn't worry about it?"
"No," Palmer answered and then in a more somber mode he added, "And you don't really need to worry about this other, either. Lucille and Anne and I want to invest in your bar. Crane's been looking into the possibility of extending the liquor license to include the shop next door, now it's empty, and I've got some really reasonable construction bids for breaking through the wall and expanding..."
"No," said Joe, his neck stiffening.
"Look, Buddy," Palmer leaned forward, "the accident and all set you back, but it's only temporary, and..." he chuckled, "Where would we hold Woden's lai if this place closed up?"
"Wode-what?" Joe asked.
Palmer drew back with a look like he'd been caught with his large paw in the cookie jar. "You don't know?"
"Palmer!"
"Well, it wasn't anybody's idea really. It just sort of evolved..."
"Bear!"
"Easy there, Joe," Mark took a deep breath and chewed on one enormous knuckle. "Set's going to thrash me, but hell, I thought you knew."
Joe's eyes narrowed and he folded his arms.
"Okay, okay," Palmer answered the un-voiced command. "Wednesdays, when you go off with the band to sing for that other bar...Well, we sort of have a party here. The Woden's lai, that's what Set calls it."
Joe's right eyebrow crawled up his forehead. "Party?"
"Well, sort of...yes. We just do songs and then there's the bar routine and...other stuff, the 'aria-off,' and 'stump the barmaid,' like that. It's all been a lot of fun. Just that little 'incident' last month, but since then..."
"Whoa," Joe put both hands up, "slow down and start from the beginning."
"You know those acapella street groups? Well, Crane and Mike and Set and me, we do that...but mostly sixties' stuff, Motown, disco..."
Joe looked like he would gag, "but I take all the mikes and amps with me to that gig uptown."
"Well," Palmer ducked his head, "we sing pretty loud. Nobody complains they can't hear, even though the place is packed..."
"You're packing this place?" Joe was astonished, "In the middle of the week? Doing Karioke?"
Palmer ignored the insult. "We wanted to avoid drawing in the crowd who would more likely be going uptown to hear you...or, at least I think that was the unspoken code. We don't do blues or anything really serious, just Baby Boomer teenie bopper stuff, and everybody loves it. 'No class whatsoever' that's our motto."
"Bar routine?" Joe asked.
"Oh, well, that...Anne and I brought over a video for Set to see. We'd been talking about the L.A. bars and how the tenders did this whole..." Palmer hurried on, seeing Joe was not interested in the particulars. "Some Tom Cruise thingee...anyway, Set loved it. She and Mike have this whole bit worked out where they put together some truly Godawful banana green daiquiri slush..." Palmer screwed up his face. "Anyway, if you pay ten dollars, you and your date can sit at the bar and have them build a drink for you to your pick of music off the jukebox."
Oh, Lord! Dawson's face collapsed into disgust.
"It really is neat, more like juggling, and they're so good. They never miss a catch. It's really exciting to watch..." Palmer could see his enthusiasm was not persuasive.
"Aria-off?"
The Bear pumped out his chest, "I'll have you know that I, Dr. Marcus W. Palmer, won this week's aria-off ...Tirandot, if you please," he patted his large hand over his heart, "though I will admit it was a close call against Set's Un bel di and Crane's Mephistopholes. To tell you the truth, I think the customers gave it to me because I had lost four weeks running."
Curioser and curioser, Joe descended down the rabbit hole. He thought Palmer must be joking. He just couldn't see Set doing the aria from Madam Butterfly. She wasn't even a soprano. Then, again, he couldn't imagine the Bear doing classical music any more than he could see the four of them doing a "doo-wop" piece, or--God help us--Joe had a sudden vision of them doing a Supremes' number, complete with choreography and gowns. He'd pay to see that. If he had a dime to his name, he'd probably pay to keep them out of his bar.
"You said there was an incident, Palmer?"
"Oh," the Bear's face took on a cheap innocence, "nothing really. Just a little misunderstanding about..."
"Yes?"
"Well, I think Set was doing a sixteen-customer 'stump the barmaid' and..."
"Set is waiting tables?"
"Oh, yes, she's excellent at it, Buddy."
"But she can't write or read..."
"Which is where the barmaid game came from. She does all the orders in her head and it's gotten to be a sort of challenge for the customers to get her to make a mistake..."
"Palmer!" Joe couldn't believe the Bear would subject Set to such abuse.
"Oh, she never makes a mistake. Set always wins and then the customer who challenges has to pay double for his order, which is usually excessive to begin with, seeing that the more items ordered, the more likely a mistake will be made. Anyway, this drunk sonofabitch lost the barmaid game and he got abusive, verbally..."
"Go on," Joe sited on the Bear.
"I'd rather not get into the particulars," Palmer shifted uncomfortably, "something about her being crippled and you being crippled and...something really nasty. It turned physical so fast, neither I nor Crane could get to her in time..."
"Set got hurt?" Joe was appalled. He had trusted at least Mike to take care of things the one night a week he had to be away.
"Set?" Palmer started laughing, "Oh, my, no. She had him up out of his chair and flat on his ass in the street, before anybody could stop her. Well, nobody would've stopped her. This guy was a real jerk. I had my lawyer contact him the next day and we, uh, settled out of court."
Joe put his head in his hands. His temples were beginning to pound.
"It was great for business. Just about everybody wanted to get a look at Dawson's new bouncer after that."
Joe groaned.
"Listen, Buddy," Palmer rested his hand on Joe's shoulder. "I haven't had so much fun in a long time. It's really made a big difference at work. My residents claim I've gotten almost human and they can't wait for Wednesday night to come watch me make a fool of myself."
"Joe," the Bear added, "Your little lady is a wonder. I don't need to tell you that, but there's something powerful about the quiet way she makes things happen, the way she brings people together. It would be a shame to give her a hard time about this, just because I spilled the beans."
Joe struggled up to standing and grabbed for his cane, "I think I need to see Set." He headed past Palmer for the door.
"Joe? Don't be too hard on her."
Joe turned back, shaking his head and grinning, "I'm not going to hurt her, Bear..."
"...I'm just going to kill her."
"Majesty?" Marak's usually deep baritone voice went thin and reedy when the Sovereign at last bid him speak.
"Lord Marak, what ails thee?" Ithuriel broke with protocol when he discerned the ashen pallor on the face of the Privy Council General.
"I have made the most dreadful mistake, Sire," Marak was actually shaking. "I fear you would be better served to kill me now, send me to hell without favor or blessing."
"Speak!" the King demanded.
"The Royal Consort--" Marak stammered.
The King relaxed. If it was Malak's doing, it could be any awful thing, and none of it unexpected. What had she done now?
"She went to meet with the Privy Council," Marak went on.
"Was that wise?" Ithuriel folded his hands. He would have liked to see that confrontation. He hoped he still had any of his elite generals left in one piece. Marak certainly looked the worse for the wear.
"And the consequences of that action?" the Monarch asked.
"I--" Marak shook his head, unable to continue for the moment.
"Can we assume she trounced them soundly?" He would have to visit with the Council and reestablish some order. Poor fellows.
Marak nodded, "Indeed."
"Any survivors?" the King asked wryly.
But Marak's grim visage did not soften. Something else had happened.
Marak found his nerve with his voice, "I told her she should be more--cooperative--in the duties and mission of her new office."
"We are appreciative for your interventi
