fic - Snowblind, ch 2
Jan. 8th, 2012 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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last_herald_mageUm. So. I've been working on a Vanyel/Leareth AU. I posted the first part of this fic on LJ / AO3 (slightly more polished) right before Christmas...it is pretty much a whump trainwreck and that was even before it got to the dubcon hatesex part. So yeah, warnings for dubious consent, major character death and lots of trauma damage, self harm, really bad coping strategies, and so on.
SNOWBLIND, 2
Leareth's mouth opened in an angelic smile. Vanyel felt like he had just thrown his heart down onto the frozen ground, dead while the rest of him lived on for a while, and he set his hand behind his back and bowed politely to his enemy; it was a courtly gesture, the kind made between those of equal rank - not, never, the formal supplication he offered only to Randale. Not that these barbarians would know the difference.
To his great surprise the gesture was returned. Leareth's dark eyes locked with Vanyel's, and he felt little direct menace, only a sort of eager curiosity. It was as if Vanyel had agreed to dance with him, and perhaps he had; his mind spun from role to role, courtier, negotiator, assassin, courted - somehow, he had to gain control of the situation again.
Start with the formalities; they buy time. "I am obliged by your magnanimity, and I would suggest that we retire to discuss the terms of this agreement in more detail." He added no title; Leareth was unlikely to use one that Vanyel would be prepared to recognise. They didn't claim this land but Leareth claimed more, everything.
The smile faltered for a second; Vanyel was standing before him in rags, his hair torn and matted, face half-violet and with a patch of barely-dried blood coated over the left side of his body; Leareth might just as well expected Vanyel to grow a second head as to lapse into diplomatic discourse, and Vanyel felt himself regain a shard of his confidence. "Whatever you desire," Leareth said after a moment's pause. "You will find I can be generous, and hospitable."
"I've no doubt," Vanyel replied smoothly, casting his eyes around the blasted valley. He waited as Leareth barked commands in a northern dialect he found he could half-understand, and he spread his feet to prevent himself from swaying. He felt vertigo under his clarity, an unknowable dark below the thin ice of his decision. He reminded himself that he hadn't had a choice - if he wanted anything to come of whatever few days of life might be left to him, this was the only path open to him and he was bound to go wherever it led. If he fell, may it not be in vain. The soldiers closed in on him, and he stood up straight, not letting them touch him, not letting them move him; he tried to meet the eyes of several, and felt vindicated when they looked away. He could have killed any number of them. He let them hate him, as best their captive minds allowed.
Soon, they brought him a horse - a real horse, a mountain-mare bred for hard terrain and harder winters. She was, predictably, black, and she too avoided his eyes. The balance of her walk seemed odd to Vanyel, and he suspected that her physiology had somehow been Changed to suit her master's purposes. Much as Leareth had Changed himself - it unsettled Vanyel, not simply because of the vain waste of power it represented but because it told him how little respect Leareth had for the natural way of the world around him. What was Tayledras in him felt revolted, and his need to kill keened inside him, hating what Leareth had done, what he was.
Vanyel forced himself to stay awake as his mount was led down the mountain, hemmed in by marchers each side. The horse was uncannily docile, and he decided against trying to touch her mind - the potential horror wasn't worth his unmasking it. The settlement below was silent, but he explored it with his eyes; its outlines told of a much larger village than this land could possibly support under normal circumstances, and the scent of industry only intensified as they drew closer. His hopes sank at the certainty that Leareth was prepared for a long hard war. Valdemar was not. And with the residual sense of having once been someone who had the heart to consider such things, he thought of the tight-pressed sleepers whose sweat had built all this and whose blood had fuelled the construction; their presence would make any fight, any escape, much more complicated.
A rough stone path wound up the rise to the temple. It was a little more than sixty feet off the valley floor, and from above such rocky ground it presented a respectable defensive position, but Vanyel was sure that the stronghold hadn't been designed with siege in mind but rather pure grandeur. Perhaps he'd have the opportunity to see its black spires in daylight; their shadows told him enough of their false majesty. That it would have been a tricky target from the outside, if he'd had a couple of regiments to help him crack it open, was of little import now he was riding straight inside it and quite alone. Adapt. New tactics; I'm going to bring him down from the inside.
The iron gates thudded closed behind him, and in the torchlight he saw Leareth gracefully dismount from the fell Changebeast he rode and step across to take Vanyel's reins. "There is much I wish to share with you." And I you, he thought, running through everything he might do to end this man; my knife and my fire, levinbolts and every furious element, my bare hands if I have to. But the gods know I'd rather not touch you. He dismounted without replying and noted the place he'd been led to; the entrance to one of the great corner-towers. "Rest first. I pledge to you that no harm shall befall you in the night."
Vanyel became instantly more suspicious. He was incapable of believing that this man's honour was more than a game, a thing smithed to leech and kill like any of his other toys. But Vanyel couldn't bluff with empty hands - fold, draw another hand. "My thanks," he replied. "We must confer further in the morning."
Leareth nodded, satisfied. Confer, indeed. If nothing else, it should be a pretty straightforward negotiation compared to most that I've been involved in. They had few illusions about the other's desires; Leareth presumably wanted to steal Vanyel's power and turn him into a thrall, and Vanyel wanted to kill Leareth and neutralise his vast army. In the hope of obtaining those goals, either might be persuaded to give a little ground.
The tower had three storeys, and a staircase that wrapped around it and went all the way up to the turret above; all three rooms were windowless. He hadn't been locked in here - locks would prove little obstacle to him - but he could sense a huge complement of watchers, heavily armed men who probably had no other instruction than to prevent him from leaving this tower. It was a prison in obsidian, and there was little he could do but recoup as much as was possible before Leareth returned to trouble him in the morning.
The lowest was a bathing-chamber, the second, something that might have passed for either an audience room or a study, and the uppermost was a bedroom that put Vanyel's simple quarters in Haven to shame. The bed was a great nest of silk and goosedown, edged in purple brocade, and he thought of the crude places he'd lately slept and wished for them futilely, revulsion rising inside him again. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a wardrobe, which he chose to ignore.
A servant in a black parody of Court-garb had brought Vanyel fine food, and wine, and a pair of beautiful boys who looked to be in their mid-teens. He turned away all with equal lack of emotion. Wariness and myth and basic morality all made him disinclined to so much as touch anything more than he had to. I'll have to eat again sometime... Well, he'd worry about that when it was necessary. For now, he was investigating the tower's water-pipes; he followed their flow in his mind, to a boiler banked in the earth outside, and which he sensed was fuelled as much by magic as by coal -
That gave him pause. All the magic he'd sensed here was blood-tainted, and something as mundane as a spell for warming water had probably been fuelled from one of the enthralled mages he had seen feeding power to Leareth's mind, rather than the tyrant himself. Can I really bear to use this? Why must he -
No. It's not just the magic. Leareth held this whole land and had turned its every soul to his own aggrandisement, miners as surely as mages. Any scrap of warmth here was made by slavery. Vanyel couldn't be here and not be complicit in it, but gods, could he hate and reject it, even as he took what he must of it. He sighed, and drank warm water from his cupped hands as the bathtub filled; the room clouded with steam, and he removed his filthy clothes and sank into the water, stewing with guilt.
His skin felt wrong. Everything did. Everything about even having a body - a vessel for weapons, a quiver. Only that. May as well keep it clean. He hadn't bathed since his night at the Guardpost. What had happened the day after had already been burned away, frozen, buried, cast off, killed, and still he shuddered while he scraped his skin clean.
He tried not to look back - all he'd see would be his own footsteps leading from one misjudgement to another, via pains caused entirely by his own errors. No, he shouldn't look, yet couldn't help but look. He knew better than to relax for a second - all he could do was scrabble for more energy and more time. He was still valuable only insofar as he could use the killing-powers inside him; in all other respects he was a walking corpse, destined to be lost without honour. And If he served his purpose, then the country he saved most likely would never come to know of it or anything else he'd said or done or had done to him -
Keep your mind in the present, you damned fool. He dipped his head back in the water, and pulled at the knots in his hair. He felt a wet tendril catch on the wound on his arm, and hissed. So strange to even feel anything.
He took what relief he could find in the heat of the water before draining it, and then rinsed his clothes out in the remainder left in the boiler. He wrung them out and carried them with him back up the stairs, noticing the fine hairs on his arms standing on end as he chilled again; he felt no particular discomfort.
He spread his rags flat on the floor and slid into the bed, and set a half-dozen magical alarums before he gave in to exhaustion. If Leareth wanted to have him killed where he lay, at least he'd be awake for it.
"Vanyel?"
The voice that he heard on his awakening him made him sure that he was dreaming again, and he wondered why he couldn't see the changeless sky. But then he realised that his eyes were open. There was nothing to be seen in his tower room. Not a scrap of light.
There were footsteps, and then a rustle at the end of his bed. "Van? Still asleep in there? It's me."
Hearing his voice here didn't even make sense and Vanyel's mind smouldered, furious and confused and more furious because of it; then he remembered what Leareth had promised him. A shudder ran through him, something cold and absolute that killed all his wonderment and all reason with it. He was awake, and sitting up and waiting for another's hands to find his own.
Barely warm. He traced the backs of those hands, bones under dry skin, up to strong forearms and the soft flesh of his inside arms. The familiarity of the form tugged at the place where he'd once had a heart. Beneath it, a subtle tingle of magic.
Very subtle, he thought coldly. He pulled the stranger forward hard, and buried a hand in his hair. Wiry curls parted between his fingers, and he heard a warm gasp. You're good. Very damned good. "Miss me?" whispered Tylendel.
Vanyel snarled low, and shifted his hands to his adversary's face, feeling his way along perfect curled sideburns and finely replicated cheekbones. His mind raced free from his body, floating in the dark. He knew exactly what was going on and -
- he wasn't going to stop it.
The last thing he needed was to hear another fucking word and so he kissed him. Cold and hungry and so hard that their teeth met, and he felt brittle ice in his spine, hardening him even as it numbed him. Reptile-hands against his naked body. He lay back, pulling his visitor above him, breaking the press of their lips to move lower, trace his teeth down that elegant throat.
You aren't perfect. It's easy to use magic to learn what a man looks like and sounds like, but you've no idea of the taste of him - Yet he was frozen inside, steadied himself with one hand to each side of the crevasse.
Those hands were exploring him, gentle and firm and so alike to Tylendel's in gesture, utterly necrotic in touch. Did you once watch us, is that what you're showing me? He felt his own anger beating inside his skull, a fist slamming against the ice walls. He let his tongue drift down to his enemy's chest, tip digging into muscles as if he were trying to find the gaps between the scales. I could test you, he thought as the other's touch moved towards his numb centre. So ''Lendel', what would you do if I told you to stop? What would you -
He wrapped his mouth around a blood-flushed nipple, tongue and teeth exultant with hunger. The ice never swayed never cracked no way past no way to say no no no I don't want this and he dropped down inside it. So dark, not even a sky. And I'm - awake.
A hand closed around his cock and he heard himself moaning, felt himself rising into it. I have to -
Have to nothing, can't anything, oh gods this is real. It's not him. But it's me. And it's Leareth. And it's me. I'm really - A knee slid between his thighs and he cried out. Another hand. He had to think. Had to speak, had to make a mage-light and see oh but what would he see?
He couldn't cast the spell. He let Leareth embrace him again, turn his body over in the dark, press cold lips down his spine, Vanyel trembling under him. This wasn't making light. Wasn't making love. This was -
- making hate.
Vanyel found himself below the even grey light, blinking, his pleasure already faded into the toneless snow. Alone, this time, and he decided he was glad of it. He sat on the ground and put his hand to his mouth, chewing at his knuckles in disgust.
It was hours of runaway thinking, growing ever more chilled, before he heard Tylendel's footsteps. Vanyel looked up at him as he scrambled over the nearby rise, now assuming that this was simply another trap.
'Lendel took a step back at the sight of Van's hostile expression. "Van, I -" He looked concerned, and a little hurt. "I'm sorry. That wasn't my fault. But I'm sorry."
"Who are you?" he spat.
Tylendel dropped to one knee, keeping his distance but holding Vanyel's eyes level. "You would know better than anyone. Probably better than me."
Well, that was true. He did. However angry he was becoming in this nest of delusions and dreams, no one else's fantasies would ever be good enough to fool him. He sprang across the empty snow, tackled Lendel by the shoulders and kissed him as they fell into the snow.
A moment of warmth was proof enough, and he pulled himself up again, leaving Tylendel sprawled on the ground. "I'd know," he agreed, lips stinging. He raised a hand to his mouth, and wasn't surprised or even fazed when he found that the blood at the corner of his lips wasn't red, but crystalline-blue. This settled it. It wasn't anyone's delusion but his own. That was his 'Lendel picking himself up from the ground, and not anyone else's.
This triumph of reasoning only made him feel emptier. He'd had to do it, though. He'd decided upon it an hour ago, and taken like that - taken, not requested or offered - the kiss hadn't hurt him.
It had hurt 'Lendel, though. He knew he should feel guilty, but he couldn't feel anything much except anger. Lendel was sitting up, grunting slightly. "You could have told me you wanted..." He trailed off at Vanyel's warning look. "Right," he said softly. "Anything else you'd like to warn me about?"
"Go away."
"Rather be alone, huh?" Vanyel looked at him witheringly. "Van, I think we need to talk."
"I've nothing to say," he replied quickly.
"Then what have you been thinking about all this time?" Van was silent. "I know what happened, Van, I'm not angry -"
"Then leave me alone." He knew how petty he sounded but Tylendel mustn't - no one should - he -
He turned his face against the wall of ice. If only he could do what he'd always planned to - kill Leareth and then die. No one should be trying to care for him any more, least of all 'Lendel. He wasn't worth it. Wasn't worth anything except...
He could feel Tylendel creeping close to him. Not trying to touch or to hurt, just to be near. "Van. I know just did something that you wouldn't have wanted to do. It wasn't good for you, and it wasn't like you."
"It was necessary," he replied. "If I play along he's going to give me a chance to kill him."
"And until then, he'll do whatever he likes with you?" Vanyel dropped his head. Yes, he wanted to scream - that was the vise he was trapped in and there was nothing else he could do but play along and look for Leareth's weaknesses, while knowing all the while that Leareth was doing the same to him. And the less he made sex seem like a weakness - which in any case it shouldn't be - the better.
But he couldn't say it.
"Fine." 'Lendel sounded exasperated, to say the least. "But could you at least tell me what the hell you think he was getting out of that performance?" Van looked up, startled. He hadn't thought about that. Or if he had, he'd assumed that Leareth simply liked to extract pleasure from the discomfort of others, and if Vanyel failed to express any such discomfort, he'd soon lose interest. That there was any other reason he'd choose to come to Vanyel in the guise of Tylendel hadn't crossed his mind.
But what if that wasn't the reason? What if - He glanced at 'Lendel's face, suddenly thinking of two different possibilities, both of which were unlikely in the extreme. "Either he thinks he can crack me with his lousy illusion," and he surely had some awareness of the limits of even the best illusions, but the other possibility was almost too stupid to contemplate. "Or he's playing out a fantasy of what it would be like to be my lifebonded. He really wants to be you."
Tylendel nodded. "I know it sounds absurd but it would explain a lot of other absurdities."
"Like that I'm still alive and he's not tried to change that yet. He must know I don't plan to help him, and there's a lot of easier ways he could get power than by draining it from me. This really is personal, isn't it? He wants me to..." Validate him? Something like that. Vanyel's purely sexual surrender had surely been gratifying to Leareth's ego, even through that superficial veil, but he hadn't tried to dispose of Vanyel afterwards.
So maybe all this time, Vanyel's nemesis had had a crush on him. Stef would be amused - and he immediately regretted even thinking of Stefen because now more than ever he couldn't dare a trace of that still-living bond in his mind. If Leareth came to know that he had lifebonded again...
"What are you going to do now?" asked Tylendel. "He's not going to stop, Van."
"I need to kill him."
"You need to get out of here!" 'Lendel flung his hands up, gesturing at the sky. "I'll help you, I promised that. But killing isn't enough -"
"Hells, listen to you," he hissed. "He had Savil and Yfandes killed. I've half a theory he had Staven killed." 'Lendel's eyes closed, and his face twisted in, damn him, pity. It didn't make sense. "How could you not want to see him dead?"
"I can't, Van. I can't want that as much as I want you safe. Do you not know what I had to give up here?" Open eyes, tears freezing to his cheeks. "The more you hate him the further down you'll fall. Don't you -"
Van got to his feet angrily and tried to turn, but stumbled. He felt the ice beneath him crack, and then everything went dark.
SNOWBLIND, 2
Leareth's mouth opened in an angelic smile. Vanyel felt like he had just thrown his heart down onto the frozen ground, dead while the rest of him lived on for a while, and he set his hand behind his back and bowed politely to his enemy; it was a courtly gesture, the kind made between those of equal rank - not, never, the formal supplication he offered only to Randale. Not that these barbarians would know the difference.
To his great surprise the gesture was returned. Leareth's dark eyes locked with Vanyel's, and he felt little direct menace, only a sort of eager curiosity. It was as if Vanyel had agreed to dance with him, and perhaps he had; his mind spun from role to role, courtier, negotiator, assassin, courted - somehow, he had to gain control of the situation again.
Start with the formalities; they buy time. "I am obliged by your magnanimity, and I would suggest that we retire to discuss the terms of this agreement in more detail." He added no title; Leareth was unlikely to use one that Vanyel would be prepared to recognise. They didn't claim this land but Leareth claimed more, everything.
The smile faltered for a second; Vanyel was standing before him in rags, his hair torn and matted, face half-violet and with a patch of barely-dried blood coated over the left side of his body; Leareth might just as well expected Vanyel to grow a second head as to lapse into diplomatic discourse, and Vanyel felt himself regain a shard of his confidence. "Whatever you desire," Leareth said after a moment's pause. "You will find I can be generous, and hospitable."
"I've no doubt," Vanyel replied smoothly, casting his eyes around the blasted valley. He waited as Leareth barked commands in a northern dialect he found he could half-understand, and he spread his feet to prevent himself from swaying. He felt vertigo under his clarity, an unknowable dark below the thin ice of his decision. He reminded himself that he hadn't had a choice - if he wanted anything to come of whatever few days of life might be left to him, this was the only path open to him and he was bound to go wherever it led. If he fell, may it not be in vain. The soldiers closed in on him, and he stood up straight, not letting them touch him, not letting them move him; he tried to meet the eyes of several, and felt vindicated when they looked away. He could have killed any number of them. He let them hate him, as best their captive minds allowed.
Soon, they brought him a horse - a real horse, a mountain-mare bred for hard terrain and harder winters. She was, predictably, black, and she too avoided his eyes. The balance of her walk seemed odd to Vanyel, and he suspected that her physiology had somehow been Changed to suit her master's purposes. Much as Leareth had Changed himself - it unsettled Vanyel, not simply because of the vain waste of power it represented but because it told him how little respect Leareth had for the natural way of the world around him. What was Tayledras in him felt revolted, and his need to kill keened inside him, hating what Leareth had done, what he was.
Vanyel forced himself to stay awake as his mount was led down the mountain, hemmed in by marchers each side. The horse was uncannily docile, and he decided against trying to touch her mind - the potential horror wasn't worth his unmasking it. The settlement below was silent, but he explored it with his eyes; its outlines told of a much larger village than this land could possibly support under normal circumstances, and the scent of industry only intensified as they drew closer. His hopes sank at the certainty that Leareth was prepared for a long hard war. Valdemar was not. And with the residual sense of having once been someone who had the heart to consider such things, he thought of the tight-pressed sleepers whose sweat had built all this and whose blood had fuelled the construction; their presence would make any fight, any escape, much more complicated.
A rough stone path wound up the rise to the temple. It was a little more than sixty feet off the valley floor, and from above such rocky ground it presented a respectable defensive position, but Vanyel was sure that the stronghold hadn't been designed with siege in mind but rather pure grandeur. Perhaps he'd have the opportunity to see its black spires in daylight; their shadows told him enough of their false majesty. That it would have been a tricky target from the outside, if he'd had a couple of regiments to help him crack it open, was of little import now he was riding straight inside it and quite alone. Adapt. New tactics; I'm going to bring him down from the inside.
The iron gates thudded closed behind him, and in the torchlight he saw Leareth gracefully dismount from the fell Changebeast he rode and step across to take Vanyel's reins. "There is much I wish to share with you." And I you, he thought, running through everything he might do to end this man; my knife and my fire, levinbolts and every furious element, my bare hands if I have to. But the gods know I'd rather not touch you. He dismounted without replying and noted the place he'd been led to; the entrance to one of the great corner-towers. "Rest first. I pledge to you that no harm shall befall you in the night."
Vanyel became instantly more suspicious. He was incapable of believing that this man's honour was more than a game, a thing smithed to leech and kill like any of his other toys. But Vanyel couldn't bluff with empty hands - fold, draw another hand. "My thanks," he replied. "We must confer further in the morning."
Leareth nodded, satisfied. Confer, indeed. If nothing else, it should be a pretty straightforward negotiation compared to most that I've been involved in. They had few illusions about the other's desires; Leareth presumably wanted to steal Vanyel's power and turn him into a thrall, and Vanyel wanted to kill Leareth and neutralise his vast army. In the hope of obtaining those goals, either might be persuaded to give a little ground.
The tower had three storeys, and a staircase that wrapped around it and went all the way up to the turret above; all three rooms were windowless. He hadn't been locked in here - locks would prove little obstacle to him - but he could sense a huge complement of watchers, heavily armed men who probably had no other instruction than to prevent him from leaving this tower. It was a prison in obsidian, and there was little he could do but recoup as much as was possible before Leareth returned to trouble him in the morning.
The lowest was a bathing-chamber, the second, something that might have passed for either an audience room or a study, and the uppermost was a bedroom that put Vanyel's simple quarters in Haven to shame. The bed was a great nest of silk and goosedown, edged in purple brocade, and he thought of the crude places he'd lately slept and wished for them futilely, revulsion rising inside him again. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a wardrobe, which he chose to ignore.
A servant in a black parody of Court-garb had brought Vanyel fine food, and wine, and a pair of beautiful boys who looked to be in their mid-teens. He turned away all with equal lack of emotion. Wariness and myth and basic morality all made him disinclined to so much as touch anything more than he had to. I'll have to eat again sometime... Well, he'd worry about that when it was necessary. For now, he was investigating the tower's water-pipes; he followed their flow in his mind, to a boiler banked in the earth outside, and which he sensed was fuelled as much by magic as by coal -
That gave him pause. All the magic he'd sensed here was blood-tainted, and something as mundane as a spell for warming water had probably been fuelled from one of the enthralled mages he had seen feeding power to Leareth's mind, rather than the tyrant himself. Can I really bear to use this? Why must he -
No. It's not just the magic. Leareth held this whole land and had turned its every soul to his own aggrandisement, miners as surely as mages. Any scrap of warmth here was made by slavery. Vanyel couldn't be here and not be complicit in it, but gods, could he hate and reject it, even as he took what he must of it. He sighed, and drank warm water from his cupped hands as the bathtub filled; the room clouded with steam, and he removed his filthy clothes and sank into the water, stewing with guilt.
His skin felt wrong. Everything did. Everything about even having a body - a vessel for weapons, a quiver. Only that. May as well keep it clean. He hadn't bathed since his night at the Guardpost. What had happened the day after had already been burned away, frozen, buried, cast off, killed, and still he shuddered while he scraped his skin clean.
He tried not to look back - all he'd see would be his own footsteps leading from one misjudgement to another, via pains caused entirely by his own errors. No, he shouldn't look, yet couldn't help but look. He knew better than to relax for a second - all he could do was scrabble for more energy and more time. He was still valuable only insofar as he could use the killing-powers inside him; in all other respects he was a walking corpse, destined to be lost without honour. And If he served his purpose, then the country he saved most likely would never come to know of it or anything else he'd said or done or had done to him -
Keep your mind in the present, you damned fool. He dipped his head back in the water, and pulled at the knots in his hair. He felt a wet tendril catch on the wound on his arm, and hissed. So strange to even feel anything.
He took what relief he could find in the heat of the water before draining it, and then rinsed his clothes out in the remainder left in the boiler. He wrung them out and carried them with him back up the stairs, noticing the fine hairs on his arms standing on end as he chilled again; he felt no particular discomfort.
He spread his rags flat on the floor and slid into the bed, and set a half-dozen magical alarums before he gave in to exhaustion. If Leareth wanted to have him killed where he lay, at least he'd be awake for it.
"Vanyel?"
The voice that he heard on his awakening him made him sure that he was dreaming again, and he wondered why he couldn't see the changeless sky. But then he realised that his eyes were open. There was nothing to be seen in his tower room. Not a scrap of light.
There were footsteps, and then a rustle at the end of his bed. "Van? Still asleep in there? It's me."
Hearing his voice here didn't even make sense and Vanyel's mind smouldered, furious and confused and more furious because of it; then he remembered what Leareth had promised him. A shudder ran through him, something cold and absolute that killed all his wonderment and all reason with it. He was awake, and sitting up and waiting for another's hands to find his own.
Barely warm. He traced the backs of those hands, bones under dry skin, up to strong forearms and the soft flesh of his inside arms. The familiarity of the form tugged at the place where he'd once had a heart. Beneath it, a subtle tingle of magic.
Very subtle, he thought coldly. He pulled the stranger forward hard, and buried a hand in his hair. Wiry curls parted between his fingers, and he heard a warm gasp. You're good. Very damned good. "Miss me?" whispered Tylendel.
Vanyel snarled low, and shifted his hands to his adversary's face, feeling his way along perfect curled sideburns and finely replicated cheekbones. His mind raced free from his body, floating in the dark. He knew exactly what was going on and -
- he wasn't going to stop it.
The last thing he needed was to hear another fucking word and so he kissed him. Cold and hungry and so hard that their teeth met, and he felt brittle ice in his spine, hardening him even as it numbed him. Reptile-hands against his naked body. He lay back, pulling his visitor above him, breaking the press of their lips to move lower, trace his teeth down that elegant throat.
You aren't perfect. It's easy to use magic to learn what a man looks like and sounds like, but you've no idea of the taste of him - Yet he was frozen inside, steadied himself with one hand to each side of the crevasse.
Those hands were exploring him, gentle and firm and so alike to Tylendel's in gesture, utterly necrotic in touch. Did you once watch us, is that what you're showing me? He felt his own anger beating inside his skull, a fist slamming against the ice walls. He let his tongue drift down to his enemy's chest, tip digging into muscles as if he were trying to find the gaps between the scales. I could test you, he thought as the other's touch moved towards his numb centre. So ''Lendel', what would you do if I told you to stop? What would you -
He wrapped his mouth around a blood-flushed nipple, tongue and teeth exultant with hunger. The ice never swayed never cracked no way past no way to say no no no I don't want this and he dropped down inside it. So dark, not even a sky. And I'm - awake.
A hand closed around his cock and he heard himself moaning, felt himself rising into it. I have to -
Have to nothing, can't anything, oh gods this is real. It's not him. But it's me. And it's Leareth. And it's me. I'm really - A knee slid between his thighs and he cried out. Another hand. He had to think. Had to speak, had to make a mage-light and see oh but what would he see?
He couldn't cast the spell. He let Leareth embrace him again, turn his body over in the dark, press cold lips down his spine, Vanyel trembling under him. This wasn't making light. Wasn't making love. This was -
- making hate.
Vanyel found himself below the even grey light, blinking, his pleasure already faded into the toneless snow. Alone, this time, and he decided he was glad of it. He sat on the ground and put his hand to his mouth, chewing at his knuckles in disgust.
It was hours of runaway thinking, growing ever more chilled, before he heard Tylendel's footsteps. Vanyel looked up at him as he scrambled over the nearby rise, now assuming that this was simply another trap.
'Lendel took a step back at the sight of Van's hostile expression. "Van, I -" He looked concerned, and a little hurt. "I'm sorry. That wasn't my fault. But I'm sorry."
"Who are you?" he spat.
Tylendel dropped to one knee, keeping his distance but holding Vanyel's eyes level. "You would know better than anyone. Probably better than me."
Well, that was true. He did. However angry he was becoming in this nest of delusions and dreams, no one else's fantasies would ever be good enough to fool him. He sprang across the empty snow, tackled Lendel by the shoulders and kissed him as they fell into the snow.
A moment of warmth was proof enough, and he pulled himself up again, leaving Tylendel sprawled on the ground. "I'd know," he agreed, lips stinging. He raised a hand to his mouth, and wasn't surprised or even fazed when he found that the blood at the corner of his lips wasn't red, but crystalline-blue. This settled it. It wasn't anyone's delusion but his own. That was his 'Lendel picking himself up from the ground, and not anyone else's.
This triumph of reasoning only made him feel emptier. He'd had to do it, though. He'd decided upon it an hour ago, and taken like that - taken, not requested or offered - the kiss hadn't hurt him.
It had hurt 'Lendel, though. He knew he should feel guilty, but he couldn't feel anything much except anger. Lendel was sitting up, grunting slightly. "You could have told me you wanted..." He trailed off at Vanyel's warning look. "Right," he said softly. "Anything else you'd like to warn me about?"
"Go away."
"Rather be alone, huh?" Vanyel looked at him witheringly. "Van, I think we need to talk."
"I've nothing to say," he replied quickly.
"Then what have you been thinking about all this time?" Van was silent. "I know what happened, Van, I'm not angry -"
"Then leave me alone." He knew how petty he sounded but Tylendel mustn't - no one should - he -
He turned his face against the wall of ice. If only he could do what he'd always planned to - kill Leareth and then die. No one should be trying to care for him any more, least of all 'Lendel. He wasn't worth it. Wasn't worth anything except...
He could feel Tylendel creeping close to him. Not trying to touch or to hurt, just to be near. "Van. I know just did something that you wouldn't have wanted to do. It wasn't good for you, and it wasn't like you."
"It was necessary," he replied. "If I play along he's going to give me a chance to kill him."
"And until then, he'll do whatever he likes with you?" Vanyel dropped his head. Yes, he wanted to scream - that was the vise he was trapped in and there was nothing else he could do but play along and look for Leareth's weaknesses, while knowing all the while that Leareth was doing the same to him. And the less he made sex seem like a weakness - which in any case it shouldn't be - the better.
But he couldn't say it.
"Fine." 'Lendel sounded exasperated, to say the least. "But could you at least tell me what the hell you think he was getting out of that performance?" Van looked up, startled. He hadn't thought about that. Or if he had, he'd assumed that Leareth simply liked to extract pleasure from the discomfort of others, and if Vanyel failed to express any such discomfort, he'd soon lose interest. That there was any other reason he'd choose to come to Vanyel in the guise of Tylendel hadn't crossed his mind.
But what if that wasn't the reason? What if - He glanced at 'Lendel's face, suddenly thinking of two different possibilities, both of which were unlikely in the extreme. "Either he thinks he can crack me with his lousy illusion," and he surely had some awareness of the limits of even the best illusions, but the other possibility was almost too stupid to contemplate. "Or he's playing out a fantasy of what it would be like to be my lifebonded. He really wants to be you."
Tylendel nodded. "I know it sounds absurd but it would explain a lot of other absurdities."
"Like that I'm still alive and he's not tried to change that yet. He must know I don't plan to help him, and there's a lot of easier ways he could get power than by draining it from me. This really is personal, isn't it? He wants me to..." Validate him? Something like that. Vanyel's purely sexual surrender had surely been gratifying to Leareth's ego, even through that superficial veil, but he hadn't tried to dispose of Vanyel afterwards.
So maybe all this time, Vanyel's nemesis had had a crush on him. Stef would be amused - and he immediately regretted even thinking of Stefen because now more than ever he couldn't dare a trace of that still-living bond in his mind. If Leareth came to know that he had lifebonded again...
"What are you going to do now?" asked Tylendel. "He's not going to stop, Van."
"I need to kill him."
"You need to get out of here!" 'Lendel flung his hands up, gesturing at the sky. "I'll help you, I promised that. But killing isn't enough -"
"Hells, listen to you," he hissed. "He had Savil and Yfandes killed. I've half a theory he had Staven killed." 'Lendel's eyes closed, and his face twisted in, damn him, pity. It didn't make sense. "How could you not want to see him dead?"
"I can't, Van. I can't want that as much as I want you safe. Do you not know what I had to give up here?" Open eyes, tears freezing to his cheeks. "The more you hate him the further down you'll fall. Don't you -"
Van got to his feet angrily and tried to turn, but stumbled. He felt the ice beneath him crack, and then everything went dark.
