To Forgive

 
 
 
Chapter Four

 
 
It was Sydney who disguised himself as the prince and instructed his accompanying envoys to deliver the missive personally to the Cardinal, who thereupon issued an edict that the prince be excommunicated. He promised to send church-appointed investigators forthwith to his country to further interrogate him, but allowed the quaking messengers to leave in peace.

 
Meanwhile, Ashley broke into the lower levels of the lesser campanile beside the Great Cathedral, where manuscripts were written and illuminated, and past business records from church offices were stored, ordered, and tended by pages, along with sermon transcripts and innumerable other documents. Ashley was invisible, but it was still difficult to rustle through so many papers, trying to find some kind of finance ledger, without being heard. Thankfully, this older bell tower, lessened in glory now that a higher one stood nearer the new cathedral, was occupied mostly by pages and apprentice scribes who knew nothing of the Dark except that it was baneful, poisonous, and forbidden. No one had the craft to find him out there.

 
The accounting journal Ashley eventually found was five years old, in twenty-four volumes, two for each month. It took him until after nightfall to read, not only because of the huge amount of material to leaf through, but because often he had to stop and remain perfectly still as a dewy, young apprentice scribe (or bitter old eremite) would bustle in and around the place where he was standing.

 
But when the candles were blown out for the night, he knew he had to leave.

 
Since he couldn’t copy down the information, he had memorized what he could, focusing only on annual tributes, since those would not be out of date, and singling out the largest ones.

 
 
 
He hurried back to the inn and found Sydney there, faintly humming a psalm that Ashley could only barely recognize. Sydney had retrieved a few changes of clothing for himself (all identical, Ashley noted with a smile), and had even rifled around his father’s manor and found some simple apparel for Ashley.

 
And now he was stuffing all their belongings back into their packs.

 
"Are we leaving, Sydney?"

 
The slighter man stopped singing and looked up briefly, but went back to his work right away. "It is Sunday; mass was today and we are pilgrims. We will be expected to leave tomorrow morning."

 
"Where will we go?" Ashley inquired, slightly worried. He realized now he’d taken their perfect hide-spot for granted.

 
"I know of a place."

 
 
 
The streets were abandoned for the night. Sydney had sold the horse earlier that day, and so they walked on foot to the small, dilapidated old building, its wooden planks dark and chipping lengthwise slowly at the edges, windows long boarded-up, slightly slanted roof with half-rotten shingles waiting ruefully for the next snowfall to crush it entirely. It had been the home and workshop of an old fiddlemaker, who had apparently died before Sydney or he had been conceived. The structure had no masonry foundation, and Ashley was astounded it had managed to survive for so long.

 
Not surprisingly, the door was locked with a sigil, since, Ashley resentfully remembered, Sydney was so liberal with their use. His companion unlocked it and allowed Ashley to go inside first.

 
It was absolutely quiet and still. There was only a small scattering of grey dust, and the furnishings seemed in good shape if not brand new, but the humble single room seemed to droop with melancholy. The walls themselves appeared to be mourning their own decay, as the lost sounds of violins hung forgotten in the air like the memory of battle cries over a dead and empty field—the dirges of regretful years.

 
He looked to Sydney, whose eyes were turned down to a small washtable with its ewer, smaller than the one they had shared at the inn, but metal instead of clay. It appeared to be silver.

 
"This is where I lived for the past year and a half," Sydney quietly announced. He was silent as Ashley watched his gaze slide over the walls listlessly, then over the ceiling, then the floorplanks. "You and I are the only alive who know of this place."

 
Ashley, openmouthed, wondered for some reason if the duke had known.

 
Sydney continued, "There’s a small well not fifty paces behind us. The floor and walls and rooftop are all protected and imperishable, and…" he glanced back at Ashley, who was still gaping, and added, "if you do not close your mouth, an insect could fly into it."

 
Ashley closed his mouth, Sydney chortled, and outside, a wagon rolled by in the night. Sydney acquired a piece of cloth from somewhere and began to wipe the dust off of the few surfaces: the top of the low fireplace, the exposed parts of the tabletop, the seat of the one modest chair. There wasn’t much dust; certainly, their previous two rooms had been much less clean.

 
But this place wis, is, Sydney’s, Ashley realized, and understood the silent drive to attend to it. Everyone wants a place of their own, and it’s natural to care for such a place. It was the nature of the surroundings that astonished Ashley. Sydney was a man who seemed bathed in luxury; he never expected to discover that he would designedly endure such asceticism of living. Still, there were a few rich trimmings…

 
"What should we have for our eventide meal?" Ashley queried softly.

 
The water-ewer was silver, and the bedlinens, now that he looked at them, were new and rich and soft.

 
Sydney stopped dusting, noticing Ashley’s eyes on the empty container.

 
"Why don’t you fetch water for us, Ashley, and I will bring food."

 
He nodded. "Do you have any other jugs that I could fill?"

 
Sydney pointed to the far corner, where two modest clay jars rested, appearing for all the world like they had just been cleaned. Ashley nodded again, briefly, and gathered them, along with the silver, but paused before the threshold, another question in his mouth. He didn’t bother releasing it, knowing Sydney could answer it without hearing.

 
"Our false fronts are no longer necessary. We are not present in this city, neither as Nestor nor Horace nor Sydney nor Ashley. I died with Leá Monde and you fled after assassinating the duke. It will be advantageous to blot out our appearances altogether."

 
Ashley let his next question out, somehow needing to say it.

 
"How do I…" he faltered, unexpectedly, but picked himself up. "How do I make myself discernible to you?"

 
Mirth surged everywhere in Sydney’s eyes as he replied, "Ashley, you couldn’t hide yourself from me, not even if you tried. You may as well be wearing a volcano around your neck. You have no idea how to hide from someone who knows."

 
Ashley frowned as he left, deciding that it would be better if he asked Sydney as soon as possible to teach him how to hide himself, counting on the inevitability that he would encounter someone who ‘knows’ and who might not be an ally. He made himself disappear and walked through the door, reprimanding himself for almost manually opening it.

 
Sydney had not yet arrived when he brought the filled jars back to their hovel. He sat down on the bed, which was only slightly smaller than one they had shared from the hotel, and he couldn’t help looking forward to retiring for the night. It was approaching midnight, possibly slightly past the hour, and he was tired. He wanted Sydney to come back so that he could eat quickly and lie down with him.

 
"You must be tired," Sydney murmured, quiet voice dripping amusement. Ashley had laid down for only a couple of minutes and had drifted to sleep. Sydney, mercifully, did not chide him further for it, but only placed a chunk of bread and what appeared to be a sausage in his hands, and withdrew to somewhere. Ashley sat up and ate, sleepily.

 
It had been over a year since he’d eaten a sausage.

 
"Sydney?" The blonde mage materialized at the mention of his name, and Ashley idly realized he’d only been over beside the table. "Could you…teach me tomorrow? How to keep myself invisible, even to those who use the Dark?"

 
He heard the other man sigh. "Yes, Ashley. We can in the morning." He felt a cup of water pressed into his hands. "For now, you need sleep. We both do."

 
Ashley drank, and ate, and reclined, and slept. He was vaguely aware of Sydney at his side before he dropped off. At one point during the night, he was sure he was being kissed, but it may have been a dream…

 
A dream?

 
An open sore. A wry smile. A boy with the voice of a man; a man with the directionless love of a child. A drink of pure grain alcohol, cold on the lips and hot in the throat, burning in the stomach. The glint of a defeated love. The incarnation of Song.

 
Ashley saw Sydney. Saw the broken, sad old harmony of him. Saw his blistered, crippled heart, mortally wounded but too ornery to die. Saw the shipwrecked hope, the ashes of youth laughing at their own smoke. Saw the self-fulfilling prophecy, his own words mingled with those of a sage priestess, "//You will be left holding the ashes…//"

 
Bold but not straight. Sin for its own sake. The scars of every loneliness.

 
He was resting now, quiescent now, nestled among grand and lofty old towers of abject misfortune—cold brick upon cold brick, torn down and built anew. His hands were the hands of a mason, the architect of a tuneful, sad delirium. "//I am poised and ready to jump,//" he shrugged, "//but I might not.//"

 
A red ocean of tears.

 
He began to lash oun emn empty pool of very old desire, forsaken and alone, his clipped wings mourning for themselves. But he stilled his own hand. And he settled and sang. Loud and sepulchral, his song rang out at its own behest and would not yield—twelve legions couldn’t have stopped it. He was drooping, just like when Ashley saw him out of Leá Monde, sagging down toward the dirt, craving burial, too tired now to perish.

 
"//Until the day they lay me out,// he ruefully sang, //‘twixt my father and his counterfeit bride…//"

 
Ashley tried to move closer somehow, and was amazed to find that he was able to. But he was still not sure what he was looking at, except that it was Sydney. Was this a boy? A man? A monster? Real or imagined? Past or present? How…

 
"//…my strength bled out, my longing quelled, I swear…//"

 
The song collided with him. Was it a prelude? The air was hot and heavy again, the same as it was in his vision of Sydney’s sacrifice; he could feel the heat of nearby flames, but could see nothing but Sydney.

 
"//…I swear that I will never quit my song.//"

 
Something changed. Shifted. Sydney was reclining now, immodestly, on a low couch of imperial purple, and Ashley was nowhere. But the song still bled to him, the vision brighter now that he was no longer in it.

 
Ashley realized abruptly that although he was not there, Sydney was looking at him. He was looking directly into his eyes, singing to him, helpless to stop his own sincerity. The song became a hopeful but remorseful chant, with the Kildean syllables still in their same meter, but sounding a little lower and more guttural now, taking a more intimate tone.

 
"//I know that you can hear me now, my exiled soldier of reluctant majesty, but I feel no shame in this. I know how you have heard my song, as I have also heard yours.

 
//Too secret to be named, too sacred for the ages,

 
//Too beautiful. The gods are unworthy to hear!

 
//I have done all things, and have gained nothing. I have overturned the riverbeds, crushed mountaintops, brought high men low, dropped riches to the dirty feet of slaves. I have earned the trust of brave and devoted men, deceived! all of them, for they believed I was the Truth, but this is not so. Truth is more than the absence of deception. What did I have, but a curse on my soul—the simple inability to be wrong!

 
//I have fought and won and lost

 
//And lost and lost again.

 
//I have endured trials, admonition, shame. For it is better to be reprimanded than forsaken. I have struggled long and deep, and at last I found true justice, elusive justice, chaste and uncorrupted, metal cold and never born. I made myself oblivious to your unassuming kindness, not allowing myself to luxuriate in anything but death, my next and final trajectory. Ending my cruel life, I passed my meager inheritance on to you.//

 
Sydney seemed to stand now, his opulence abandoned, assuming an apologetic smile, spreading his opened metal hands out at his sides in prayer or resignation.

 
//I never knew you and did not bother to hark,

 
//But I forgot justice when I heard your song.

 
//A tangle of wisdom, foolishness and pain, suspended in the air in all its stalwart and defiant bravery. The very rhythm of my soul, but with a harmony so sweet I felt ashamed when first I heard it. And I was overcome by the violence of your uncertain grace; and I was emptied, a burnt up prayer washed up on the inviolate shore of you. And I only wanted to keep it.

 
//You are the opposite of surrender

 
//A vessel shipwrecked before it ever touched the sea

 
//That sails out regardless and claims shiftless victory

 
//You are the song of my own heart, my dust and my ash, the final joke that fortune played on me. Paying homage to no god and no man, avoiding safety, remembering all things except yourself. Scar tissue of valor matched forever against the sickness of iniquity. But you may as well be fighting the sky! This war will have no end, and I know this knowledge will not impede you. So long as you breathe you will fight.

 
//Alive and trembling with love, spilling over with virtue;

 
//The earth cannot hold you, Ashley, how could I?

 
//Dancing backwards and falling, as obstinate as I am, your song tears parts of you up and out along with it. Conclude your wandering, my song, my gentle vagrant, and return home. Home! I have traveled so far, suffered so much to this end, this terrifying sweetness. A great desire swells in me now. I want to say, thank you. Thank you. I thank you and I’m sorry.//

 
The song changed again, still a chant, but with a longer and more complex meter. Likewise, the vision transformed, to the choir of a darkened basilica, where a young Sydney sang, his voice much older than this vision of his body.

 
//Because the movement of the universe is ultimately immutable—and it doesn’t matter. Because the soul is immortal and is able to endure every evil and every good and it doesn’t matter. Because the impressions of the flesh prevent man from gaining true knowledge and it doesn’t matter. Because man’s soul always strives to be just and pure and always fails and it doesn’t matter. Because heaven and earth are not enduring and it doesn’t matter. Because the desire for honor is man’s greatest stumbling block and it doesn’t matter. Because the pleasures of the flesh are not inferior to the pleasures of the soul and it doesn’t matter. Because all life is patterned after the Divine Life, constituted of separation and reunion, color and void, love and danger, sorrow and forgiveness, death and eternity, and it doesn’t matter, because of you. Because you are my heart’s song. Because I can feel you.//

 
The vision left altogether, leaving only the last drops of the song.

 
//When we were traveling together, you said something strange…you said that which is yours is mine also. Ashley, your love could strangle leprosy; could wrestle with the love of God! I thirst for you. Ashley, Song of all Forgivenesses…may I have your love?//

 
 
 
The crescendo trickled out and caved in under its own weight, and Ashley found his dream had dissolved, but he was holding Sydney, still holding him as the other man sputtered apologies into Ashley’s neck and wept from the force of their song. And Ashley realized that it hadn’t been a dream, because he had been awake the whole time. Both men were standing on their feet beside the bed.

 
"I didn’t mean…for you to hear that," Sydney softly admitted, beginning to compose himself.

 
Ashley held him tighter, not sure what to say to someone who had just inadvertently revealed his soul to him. And it had been so profoundly beautiful, all he could think was that he wanted to hear it again. He allowed his mouth to talk while his mind took its time to stagger.

 
"How long were you a choirboy?"

 
Sydney withdrew from the embrace and wiped his eyes on his cold wrists. He seemed to consider before he responded.

 
"I will tell you in the morning. We both need rest. You lay down; I’ll build a fire."

 
"Sydney," Ashley weakly remonstrated, "anyone could see the smoke and know that someone dwells in here."

 
"Don’t think that I am so unskilled that I can’t make a smokeless fire," the slighter man retorted, and bent to execute the spell. Ashley obeyed the advice to rest and stretched himself back down on the bed. And when Sydney came back, he held him eagerly, and slept.

 
 
 
And he woke to the sound of pouring water. He cracked his eyelids open and saw Sydney, bent over the silver ewer, pouring dark wine into it from a smallish wineskin. He sat up and watched as Sydney took the bowl outside, then stood up and followed him, watching him through the place in the wall where there once was a window. Sydney held the bowl up slightly above his head in front of him, facing the first indications of dawn, and spoke something that Ashley could not hear. He began to pour out win wine onto the dusty road, but stopped before it was all finished. He brought the last measure to his lips, tilted back his head, and drank deeply. He wiped his chin on his claw before turning and bringing the empty ewer inside.

 
It began to snow.

 
"You’re already awake, Ashley. I have elderberry wine and goat cheese."

 
"Do the heavens need your permission to snow, Sydney?"

 
Sydney only smiled, and poured a generous saucer of wine for his companion. Ashley rubbed his stinging eyes, and tried again to win an answer.

 
"I knew you woke up early, but I had no idea you arose before dawn."

 
"It is the day of the solstice today," Sydney said impassively, handing Ashley food and drink. Ashley took the offering, bowing his head briefly in thanks, and sat on the bed to eat. Sydney eased himself into the chair by the table.

 
"You asked me last night to explain to you how to shield yourself from eyes that can see in the Dark. In order to understand how to become invisible within the Dark, you must be aware of how the action of vision by means of the Dark is accomplished."

 
The wine didn’t seem to be very old, but it was dark and thin and sweet. Ashley tipped his saucer back with both hands and drained it, desiring more. Sydney got up to poke at the fire, then sat back down, still speaking all the while.

 
"The eyes of a human being are mechanical objects. They work in a very precise physical way—they receive light and transmit images of the light they receive to the rest of brain. They are, in short, machines, whose output is the product of light. As long as a thing is a physical, mechanical object, it can malfunction."

 
"I also asked you something else last night," Ashley said, levelly. "How long were you a choirboy?"

 
Sydney stopped and closed his mouth. And squared his jaw.

 
"You desire to know more than just that, Ashley. The narrative begins much earlier. I will withhold nothing from you."

 
Sydney lowered his head and closed his eyes—not squeezing them shut—just gently closing them, and he began, speaking slowly and deliberately.

 
"My father impregnated a harlot in a rather…base…district in the southwest of Valendia proper. He was in his middle-thirties, and had long been marked with the Rood, and learned of the conception by means of the Dark. However, like me, he was unable to ‘see,’ only to hear. It took him several exacting and strenuous months, searching the city. When he finally found my mother, she was great with child and was almost ready to bring forth.

 
"The men of the whorehouse, who were her possessors, refused to allow her child to live, and told my father that the infant would be strangled after birth. They were coarse and brutish men and mocked my father, tearing his clothes and threatening him with violence as punishment for befouling one of their higher-yielding whores with a pregnancy. He pleaded with them, and eventually persuaded them to give the child to him after it had been born, for an outrageously high price. He also bought my mother, so that I could be nursed by the woman who bore me.

 
"To their credit, the men did not deceive my father, but delivered me and my mother to him at the appointed time for the price they had agreed on. But my father, disgusted with my mother, turned her away after I had been weaned, for he was a man who was never satisfied with one woman, and only kept his lawful wife, my brother’s mother, in his house for reasons of family politics. But in spite of some of his moral shortcomings, hs ths the dearest and most loving father a child could ever hope to have.

 
"When I was four, it was my father’s wish that I should learn ead ead and write and work with my hands. He sent me off to one of the lesser monasteries, the closest to my father’s manor, St. Reggiore. The monks there soon discovered my talent for song, and I quickly became a favored student of music.

 
"I dwelled there for a few more years. But, one day, when I was not yet old enough to produce seed, I heard some of the elder monks speaking amongst themselves, regretting that I would soon begin to grow into a man and they would lose their finest tenor. Using the Dark, which had long since spread its issue inside of me, I learned of their plan to castrate me, and I fled the monastery that very night in fear. I was almost ten.

 
"I somehow navigated my way to the Graylands, in the driving snow, and to my horror, my father’s house was emptied. The Cardinal was proceeding with the first Inquisition of Heretics at that time, and it had been known to him that my father had ties to Müllenkamp. My father was forced to wait in the snow for three days, without food or drink, prior to his abjuration before the Cardinal. Imagine their surprise, if when they had meant to brand him with the Blood-sin, they had found one waiting there on his back already!

 
"But he had wisely bribed some important churchmen to vouch for his life, and was permitted to return to his house after public humiliation and a full statement of disavowal of the Dark and of Müllenkamp. He was not even tortured. However, several very expensive heirlooms were destroyed on the pretext that they were liturgical objects. My father lost wealth, but was safe.

 
"I waited for him at our house, in hiding with the servants, for several days. It was not and still is not known by the church that I am a Bardorba, although the Cardinal himself may secretly know. When my father returned, he was joyful to see me rather than resentful that I hadt tht the monastery. He was very obviously downcast, however, because in renouncing Müllenkamp he had made himself unfit to perform her rites. Although I was very young, he began immediately to initiate me into her mysteries, and reluctantly passed his mark on to me."

 
Sydney calmly raised his eyes to meet Ashley’s. "And I suspect that you know, or could guess, everything of import that happened after that. And," he smirked, "you want to ask for another saucer of our wine."

 
Ashley’s mind was reeling with images and impressions of things that Sydney hadn’t spoken of, but that he had experienced: from the hollow pangs of a friendless childhood, to the heartsick loss of a first love, to an overly intimate glimpse of Sydney’s private, reckless fear of harm to his genitals. Suddenly he was aware that his saucer had been refilled.

 
He looked up to an unashamed and smiling Sydney, and couldn’t help but smile himself before he drank.

 
And somehow, somehow Sydney had found out that he was ticklish under his arms. He yelped indelicately and jumped backwards, luckily having consumed all of his drink, because his saucer flew to the floor. Sydney didn’t follow him onto the bed, but stood looking down at him with a syrupy, ingratiating smile. And n thn the long and tedious lecture that Ashley had, admittedly, asked for.

 
 
 
After an afternoon meal of cheese, bread, and the remaining wine, the two men set about their next task of forgery. Sydney brilliantly altered his calligraphy to match the far western Tierchran style, signing the names of two Barons of Rhenn, and writing separate letters as private correspondence to their bishop, exhorting him to take back the adulterated throne of tardiardinal and make it pure again with his abounding mercy. Meanwhile, Ashley intercepted the tribute-bearers, expertly causing them to fall asleep on their way, and animated their resting bodies to divert the hundred talents of gold to the doorstep of an orphanage in the town of Alsor. The monks there did the natural and instinctive thing: praised God for their unanticipated windfall, and immediately buried almost all of the gold in secret for safeing.ing.

 
Ashley arrived back in town late in the night, and made love to Sydney, quiet and breathless and slow on the very old bed with its absurdly precious linens. Sydney was a little drunk, and Ashley thought about how he smelled like springtime, and about how his collarbone stuck out a little more than he expected it would every time he looked at it, and wondered crazily if he was beginning to fal lov love.

 
And he had another dream that night.

 
He recognized it as Sydney’s dream.

 
He saw the ‘tyrant’ first, eyeless, crowned with jaundice and deformity, leaning forward on his ghostly and imposing throne. It surged up, dripping black bile and calamity, its four long legs thrusting up from the steaming earth, slouching just under the bloodied clouds. It seemed to look down over a great and doleful city, sodden with its final lamentation and a dark, filthy, stinking pitch.

 
He knew, somehow, that this vision would not last much longer; he felt the threads of the ancient and unhappy song become thinner and approach their weak and desperate coda. He knew this song. And he knew it would be finished soon.

 
And he thought he saw God there for a moment, a golden flicker of pure, unmitigated love—spat on, trammeled, and smiling, desperately healing, defiant forgiveness in the face of endless imnce.nce. His eyes were glistening with someone else’s tears, from someone else’s pain. Jilted, immutable, winking—

 
It forced Ashley to drop his eyes in shame.

 
He understood that God desired to help the city, but the city would not allow Him. And so, infinitely and eternally rejected, He stood by Himself and suffered, alone with his jeweled paradise of unrequited love as the multitude moiled helplessly under the tyrant’s canopy of hate.

 
The city was very obviously dying, melting, resembling a beggared and dirty old man surrendering to plague, vomiting blood and spitting noise. The captive men below, breaking under the guilt of the ages, at last deserted their hymn of hopelessness. Horns cut up from the tilled soil, while above, the four winds quarreled in the poisoned sky.

 
//This song is over.//

 
But it started again.

 
 
 
Ashley awoke with the knowledge that the fire had gone out and he was cold. Although it was dim indoors, he knew that morning had already ambushed the two loversd, nd, naturallydneydney was already awake.

 
"Does it hurt, Ashley?" Sydney asked, trailing steel fingers tenderly down the emblem on his back.

 
"Sometimes."

 
He sort of sighed a little. "I had to give you this power," he said, his voice unfamiliarly humble, "I am sorry I could not spare you the pain."

 
Ashley felt like he needed to blurt out some kind of confession, some kind of condolence—any words at all. But he was at a loss. He only took up his partner’s hand and squeezed it, a gesture he knew couldn’t really be felt, but was not wasted. They locked eyes, and Ashley offered a modest smile.

 
And something about Sydney seemed to unclench. They kissed briefly, friendly and easy, a warm morning salutation. Ashley found himself wanting to lay back down and sleep afterwards.

 
"I’ll bring eggs," Sydney added frivolously, and left, his voice and manner revealing honest satisfaction. Ashley got up to wash, and found himself smiling a little more.

 
Sydney had left a very thoughtful gift for him: a razor.

 
 
 
Ashley used it every morning. He’d never really owned one for himself, as far as he knew. In thanks, when Sydney finally ran out of his carefully-conserved linseed oil, he purchased more for him, pawning some more of his gemstones for coin. They both worked meticulously over the winter, not only holding back tribute from Batistum, but also stirring up dissonance in the city.

Their efforts would pay off today. Several church officials had spoken openly against the Cardinal, and his allies were nervously quiet, not defending him. Enraged and desperate to keep his image of absolute authority, the Cardinal had ordered tithes to be forced up monstrously, and had send troops to kill entire families of known cultists. In response, just last night, townsfolk and cult leaders had actually banded together.

 
And today, there would be a riot.

 
Sydney had carefully laid in wait for the Cardinal in his private chambers a few days prior, and had set up a paling around the man, in such a way that the paling moved with him. It seemed to Batistum that there was no change with the Dark, because he hadn’t businusing it, just allowing it to bunch up inside him as he occupied his throne. But his power could not affect anything outside a radius of ten paces of him, wherever he went.

 
As a consequence, the king found his wits again, and also spoke out against the Cardinal.

 
Sydney had tirelessly gloated his accomplishment. And now, as the blonde conspirator had delightedly proclaimed, "The old goat will have to just sit there and watch as his castle of sand is tdowndown by the surf."

 
They had woken up before down, and ascended to the highest peak of the great monastery’s pointed belltower, watching as the crowds spilled into the squares with a great shout, and immediately began to wreck things. Ashley concentrated his energy on a huge joint Prostasia/Herekles spell, bolstering tattered clothes of worn wool or leather, pick-axes, sickles, torches, staves, the occasional pitchfork, even the broomhandles of young boys who couldn’t be kept inside.


The Crimson Blades, of course, were waiting for the rebels, and came marching proudly out into the teeming streets, their swords too heavy for them, their brand new, silver-embellished armor gleaming in the first rays of dawn. Many of the cultists, especially the leaders, attacked them with spells, and the knights were grossly outnumbered. They didn’t last long before they retreated. A few dozen even threw off their armor early he she skirmish, and fought against their former comrades.

 
Several men were wounded, and there were three casualties, all Blades. Ashley began to think about the methods for social reform that Guildenstern and Rosencrantz had spoken of, and wondered if his were in any way less dishonorable. His means caused deaths also, and were fed by deception and cloaked treachery. He was troubled by this and began to doubt himself, wondering if his motives for revolution were truly any nobler. He wanted to be sick.

 
"You worry too much," Sydney admonished, curling an arm around Ashley’s lower back. "The deaths of soldiers didn’t bother you so much until now, remember? You killed at least forty of them yourself in Leá Monde."

 
Sydney was right, of course, Ashley hadn’t thought twice about all the lives he’d ended there. Why should this be different, now? Surely fewer people had died than would have, if he hadn’t intervened…?

 
"You saved these men, Ashley Riot," Sydney murmured, "these brave, raucous, bold men. They’re not really rioting any longer, they’re celebrating."

 
Ashley concentrated the Dark on keeping men from injury as they began to pull down the walls of the Great Cathedral (which had taken over a hundred years to build), destroying heavy masonry supports and smashing the huge slices of colored glass. The rioters actually seemed to have greater trouble with the windows, since those were made to bow with the wind and withstand harsh weather. They were inclined to bend instead of breaking, and it took great force to achieve a crack in them.

 
The whole city seemed to be helping the effort of destruction, looting whatever they could, and not just the cathedral. All of Batistum’s palaces were being pillaged, and would probably later be burned. The clamor of triumph rang out everywhere as the sun crept a little higher, feeling warmer than it really was.

Ashley began to relax as the inexorable sentiment of joy began to infect him, and he enfolded Sydney in his arms and kissed him, careful and tenderly, until his breath escaped him. Afterwards, the two men allowed themselves the unfamiliar luxury of looking into one another’s eyes, in the deep, sacred, drunken way that lovers do.

 
Sydney began to laugh. It was a small chuckle at first, one of his almost-coughs, but very soon his head was thrown back and mirthful tears were running down his face. Ashley shook him gently.

 
"What?"

 
At this, Sydney somehow began to laugh even harder, his thin belly shaking, spilling more tears. Ashley could only watch in silence, mystified. After a couple of hysterical minutes, Sydney managed, with great effort, to speak.

 
"Your hair," he choked, "your ridiculous hair," and he began at once to laugh again, "…tickles!"

 
Indeed, the front tendrils of Ashley’s hair were hanging forward enough to brush Sydney’s face. But Ashley decided that he didn’t much like being laughed at.

 
He found a quick and binding way to stop Sydney’s mouth.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  sp; sp;
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Author’s Notes:

I would like to point out that the portion of Sydney’s dream sequence when he gets all philosophical consists of several sayings and theological/philosophical ideas that do not belong to me, but were borrowed from various sources and appropriately tweaked to suit my purposes. I do not know what all of these sources are, although I suspect Lao Tzu had something to do with it, and some Hasidic Jewish stuff by Martin Buber, and almost definitely Plato/Socrates. And who knows what else. As far as I know, I didn’t quote anyone verbatim, but I wanted to clarify that the ideas aren’t exactly mine. And I’m positive I completely assraped all or several of them.