The God Eaters

  "It gets easier."

  "I've never said anything nice to you, have I?"

  Some of the sad went out of Ash's smile. "A few things. One thing especially comes to mind, though you might not remember saying it."

  "I remember. I meant it."

  "You could say it again, now, if you want."

  It stopped in his throat, then came out in a rush. "I love you."

  He was astonished by the feeling that ran into him from Ash's hands; he had no point of reference for anything so high and bright. Such joy. It was true, it was all true, somehow it made Ash perfectly happy to hear those words, despite their flawed source. Suddenly he was no longer helpless or confused.

  Saying it the next time was easier. "I love you, Ash. I love the way you do things, how you learn so fast, your hands are so fast and clever, it makes me happy to look in my pack just because it's so like you to line everything up neat like that." This could be addictive, how easily he was making Ash flush with pleasure just by talking. "I should have said all this a long time ago. I like your curiosity, the way you listen and ask questions, I like how you see the world, without judging people, I don't understand how you do it but I really admire it. I could go on all day. The way you talk. The way you laugh. I love the way you try to do right without thinking whether it'll hurt. I love the way you curl your hands up by your mouth when you sleep, and the way you scratch your nose when you're thinking -- everything you do leaves trails in my brain, it stays."

  Ash was studying his hands, ears scarlet. "You can go on like that as long as you want. Um.

  Particularly you could tell me -- oh, now I'm going to sound vulgar -- do you remember saying, when you got well, you were going to. Um."

  "Fuck your brains out?" Kieran laughed, feeling light and dizzy.

  "Well, yeah." Ash glanced up, then ducked his head again. "I know I'm sort of funny-looking, and you deserve to be with someone as gorgeous as you are, but if you do still... want me..."

  "You're not funny-looking. You're like gold and ivory, your eyes are diamonds, you're a treasure to me." Kieran took a deep breath, watching Ash's face in profile, waiting until Ash finally straightened to look at him. He bent to place a deliberate single kiss on Ash's lips; when he pulled back, Ash leaned after him just a little, wanting more, and only then was Kieran certain.

  With shaking hands, he took Ash's glasses and set them aside, just for the relief of looking away for a moment. The touch of Ash's hand pushing back his damp hair was as strong as burning, but good, far too good.

  "Kai," Ash whispered; the shape of his lips moving around the name was unbearable. Kieran barely began the motion to embrace him, and Ash was suddenly all over him, kissing him ravenously. Sun-warmed skin, legs tangling; they couldn't get close enough, sitting up; Ash bore him down and pressed along the length of him, biting his lips, and it didn't hurt, it was perfect, it was the first unshadowed beginning he'd ever tasted.

  For aeons they clung together, locked in an alchemy of breath and spit and wondering, gradually realizing that they had lost the barrier between themselves, were mingling now in mind and heart, could no longer be certain which of them originated which sensation. Even groans and sighs could be told apart only by timbre. The blurring of identity abated a little when Ash broke the kiss in order to follow the line of Kieran's jaw to his ear, but every touch was still amplified.

  With hands and lips they began to explore each other. While he tasted freckled shoulders and narrow wrists, Kieran was aware that Ash had been wanting just as strongly to taste scars and tattoos.

  He rolled Ash under him and slid his hand down. "Can I --?"

  "Oh please yes --"

  Neither of them could stand waiting, but he drew it out anyway, taking his time with the buttons, dragging his palms down Ash's thighs to strip him, savoring. "There are freckles on your knees."

  Kieran returned to Ash's throat and kissed his way down. He went as slowly as he could, not wanting to rush this, but Ash's hands knotted in his hair, desperately impatient. He surrendered, opened his throat and gulped Ash down, a skill he'd learned in his sordid former life finally put to a good use; he knew now exactly how good it felt, as he caught an echo through the empath's skin, following Ash's broken whimpers with muffled sounds of his own. When Ash arched convulsively and let out a moan two octaves lower than his speaking voice, Kieran nearly went off as well.

  For a time, Ash lay stunned, round-eyed. His mouth worked several times before he was able to speak. "Kai. You. Oh."

  "Yes." Words were silly things now. They had a much better way to communicate. As soon as Ash got his breath back, he was caught in the echo of Kieran's need, hungry to reply in kind.

  Curious, awkward, his unsure touch lethally sweet. His eagerness seemed so young; there was something kittenish in the way he wouldn't let Kieran do anything but lie there while he methodically worked out what ought to be kissed, bitten, licked -- and what tickled. But then he was done with exploring and invited Kieran to fulfill his promise, and once Kieran was inside him wiry muscle jumped into sharp relief, his eyes burned, his intensity was almost frightening.

  Flying, falling, Kieran had a moment of terror that he would somehow break Ash if he let himself go, that he might release all his magic along with his tensioned desire and kill them both, but it was too late to make decisions. The sight of their fingers knotted together, brown against white, was the last straw. He called out Ash's name and lost his own. Heard himself sobbing incoherent endearments in two languages, was rolled under the storm of Ash's reaction, surrendered to the empath's twining of their emotions into a loop that fed on itself until they were both blind and blazing. For a timeless time, the universe consisted entirely of one two-stranded knot of ecstasy.

  Returning from that place was like regaining consciousness after being knocked cold. They lay breathlessly twined together for a time, tasting their own flavor in each other's mouths, running hands aimlessly along sated skin, mirroring the awe in each other's eyes.

  "Are we..." Kieran found speaking hard for a different reason now. A fierce proprietary joy was welling up, filling him so full there was hardly room for speech anymore. "Is there a word for what we are? What that was? Or should I just say -- edeime kii, my lover?"

  "Yes. Say it a lot," Ash replied with a dreamy smile. "Say 'mine.' Get all jealous and possessive, and growl at anyone who comes near me. It gives me such a kick when you do that."

  A laugh bubbled up in him, coming out strange and jerky. "I've been doing that all along, haven't I?" He pushed his fingers through Ash's hair, viscerally pleased at the way the curls sprang back.

  Picked a fragment of grass off Ash's neck.

  "I wish we could stay like this forever. Right here, in the sun, by the water."

  "Why can't we?"

  "We'll have to come up with more supplies somehow. And we can't be sure we've lost the Watch.

  Even if this place masks us, there hasn't been any rain. Our trail hasn't washed out."

  "Huh." It was hard to think about anything at all, but that was a valid point. Kieran took his time brushing away grass and leaves that had stuck to Ash's skin, letting the idea roll around in his head. His mind felt clean and empty. There was plenty of room to think. "Well," he said slowly,

  "I wonder if maybe we can do something about that."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Just a sec." He got up long enough to spread out the blanket he'd been using for a kilt, and they both lay down on it. Now Ash got into the game of picking off bits of vegetation, so they let themselves be distracted by it, laughing -- giggling. Kieran was fairly sure he'd never giggled before in his life. And now he was like a kid, just playing.

  Eventually, when they could no longer find any more twigs in each other's hair, Ash reminded him. "What did you mean, we can do something about it?"

  "When I saw that storm, the one that broke us out of prison, I kind of got the feeling that I'd called it. It was there already, but I told it where to g
o. We're past the season for heavy rain, but maybe I could find something, steer it over."

  "That would be really interesting, if you could."

  "Yeah. For one thing, it would make me a bit of a stormcaller, as well as a jinx. Which means two Talents."

  "But you said 'we' -- what can I do?"

  Kieran wasn't sure how to answer. He was distracted by the faint line of tiny, gilded hairs that ran up to Ash's navel. All the gold hidden in the temple was spare change compared to this. "You shine," he murmured, raising his eyes to the copper-speckled alabaster of Ash's face. "I saw you shining like this once in a dream. Have you noticed you're not sunburned anymore?"

  "No, I --" Ash blinked and caught his breath as Kieran touched his lips, no longer chapped and cracked as they'd been yesterday.

  "There's a lot more power here than I thought. It's healed you too, you just didn't notice because you weren't too beat up. Did you get the feeling there's more of it between us? I mean, do you feel stronger than before? Magically. Because I do."

  "Absolutely. I don't have to strain to sense you -- in fact, I have to make an effort to keep from smudging our minds together."

  "So I think we can maybe do more than we could alone. Maybe if you sort of ride with me, I could make it rain."

  "How do I --"

  "How do you think?" He pulled Ash close again.

  Without the force of pent-up desire behind it, the mingling of their minds was not so sudden this time, and he could watch it happening. They both watched it, experiencing each other's wonder; sometimes as an echo, sometimes in tandem; the border was in constant motion.

  It was a bit of a shock to recognize, suddenly, the same kind of pattern he'd witnessed during the minute or two he'd been dead. The same branching whorls, sigils more idea than picture, the map of a life. He saw, in a rush that made him gasp, how Ash's empathy worked. The edges of his pattern were open and hungry, fashioned to grasp and explore whatever idea-shapes came near them. Now Kieran's symbol-body was doing the same thing; they were like thousands of clasped hands.

  Once, he thought he glimpsed the tight coil of strange matter he'd seen in Ash before, but left it for later exploration. Right now the task was to reach outward. A slight shift of focus, and he saw that everything else had a pattern too, the whole world was full of pattern. The lines of earth were slow and fat, plants and insects a thick mat of repeating forms, water a dense mass of designs so tiny and so interlocked that nothing could penetrate it. Even the blanket had its form.

  The wire frames of Ash's spectacles smeared the pattern of the grass a little where metal touched leaf. Exploring this new level of sight could make up the work of a lifetime. Kieran thought he might have gotten lost in it and never come back to himself, if Ash hadn't been, at the same time, reminding him of his skin.

  Air was a pattern as well. Hot and cold, wet and dry, its movements were more beautiful than anything solid, such a shame that people couldn't see it -- but Ash could see it, and so the beauty was shared, and didn't have to hurt. Higher, wider, the small shapes made up large ones, which made up even larger ones, until he could see the greatest air-shapes of all.

  "What?" Ash pulled away to look at him, and he realized he'd cried out.

  "I just --" It was hard to focus on something so small as explaining. "I just understood why there's a desert here."

  "Show me."

  "No... you have to anchor me, pull me back if I... there's no limit to how much power I could use.

  I could use myself up."

  "I've got you."

  Trusting Ash to catch him if he spent too much, he plunged back into the sky. West, toward the sun. He meant to pass the mountains, but something on the ground called to him. A massive dome of roiling energy, a three-dimensional whirlpool of intricate symmetrical pattern. The Burn, he realized. It was the Burn.

  It looked, somehow, tasty.

  No. Don't touch it. The thought didn't come in words, but Ash's caution reached him, and he left the Burn alone, though it felt like seeing money in the street and just stepping over it. Turned his mind from it and reached out for the wet warmth beyond the mountains' teeth. It was raining over there, on the far slopes. Why couldn't the clouds get over the mountains, stream between them and form on the other side? Maybe... ah, there, a cold river of air out of the northwest, coming down the coast, wringing out all the moisture. He sent a warning to Ash that he was about to begin, then wrapped himself around the cold wind and wrenched --

  Suddenly he was trapped in his body, sweat-drenched and shivering, mind numb, exhausted.

  "Just breathe," Ash told him. From the places where their skin touched, warmth and life were pouring in. "I think I pulled you back before you could do anything."

  "Dunno." He blinked a few times, flexed his hands. Strength was returning. Within a few seconds he felt almost normal, but that was a far cry from the towering dominion he'd had a minute ago.

  "It's enough for one day, anyhow. We don't know what we're doing. We need to play with it a while, get the hang of it. Otherwise we could get hurt."

  "Tomorrow, then."

  "Okay." Ash gave him a brilliant smile. "Everything started over today. Did you notice that?

  Every day of my life before this one looks stale and dusty."

  Kieran nodded. Ash was right. He felt reborn, remade. "And you know... that thing with the air, with seeing all the twisty shapes, the magic -- it's not half as interesting as you are. If I had to pick between magic and you, magic could go to hell."

  "Stay with me always?"

  "You couldn't get rid of me." He grinned. "It'll take years just to get used to making love to you.

  You have no idea how good it can be."

  "You mean it gets better?"

  Rather than answer, Kieran decided to demonstrate.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Everything all at once; that was how it had always been. Chaiel had never been able to choose what he saw. He could, sometimes, leap from one image to a related one, but even then the images rarely made sense. His clairaudience wasn't nearly as reliable as his clairvoyance, and the occasional bursts of clairsentience were simply confusing. He dimly remembered that it hadn't been like that before he was put in the bubble, but he tried not to think about that time.

  So it was a pleasant surprise to be suddenly shown Thelyan boarding a train in a great hurry, and immediately on the heels of the image get a clear sense that the Director was on his way to see Chaiel.

  Thelyan's visits were stressful. Nevertheless they provided new fodder for thought. Knowlege came through much more strongly when the bubble was opened to sight and sound. But what could have got the chilly bastard so worked up? That thing his predicting people had seen, a while back? Chaiel's memories of that visit were tangled, but he did remember that he hadn't been able to answer the question. Thelyan didn't understand how Chaiel's abilities worked. There had been, of course, a remote chance that a scrap of clairsentience would have given Chaiel the answer, by pure coincidence, but Thelyan always acted like Chaiel could know whatever he wanted.

  I used to be a god, Chaiel reminded himself. He said it out loud, to have his voice for company.

  "I used to be a god."

  Then he lost some time. He discovered he'd chewed his nails to bleeding, and bitten his hands and arms raw. This happened sometimes.

  He remembered that Thelyan was coming to see him. Nothing by which he could judge time presented itself, so he didn't know whether he'd seen the train-boarding scene a minute ago or a day or a year. Now there were sounds coming to him, so he held his breath, hoping for music. It was so good when music came.

  There was a hissing sound. Then a sharp crack, followed by a clank. Then a voice, speaking a language he didn't know; there were many languages he didn't know, though he heard them all the time; also foreign words the meaning of which came to him, though he didn't know what language they were. Then, suddenly, with a feeling of a dislocated joint snapping into place, a blizzard o
f clear speech in Eskaran:

  very strong surge lasted only eight seconds, though the atmospheric effects resolved, unfortunately. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No.

  can't get anything from him except this garbage about a green man, even in Survey. Well, the report -- yes. The report I received from Sandwell made mention of a green woman, though they've had minimal loss of personnel there. I can't correlate it with the thunderstorm prophesies, though. Yes, the locus appears to be the same, but it

  just realized why there's a desert here.

  Drink up, it's the end of the world!