Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  I am a parcel of vain strivings tied

  By a chance bond together

  — Thoreau

  The river flowed both ways. The current moved from north to south, but the wind usually came from the south, rippling the bronze-green water in the opposite direction.

  — Margaret Laurence

  For Marsha Kirzner, Ananda Lebo, Eli and Daniel Kirzner-Priest,

  my parents Betty and Ted Priest, Eitan and

  Erez Lebo, and William Broome and Pearl Priest

  Table of Contents

  Map

  Preface

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Lexicon

  Preface

  The following is a brief recap of Book 1 of the Spell Crossed series:

  For fifty years the people of the Phaer Isle have been subjugated by the crystal-faced Pathans who live in the underearth. In order to prevent a resurgence of spellcraft, which they believe is rooted in text, the Pathans have destroyed all the literature of the Phaer people and executed all of the mages. Reading and writing and even singing are now forbidden and two generations have passed with the Phaer people living in slavery, hardly even aware of their great literary tradition and proud history.

  Seventeen-year-old Xemion has been raised in an isolated, mountainous part of the island by a woman named Anya. Since he was young, she taught him to read from a collection of tiny books stored in a small locket. The collection contains, among other classics, the Phaer Tales — epic stories from the island’s legendary past. Reading these stories has given Xemion romantic ideals and convinced him that he will one day be a great warrior.

  This desire only increases after he rescues a teenage girl named Saheli from a raging mountain river. There is a tradition in the Phaer Tales that two warriors who join forces in a fated love bond can gain even greater power together. Xemion is convinced that Saheli is his warrior beloved, but he keeps these thoughts to himself.

  Saheli’s physical wounds heal, leaving only a diagonal scar over her left eyebrow, but she still cannot remember anything about where she came from or what happened before she met Xemion. All she knows is that she has a deep fear of magic.

  After the sudden death of Anya, Xemion begins to recite the stories to Saheli and to other children from Sho, the local fishing village. Two of these children are a boy named Torgee, who has feelings for Saheli, and his younger and very headstrong sister, Tharfen, whose feelings for Xemion are deep and troubled. Despite the Pathan strictures against the use of any kinds of weapons, the four also take to games of swordplay using sticks, though Tharfen uses a sling and stones, with which she has excellent aim.

  Then one day Xemion discovers a stick that is so like the blade of a sword he can’t resist putting a copper point on it and covering it in silver luminous paint to give it the look of a real sword. When he performs a sword dance with it, his performance is witnessed by a man named Vallaine who, strangely, has one red hand. He tells Xemion and Saheli that the Pathans are currently so embroiled in civil war that they’ve had to withdraw all their own troops from the Phaer Isle. Vallaine invites Xemion and Saheli to come with him on his ship to the city of Ulde where a rebellion against the kwislings — traitorous Phaer Islanders who the Pathans have chosen to rule in their absence — is about to begin. Xemion is tempted to go but Saheli is mistrustful of Vallaine. Besides, they are bound by previous vows and tell him they cannot go.

  That evening when they return to the tower hidden inside a tree where they live, Xemion reads a new story from the collection in the library, but this time when he finishes it the locket poses a riddle: “Who’ll be gouged and who’ll be gored by the sword inside the sword. Will its power be ignored O who will wield the paper sword?”

  Meanwhile, in Sho, a sadistic examiner — a Kwisling official in charge of weeding out children in the populace who may be spellbinders — shows up and catches Tharfen. He beats her until she provides him with information about the two teenagers who he has heard live alone in the forest. When he gets to the tower tree, he tries to kill their spell-crossed pet, Chiricoru, which is part swan, part rooster. Xemion thwarts him by using the painted sword, but in the aftermath of the fight their forest home burns to the ground and they are forced to flee. They decide to head toward Ulde and the rebellion.

  The two are unexpectedly joined by Torgee and Tharfen, who warn them that the examiner is pursuing them with a pack of vicious Pathan dogs. Together the four stay overnight in the woods, close to an old hunting lodge. In the middle of the night, Saheli begins to be plagued by a strange melody that runs over and over in her mind. When the morning comes, they discover inside the lodge a large spell kone and, fastened to the ceiling, an old, long-haired, howling madman. They all flee in terror, but soon discover that the examiner and the dogs are closing in.

  When the four travellers are trapped in a mountain pass haunted by ghouls, Xemion and Saheli are forced to drink water from one of the two magic wells in order to pass through the gates. Xemion drinks the water of memory and Saheli, despite the protests of a ghoul who turns out to be her mother, drinks the waters of forgetfulness. When the examiner arrives and attempts to follow them through the gate, Tharfen launches a stone with her sling that breaks the bottle he is drinking from. She has her revenge on him as he is attacked by a mob of ghouls, who take him into their fold.

  As they continue on their journey, Xemion comes face-to-face with a dragon. Just as he fears it is about to kill him, it turns and kills the last of the Pathan dogs instead, and Xemion believes that the dragon deliberately saved him. Later, in the town of Shissilill (which due to spell crossing now has no friction), Xemion and Tharfen collide at great speed. Somehow they pass right through each other, but each retains a small piece of the other. Later Xemion is pained to discover that Saheli and Torgee have collided in the same way and now also share a piece of each other.

  During their time in Shissilill, Xemion and Saheli get separated from Torgee and Tharfen. They continue on together into the deeply spell-crossed eastern side of the city of Ulde, where they again run into Vallaine, the mysterious man with the red hand. He warns Xemion to get rid of the painted sword as soon as possible and shakes hands with Xemion and Saheli before sending them on their way. Since, as he has implied to Xemion, he is a middle mage, the shaking of the hands activates the properties of the waters of memory and forgetfulness in the two. Xemion and Saheli take the path recommended by Vallaine, which passes right by the Great Kone, thought to be the origin of all textual magic on the Phaer Isle. To gain courage in this passage, Saheli, who has grown increasingly frightened of magic, for the first time takes Xemion’s hand, and when they get safely by she kisses him on the lips, much to Xemion’s surprise. Although Vallaine warned him not to read any of the exposed lettering on the Great Kone, as Saheli kisses him, Xemion’s eyes alight on one letter — an X.

  Xemion and Saheli cross over into the western side of the city, where youth from all over the island are gathering at an ancient stadium known as the Panthemium in order to join the rebellion and the new military academy. As t
hey wait in line with the others, a young man named Brothlem Montither assaults someone. Saheli intervenes. Enraged, Montither turns on her with his weapon in hand, but Xemion uses the painted sword to subdue him. The incident ends with the arrival of the legendary Tiri Lighthammer, hero of the Battle of Phaer Bay, fought fifty years earlier.

  Soon after, inside the Panthemium, the assembly is interrupted by a troop of kwisling soldiers led by the departing Pathan governor. In the uproar that follows, the governor is wounded and humiliated by Tiri Lighthammer and is forced to leave. But in all the confusion, Xemion and Saheli are separated.

  Xemion searches frantically through the crowd, but just when he thinks he sees her, the leader of the rebellion, Veneetha Azucena, brings everything to a halt. She announces that all in attendance must immediately take the official vow of the rebellion’s new military academy. This ritual involves all participants crossing their arms in front of them and grasping the hands of the two people on either side. When Xemion does this he finds himself wedged uncomfortably between a bitter and vengeful Tharfen, who has appeared out of nowhere, and the bully, Montither, whose hatred for Xemion is obvious. With these two contentious comrades he must take the vow of friendship and alliance.

  1

  Not Seeing Her Face

  Xemion strained to see her face. But she remained turned away from him, seven rows ahead, her hair tied up in a topknot. It had to be her. But it might not be. He trembled at the thought that he may have lost her forever.

  “Keep the grip!”

  Veneetha Azucena’s command reverberated off the ancient stones of the Panthemium. Xemion, along with all the others, stood with his arms crossed in front of him, his hands gripping the hands of those on each side. They had all just taken a vow of obedience. But he would break that vow, he thought. If he could, he’d let go right now and push his way forward to where the girl was standing. He had to see her face to make sure.

  “See how you are all bound in and to one another,” Azucena urged them. “This is how we will be bound in the endeavour before us. Not only each to all and all to each but to our ancestors, as well, who also made this grip. Feel it.”

  They stood silently; the only sound the rippling of the gorehorse flag flapping first one way and then the other in the crosswinds coming in off the sea.

  “This one here,” Veneetha Azucena said finally, pointing to a thin Phaerlander who stood at the front of the assembly, closest to her, “is directly connected to the one at the end.” She gestured over their heads. “Each one sworn to each in alliance and friendship.”

  But Xemion felt only hostility from those on either side of him. In fact, he had just that morning publicly humiliated Brothlem Montither, the large, finely attired, slightly perfumed individual currently gripping his right hand. And Tharfen, the younger, shorter red-haired girl on the other side who kept yanking on his left arm trying to get his attention, was someone with whom he’d had nothing but quarrels ever since their first meeting. The fact that a recent collision in the spell-crossed borough of Shissilill had left a small fragment of her inside him only served to increase the amount of discomfort he felt in her company.

  “Don’t just look for Saheli. My brother may be up there. Look for Torgee, too,” she hissed, jabbing her thumbnail into the back of his hand.

  “Now, you will all soon be put to a test, but before we begin there is something I must stress very strongly.” Veneetha Azucena paused and surveyed the crowd before her, the high red feather atop her black headdress bending back and forth in the strong wind. “There are still functioning spellworks to be found in these parts. Mostly these are devices retrieved from newly fallen houses by speculators. Certain Pathan scientists are very interested in acquiring such items. Nothing could be more dangerous to our cause than these. We will not tolerate any kind of traffic in these items. They may not be owned. They may not be kept. And they certainly must not be used. Remember, they have held to their spells for fifty years and are now completely unstable. They must be destroyed. But not by you … by Mr. Glittervein here.”

  She pointed to a Nain standing to the side amongst the other faculty members. Like all Nains, he was short and broad of shoulder but well-proportioned. He had dressed neatly for the occasion in a red uniform and wore his long auburn hair so that it covered one side of his face, while the other side gazed handsomely out at the crowd. He gave a little nod.

  “As our Provost, he will be in charge of our armaments and provisions. You’ve all seen the high chimney of Uldestack where he has his forge. Let me tell you, he can build such a fire there as will melt anything, spell crossed or not. So if you have found any spellworks since arriving here, or if any of you have somehow managed to accidentally bring any in with you, I will give you one last chance to surrender them to him today. After today, if anyone is caught with spellworks, they will be instantly expelled from the academy. We are firmly committed to this. And because here in Ulde we are once again in the presence of the Great Kone — the very root and source of the textual magic — do not think there is any intention to return to the easy ways of spell kones and conjuration. I bid you witness me: I will not have even so much as the rubbing of some charm. I will not hear a wish, a prayer, or an incantation from any of you. Our actions are our wishes. Our will is our prayer. Our swords are our incantations. Now, have you got that?” Heads nodded. “Say aye.”

  A deep-voiced, solemn “aye” arose from the crowd.

  “Many more of you than expected have shown up. But if you are hungry you will be fed, and all of you will be directed to lodgings after we finish here. Mr. Glittervein will have to make more swords, but you will all be given a sword and you will all be taught swordsmanship so that you may learn to ably defend us when these enslavers and book-burners return, as they surely will. In fact, given the treatment which their Prince has this morning so justly received at Mr. Lighthammer’s hand, they may be back much sooner than we thought. That is why you are about to be tested. We need to find three dozen of the best fighters to take special intense and advanced training so that we may begin guarding our perimeters immediately. And to find such a number we must trust to the one true compass we know.” She gestured elegantly. “Tiri Lighthammer.”

  Lighthammer had once had been a triplicant, but his heroic battle with the invaders fifty years earlier had left him with only two arms and two legs. This caused him to come forward now with a slightly asymmetrical gait. But as he stood before them in his red jacket, his broad shoulders decorated with golden epaulets, he looked powerful and impressive. He ordered that two broad doors leading into the stables under the stadium be opened. Slowly he drew his famous steel sword and held it up in the air. “The test is simple,” he announced. “Can you hold onto a sword or not. First I will instruct you and then I will test you.” These words calmed Xemion down a little. He knew how to hold a sword. And so did Saheli. He had learned the skill from the Manual of Phaer Swordsmanship, one of the tiny volumes he carried even now in the little locket library that hung on a chain about his neck. He had practised, and so had she. They would both be among the chosen. He knew it.

  Lighthammer turned his blade into the light. “Do you see this hand here? This is the Phaer grip.” Lighthammer stood with one leg forward and bent, the other back and straight, his sword held up before him at a forty-five-degree angle. Despite the slight sense of imbalance caused by the odd placement of his two arms and legs, he looked very forceful and elegant.

  “A sword is not a bottle you grip by the neck to break over some drunkard’s head,” Lighthammer continued. “It is a deftly balanced scalpel you steer with deadly precision. Grip the hilt, not too tight, with the thumb up the haft resting on the guard. Do you see? Say aye.”

  There was a chorus of “ayes.”

  “Good then.”

  He touched the shoulder of a very large Thrall girl who had emerged from the chamber under the stadium. She wore a bulky grey cloak, but her head was bare. By the look of her bleached white
eyes, she was blind. She carried a slightly rusty-looking sword.

  “First, arrange yourselves in lines of twenty-four, but keep the grip within the lines. I will start with this fellow at the front. Step forward one by one, and when the first line is done, the line behind shall step forward. Do you understand? Say aye.”

  “Aye,” they said in unison, and after a brief shuffle it was done. Seven rows back, Xemion’s impatience gathered and his anxiety quickened. It would take so long before he had his turn and she was so far ahead of him. He thought about how she had drunk the water of forgetfulness at the Vale of Two Wells. What if it caused her to forget what had happened between them earlier that morning? To forget their kiss? What if somehow they were apart long enough for her to forget him altogether?

  He strained to see her, but now that the crowd had shifted, a group of giant Thralls hid her from view. The same shuffle had, however, opened up a vista on the other part of the front line, and there, no more than a person or two away from where he believed Saheli stood, was Tharfen’s brother, Torgee.

  He leaned down and whispered, “I see him.”

  “Where? Where?” Tharfen, whose height prevented her from seeing much around her, actually jumped up and down trying to see over the shoulders in front of her. She succeeded only in annoying the burly girl on her right side.

  “He’s right up the front,” Xemion whispered.

  “Well, get his attention,” she demanded, yanking on his arm.

  “I can’t,” he told her, yanking back on her arm.

  “You have to,” she protested, digging her nail into his hand.

  “No, I don’t!”

  Tharfen dug her nail in harder.

  “Do it yourself.”

  Unfortunately for Xemion, he said these last words a little too loudly. From the front, Tiri Lighthammer’s iron-grey eyes found him. “Silence back there or you will be removed!”

  On Xemion’s other side, Montither turned just enough to sneer at him.