     |
|
|
Chapter Three: In Adamo Veritas
Mary Lindsey Palmer took another deep breath and tried to relax. Ram was out there, beyond the shutters of Mary's lids, sitting beside her, the long, cool fingers pressed lightly against Mary's temples.
"It is easy, Mary," Ram had said. "You just close your eyes and relax and I will take you to him, to the place where Malak waits for you in the hall of the heavens."
Mary had obediently closed her eyes. She needed no more prompting than this to begin. Malak was her heart and her heart's desire, the father of her children, the mirror of her soul. She needed to be with him almost more than she needed to breathe. Her sudden excitement, however, drove any capacity for calm right out of her being.
So she lay on the bed in the room that was to have been hers and Sean's, the poor boy who had married her, and she tried and tried to relax, to sleep, to dream--whatever it would take to see Malak again. Every single portion of her flesh and her soul desired this, every atom of her person shuddered and danced in anticipation of her grieving's end. Now the pain would be done and the joy would begin again. Now. Now.
But nothing happened. She saw the darkness behind her lids only and no vision was engendered there. Struggling to be still and calm, fighting for the peacefulness which Ram had suggested, Mary painted a scene in her mind, thinking a pattern might be useful. She was dressed in a pale peach gown, long billowing sleeves, aboard the long-dead Monstro who, with Malak, had saved her life when the band of Immortals had come after her, mistaking her for Sean. She was not a child now, but a full-flowered woman, gravid and lush, lustful and fair.
You and I must make a pact,
we must bring salvation back
Where there is love, I'll be there
The vision disappeared. Damn! She had been nearly cross the field. She could almost see him, standing in the shadow of the great oak by the river. Maybe she should open her eyes and ask Ram to make Molly turn off her favorite Motown oldies station. Mary was fairly certain she could not do this trance thing with all the background noise.
I'll reach out my hand to you,
I'll have faith in all you do
Just call my name and I'll be there
No, a radio was not going to defeat her. Not in so important a quest as this. Mary willed herself deeper, back, back...Yes. There was the feel of the Friesian between her thighs, the rough feel of the raw side of the ornate reins between her fingers. She looked down. They came into focus as if they were real, deep red leather, carved in scallops with golden appointments and...
And oh - I'll be there to comfort you,
Build my world of dreams around you,
I'm so glad that I found you
I'll be there with a love that's strong
I'll be your strength, I'll keep holding on -
yes I will, yes I will
...and she was back behind the curtains of her closed eyes. Damnation!
Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter
Togetherness, well that's all I'm after
Whenever you need me, I'll be there
I'll be there to protect you,
with an unselfish love I respect you
Just call my name and I'll be there
Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up! Mary felt her eyes begin to tear with the intensity and the frustration of this endeavor. Just a little quiet and I could be there. Oh, Malak, I want to be there. I have to see you. I have to tell you how much you mean to me, how wrenched and empty I am now that you are gone. How...
Don't you know, baby, yeah yeah
I'll be there, I'll be there,
just call my name, I'll be there
Mary drove herself down with all her considerable will--or, at least, stubbornness. There, she squeezed her legs against Monstro's sides. There he was just ahead. Malak, oh, Malak...
(Just look over your shoulders, honey - ooh)
I'll be there, I'll be there,
whenever you need me, I'll be there
Don't you know, baby, yeah yeah
I'll be there, I'll be there,
just call my name, I'll be there...
"Will you shut the fuck up!" Mary opened her eyes, flailing her arms angrily. "I'm trying to find..."Malak just smiled. "I was wondering when you would open your eyes, Beloved. I've just been waiting and singing. But, as you have requested so graciously, I have shut the fuck up."
And so, for that matter, had Mary. She was momentarily reduced to a blubbering mass, shaking softly in the generous arms of the angel.
"What is this place?" she asked, between sniffs, when her tears had rolled away.
"It is where I am," Malak replied evenly. "The place where I wait for you, Beloved."
Mary took in the surroundings. "It's a little bleak," she commented before she'd had time to think of anything nicer to say. It was a small hillock, rising above the fog, dotted with old boulders, granite and marble, one of which they had appropriated as a couch.
Malak laughed softly. "I had not expected you here so soon, Beloved. I tend to crave little around me. Nothing special, really. I only crave you. And now you are here, I want for nothing save to please you."
Mary ducked her chin down and blushed.
"Give me just a moment, Beloved Mary," Malak said, rising like a great eagle, "and I will set this place to rights."
Mary chided herself for what she was thinking. An almost new mother should be more controlled, less lustful than this, she reasoned. After the general designation of bleak, the only deficit that had crossed her mind was, "no bed."
When she raised her head she gasped. The tiny hill had emerged higher from the fog and the sun broke through in palpable ray-curtains, draping the more peripheral dolmen in shades of warm morning, like daybreak at the Great Henge. Beneath her feet lay a carpet of gently rolling deep green moss pillows, lined in daisies and baby's breath. A gentle scent of peach lifted in the tender breezes that shaded the warming sun into perfect temperature waves.
The subtle alterations of Malak's "waiting place," went all but unnoticed, however, for in the center of this aerie, the Angel Resident stood, gleaming, all of his great gladness evident on every surface of his translucent hide.
Mary reached down to unfasten her dressing gown, only to find she'd forgotten to bring it with her in the first place. She reached for Malak as he knelt before her, his great galleon-sail wings throwing opals and rainbows over her eyes.
"Is this real?" she asked, thinking the sounds she made were too ugly for this man, this place, thinking the question too stupid.
"No," Malak answered, rising between her knees, encircling her with his broad, pale arms. "All that is real here is you and me and the love that makes us one, and the children that will be. Only the love is real, Mary. All the rest is unimportant, so unimportant, in fact, that it makes only whispers and shadows against the light of the truth."
Mary thought of a joke she had made as a child in parochial school in England. The first week of Latin, she had stumbled across a familiar word, the name of her uncle, and in the subsequent weeks she had found a phrase to go with which was ironic in extreme, given the essential nature of her uncle. Mary smiled. She had found the truth which she had known so long ago and mistaken as a humorous line.
"In adamo veritas," she said.
Malak bowed his pale curls down into her breast and sighed so sweetly that he stopped her breath and her heart and any other thought she might have had, except for the one which had begun this wondrous reunion.
You and I must make a pact...
Adam grumbled his way down the cliff path to the beach and the meeting at the semi, for which he and Duncan were now nearly an hour late thanks to their wallow under the house. Honestly, Duncan had gotten more than a little silly since their being officially wed this past month. Adam would not have believed the sober, somber Scot capable of such boyish adventures. What would be next? Chandeliers?
As Adam's feet hit the sand, he picked up his pace. It wasn't as if they would be able to come up with any solutions to the problem of the two madwomen, but at least they owed the others the respect of their presence. Adam stopped suddenly. What was this? A sense of duty? Responsibility? Good God, was he turning into a Boy Scout? Oh, surely not. Duncan was just a bad influence. A very bad...
Adam turned around. Duncan had stopped behind him and stood in the light of the gibbous moon like a prototypic hero or an elemental of the night. His strong legs were braced slightly apart in a perfectly balanced stance, neither at war nor at rest. The long black hair lifted in a cape on the evening sea wind and his brawny arms were crossed over his chest. What the hell?
Adam walked back towards the Scot, taunts and jeers at the ready, arraying themselves before his quick mind, so he could best express his disgruntlement at this delay. But as he drew within four strides of the Highlander, Adam's wit expired in the smoke and embers smoldering in Duncan's solemn expression.
"Why?" was all Adam could muster, and it was a hoarse whisper at best.
The broad hand lifted from the opposite forearm and two fingers crossed the full, calm lips.
All right, Adam thought, I'll shut up, but what is it you want? Why are you doing this? What does this mean? How do you expect me to--?
Though he had promised himself not to do this, Adam drifted his mind across the distance between them. He was not very good at this, nor did he pursue the talent with any diligence, and the most he could gather was a collection of profound emotional colors, a bewebbed tapestry of solferino and ebon and ashen greys. He couldn't hear what Duncan was thinking. He could only hear the urgency and absolute resolve. This was serious, whatever he was doing.
Duncan's stare was beginning to unnerve Adam. He took a deep breath to speak, but Duncan raised his hand again.
All right, Adam let out his breath instead of the words which might have defused this inexplicable tension between them. Duncan doesn't want this defused, he reasoned. He doesn't want me to lessen this moment with words. But what, dearest Duncan, do ye want?
Duncan's dark eyes never wavered, hardly blinked, it seemed. Adam pressed down the sudden and unreasonable fear which had begun to knot his stomach and tried to think what was going on here. He felt the Scot's unbending gaze as if it were a poker, but Duncan's features were neither angry, nor ridiculing, nor any other thing than calm and insistent.
What? What? Adam thought. He wondered why he could not simply turn and leave, wondered why he felt the need to. Ah, a subtle shift in perspective gave Adam an answer, though he was in no way comforted thereby.
He never would have characterized the bright brave Scot as ruthless, but in this instant that was the word came to Adam's mind. This was a test, a penance, some other very similar thing. Duncan was giving him the choice of his participation, but Adam could only feel he had no choice at all, except to go or to stay.
He could not go. It surprised him as much as it might have surprised the Highlander before him standing like a holy stone in the eerie light of moon and waves. If he were to stay, Adam reasoned, then he was going to have to pay.
And he would probably have to pay more than he was worth, more than he had.
Sure enough, Adam thought, I have guessed aright. He watched the penetrating stare float downward and fix on his chest, boring through the soft running suit top. Adam forced his hands to remain at his side and not fly up to protect his middle. Well, Adam reasoned, he'd been in this situation far too often to count. It wasn't beyond his abilities after all. What was there to lose?
Everything, he argued silently. Abso-bloody-lutely everything. Duncan knows as much of your past as he cares to, and he is not the sort to pry, in any case. He doesn't care what demons haunt you, what particular fears send you running down the night on a mare black as the void. He isn't Cronos. He killed Cronos. Adam shuddered from the icy sea spray which peppered the night breezes. He shuddered from a fear and fascination he would never admit to. Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod scared the shit out of him.
Part of why you love him, Adam chided himself, is because he has it in his power to destroy you--not just take your head, but take your soul. You have kept all of this at bay these two decades. You have separated your nasty little perversities outside of this union. You have used Duncan to pretend you are something you wish to be. How long did you expect him to overlook something like this?
Adam felt the old nausea rise, felt the ancient mechanisms grind rustily into motion. You would die for him after all, Old Man, he said to himself, so how hard could this be? Maybe Duncan didn't want this at all. Maybe it was just paranoia on Adam's part.
All of this time Adam had held lengthy court within himself, Duncan had hardly moved, though the tall Gaelic stepson seemed completely at ease, as if he'd just settled in that pose the instant before.
Adam slowed his breathing and reached for the bottom of the sweatsuit top. He pulled it up over his head and let it drop to the sand, gauging Duncan's reaction.
Duncan smiled and nodded slightly and went back to waiting and staring, though his gaze had drifted southward.
Adam moved forward a step and Duncan lifted his hand palm forward. Damn! Adam had thought if he could just get closer, if he could cover himself in his lover's warm body, that he could float above this anxious feeling, this shame that was creeping over his skin. In Duncan's arms he could distance himself from all of this, could descend into a dreamy darkness where thought and perception were superfluous.
No, Duncan wasn't going to let him off so easily. Adam glanced over his shoulder at the lights of the semi. If someone looked out here, the moonlight was bright enough...a glance back at Duncan was enough to convince Adam that the Scot didn't care about this either. Ah, well. Adam took another deep breath, kicked off his shoes and slipped down the sweatsuit pants, pushing them to the side and standing there naked and shivering, swathed in moonlight and his ever-expanding fear and uncertainty.
His long hands, one-over-the-other, moved automatically to his groin, even as his former experiences tilted his shoulder fetchingly and his eyes unfocused as he prepared to dematerialize. Methos did not used to mean meat or anything close to that, but it did now, at least to Adam. He found that place within himself where his mind left the meat he had become and disappeared into the ether, carrying with it all those pesky considerations of justice and pride and freedom and identity, far away from the petty romantic notions of loving and nurture, peace and comfort. Pleasure vanished too, if for no other reason than it resided so close to the appreciation of agony.
Adam's head tilted over to the side and down slightly, the attitude of a well-used slave, and he bid his humanity good-bye.
The gesture was not violent but it jerked Adam out of his reverie and the pale hazel eyes leveled on the Highlander's. Duncan smiled and nodded his approval, then he grasped Adam's wrists lightly and moved them to hang by the Old Man's sculpted sides. Duncan nodded again and his arms recrossed as his smoky, almost teasing, stare shifted downward to the sand.
Adam sank to his knees, scrambling frantically within his own skull to regain a distance whereby he could survive this. It was clear to him now what Duncan was doing, but he still could not divine the why of it. This was not the Highlander's style at all. Except for the Dark Quickening and the righteous battle, Duncan was not a brutal man. Quite the opposite, and sometimes even to his own disadvantage.
Well, Adam thought, I offered you my neck at a time when I hardly knew you, Highlander. His breathing calmed a bit. Now I will offer you this, in a time when I know you better than I know myself, and for what it is worth, I hope you are satisfied.
He heard Duncan behind him, digging in the sand, but Adam did not turn to watch him. If Duncan chose to master, then he would choose to serve as well as he was able, and then, just maybe, they would both come out of this in one piece. Adam tried to return to the mindset of his long dead past, the place where the Master was of no concern to him, only his own obedience and endurance. It struck him so odd that something he could slip into, almost without thinking, before, should now be unattainable.
Then Adam's chance to escape was past as Duncan walked back around in front of him and, tipping his chin up, indicated Adam should lie back. Adam pushed back and lay down on the sand hillock which Duncan had been forming behind him. It propped him up nearly to sitting with his knees bent up in front of him, all sandy and red from kneeling.
Duncan crouched down slowly beyond Adam's knees. The broad swordsman's hands settled over Adam's knees, the thumbs slipped between and the Eldest Immortal breathed out and slacked his thighs sideways, closing his eyes, waiting.
Another rap between Adam's eyes jolted him aware again. Duncan was sitting between his spread legs, his knees under Adam's and his feet resting either side of Adam's slim waist.
He wants me to watch, Adam thought. He isn't going to spare me any of this. Why? What have I done that he should use me this way? Then the thought struck him. I have lied to him. Not exactly a revelation, Adam reasoned. He always lied to everyone. He had to. People expected it of him, a necessity of the sheer weight and volume of his past, as well as the more perverse portions which tended to frighten his enemies and sadden his friends. He had to lie to live, after all. It wasn't as if he could advertise his true identity and not expect his head to go rolling shortly thereafter.
But I lied to him more intimately, pretended to satiation, and he caught me at it, and now he's going to make me pay for that betrayal, because Duncan trusted me to be honest with him in at least this degree.
And here he sits, Adam thought, waiting for me to stop chattering to myself and pay attention to this, this...punishment? Lesson?
Duncan reached his hands forward and placed them lightly against the sides of Adam's face, waiting for the grey-green eyes to settle and focus on his own.
Adam tried to ignore the icy light breeze washing his inner thigh, his sensitive crotch, open and vulnerable. He tried to breath in something other than these shameful, ragged gasps. He tried to distance himself from the moons mirrored in his lover's eyes. He could succeed at none of these endeavors. All the while he grew more dreadfully afraid and excited, more convinced that he was flying apart in a million discarded shards, indistinguishable from the billion grains of sand beneath him.
Duncan hesitated a moment longer and then, smiling, he traced his hands down Adam's face and ran the nail of his right thumb across the place where mortality would someday find the Old Man.
The nausea rose to the spot where Duncan played the pretense of beheading. Adam wondered that he did not scream or laugh, or any other thing which might stop this, this...whatever this was which had so discomfited him. Duncan had really done nothing to him. Nothing. Why was this nothing so devastating then? Adam felt his wonderful words desert him with the reason and logic which were their songs, the music that kept him safe through the corridors of chaos.
Another rap between his eyes and Duncan began in earnest, whatever he was doing. Adam watched helplessly as the strong hands roamed over his chest and belly, light as moth wings, disturbing as spiders. Adam's gasping turned into a mewling series of plaintive expirations. Duncan moved to Adam's sensitive nipples, now hard as stone, and began to fondle and pinch and mold. Adam only realized his own hands had moved down over Duncan's, when his wrists were gently, but firmly, moved away and set above his head.
Adam writhed beneath the seemingly endless foreplay, straining to keep his eyes open, to watch the descent of his own flesh into a helplessness of passion. He strove to view himself as his former masters must have done, but he could find no appreciation for the lust-crazed animal that he was fast becoming. It both disturbed and distressed him, but it pleased him not at all. The painfully swollen cock jutting from the curled fuzz at the join of his legs, the sound he made as Duncan smoothed the foreskin back and bathed the glans in some lotion he had brought, the way he could not stop pushing up into the command of Duncan's hand upon him--all of this disgusted him, here in this light, eyes open, without his words to make it something else, or Duncan's pleasure to excuse it, or any thing which Adam might find remotely redeemable.
Adam felt Duncan's hand between his buttocks, stroking and pressing, felt first one and then two fingers enter him smoothly, slowly, deeply, touching electrically the precise spot which had sent Duncan off into a superb imitation of a breaching whale, so long ago when they had first been together. Adam felt the urgency, the inevitability, surge through his cock in time to the thud of his heart against his chest. But then Duncan's hand circled him and stopped him, and Adam might have cursed his mother to hell for teaching the Highlander this insidious trick, were she not already so condemned.
The pressure left his shaft and fingers hooked under his chin, lifting his head up, connecting him again with the deep, aching wells of his lover's eyes. Adam tried to hold fast as the shame washed him, wave-upon-wave of molten self-immolation. How can you even stand me? He thought. What can I possibly be worth to you? What do you want of me that you don't already own? What do you want to know? That I am every bit as loathsome as you have always suspected? Every bit as useless and vile?
Take your pleasure in me, dammit, Adam thought, It is all I can offer you, all that I am worth, if one does not count the odd clever or amusing conversation. If you take my words away, then this is what is left, Duncan. Only this. Take it and leave me alone.
Adam cursed himself. He had closed his eyes. He popped them open immediately only to see Duncan sitting back on his heels, still between his legs, still waiting.
Adam would have liked to be angry with the bastard Scot, but he couldn't muster that emotion. He was suddenly empty of it as if all his ire had bled out from him, into the sand. Adam found himself staring at the man whose prisoner he'd become, trying to divine the meaning in the sweet smile, the calm demeanor, the irritating watchful waiting of his solid frame. What? Adam asked silently over and over, What do you want?
But the answer lay somewhere between nothing and everything and Adam could not get it at all.
Again the hands stroked and measured and sparked a thousand prickles along the entirety of his flesh. This time Adam watched, not the hands, but the face, and he began to understand. Again the hands moved down and splayed and pressed and entered. Adam watched his sodden flesh respond anew, writhing and tensing and rolling beneath the excessive attentions, Duncan's and his own.
And Adam watched Duncan's features soften, saw the eyes crinkle gently along their doleful edges, watched the lush mouth work in subtle, silent kisses.
Duncan loves me, Adam thought. Just as quickly he saw how ridiculous this was as an epiphany. He knew this already. Didn't he? Or did he just suppose Duncan loved Adam because Adam had succeeded in lying to him so skillfully? But he loves me now, here, Adam considered, in this place where I am nothing. Still he loves me. Me, here, now, in this place where I am of no worth at all, where I am abjectly and transparently pathetic, needy and helpless, afraid and mindless. Still he loves me.
The next wave of inevitability rose and dashed unheeded, as Adam wrestled with the answer to this.
I have betrayed him because I did not believe, could not believe. Duncan loves me more than I do myself, and it isn't just because he doesn't see me. I am the one who is blind.
Adam opened his eyes again, but this time he did not curse himself for having lapsed in his obedience to Duncan's command that he keep them open. This time he looked, not with his own eyes, but with Duncan's. He saw the smooth, pale skin, now flushed with a fiery pleasure or panic or passion. He saw the fine network of muscle sheathings just below the thin surface, building like sculpture down the length of his long torso. A fine body. Not the body of a troll or a monster, altogether pleasing, really. He took the measure of the long, lean thighs, stretched gracefully either side of Duncan's waist. Adam studied his erection, lifted tight against the ripples of his flat belly, eager and hungry, alive and waiting. Waiting, as his entire being was waiting...
...for Adam to discover such a simple truth, that being loved, he was lovable, even by himself, even in silence and without a single artifice to amend what he took to be the worst creature on the face of the Earth.
The revelation made him weep, but he wouldn't have known it were it not for Duncan's lips and tongue upon his cheek, tasting his tears.
"Oh, God," Adam said suddenly, coming back to himself, "God help me, but I do love you, Duncan MacLeod."
Strong arms circled around Adam's long back and slid him up Duncan's thighs, lifted him up and settled him down slowly into the familiar join which was ever a new and entrancing sensation. More so now, Adam thought, because I deserve this exquisite pleasure that is you, My Love. I have bought you with my whole heart and my whole soul.
I thought it would destroy me, Adam's internal dialogue grew clipped and incoherent, as he drew down deeper and deeper over the Highlander's comforting girth.
But if that is what I was, Adam pulled the icy air deep into gasping lungs, then I am better off destroyed...
He buried his head forward into the dear, dark curls and surrendered to his own flesh and the soft moans of his beloved.
...better off destroyed, Adam's thoughts echoed round his skull.
In you and with you, I am reborn.
"I have heard your arguments, Lord," Grant's tones were low as a well, and as deep. "But I contend you have no say in this matter."
"At least stop pushing," Ram whined, leaning back against the gigantic Facet as he ushered her down the hallway to the bathroom.
"You are done with your travails here, Lord," Grant planted his wide palms between her shoulder blades and pressed forward harder. "It is now my duty to make you more presentable for when the menfolk return from their meeting down on the beach."
"I didn't say," Ram wriggled round, only to meet his hands against her shoulders and her forehead slammed against the rock that was Grant's solid chest. "I did not say I was staying," she sputtered.
"Very amusing, Lord," Grant twirled her back around again, as if he were a dance partner and proceeded herding the obstreperous Dragon Lord down the hallway. "It is only a bath, Lord, not known to be either fatal, or even unpleasant, to mortals, immortals, or Lords. Forgive my impertinence, Lord, but you are filthy and the work with Alexa and Mary has made you stink...not to put too fine a point on the matter."
"I'll put a fine point on--Grant!" Ram roared as the giant gave up and simply gathered her in his arms, strode down the rest of the hall, entered the bathroom, and dropped her, as gently as he was able, into the bubbles.
Ram disappeared beneath the surface of the water for several seconds and then she rose slowly, like some sinister and monstrous sea denizen. As soon as her full lips cleared the bubbles, she spat out such a stream of profanity as would make a fish wife blush. All of it was delivered in precise English--at least at first. As Grant picked up a sponge and doused down the wadded matting of her long hair, the colorful language deteriorated into a strange Nordic dialect which Grant had not heard since his grandmother had taken him on her knee to tell him the ancient tales about the Ice Giants and the son of Loki, a great dragon who lay coiled deep in the earth, waiting for his time to return and wreak chaos on the races of men.
But the unflappable Grant continued on, pouring the shampoo over her crown and working the suds through the dark mane, very like her son's, Sean's. Ram's diatribe wound down as he rinsed and began again, working the aromatic soap through her tresses and massaging her scalp with a tenderness which seemed impossible for fingers as large as his. About the time she started to threaten him with Faffner and the dim hall of warriors, Grant interrupted.
"Here," he said simply, handing her the large sponge and a clear bottle filled with peach bathing gel. "You could start washing, Lord. And those pants are going to have to come off. I'll go get you some more suitable apparel from the closet."
"I'm not staying, Grant," Ram pouted. "New clothes won't entice me to change my mind."
Grant gulped audibly. "And exactly what would make you change your mind?"
A cheap smile painted itself across the dragon's mouth, not quite so widely that her fangs showed, but almost. "Oh, I don't know," she sighed breezily, "What are you offering?"
Sometimes the sunset paints the high granite peaks with a soft orange glow, not unlike a blush. This was the color which washed the solid giant standing at the bathroom door. The only sound was a soppy smack as Ram's soaked pants hit the tiled floor.
Grant found himself automatically signing the vow that the Facets shared with each other, a sort of secret handshake. Two fingers of the right hand drew across his heart, then his neck, then he put both broad hands together and offered them forward. In essence it meant, "My heart, my life, for you."
Ram looked up from washing her toes. "That's charming, Grant, but what if I want something a little more ordinary?" He'd lugged her down the hallway like so much laundry. She was damned if she was letting him off this hook so easily. Ah, well, she was damned in any case, but why surrender?
"Anything," Grant's deep, brave tones had deteriorated into a rasping whisper.
Yes, Ram thought, that was enough recompense to serve. "You promised Horse that if I came while they were gone, that you would keep me here no matter what it took?"
"Yes, Lord," Grant's returning voice was all apprehension and discomfort.
"How did Thomas know I would come?" Ram worked the gel through the sponge and washed her face and long, long neck.
"He only prayed, Lord," Grant replied, reaching for a large towel and draping it over his arm.
"Does he know that the Father of All Horses is dead?" she continued over her body with no more sensuality or bother than if she'd been washing an inanimate object.
"He knows, though, in truth, Lord, neither he nor I understand it," Grant answered. He reached over and turned on the hand shower so she could rinse off.
Ram took the shower and tested it on her other hand, tilting her head to the side, contemplating how to explain. "I'm not sure I can explain, Grant. Give me a moment to think about it." She moved the spray over her head, her back, switched hands to rinse the opposite arm.
Grant flipped the drain open and lifted up the towel. Ram turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub, taking the towel and wrapping up in it, flipping her wet hair back over her shoulders. She sat back on the tub's wide edge and kicked her feet out in front of her, wiggling her toes.
Grant approached cautiously with a spray bottle.
Ram jerked sideways, eyeing him suspiciously.
"It will help with the tangles, Lord," Grant explained, spraying some on the back of his hand to show it wasn't dangerous.
One hand on the top of her towel, Ram reached the other out to grasp his wrist and bring it back to her hawkish beak. She breathed in, "Roses, nice." She ducked her head down dutifully and waited for Grant to finish spraying her hair, giggling as the mist kissed her bare back.
Grant picked up a brush and sat down beside her, indicating she should turn sideways so he could get to the back of her hair and the collection of rats there.
"I suppose I feel like Watcher Dawson felt the morning he woke to find both his legs gone," she began her explanation, sitting still while Grant sorted his way through her mane. "I have been in Diminishment before, and I suppose that is what happened. Malak surrendered in Diminishment to the degree that not just his power, but his identity was lost, and I alone remain, as I have been charged to do."
Grant made a new part and began to untangle the next section, setting the finished strands in front of her shoulder. "So your powers are gone again? Doesn't that make you mortal as you were after Sean was conceived?"
"What?" Ram had drifted away momentarily under the sensuous administrations of Grant's brushing. "Oh, ummm, no actually. No," she said, jerking away, nervously.
"But you were mortal after the last Diminishment, and Malak was still with you then." Grant folded his large arms, tapping the back of the brush against the opposite forearm. He was far up in the hierarchy of Watchers. He knew his history better than most. "Until you went playing serial killer as the Knacker and took all those heads."
Ram stood up and wrapped the towel more tightly around her. "Well I am not mortal, Grant. And that is all I will say about the matter. You said something about clothes?" she prompted.
"I will go get them if you will come with me, Lord."
"Don't trust me?" the cheap grin returned.
"Thomas will have my ass if you are gone when he returns, Lord," Grant pleaded.
Ram tilted her head and gazed in the general direction of the anatomy referred to. "Again, you mean?"
Grant's brows knurled down over his pale eyes. "You have given me a long life, Lord. I am ever grateful for that, but I will brook no denigration of my master. None."
Ram nodded her apology. "I promise not to leave, Grant," she said, finally breaking the electric silence that issued from Grant's righteous indignity.
When Grant did not move, Ram walked by him and he followed her out the door to the hallway closet and the clothes he'd mentioned.
Ram began to pull on the soft jeans, then paused. "What is it like, Grant?"
Grant did not understand either the question, or the timid way she asked it. "What is what like, Ram?"
"Loving someone that much, Grant," Ram sighed and pulled up the faded denims. "Having them love you that much back. What is that like?"
Grant sank down on his knees and drew her to him. "I'm sorry you don't know, Ram. Truly sorry."
"And if you two are finished with your 'moment'," Margaret appeared in the hall. "I need Ram out here in the kitchen to help us while Grant cleans up the bathroom."
"What's the matter?" Ram drew back from Grant and hurriedly pulled on a T-shirt.
"Why does anything need to be the matter, Ram?" Margaret spoke loudly and boldly, always. "You are surely more than just the cavalry coming over the ridge in the nick of time."
Ram stepped backwards and stared at the dynamic and cheery Facet. "I am?"
"Of course you are," Margaret chuckled. "We're making bread. We need another pair of hands and a fourth to complete the gossip group. Mary's still sleeping, so we decided to invite you."
"Cooking?" Ram asked, glancing at Grant.
"I believe that would be more in the line of baking, Lord," Grant pushed up to standing, measuring the situation, whether it was safe to leave Ram, while he cleaned the bathroom.
"Well?" Grant stared down on the Dragon Lord.
Ram took a deep breath. Then she put two fingers over her heart, then lifted them to her neck, then she placed her elegant hands together and offered them to Grant. "I swear," she said softly.
Grant bowed low, mirrored the sign, and then padded off to the bathroom.
Ram followed Margaret down the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen. A heady, yeast smell drifted through the homey little room, alight with the soft, high tones of women.
Ram stalled at the doorway and edged along the wall, keeping her back to it, hunting for a peripheral vantage on this most unfamiliar field. Left to her own devices, she might have stayed there, glued to the dark corner, watching the women, Molly and Margaret and Alexa, plying the divers charisms and graces of womanhood. They seemed divinities of nurture and order and utterly charming rituals of renewal.
They were making bread. Ram could not think why this would be. The larder was well-stocked with bread and rolls and such, not homemade to be sure, but adequate to their needs.
"Oh no, you don't," Alexa's hand, all powdered with white flour and dough balls, scooped behind Ram's back and pulled her away from the corner onto the center of the field, the wooden table where the bowls and the spoons and the marble slabs lay waiting for the next batch to begin. "This is definitely not a spectator sport. Here," she looped the neck of an apron over Ram's head and floated behind her to tie it in back.
Ram's hands flew up at her sides like wings as she stared down at the daisy-spangled caparison now draped over her front.
"You've watched me make fry-bread often enough to finally do some yourself, Ram. Here," she handed over a hand-thrown bowl of enormous dimensions glazed a pale blue, as was most of Mary's "wedding ware."
"But--," Ram began, but Alexa was already off to the stove to check the oil.
Molly sidled up silently and took the bowl, laying it down on the table.
Ram stepped up to the table with remarkably little enthusiasm, staring at the bowl as if it might speak to her. Molly handed over the flour sack and smiled. Ram poured some into the bowl and then stepped back as the white cloud fumed up and assaulted her nostrils. She stepped back from the table, choking.
The women started giggling, then laughing.
Ram swiped a paw across her dusted features and stepped bravely back into the fray, ignoring their mirth. Molly handed over the oil and Ram remembered to make a well in the flour to receive it. Then Molly handed over the first egg and Ram rolled it over her hand, over the back and then over the palm, like a juggler, making a ball seem to float or slide. The egg remained stationary in space as Ram's long, graceful fingers played around it as if the egg were floating.
The giggling stopped. Ram grinned ever so slightly and reached her left hand out for the second egg. Molly obliged. There followed such a complex juggling routine as any of the three women had ever seen. The kitchen came alive in applause and praise.
Ram bowed and then handed the eggs back to Molly who showed her how to break them into the well without getting any of the shell in the mix. Ram praised and clapped for Molly and the kitchen audience commenced to laugh in earnest.
Margaret removed two of the bread pans from their ledge near the oven. She plopped out the leavened wheat rolls and began to punch them down. Molly and Ram were in the midst of mushing up the fry bread mix, up to their elbows in gooey dough, when Alexa came over and added more flour to the mix, sending up another cloud.
Ram looked up indignantly. She lifted her right eyebrow and glanced over at Molly conspiratorially. Molly's eyes widened and she shook her head. Ram ignored the silent plea, lifting her right hand out of the dough and flicking a substantial wad, dead center, of Alexa's forehead. Smack.
After an instant of surprised shock, Alexa picked out a handful of flour, lifted her palm in front of her mouth and blew hard, showering a white haze over Ram's face and hair.
Molly ducked her head, growing bright pink with her effort not to laugh. "Hey!" she howled as Ram's next salvo struck the top of her head and stuck there, a sticky pulpy mass.
"Come on, ladies," Margaret chided them, popping Molly's back to remind her of her manners.
Margaret looked up from her bread just in time to see all three of them sited her direction and loaded for bear.
"Ladies, ladies," Grant appeared at the doorway.
Slowly the kitchen crew turned on the intruder.
Four wicked aims flew at the giant, each finding its mark.
Grant never reacted, which made it all the more hilarious and the women were soon rolling with glee and silly commentary about the dough boy at the door.
"Do call me if you need anything," Grant said laconically, picking off dough wads and dusting off flour. "I'll just be tidying in the living room."
With that, he shook his head, turned on his heels, and left, closing the door behind him. The gleeful children's laughter built behind him, but he paid it no mind. Some things, he reasoned, are beyond the ken of mere mortal men.
Or even men who only used to be mortal.
"What are you looking at?" Sean remarked, wiping the bar counter of the enormous beached van.
Thomas Cross turned away from the window, set in what was now the north end of the semi, in the kitchen behind the bar counter. "Nothing, Sean. Just wondering where the rest of our group is. It's getting late."
"And the two of you are getting drunk," former Judge Stoner remarked a little jealously. Facets were unable to get drunk, no matter how much liquor they consumed. A small price to pay for immortality, but some days the price seemed less small than others.
"And if I am going to be your student, Horse," Sean slid around the bar and peaked out the window, "then you are going to have to learn you cannot lie to me." He lifted the shade which Thomas had drawn before answering his question. "Well," Sean swallowed a burp, "You can lie all you like, won't work. I can hear it--What the--?"
"So I told the Mayor," Strike continued the conversation he and Stoner were having on the couch, one step lower than the bar. "that we had raised the rates on all the 'News' customers and that it was in no way a form of blackmail, that his confidentiality would be preserved, even if he defaulted on his bill--"
"It is a rather odd fascination," Stoner commented, trying to think what major city within commuting distance to San Francisco might be home to a mayor with a propensity for whipped cream and--well, a number of entirely amusing images came to mind as he inventoried the political strata of the Western Rim.
Sean peered out the window onto the moonlit sand. Some sea creature, a porpoise he thought, was beached there. He would have gone out himself to help the unfortunate beast, but someone was there already, assessing, assisting. "So is Dr. Lindsey going to be all right?" he asked Tony Stone.
"As I said," Stoner paused in his fantasies about the mayoral peccadilloes, "She took one look at Mary, turned on her heels and made me drive her all the way back to Overlook. I don't think your mother-in-law is handling this well at all, Sean. Which begs the question, 'What are we going to do about this--or rather these--tragedies?' as in, when does the meeting start?"
Thomas pulled Sean's sleeve, but the MacLeod heir wouldn't leave the window. His inebriation slowed his perceptions, but not his curiosity. Didn't really look large enough to be a whale, but really too large for a dolphin, maybe--.
Thomas finished fixing the next round of drinks, Brandy Alexanders. Cross did not ascribe to the drunkard's credo about not mixing poisons when one is serious about chemical alterations of the sensorium.
"I don't think that's a--," Sean paused and blinked.
Thomas pulled him away from the window and handed him a drink.
"Hey," Sean said thickly, "You know, I think that was--"
"Yes," said Thomas.
"And that was--" Sean's fair features screwed up in disgust.
"Yes, I believe it was," Thomas clinked his glass against Sean's.
"But they were--" Sean protested.
"They most certainly were," Thomas agreed. "Drink up, lad. You are far too old for this to be any sort of revelation."
"They're already late for the meeting," Sean whined, though tardiness was hardly his first objection to the vision on the beach. He sipped pensively at the orange drink, oblivious to the sweet taste, the minor lovely tang of just a touch of Triple Seq, which was Thomas' trademark.
"And you don't lie very well, either," Cross toasted the young man and stepped down into the living area to settle on the couch opposite the two representatives of the Facets. "Grant and Margaret and Molly won't be coming--"
"Of which the same cannot be said for my randy parents," Sean grumbled.
"A little forbearance, Son," said Stoner, guessing what night time beach recreations were occupying the final two members of their summit meeting.
Thomas ignored Sean's sour commentary and continued. "Allen is staying in Seacouver to help Dragon with the construction oversight."
Sean shuffled down to join them and plopped on the couch next to Cross. "Crap," he mumbled to himself.
"Perhaps we could address your problem first, Sean," Thomas patted the young man's knee.
"Trust me," Sean lifted the mahogany hand off his leg and placed it back in Cross' lap. "It's not that much of a problem."
Strike stretched and yawned, "A nearly comatose new wife would seem to be a worry, at the very least, Mr. MacLeod."
"S'not my wife," Sean sipped his drink and shook his head. He dug in his pocket and slapped a folded set of papers on the floor. "Read 'em and weep," he laughed, but it was a warbling sorry sound he made with hardly any mirth to it at all.
Striker retrieved the papers and handed them over to the Judge.
"Got 'em when I was in town taking care of this flotsam," Sean's hands fluttered up suddenly, indicating the entire van.
"Petition for annulment," Stoner said all too soberly.
"Oh, Sean," Striker commented solicitously.
"Maybe it's for the best, Sean," Cross murmured.
"Oh, right. I'm so sure," Sean nearly spit the words over his numb lips. "Let's see now: you have the faithful Mr. Grant, Molly and Margaret have Dragon, Dahm has--or should I say, is having--Pop, Stoner has the 'nigmatic Doctor Anne, Strike has a whole collection of interesting bed partners--"
"We get the point, Son," Stoner interrupted.
"And I'm not getting any," Sean whined, "Nor can I see I'm ever likely to at this rate. Even marriage isn't getting me anywhere off the 'ginity slow track."
"The what?" Thomas asked.
"'Ginity," Sean hiccoughed, "Ver-gin-i-ty," he expanded.
Striker rose to mix his comrade Facet a drink. To hell with the futility of it, Stoner and he would have to at least make the attempt. This had all the appearances of being a truly dicey meeting.
"I thought you and Kyle--" Cross began.
Sean shook his head. "Just a joke between us s'all."
Cross wondered what to say to the drunken disconsolate Immortal. He glanced over at Striker, standing at the bar trying to decide on the liquor choice.
"Look at me," Sean threw back the rest of his drink. "I'm the perfect partner. Young, good-looking, no concerns about pregnancy or diseases, or even growing old. I'm going to waste, dammit!" He slumped down further in the couch, affecting the full-body pout at which his brother was so talented.
Stoner answered by tearing up the annulment papers into tiny pieces and tossing them into the air like so much confetti or snow. "Well, perfect or not, Sean. You have a wife who needs you. A child who will need you. And many people who love you dearly and absolutely, if not physically. Stop acting like a spoiled brat and all else will follow in due time."
The Judge commanded their entire attention. Striker stopped pouring. Thomas cleared his throat. Sean sat up straight.
The door opened and Duncan MacLeod rolled in, sandy and barefoot, with the Eldest Immortal in tow, also sandy and shoeless. "Sorry we're late," he apologized to them. "We were--"
"Yeah," Sean smiled, "You certainly were, Pop."
Duncan's thick brows scrunched down over a disapproving glower as he reached behind him to catch Adam's bony elbow and stop his intended retreat back out the door. "Adam, why don't you and your brother go up to the house and get us some more ice."
Adam, who'd been uncharacteristically silent this whole time, merely stared at Duncan. The Scot raised his hand and placed his palm behind Adam's head. He nodded reassuringly.
Cross pushed Sean up off the couch, lifting his palm to silence any protest.
When the brothers were gone and the door closed, Cross complimented their clan Chieftan. "That was a stunning bit of battle strategy."
Duncan shrugged and took the drink Striker offered. "Whatever. Adam is in no shape to be helpful just now and Sean looked too drunk to be much help either." He sited on Cross. "You too far in your cups to contribute?"
"I am never that drunk," Thomas answered with a precision and pride only shared by the truly inebriate.
"Right," Duncan smiled and joined him on the couch. He kicked at the paper scraps. "Playing at Mardi Gras, are we?"
Stoner grinned and welcomed Striker, and the drink he brought, back to their side of the living room.
"All right then," Duncan continued, " Where shall we start?"
The answer was obvious. Where else would one start when the entire order had gone diving off a cliff into the void? Where else but Chaos?
"Ram," they all answered in unison, except that Cross' version was a little late, off the beat and just the slightest bit slurred.
It must be so: 'tis not for self
That we so tremble on the brink;
And striving to o'erleap the gulf,
Yet cling to Being's severing link,
Oh! in that future let us think
To hold each heart the heart that shares;
With them the immortal waters drink,
And soul in soul grow deathless theirs!If That High World II, a selection from the Hebrew Melodies...
..............................................George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron
"Must be so. S'not f'self," Sean slurred as they climbed the narrow cliff path up to his blighted wedding bower. "We so tremble on th'brink."
"And striving to o'er leap the gulf," Adam took the next line, steadying the drunken brother of his heart. "Yet cling to Being's severing link."
"S'from my collection," Sean said blinking and slapping Adam's graceful hands away with his own twins to those same artisan's fingers. "Ah'm thinkin a book maybe: Hymns to Immortals."
"A noble endeavor to be sure, Sean," Adam sighed. "Up, I believe we are returning to the house."
Sean took his bearings. Pulling away from Adam, he had headed the wrong way and was now descending the path again. "Oh," he said stupidly and turned round to follow Adam up the path.
A few more strides in silence and Sean commenced his recitation, "Oh! In that future let us think to hold each heart, the heart that shares..." Sean crumpled down on the rocky way and burst out weeping.
"Oh, Sean," Adam scrambled back and sank beside him, wrapping a yard-worth of arms around the bucking shoulders. "I will be your soul in soul until another comes along. You are not alone."
Sean sniffed loudly. "Sure," he gulped. "Do you think I'm spoiled. Stoner says I'm spoiled rotten."
"He's right," Adam said gently, "As spoiled as all our love can make you I fear."
"Gee, thanks," Sean snorted. "You don't think anyone will come along do you?"
"I cannot speak for you, Sean. When Byron wrote that piece, I thought he had done so for me--" Adam began.
"You?" Sean stared, pie-eyed. "You and Byron, Dahm?"
"Yes, Sean. It's not so impossible to imagine, after all," Adam suggested.
"You and Byron. Damn!"
"As I was saying," Adam helped the drunken boy up and they started back up the path.
Sean halted and waited for his weaving torso to steady. "But Pops killed Byron."
Adam's next breath was a heavy tide, "Yes, Sean. Byron could not find that one other Immortal to drink the holy waters with."
"You weren't good enough?" Sean burped.
"No I wasn't, Sean. Not nearly enough," Adam said, thinking of those wild and sensuous times, so full of nothing important or lasting. "I understood nothing it seems, but at the time, I thought I knew everything."
"Something wrong, Dahm?" Sean sat down again. Something was wrong with his stomach. Maybe he was only hungry. He'd passed on the sandwiches and stew. "What happened on the beach with Pop?"
Adam stared down at him aghast.
"No, I don't mean that. I saw that. Just, just, you're acting funny, Dahm. What happened?" Sean felt hot and his throat tingled. Something definitely was wrong.
"How am I different, Sean?" Adam asked softly, skirting around the entire issue of how he felt that Sean had witnessed--whatever he had witnessed.
"I don't know, Dahm," Sean swallowed hard. "Your voice sounds so soft and squishy, with that edgy tone just this side of--." Sean pitched over forward and began to spew.
Adam dropped down beside him and held his shoulders, crooning encouragements and sympathies, while his baby brother hurled and gagged until it seemed he must soon deliver his shoes through his mouth. It seemed to go on and on, but eventually Sean's poor stomach was empty and the dry gagging quieted.
"Oh, God," Sean sat back against his brother's chest, "I've been poisoned, Dahm. I'm going to die."
Adam laughed lovingly. "No, you're going to wish you'd died, but this won't be fatal, Sean. Just too much alcohol and no food."
"How do know I didn't eat?" Sean said each word carefully as if he couldn't trust his traitorous flesh not to start spasming again.
"Well," Adam tried not to make a joke at his dear brother's expense, "You've barfed your evening's history all over the path here, and I see no food."
"Very funny," Sean grumbled. "Spoiled rotten and can't hold my liquor besides. Sheesh!"
"Oh, Sean," Adam pulled him close and kissed his forehead, "I love you so much. I wish I could say it in a way you would understand, but someday you will know."
"How can you stand to touch me, Dahm," Sean wriggled, but his older brother would not release him. "I'm all over vomit and I reek."
"You do indeed," Adam smiled and held him closer. "I love you, Sean."
Then Adam leaned in closer and kissed Sean right on his fouled mouth, lightly, tenderly, deliberately.
And Sean almost understood.
 |
 |
The Domestic Conspirators in the kitchen were soon joined by a dreamy-eyed doyen, dressed in jeans and tank top--the first time Mary had been out of a dressing gown since she first came to this strange honeymoon bungalow.Each woman greeted her in turn and spared her their stares. Some women bloom in pregnancy, some women bloom in lust and love. Mary bloomed with both, so blatantly they all felt just the slightest twinge of jealousy. Mostly they just felt how full of love and life she was, a perfect center to their happy hearth and makeshift bakery awash in delicious, comforting aromas and healing, nurturing magics.
"Now," Alexa said wickedly as Margaret pulled the first finished loaves from the oven. "Hmmm, now who can we get to slice all this bread?"
They all laughed and stared at Ram.
"Me?" Ram had tottered through the entire kitchen experience in a kind-hearted and grateful, but unbalanced fashion.
"We have need of a very large, very sharp blade, Ram," Margaret joked.
Mary began to wake from her lovely dream and Malak's dear carresses. "You are Ram?" she asked.
"I do not have it any longer," Ram replied, her voice descending into an almost masculine register.
"Sean's mother?" Mary asked again.
"You've hidden it somewhere?" Alexa asked, knowing Immortals and Dragon Lords were never very far from their swords, even though the impulse to duel, the Gathering, seemed to have dwindled with the death of all the dragons.
"Sean's mother, the Dragon King?" Mary asked more loudly, trying to be heard above this nonsense about the sword.
"I buried it," Ram said somberly.
Quiet Molly's eyes went round and white-ringed. "Oh my God!" she breathed out in a hoarse whisper.
"Adam's mother?" Mary persisted. But, of course, she thought, who else to take her back to Malak? Who else but The Ram. She had not made the connection initially, having never met the woman, and the fact they usually referred to her by her other name: "Chaos?" she said aloud.
"What is it, Molly. Why should burying her sword--Oh, Dear Lord!" Margaret stared at Ram who was now standing at the kitchen's center, wrapped in her long arms, every muscle tight as steel wires.
"What does it mean, Ram," Alexa moved towards the daunting dragon. "What does it mean that you buried your sword? That you will never fight again?" She decided to pick the most optimistic guess, though surely Molly and Margaret's reactions said otherwise.
"It is a warrior's tradition to bury his sword with the fallen enemy if that enemy were the most worthy and noble opponent in all the land. It is done when a man of greatness falls beneath your blade, so that the blade may never be used again on a less holy opponent. It is also a penance for killing such a man, however fairly, to remain unarmed for a full year to mourn the memory of the one slain," Ram shook her head and the cloudy eyes spoke clearly the message that she would entertain no further questions about why or where her sword lay buried.
Instead, Ram walked over to Mary's chair, knelt down on one knee and bowed her head down onto the back of Mary's offered hand. "Forgive me, Lady Mary, for not having honored your presence here more formally. I thought the tenor of this sweet scene of domesticity was an inappropriate venue for more than happy hugs and friendly hello's."
"I am glad to finally meet you, Ram." Mary corrected herself, "to finally meet you in the flesh. I feel I have known you all my life, and our long talks while you were still in my father--. Well, I count that we are already dear friends, Ram."
"I am ever your servant, Mary," Ram lifted her head but she did not rise. "Malak has commanded me to see to your every wish, your every want. Anything within my power to give is yours."
"Please," Mary patted the seat beside her, "You can be a Noble Knight some other time, Ram. I have need now for only a dear sister to my own true love, and so you are, and so shall you be to me until I am gone to him for the rest of time."
Ram levered up and sat down stiffly beside her.
The newly risen dough for the second batch disappeared into the oven and Molly flipped out the new loaves, steaming and smelling so delicious they could almost be tasted across the tiny room. There was no more talk about swords and slices. Alexa gathered the whipped butter and honey and a whole collection of jams, setting them on trays, while Margaret started the coffee and the kettle for the tea.
Mary and Ram conferred in low tones at the tiny table by the door. Ram shook her head adamantly midway through the discourse, but Mary evidently held to her side and it was clear at the end that Ram had conceded defeat, but its exact nature remained obscure to the other three kitchen maids, busy with their own tasks, readying the tea party.
Alexa guessed what their discussion must be, but only because she'd held a similar discussion with Ram not three hours earlier. She and Mary had a single place to go, a single person to be with, and those two beloved beings were no longer in the world, Alexa thought. And we must leave the world to go to them. And we have each of us has made the Dragon Lord promise to take us there.
"Alexa!" a familiar baritone called from the doorway.
"Good Lord!" Mary's tiny nose wrinkled up at the awful, acrid stench which followed Adam into the room and proceeded from the sleeping drunkard in the cradle of the Eldest Immortal's long arms.
Molly came forward and tugged on Adam's sleeve, indicating he should follow her. Grant appeared behind Adam and took the sleeping Sean in his own broad arms, leading the way to the bathroom. Alexa went to open the back door which led onto the screened porch, airing the room. Molly flapped the inner door, creating a breeze to hurry the dreadful stink out of their domain.
"Where's Ram?" Margaret asked.
Not one of them could answer. She was simply and utterly gone.
"I shouldn't imagine it's easy to be a mother to those two," Mary commented graciously on Ram's rude departure.
The standard of rudeness escalated suddenly though, as a howling Sean MacLeod could be heard through the entire house, screeching his dissatisfaction with the cold shower and the bastards attending him.
Ram stretched her legs out straight and bounced her knees nervously. Her long fingers untied the apron and she lifted it over her head, folding it carefully, as if it were a portion of a holy vestment. Then she laid it aside on the weathered boards of the porch flooring. I am no kitchen wife, no baker, nor dear granny to be occupying my time with any domestic virtues or blessings. I am a warrior and a king, and it would behoove me to remember this and stop casting after vague desires for the simple pleasures.
Ram leaned her long back against the weathered clapboards, the old outside wall of Sean's house, now the inside wall of the screened and glazed porch. She settled the back of her head against the wall and gazed out the windows at the lowering moon and tried to stop trembling. Her fault, entirely her fault, she'd lost some of Malak's battle senses when she had lost Malak, but being away from the halls of Man these many weeks since his departure, she had not noticed this before.How incredibly, how unbelievably stupid. Ram knocked her head against the clapboards. She would have to relearn the lesson she seemed never able to remember, that the World of Man was not her world, that Man was an ever-present danger, never to be trusted. Ah, the sweet temptations of the mortal world. How irresistibly seductive they could be.
A chill still ran the back of her neck and bristled the tendrils there. Unbelievable. She had allowed Adam to come upon her entirely unaware. She'd not felt him coming, nor truly understood, at first, that he was there at the kitchen door, his besotted brother pup asleep in his arms. Ram bent her legs up and leaned against her thighs, trying to rebuild a calm or some other semblance of reserve.
Damn! She'd had no preparation, no time to face those dreaded features, the all-too-familiar tones. At least she had managed to direct his attentions towards his wife and given herself enough time to slip, unheeded out the back door. It was always hard to see him again, always a matter of the greatest discipline just to be civil, just to keep the demons at bay, just to stay in the world and not go flying off into the half-dead catalepsy which had afflicted her since her ascendancy and Malak's denial.
She'd always had time to deal with the enormous dread and terror which her son evoked, but not this night. This night she was too stupid, playing with the women, letting their elemental magics blind her and make her fail the watch. So she wasn't ready to see him standing there and even now, a long hour later, she was still shaking from it, still undone.
Ram reasoned she was safe here in the dark of the porch. They were all occupied inside with Sean and the tea party and--. She gritted her teeth together and reached for Adam. There. Still bathing, weary and--.
And something, something she did not recognize at all. That was why he'd snuck up on her so unexpectedly. He was changed, nearly unrecognizable. The women had filled her in on the wedding. Ram hadn't thought much about it, but perhaps that had changed her son. Something surely had.
She jerked physically as she drew back from him and withdrew into her own empty self again.
Perhaps if she were not such a coward about thinking why Adam so terrified her. Perhaps a bit of boldness and insight. Ram sighed softly. She knew perfectly well why he scared her so. She was never predisposed to dwell, but maybe a small portion of reminding, a minor excursion to the past.
Ram took the night air into her lungs in a long, slow inspiration, and began. After his face, it was Adam's hands disturbed her. The problem being, Ram considered, that they are so like the hands of his fathers, as his face is their face, and I have been ill-used by those hands. But she'd known this would be even holding him as a babe. She had always known he would grow into the image of his fathers, and she'd done everything possible to have that not make a difference in the way that she felt about him.
Because she loved him profoundly, as deeply as was possible given the cold dragon's heart which beat within her breast.
His fathers, Ram mused. She had always thought of them as such, though of course only one of the five could have sired him. Try as she might, Ram could not discover which of the tall barbarians was Adam's sire. She did of course know the moment of Adam's conception, but by then she had been too beaten and exhausted and torn to know which filthy body had pressed her down yet again, rutting like a beaste, a drunken beaste, at that.
It happened after their beatings had blinded her, one eye closed--the left--above the fractured cheek and the other hemorrhaged, rendering everything in shadowy reds and deepest black. They did not smell different, one from the other, nor were their sizes or manners in any way defining. Her sensitivities were blunted with rage and shame and fear, but she might not have known him even if this had not been the case. They were so alike, even their thoughts were not dissimilar.
Ram's thoughts drifted away from the dreary business to the wonderful moment when Marak had found her, dumped with the rest of the brothers' trash in a small ditch, when they had struck camp and moved on. She could not see him, nor smell him, nor feel him above the stench of the garbage and the many aches and stings of her own stinking flesh, but she knew him immediately. She had never been so gladdened by another, for all she had been shamed nearly to death that he should find her in such straits.
"Oh, Brother Marak," Ram whispered, "Just look where we have come, and by what rock-strewn and agony-ridden way. You will soon be gone with Mary and then the Great Darkness will begin. Will you turn back and listen if I promise not to whine?"
"Mother?"
"Well, then don't," Ram quipped, hitting her stride, "Don't put yourself out, Dear Son. You are grateful that I have rescued your two madwomen, and you needn't worry I shall stay around to stir things up. I will return when Mary is due to be delivered. You'll be at the Cross Estate, outside Seacouver?"
Ram shot across the porch and spun round, her back to one of the windows. He had done it again! Ram struggled to affect a composure. She forced her voice down in register and held it steady, "Adam?" "I did not mean to startle you, Ram," Adam smiled and stepped fully onto the porch. "There is bread," he gestured behind towards the kitchen which still wafted yeasty, fresh smells onto the night breezes.
Ram shook her head stiffly and tried to will herself away from the wall, but she seemed stuck there, all the more so as Adam advanced.
"Are you all right, Ram?" Adam asked as he approached.
"Fine," Ram said in a clipped fashion reminiscent of a Field General.
"We had worried that you were destroyed with Malak," Adam backed away from her, almost subconsciously in answer to her foreboding retreat against the porch's outer wall.
"I wasn't," Ram began to remember the rhythms that allowed her to converse with this halfling son of hers. "As you can see." She pushed forcefully away from the wall and gestured he should sit.
She did not join him. She did not dare.
"I cannot tell you how grateful we are that you have returned," Adam folded his legs up awkwardly and tilted his head up to watch Ram, still standing.
"We thought so," Adam's face screwed up as he squinted. "What is wrong?"
"Oh, dear, let me see," Ram tapped her long fingers on her temple in a sorry pretense of cogitation. "Perhaps the diesel explosion, or might it have been that sorry little brother of yours consecrating Malak to the blessed hereafter, or, oh, I don't know there are so many little difficulties to choose from."
"Stop it," Adam blurted out suddenly and Ram froze.
She missed the beat by several measures, then, "Stop what, Adam?" she managed, with all the crafted care of a nanny speaking to a particularly stupid child.
"What you're doing," Adam said simply, "I don't want to play this with you any more."
"And that would be--?" Ram's eyebrow lifted and she looked down on him, placidly and patiently with just a whisper of a sigh.
Adam made a noise like a growl and his head sank down, rolling back and forth in exasperation. "Forget it," he said finally, "I want you to do something for me." He did not look up at her again, but he could feel the attention of those steel grey eyes upon the top of his head.
"I am breathless," she replied with all the ridicule three simple words might impart, "in anticipation." Ram hissed like a dread serpent when she said this.
"No doubt," Adam laughed sadly. "I want you to give back my memories, Ram." Adam levered up to standing, and Ram backed down the porchway, away from him and from the door.
"Excuse me?" she stalled as she continued backing up into the shadows.
"There are things I should be able to remember, but I can't," Adam explained. "I think you have taken my memories and I want them back." He folded his arms across his chest and waited for the argument between them to begin in earnest.
"All right," Ram replied.
"Now, I know--" Adam had practiced his part, "What did you say?"
Ram chuckled, "I said all right. Have them back. I surely can't use them. And if we're going to be precise, I never actually took them, but only enhanced your forgetfulness."
"Whatever," Adam dismissed the rationalization. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
Adam thought a moment. "It isn't any different! I still can't remember!"
"What would you like, Adam?" Ram revved up to full sarcasm, "Shall I wrench the head off a chicken and go dancing naked in the moonlight. Or maybe just a more traditional, Abracadabra." Ram flailed her arms in large circles, pulled them into her body and then pantomimed throwing something forward, all her fingers splayed. "Memories," she called out, "get back in Adam this instant."
Then she started laughing at her own joke.
Adam might have joked back, but something had happened to him this night which made this stupid distancing unbearable, and rendered him furious. He launched for his mother and pinned her wrists above her head against the porch windows.
The eerie lunar illuminings cast her features in stark terror and her eyes softened in hopelessness and surrender. She did not even struggle. She did not seem to be breathing.
Adam leaned over her. He almost thought to let her go, but something made him hold her fast. "I still can't remember, Ram. And I can't stand this wordplay any longer. Just take the spell off or whatever. Wave your magic broom. Whatever it takes." Despite his protestations, Adam found it difficult to speak with this woman in any but the most sarcastic tones.
"I can't be held responsible for your prodigious self-deceit," Ram answered back, but her voice was so caught and breathy, Adam thought she might be weeping soon. Or screaming.
"I can't remember!" Adam's full baritone roared as he leaned in closer to her stricken features.
"I can't--," she began, but her argent eyes filled and her lower lip began to tremble.
Adam could not have explained what happened next, or rather, why what happened happened. He suddenly caught her mouth beneath his and entered as the trembling lips slacked open in full surrender. He tasted the bread dough she'd stolen and the tang of the fear and the poignant beginnings of an unmistakable lust.
But it was Knight to Queen one and Ram followed with a rather ordinary, but effective, counter. Knee to King two. Checkmate.
Adam went rolling and howling across the weathered grey boards.
Ram dropped down beside him, pulled his hands away and placed her own on the offended spot.
Adam took the next breath expectantly and then breathed out in utter relief. He did not thank her, nor did he apologize either. He just straightened up to sitting and waited for what Lucille was fond of calling "God's Own Retribution."
The silence between the two seated figures on the moonlit porch was so intense as to completely occupy them. They never noticed the giant and the unsteady MacLeod heir leaning against the porch door frame, watching.
"Maybe it would help--" Ram began.
Oh, God, Adam thought, let something help.
"--if you told me what exactly you want to remember," Ram finished.
Adam actually had to think a moment, he was so flustered he'd forgotten. "Oh, yes. The day you killed me, Mother," he paused. "Ram, the day--."
Long graceful fingers floated up between them to bid the silence return. "I do remember that day, Adam. I am sorry for the knowing. Perhaps it would be better if you continue on in your forgetfulness. It is surely so long ago that it cannot matter now."
"It matters," Adam said. "I'm sure it matters. I just cannot remember it well enough to know why or how it matters. It matters."
"For the sake of argument, then," Ram smiled, but it was an uncertain grin at best. "Let us stipulate that it matters. What do you want? When you are ready to remember you will."
"Tell me what happened," Adam commanded.
Ram leaned back, propped on her arms. After an aching pause, she said, "I'll help you remember, but I won't tell you. You wouldn't hear it, in any case."
"What?" Adam asked.
"Once upon a time, there was a Consort to the King who ran away foolishly and came afoul of a band of--"
She continued on, but Adam knew this story already, second hand to be sure, but from no less an accurate source as Joseph T. Dawson, thank you very much. He knew he was a bastard and that his mother had not agreed to the sexual union and--. Adam looked up. The porch had grown still. Ram was staring at him.
"See what I mean?" she said. "If you do not want to hear something, those lovely hazel eyes of yours just glaze over and you wander far, far away."
Adam ducked his head and studied his palms. "All right, then, let's also stipulate I am a son of a bitch and here's the very bitch to prove it."
"The very one," Ram said in tones of permafrost and molten lava. "Just tell me what you do remember and stop this childish pouting."
"I remember it different ways," Adam looked up, surprised when her hand settled on his knee. Had he not known better, he might have thought she meant to comfort him. He was suddenly minded of how she must see him, and how similarly he saw himself, or would, were it not for the fact that someone who loved him saw him truly. "For a long while I thought I had been summoned to your private chamber, that you had greeted me with your arms wide, to draw me into a hug. And as I came close to you, you pierced me through the heart, and I died almost in the next instant."
Ram's head tipped to the side. "Adam Piersen, Pierce-son. Hmmm, so you think you were born that day? That you were the son of that wounding?"
"Now it is you doesn't remember," Adam laughed and began to relax. "You told me my father's name was Pier."
"Oh yes. You are right," Ram laughed a little also, "So hard to keep the lies sorted out."
"Then I remembered about Marak teaching me the Ascendancy. He said that you expected me to lie with you, that it was the ritual of manhood, and that I was far past the age and a disappointment to you that I had tarried so long. I remembered entering your bedchamber and slipping in beside you. I remember you were asleep. I began to stroke your back, to kiss your neck. I remember how warm you were, how your body came alive beneath my hands. I can remember how excited I was, and not a little afraid. Then you woke up and ran the knife into me, through my chest, notching a rib, and I was drowning in my own blood, fighting for air. It hurt so much, but then you were there, leaning over me and you did something. The pain went away and I died."
"You were close to me when I wounded you," Ram prompted. "As close as a hug. Think of that moment." The fingers lifted from his knee and brushed like wings over his lids, closing his eyes. "Tell me what you see, Adam."
Adam tried hard to remember the subtle flashes, the dim images of his forgetfulness. "I see your face," he said.
"Where am I?" Ram asked in sonorous tones.
"What?"
"Am I standing?" Ram offered.
"No, no. Lying down on your back," Adam's face drew tight and strained.
"Easy," Ram breathed, "Just let it come to you. Don't try to force. I'm lying on my back. Are my eyes open?"
"Yes," Adam answered quickly, then looked again inside the place where he had so often sought to go, though he was now beginning to wonder why, and also beginning to fear that his mother's warnings were wise. "No," he amended. "No, they are closed. Why would they be closed? Oh, God!" Adam screeched and opened his eyes.
"It is all right, Adam," Ram's hands had settled on his shoulders. She had leaned forward, close to him. "It was long past. It is not happening now."
Adam couldn't help thinking how brave she was to do that, couldn't help thinking he was a danger to her somehow. "I saw blood, Mother. You were lying in a pool of blood. Your eyes were closed because you were unconscious. What happened?"
"Where was I?" Ram asked softly.
"Where?" Adam did not at first understand the question.
"Was I on my bed?"
"Yes, of course," Adam stared at her, seeing her now in the past as well as the present, one image verging with the other. He shook his head, "No, you are lying on the floor next to the bed."
"How did I get there?" Ram asked and her hands slipped down from his shoulders as she moved back from him.
"How?" Adam stretched his back. "I don't know. You fell. You must have fallen. No, I don't know."
"You will remember when--"
"Now!" Adam shouted, "I will remember now! You were on the bed and then you were on the floor. So you didn't kill me as you woke up, or you would still be on the bed..." His voice dissipated into silence as he wrestled with the riddle. "Please, Mother," he finally pleaded.
"We fought," Ram said.
"Yes, yes we did. A terrible row. Terrible. Yes, I threw you off the bed and you hit your head on the floor and passed out. Oh, Mother, I am sorry," Adam reached for her, but she drew back farther, the same look on her face as when he had pinned her against the porch window.
"That is enough remembering," Ram pushed up wearily. "You said there was some bread left?"
"Wait," Adam blurted, "Please, I can almost see, almost--"
Ram sighed loudly, "Where are you?"
"Me? I'm leaning over you, no, not, not leaning so much as--" Adam's generous mouth dropped open and all the air rushed out of him in a grunting, "Oh."
"Enough," Ram whispered. "This is enough."
Adam stretched himself out on his back, dazed and not a little shocky, one arm over his forehead, searching for his breath, and incongruously calm-voiced, "You came to with me on top of you, the image of the man who had raped you, doing the self-same thing all over again. No wonder you killed me, Mother. Where was the knife?" He asked this last as if he were just finishing up a report and needed the last detail for completeness' sake alone.
"Under the mattress," Ram answered hoarsely, trying to fight her way back to him and having no success whatsoever. "I flailed my arm out, felt the bed, and walked my hand down until I found the blade I kept there. Then I struck. I am the one who is sorry, Adam. It should never have happened, and were I more the warrior and less the coward, it never would have happened."
"And after I died?" Adam's voice was pitched in exhaustion and settled into blackest devastation, so devoid of emotion he made a joke to himself hearing it. Dead man talking, he thought. And then he thought, Duncan is mistaken. In this way he plunged a keener knife into his heart than ever had visited it before.
And Ram commanded herself to see to the wounded left upon the field, made herself go to him then, to sit down beside him, to die for him, if that were possible. She draped her hands over his heart and spoke her comfort to him, in her tones, if not her words. "Marak came in after to enjoy his joke, I suppose. He found you dead on the floor by the bed--"
"You took me just as I came, didn't you," Adam stared blankly. "That is the origin of my perversity. Isn't it?"
Ram's eyes closed, but she took the heedless blow with all the others that had come before this one. "Yes, that would be logical," she agreed. "Marak could not find me at first. I had crawled into the corner of the large wooden closet at the other side of the room."
Adam remembered that closet, a deep mahogany affair, brilliantly carved with lions and bears and dragons, and...
"Brother Bear was a long while bringing me back to my senses, but he did in due time, and bless his heart, he cleaned the room and took the knife from your carcass. To his utter amazement and relief, you awakened and he set you up on the bed. When he told me you lived, I was also relieved. Had you died I would have lost my life," Ram laughed hollowly, "I certainly had a different perspective on death then, when I could still have it."
"What?" Adam pushed up on his elbows. Distraught and numb, still his quick wit and curiosity engaged. "Why would you die?"
"In a race that is disappearing through extinction," Ram explained. "What do you think would be a more heinous crime than the killing of a child?"
It did make a sort of sense. Adam was surprised the Danae held him in such importance, but then again, he was their first child in many centuries.
"Yes," Ram continued, "After I became Malak again, Brother Marak vowed the incident would remain secret for all times, because I would be in danger if it was ever revealed."
Adam reviewed the words. They made no sense. He said so. "But I survived!" he protested.
Ram's face collapsed in a sudden ashen wreck. "Yes," she answered, "But your son did not."
It took a brief instant for the words to make their meanings known to Adam. A tiny piece of time between logic and reason and the full-blown rage which took him straight into Ram, a fury incarnate. His great love for his brother, Sean, spurred him on. He could so easily see Sean's brother, his own son, more helpless than any living being on the earth, cut down without so much as a whimper to grieve his loss. The only son he would ever sire, alive how many minutes, hours? Never to walk the world. This wasn't a theoretical concept, but a living son before his mind, dying unknown, unburied, unloved.
Adam pummeled and kicked and beat the dim flesh responsible, for his own great grief, the sorry life that had been forced upon himself, and the even more sorry death that had befallen his one and only heir, a child whose mere mention had stirred deeply in the new well of loving which Duncan had tapped.
Behind them at the kitchen door, a similar though quieter scuffle ensued as Grant took umbrage with Sean's drunken intentions to defend his Big Brother, who was doing quite well all by himself. So well, in fact, Grant was considering pitching into the fray and rescuing Ram, who did not seem to be mounting anything like an enthusiastic defense.
The two combatants finally hesitated at the far end of the porch, facing off, staggering and panting.
"I want your memories back," Ram said between gasps. "You don't know how to keep them."
"Tell me, Dearest Bitch of Mine," Adam's venom was rendered less authentic by his exhaustion, "What would have happened had you been expecting me in your chamber that terrible night?"
"Believe me, Pup, you don't want to know," Ram spat back.
"As if," Adam's tiredness sapped his wit, "You and what army?"
"Maybe you do want to know," Ram said less viciously, sitting down and wincing as her bruised left hip touched the wood.
"Does that mean you're surrendering?" Adam felt somehow as if she were stealing his victory and he wasn't even done being furious yet. Though, he had to admit, he was too spent to continue the fight just now. He sat down.
Ram lifted her left hand--the right shoulder was not in commission, it seemed. "Unconditionally, Adam, and without prejudice."
"Then my initial command is--" Adam tried to think. Maybe Dear Mom wasn't entirely at fault for his dicey memory. "What I said before."
Ram looked as if she were going to make him expand on this, but she was gracious in defeat and answered the forgotten question. "If you had awakened me first," she paused and rubbed her shoulder, "then I would have been awkward, but I would have made love to you. It wouldn't have been wonderful at first, I was far too frightened of you for that to be possible--"
"Frightened, Ram?"
"You scare me, Adam," Ram looked down at her lap, avoiding his pointed stare. "You always have."
"Why?" Adam could not have been more astonished had the earth stopped on its axis and decided to start going round the other way.
"I suppose because I loved you first, before ever I loved anyone else. I held you in my arms and you took my heart away...and I never missed it at all. I knew all along you would grow up to look like your fathers--father," she corrected herself. "I, I spent a lot of time and thought and planning to work around that, but I could not account for my essential cowardice where that was concerned. Still, if I was very attentive I could manage to fight my way through the ring of terrible brothers which surrounded your every surface and love you, trapped inside, through no fault of your own. I expected that you would become my consort. I hoped that would be so. I envisioned your wise counsel in the High Court. I imagined our sons would bring the World of Man and the Danae together in Holy Alliance to our mutual benefit. I--," Ram paused, remembering far into the past, a hope that had long since died. "You are so fine and fair and your intellect is as keen as the finest blade, Adam. We would have been wonderful together and the world would be far different than it is," she paused again, "and the angels would still bless the earth with their presence...and I would not be damned."
Adam could not speak. He saw another future, as real as this one, spread out before him, lost through one horrific mistake. He heard his mother praising him, heard her longstanding admiration and affection. He heard the truth in her words, saw his entire life laid out in the past, with everything falling into place. Her words had brought him out of Chaos, even as Chaos had delivered him into life and out again. He felt the tears well and spill down his cheeks without even a sob to herald them.
"But," Ram gave him the last of her resources, the last of her comfort, even as she descended into the pit. "But if that had been so, then Barad'n would not have gone to the Western Lands and bedded the metallurgist. And Boedvir would not have sought out Barad'n's son to sire her own babe."
Adam stared at her uncomprehending.
Ram's eyes wrinkled and she chuckled, "Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," she named the aforementioned babe.
And much in the same way as her words had raised up and then murdered his son, they now raised up Adam and set him in the present, hale and whole and without regret.
