by Victor Poole
"You're taking your own life out," she accused him. He smiled at her.
"I don't care," he said. "I'm not good for anything else, and I like you."
"No!" Ajalia shouted. "That's sick. That's disgusting. I won't let you."
"It's too late," Delmar said with a grin. "I've taken out half of my golden lights, and one half of the part of me that works magic. It's in you now. You don't know how to get rid of it, either," he said with relish. He met her eyes, and his face was triumphant. "That's why you came out of your skin," he admitted. "You started to do magic. You don't know how, but I do. My soul is fused in with yours. You know things now, that you don't know that you know."
"No," Ajalia said firmly. "You're overtired. You haven't eaten."
"I'm in love with you," Delmar said peacefully. "And I don't care if I die," he added. "You can go and stay with Philas if you like, as soon as you're better. You've been getting better faster now," he added, nodding to her arms. She looked down at the skin, and saw that he was right. "And you're not as weak," he added. "You can move better."
Ajalia glared at Delmar.
"This is wrong," she said angrily. "You take yourself back right now."
"I can't," he said, satisfaction spreading like goo over his face. "You can hate at me all you like, and leave me, and never ever speak to me again, but you won't be so weak now."
"You disgust me," Ajalia said hotly. "That was an incredibly rude thing to do to me."
"It was," Delmar said, giggling. "It was very rude." He looked at her like a proud parent. "I don't care," he added happily.
Ajalia stared at Delmar. He was so calm, and so happy, and so at peace with the universe, that she could not muster anger any longer.
"I think I hate you," she said, but she didn't sound hateful by any stretch of the imagination.
"Do you know what I would like to do?" Delmar asked her. His eyes were brighter, and his cheeks, black as they were, had glimmers of happiness all through them.
"What?" Ajalia asked mulishly. "What do you want now?"
"To kiss you," Delmar said. He leaned back against the hollow, and stared at her, affection open and shining in his eyes.
"Oh stop!" Ajalia cried. "Stop liking me, and tell me how to make you get better!"
Delmar laughed. "You can't," he said slyly. "I am sure that you don't know how."
Ajalia glared at him. She looked at her hands, and then pressed her palms against the base of the tree, where the roots tangled to form the hollow.
"How do I do that?" she asked. "How do I get the golden lights out of myself?"
"No," Delmar said. His voice was smug.
"Can, and will," Ajalia said. She stared at the tree, and tried to make golden lights shimmer at the ends of her fingertips. Nothing happened, and she gritted her teeth together.
"You are going to read this with me," she declared, pulling the slim leather book from within her robes. "Where is the translation stone?" she demanded.
"I put it in there," Delmar said, pointing at her robe, "into the pocket."
"Get it out," Ajalia snapped. He stared at her. "I have blood on my arms," she said angrily. "I can't reach the pocket in there."
Delmar looked at her with his eyes narrowed.
"Are you tricking me?" he asked.
"No," she said. He put his hand into her robe, and took out the rectangle of white stone. "I want my knife harness," she told him.
"So you can knock me on the head with the hilt when I try to help you?" he asked.
"Yes," she said.
"No," he said. They glared at each other. Ajalia flipped open the book to the first page, and thrust it at Delmar.
"Read to me," she said imperiously.
"Did you know that your eyes turn a different color," he asked, "when you're angry?"
A violent blush climbed up her cheeks.
"I am sure," she said stiffly, "that that is not the first part of the book."
"No," Delmar admitted, taking the book from her, and settling into the hollow next to her, "it isn't. The first part says that Bakroth wrote this book."
"Can you read the letters?" she asked.
"I looked at the translation stone," Delmar told her, "when you were sleeping. A few of them I didn't recognize, but I have learned them now."
"Read," Ajalia said. Delmar leaned over, and kissed at her jaw. She froze, and felt his lips warm on her neck. "That isn't reading," she informed him. "And I still haven't forgiven you."
"When will you forgive me?" he murmured into her cheek.
"Probably never," she said.
"Then I am unrepentant," he said, and tilted her chin towards him.
"Read me the book," she said. Delmar scruffed his nose against her cheeks; his chin was rough with reddish stubble. She wanted to ask him if he shaved; she hadn't noticed any beard on him before.
"I don't want to anymore," Delmar mumbled. She shoved him away, and he laughed at her. He opened the book, and looked at the first page.
"Bakroth wrote this book," he read. His voice was lower, she thought, than it had been before. He sounded proud, and sure of himself. She would have told him to stop preening, but she was sure he would kiss her if she said anything more. "I am Bakroth's wife," Delmar read, "and I write this book to preserve his memory. His brother has turned against him, and the people are angry; Bakroth, perhaps, has not long to live. I have gone into hiding with the scraps of paper that I could gather, and I write them here, to save them for my children's children."
Delmar stopped reading. Ajalia watched him flip through the book.
"Did you know his wife wrote this?" she asked.
"I haven't opened it without you," he said. "I did not know." His eyes were distant, and his mouth turned down. He opened to the last page of the book, and examined the writing there.
"Is it the same?" Ajalia asked.
"I thought it was his," Delmar said. "I thought Bakroth wrote it." Ajalia saw that Delmar valued the book less now. She grimaced at him.
"Read it to me," she said.
"It won't be about the spells," Delmar grumbled. "There will be no magic."
"I don't care," Ajalia said, but she did. "Read it to me."
Delmar sighed, and turned back to the front of the book.
"I am going to extort kisses," he warned her, "as payment."
"Stop whining," she told him.
"I don't want to read this," he said. "It's going to be women's stuff."
"You don't know that," Ajalia told him. "Maybe she's like me." He glanced at her.
"I doubt it," he said.
"Read," she urged.
With another heartfelt sigh, Delmar read aloud from the book.
"My husband has fled west, to the mountains, with my sons. I have hidden myself in the wilderness, as I am with child, and cannot flee. Jerome cannot find me here. I have put wards over the entrance to the cave, and hidden my tracks. I know that Jerome will not read the signs."
"The same cave that we saw today?" Ajalia asked.
"No," Delmar said. "There are caves in the mountains up north."
"She said forest," Ajalia said.
"No," Delmar repeated, "she said wilderness. She must have been up in the mountains."
"Hm," Ajalia said.
"I will copy here," Delmar read, his voice catching interest in the words in spite of himself, "the spells and the chants, in case Bakroth is slain. This is the book of Bakroth; I copy here his work, and his words."
"Sounds promising," Ajalia pointed out. Delmar shushed her, and turned the page. He looked for a long time at the letters that tangled up and down on the page. "What is it?" Ajalia asked.
"It's a spell," Delmar said slowly, "but different. Twisted up inside."
"What does it say?" Ajalia asked. Delmar took a deep breath, and pointed to the top of the page, where a long row of letters was followed by a diagram, and a swirl of vivid ink.
"It's a map," Delmar said. He turned the book to the side, and squinted at the letters.
"What does it say?" Ajalia asked again.
"This is the heart," Delmar said, pointing at one of the words. "And this is the head."
"What do the words say?" Ajalia asked again, her voice rising. Delmar glanced at her.
"Put the head above the shoulders," he read, "with the heart drawn forward like a pulled arrow. Shoot the glimmers of light from the ears, and the tips of the breast, and repeat the massive earth work spell." Delmar looked at Ajalia. "There's a note here," he said, "that has a number. I think it references another spell in the book."
"All right," Ajalia said. "But what is this spell for?"
"When the light has filled the cavity, where the soul lies," Delmar read, "reach beneath the earth, and pull the long vein that runs into the core."
"What core?" Ajalia asked.
"The light within the earth," Delmar said. "All the old spells reference the core, where the golden light comes from. Our souls are drawn out of the earth."
"Okay," Ajalia said. She touched a finger to the wild writing. "Is this how you do your magic?" she asked.
"No," Delmar said swiftly. "My way is much cleaner than this."
"Does this kind of magic hurt you?" Ajalia asked, touching the hollows in Delmar's cheeks.
"All magic hurts," he said. Ajalia took the book out of his hands.
"What is this part?" she asked. Delmar bent over the page.
"Draw the earth's vein into the groin," Delmar read, "and channel the inner lights." He looked up at her. "It's gibberish," he said. "I'm sorry, this is all mush."
"Finish it," Ajalia said. She was thinking of a great interlocking web of shining light, stretching from the bark beneath her into the dirt below. She thought of great veins of the same throbbing golden light that she had seen on Delmar's fingers, and on his tongue; she imagined thick pulses of this golden substance tunneling deep under the earth.
"When you have grasped a chain of the deep magic," Delmar read, and Ajalia pictured herself gripping onto the threads of molten gold deep beneath the tree roots; she thought she could feel the light struggling against her palms, wiggling to be free.
"What's next?" Ajalia asked. Delmar's finger was pressed to the old page; the extreme edge of the yellowed paper was crumbling into threads.
"Draw the light from within the core through your own soul," Delmar read aloud, "and then you will have the power in your own hands. Do with it only what is just for the white branded ones."
Ajalia yanked at the golden threads; a feeling like the touch of lightning jolted up her spine. The breath crashed out of her, and her hands shook. "This is the first power," Delmar read, "the gift of the old ones that was gotten by Bakroth, the son of the sky men and the earth." He looked up from the page.
Ajalia's palms were gathering beads of golden light. She stared at the skin of her hands, sure that she was imagining the dots of bright orange and yellow that were drawing into thick knots of light on her skin. The blood and scabbing mess on her wrists was shivering strangely, vibrating.
"What did you do?" Delmar asked. He was staring at her, his eyes widening with alarm. Ajalia was going into a kind of trance; she could see ribs of gold and red over her vision. She reached towards Delmar's face. He flinched away from her, but she grasped his cheek hard. The dots of light sank through Delmar's skin; he gasped, and his spine went rigid. Ajalia did as the book had said, and imagined the cords of gold light spinning through her center. She felt as though her ribs were on fire, the bones breaking apart beneath her skin. A thick layer of gold blasted out of her palm and into Delmar's face. He broke away from her with the force of the light; she saw his eyes roll up into his head. His body went limp. She watched his body, and saw that he was breathing. A sparkling vortex of light was within his body, in his midsection. She could not see light within him, but she could sense it, feel it within his body, as though finding a mirror image of his body within her own. She explored the energy in him, and found a curious gap in his lower back, a hole in the movement of the blood and living tissue.
Ajalia looked down; both of her hands were shimmering now with piles of molten gold light. She moved towards Delmar on her knees, and pushed her palms against the place where she sensed the gap. Delmar's whole body expanded suddenly with breath; she drew back. When she looked at him now, she saw a rim of gold around his whole body; he was full of light.
A thought struck Ajalia; she reached into the earth again, and grasped another thick tendril of gold from within the folds of the earth. She imagined pulling it up, twisting and stretching it until it reached Delmar's back. She closed her eyes, and pictured the golden line worming its way into Delmar's groin, at the apex of energy she sensed within the cradle of his pelvis. She secured the golden light, tethering it to the lines of golden and green light she found within Delmar's body.
Ajalia fell back against the floor of the hollow. She was sweating, and her whole body was drenched with an uncontrollable trembling. She could feel the golden light within the earth slipping away from her; she felt that she would lose control of it soon. A sense of foreboding, of doom, overcame her. Her eyes passed instantly to her own arms, where the blood still leaked sluggishly from the opened scars and scrapes. Gasping for breath, she gripped both forearms in her glowing hands. If she had not been so utterly spent, she would have screamed.
Ajalia's mind was slipping away from her, fading into nothing. With the last ounce of her consciousness, she tore at the golden threads she had pulled from within the earth, and connected them to herself, molding them together with the faint threads of energy that ran through her own body. She almost laughed when she turned her inner vision to herself; her body was shattered, broken almost beyond repair. Delmar's whole form was run through with brilliant cords of color and light; she looked at herself, and she saw threadbare scraps of thin light tracing like shadows throughout her body. Ajalia gathered up these scraggled threads of light, and tied them securely around the cord of gold from the earth, which was thick, and wild, and bright. A pulse of energy ran at once through her lines of energy, brightening them, strengthening them.
Ajalia felt tearing heat down her arms; she looked down at herself, and saw great peels of skin falling away from the raw places. Her scars were back suddenly; she watched them grow, and harden into thick white callouses, and fall away. The bloody places appeared again, and then healed. This happened again, and again. Finally, fresh skin appeared beneath, soft and smooth as tender new leaves. Black burns billowed up into her flesh; the old brands appeared, sharp and razor-bright in their outlines. Ajalia watched the wetland brands grow, the curved dagger becoming sharp and black on each arm. With a sound like tearing paper, and a smell like death, the brands burned away into white smoke. Ajalia saw her arms glowing from within, the lines where the brands had been glowing white like long thin suns. She no longer felt tired; the light from within the earth was pulsing through her spine, throwing off great clouds of darkness.
Ajalia could feel her past shedding away from her, like the scars and the scrapes and the brands had done. She felt as though she was being born anew in a bath of pure fire. The pain faded into a pulse, and then into a comfortable heat. She saw that what she had felt before, or what she felt now, she would have seen before as pain, but now she saw it as hardness, and as welcome strength. She felt as though a kind of deep structure, a thick river of light and power, were spreading through her bones with the golden light. She stood without pain, and went to Delmar. He was thrown back, his head turned away from her, and his eyes closed. She knelt beside him, and gathered him up into her arms. Her hands were no longer glowing; the gold had receded into her bones; she thought she could feel herself burning from the inside out.
She curled herself up in the hollow, cradling Delmar close in her arms. Leed, she thought, would come back sometime. She could hear the black horse snuffling through the grass. She thought of Philas, and of his offer to beat Delmar, and to carry her off. She laughed, and buried her face into Delmar's hair.
THE SECRET PASSAGE
Delmar woke up tired and cranky. Ajalia had left him to take the horse to water, and he sat up in the hollow with a piercing headache, and a memory of her mouth on his skin. He looked around the hollow, groaned, and then tried to go back to sleep. When Ajalia appeared, leading the horse and carrying a rind of water, he growled at her.
"You left me," he said grumpily.
"Here," she said, holding the water out over the rim of the hollow. Delmar took it with a frown.
"What's the last thing that happened?" he asked, rubbing his eyes.
"Magic," Ajalia said. He frowned at her. She looked at him.
"You look different," he said, an accusatory note in his voice.
"Yes," Ajalia said. She held up one arm. Aside from a glimmering white scrape in the shape of her brand, the skin of her inner arm and wrist was smooth, and fresh, and clean. Delmar blinked at her.
"Did you—" he began, and stopped. "Did I—" he began again.
"Do you feel better now?" Ajalia asked. She tethered the horse, and vaulted over the edge of the tree.
"You don't seem sick anymore," Delmar said suspiciously.
"No," Ajalia said. "Are you ready to go?" Delmar looked at her. He looked confused and annoyed.
"I was going to nurse you back to health," he said slowly.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "Now I'm better."
"How did you get better?" Delmar asked. She shrugged. If Delmar couldn't remember the golden light, and the burning surface of her hands, she was not about to enlighten him. She had taken the book, and hidden it in the forest. She had a funny feeling about that book, and she did not want Delmar to read any more of it. She wanted to study it for herself, once she had mastered the old Slavithe, and the letters on the curious translation stone.
"I guess your magic kicked in," she said lightly.
"I guess," Delmar said cautiously. He was still watching her. She had changed into the sleeveless orange gown that had been packed away in her bag, and she had washed her hair. "Was I asleep?" Delmar asked. She noted, with satisfaction, that his cheeks were ruddy again, and that the dark circles under his eyes had vanished.
