The Final Days
Elspeth and Swallow face the final leg of their quest alone, having lost the rest of their companions.
It was black sand to the horizon.
There was the odd crag or dune, but the whole desolate plain did not even seem to undulate much. The far distance was clouded by a purplish mist. I did not know if it was heat shimmering off the sand that obscured our path, or the rise of toxic fumes. It did not seem to matter. We would die, no doubt, as a result of our time in the Blacklands, but exposed to the low levels of taint which Jacob's clicking machine seemed to be indicating, it would be more than a month before we showed symptoms of wasting sickness.
Plenty of time to complete our quest.
I glanced at Swallow, whose Twentyfamilies swagger gave no indication that he was touched by the bleak surroundings. I became grateful for the colourful embroidery of his garb, the ornateness of his rings and wristcuffs, as the complicated nature of the items seemed a reminder that life was continuing, somewhere.
I thought of the cloak the Futuretellers had gifted me for a Moon Fair, which seemed so long ago, distant enough to be a past-dream of someone else's life. It had depicted the animal companions who had joined me and fallen on my quest: Darga, Rasial, the wolves, Faraf, Gahltha, and dear Maruman. Absurdly, I wished I were wearing it now, though the sun and stale wind already made the plains uncomfortably warm.
Our shadows traced the earth in front of us, creeping longer and longer as we outpaced the slipping sun. When at dusk we came upon a scorched black tor, rising no further out of the ground than the height of a man and half again, Swallow suggested we make camp as we were unlikely to find another break from the wind.
The plain was bereft of wood, grass, anything that might have fed a fire. I had heard Jak reason once that this was because the central sands shifted so much they smothered any life. In other places, the sand had fused into a glass platform that no rhizome or tuber could penetrate.
Swallow arranged a few sticks of dry wood from his pack and lit them, although the simple food we had left required no cooking. The fire was merely comfort, and the building of it was a ritual that tied us to other expeditions, daily habits, and those things which anchored us and kept us true to the awful future ahead.
I smiled wryly at Swallow, who was sitting with his legs bent before him, his forearms resting on his knees. "So, this is where our promises bring us."
His grin revealed a brief flash of his teeth, so white against his dark skin. "I always knew you were trouble, Elaria." I admired the easy way he accepted where we were, the courage of his countenance. He was as untroubled by living in the moment as beasts were.
I drank some water from the bladder. "Still, it saddens me to think that no child of yours will be Drek'ta."
"It is the end of a noble line." He agreed. "If you don't count my father."
I blinked to see him speak so easily of Twentyfamilies matters, about which he had always been secretive. This openness prompted me to more candidness. "Why did you never bond? I can't imagine, being a handsome gypsy prince, that you had a shortage of offers." I saw Swallow's amusement at my blunt compliment, and realised that I too, was acting against my own guarded nature. It must have been the barren desert's effect on us, I decided.
"I did have many opportunities to wive" Swallow admitted "but I detested the restrictions placed on me. I could only bond with a Twentyfamilies pureblood, and some were preferable to others as they would help dilute the relatedness of our blood. The older women of our clans all but arrange these matches themselves without regard to love or fellow feeling." He scowled. "Besides, I knew one day the ancient promises would take me away from the Land. It was as though I was already bonded, through destiny, to you." His eyes became half lidded, and his lips curved into a smile.
"Is that why you kissed me, all those years ago?" I asked.
Swallow chuckled. "I told you why I kissed you – because I wanted to." He then looked at me solemnly "If Elaria the halfbreed gypsy had been a real person, she would have been a favourite of mine. Perhaps even a candidate for bonding."
Once, to hear him talk of such things would have made me uncomfortable, I would have felt I betrayed Rushton to even allow them to be said. But here, in this grim dark wasteland, I cherished the idea of all human connections, and I welcomed Swallow's flirtations. Even poor destroyed Dameon's love for me seemed sweet now.
"Do you think it is our hostile surrounds that makes us more open to each other, or is it that we are nearing our deaths?" I asked.
Swallow sighed and put an arm about my shoulders, leaning me into him. "I think it is a little of both. We are both leaders of our people, used to weighing decisions and weaving plans, and we find ourselves in the peculiar situation where nothing we do matters, except for this one thing: we will save the world from another Great White, or we will not. Either way, we have both bartered all that we love to save a world that will ultimately belong to someone else."
Although he spoke lightly, his eloquent reasoning it told me I had been wrong to believe that Swallow had simply accepted his fate. He had gnawed at and wrangled with his destiny perhaps as much as I had, and was no doubt adopting his usual breezy airs to buoy my feelings.
This triggered a furtive question in my mind. "What colour is my aura now?"
His eyes flashed warily but he answered: "Close to your body it is red, especially around your heart chakra. It is like a wound. Then it fades, becoming muddier, until it is black." I nodded, looking past him. The red was my part in the deaths of those I loved, I knew. I could only guess that the black meant despair.
Swallow brushed my cheek with a broad stroke of his thumb. I must have begun crying, I realised, although I could not feel it. All this time he had been reading my feelings in the spirit energy that shimmered around me, shepherding me, trying to keep me from the verge of insanity. Because only I could finish what we had started.
Swallow leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I felt a mad desperation to be closer to him, and grasped him behind his neck and pulled him to my lips. He did not resist me, and I wondered if he would make love to me simply to preserve his ancient promises.
I asked as much between kisses, wildly, bitterly.
"Were you not listening earlier, Elspeth?" Swallow cried. "I have always felt for you, though our damned entwined fates made things so complicated." I went to kiss him again, but he held me back.
"I am scared too, you know. And I share your guilt about those that we've left behind, but we've already fulfilled our oaths to them with blood. You have paid your Rushton and I have paid my clan tenfold. We are dead men, Elspeth, and I think we are both entitled to take comfort in each other. After all, did not the fates bind us together, here at this very spot?" his voice was plaintive now, and I saw tears brim in his eyes too.
This time we kissed open mouthed, passionately. I ran my hand up the muscled definition of his arm, and we rolled sideways by the fire. Swallow wrenched my loose shirt from me, and I fumbled with the belt that secured his trews. He sank into me, the muscles of his choca stomach rippling against me, and we filled the stark night with our breath and sweet moans.
When we were still, I lay by him, with his arm loosely around me and my head on his chest, listening to his thudding heart. Occasionally, he would press his lips to the crown of my head, and gently rub my shoulder with his fingertips.
"Thank you." He whispered.
I knew that with his spirit eyes, he would be able to see a golden cord running between the two of us, feeding each of us the love of the other and the will to go on.
We lay like this, unsleeping, until dawn.