The King of Forever by Kirby Crow

Author:Kirby Crow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance, gay fantasy, gay fiction, fantasy, m/m romance, yaoi
Publisher: Bonecamp
Published: 2015-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

Fading Dreams

Ulan was an eerie copy of Melev. Liall could tell one Ancient’s features from another only with long familiarity of their race, and he did not know Ulan very well. For a short time in his childhood, Ulan had been his teacher and protector, but the memory was foggy within him.

Girded about Ulan’s lanky, towering frame was a simple linen tunic knotted with a leather cord, leaving his flat, broad feet and ropy arms bare. His eyes were as large as apricots and as colorless as moonstones, and his skin was like a wind-blasted oak, reddish-amber and rough. His nose was hooked, his jaw like a block of wood, and each knotty finger of his plate-sized hands had an extra joint that the Rshani lacked. An Ancient standing very still in a forest could be mistaken for a bare tree in winter.

Liall knew that some trees in the deep forests beyond the Greatrift actually were dormant Ancients, but it took a deliberate effort of will for them to shift to such a latent state, and once it was done they must remain so for many years. Whenever he witnessed an Ancient in motion, he could sense the burning life within them, and how very alien they were.

Ulan stood waiting in Liall’s solar, his body a broad, rough scrawl against the elegant folds of a tapestry. He bowed his head slightly: as close to homage as any Ancient would ever render to a Rshani, royal or no. “King Nazheradei, the wolf.”

Liall returned the bow with a wry smile. There were two kinds of power in the room. One stemmed from the realm where a king ruled the lives of other men with simplicity and directness. The other ruled from a place of ice and legend that no mortal Rshani could ever fully understand.

“Not a very complimentary address, is it?” Liall said. “Perhaps they should have called me the Bear when I was in Byzantur. It would have translated so much better.” Wolves were considered scavengers and pests in Rshan, not the romantic mountain beasts of the Southern Continent; the land that Rshani crudely called Kalaslyn. In more polite moments, they referred to it as the Brown Lands or just Outland, if they spoke of it at all.

“Wolves have their place. Bears have their place,” Ulan said.

The deep rumble that his vocal chords produced seemed to sink into the timber beneath Liall’s boots and vibrate.

“Ah, but it’s finding that place that matters, yes?” Liall answered. “Here, a wolf is scorned and the snow bear is honored. I might as well have been named for the bat or dragonfly for all the respect wolf lends me here.” He motioned to the banner of Camira-Druz on the wall: scrolling lines of silver across a field of blue. Nearby was the shield of Camira-Druz with its lumbering white snow bear and golden star shining above. The eyes of the bear created two more golden stars below; a symbol of the Longwalker constellation that winked pale and lonely over the horizon of Rshan na Ostre during the dark winter.

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