Summerlands part 18
Someone mentioned Summerlands here recently, and I dunno if that provided the last little push I needed or if it's just that having the house to myself makes me extra writey, but I got back on that horse last night and rode a while.

Since my own journal is now private, I've decided to post these here instead. I think they fit better here anyway. I'm not moving the other segments, but they're all public, so you shouldn't have any trouble reading them.

For those of you who weren't following it before, I'll give you a little background. 'Summerlands' is a writing exercise; the point is for me to fight my plague of perfectionism by writing as fast as I can and then posting the result without editing. I do give these pieces a once-over for typos and grammar, and sometimes catch a patently stupid phrase and change it, but I'm not giving them the four or five rewrites my 'real' work gets before I show it to anyone. That doesn't mean you can't criticize! I'm not particularly sensitive about criticism, and am always happy to hear what you think works and what doesn't. But crits will be more useful to me if they focus on character, setting, and language rather than plot and pacing, since I'm making very little attempt to keep a plot together.

Index post is here: http://gomichan.livejournal.com/185409.html


Peony was nowhere to be seen when Jared got back to the apartment off the library. Hiding, he thought; somehow he was sure she knew Deimos had been there. He showered and changed his clothes. He threw away the clothes Deimos had ruined. He could've repaired them, but he didn't want them anymore.

He cleaned up the tumbled and bloodstained books, the dried blood on the floor. It didn't feel like it had anything to do with him. When that was done, he began searching the shelves.

Someone had to have written about Deimos. There had to be something Jared could use against him.



* * *



Day waited up long into the night. It was nearly morning when his door rattled. He set aside the torn gambezon he'd been mending and stood, but didn't go to answer it. It rattled again, harder, then thundered with an angry knock.

"Open your fucking door, you felching fairytale!"

He opened it and stood aside to let Deimos in. He kept his face impassive as he went to stand by the marble mantelpiece. He rested his elbow on it beside the place where he'd driven Deimos's knife three inches into the stone. He waited.

"What's your game?" The Monster King's crimson eyes were narrow with suspicion. He could usually summon his weapons with a thought, but Day had bound the knife so he couldn't call it. It was a difficult magic, and it had cost him dearly. Deimos was smart enough to know Day wouldn't do that just for spite.

Day wrapped his hand around the knife. He gave a wrench. The blade broke in half. He tossed the ruined thing to Deimos, underhand, insultingly slow.

Deimos ground his teeth as he caught it. "You sorry son of a bitch. If you weren't hiding behind Karil's skirt --"

"What's the matter? It's still a knife." Day allowed himself a little smile. "It's not destroyed. It's just a little changed."

With a snarl, Deimos threw it in the fire. He turned on his heel and stalked out.

Day closed the door gently behind him. Once it had been long enough that he was sure Deimos wasn't coming back, he picked the knife out of the coals. Its wooden handle was scorched and the blade had no doubt lost its temper, but that was all right. It was still itself. He freed the other half of the blade from the stone mantel and wrapped the two pieces together in a cloth.

He was sure Deimos had taken his more obvious meaning: that he was ruining Karil's things by playing with them, even if he didn't outright destroy them, and Karil would surely tire of that if he kept it up. Day didn't think Deimos believed it; he probably believed that the indulgent, besotted Karil he saw was all there was to the man. It seemed unlikely, though, that Deimos had spotted the deeper message: the knife was one of his bound weapons, like his scalpel and his chainsaw, forged out of his soul, which was why he could summon them by will. Day had not only ruined it... he'd taken it. He'd only meant to keep a piece of it, but Deimos, in his anger, had let him have the whole thing.

He wasn't sure precisely what he would do with it, not yet. He didn't want to -- no, that wasn't entirely true -- he couldn't risk harming Karil. But he was certain some potent spell could be forged of it sooner or later.

Sooner, he thought, would be better.



The next day, he sought an audience with his lord. Karil received him in a window-walled room high in the 'modern' wing. The room was empty but for a tall loom and a small table with a vase of hyacinths on it. Karil was working some subtle magic; at a glance it looked as if he were weaving a plain white cloth, but he had neither shuttle nor spools of thread. The fabric formed of its own accord as his graceful fingers caressed the warp. From time to time he took a flower from the vase and, somehow, caused it to join the cloth as a strand of blue-purple irridescence which gradually faded into the whiteness of the weave. Pale daylight turned his skin to pearl and his hair to fire. Day didn't mind waiting until Karil deigned to acknowlege him, though it was nearly an hour.

He thought of Jared's impertinent question: 'Are you still in love with him?' He was not, not the way Jared had likely meant it. He didn't envy Deimos's place in Karil's bed. What he envied was the monster's place in Karil's counsels. He wanted Karil to confide in him as he once did. Listen to what he had to say and not dismiss him as a mere minion. He wanted there to be some... some point to his loyalty. He'd never allowed himself to think of Karil in any base way, but it was so difficult when Karil habitually debased himself by bedding something foul.

At last Karil turned to Day with a smile. "Do you know what I'm weaving?"

"No, lord."

"Come, sit with me." He gestured, and suddenly a second chair had always been there. When Day sat in it, Karil returned to his task. "What does it look like, Day?"

"A shroud for a god."

Karil chuckled. "Perhaps, perhaps." Then he shook his head. "No. It's a garment for a creature that is not a monster. A creature I hope you've come to tell me is waiting below."

"I'm sorry, lord. We haven't captured it yet."

"No matter. I'm not finished weaving anyway. So long as a certain someone doesn't get to it first."

"The hunting parties are disguised as regular patrols. We erase whatever trail we find, and keep what we've discovered only in our memories."

"Then to what do I owe the pleasure of your light, O you who remind me that the sun is not a myth?" Without looking, Karil reached out and ran his hand down the length of Day's hair. He came away with a fistful of strands; red-gold began to twine with the violet shimmer in his weaving.

Day's heart skipped a beat and then sank through the floor, but he neither showed it nor thought about it. Karil often bestowed these gestures of affection and forgot them the next moment. It was simply Karil's way. "I've come to ask a favor of you, lord."

"Oh? And have you earned one?"

"A favor is, by its nature, unearned."

Karil laughed. "Did I teach you that, or were you always slippery with words? Well, I'll hear you out, at least."

"It's been many years since I added a warrior to our ranks. I still haven't been able to replace those Deimos killed when he first arrived. I wish to build an army worthy of you, and yet I can barely field enough men to hunt fugitives without leaving the walls half-guarded. The new librarian isn't particularly strong, but he's healthy and obedient, and he wants to learn. Please let me train him as a squire."

Karil considered this for a while. His expression wasn't encouraging. "To fight with sword and lance, a boy must be trained before his bones have hardened. If you begin when he's full-grown, he'll never be strong enough."

"Forgive me, lord, but that's not precisely true. Dame Eleanor was not trained thus."

"She's a giant," Karil dismissed. "Why does everyone want that boy? Is there something special about him I haven't noticed?"

Day stifled a sigh. Eleanor wasn't a giant. In the place she came from, it was perfectly ordinary for women to be more than six feet tall -- and black as jet as well -- but she was completely human for all that. He wouldn't annoy Karil by correcting him on small details, though. "No, lord, he's unremarkable in himself. But it's been a long time since anyone new arrived from the old world, and the last few were especially disappointing." He tried to steer the conversation back on track. "He may not be strong enough for the weapons I use, but perhaps lighter weapons --"

"No."

That seemed to be that. Day leaned forward as if to rise. Karil's hand shot out and caught his shoulder, pushed him back.

"No, we don't need another knight. Blundering around on a big fat horse, clanking like tinkers, calling out challenges of honor to shadows. No."

Wounded by Karil's unfair caricature of him, Day looked away.

"Deimos doesn't have knights," Karil went on. "He barely has what you'd recognize as an army. Yet when it's necessary to move, his monsters respond more quickly, more ably than you and your men."

It was very hard not to defend himself. It was impossible not to be hurt. Once, Karil had loved having armored knights in his service. Day was who he was because Karil had willed him so. But he said nothing. Anything he said would only make it worse.

"What we need, you see, is the sort of person who can move on a moment's notice, live wild if he must, carry out his orders without the impediment of outdated chivalry. Do you think the librarian can be made into one of these?"

You used to love chivalry, Day thought despairingly. He did not, however, miss the opportunity to move the boy out of range of Deimos's harrassment. "Yes, Lord Karil, I believe he can."

"Very good." Karil plucked another hyacinth and began threading its color into the cloth.

Day stood and bowed. "I shall begin right --"

"Oh, not you." Karil looked up at him, all polite apology. "I'll take care of it myself."

"But... lord? Are you not busy with other matters?"

"Are you stupid? I'm bored senseless, Day. I always am. Come here a moment." He beckoned Day down, gleaned another handful of his hair, and kissed his cheek. "I know what you are," he said softly. "You're what I made you to be. Don't think that because I torment you I'm displeased with you. Your brave suffering delights me." Then, between one moment and the next, his gentle expression transformed to a snarl. "Go! Get out! Go!"

Day fled.