Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  As he approached the frescoed porticos of the marble building in which, as a noted survivor of the Second Battle of Phaer Bay, he had been lodged, he became aware of someone, or something, not far behind him. Even in this part of Ulde, one had to be careful. There had been an influx of so many refugees into the city of late and many of them were desperate and hungry.

  He gripped the handle of the curved dagger he carried at his hip, and the next time he turned a corner he ducked quickly between two buildings and ran to the end of the alley. He waited for who or what it was to pass, but he waited a long time and nothing came.

  Keeping snug to the wall, he crept back to the front edge of the building. Here he ducked down closer to the ground and peeked around the corner. There she was, face-to-face with him.

  He gasped and inhaled a thick, smoky, peaty aroma. “You,” he said, though he could see nothing within the hood but two blinking eyes. For a second he was unsure if it was even her. His first impression of her back at the Great Kone had been of pure holiness, as though he had been granted a glimpse directly into the dream world. But now, in the instant before she spoke, he felt a slight quiver of fear, of strangeness.

  “Are you looking for someone?” the voice, almost mirthful in its tone, asked him, as if she already knew him and knew what was in his mind.

  He inhaled again that scent — like the mead his grandfather used to drink. He had always loved that smoky aroma. “I … I …”

  Lirodello stepped out of the alleyway and faced her. He was taller by a foot than she. There was only moonlight and a little starlight above, but she had to look up to see him, and in that lunar stellar mix he beheld a little more of her face. Again he almost gasped. For even mostly hidden in shadow, it had an unnerving beauty. Not delicate. Not fine. But angular and complex, with eyes so deep and impenetrable that he felt scared for a moment. Everything else in him was utterly magnetized. He stuttered. “I have to be careful in going home,” he said. There was a little catch in his voice. “Even here there have been robberies and attacks.”

  “Well, don’t worry,” she said with a lilting laugh, “I won’t attack you if you won’t attack me.” She lifted her hand and touched him lightly on the right shoulder. He was amazed at how much it thrilled him. “I agree,” he answered. For a moment the sadness lifted from his features and there was for the first time in years a little of his old charm present in his manner. “But what of robbery?”

  “I have nothing — nothing but this cloak, at least — to be taken,” she answered. “And I’m sure I couldn’t steal whatever it is you are clutching at your hip.”

  He jerked his hand away, still gripping the dagger. “Oh, just my dinner knife,” he said and he almost smiled.

  “Lucky is he who has a dinner knife such as that. Even luckier if he has dinner,” she quipped.

  For the first time, Lirodello sensed her hunger. “Well, I am such a lucky fellow,” he answered. “I have a dinner waiting for me.”

  “And where might that be?”

  “I eat in my rooms, which are just a few blocks from here.”

  “Well, since there is safety in numbers, shall I walk along with you?”

  Despite the feeling of guilt, the thrill in Lirodello’s heart did not diminish as they proceeded along the street. There was something irresistable about this girl — her eyes, her voice, the strange accent, the slightly taunting sense of humour, the mystery of her face.

  By the time he got to the ornate door leading up to his quarters, his growing reluctance to say goodbye to her had overcome the guilt.

  “Where do you go from here?” he asked her.

  She laughed lightly. “Well, that is the big question,” she said, again with that hint of taunting in her manner. “And whoever knows where they go from here has been granted the great gift of prophecy.”

  “Well, I claim no prophetic powers, but I do know that I am going to climb up the stairs and have my supper. Potatoes, spinach grown on my own roof, and a slow fish caught just this morning,” he told her.

  She said nothing.

  She looked at him expectantly and pulled back her hood. The moon had gone behind a cloud and he could still barely see her. But the gesture sent such a thrill through him he almost buckled. She seemed to have long, dark hair. Perhaps her cheekbones were high. And — the definite sight of her downturned mouth hit his heart like a hammer. The two of them stopped there, neither leaving nor staying.

  “I hope I can eat it all by myself,” he said, immediately feeling false and foolish. More silence.

  She narrowed her eyes and her mouth went up on one side, a mother fondly doting on the prattle of a child. Finally, she shook her head, and with a rolling flourish of her hand she signalled her imminent departure. With only a slight hint of disapproval, she said “Well, I better—”

  “I … I wish you would help me with it.”

  Her voice recovered its lilting humour. “We’ve only just met, sir, and already you wish to dine with me?”

  “I would be delighted,” he said, and now his sad face curved open into a huge smile.

  “Oh my,” she said, “you look so utterly different when you smile. You really should smile more often.”

  Lirodello blushed and kept smiling.

  14

  Not Reading Rondell

  Poltorir was wrapped around the base of the tower just as she had been every day for the past five years. She couldn’t have flown away even if she’d want to. She had lost that ability even as Xemion had lost his spellcraft. At least that was what she believed. It’s true her legs still worked and she could have run off and lived as a great lizard on the land, but he needed her and he kept her well fed with spell-crossed meats and other delights. Besides, he had saved her. The cruel scars on her flayed hide still attested to the torture she had endured during her captivity. She might still be enduring it now if it weren’t for him. So she stayed and guarded his tower and let the black thorns slowly grow around her. Curled in them now like a snake in a shell watching the ways, keen to the scents emanating through the dark thicket, she faithfully awaited his return.

  First she smelled his fear scent and then his anger scent. Then he called her name. He was crashing toward her through the thorn forest. He had obviously abandoned his usual caution. “Poltorir, move.” She didn’t deign to look at him when he burst out of the shadows, but she complied. There was a rattle of her scales and the snapping of thorns at her back as she shifted enough to draw her midsection away from the doorway that led into the tower. “Move,” he shouted again. He pushed past her and rushed up the seven sets of stairs to the top of the tower. Bargest looked up as his master entered the room, but Xemion rushed right by him into the other room. He grabbed Saheli’s wrist and sighed with relief. The same. He touched her neck. He held the little mirror to her mouth. The same. The same.

  The urge to run back there even now and continue reading the Great Kone tore at him, but he walked rapidly to the door and locked it. He then ran into the other room and grabbed as many books as he could sweep off the shelf and carried them to the door. Several armfuls later there was a small pile. He knelt down and pushed them higher up against the door as though they might block his leaving.

  He was shaking all through his body now and dripping cold sweat. He paused and hung his head, breathing deeply, trying to calm himself. It could not be done. He craved. He longed. He remembered again those dark, addictive letters, the inability to stop reading. And then the warm push at his back that had distracted him enough to disconnect his eyes and let him turn away. That touch, that feeling of the middle mage was too distinct to have come from anyone but Vallaine. But Vallaine was dead. If they had brought him back to life, even if only briefly, they must have spoken the Spell of General Return — the same spell he had spoken over Saheli five years earlier. As the implications of this sank in, his trembling increased. Without that push from
Vallaine, he might be several spirals down the Great Kone by now and on his way to starvation. But what if Saheli were even more spell-crossed now? Now that there was another demand on the power of the Great Kone.

  “Saheli. Saheli,” he whispered. “Come back. Come back, my beloved.” He hovered. He told himself that Vallaine was a middle mage and that the spell Vallaine had meant to enable by touching him was the spell to bring Saheli back to life, and that was why the urge to kiss her was now so strong … because …

  Xemion straightened up and turned away.

  He paced. Nervously he started to talk to her. “I saw Tharfen for the first time in five years. Only her eyes. Only for a moment. She was dressed in some kind of pirate outfit. She looks more grown up now, but still malicious, hard-hearted.” He thought about whether to tell her about his episode of kone thrall, but decided against it. He’d been talking to her like this ever since he had first brought her here; in case she was conscious and listening. “Not much longer now, my beloved,” he said. “You have waited so long, and I have waited so long, but it will not have been in vain, I am sure.” At that moment, almost as though it were contending to be as powerful a force as his love for her, he felt a small ping inside his skull and the yearning to read the Great Kone surged through him so strongly it shocked him.

  He looked at the book of poems by Rondell and almost reached for it. Instead, he took out his sword and began to practise. This was one of his other diversions, but it only worked because he had included a textual element in it. He had learned all that he knew of sword work from the three volumes of The Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship, one of the books that had emerged from the locket library. He had practised the moves indicated in the illustrations and texts of the book daily, but when he did the exercises, thrusting forward, parrying, and riposting, he used his sword tip to spell out memorized texts in the air. His mind was full of them. Everything he had ever read had been retained thanks to the memory potion secretly administered to him by Musea the Thrall. And when the sword spelling stopped satisfying his craving, he added yet another ingredient.

  Visibly sweating, he began reciting words aloud to match the words he wrote with the tip of his sword. But all too soon his thoughts began to stream away from him like leaves in the wind, blowing toward the Great Kone. Perhaps reading the Great Kone was exactly what he needed.

  Xemion put the practice sword down and took Saheli’s hand. He held onto her like he was the last leaf on a tree in a driving wind. He wished Vallaine was there to help him, but he also dreaded Vallaine being there because it might interfere with the spell on Saheli. He had to hang on. Something would shift soon, he knew it.

  He got up and paced around and around. He walked to the door and almost reached for the lock but saw the books piled up against it and stopped. The book! He had to delay starting it as long as possible. It was a thick book, but no matter how slowly he read it, it would not last till the equinox, and the equinox … the equinox …

  He stopped and gasped as a new thought occurred to him. He had come to believe that the equinox would be the day she arose. It made sense. That would be the day the Great Kone completed its first full turn — the first full turn since he had recited the spell to bring her back. But what if it signalled the opposite? He hardly dared think it. He had spoken the spell desperately and without forethought. Maybe it needed the touch of other mages in a mass spell like the one Drathis had cast. What if the equinox was the day his spell finally failed?

  He rushed over to the tell kone. He almost dreaded spinning it now, but he knew it would divert him. Behind him, but unknown to him, Saheli’s index finger moved very slightly. Holding the frame of the tell kone on the left side, Xemion whirled the handle at high speed so that the kones sang for a long time before the last of them came to a halt. Nothing shocking was revealed this time. That helped. It calmed him down a little. It was just an image of a nose — a long nose, well shaped and fluted at the nostrils. It made him think of Torgee.

  He took a breath and his eyes swam back over to the book. He had held off as long as possible. At least it was a thick book. And poetry could be read slowly, savoured and considered. Trembling, he opened the cover and read the title page. Brief Works of Rondell. Brief? He turned the next page and there was the first poem. His heart sank when he saw it. He read it aloud as slowly as possible.

  The reason

  love gets deeper and deeper

  is so that we can keep

  falling

  in

  it.

  15

  Torgee Slips Up

  Torgee had been pursuing a glomerant for hours. It was large, with many limbs like a cadaver octopus. It could be silent. It could stop still in the dark of the night and hide from his eyes, but it couldn’t hide from his nose. Everywhere it went it dispersed a pungent detritus. He followed it on the east side of the wall through the rubble of the fallen houses and the eerie spell-made silences that were everywhere. When it climbed back over to the west side he followed it there, too. There was less of it now. He could detect this fact because he could smell the diverging paths taken by the smaller parts of it that kept separating.

  Eventually he came to a crossroads where three final pieces must have gone three separate ways. He sniffed. There was something very familiar about this place. He pulled out the bottle and took a drink of the poppy mead, then sniffed again. He suspected there might still be a piece of the glomerant somewhere nearby. But if there was, it must be very small. And there was no wind to carry its scent to him. He sniffed once more. One of the pieces had slithered off to the east and the third had obviously hurled itself through the very familiar portal that he now stood in front of. This was a place he had avoided for more than five years — the portal that led to Shissillil.

  Oh, Shissillil. Torgee sighed, looking through the moonlit portal longingly.

  Torgee reached into his cloak and took another good solid slug from the bottle, feeling the warmth sink into him.

  It was in this frictionless borough of Shissillil that a miracle had once happened to him. Saheli. He flashed back to that moment — or those moments or that eternity — of panic as he was propelled toward, and into, and through her. There had been no impact or collision, but somehow he had come away with a piece of her inside him. It was more of her than he’d ever thought he’d have, and he’d never sullied it by telling anyone about it. Not even Tharfen. He just went around with the scent of Saheli always in his mind. All those months with her in the training camp in the mountains under Tiri Lighthammer’s tutelage with the sword, he had never acknowledged it once. If there was also a piece of him in her, he could not tell for sure, but he hoped so. He’d gladly give all of himself to her anyway. He couldn’t help it.

  But then the Phaer tourney had come and the Second Battle of Phaer Bay, and suddenly, as he lay in Mr. Stilpkin’s hospital recovering from the wound to his thigh inflicted by the hateful Montither, he felt the piece of her in him go dead. Or, rather, he felt it cease living. Not that he would have expressed it that way at first. He just knew there was the sudden deep absence in his chest so painful, so unresolved, that he had to go numb to everything in order to stop feeling it.

  During the first two years after the battle, he accepted what Tharfen had told the Council — that Saheli was dead. Certainly enough to grieve her, but not entirely enough to leave her. Even though the piece of her in him emitted nothing, even though it felt neither alive nor dead, he held on to it with numb hands. It was like some scar jewel, untouchable, too beautiful to look at.

  Very recently, though, at the back of his deepest dreams, he had begun to sense it again. But with it had come pain, pure pain, and as much as he wanted to feel that little bit of life that seemed to be in the piece, he could not always handle the pain. And so, as he opened himself to the piece, the adoring Torgee had also opened himself to the taste of poppy mead. He took a few more sweet swallows. He
staggered and stood swaying in front of the gateway, head hung over in his drunkenness and misery. Just a foot in front of him the spell-crossed portal opened onto the road that slid away toward Shissillil, and somewhere in that coiling crisscross of ways there was the very place where he’d crashed through her.

  He saw her now, shooting toward him. Even in her terror, she was beautiful. Could he have avoided her? He had asked himself that many a time. And how could he have known how extremely pleasurable it would be? In fact, now that the recollection was upon him, he remembered that he leaned to the right just as she had leaned to her left, so that they both leaned in the same direction like mirror images and crashed through each other. Both had put their arms up in front of their faces, and then were shattered hand through hand, arm through arm, shoulder through shoulder, head to head, torso to torso. Emboldened with the power of the poppy mead, Torgee dared to hold that picture, that ecstatic sensation, in his mind, the vision of her face.

  Ever since that day, the piece had resided in him secretly, a holy relic too precious to be known to anyone else. It might have been the last piece of a map home. It might’ve been the last flame, so preciously he cupped it. But now something new was happening. He could feel it moving like the tip of a finger poking at his insides. There had always been a suggestion of little stirrings in it, but this was different. For the first time he could feel something beyond it. Something that it was part of and was trying to get back to. Something that was coming alive.

  It hit him with the force of revelation. She’s not dead. How could he not have known that all along? How foolish and hopeful he suddenly felt. Something had awoken in the piece inside him and it was swimming back to itself. Wanting a reunion. She had not died. Not entirely. She was alive, and he had kept a little of the flame of her going even though it burned and hurt him. That was loyalty. That was devotion.