And her mouth was busy panting and saying things—all nice. Things about him, about how strong he was, how manly, nothing like those things Maeve would say to him, nothing like those sentences, those words which she’d wield nearly as effectively as the prince would his axe, cutting him down with seemingly little to no effort, likely not even being fully aware, at the time, just how deep her words wounded him.
And he would not tell her, not now, not ever. Those illusions created by Chall’s magic, those he wove with his spells like a tailor might weave a dress from idle strands of cloth, did not exist for long. But this illusion, the one regarding Maeve and his feelings for her, he had maintained for over twenty years and would continue to maintain it, not by his magic but by his will, by his fear, a terrible, gnawing fear of what she might say should she find out. Would she mock him? Would she laugh? Chall could handle a lot from a lot of people, had been called every name imaginable and, most of the time, had deserved it, but he could not handle that. It was better to maintain the illusion. Better not to know.
Perhaps that made him a coward, but that was no great surprise. He had known that about himself for a long time now, had made his peace with it. And so, he pushed all those errant thoughts aside, focusing instead on the woman on top of him. She would not mock him, not laugh, or taunt, and what pain she caused would be so intermingled with pleasure that a man could not tell where one ended and the other began. In the face of all of that, the fact that she was not real, was little more than a mild inconvenience. After all, every couple had their problems.
Suddenly one of her hands grabbed him more roughly, and he frowned. “Easy,” he said. “Take it easy.”
The woman continued to smile, continued to rock and tell him how great of a lover he was, but her grip on his chest tightened, and she gave him a rough shake. “Wake up, Chall,” she said.
Strange, for a dream to be asking him to wake up. Stranger still for the woman to speak in the familiar voice of Priest, strange and more than a little uncomfortable. “Wake up. Now.”
Then he was blinking his eyes open, and it was not the woman he was staring at anymore but the wizened features of the Priest, a grim expression on his face. Thankfully, the man was not sitting on top of him as the woman had been, but was instead standing beside the bed, looking like bad news waiting to be heard.
Chall didn’t want to be that someone, would have gone through quite a bit to avoid it, but he sighed and slid up into the bed so that his back was propped against the wall. “Let me guess,” he grunted, rubbing an arm at eyes gummy with sleep, “we’re fucked.”
The other man frowned at the profanity, but apparently his news was important enough that he didn’t dare waste time on yet another lecture. That, of course, was a very bad sign, for the man loved his lectures more than anything, so even before he started to tell Chall just how well and truly doomed they were, he’d already risen and started pulling on his boots.
This, of course, made him notice the purple pants he was wearing—the bright color visible beneath dirt stains—and he had a thought that he really ought to take the time to visit a tailor, buy some trousers which were a touch less ridiculous. After all, he was going to make a damned ugly corpse—sooner rather than later, it seemed—and there wasn’t any need to be wearing purple trousers of all things. Chall knew he was ridiculous, odd, had largely embraced that fact…but even he had his limits.
“The others?” he asked when the man had finished an abbreviated version of what was happening, possibly short enough to fit on their tombstones.
“Here.”
Chall followed the sound of the voice to the door where Maeve stood, and despite his efforts at his dreaming, she was far more beautiful now, even harried and clearly worried, than the woman of his dreams had been. Older, yes, but not lessened by the years. Instead, she had been magnified by them, and what few wrinkles lined her face did nothing to mar her beauty, served only instead to outline it. Seeing her so recently after the dream, after his thoughts of her, Chall felt his face flush with embarrassment, feeling as if somehow she must know exactly what his thoughts had been, a small smile, what might have been a smirk on her face, that seemed to support that.
“We’re in a bit of a hurry,” she went on, “you know, impending death and all, but are you sure you don’t want to take a moment,”—she paused, staring meaningfully at his pants—“maybe change your trousers?”
Chall didn’t have any trousers to change into, would have done so long ago if he had, his travel bag, such as it was, consisting of mostly empty bottles of liquor, and a ratty blanket most homeless people would have thrown out long ago. He could have told her as much but, of course, Chall never told the truth when he could lie instead, particularly to Maeve, so he smiled—difficult considering what Priest had just told him. “Why would I do that while these are perfectly fine?”
She grunted. “Not the word I’d use.”
Chall glanced between the two of them. “Cutter?”
“Keeping
