The Lotus Ascension (40 page)

“Chief Priest
Vaelus,” Sillara said, stepping up before Soren.

Vaelus came
forward and knelt before her.

“Do you still
look with an eye of favor on Merieke? For though her guilt is plain, her hand
did not strike the blow.”

Vaelus's gaze
shifted over to where Merieke stood under guard. “I do, for other than yours I
have never seen such beauty in all my life. But she is the King's.”

“No more,”
Soren said. “She was my concubine, and I may cast her off if I wish. I give her
to you under that same relationship.” He did not have her executed to spare
Darien's wits, and partly to fulfill Nathen's dying wish.

“Then I will
take her.”

“Father!”
Merieke cried out, but
Darien lay insensible. She looked to Soren. “Soren, don't do this. I love you.”

But Soren would
not meet her eyes. “Vaelus, if it
like
you, I will
send you to Arinport as my ambassador. You will speak for me before the throne
of my friend, King
Jahen
. And with you I’ll send a
deed of gift, making over to
Orien
all the
Itenu
properties, titles, and privileges.”

Vaelus
bowed.
“As
you command.”

“We'll never
see her again,” Soren whispered to Sillara, and she squeezed his hand. To the
guards, he said, “Take Merieke away. She will go to Arinport with Vaelus, and
let her know that the day I see her face again, that day she dies. Vaelus, take
tidings to King Jahen and King Tivanel, and tell them all that has transpired
here. Let them know what dark deeds unrequited love has wrought.” He looked
into Sillara's beautiful eyes and found that his love, however, was requited.
“Remove the body from the bedroom.”

The whole
assembly filed out of the room and out of Soren and Sillara's house. The guards
helped Darien to his feet, but he stumbled away like a man already dead.

Sillara removed
Konas's wedding bracelet and let it clatter to the floor. Soren removed his own
bracelet and slipped it on her wrist, and as he did so, all his cares flew
away. His soul, now unburdened, soared in its love for his sister-wife, and he
scarcely breathed, lest he break the spell and wake from his fantasy.

Sillara
responded to the thought Soren did not speak. She wrapped her arms around his
waist and hugged him. “No dream, no fantasy. I am real, and I will be by your
side loving you until I breathe no more.”

“Your last
breath is my last breath.” Soren kissed the top of her head as he had so many
times in the past, first in innocent brotherly affection, now with a rising
passion they could at last share.

Sillara
looked up into his eyes as
she had all her life, but this time
Soren
knew she
would not be content with a mere peck on the forehead. He took his sister in
his arms and pulled her close, relishing the moment of wrapping her up in his
embrace.
Sillara’s
tongue traveled across her bottom
lip, and her gaze never left
Soren’s
face. He felt
her thoughts as close to him as his own. And now her body lay against his,
almost nothing separating their skin.

Soren
brushed his lips against hers,
testing her sweetness, and all the tension in her muscles melted away as she
fell into his kiss. The world’s mind opened to
Soren
,
and he understood clearly what all his life he had only perceived dimly. He
knew the world as he knew
Sillara’s
mind.

Sillara
broke the kiss, and her eyes
stared in wonder. “The glass is no longer dark.”

“You sense it,
too?”
Soren
explored his new mind
in
an instant, understanding deep mysteries
that his mortal mind could not
have grasped.

Sillara
nodded. “This is what we were
born for.”

Epilogue

“
Soren
.”
Sillara laid her hand on her brother's shoulder. The sunlight was bright in
their room, and the scent of roses—flowers she had had shipped in from Arinport
centuries ago—pervaded the chamber.

Soren's eyes
opened, and he sat up, wrapping his arms around her. “Happy birthday,” he said.

Sillara laughed.
It was their five hundredth birthday, but they knew well that death could not
touch them, not since they had tasted their immortality with their first kiss.
“The Burning is not coming for us, brother. We are not mortals.”

“We are not. Nor
are we subject to mortal limitations, not even death. And Prince Kamen shows no
sign of it.” Soren leaned his brow against hers. “But is it right for him to be
an eternal Prince and never a King? I mean, of course, of
our
people,
for he has been King of the Ausir for centuries now.”

“He, like us,
partakes of
Abrexa’s
gift of divinity.”
Sillara
smiled. She knew Soren's desires as she knew her
own; his desires
were
her own. “We have long since fulfilled the
prophecies of Abrexa, and our Tamari—do you remember how they used to be called
'Desertmasters'?—would be glad to have our son as King, even if they must share
him with the Ausir.”

“So it is today
then?”

“Today.”
Sillara kissed Soren's
shoulder. There was no need for further speech. As the years had passed, they
had transformed the uncouth, if proud, Desertmasters into the new Tamari, a
race of mixed-blooded humans who lived by Sunjaa law augmented with Tamari honor.
Over the centuries, they had built up relations with Arinport, and now the
Tamari were a rich people; but still Soren and Sillara insisted that they keep
the attitudes of the original Tamari, never growing soft in their wealth.

“How long do you
think it will take Kamen to answer our summons?” asked
Soren.

“We should be
free of the city of Tamar within four months,” said Sillara.

****

Three months
after the dispatch of Soren and Sillara's messengers, Kamen, King of the Ausir,
Kamen, Prince of the Tamari
Desertmasters
, stood
before his parents on the steps of the temple-tomb in the heart of the desert.

Soren and
Sillara, hand in hand, faced their son and their subjects. Soren was the first
to speak.

“Nearly five
centuries ago, I became your King. I came down from the sky in fulfillment of
Abrexa's prophecies. I brought law in my right hand and justice in my left. For
longer than any of you have lived, I have served you and ruled you. I am your
Queen's King, and I am weary of my days.”

Sillara caught
Soren's glance. He was weary only of the city, only of the company of others,
for as the years had worn on, Soren and Sillara had grown ever closer, ever
dearer to each other.

But it was her
turn to speak, and she tore her gaze from Soren's face. “Nearly five centuries
ago, I became your Queen. I am gold-horned as Abrexa is gold-chained, with
Veirakai's craft in my hand and his Abrexa's passion in my heart. I am your
Queen, and I am weary of my days.”

The Chief
Priest Vaelus, descendant of the Vaelus who had taken Merieke as concubine, now
spoke. “And for more years than we can recall, you have been our Queen and our
King, our mother and our father. Will you now leave your children desolate?”

“I am Kamen.”
It was his turn now to speak, and Sillara's son turned from them to face the
gathered Tamari Desertmasters. “I am gold-horned as Abrexa is gold-chained. The
craft of Veirakai is in my hand and his Abrexa's passion in my heart. I have
come down from the sky with law in my left hand and justice in my right. I am the
son of your gods, and I can rule in the full measure of their divinity. I will
take the crown of my celestial father, and I will be to you your King. I will
comfort you for the loss of your heavenly mother, and this city shall be mine.”

Chief Priest Vaelus
cried aloud. “Shall we release those whom Abrexa sent us?”

Sillara then
lifted up her voice, and in many tongues from many places around the square,
she sang her reply.

The goddess
gave, and the goddess takes away.

Blessed be
Abrexa, gold-chained Abrexa.

Soren spoke
over Sillara's mournful melody, crying out to the people to whom they had given
more than a lifetime. “Sillara and I—no more your King or Queen—
have
given to you more years than we should have had. Would
you have us die here? Will you not let us find our own rest?”

“My father and
my mother have served you, O Tamari, have given you their lives. They must
rest. They swore to you to be your King and Queen until their heir should take
up the crown.”

Chief Priest
Vaelus bowed his head. “What can we say?
For the Queen and
her King have been as gods to us.”

“And so they
have deserved to be.” Kamen turned back and looked at Soren and Sillara. “I
will take up the crowns that have grown too heavy for your heads, and I will
add them to my own.”

Sillara removed
her crown and placed it on Kamen's head. She leaned down and kissed his brow.
“Farewell, and
may
all the gods watch over you. We,
too, among them shall hold you ever in our thought.”

Soren then
removed his crown and placed it on Kamen's head, where it clicked into place
with Sillara's. He, too, kissed Kamen's brow. “I have been a King for even
longer than you have, Kamen, but I have never desired it. You shall rule this
people as you rule the Ausir, and when the line of the
Sunjaa
Kings fails—as
Abrexa
has told us it will within the
century—you shall take up that crown, too. You, Kamen, shall be the undisputed
ruler of
all the
west.”

Kamen smiled,
and Sillara thought her heart would burst with joyful pride. “Farewell.”

Soren took
Sillara's hand again then, and they passed through the crowd of their one-time
subjects. They walked unescorted to the edge of the city they had not left in
centuries, and there they climbed into an Ausir balloon and set out for the
west.

When they
finally set down, after many days of journeying, they crossed a high mountain
range and passed into the uttermost west. There they saw a veritable sea of
trees, and they knew that they had reached the Brien Amir, fabled forest where
the Ausir had awoken in the deeps of time.
Though none had
ever been able to pass through its tangled paths since the Ausir had left it,
for Soren and Sillara the paths seemed to open before their feet.
They
passed through the forest, and when they stood in the heart of it, there they
found the bower of roses of their long-ago dreams.

“
Shalar
grows here,” said Sillara.

Soren nodded.
“It was placed here by the goddess herself.”

“For us.”
Sillara
understood, and she knew that Soren did, too. The goddess Abrexa, like
themselves, had had a predestined mate, but she had had to endure much to
obtain him. They, too, had had to endure much to have each other. But they had
endured. They had proven the purity of their love by keeping the oaths that had
kept them apart, just as
Abrexa
had. And the
goddess’s reward to them was to set the eternal crown of godhood on their love.

So Soren and
Sillara dwelt together, in a bower of bliss, a cradle of roses, innocent as the
first beings to awake in the world, and there their love grew day by day, hour
by hour, until when the final battles came upon the world, when King Kamen of
the west fought against Arixus, Emperor of the east, the love of
Soren
and
Sillara
had long since
raised them up into divinity, and their son could call upon their power.

Yet even the
breaking of the world could not break their love, and the world itself ended
first.

The End

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Other Books by Adonis Devereux:

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