This story is a work of fiction. It contains a description of and references to sexual behaviour between adults and children, along with expressions of physical affection. If you find this type of story offensive, or if you are underage and it is illegal for you to read it, please exit now. All characters are fictional and in no way related to any persons living or deceased. Any such similarity is purely coincidental and uncanny.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced in any form without the specific written consent of the author. It is assigned to the Nifty Archives under the provisions of their submission guidelines but it may not be copied or archived on any other site without the direct consent of the author.
I do not know how well-received these chapters are. The only clues I get are emails from readers. Like the story? Hate it? Have liked it since its emergence? Feel it is getting too obsessive? Not Tarantino enough? Let me know. I can be contacted at Bookwyrm6@yahoo.com
Special thanks to Rob for editing.
Copyright 2003 Kristopher R. Gibbons. All rights reserved by the author.
32 This Unprevailing Woe
Claudius: We pray, you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe; and think of us
As of a father: for let the world take note
You are the most immediate to our throne;
And with no less nobility of love
Than that which dearest father bears his son
Do I impart toward you.
Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2, lines 105 ff.
A serene Priestess and a subdued Quillmaster returned to Evendal after nearly a bell's absence.
The King sat in soft-voiced conference with Master Fillowyn and Jaserle of the Rosette. Master Fillowyn had what was proving to be a near perpetual look of incredulity, matching Jaserle's at that moment, as Evendal's face glowed and one hand chopped the air in passionate emphasis. After the two women performed their courtesies and seated themselves, the King made introductions and returned to his argument.
"This is one time where the will of the masses and the immediate self-interest of all parties have no weight. As Lord Absolute of the Thronelands, We shall summon, interview, and commission suitable members of the Rosette -- and the Cinqet -- to the Judex Oseidh."
"You will provoke revolt," Jaserle insisted, "as well as endanger those you appoint! This is unconscionable!"
Unperturbed, Evendal responded, "True, it is without resort to Our conscience. It is necessary, nonetheless. And you are wrong, Goodman Jaserle. Our rule shall continue unchallenged."
"Your Majesty," Fillowyn protested. "You would have to train such commoners, oversee their judgements, correct and restore from their errors. And what would restrain their bitter reprisals when a neighbour who had wronged or failed them sought the King's justice from them?"
"Justice, my honoured advisors, is never easily provided, nor always recognised. And Fillowyn, We are well aware that many of those rendered t'bo by the duumvirate were gentry quite capable of quiddities(121). They would require little training. And should Our summons bring worthies who are not so apt, We shall still consider them soberly.
"We shall not be able to accomplish Our intention unless the weather grants Us a day or two of warmth. So this 'invitation to destruction' you anticipate may not come to pass until spring. No, do not look so relieved. What that bodes for Osedys is expense and expenditure, good Fillowyn. And for the Rosette, an escalating of hostility, good Jaserle, and in wintertime besides."
Jaserle appeared almost smug. "Winters have always been a season of respite for us, Your Majesty, as the Stonewrights did not feature bestirring themselves to brave the cold and pursue their aims with the same diligence other times provoked. As our likeliest irritants now are folk of the same neighbourhoods and the same mettle, I do not anticipate unique behaviour from them."
The King of Osedys shook his head in dismay. "You no longer have the enemies of the past to unify you, and little in common but your past pains and grievances to dish out to each other and feed upon. And with liberty restricted by weather and not another's will..."
"You do not know the stalwart heart of our community, Your Majesty. Our unity bears no seam."
Evendal m'Alismogh could hear a reverberation in Jaserle's speech, as though the words were an echo and bespoke themselves without any requisite thought on the elder's part. Then the King realised it was so in actuality: Jaserle spoke without reflection, defending his people against the perception of a flaw. Evendal could have accused the Rosette of being like all Hramal, certainly the most nonsensical of accusations and, unthinking, Jaserle would have countered, assuming a slight.
"What did Your Majesty mean that greater expenditures would result?" Master Fillowyn inquired. The King had known what would most affect the Chancellor's opinion.
"Either We turn to the manorlords for the dispensing of justice and equity to those outside of their demesne, granting them ungainly influence, or We permit the same people who failed their vows and their financial obligations toward the Throne to continue to oppress Our people and claim Our taxes and fees."
The emissary of the Rosette scowled. "Can you not invest select Guard to so perform? Can you not sing these magistrates to just and honourable action?"
"Tried and proven Guard are too few now, after Our winnowing, to accomplish the former." The King of Osedys grinned slightly. "And were We to do the latter, then indeed would revolt eventuate." He saw no reason to reveal that such was also beyond him.
"Nine years of parasitic misrule and Throne-sanctioned slaughters failed to stir your sheeplike people! What makes you think simple justice would?"
"There is nothing simple to justice or right governance. It is not what people want but it is what they need, and spelling all of the Sixty-Six would not provide it."
"You mean that you do not wish to try," Jaserle challenged.
"We have said what We mean. We would be quite blissful and grateful to your greater insight, good Jaserle, were you to enlighten Us on how to evoke compassion in the self-involved(122), perception in the obsessive, temperance in the profligate, and integrity in the passive and pliable. We beseech you to relieve that poverty in Our wisdom."
Jaserle gave no reply.
"No." Evendal did not relent. "You challenged Us. Respond. Do you know what would happen were We to make all magisters and saemonds will-less... engines?"
"That is not what I asked of you, Your Majesty."
"A songspell is only as malleable as Our words and will in congress. The immediate circumstance, the felt need, and the range of meaning possible in the words used -- when words are used -- all conspire. And limit. So, yes, that is what you asked of Us."
M'Alismogh had thought long and deep on his capability. Casting a compulsion on one person or one group to perform a specific action, or to choose between two responses, required one equally specific, intentionally evanescent songspell. This was not equivalent to casting an anticipatory glamour such as Jaserle proposed. While speaking the truth, Evendal did not elaborate on what was, for him, the most cogent argument: He had learned the ethical failure in using his 'gift' to continually coerce behaviour when he stifled the sharp tongue of Mar-Depalai. Begin with his justiciars and where would he stop? Why would he stop?
"I did not know, in as much as I do not know how you accomplish what you accomplish, Your Majesty."
"Yet you cast aspersions on Our good sense, Our perception, Our authority. All in order that We might not require honourable service from citizens in the Rosette."
"Your Majesty mistakes my intent!"
Evendal's left eyebrow rose over a lambent eye in jaded amusement. "No, good Jaserle. We most certainly do not. Your purpose is a clarient litany in Our ear. Your insults mean less than warming air on a cold day.
"You want Justice without committing Our people of the Rosette to its exercise. You fear yet another tie binding the Rosette to the rest of Osedys. Know you that We are Lord in Osedys and the Thronelands?"
Momentarily confused by the seeming non sequitur, Jaserle replied, "I know that well, and wish Your Majesty long reign over your people."
Evendal gazed obliquely at the emissary, still amused. "As Lord Absolute of the Thronelands, were We to summon all of Our peoples to Our side, do you truly forecast that the denizens of the Rosette would not be in the vanguard?"
Jaserle ruminated on that for a time. "I just want... I want all the losses, the foulness we endured..." He stopped, patently unable to encompass his pain and hope in words. "I will march my people out to Alta before I allow one more Thronelander to harm or threaten them."
"Answer Our question, Jaserle."
Grudgingly, the armless man complied. "Their past travail and present hardships notwithstanding, the main still account themselves your subjects, Your Majesty."
"Then on two matters are you and your sovereign in accord: We agree and pledge that, should harm from their fellow citizens undeservedly threaten any of them, We will put the Rosette under Royal escort to Alta."
"And the second accord?"
"That you are Our people. Thronelanders."
Jaserle opened his mouth, caught the now humourless gaze of his liege, and closed it. As deputy to the Rosette, he served the weal -- and to some degree the will -- of those people, by serving the will of their liege. In their current condition, it would not serve the well-being of the Rosette to demand a status that was separate but equal to the urban Thronelanders. And Jaserle knew that by the time his people could speak from a position of health and strength, they would not see any worth in such a distinction. This King would accomplish the Rosette's assimilation simply by being decent and just, and Jaserle had no honest or honourable recourse. He merely stood as proxy, procurator for a body of individuals and families, a time-honoured legal and political fiction abetted by the Throne of Osedys. The isolation, the special estate, of the Rosette was a legal and political fiction that the Throne refused to entertain, and therefore carried no weight and held no validity; without Royal imprimatur, it would remain only a personal fancy of Jaserle's.
Conflicted, worried, he turned his gaze to the insensible breathing mystery pillowed in a nest of bedclothes in the King's lap. The Heir had endured two years of physical and psychic torture, isolation, and degradation. If the most persistent and resistant rumours were true, he had died protecting the present sovereign - only to be restored by that puissant majesty's impassioned command. When Jaserle had heard of Kri-estaul's sudden trek to the very sanctum sanctorum of the Temple, he fully expected to spend the bells of his next Royal Audience offering consolations.
Wonder encompassed Kri-estaul and it gave off the odour of a virile, hard-won healing; the wages of the child's unique survival had been pain. A favourite saying among the gentry ran, 'Life does not deal what you cannot endure,' a sentiment no one among the Rosette was fool enough or blind enough to harbour. The ability to endure suffering was not a virtue, nor did having a history of overcoming travail make one virtuous or wise. And yet the manner in which Kri-estaul just managed to outlive tormentors, assassins, and his body's betrayals filled Jaserle with a troubling awe for the boy. The emissary to the Stonehaulers failed to see how he himself held the same inexplicable talent for survival.
Feeling that he looked on the face of his people's best hope and advocate, a seated Jaserle declined his back in a seated bow, gripping his walking staff hard in his remaining hand.
"Yes, Your Majesty. On those two matters I must grudgingly concede. We need you and know we must rely on you.
"There is another matter I have been pressed to approach Your Majesty, and His Highness, on."
"Say on," Evendal bade. "Should We awaken Our son to address this matter now?"
"'Tis well to let him rest. It is for a trifle, but I have been assailed, repeatedly implored, to petition Your Most August Majesty, until I finally consented."
"What roars so in their blood?"
"They would a trifle, as I said."
Evendal did not understand. "A trifle?"
"Some counterfeit presentment of yourself and your son. Some credible relief from which they can themselves fashion likenesses and remembrances."
Immediately, Evendal's early childhood flowed to the forefront of his thoughts. Occasions when someone braved the cordon of Guard to touch him, to grab and savage his clothes for some token that might, through wish-craft, prove therapeutic. Where Evendal saw desperation, his father alternated between rage at the affront, amusement at the stupidity of the canaille, and pride that the focus of all the fervour was his golden-eyed son. Feeling hemmed in, incredulous at the shouts, the demands for his intercession, from people who saw only the princely blue raiment and the hint of molten sun under abashed eyelashes.
"No," without prologue, without apologia.
Jaserle persisted. "You will not bend your neck to grant this most innocent of loyal ambitions?"
"Innocent? You are old enough to recall the mayhem that ensued when some moonstruck fool insisted Our golden eyes imbued anything We touched with the virtue of healing."
"How does that touch on their desire to know the face of their Lord, the man who has saved them from slow and ignoble death? Their desire to show their acknowledgement of the promise for their future good fortune that is His Highness?"
"It will not stop at that," Evendal predicted.
Jaserle shrugged. "What is that to Your Majesty? A king has no power over what others choose to do with his generosity. It is mete for a king only that he be generous. If they gild your semblance, bronze it, melt it, spill blood or swash on it or toss it over the cliff at the winter equinox, that is their decision, as are the consequences that must follow. They ask of Your Grace, and the asking itself is an ensign of both their gratitude and their wisdom."
Evendal looked askance. "You want Us to accede?"
"As Jaserle, no," he answered frankly. "As the Rosette, yes. You would be encouraging the very thing you battle us over: the perception of unity, of conviviality, of mutuality, 'twixt the Rosette and Osedys."
"How so?"
"By showing you both guard and regard them, even in their most unmannerly worship. That you do not despise their love or their hope for your heir."
Given that perspective, Evendal wanted to grind his teeth. "Very well. We shall petition the Typika. But with these strictures: It shall not be larger than life, or militant of countenance. No paint, nor jewels for eyes. At the first violet, the first sprig of rosemary or bit of thyme that touches it, the eikon gets reduced -- whether wood, bronze, copper or silver -- to an arm that you will wear from sunrise to sunrise unceasing!"
Jaserle declined his head again, his day's duties accomplished. "As you will it, Your Majesty."
The next few days saw a worsening in the weather and an improvement in Kri-estaul's stamina and demeanour. Having awoken morning after morning to Evendal's hugs, and every afternoon to his heartfelt smile and greeting, the boy came to accept his father's constancy quickly. Repeatedly, the Heir would refuse naps or bed-rest to stay in the Royal lap. One ramification of such abuse that Evendal had not foreseen emerged as Kri-estaul adjusted to an ever-present wellspring of messages guaranteeing safety and loving-kindness: Kri-estaul seemed to crave his father's body.
The first afternoon, the Royal Heir had just stirred from a prescribed but unsuccessful bell of bed-rest. Evendal had bundled him onto his lap and was discommoded by his son's hand wandering under his tunic. Like the most deft of cutpurses, Kri-estaul had undone two inlaid fasteners in Evendal's overtunic and a single button on his tunic without alerting his father. Then his hand had wormed its way through the layers of cloth to tickle like a frosty cobweb against the skin of the King's belly.
At first the King supposed the child sought to warm his hands against the room's persistent chill. For a while the wilful appendage remained above Evendal's waist, alternately rubbing his stomach and his side in slow, idle circles.
Lord Evendal ald'Menam began to address the Best Mate of the Maritime Councillor, tendering his regret that King and Heir could not brave the weather to visit Alekrond as yet.
"Your Majesty." The weather-toughened man spoke as though oblivious of the odd interplay between King and Heir. "This season is not being kind to Master Alekrond. He is prostrated temporarily, else he would be here himself."
Evendal felt a frisson of dread at the Best Mate's news. "Let all take note, all things seen and unseen bear witness, that We desire health of heart and main to Our friend Alekrond."
The man bowed acknowledgement and continued. "It is with such an understanding that he directed me to remind you of the hope you once offered him. And to say that he is in desperate need of its speedy fulfilment."
The King stared out the window at the drear grey clouds with their suggestion of snow. The weather limited Evendal's practical responses. He needed to execute his foster mother soon, lest winter imprison him with a creature of almost noumenal influence. He needed to retrieve Alekrond's heir from wherever this worthy had hied to. Proud and mindful, Alekrond would not send a messenger such as his Best Mate were his need not dire. But Evendal would not be forsworn in his word to his own son.
In that moment, with uncomfortable effect, Kri-estaul's hand graduated wilfully downward. Evendal had managed to ignore his own threatening tumescence at the hand's felt wanderings and treat sensibly with Alekrond's Best Mate. When the small hand tried to burrow its way between the belt of his tunic and his skin to reach his groin, Evendal held the cloth-hidden miscreant immobile with a seemingly unthinking gesture.
"Tell friend Alekrond that We heed his word and hear his need, and shall act with all dispatch."
Alekrond's second bowed once, and once again at the door, and left.
The King glanced about him. The length of Drussilikh's visits had diminished of late; earlier in the day she had offered to present the King's good wishes to the Lord of the Tinde'keb. Aldul, seated behind the bed, had refused to change his habit of attendance after his crises of nerves, but Evendal sadly noticed an even greater tendency toward silence and reserve in the Kwo-edan. Anlota sat to Evendal's right, with Ierwbae standing behind an unsteady Metthendoenn. Danlienn attended. Falrija manned the doorway. When Evendal raised his hand to signal a halt in the influx of visitants, Falrija nodded and waited.
"Aldul, Mother Anlota, Ierwbae, Metthendoenn, and ubiquitous Danlienn, please grant Us half a bell of privacy with Our son."
The five consented and left the room. When Evendal thought them out of hearing range, he looked meditatively at a timorous Kri-estaul. What did it mean that his son just gotten him hard? Despite the sick twisting in his gut, Evendal forced himself to address his son's behaviour. He could think of nothing he had done or said to justify the unsettling liberty that Kri-estaul had taken.
"Please remove your hand, my son."
Kri-estaul's limb retreated with alacrity.
"What did you want from your actions just now, Kri? What did you hope for?"
After an extended quiet that told Evendal m'Alismogh nothing, Kri-estaul shrugged one shoulder.
"Were you curious?"
A second shrug, followed by a negating twist of the head.
"Were you warming your hand? Feeling bored?"
Kri-estaul shook his head again.
"Won't you talk with me about this?"
"Can't," Kri-estaul mumbled.
And Evendal, helpless, knew that he had taxed his son's courage with that confession alone.
"Well. Please do not do that again. Or anything like it." He did not know what else to say, and so father and son rested in disparate silences. Kri-estaul's silence stayed a part of him throughout the day, despite Evendal's efforts later to cajole him out of it.
Readying himself and his son for the night had returned to a routine. A chat on whatever entered their heads at the time. A careful carting to the jakes, now that Sygkorrin had sanctioned such movement. A few sips of warm chamomile tea. Evendal added to the logs in the nearest fireplace, settled in beside Kri, draped an arm over his son as tight as he dared and kissed him on the forehead before closing his glowing eyes for sleep.
The embrace of Hypnos held Evendal fast when shaking and rustling noises pulled at his awareness. He disregarded the externals until they faded away, for in his dream he was back home. His love sat at his side gazing on him with tolerant amusement. The look and attitude rent Evendal's dream-rider's calm with its sweet familiarity. Every line and curve of the other person begged for belief in its solidity; the raven-wing blackness of the long hair so obsessively cleaned, the dimpling under the cheekbone alone one side of the face, the tanned skin and the weather-born wrinkling around sloe-black eyes. The scent of tar and river fog that could never quite be ignored.
The urge for tears was great. "Are you...? You're not truly here." A part of his consciousness knew itself in dream.
The phantasm moved readily out of its relaxed pose and sat forward, sable eyes aglitter in the mimicry's torchlight. All good humour fled its countenance, replaced by a haunted, haunting pain and a starveling's fierce need.
"Yes and no, my heart. I have missed you so. It has driven me too near madness!" The voice was as Evendal remembered it, and its passion set his bones to aching.
A blink of a shut eye and his view changed. His beloved's sable locks swayed up and down repeatedly over his middle as he felt the wet warmth of that precious mouth on his hardness. The lips pursed tighter than he recalled, the throat likewise more snug. "No, no." he protested, forgetful of the circumstance, confusedly thinking only that completing coitus would put him to sleep when he did not want to sleep, to lose awareness of his lover.
His denial and the pause that ensued woke Evendal up. Briefly he struggled to recall all the elements that made up his oh so realistic intimate: clean black hair, onyx eyes, hungry gaze, still lingering warmth...
"What?" He gripped at bedclothes that were no longer at hand and turned bleary eyes toward his feet. A bundled-up ovoid he could also feel pressed against his left thigh, bobbing frantically over his groin. The shock of awakening so, with his surmise at the fellator's identity, preceded the realisation that his dream and the present reality had conspired to bring him dangerously close to climax.
Distraught on more than one level, Evendal felt less than patient. He kicked the remainder of the coverings from his legs and used his right foot to push the fellator backward off of his bouncing, suddenly cold, member. Surprised, the aggressor's teeth scraped the glans as he toppled, at which Evendal winced but accounted it a small wage to pay. The King did nothing for several breaths, willing his excitement to diminish, waiting on his body's urgency to ease. The thought of what had almost transpired accomplished both goals.
Evendal felt furious and heartsore from his dream loss, and sick to his stomach at what he woke to.
"What did you think you were about?" Evendal barked. He sat up, dropping his feet onto the cold floor. The egg-shaped lump quickly shed bedding and pulled itself up to and over the edge of the bed. Alarmed, Evendal stood and shouted, "Kri, stop!"
Training in submission and obedience won out over any other consideration, so Kri-estaul lay flat on the cool floor, motionless but for gasps and sobs forced out of his mouth by the bellows of his lungs. In a trice, Evendal knelt at his son's side, ignoring the child's flinch.
Gingerly, the King felt over Kri-estaul's arms. "Are you hurt?" he asked, the glow from his eyes highlighting the red in Kri-estaul's cheekbones. "Does your head or back hurt?"
"Please, Papa! I'm bad. I can't help it. But will never, ever, bother you again. Please, Papa! Please! I'm sorry. Don't hurt me. Please!"
"Kri-estaul," Evendal snapped, out of sorts, "I do not want to hear you talk like that. Ever. Are you hurt?" Alerted by the volume to Kri-estaul's litany, a Guard stepped in from the doorway; the King waved him to stand at rest.
The child calmed enough to sniffle honestly, "No."
"Then let me get you back under some covers, this floor is too cold." He suited action to word and tucked the bedding under his son, essentially cocooning and immobilising the boy before he could protest. A thick robe draped one of the chairs; this Evendal grabbed and wrapped around his chilled frame before sitting down beside his son.
Back when he executed Nisakh, Evendal had anticipated that the very presence of the criminal might invoke self-degrading habits from Kri-estaul. He had been pleasantly relieved when no such turpitude emerged. Apparently it had simply been delayed. After threshing his mind for any incident that might have succeeded where Nisakh's presence and poison failed, Evendal could find no candidate. He did not know how to even approach this situation.
"What moved you to siphon me?"
Kri-estaul gave no answer.
"You professed nothing but shame at having to do so to anyone. Why did you suckle on me?"
The child tried to squirm further under the bedclothes. The King held the cloth, and the child, in place.
"Kri-estaul, why did you suckle on me so?" Evendal m'Alismogh insisted a third time.
The answer dragged itself from the boy's lips. "I needed you," and nothing more.
Evendal knew his son spoke truth; Kri-estaul acted out of a need for him. But not from the sexual impulse of the obsessed, and not from some adolescent curiosity or imposed libidinous impulse. Lust did not motivate Kri-estaul, but Evendal did not know what did.
Flummoxed, the King fleetingly wondered what bell it was, and just as quickly decided it did not matter. He sent a Guard to tender his apologies and beg his friends' attendance in his quarters.
Metthendoenn arrived first, black hair tousled, face damp from refreshing himself. Ierwbae shadowed him. Wordlessly, Evendal directed that Anlota's nephew remain just outside the door, then returned his gaze to his motionless son. Aldul, with careful steps, entered soon after.
"Brothwek," the King called to the Guard at the door. "Please move a chair by the hearth again and pull a rug from the chest. Then retrieve the carved soapstone warming on the mantle for Aldul's knees."
The Guard complied.
Kri-estaul watched his father with fear, uncertain what the King intended by having summoned others. Though he continued to hold the child immobile, Evendal gave the appearance of attending to his companions' comforts.
"One more imposition, good Brothwek. Would you pour some of that Haiperret lager? For yourself as well. Our brother Prince, Murlesnad, included some with his warning to Us regarding Onkira. We might as well enjoy it. Even kept in Our chilliest caverns it would not survive the winter."
Metthendoenn took a cautious sip, and then a more appreciative quaff. "I am surprised it did not go sour simply from the journey south. Ale usually does not travel well."
"Brews out of Arkedda are the exception, you'll find," Evendal commented. "After the jugs are sealed they are heated lightly, most craftily, and only then packed in ice for shipping or storage."
Having observed the child's poorly masked distress, and the downward turn to Evendal's mouth, Aldul interrupted the patter. "So, how is it with Kri-estaul?"
That the Kwo-edan knew the cause for his summons, and did not address the child when he had been granted that privilege, was not lost on Evendal. He did not answer immediately, choosing instead to confront his son first. "Kri, I do not know -- with any certainty -- what impelled your aggression. And I need to learn it. I requested these two from among our friends because they have known trials similar to your own, and so could best advise us while not presuming to judge you. I did not call them here to shame you or advertise your misdeeds. Have I ever lied to you?"
Too soft for the others to hear, Kri-estaul confirmed, "No."
"And I am not about to start. I hope that this is acceptable to you, but I shall confer with them whether it is or not."
Evendal turned his attention to his companions. "Aldul. Metthendoenn. Yesterday during audiences Kri-estaul surprised me by reaching inside my clothes and working to grasp my member. When I became aware of what he was doing, I ordered a recess and asked him in confidence to explain his actions, but he would not. My impression was that he only half understood his motives and did not want to admit what little he did understand. He did confess to a fear he could not convey, and could only say that he needed to hold me. I bade him not touch me so."
"And he repeated his actions just now?" Metthendoenn inquired, nobly suppressing a grin.
Evendal was not amused. "Metthendoenn, think. Would you want me to find your past violation trifling, farcical?"
Chastened, Metthendoenn demurred. "No indeed. Forgive me, Your Majesty."
"That is not my name, Metthendoenn."
"Forgive me, Evendal."
"Tonight, he progressed to swallowing my, er, oar(123). These are not actions that need to be posted on every Crier's Post, but neither is it haviour I can fathom alone."
"He may not be able to explain what he feels, but... Consider his training," Aldul began.
"In what way?"
Aldul struggled verbally toward an understanding. "He knows how to serve. How to submit. He knows, however wrongly, that he is scum. Not that he has done anything evil, but that he is evil simply because that is his essence, his core."
"Shame?" Metthendoenn rallied.
Aldul nodded. "Kri-estaul? Kri-estaul?"
With exaggerated slowness, Kri-estaul turned his head to stare sleepy-eyed at the Kwo-edan. He so wanted to hide, to disappear, to go to sleep and never wake up. His saviour did not, could not love him. He was twisted, a legless doorstop. He wanted to be able to do something right, just once. He would give his heart and blood to refrain from troubling or ruining the lives of those around him.
"Are you tired?" Aldul asked.
Kri-estaul shrugged. "I guess so."
The King explained, "That is how he was yesterday. Afraid to speak. All head gestures."
Again Aldul nodded. "I will describe feelings and thoughts to you. You lift a finger if I have held the mirror up to your own feelings. Will you do that for me?"
Evendal sat back, releasing his grip on the cloth restricting his son's movements.
Kri-estaul blinked a few times and then shrugged slightly.
Aldul dragged Kri's hands from under the coverlet and began. "Everywhere he looks now, he is told how great he is. We all tell him and try to show him that we love him. He has come to believe us." Kri-estaul started to raise his right index finger, then reconsidered.
Aldul nodded. "This has gotten scary. It is also a burden. Right now any expectation just hurts." Kri-estaul lifted the same finger, without hesitation.
"What do you mean 'expectation'?" Metthendoenn asked. "Since when was showing love a demand on the one loved?"
But Evendal shared sad gazes with Aldul and offered his own answer to the question. "It was never anything else in my family. But if you know, in your heart, that you are not worth the efforts of others, then their every gesture of love is a burden of responsibility on you. The responsibility of seeming worthy of the love given, even though you know your effort is doomed from the outset because you are innately... dung. That innate sense is rooted in the heart; it yields a weariness of despair and pain indescribable."
Evendal stopped and looked down to see that Kri-estaul had raised his palm up, fingers wide.
"Oh, Kri! Suffer but a little longer and I promise you this shall pass as surely as the season does."
Kri-estaul squirmed again to burrow under the covers.
"Yes," Aldul echoed, a wistful expression crossing his face, "this shall pass."
"But whence this strange impulse to assault my sex?"
"What was he about before he went after you?"
"He was still awakening from his nap."
"Had he slept?"
"Ye... no. He had been too restless. More often awake than asleep. Both days."
Metthendoenn interjected, "And where were you as he rested?"
"Sitting in my chair at his bedside."
Metthendoenn wasted no time in engaging the boy. "Kri-estaul, do you love your Papa?"
The question mobilised the child to straighten and peer up at the Guard's face. "Yes! Yes, I do! I do!"
"I believe you," Metthendoenn assured. "Tell me what you do for your Papa."
A long pause ensued, then Kri-estaul shouted, "I don't know!"
"How do you show him that you love him?"
Kri-estaul grabbed at the counterpane, wanting to hide, unable to answer. Evendal fought the urge to weep.
"Then tell me what you can do for your Papa. What might you do?"
After a prolonged silence, Kri-estaul whispered, "I thought... I thought there was one thing I could do. But I couldn't even do that right!"
"What made you think he would want that?"
Again Kri-estaul said nothing, and Metthendoenn realised his error in asking the wrong question. The child had not been thinking.
"Did you know he wanted that from you?" Kri-estaul shook his head in negation. "Did he ask it of you?" And again the child shook his head. "Did he hint...?"
"I didn't know what else to do!" Kri-estaul cried out, his tongue suddenly freed of constraint. "What else can I do? It's all I'm good for! I'm ugly! I'm dumb! I'm a paperweight! Bad! Ugly and bad! Useless! Everyone's nice to me. Sweet. When I can't do anything! A damn burden, like my legs! I just want to help! To really help! Just one thing."
"You are no burden," Metthendoenn intoned.
Evendal agreed. "You are no burden."
"Kri-estaul, you are no burden," Aldul echoed.
"You are not ugly!" Evendal insisted.
"You are not dumb!" Aldul affirmed.
"And you are not bad, nor a paperweight," Metthendoenn hissed. "You are not a doorstop. You are a good, sensitive, loving boy." He looked up at his King. "I tentatively offer that more is involved here, Your... Evendal."
Evendal did not know if he could face any more. "Like what?"
Aldul nodded at Metthendoenn and answered for him. "Isolation, my friend. It set Kri-estaul on an unhealthy course of thought and feeling. And can only continue to do so."
"But he has not been isolated," Evendal protested. "He remains at my side day and night, nor would I have it otherwise."
Metthendoenn shot a quick glance Aldul's way, which the Kwo-edan mirrored. "When you were a child, who held you, slapped you, or gathered you up when you hurt, Your Majesty?"
"No one. Onkira would when... on... You know when. Occasionally Wytthenroeg would offer a brief embrace -- I was ever a spare lad -- or give me a kiss on the cheek or forehead. Why?"
Aldul took up the issue. "You do not know the virtues in affectioned touch. To be held by someone safe as well as lovingly disposed benefits both people. More to the point here, it assuages anxieties. We may be in error, yet 'tis an error that can do little harm. His seclusion for those two years was extreme. The remedy may need to be as well. Treat him as your arm, just that far from you and never farther. He may need your body's closeness."
Metthendoenn's face lit up with realisation. "Yes! His assault on you served two purposes. To do what he knew to do, what had been required of him for two years, so that it might offset the void(124) of shame in him and his feelings of uselessness. And to gain the reassurance of touch, of tangible affection. I wager that what triggered tonight's actions was either your moving away from him on the bed, or a sour dreaming, or both."
Caught up in the round of speculation, Evendal's gaze had wandered away from Kri-estaul, upward and to the right of his field of vision. Kri-estaul thrust his arms out to reach for Evendal, then quickly folded them back against his hunched-up torso and whimpered. Just as swiftly, Evendal pulled his son from the bed and, momentarily heedless of the boy's misbehaviour, settled him against his bony chest, within the folds of his heavy robe.
"Don't leave me! Please? Don't ever leave me. I'll do good." Kri-estaul heard himself babbling, promising anything just so his comforter stayed, just so his Papa held him just so, in the circle of this warmth and strength and safety.
"Shhh. I won't. Thunders! How many times have I thought on the two years you spent in thorough solitude, and never fathomed what that truly meant for you! To know no touch but in rapine, or the touch of vermin." Evendal tilted his son's head to meet his eyes. "Foul or fair, you are worth more than every pearl I have, Kri-estaul. Foul or fair. Is that what sets you off? Your dreams have me abandoning you?" The child strove in vain to hide his head, which served as answer enough for the King. "Never, Kri-estaul!" But Evendal well comprehended the irrationality that lingered from a dream's miasma. Kri might know and trust Evendal's steadfastness, but that knowing was not even a whisper from the back of the room when emotion roared.
The King looked to his friends. "Not so long ago, I sang his freedom from patent disbelief in his own worthiness. That glamour seems to have had absolutely no effect. Any thoughts on why?"
Aldul tendered, "Perhaps his age is a factor. As a child, words have a... significance that is different in kind from what they have for adults. Just as a parent has to instruct a son or daughter several times to perform a chore before their words are heeded, so, perhaps, with your songspells."
"His command of the language interferes?"
"Not so much," Metthendoenn offered. "More the language's command of him. The command that language has over a child having eight years is less than the power it has over an adult. And his heart and mind have six years, not eight, rendering him more prone to insecurities that one encompassing eight years would consider trifling."
"Why not simply ask me for an embrace? And in what other ways can I present myself as pliable, amenable to his needs? When will he let me know when he has been frighted or troubled? Sweeten it however you want -- he treated me tonight as he once did Nisakh!"
Aldul, still feeling numb from his own turmoil, nonetheless recognised that his friend was approaching his limits. The King struggled to instil a remedy for the degenerative custom, the very habitude that the child had just enacted upon him. The priest suspected that the child's actions this night struck at the core of Evendal's vulnerabilities, his own anxieties. Aldul considered his first objective to reassure his friend, while disdaining falsehood. Any healing or helping of Kri-estaul, which was the King's first objective, could only succeed if it came through the royal voice and virtue.
"You are his Papa, Evendal. He doesn't see you as his gaoler. You fill a need he has that is older than his capture. Older than this degradation. Remember, Kri-estaul lost his natal father at Mausna, seasons before his nabbing. Yes, his behaviour would worry anyone, Evendal. But it might prove a good sign."
"How?"
"He spent two years ignoring his own needs, the demands of his heart and body, in order that he might survive. Such habits do not cease on their own. He no doubt kept silent about his needs to avoid further taunting and torture. Although the danger, or threat of pain, is past, abstention has become a habit." Aldul stared at a Kri-estaul who stared back in confusion.
Evendal sensed both that Aldul was not finished and that, while he had come close, he had not struck quite true in his assessment, and so waited. Aldul did not disappoint.
"Perhaps he fears being burdensome in this matter also. I expect suppression has become second nature and Kri-estaul no longer knows what he is feeling -- what motivates his actions -- until it overwhelms him."
Evendal's gut and gift conceded the veracity of that statement. "But how is it a good sign?"
"He is not being a minion. What he is feeling is more important to him than utter obedience. Also, his admitted fear of your anger aside, he feels safe enough with you to gamble on your displeasure."
Evendal gazed down at his son gazing up at him. The strength of character that Aldul described he himself had already seen in Kri-estaul. He did not doubt that some anxiety, some fear Kri could not readily name, motivated his son. And he recalled Kri explaining how he would anticipate Nisakh's wants in order to minimise the abuse, to keep Nisakh content with him, to keep him from being discarded or traded away. His heart suddenly hurting, Evendal closed his eyes briefly and shook his head.
"I warned you that I might not do well as your Papa, Kri-estaul. You would be better served if Drussilikh were to tend you."
Bewildered and worried by the talk around him, Kri-estaul had waited and watched, hoping to be overlooked in the circuit of verbiage. The clear reluctance, the undertone of grief when Evendal addressed him, penetrated as it had not previously. And Kri-estaul suddenly understood that his Papa was not threatening him with abandonment, but honestly feared for him. Before, when his Papa had offered to return him to Drussilikh, it all sounded too much like when Nisakh threatened to leave him in continual night and solitude, or return him to the Most Terrible Lord Abduram, in order to hear him beg. Far from sleepy, Kri's mind leapt from his new perception to its significance to its likely result. He scowled in an oblivious mimicry of the King.
"You really don't want me to go," Kri-estaul asserted, eyes wide for telltales.
"No! But mayhap if a woman tended you..."
"No! I mean... You're not just scaring me when... when you talk about me choosing to no longer be your son, or of sending me away to Drussie or anybody else?" The words came out in a rush of breath.
Evendal looked down in surprise and renewed sorrow. "No. I never want to scare you. I would never threaten you or use your fears. When I make a statement to you, my son, I will mean what I say and only that."
"And you are not angry with me?"
"On the contrary," Evendal replied with grim mien. "I am very angry toward you."
Evendal had never admitted such to him before. "You are?" The tone of unabashed wonder made it clear to all three adults that Kri-estaul both believed Evendal, and did not understand why he was not in a near-mortal agony of punishment.
"Kri-estaul, I am your father. I am not Nisakh. Do not treat me like him." Evendal supposed that continuing that line of thought further would only elicit further feelings of shame and guilt. Yet, so far, delicacy had not served. He could think of no examples to turn to; he had never been allowed close to another family, knew no guide but his felt lacks, his own sense of fairness, and his heart's pain. As an eight-year-old, had he been unscathed, he might have indulged in what felt good for his prepubescent form, but at that age -- so Evendal recalled -- neither love nor lust were a part of his constitution as yet. The semblance of such adult motivations was learnt, impressed from without, from adults like Onkira and Nisakh.
"Do you love me, Kri?"
"Yes!"
Evendal nodded. "In what way? Do you want me to hold you?"
"Yes!"
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
Kri-estaul waited for derision, and when none came forth, he answered, "Yes."
"Do you want me to buss(125) you?"
Kri-estaul made a face. "Ewk, no!"
"Do you want to suck on my neck?"
"No. Why?"
"Right now, I ask the questions. You say you love me. Do you want to suck the sperm from me?" Evendal emphasised the principle verb.
Kri-estaul said nothing, only stared at Evendal frozen into stonelike inscrutability.
Like a conversation one might hear emanating from the next room, fragments of a monologue wafted by m'Alismogh's ears. 'What should I do? Should I say yes? It's nasty. Should I say yes? Or no? Does he want it? What does he want? Which? Thunders, I hate it! I never wanted it. Does he want it? How do I know?'
The words seemed louder as m'Alismogh focused on them, so much so that he barked out, "Enough!" He continued speaking, to make it seem it was the silence he objected to. "Answer me, Kri. Not whether I want it, but whether you yourself want to do this. I know the true answer, so speak it without fear."
"No!" Kri-estaul blurted, trusting the reassurance. "Never! I hate it! It makes my gut knot!"
"Your actions tell me a different tale. Do you so miss the dark and dank of the under-grounds? Or is it the company of mice and roaches?"
The boy shuddered.
"No? I must assume that you enjoy assaults in the dark. Rape. That you do not want a father. You must miss Nisakh and need a master, a dominating bruiser." Evendal could not quite manage the impassive, ambivalent tone he had intended.
Kri-estaul's lip trembled, his eyes turned to full and captive moons reflecting the blaze from Evendal's orbs.
"Do you want to get shackled? Starved? Forced to take my member up your bum? Kept only to please my guests and myself? Have that sticky white stuff fed to you and sprayed on you every day?"
A statue would have envied Kri-estaul for stillness, so shocked was the boy at his father's soberly delivered offer.
"If you wish, I could song-summon someone to keep you. He would no doubt mark you in some way, perhaps a tattoo on your face or a branding, so that all might know you as his. He could keep you down in the under-grounds. If you wish."
Kri-estaul whimpered and shook in reaction, as an appalled Metthendoenn and a sanguine Aldul squinted in continued silence. The light of the King's eyes had waxed with each query, until Kri-estaul's skin seemed snow-white and his unmanageable hair black as basalt.
When the child could answer, it came out in a definitive bark: "No! No!"
"No?"
Kri-estaul shook his head against Evendal's breastbone frantically.
Evendal tilted Kri-estaul's face so he could not hide it. "Just tell me what you want of me, and it is yours. What do you need?"
Evendal's tone made it plain that he expected an answer. He felt no reservations using both 'want' and 'need' interchangeably with Kri-estaul, as the child was terrified of expressing a want that was not truly a long-denied need.
After a prolonged battle of silence between Evendal's resolve and Kri-estaul's terror and stubbornness, Kri-estaul capitulated.
"I want you."
"As what?"
"My protector."
"And?"
"Whatever you want."
"No," Evendal snapped. "I asked what you want. The truth from you is what I need. What else do you want me to be and do(126)?"
"Hold me... talk to me... don't hurt me..."
"That is what a Papa does, Kri."
"That's what I want, I want you as my Papa. Please, I'll be..."
"...good. I know. Your father I will be and do. Never suckle my member again. And do not offer your bum ever again."
The silence that followed dragged. No one spoke, the three men, aside from shading their eyes, made no move. The King's very stillness seemed to command its like from them. Evendal kept Kri wrapped in the folds of his bedgown and waited. Soon Kri-estaul's trembling eased. The horror his Papa had evoked faded enough for his mind to work and, feeling restless and uncertain of his standing, he looked back up.
Evendal had been waiting for his son to bestir himself. His eyes' radiance proved no impediment to the child's vision as they again shared gazes.
"Never do that again," m'Alismogh reiterated. "Do not revive those days or enflesh those memories."
A bell's quarter passed in odd quiet. Aldul made himself more comfortable. Metthendoenn signalled the Guard they were not to be disturbed as yet, though intrusion at so late an hour was unlikely. Brothwek kept vigil, his ale stashed safely in a corner for when he was relieved. Throughout the hiatus, Kri-estaul lay sedately in Evendal's arms, alternating between locking eyes and rubbing his fingers along a fold of the bedgown with eyes averted.
"You don't want that of me?"
"No, I do not."
"You..." The boy swallowed hard and tried again. "You're not going to do any of that to me. Are you?"
"Any of what?" Evendal chose to play dense.
"You know what." Kri stopped and gathered up his nerve to continue. "Not feeding me. Shackling. Giving me over..." He halted in midword and could not finish.
"You cannot say it, can you?"
"No," Kri admitted softly.
"A good rule to live by, my son: If you cannot talk about it with another person, do not do it. Only two categories of people freely do what you tried to do this night, Kri. Adult lovers such as Metthendoenn. And children who hate themselves, seeking pain and eventual death.
"Who am I, Kri-estaul?"
"You are the King."
Evendal shook his head. "But who am I?"
"My Papa."
"Yes. Though the Honourable Jaserle would perhaps treat you more gently than I seem to have."
Kri-estaul heard Evendal's recrimination as parental self-doubt, and he wanted to cry all over again. "No! Don't! I want you for my Papa! You, not him."
"So what else am I?"
Though confused at the resumption of his Papa's queries, Kri-estaul responded, "Kul's friend."
"Ah, yes. What else?"
"My friend."
"What else?"
"I don't know."
"You asked it of me earlier. I am your protector. You dreamt that, remember?"
The child nodded solemnly. "And... you still love me."
It was not quite a question. Evendal frowned.
"You're still angry with me."
"Yes." Against his inclination, Evendal focused yet again on the boy's troubling behaviour. "What moved you to pursue the actions of yesterday and tonight? Your dreams?"
"I guess, Papa. I don't know."
For the third time, Evendal remarked, "You treated me as you would Nisakh."
"N... n... n... n..." Miserable, he could not honestly deny it.
"Yes. What bestirred itself from the lake of your dreams? Did you fear that as I have now executed Nisakh, found my true mother and other blood kin, I might tire of you? Because you cannot run errands for me? Because my vow to you confines me to this room, to your care? Did you fear that I intend to foster you out as soon as I can? Free myself of a burdensome heir?"
"You turned your back and walked out of the room!" Kri-estaul cried, the memory emerging whole and sudden in all its pain. "Niar-lles and Eirath-harl were with you. You left me! And I could tell the mice were waiting! And I cried and cried. But you just closed the door! And it was dark again!"
"Oh, Kri! When? When was this?"
The boy sniffled, and murmured in reply. "When... when I awoke just now. I know you were right here, but you were asleep, and I was afraid to wake you for a stupid dream, but I was scared, and worried, and it scared me and..."
A stray thought provided a correlation unsought, and Evendal recalled yesterday's audience, when he had agreed to fulfil his promise to Alekrond. To Kri-estaul this would have meant being left behind in the unwelcome warmth and safety of the Palace. So the child acted, or rather reacted, promptly. "And you did what you knew to do, yesterday. The only initiative that had ever helped before. What pacified Nisakh might keep you with me." Evendal softly recapitulated for his vulnerable son.
Then his voice changed, grew grim and stern once more. "First, I am not Nisakh. What served for him will not serve for me. Should you try again to suckle any body part of mine, or of anyone else's, or should you attempt buggery, I must assume that you have no love or respect for me or yourself."
Evendal cradled his unnerved son, lifting him until they were nose to nose. "Second. Not all dreams are true ones, my boy. Not all dreams are to be trusted. And not all dreams have obvious meanings." The glow enveloped the apple of Evendal's eye, wrapped him in golden glare, so that he appeared an indistinct pulsing egg from which a troubled voice emanated.
"What...?" Kri-estaul took a moment to calm himself again. "What do you mean?"
"As many different ways as I know how, I am saying one thing, the same statement your dream made: You have a choice. Who do you want to be? My son? Or a whore? My own Niar-lles and Harl? Or Nisakh's pupil?"
Aldul gaped. His initial reaction was to protest that the child was too young and fragile to be expected to respond honestly or comprehensively to such an abstract challenge. But then the whole confrontation had defied Aldul's understanding of his friend and the prince. He had not expected such steel, such ruthlessness, in Evendal toward his son. And he had not considered seriously enough the depth of fear that still haunted Kri-estaul.
His amazement deepened when Kri-estaul responded solemnly, taking courage from his father's calm gravity. "Is that what my dream was for?"
"I would not be surprised, my beloved boy, since there is nothing you can do or have done that would make me abandon you or discard you. Nothing!" 'Including this,' he thought grimly to himself.
"You have seen what Nisakh and Abduram offered and what they expected. You have seen, through Tothofir and Hanikrést, what you yet could become -- even though legless. Every day you see before you better choices as well, in Aldul and Metthendoenn, even Estalevrh. The decision is no one else's. Do you want to be known as Nisakh's wreckage? Or as my son?"
"I want to be your son, Papa. Only your son."
"Thrice now have you so declared yourself, Kri. I must hold you to that."
A number of muscles in Kri-estaul's anxiety-stiffened torso relaxed.
"And you must treat with me as a son does his father.
"You hurt? You feel scared or abandoned? You must decide on other, newer, ways of letting me, us, know." He had instructed Kri, repeatedly, to awaken him at a nightmare's troubling. He did so again. "I need you to harass me -- to grab me fiercely and most chastely when you feel uncertain or frighted -- whether 'tis the sixth hour of night, the middle of your bed-bath, or the crisis of an audience with the Kwo-edan Curia. Your life is mine, Kri-estaul; so I command it of you."
To everyone's surprise, Kri-estaul scowled belligerently, his tone of voice conveying his feelings to the others since only Evendal could see him. "What use am I?"
Evendal was ready for that query. "You smile at me. Not because I am King. Not because I can do what no one else can, but because you like me and love me. No one else of this city does that for me. Just you. You are my son, with a wit and a perception I do not have and never had. I rely on you to let me know when I seem crazed or cruel. Remember? I meant that, and still mean it. I don't always know. But your being my son is not some covenant we have entered into -- you will still be my son, and loved by me as my son, whether you perform that task or not."
The King paused, commanding his son's attention, awaiting his response. The brilliance from Evendal's eyes began to recede, the illusion of a cocoon of light faded, and both father and son's features reemerged into the common sight.
"I don't understand." When Evendal did not rescue him, did not let him pretend stupidity, Kri-estaul dared convey what he thought he had heard, what he thought the King meant. "You'll love me, even if I just stay in bed for the rest of my life and eat half the kingdom's oatmeal and honey?"
"Yes, if that is what you need. If I were your fosterer, someone you abide with for a season or two and later depart from, then I would fret over your earning your board. But I am your father. You are my son. You owe me nothing but your ambition to be the best Hramal, the best Oseidh, you know how to be. Nothing else. I need you to take your being my son seriously -- and that means letting me take care of you without you worrying, without you thinking in terms of remuneration. Right now, that is what being my son means, and you agreed to be my son. I am taking you at your word.
"You want to keep me content with you? Then let me be as a father to you and give you whatever you need when you need it."
"I shall, Papa."
"Evendal," Metthendoenn protested. "Kri has but eight years. In a sennight, he..."
"I choose to trust that my son will disdain actions that no longer benefit him, 'Doenn. I choose to trust my son."
(121) Quiddities: subtle arguments; from Latin quidditas, whatness. Trifling points or quibbles.
(122) "Incurvatus in se": Curved in on oneself. For the Hramal, what we sweepingly label 'selfishness' encompasses many distinct and unrelated words.
(123) Like the Greek "paidalion", a common euphemism.
(124) The closest approximation is in Hebrew; "bohu": form demanding -- yet incapable of bearing -- useable content.
(125) Hramal-renan distinguishes linguistically between what we might call 'a peck' and 'French kissing.'
(126) In Hramal-renan, the phrase used for 'to be and do' is one word and one concept.