Scenes From An Unusual Marriage, 4/A Nest of Echoes, 1

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Galen
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Scenes From An Unusual Marriage, 4/A Nest of Echoes, 1

Post by Galen » Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:36 am

[[This post has two separate titles. The alternate "Nest of Echoes" title is stolen twice. I used it years ago, and the first time I used it, it was stolen from the movie/book "Stir of Echoes."]]

I knew the look in my wife's face. In fact, I knew it well. Happiness that I gave the answer she wanted to hear, together with stern disapproval, because she'd anticipated that I wouldn't. It would take awhile, I knew, for that disapproval to vanish, for Joylah to absorb the fact that I'd answered correctly.

“Not your fault in the slightest,” she said.

“I know,” I replied.

“Her choice.”

“I know.”

“And you're right about it. Not as selfish as his choice, but stupid none-the-less.”

“Mmmhmm. Why do you sound surprised that I realize this?”

“Because I'm used to you blaming yourself for things that aren't your fault.”

I chuckled softly.

“Don't, Galen. Don't chuckle this off.” Her voice was scolding. “You're stirring the nest. Take care you don't get stung.”

“What nest?”

“The nest of echoes. Some of the echoes are even yours. Ours. I know how your mind works, husband. Everything has its echo. Thanatos is Phoebe's echo.” Seeming to change the subject, but only if one didn't know how Joylah's mind worked. I knew, or at least realized, what her real subject was. “You worry she's dead or hurting, and that he'll share her fate.”

She was right of course. I didn't need to say anything.

She kissed me. “I'm sorry I couldn't....”

“It's me, not you.”

“No, mela, it's me too. Back home I could have fixed it if I tried, but...”

“No, you couldn't have. The damage was done years before I met you. It's me. NOW who's blaming herself for things that aren't her fault?”

Her soft kisses on my mouth, my neck. “Fate isn't done with you, love. Even if we were different, you wouldn't have a successor. You don't need one. Your race isn't run. Thanatos won't take up your sword, not because of you, but because he has his own. Thanatos is Thanatos. He isn't you, nor was Phoebe. Don't try to make him you. I know you don't have everything you want, love. I know it bothers you to see people have what you think they don't deserve, especially when you want it too. But you have much more than you ever asked for. You have everything you've ever been completely positive you wanted.” Her voice grew husky, her eyes changed color. “And a fair amount of what you've wanted, but wouldn't admit to wanting.”

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Aranel and I had rented a room in the bath houses of Buccaneer's Den, Trammel. I'd insisted on Trammel. I didn't want a chance, even a slight one, that our time together would be interrupted by her war, by Factions. I had to remind myself of that, that it was her war, not mine. That it would be an insult to her if I tried to supersede her or protect her too much from burdens she was more than willing to carry. The most I could really do was rub her shoulders and her feet. Both literally, and metaphorically, and, like today, both.

It felt strange that I hadn't actually taken my mistress yet. She was, I thought, available to me, but the time had never felt right, and pushing things was definitely wrong. I was not desperate; it was not deprivation that made me seek Aranel's attention. No one could be married to Joylah and honestly claim to be deprived. Aranel, I felt, wasn't comfortable with that side of herself yet. But her naked body, though scarred, was a vision, and she finally felt comfortable showing it to me.

I rubbed her shoulders, and other things, in the near-steaming bathtub we sat in together this afternoon. There had been a difficult stronghold defense just the day prior, which she'd been too caught up in to inform me of. After an hour in the hot bath, Aranel's muscles had finally begun to loosen, and her tension to unwind.

“It's dying, isn't it,” she said, whispered in between soft moans of relief and pleasure, as I rubbed.

“What is.” I knew what she meant, but I asked, still. I'm not sure why.

“The cause. Factions. The world we fight for. There's some more people in Felucca of late, but....But, the world itself is dying.” Like many elves who had lived and worked among humans for a long period, Aranel lived with something close to a human's intensity. But, she was still an elf, still drew her energies from life. And, each passing week, there was less of that left in Felucca.

“I suppose it is.”

“What will we do?”

“I think someone will always fight for that world. For the right reasons, for the wrong....Nothing lasts forever, save the fight. The fight will always go on.”

“But everything will change. Sooner or later.” Aranel was innocent in some ways, experienced in others. She'd seen a lot of death, but it had almost all been right in front of her. The next energy field, the next flame strike, the fate of the Feluccan towns resting in large part on her shoulders. But, right in front of her was about as far as she'd ever had to look. The bigger picture, I think, was something she was just starting to really see. I thought of Watcher, Aranel's wise, quiet, strange mother, and saw in Aranel the echo of her mother.

“I suppose it will. Change is the one constant. Felucca gave way to Trammel. The one God is slowly replaced by the many, I suppose one day the one will replace the many yet again. British's rule from afar replaced, eventually, by Dawn's rule from up close.” I was rambling, but Aranel's attention was still rapt. Whether my ramblings genuinely interested her, or if this was solely the adoring love of a mistress for her married lover, I couldn't guess. “Factions isn't immune to that. Minax is impotent for the moment, Lord British gone, the Shadowlrods dead, the Council of Mages more-or-less defunct. Old ideologies, old powers, give way to new.”

“So what do we do m'Lord.” I probably should have stopped her from calling me that.

“When new powers arise, we'll see the one closest to what we believe, and join it.”

Aranel leaned into me, and sighed a long sigh. She rubbed her naked body against mine, and a soft moan escaped me. “I'm sorry, m'Lord.”

“For not telling me about the defense?”

“For that...For everything. For that the time hasn't come, for that it isn't here now, for your having to listen constantly to a girl drone on and on about a fight that isn't yours. I guess...I guess I'm not a very good mistress.”

“I find you magnificent.”

She blushed, her blush obvious even with her cheeks already flushed from the heat of the bath.

“Thank you for your kind words, m'Lord.”

“I meant them. I love you.”

“I love you. Thank you for being patient.” She somehow leaned even closer, and reached back for me. “It isn't time yet.....But that doesn't mean I'm not your mistress. And....And this is what we do, isn't it. We please our lovers.”

I nodded.

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Tanda hadn't so much as flinched when I'd threatened the life of her client, Polynikes's son Leif, and I knew she knew I meant it. Leif knew I meant it too. Luckily, Leif hadn't killed the bartender, and thus his life would be spared, at least from my hand.

But who had killed the bartender, the unfortunate Mr. McGinn?

I'd suspected at first, very strongly, that it was the Temple of Mondain. That kidnapping Willa, murdering the bartender, and framing the Marshal's son for the murder was part of a campaign to harass, embarrass and generally bring down the Grand Marshal. I'd seen similar campaigns, up close, had been the victim of a few.

But was it really the Temple doing it? The more I thought bout it, the more it seemed at once too direct and too indirect for the Temple, at least based on what I'd seen. (That, of course, meant more historical readings for me, to refine my view of what the Temple was capable of.) Certainly the Temple had kidnapped Willa, but it was far from clear they'd murdered McGinn the bartender and framed Leif. Or, more likely, if they'd been behind it, they'd hired it done rather than done it themselves.

And it wasn't necessarily clear, the more I thought about it, that the Temple was behind the kidnapping of Willa even though they had clearly performed it.

The other things they'd done, they'd made no serious attempt to keep secret. With Leif now acquitted, why not claim responsibility for the murder and brag about our inability to catch them? That was more their style than acting entirely from the shadows, like conventional criminals who were trying to get away with something. So, perhaps, they weren't behind McGinn's murder at all.

So, if not the Temple, then who? Someone perhaps from the Marshal's past. Few who had crossed him had lived to tell the tale, Tanda had told me. “The Marshal and I have that in common,” I'd replied. At first, this seemed to narrow the list of suspects. But then I realized, actually it had been expanded infinitely.

It occurred to me that I didn't actually know that much about Polynikes. I'd need to know more about the Marshal, a lot more, before I so much as had a list of possibilities. And that meant digging up a lot of old graves, listening to a lot of echoes.

Meleria's echoes, old and new, were on my mind as well. There would be more echoes created, I knew, before the matter of Meleria was concluded.

And after that, a promise I'd made to a now-dead woman had to be kept even though I didn't have the taste for it anymore.

And then there was the Demon Conclave, and the elemental titan blood feud, and the threats they all posed. The Minister of Security was keeping things from us again. The Demon Conclave was after something in Lord British's vault. If he'd deigned to tell us what was in there, we might have been able to figure out what they were after, and from that, the why, and from that, all kinds of useful things about the Conclave might have been inferred. I was still convinced that it was possible the elemental titan Pyros was the current head of the Demon Conclave, that we were still all pawns in the titans' blood feud, that Pyros was using the demons as Stratos had used us and Lithos had used the Cult of Styx.

Joylah was right, of course. I was stirring a nest of echoes, and some of the echoes were mine. In a strange way, echoes were extremely dangerous for someone like me. Too many echoes, and you couldn't hear the enemy coming.

But what else was I supposed to do? By now I think no one could any longer believe I was just an antiques dealer.

Joylah had been right about something else too. Fate wasn't done with me, and I was the only one who kept thinking it was.

I thought of Joylah and Aranel and realized I was far, far luckier than most. The way of the warrior was usually a very lonely one, and it had been for me too, for a long time, but it was no longer.
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