Thorn Boy and Other Dreams of Dark Desire (13 page)

Akaten was
brought in, his hands bound before him. As I looked at him, a shred
of emotion came back to me. For a moment, my heart seemed to
squeeze itself of blood, but I forced myself not to look away. He
looked small between his guards, and so thin. His hair was a dusty
rag down his back. Someone read out the charges and then announced
that Akaten had been found guilty of treason, of plotting against
the king’s life. He did not stir himself to contest these
accusations. How can anyone believe it? I thought. Look at him.
He’s pathetic.

Then Alofel
spoke: ‘Akaten, the sentence of the crown is this. You will be
taken from this place, unto the executioner’s yard, and there offer
up your life in penance for your crimes.’

Akaten raised
his head then. I could not see his face, but I did not envy Alofel
having to look at it. ‘You are all barbarians,’ Akaten said. ‘You
have abused me, and my people will not forget this.’

Alofel made a
curt gesture with one hand. ‘Take him away.’

Akaten
struggled a little as the guards attempted to turn him round.
Perhaps at that moment he realised he was about to die. I saw his
eyes frantically scanning the gallery. I knew what he was looking
for. I wanted to run but was held fast in the press of curious
bodies.

Akaten saw me
among the crowd; our eyes locked. His face was that of a lunatic,
without reason or feeling. He uttered a string of obscenities in
Mewtish, among which I recognised my name. Then the guards began to
drag him from the hall.

‘
Darien!’ he screamed. ‘You have cursed yourself! It was me
in the shrine! It was me! Now you send me to my death! The goddess
will not forgive you!’

I could not
move. Mallory’s people all looked at me with interest, perhaps
expecting me to make some last retort. But I could do nothing.
Mallory, leaning forward in her seat at the front of the balcony,
did not even turn her head to glance at me.

The echo of
Akaten’s wails resounded around the chamber for several minutes.
Alofel stared at the doors through which he’d passed. I realised
then that within minutes the person I loved beyond all others would
be dead. The axe would fall. His perfect head would be severed from
his body. I could not bear it.

The pieces of
the body would be shipped back to Mewt. I wandered around in a
daze, barely able to recognise face that I knew. Even the boys kept
their distance from me, watching me with morbid interest, but
realising the sport of taunting me would no longer satisfy them. I
was broken now, truly broken, not even allowed the dignity of
retreat. The palace, which I had loved, became the realm of
hell.

One day,
Porfarryah sought me out. Perhaps she felt concern for me, or like
all the others, only curiosity. ‘You should have poisoned him when
you had the chance,’ she said.

‘
Yes…’ I
sighed.

‘
I can’t
bear this,’ she said.

I glanced at
her. ‘It could easily have been you.’

‘
I
know.’

So she visited
me regularly, attempting to revive the friendship we had once had.
I think she was superstitious about what had happened to me, and
sought to appease the gods by trying to help me. But she could not.
I no longer had the strength even to appreciate her gesture.

Some weeks
after Akaten’s execution, I asked permission from the keeper of the
harem to visit Phasmagore. I needed the solace of the temple, the
quiet wisdom of the priestesses, and did not intend to visit the
inner chambers. Porfarryah accompanied me and we went to make
offerings in one of the shrines together, a gift of twisted flowers
laid upon an altar. Tourists thronged around us. I stared at the
inscrutable countenance of the goddess, robed and chaste in her
nimbus of incense, and said to Porfarryah, ‘I have to go to the
Shrine of Bestowing.’

She looked at
me anxiously. ‘Darien, wait. Leave it a while.’

I shook my
head. ‘No. Now.’

‘
I will
wait at the portal for you,’ she said.

When I entered
into the tunnel of veils at the entrance to the shrine, it was as
if I’d stepped back in time. Dreamily, I hoped that by doing this,
I could somehow erase all that had happened over the last few
months. When I came out again, I would find myself in early summer,
and Akaten would just have arrived at the palace.

It seemed that
it was the same priestess sitting fanning herself with a palm frond
in the ante-chamber. She gave me the pastille and I swallowed it.
Everything happened just the same. I went out into the darkness,
swallowed by the thick shrouds of scented smoke. I found myself
face to face with the naked goddess, who gestured for me to pass
onwards. I went into a small chamber and sat there upon the
cushions, waiting for the one who would come to me.

A shape
appeared in the doorway, limned against the light. All around me, a
thousand panels slid back in the walls. He came towards me and I
stood up. Yes, it was happening, the magic of the shrine was
working. I held out my arms to him, murmured his name.
Come to me, come to me.
He did
so.

I could only
see his eyes, which were lit by a band of light. ‘Darien,’ he said.
‘Don’t you know that I will always be here waiting for you.’

I took his
face in my hands. ‘Beloved. Peace.’

I leaned
forward to kiss him, but he crumpled before me. I was confused, for
I still held his head between my hands. Then I realised. A body lay
at my feet, its severed neck gouting blood. I held only a head in
my hands, a head whose mouth murmured, ‘Kiss me, Darien, kiss
me!’

I began to
scream, and flung the head away from me. It hit the wall and then
rolled across the floor, its accusing eyes still staring up into my
face. ‘But you love me,’ it said.

I remember
nothing more.

That was three
years ago. The severe decline I suffered after my visit to the
shrine meant that I could no longer live at court. Visiting
dignitaries had no desire to bed a gibbering lunatic, even if he
had once been the favourite of the king. The keeper of the harem,
who had some mercy, arranged for me to be cared for in a monastery,
in the hills above Tarnax. I was ill for a long time, and my sanity
returned to me only slowly. I was hidden away, an embarrassment,
forgotten by all. I was lucky. Yes. I could have lived out my days
in the palace as a shunned nobody, an outcast. Here, at least, I
have found a kind of peace.

These
days, I think to myself,
but I am still a
young man.
Is this all my life is to be? I could run
away, no-one would stop me, but where to?

Now, I work as
a servant in the garden and the kitchens of the monastery. It suits
me, for I do not need to talk to anyone except to discuss my
duties. The monks are kind, but they know I am not like them. I
have no faith. Challis Hespereth chose to champion Akaten; me she
despises. Some weeks ago, I spoke to the Abbot here, and told him
my story. I needed his opinion. He nodded slowly, then told me that
he believed I had hallucinated in the shrine, my guilt and fear had
driven me insane. I know this is probably correct, but another,
less rational part of me still doubts. Throughout my relationship
with Akaten, I had wanted to know whether or not he’d been the one
who’d come to me in the shrine, and only at the end did he admit to
it, when it was too late.

Or perhaps
that was a lie.

Yesterday, I
went down to the city for only the second time since I began my
retreat here. I went to the market to shop for spices, and there
walked among the people, envious of their lives. There is a well
there, right in the middle of all the busy stalls. I was thirsty
and walked up to it. A man was standing beside it, drinking from
the metal cup that the well-tender had given him. My heart
convulsed. At that precise moment, the man noticed me. Our eyes
met, and I saw the shock in his expression.

He could not
have been much older than myself. His skin was tawny-gold, and his
long hair hung nearly to his thighs, confined at his neck.

We knew each
other instantly. It was not Akaten. This man looked nothing like
him. I realise that now.

What happens
within the temple is sacred and secret, not be discussed once the
devotions are completed. We must forget what happens there. But
still, I may return to the market soon, and he will be there,
waiting. I know it.

Spinning for
Gold

This story is
the first of a sequence I wrote for a friend of mine while I was
still creating the first Wraeththu book ‘The Enchantments of Flesh
and Spirit’. My friend was feeling low at the time, so I wrote
these pieces to cheer him up. They are retellings of old fairy
stories, with a gay theme, this one being my interpretation of
‘Rumpelstiltskin’. In folk lore, you acquire power over
supernatural creatures, in particular goblins and fairies, when you
learn their true names. Another version of this story can be found
in the Scottish folk tale, ‘Whoopity Stoorie’.

‘
Spinning for Gold,’ is set in the land of Cos, and its king
is called Ashalan, as he is in the Magravandias trilogy, but this
is a distant ancestor of that character. If the Magravandias
stories are set in an Alternate Victorian Age, then these fairy
tales are in the Medieval Age of that world.

This story and
its two ‘sequels’, ‘The Nothing Child’ and ‘Living with the Angel’,
can be seen as different chapters of the same tale.

In the land of
Cos, many years ago, an important master miller lived beside a
deep-flowing river. Widowed when his two children were very young,
he had acquired along with his wealth a tendency to drink and
gamble rather more than was advisable. So much so, that quite
often, his son, Jadrin and his daughter, Amberina, would lie
trembling in their beds at night, waiting for the drunken
homecoming of their father, for it was not unknown for him to
behave irrationally under the influence of liquor. Sometimes,
frenzied at not being able to find the whereabouts of his pipe or
tobacco pouch, he would attack the furniture and even any household
pets or servants who were too slow to move from his path. Having
said that, however, he was not on the whole a cruel father. To be
fair, his faults were merely the children of his grief, which had
never healed completely, and in the faces of his son and daughter,
he could often see the eyes of his dead, beautiful wife looking
back at him; he loved the children passionately. Because of this,
Amberina and Jadrin led a sheltered, luxurious life, which in
creatures of weaker character would have led to them being
altogether spoiled and petulant.Amberina and Jadrin, however, were
gentle, kindly souls, without any evil temperament. Quite content
in each other’s company, the siblings spent most of their time in
the great forest on the east side of the River Fleercut, or else
scampering over the rolling, bosomy hills to the west, beyond which
lay Ashbrilim, the city of the king; a place where they had never
ventured.

Alike as
twins, even though two years separated their births, they had both
inherited their mother’s dark, midnight hair and lustrous eyes.
Visitors to the mill-house commented on their beauty to their
father, although those of more sensitive nature could sometimes not
easily repress an eerie shudder whilst looking into those
fathomless eyes and forest-wise faces. Friends of the miller might
comment to each other, over mugs of ale, in taverns far from the
mill-house, that all was not right with the miller’s children.

‘
They
spend too much time out in the moonlight,’ one might say, as if to
explain their white, white skin.

‘
And too
much time in the forest.’ another might add, as if to explain their
mossy hair and shadowed smiles.

Sometimes, in
an attempt to bring Amberina and Jadrin out into the real world,
some well-intentioned neighbour might send their own children to
encourage the miller’s progeny to enjoy more natural childish
pastimes, but the other children always went home fearful and
anxious. If their parents should question them, wondering if the
miller’s children had deliberately frightened them, they would
always answer no. Amberina and Jadrin, though strangely distant,
were always polite and friendly to visitors, leading them into the
forest glades and weaving their hair with flowers. No, it was not
fear exactly. The children could never explain exactly what it was
that made sleep come with difficulty for several nights after a
visit to the mill.

It was early
summer and Jadrin had just celebrated his sixteenth birthday. Soon
Amberina would be fourteen years old. Their birthdays were very
close together, both born under the sign of the moon and the water.
After a large and cheerful tea-time, enjoyed only with the servants
(as the miller had been gone to the city for some days,) the two
youngsters went hand in hand, down to the reedy edge of the river,
some yards south of the tall, lichened mill-house, where the stream
widened into a deep, dark pool overhung with waving willows. They
knelt down in the soft, damp earth and gazed into the water, not
yet brilliant with the reflection of stars, but lazily roiling,
dark as if with unspoken secrets. Jadrin sighed and leaned out over
the pool. Amberina moved quickly to untie his hair from the black
ribbon at the back of his neck, so that the raven waves, like water
itself, fell to kiss the surface of the pool, floating out like
weed into the dusk. ‘I feel a strange heaviness about me,’ Jadrin
murmured in a soft, sad voice.

‘
It is
only your own hair floating in the stream,’ Amberina answered,
mischievously.