Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:29:35 -0400
From: M Patroclus <thephallocrat@gmail.com>
Subject: The Exile, Chapter 22

THE EXILE
A Gay Fantasy Experiment

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Chapter 22

Oh, Alek! How I failed you!

Forgive me, mysterious reader. For all these years I have done my best to
forget, to swallow my guilt in a million good deeds. Only now, as I relive
my memories again to put them to paper, only now do I realize that from
this pain I could never truly hope to escape. How foolish to think
otherwise.

What use has it all been, then? What good all that I have brought to pass?
What does it profit, to be a son of power, if it could not stop my betrayal
of the one I loved above all others?

Yes, my betrayal. For I would not have you who read this, you who have
traveled so far down this road of memory with me, think that Alek betrayed
me. That he struggled with all he could muster to escape the power that had
held him so many years, I do not doubt. But had I heeded the many warning
voices who had told me to protect him, had I not jealously hoped to hold
him to my bosom, he would have been spared. As many voices have told me
since that fateful day that I was not to blame for what happened, but I
know better. Almost I could convince myself that I hear Damon laughing
distantly, mocking me.

I drew my sword, but I could not fight him. The Queen laughed, but there
was relief in her face that revealed that she had not been certain my
friend would fall under her sway again.  A moment of impasse, Alek's guilty
face fading into one of determination. My friend vanished to be replaced by
the servant of the Queen again, tearing my soul in two as he left. He had
not my defense, nor had he my connection to Damon that had brought me to
myself when I had fallen into her power. Nor was there any time to shake
him out of her power as once I had done, with a kiss and a idealistic
speech. The time for such things was past, too late by far.

We stared each other down, and then they were gone, through a hidden
passage, cleverly concealed, one of many that now we now know criss-cross
the Queen's keep. I watched them flee together, knowing I should pursue,
but my feet were frozen to the floor.

I know not how much time had passed when the door opened, admitting several
of the amazarii of our faction along with Shara and Jelena.

"Where is the Queen?" they asked, but I could not bring myself to answer.

"Where is Alek?" Jelena asked tentatively. "Markis, where is he??"

She crossed the distance between us and grabbed my hand. When I could not
meet her gaze, she sunk to her knees and wailed.
_______________________________________________________________________

I did not sleep last night. A distant sound of laughter tormented me,
almost making me believe... but no, he is gone. I will not even think of
it. It was a memory of darkness that haunted, that's all, for I allowed
myself once again to fall into an old despair, thinking of Alek. Like all
men I have my moments of weakness, and some pain never truly dies.

Today I visited Shara, my Queen and the present Ruler of Fermanagh. Our
conference took place in the very chamber where we were wed at last. We had
been promised to each other for most of my life, and in this way that
promise was fulfilled, though in a way neither of us could have
expected. Refusing her had caused my exile; and now she became my bride
anyway. But at least this time she knew exactly what I could offer, and
exactly what I could not.

Of our marriage and coronation, I remember little. A numbness had consumed
me since Alek's defection and was weeks in passing, during which time I
fulfilled the tasks required of me with as much grace as I could manage,
trusting my advisors and friends to manage the preparations for our journey
north. There was no sign of Valessa and Alek, and reports suggested they
managed to flee the city with those remnant amazarii still loyal to their
cause. My advisors predicted they had already joined the Archbishop's
forces massing near Broxbourne. Tormented, I had denied all my company,
even and perhaps most especially Pasha. Damon's presence I could not
control, so I ignored him completely, refusing to hear anything he said,
any of his threats or promises of power. Time passed in a blur, so that
when the appointed day came that Shara and I were to take our places as
rulers and co-monarchs of the city, it was a surprise.

We knelt side by side and were wed. This was a much more public and
political affair than our wedding back home, and I knew that this time I
could not refuse. I tried to bring myself to listen to the words of the
ceremony and found only apathy welling up inside of me. I let my eyes
wander over the crowd aimlessly, until I saw the red-eyed, hungry face of
Jelena staring at me. It shot ice down my spine, and after that I stared at
the floor in front of me until the ceremony was over. And then it was
done. I was King of Fermanagh, Valen's heir and successor. Already the man
had faded into obscurity, and I rarely saw him again after my
ascension. Eventually there was no word or sign of him. Perhaps he was
assassinated by somebody who still held a grudge, it would not be
surprising, but for my part I believe he left our lands on his own accord,
running away from himself, from his past. Perhaps I only think that because
it is more or less what I myself am planning to do any day now.

The people celebrated our ascension to the throne, for it marked the end of
the times of trouble and the hope for a new beginning of peace. A speech
was expected of me, something to whip up the common people's support for
our continued cause and the war coming against Broxbourne, but I had not
the energy for speeches. I had fallen again into a pit of despair as black
as that as had sapped all my strength after Ambassador Hollis had
died. Everything tasted of ash and bitterness, and the existence of joy and
sweetness offended me. I fled from all celebration and took refuge in my
rooms.

That evening, after the coronation, I lay in bed with a single candle lit
nearby, attempting yet again to think of all the many ways I could have
saved Alek, could have prevented his downfall. The door opened, and a slim
figure slipped into the darkness of that corner of the room.

"You keep too much to yourself, husband," Shara said, a smile in her words
as she gave me that title.

"What do you want?" I managed to reply.

"You should not be alone. It is, after all, our wedding night."

I shook my head. "Shara, I cannot --"

"Oh, hush. You need not explain again, I am not a fool. Why do men always
think first of such things? There are more ways than one to keep company. I
have been watching you, these past days. You have not been yourself." She
had stepped into the edge of the light from my candle, looking just as I
had always remembered her during my exile: the perfect combination of
beauty and deadliness. "You keep to yourself, push your friends away,
brooding alone and saying nothing. This is not the man I know, the man we
all swore to follow."

"Am I not allowed to mourn?" I snapped suddenly.

Her eyes were full of sympathy. "Of course. I understand your feelings for
him were... Well, there was once a time I would have envied his place in
your heart. Grieve, then, we all expect it. But by choosing isolation and
darkness time and time again you give yourself no chance to heal. You keep
yourself stagnant, unable to move on."

"I don't want to move on!" I shouted, "None of it matters now, don't you
see? Why should I care what happens to the world? Maybe everybody else can
let go of what happened and just keep going like it's nothing. Maybe
everybody else doesn't care about him enough to realize that it has changed
everything. Everything!"

She arched an eyebrow at my outburst. "Including Jelena?" I could say
nothing to that. "Though she mourns she at least has not given up on our
purpose. She makes preparation for our campaign north and plots to recover
her lover from the Queen's clutches. She has held onto hope, at least, and
in this shows herself wiser than you, for all your enlightened sermons to
our Elders."

"Because it wasn't her fault," I countered, "Because she doesn't have to
bear the guilt. She should hate me. I should bid her come to me and punish
me as I deserve. Death at her hands would be fitting."

"She will not indulge your rather selfish desire for self-destruction,
Markis. No, don't protest. I have known you longer than any here. I do not
remember a time when you weren't the most important person in my life. I
know you, and I know that for all your outward qualities that have won you
the respect of so many followers, there is a darkness in you. It has been
there as long as I have known you, buried under the surface. It has grown
since your exile, old friend, as if... as if it has been feeding on you and
has grown stronger."

My skin turned cold, my tongue (my new tongue, not even the one I had been
born with) gone numb. I said nothing.

"We need our leader more than ever," she said, "We cannot afford to indulge
you extra time to recover from your personal tragedies. You are a King,
now, and more is at stake than your own heartbreak. Be a man, now, and
honor that." She crossed to the door and pulled it open. "And do not let
yourself be alone. It is foolishness to push away all who love
you. Tonight, of all nights, your wedding night, let yourself be loved."

When I said nothing in protest, Shara turned and peered through the open
door. "Come on in now," she said to somebody out in the hall. Turning back
to me only to nod goodbye, she exited the room.

In her place came a new, equally slender figure that walked uncertainly
towards the light. I knew Pasha instantly, and my first was reaction was
indeed to order him away, to hide my face from him. But I remembered
Shara's words and held back my rebuke. His face appeared at the edge of the
candlelight, and on it was such a look of pain and hope mingled together
that at once my resolve and reticence vanished. I took his outstretched
hand and pulled him onto the bed with me, kissing him deeply.

On and on we kissed, pausing only briefly to undress, and the heat of his
body enfolded mine. He felt fragile in my hands, and not just because he
was smaller and younger. He loved me, and having loved in my time I knew
how vulnerable that made him. He knew that I could never be his completely,
forever, in much the same way that I had always known Alek could not be
mine. But that did not mean that what I felt for Pasha was any less real,
was anything less than genuine love. Perhaps Alek's feelings for me were
the same. We are all of us bound together by this strange thread we call
love, this piece of the Creator himself placed inside of us. This I have
learned above all in my exile: it is not easy to love another. To do so is
as difficult as fighting off enemy soldiers with a single blade, as
difficult as speaking the truth to a roomful of corrupt politicians, as
difficult as being imprisoned by your worst enemy, and as difficult as
facing the friends and family you had once betrayed. But for all that, to
let yourself be loved by another... this, I think, is more difficult
still. We all desire it, but for all our desire the truth of it is perhaps
our most perilous challenge. May you face that challenge, my friend, and
succeed. Make no mistake -- your very life may depend upon it. Mine
has. Mine has.

He opened himself to me, and I entered. At once I was enveloped in a joyous
warmth that pleasured my spirit as much as my body. He gasped with wide
eyes and smiled broadly, almost on the edge of a giggle, prompting me to
laugh as well and say, "You look surprised. Surely you've had other men
inside of you before me."

"Never a king," he growled in a voice so husky and masculine that I hardly
recognized it as his own. Still, I heard the light, familiar teasing in his
tone, and returned with what I'm sure was some utterly predictable jest
about giving him the "royal treatment" or some such nonsense. It is
difficult to be truly witty or original in such times. In truth, it matters
little. That we feel free to make fools of ourselves is as much a sign of
intimacy as uncovering our nakedness, and in our playfulness I found a
freedom that I had not felt in many weeks. Indeed, even the weight of my
guilt over Alek faded into the background, for a little while at least.

For months the tension between us had been building, and I had tried
wilfully to ignore it. I had told myself that Pasha was too young, that he
deserved someone of his own age, that my heart was elsewhere. He had shared
my bed often but never had I allowed us to be partners of the flesh though
each time we had touched I had felt my desire grow within me, held back by
stubbornness, perhaps, or some foolish notion of chivalry or, most likely,
some fear to let go of the pain my love for Alek had caused me, as though I
had come to believe that pain was as much as part of me as my hand and
could not be separated from who I was. Now at last that long-building
desire exploded out all at once, held back no more. It did not take long
before I had thrown myself fully into the task at hand, and dear little
Pasha, flushed crimson with joy, began squealing so loudly that some remote
part of my mind was certain every inhabitant of that wing of the complex
could hear our lovemaking clearly. I had abandoned all sense of
embarrassment, however. If I was king now, I would exercise this much
privilege at least. Let it be known, the king is rutting his clerk on the
royal wedding night! Long live the king! It was a human weakness I had
every intention of indulging, for I had determined that I would not let
myself forget that I was only a man after all. I would not deny myself and
withdraw as Valen had before me. All this I thought to myself with a wry
grin as sweat trickled down my forehead, my eyes locked on his.

Pasha was an eager vessel, desperate for the final consummation of our
union. He whispered urgently of his need for me, to be filled by me, and I
quickly obliged. Of the lovers I had taken since my exile, only Damon had
showed more skill and eagerness. The boy's time amongst the Veruvians had
taught him many wondrous things, and I silently blessed them in those final
moments as all I had held back was released inside of him. I took him in my
arms, feeling the wetness of our fluids between us, tumbling towards the
first night of peaceful sleep I had enjoyed since Alek had vanished, or
perhaps since even earlier than that.

We made love daily after that, sometimes more than once. Thus, when at last
we departed Fermanagh, a much bolstered army at my command, it was no
surprise to anyone that Pasha rode close by my side. That departure from
the city, now firmly under Shara's rule, has weighed upon my mind, for
tomorrow or perhaps the next day I will leave this city once again for the
final time. We are expected in Carmathen and my final tour of my lands must
move on.

Today, as I said, I visited with Shara to say goodbye, though she did not
know that this was the true reason for my visit. We spoke much of the old
days, before my exile, and some of my adventures after, of her brother and
my father and other friends long passed. I was able to finally find the
words to thank her for the gift she had given me on my wedding night, how
her words had saved me in a dark hour. I told her in no uncertain terms,
for the thousandth time, that my rule these many years could not have
proceeded as smoothly without her aid.

"I did less than you think," she protested, smiling. Age has not dimmed her
beauty. "It was you who brought these lands together."

"I think not--"

"Oh no? You know, I have never told you, but I believe you are Alander's
heir in more ways than you think. He was called the Uniter, the Unifier,
and these could be your names as well."

"Bringing these separate lands under one rule was never my intention, but
only a practical necessity," I said, rather dismissively.

She shook her head. "It's more than that. In your wake I have seen brother
reunited with brother, father reconciled to son. I have seen factions that
swore enmity to each other work in union under your command. The men and
women of this city live in peace, and now even the poorest citizens of our
neighbors to the north hold their heads up with pride. You have
accomplished so much, more than enough to outweigh any... sins that you
feel you have committed." She gave me a significant glance.

I knew what she was referring to, understood the logic of her words and
knew she meant them, but all I had to offer in return was a tight smile. We
shall soon see if she is correct, I think. My final judgment draws near. As
I sit here writing I hear that faint, distant laughing once again, and I
believe I know what it portends. All for the best, then, that I will soon
end my rule.

He has returned. Or perhaps, more likely, he never truly left.
____________________________________________________________________________

Of the many skirmishes and battles of the War that comprised our campaign
northwards, I have little to say. I knew almost nothing of tactics and
strategy, not when dealing with the large numbers of men involved in those
decisive conflicts, and trusted my advisors to handle the details of where
and when and led my men into battle at their direction. Some fights we won,
others we lost, but ever our momentum carried us northwards, and we gained
more strength as we went as I had predicted. I have no skill for describing
such things, and anyway there are no doubt many books now written about the
War that could lay clear the tactical history of the thing better than I. I
mean to write what I always set out to write: my personal story, and that
of my friends.

Near the city of Carmathen we faced the bulk of the Broxbournean army for
the first time and very nearly had our first defeat. I remember my advisors
pressing me to call the retreat, screaming above the noise and chaos of
battle. Struck with uncertainty, I wished Pasha was there though I knew it
was best that he had been kept behind. He was no soldier. Again and again I
was urged to give the command to pull back, but something stopped me. I
knew that if my main force was routed then and there our momentum
northwards would dissipate, perhaps never to reform.

I still remember the elation and relief that washed over us all when news
of reinforcements arrived at our darkest moment, when I had almost given up
hope. As though it had all been planned (and, perhaps, it had been by some
power we do not understand), a small host of giants appeared on the horizon
and took our side. Golmeir, I knew at once, was with them. When the battle
was done, and our forces gathered to bury our dead and prepare to move on,
I sought him out.

I found him at the side of another of his race even larger than he. Those
of my personal guard who were giants themselves, left behind by Golmeir to
protect me, went to one knee at the sight of this imposing figure, and it
was then I knew his identity. He was surrounded by a retinue of warriors,
including the one known as Talmeir who had taken my friend Gol home with
him some weeks previously. I embraced Golmeir warmly, even though doing so
made me feel like a small child embracing a grown man, then turned to
address his father with a bow of respect, for he was something akin to a
King amongst their kind.

"I greet you, Chief, and thank you for your help in our battle. And I thank
you for returning your son Golmeir, a dear friend to me."

The chieftain rumbled a reply, his voice low and booming, "He has told me
you are blood-brother to him, but we could not believe it at first. Such a
thing has not happened between our peoples in many, many years."

"The old times come again," Golmeir said simply. There was respect in his
voice, but it was clear to me that the statement was intended as an
argument.

"So it would seem," the chieftain said. He never did give his name - a
formal people, the giants. "Your true-brother Talmeir is not convinced, and
has urged me to caution."

I had not known Talmeir was my friend's brother, and wondered why it had
not been brought up before. Their ways are not ours, and I merely raised my
eyebrows in Gol's direction in response. Turning back to the Chief, I spoke
again: "Last time I saw my friend... my blood-brother, he said he was going
home to be judged."

"And so he has been," the Chieftain replied, "Judged, punished, and
pardoned. It is done, and we speak no more of it. Now we come to judge
another."

"Who?"

The Chief leaned down, nearly bending over, until his eyes were level with
mine. "You."

"What crime have I committed?"

The giants laughed as though I had made a great joke, and their laughter
was frightening. It sounded like an earthquake had erupted all around me.

Talmeir was first to speak. "A judgement of worth, small one."

"We will see if you are like the one who came before," Golmeir
explained. "He was the the last of your kind to be blood-brother to us."

"The King of the Mountain you once spoke of?" I asked. Gol nodded.

Talmeir laughed again. "As you say, brother, but I see no Alander in him,
and you are no Iotor."

I started with surprise. The allies of Alander that my people had venerated
as angels: Tharon, Veru, Damon, Lestra... and Iotor. "Iotor was a giant?"
There had not been time to study Alander's writings in depth, and there was
so much, it seemed, that I still did not know.

"Iotor was the King of the Mountain," the Chief nodded, "And Alander of
your people his ally and blood-brother. Now Golmeir says the old times come
again. He says it again and again, and many believe him."

"He would declare himself King of the Mountain," Talmeir said, "Arrogance."
It was at that moment that, for all his difference in size and shape, I
recognized Talmeir. He was Jacek in spirit, and at that recognition my
heart went out to my friend.

"Golmeir would be a great leader," I said, "One I myself would follow."

My friend looked at me gratefully, but his father only said, "We shall
watch and see. We have come to join your war. We have to come to see what
kind of world you will make. Until your foes are defeated, we are yours."
Then, to my surprise, he and all his kind with him knelt and bowed down to
me.

It was at this fortuitous moment that the delegation from the Council of
Carmathen came to treat with me, as I had known they would. They had held
their forces back all through the battle, waiting to see who would be the
victor before declaring which side they would support. Jelena had warned me
that this would be their approach.

I turned to them, cowering politicians in their rich garb, with the giants
still paying homage behind me, and saw the fear in their eyes. I knew then
they would agree to anything. Within hours, the entire Council had sworn
fealty to me, and Carmathen, like Fermanagh before it, was conquered.
___________________________________________________________________________

He laughs. I can hear him more clearly now. He is out there waiting, as he
has always been waiting for all of these years. I must face him once
again. The end of my story is coming, my friend, my mysterious reader.The
tale is nearly done. I rest my pen now, but when I take it up again, I
think, it will be to conclude my story. You shall know of my greatest sin,
my greatest secret, and my greatest shame. And then you will know why I
must leave you and go to my destiny... as you will one day go to yours.

**********************************

As Markis says, I think one more chapter will be enough to finally conclude
this story that I first conceived nearly five years ago. It has been a
strange journey, this "gay fantasy experiment" of mine, and I have learned
much from it all. There have been highs and lows, but I hope that somebody
somewhere has enjoyed the story overall. Give me a week or two to finish
the last chapter, and then you shall know how it all ends at last. As
always, feel free to contact me at thephallocrat@gmail.com with questions
or comments. And thank you for reading!!