Chapter Text
It takes him longer to get there now. The years on him make the road a little slower and autumn is already well established when he sets out, the days growing ever shorter and colder, a fine frost that covers the ground in the mornings, a chill on the evening air. Once he would have travelled on into the dark and thought nothing of it, but now he stops while the sun still lingers above the horizon, finds a tavern for the night and lays one of his dwindling gold coins upon the bar.
It is nearly a month before he reaches the foot of Mount Kalik and by then he is no longer sure exactly why he had come. What the odd compulsion had been that had made him set out on this journey in the first place.
Distant memories, old ghosts, that is all. Things that have drifted away long ago, so long that they should remain buried in the past. It is pointless to dig over them, yet they live within him and here he is, and he finds himself standing right in the shadows of them.
Perhaps he had picked this place because it is only now, in looking back, that he can see it as some sort of turning point, a cusp where two paths diverged. There was the path that he had walked down, the one he had tried never to question or regret, and then there was some other path, just the vague outline of it, barely visible, another road that might have led somewhere else entirely.
How many years had it been? Twenty perhaps? Years slip off him, they cling to him, he feels every one of them now, the many aches of them are riven through him. He has lived three score years and he isn’t sure if he will get the ten, though his body has taken the toll of them. Years of dark magic have done that, withered him, stripped something out and left his bones stuck together with some other strength, sinew and sharp, tough like a piece of old cured leather.
He finds the spot by instinct, his feet carry him there as if no time at all had passed and there is no other possible direction that they could go. He sees the crack in the sheer face of the mountain before him, invisible to most, and the years fade, become blurred together until they catch in his throat. He reaches out a hand, he recognises it as his own, but it is old now, much older than before, the veins lying thickly under his skin, and he feels the mountain cold and timeless beneath it.
Then the sun slips from behind a cloud and the autumn day grows suddenly bright. He feels the warmth on his neck and he lets it remain there for a moment before his feet carry him forward into the darkness.
He needs no light to guide his way but he casts one anyway, the path is uneven, it winds away in front of him, twists and disappears.
He draws upon his magic sparingly these days, it takes a little too much from him to use it in the carless fashion he had once been able to, each spell has become a careful weighing of effort and cost and what he will gain in return. Magic for frivolous ends is unfeasible, nothing but foolish, and yet here he is with all the ingredients for a spell he shouldn’t perform, a spell that makes no sense whatsoever and yet… he slips forward, follows the turns of the tunnels as if it was only yesterday that he last walked here. There is no difficulty squeezing through the narrow gaps and he mutters to himself softly as he does so, little things to break the silence; spells backwards, lists of ingredients, names.
For a moment, for the briefest moment, time fractures and he thinks he feels the steps of the other behind him, the one he has gone to seek, and he murmurs to him, “Come on boy, nearly there…” but the feeling fades. There is no-one there, and his words echo out into nothing.
He turns another corner and he is bathed in the green glow that emanates from core of the mountain and the air is full of the familiar dank scent of wisps and musty trees. The cavern before him is just as he remembered, the majestical slope of its roof stretches ever upwards, drawing the eye on and on until nothing but darkness can be discerned. Stalagmites erupt haphazardly from the floor, lit by the glow of magical fungi and crooked trees grow in all directions, bark gnarled, roots twisting away from them like snakes. It is the wisps that finish the picture and bathe it in an otherworldly beauty. They shine their light out over everything and turn the cavern into a magical grotto that seems to belong to the realm of dreams.
Kpp’Ar has always loved this place. He had been shown it once long ago, and there was only one person he had ever shared it with, only one person he could ever have shared it with, and a fragment of him still seems to stand at his side.
Viren.
If he thinks about him, he can picture him clearly enough.
No different to the way he had looked the last time they had met. His features a little colder then than those of the boy he had known, as if winter had already started to settle on him and wrap its ice around him. There were things Viren had asked of him that day that he hadn’t been able to give, choices he had made that still live within him, choices that bought a sadness that had grown and grown, that had expanded like an estuary leading to the sea.
No, that wasn’t quite true, there was one time he had seen him after that. A picture he doesn’t care to recall. What does it matter anyway?
Dead now.
He is dead, and the dead all look the same.
The news of Viren’s passing had come to him late, months after the event itself, it followed fast on the rumour he had been crowned regent in Katolis. That boy he had known, bright and brilliant, that boy who had burnt, how he had burnt, as if only by burning brighter and brighter could he prove himself.
Many times over the years Kpp’Ar had wondered just who he was proving himself to.
Kpp’Ar had cut himself off from society when he gave up on magic, when he saw the darkness in it, some might say the scales had dropped from his eyes. Certainly the fervour of his belief had faded for the love of something lost. Events in the kingdom of Katolis travelled slowly to him after that. They followed the paths of merchants and travellers, twisted through mountain passes, crossed rivers, stopped in many towns before they reached the little hamlet where he sometimes bought his food.
Still the news had come eventually, and just the mention of that name had sent a jolt through him. An odd pang, like coming across something he had once cherished and put away long ago in a cupboard, then finding it resurface, unexpectedly under his hand.
Viren had led an army of thousands into Xadia, had been defeated by the rightful heir to the throne and an alliance of elves and dragons, and he had fallen to his death from the Storm Spire. The news was garbled, but that seemed to be the gist of it. It had seemed so unbelievable that he had made the young merchant repeat it three times, searched the details for any trace of the young man he had known. He had gone to the nearest town, a day’s journey away, to hear slightly different versions of the same events, there was a slippery film over the specifics of them, but they all ended the same way.
The High Mage of Katolis had been killed. A full stop had been placed at the end of a story he had known the beginning of. A path had led to the edge of a cliff and fallen away to nothing.
Then had come the period of reflection that had been coming for years.
For years he had tried to turn from it, to distract himself with other things, busied himself with books on arcane learning, delved into nature, written down the many things he had learnt, his most exotic theories. It was always there though, somewhere in the back of his mind, the forks in the road, the little moments where life turned and changed and whole futures disappeared.
Death bought the past sharply into focus.
He hadn’t really thought about the journey, and yet somehow he had gathered all the things he needed for it anyway.
They seemed to just appear, as if someone else placed them there in the night, so that they were ready for him when the light of dawn came creeping in through the shutters. Things he hadn’t touched in years, the candles with their thick, black wax still melted to the sides, moon opals, a blood geode with veins of red crossing its surface like threads of gold. Many magical things found their way to his table and were packed away into a bag. His travelling cloak was aired out and laid across the top, his cane placed beside it, a bag of gold coins tucked into a pocket, his fine elven hunting knife strapped carefully to the side.
It was when he sold his gold sleeve garters to buy the mule that the journey went from something abstract to something tangible and real, something that it seemed he would actually be making. He had locked up his home one October morning and he hadn’t looked back.
Even then there was still a part of himself that could live in some half hidden denial. Perhaps this was just a trip to see the parts of the world he had thought he’d left forever. As it went on though, it was only Mount Kalik that grew and grew before him, the gloom of autumn hanging heavy over it.
Now he has reached the journey’s end and there is no denying his destination, he stands in this lost space and fear and longing vie within him. Now there is only one thing left for him to do.
He is dealing with dark magic he has never performed before, he has never particularly wanted to look back, momentum had always moved him in one direction, gathered its velocity, gone faster and faster, always forwards. The past is a place full of strange regrets, they cannot be changed, they exist there forever and there is a pain in acknowledging them.
He lays a blanket on the ground, kneels before it and places the contents of his bag in two piles. To the left goes the knife and the geode, a goblet, the twisted roots of calabaya, the sharp teeth of a soul fang serpent. He turns his attention to the right, the moon opals, the dark candle, the leaf of salvia that he places under his tongue. A flick of his fingers lights the candle and illuminates his hand with its purple light. He crushes a moon opal and sprinkles its dust over the flame.
The spell comes to his lips and he feels the way it pulls at him, the power of the magic as it takes hold. It has been so long since he performed a spell like this, he had almost forgotten the feel of it, the way it seems to suck at his heart, the thrill of the power, the malevolent grip of it that clamps him in its vice.
He has come to seek the past and he draws it towards him now, searches through wisps of time, the years that fold over themselves and bend and stretch beneath the spell. There is only one memory he wants to find, one person, one day that lies entombed within him and he pulls it towards him, shifts the elements of the world until he hears it.
The echo of his own footsteps and those of another that follow close behind.
He listens for their voices, the soft murmurs of their approach that grows louder until he can make out the words.
“Wait, you’ll see.”
It is his own voice, the rich timbre of it echoes around the cavern and he opens his eyes and he sees the outline of himself, a twisted reflection of the one that stares at him from mirrors and flat planes of water now. This is himself as he had been, twenty years younger, hair less streaked with white, face barely lined, his same dark eyes staring intently from under the brows.
It isn’t himself he is looking for though, it is the man who is following him. His light tread stops on the threshold of the cavern and there is the audible sound of an indrawn breath, the slow exhalation of it in amazement.
Then he steps forward, the Viren of his memory, stands beside his own ghost and a smile splits his face.
“Oh… it’s so pretty.”
Kpp’Ar sees him there, the warm shadow of the young man he had known and it is like a wrench through his heart. He wonders again what he is doing here, why he is doing this, it will extract a price he isn’t sure he’s willing to pay. For days the spell will empty him, the light will be torn from the world around him, a gloom will cover everything, leaving sunny days as dark as thunderclouds, leaving dark days as inky and hopeless as a starless night.
There is the other cost too, the one that is less tangible, the aching sorrow he feels on seeing him. This is his boy, the one who had grown up beside him, absorbed parts of himself that no one else had ever seen, had known him in a way that no one else ever could. He knows his face so well, and it is right before him, frozen at twenty, the bright shine of his grey eyes that want to know everything, that scour the world around him for every fresh thing they can find. His brown hair swept back off his face, his sharp features unusually soft as he stares round the cavern, drinks everything in as if it is the most wonderful place he has ever seen.
They stand beside each other and Kpp’Ar can remember how he had felt then, the happiness inside him, because he had known that Viren would love it. This little lost place in the human kingdoms that still thrummed with magic, the silent peace of its untresspassed space, the ethereal beauty that it held.
He watches himself, the ghost of himself, turn to Viren, he watches his own face mirror his smile, the curve of his lips. He watches the way Viren’s eyes lock onto his own and they blink before slowly turning back to the cavern before him.
They busy themselves after that, he sets Viren to collecting wisps, fungi and the magical lichen that grows on the trees. Kpp’Ar follows the shadow of him. He already knows what his own ghost will do; laying out a blanket beneath his favourite tree, preparing food he had bought for their lunch, opening a bottle of fine red wine to let it breathe. He had thought nothing of it then, these were just things he enjoyed, and he had been certain that Viren would like them too.
Now he follows his ghost though, watches Viren, sees all the small things he hadn’t noticed then. The way Viren’s gaze shifts from his own tasks to watch him, the odd play of emotions on his face, the peculiar keyed up excitement in him that reveals itself in the little mistakes that he makes.
One of the reasons they got on so well because Viren was just as precise as him, would cut each mushroom halfway down the stem with a quick, careful flick of the blade, would scrape the lichen away cleanly with the grain, but now Kpp’Ar can see that his concentration is only half on the task. An unusual clumsy motion and the knife nicks his hand and he brings it to his mouth, sucks on the red line of blood. Viren’s eyes are fixed only on the ghost of himself, and Kpp’Ar can see the strange longing in them and it is painful to observe, as if he is trespassing somehow into a place he shouldn’t go.
It is hope that is written on Viren’s face and even with the dull ache that the spell has pulled from him Kpp’Ar can feel the sharpness of his regret, the one he should have felt then, the one that cuts through him so acutely now.
There is something inside Viren, it had always been there, a hidden sweetness, a longing for love that he builds up walls around and Kpp’Ar knows exactly how this will play out. The way Viren will let these walls crumble in the embrace of the magic of this place, and the way that his own ghost will build them all back up again.
The way he will pile the stones together so not a crack of light shows through.
Viren wanders over to him and places the jars he has gathered down at his feet. His own attention is elsewhere and he begins to tell Viren about the more exotic uses for wisps as he pours the wine into two goblets and passes him a plate of food.
For a while they eat in silent companionship and Viren’s eyes flick constantly to his own face which is lost in its contemplation of the quiet beauty around them. There are moments when Kpp’Ar watches himself turn to Viren, touch his arm, point out some favoured view. Had he noticed these things at the time or is it only now that he sees them? Sees the way they linger with each other for a just a beat or two more than is necessary, sees the way that Viren leans slightly towards him, the tight lines of his shoulders through his shirt.
They had grown into this easy intimacy and he had never questioned its familiarity because there had been no need to, it was just something that existed between them.
Memories play tricks on you, but the traces of the past cannot lie. They are frozen in time, immutable, they have passed but they will also be there forever, it is his remembrance of them that has shifted, that has made him skew everything slightly into a less painful version of itself. He knows what will come, the familiar course of his recollections and there is a part of him that wants to turn away, to spare himself.
“They say Mount Kalik was a volcano once, but long ago, when the kingdom was whole three elven mages came together, sky, ocean and sunfire to cast a powerful spell to stop it from erupting. The damage would have been devastating. That’s why the core is cold now and this place exists. That’s why even now, thousands of years later the magic lingers here. The trees don’t need light, they’re fuelled by the remnants of that spell and some of these fungi grow nowhere else, not even Xadia. It could never be replicated, in all the world this place is unique.”
Viren is listening to him, his head on one side and despite himself Kpp’Ar has wandered over to sit on a rock before the two of them.
“I didn’t know anywhere like this still existed in the human kingdoms.”
“No. Well, very few people know about it, it’s a secret really, you can’t write about it, everyone would come, they’d strip it bare, but I suppose if you find someone you really trust, well, then you could show them, like this. You’ll know who the right person is.” He smiles at Viren and Viren stares back at him. He had thought this memory was carved into him, all its details distilled, but he had forgotten just how long the silence had stretched on between them then. The way that Viren had twisted the goblet of wine around in his fingers before draining it in three long swallows. He can almost hear himself think, well that’s a waste of good wine…
Viren takes a breath and time seems to skip and stutter and Kpp’Ar can feel his heart thud now in a way it hadn’t then.
“Kpp’Ar… I love you.”
Viren lets the words tumble out and then he looks up, eyes wide, and it is his present self who wants to answer him as he watches his own face trapped in the past receive that news, listens to the painful silence that surrounds them.
Perhaps the surprise hadn’t really been in the revelation of the words, more in the compulsion Viren must have felt to utter them. He can remember exactly how he’d weighed the many responses he could have given carefully as if they were somehow academic. He had tested each one for the right level of ambiguity, as if he could soften the meaning of such a bald statement and turn it into something else.
“Well… yes.” His arms hug his knees with all the awkwardness of a man half his age. “You mean a lot to me too, Viren, you’ve been, you’re always… I mean…” He coughs. “You’re a good boy.”
The image of the ghost of that boy twists his hands together, and his face betrays a wash of pained frustration. His eyes blink rapidly.
“Yeah, but I didn’t mean that. I meant… I’m in love with you.”
He says it softly, a slight catch in his voice and there is an even longer silence. It drags on, the two of them sitting there uncomfortably in it and his reply is less graceful than the one that he’d thought he had made.
“Oh.”
It is sour, he can taste the bitterness in it and the helplessness. That he should have to sit here and watch himself fumble around like a man who lived in water and let it cover all his senses, a man who couldn’t see what was right there in front of him.
There is no way to leave an exit from that statement and he can see the tense look that Viren is giving him, the desperation in it that had made him so forthcoming when he usually kept his feelings bottled up.
He hadn’t seen Viren’s love for the sweet mystery it was then, that it was something inexplicable, too powerful to be contained, that there was some sort of other magic in the world that meant that he had inspired this fragile emotion.
Love was a word he shied from, he had decided years before this that it would never be quite the right one for him, not in the way that most people meant it. He had found his own version and believed it was the only one possible.
Only from this distance can he see the wound in it, the way it must have looked to Viren then. The half-drunk bottle of wine sitting between them, the remains of the bread and cheese, the scattered accoutrements of their livelihood, the life they shared together, the glass bottle full of wisps lighting the air between them. Even then the whole thing had come like a horrible unexpected blow and he hadn’t known what to do with it.
“Viren, you know I couldn’t give you what you want. I’m not… I’m just not that sort of man. It wouldn’t be right.”
Funny how certain he had been then about the rightness and wrongness of things, as if they were set in some sort of stone, as if they existed only in black and white.
“How do you know? How do you know what I want? What matters to me? I already know what sort of man you are, it doesn’t matter. I like you the way you are.”
“Maybe it doesn’t matter now, but one day it will.” He keeps his voice as soft as he can. “There are so many reasons Viren, you must see that. I’ve told you the way I am. ”
He had tried to explain to Viren before, that his need for love was different, that he had never had the desires that other men had, that was why he had taken no partner. His main passion had always been his work - magic, mysteries, puzzles and their solutions, the many different ways you could reach a conclusion. He had concluded long ago that he needed only himself for that, it was easier that way, he would never be able to offer someone else what they would want from him, and Viren wanted love.
“Yeah. I do understand, I’m not asking you for that, I would never want… to make you feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be anything like that. What I’m trying to tell you is… I love you because you’re the most wonderful person I’ve ever met, and when I’m with you I feel like a part of myself that’s missing is right beside me. I just want to be with you, I don’t need anything else.”
He had forgotten Viren’s exact words and they are sharp in his heart.
He had thought he was acting for the best, for himself but also for Viren, what could he offer a young man half his age other than a slightly more intimate version of a friendship that already existed? Viren had a need for something more than he felt he could ever give, a need to be the centre of someone’s life, for someone who could give themselves to him completely, that was the love he had never had, the one he would miss with him.
“Listen, you’re very young, these feelings will change. They’re just… we spend a lot of time together, I’ve enjoyed your company, perhaps I’ve been selfish, kept you from people your own age. The king keeps asking me for a more permanent loan of your services, perhaps you should go and spend some time at the court. You’ll soon see what you’re missing with me.”
Viren rubs his eyes.
“I don’t want to spend time at the court. I want to be with you, there’s nothing they could teach me, they just want someone to perform pretty tricks for the kingdom, you said so yourself.”
Funny how he had felt he was doing the right thing, at that moment he had been certain a quick lance was the least painful way to resolve this, a wound that Viren was young enough to bounce back from, a scar that would quickly fade. He had known all the things that he couldn’t give him, and he had wanted him to have them.
Kpp’Ar watches his younger self drink from the goblet of wine, he can still recall the sour taste of it.
“I’m stuck in my ways Viren, I’m twice your age. Life is… my life is how it has to be for me. You’re…” he sighs, “you’re not like me, you have so much passion, I’ve always seen it in you, I… I just can’t give you what you need. It wouldn’t be fair on either of us.”
The words once spoken cannot be unspoken yet listening to them hang on the air he would give anything to take them back.
Viren turns away, stares up at the wisps swirling in the expanse of the darkness above them.
“I don’t think you know me at all then.” There is a raw, heavy edge to his voice as if he is only just able to hold back all his emotions.
And what had he known after all?
Viren had married, a nice girl from Del Bar, he had loved her, of course he had loved her, yet there were moments even afterwards, times when they still worked together that he would find Viren’s eyes fixed on him, some subtle sadness etched on his face.
He had had two children, it was obvious he adored them, obvious also that they took something from him, that they seemed like vines growing tight around his legs, holding him to the ground when he had wanted to fly.
Viren had seemed to change slowly after that, he became worn down with worries that Kpp’Ar couldn’t quite reach the bottom of. His son Soren had always been sickly, he got worse, the king made demands and he hid them from him. He strove and strove to climb ever upwards, became the High Mage, gained a title and prestige and yet somehow beneath it all he had lost the simple happiness that Kpp’Ar had seen in him.
Kpp’Ar knew he had also been stubborn, he had closed himself off and thought that it was for the best, no need to pick at a scab. He had watched Viren flounder and he couldn’t hold out his hand, he could never admit that perhaps he’d been wrong, perhaps sometimes life was just the chance you took, the chance that might have changed everything.
He could never utter these regrets because then they would become tangible and real and he didn’t know where they would end.
Then one day Viren had come to him and asked for his help to heal his son and Kpp’Ar had refused it. Spells like that had consequences for the caster and it turned out that he did love Viren in ways that he hadn’t fully understood, because he found that he did not want that for him. He had spent hours dissuading him, and Viren had left him, head bowed and he had thought he had succeeded.
He had only seen Viren once after that.
This memory is the one he has tried to erase, the one he had tried to burn in the rage of his own despair, the one that had left him out of his depth and threatened to engulf him.
Viren had stood at his door in a travelling cloak, had begged his admittance abjectly, and it was only in Kpp’Ar’s study that he had lowered it. Then he had seen just what Viren would be driven to in the name of love and that it would destroy him. Viren’s was a love that burnt hot and dangerous and it had carved itself into his skin. He had pushed himself beyond rational limits, beyond the bounds where dark magic had to be contained.
That was the moment something in Kpp’Ar’s world had come crashing down with a terrible clarity. He had helped Viren, because what else was there to do? Sunray Monarchs would cover the scars, but that was just a mask. They would always exist underneath it and Kpp’Ar would always know. There was an anguish that came with that knowledge, as if his own hands had left the marks on Viren because of something he had been unable to give.
When Viren had left him to try and mend things with his wife Kpp’Ar had destroyed the trade that he loved so much. That was the moment of his repentance and it had hurt him, how it had hurt, like the blinding light of the sun. This was the side of love that frightened him, powerful and out of control. It was a thing that drove you mad, where the line between great deeds and despicable acts danced on the edge of a knife and a slip could cut you to shreds.
He had left his house, the one that he had filled with all the mysteries and magic he could imagine, all the peculiar puzzles of his mind. The house that he had built around himself like a museum to hidden parts of him that nobody else could find. He had shared it once for a little while, and then he had shut life out of it, as if it could remain somehow pristine.
So he had locked the door, and then he had walked away.
Now Viren is dead. That man he had loved in his own way, who had offered him his heart once, held it out to him in his hands, his heart that had been full of wonder and wounds and Kpp’Ar had pushed it from himself. He had thought that he’d known what was best.
Now he has watched that scene play out again, nothing more than mist. There is no substance to it, or he would catch it in his hands and alter its path.
He knows things now that he hadn’t known then.
He can feel the sadness well up within him as he watches himself slowly pack away the undrunk wine, watches Viren stand with a jar full of wisps, the awkward hunch of his shoulders as he shoves it into the bag, the sorrow on his unblemished face.
It is only with the benefit of hindsight that he can see the way love had already written its way into their lives together. It was there in all the little things, when Viren cooked him dinner because he had become so absorbed in his work he would have forgotten otherwise. The day he had shown Viren how whole passages of his house were rigged so he wouldn’t get hurt. The way Viren would know without him even having to say which book to fetch from the shelf. When he would go to the market and bring Viren back one of the ridiculous adventure stories with dragons and elves that he loved to read.
Had he been asking him for much more than that?
Now his image seems to accuse him, all he had wanted was love, and if it was a different sort of love did that matter? It was there and it beat in the heart. There was no one else who had ever known him that way, who had taken the time to peel back his brusque layers, to find the man hidden beneath them, to accept him as if it was perfectly natural.
There would never be anyone else.
The force of his own bereavement strikes him as they turn away, he knows each step they will take, each one is already written. He reaches out towards them, they are about to turn, to walk out of the cave, Viren will follow behind him, silent, wrapped up in himself and Kpp’Ar knows that he won’t look back at him. To spare them both some unspoken pain he will look only ahead.
Now though he is ready, twenty years too late to make any difference at all. Now he can reach out to the ghost of Viren and speak.
“I love you.”
The words ring out in the silence and their ghosts walk straight through him as though he wasn’t even there.
Love.
For some reason he had been more afraid of that word than any other. As if love contained only one meaning, as if it wasn’t as multifaceted as the most brilliant diamond, cut and shaped by a master to refract every prism of colour. To shine like the rarest of rainbows in a shaft of light.