Larantyne Read online

  *Remember, Bard,* the Maiden whispered, shaking his consciousness into awareness of. . . something. *Find Kirel. Bring him back.*

  Then the voice became silent, leaving him utterly alone. Sylvan no longer possessed a body. A vast sense of nothing engulfed him.

  He floundered, unsure what he was moving, only aware that he felt some sense of movement.

  And then came the soul to the Undying Lands,

  Leaving the body so far behind.

  The words sprang into his mind, accompanied by lute. Of course! Couran's Quest! Couran had faced a similar situation, his love taken by the King of Gwalcadib, the deepest hell, and he had gone into the Netherworld to find her and bring her back.

  Oh, Couran, he knew, played a dangerous game

  In this land where souls were made.

  But he built a boat of hopes and dreams

  And sailed the shifting sea, powered by love, by love and need.

  Sylvan thought for a moment. Perhaps not a boat, for he didn't think he could control such a massive construction and keep it solid and real. But one of the little coracles the lake fishers used in his childhood homeland, now that he could do.

  The coracle took form from the nothingness in front of him and he touched it, finding that concentrating gave him some sense of form as well. True, he more closely resembled a silver mist than a human, but he felt better having any form at all in this shifting soulscape.

  He filled the coracle with his silver glow and draped tendrils over the side in place of hands, clinging like a spiderweb. Kirel, his heart cried. Kirel!

  He focused on his lover to the exclusion of almost everything else. A corner of his mind retained awareness of the coracle as it skimmed through the soulscape at an ever increasing pace. The rest of him focused on the magical well of emotion between him and Kirel, the way their spirits joined when they spent time together, the sparkle in his eyes when he laughed. Sylvan had never told his lover about his empathic ability, preferring to keep silent about such a controversial subject after certain troubles in his youth, but now it served him well. He knew his lover's soul with a level of detail that none other could hope to match.

  The first time he'd seen Kirel, he'd felt a connection, even before they'd met. It had startled him to no end. He could feel that moment all over again, even here in the shifting, colorless soulscape. They'd been up on stage at the Daft Corbie, New Sound Rising playing their strangely sophisticated and utterly new tunes to a crowd of chattering, drunk students. No one had played particularly well that night, cursed with such a stinker crowd. Pretty hard for musicians to compete with beer and friends, after all.

  But then he'd spotted someone threading his way through the rowdy revelers, intent on reaching the stage. A young man, small and light boned, with a look of pure joy on his face as he listened to the music. He'd fetched up against the stage and stopped right in the light of a footglow, which lit his appreciation of the performance clearly and kicked everyone up a notch, because now they actually played for an audience. Even a one person audience.

  He hadn't been surprised at all when the music lover found his way backstage. Up close, the fellow was even more intriguing, with those silvery grey eyes and the smile dancing around the corners of his mouth, just waiting to be let loose and spread across his face like sunshine. Too bad poor Kirel hadn't really known what was going on back then, that night might have had an entirely different outcome had he not panicked and run for home.

  But he did, and Sylvan tried to shrug off the encounter. He'd actually been in a relationship at that time, but Velenn paled in comparison to the memory of the music lover Kirel, despite the brevity of their encounter. So, feeling a bit ridiculous, he'd broken things off with Velenn and started looking for his mystery man.

  Who turned out to be very easy to find, and the kind of companion that made Sylvan forget all about Velenn, and every other lover he'd ever known.

  Something caught his attention, off through the mists. But what. . . A pulsing, flickering light, dim but still answering his own glow.

  Kirel!

  The coracle faded away, leaving Sylvan's mist to mingle with that dim glow.

  Kirel! Where are you? I need you!

  The glow flickered, pulsed, and then became conscious.

  Sylvan? Are you dead, too?

  No, love. I'm not dead, and neither are you. I need you to come back with me. Come on, let's go.

  But it's safe here.

  Sylvan's mist condensed with annoyance. And it's not safe among the living, I know that. But I need you, your cousin needs you, and your goddess needs you. She sent me here to bring you back.

  My goddess? So you've finally met Her.

  Yes, and She wants you back almost as much as I do.

  Kirel's light wavered while he thought. Sylvan waited patiently.

  I suppose I'll go back with you.

  Sylvan nearly dispersed with relief, barely holding himself together. Who knew what would happen to his soul if he lost cohesion in this place?

  After all, the light of Kirel's soul said wickedly, we can't make love here. Not like we can back at home, anyway.

  Sylvan rippled with amusement and re-created his coracle. Get in, then.

  They sailed together, silvery mist and warm yellow light, back through the soulscape. The going became difficult and bumpy, then the coracle ran aground against something, reality perhaps, and faded from existence.

  Sylvan barely started wondering how to get back into his body before a force reached out and gave his soul a brutal yank. He cried out in protest—

  —and landed in his body with a thud.

  "Ow!"