Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  “And there shall be none and no one to know or unknow the unknown …”

  Yes, the old Thrall was reciting what Xemion judged to be a book of philosophy. He knew only a little about philosophy. There had been one book entitled Of Meaning in the locket library, which, like all the books, due to some mechanism hidden in the locket, had to be fully read before access to any further volumes was allowed. Xemion had had to labour through page after page of long, complicated sentences, all aimed at finding out the true nature of the meaning of meaning. Not even Anya Kuzelnika had been able to follow the book’s convoluted questions. It was an extremely long version of one of these kinds of questions that the scribe was now transcribing.

  “As to what is and is not meaning — if one word is all words then are not all words linked in one meaning?”

  Holding a finger up to his lips to signal continued silence, Sarabin handed Xemion a scroll of reed paper and a pencil. Xemion looked back at him, puzzled. Sarabin made a gesture to indicate that Xemion should listen to the old woman and write down what she was saying. Xemion had half a mind to resist, because even now he could see what was coming, but it was too late for that. The sooner this was over the sooner he would see Saheli again. He settled down flat on the stage and began to transcribe. After he’d written a page full of the old woman’s rattling mumblings, they began to be interrupted by small, dry coughs. Xemion heard a deep voice say, “I beg. I beg. A nap now?” Xemion couldn’t see where the voice was coming from, but the old woman obligingly stopped her recitation.

  The scribe who was writing looked up, annoyed, but the old woman waved her hand to signal that a rest was indeed in order. She sank back just one small iota deeper into the tall stone chair and a second set of eyelids closed down over the glassy transparent ones she had been looking through till now.

  In a whisper, Sarabin introduced the two scribes. The one who had been holding the cone was Ettinender. He had long, lank yellow hair. “It’s hard for him to communicate. He was a singer once but the Pathans caught him and shredded his tongue.” Ettinender nodded his head and tried to say something. But what came out was incomprehensible. This made him angry. Yarra, the other scribe, equally old, cocked his bulbous head jerkily in greeting.

  “He can read! He can actually read,” Sarabin whispered with great excitement. “Now let me see how he is at writing.” He shuffled over to Xemion with the candle and used its light to peruse what Xemion had written. As he did so he read along in a muttering tone. His recitation began imperceptibly and slowly rose in volume, until by the end of the page he was almost speaking in his normal voice. Shaking his head, he looked at Xemion with longing. “How I envy you, young man. If I had but hands, I’d be down here every day, every moment. These hooks are good for much but not for that. I hope you realize how fortunate you are.”

  Xemion nodded uncertainly. How long had they been down here? It was hard to tell in the dark. Surely noon was almost upon them.

  “This is a miracle,” Yarra enthused, his full voice echoing off the stone overhead. “We have been so overworked for so long.” Then, seeing that he’d awakened the old woman, he spoke more quietly. “I’m so sorry, Musea. I got so very excited here. You see, this young man has shown up and he can write!”

  Musea’s glassy grey eye turned toward Xemion and she lifted the hook of her nose and stared straight down over the big, bony curve and fixed him at the end of her gaze. Xemion saw something in her eyes shift and focus and shift again as though a thousand telescopes were looking through one another all at once, trying to view him. Finally, he felt the connection as she found him. She smiled, then instantly looked away. That such a smile came from such a seemingly stony face took Xemion by surprise, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

  “He is pretty,” she croaked. She beckoned for Xemion to approach her. With the two scribes looking gleefully on, Xemion drew close to the old woman.

  “Closer,” Musea commanded in her scratchy voice. “Bring your face closer to me so I can feel it.” Xemion did as requested and she placed her leathery old fingers on his cheeks and ran them over his brow, pausing there in the middle above his nose and then along his eyebrows and over his lips. As she did this she smiled and tears welled up in her eyes. “Yes, yes,” she affirmed. “I do approve.”

  “I beseech a scrap of you,” said that same deep voice that had spoken out before. Xemion started. The voice seemed to come from beneath the table.

  “Shhh!” the old woman said. She looked down and Xemion saw her nudge a large black shadow with her foot.

  “My dog,” she said indulgently.

  “He speaks?” Xemion asked, drawing even farther back.

  “Only to beg.” Sarabin spoke quietly from behind him. He lowered the candle a little. A massive triangle of black dogface was suddenly illuminated in the halo of light. The animal put out its large pink tongue and began to rapidly lick the old Thrall’s unclad foot. She giggled. “Stop it! He’s spell crossed,” she croaked. “Aren’t you, Bargest?”

  Xemion could now see that the dog was oddly clad. A pink bow held a tuft of hair in place, where it hung down over one side of his head, while much of his torso was encased in a pink frilly coat with coloured buttons and tiny embroidered gorehorses. “Even, sir, if you have no scraps,” the dog pleaded, having stopped licking, “I will lick your hand if you let me.”

  “Ignore him,” whispered Sarabin.

  “Bargest, be quiet,” the old woman scolded. “Long ago two mages who were each other’s beloveds were his first masters,” she said directly to Xemion. “He was their retriever and he did such a good job they allowed him to live in their house. But Bargest kept on, let’s say, ‘retrieving’ a lot of extra treats when his masters weren’t looking. One mage decided that the way to correct this was to bind him with a spell to speak so that he could ask properly for the things he wanted. But you still didn’t ask, did you Bargest? One day when her birthday cake was ruined the other mage bound a cross-spell against the first so he could only speak if he begged. That’s why he always begs. But I love him anyway, don’t I, Bargest?”

  “I beseech you, do not stop,” the animal rumbled back. He began to lick the woman’s foot manically as though there were a soon-to-be exhausted sweetness there. This seemed to please her deeply. She closed her eyes and turned her face up toward the domed ceiling and soon dozed off, a look of rapture on her wizened features.

  “She has magic recall,” Sarabin whispered. “Early in her life she took thrall to the great classics of Elphaerean literature and read them over and over. And every day as she read, she drank from the wells of memory. As a result, she knows much of our lost Elphaerean literature by heart.”

  Xemion nodded, remembering the taste of those same waters on his own tongue. The memory of Saheli drinking the waters from the other well, the well of forgetfulness, flashed at him as though from the end of a long tunnel. Soon. Soon.

  “She is the last remaining storehouse of Elphaerean literature. She has copied out fifty-seven books so far, but she is very old and no one knows how long she will last. When she first came here I am told she wrote till her wrists swelled. She wrote all day and didn’t stop until she fell asleep, which, fortunately, she did with great difficulty, as she has insomnia, you see.”

  Xemion nodded.

  “She is too weary now to scribe at all. That is why these two gentlemen are doing the scribing for her. But she has been so wakeful of late they have had no rest. She’s dictating a classic of our literature that we thought we’d lost forever … and, well, we could use you, Xemion. One more scribe would be such a relief to all of us.”

  Ettinender nodded his bulbous head rapidly up and down to confirm this. “Ish dru,” Ettinender said with some difficulty.

  “So … so instead of going to the reading instruction, I would come here and write down what she says?”

  “Well … yes, and perhaps during some of the other more superfluous classes, as well. You seem to be already such a w
ell-educated fellow.”

  Xemion thought about it. “I will help, but right now I can almost sense the sun straight overhead. We must be very close to midday.” He looked expectantly at Sarabin.

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes, and I gave you my word, didn’t I?”

  Xemion nodded anxiously. Sarabin turned to Yarra and Ettinender. “I promised him I would get him back to the others for noon. But don’t fret. I will return him to you as soon as possible.”

  “You must,” Yarra said. “We are both ready to collapse with fatigue.”

  Ettinender also said something with great urgency and even a little anger. He seemed to be protesting Xemion’s departure, but his speech was so garbled it was impossible for Xemion to tell for sure.

  “As soon as possible, I assure you,” Sarabin replied. “I have made him a promise and I must keep it.”

  This definitely angered Ettinender. He stood up to protest further, but when he reached his full height he let out a little cry, went limp, and dropped to the ground. There he curled into a fetal position and began to twitch and buck and let out choked staccato sounds.

  “A fit!” Sarabin ran toward him. “Grab his hands,” he shouted. “Restrain him. He’ll push his own eyes out.”

  Yarra somehow managed to get hold of Ettinender’s flailing hands while Sarabin did his best to restrain his feet. Ettinender was turning purple. The sinews in his neck were raised and vibrating like fishing line pulled taut, his mouth was opening and shutting, and his flaps of tongue were shuddering like convulsive ribbons in the wind of his creaking groans.

  “I am going to have to go and get Mr. Stilpkin.” Sarabin said, rising. “Xemion, come and hold his feet.”

  “But it must be midday by now, and you said—”

  “I can’t help that, can I? This is a matter of life and death. Surely you are here of your own will because you want to save a life!”

  Right on cue, Ettinender began to buck anew. He jerked and wriggled like a worm on a hook, all the while creaking and shrieking.

  “Yarra alone cannot keep him from hurting himself,” Sarabin chided. “Your friend will come to no harm if you are late. But our oldest living scribe may lose his very life without your help.”

  “But—”

  “And I will arrange a time and place for the two of you to meet later,” Sarabin cut in, “I promise it. What is her name?”

  “Saheli,” Xemion answered as he reluctantly took Sarabin’s place holding on to Ettinender’s hands. “She was one of the ones chosen by Tiri Lighthammer. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I couldn’t see her face. She didn’t turn. That’s why I need—”

  “Saheli, then,” Sarabin cut him off impatiently. With that, he nodded to Yarra, said “as soon as possible,” and hurried out. The old man’s struggles continued for quite a long time as his laboured breathing turned into hoarse gasping. Yarra kept urging him “stay with us, my brother, stay with us,” casting worried, tearful glances at Xemion. And for every moment of it, Xemion’s feeling of panic that he would lose Saheli forever grew more and more desperate. Finally, a heavy, long-eared man arrived. He rushed forward and put a hand, which Xemion noticed was entirely green, gently on the middle of Ettinender’s breast and stroked his brow. After a short while Ettinender’s struggles ceased and his breathing became shallow and slow and almost imperceptible. The man with the green hand attempted to wake him, without success. He looked up sadly at Yarra and said, “I just hope he may wake one more time.”

  “Please wake up, Ettinender,” Yarra beseeched, stroking back a lock of the man’s yellow hair from his forehead.

  “It won’t be today, I fear,” the man with the green hand lamented.

  ⚔

  When Xemion finally emerged from underground, the sun was no longer in the sky. He was greeted by Sarabin, who was just returning. Sarabin’s expression was unreadable. But his eyes didn’t meet Xemion’s. “I am sorry, young man. I have been unable to locate anyone at all by the name of Saheli among those who … remain.”

  This statement shook Xemion’s whole being. Fear became cold panic in an instant and there were now goodly portions of anger accompanying it. “What do you mean those who remain?” he demanded, his voice raised.

  “It has always been the strategy of the Phaer militia to spread its forces widely over the terrain. I’m afraid that the thirty-six have already been posted elsewhere.”

  “Take me to her then.” Xemion’s voice verged on outright anger.

  “That is the problem. The elite forces train in a secret location, and I’m afraid they departed for it immediately after noon.”

  “No!”

  “I’m afraid it is so.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m afraid I am not told such things.”

  “But someone must know where they’ve gone.”

  “If anyone, only Veneetha Azucena herself.”

  5

  Xemion Pleads

  Veneetha Azucena crossed the ample floor space of her apartment on the top floor of an old tower at the foot of Phaerpoint and gazed out over the sea below. “But before you spoke the vow,” she said, “we did ask all to declare if there were any reason of attachment or safety that should prevent them from committing at this time. We asked quite clearly and no one protested.”

  “But I didn’t know we would be separated when I spoke that vow. I thought by speaking it I would be staying with her. My vow that I made to the woman who raised me to stay with her until she comes of age precedes my vow to you.”

  Veneetha was not as tall as she’d seemed upon the stage in the Panthemium conducting the vow yesterday morning. But she was still imposing. She had thrown a red robe embroidered with golden lions over her slight night garments and the contrast with her dark skin and the rich black coils of her hair seemed most becoming to Xemion even in his upset.

  “Well, you are with her, are you not? In the sense that we are all with one another in one endeavour. In the sense that—”

  “But I’m not even certain it was her. I have to make sure that it was her up there and that she’s safe.”

  “How could you not be certain?” She turned from the window and walked to the middle of the room, where she stood in a beam of moonlight streaming in through a crystal dome in the ceiling. It was much like the dome that had illuminated the sunscope that Xemion used in Ilde to project the stories onto the wall.

  “After we were separated, I only saw her from behind. I never saw her face.”

  “Surely, you recognized her in the way she moved, in the way she held herself.” As if to illustrate this, she opened her arms in a lyrical gesture.

  “I have to be certain. The gates to the stadium were left open when that Pathan and his kwislings came marching in. That’s how we got separated in the first place. I didn’t see her after that. I don’t know if she might have been taken or if she forgot who she was. Maybe she got dragged out the gates—”

  “How could she have forgotten who she was?” asked Sarabin, who had been waiting silently beside the doorway.

  “On our journey here she had to drink from the well of forgetting.”

  A curious look came over Veneetha Azucena’s features and she drew closer to him. “But the magic of those waters has had no real effect since before the spell fire — since Musea was a young woman.”

  “But it is supposed to have been bound by spoken spells by the old mages What if someone with a red hand were to initiate it?”

  She looked up sharply. “Whatever can you mean?”

  “Your man, Vallaine. He shook hands with us after—”

  At this Azucena trilled with laughter. “Oh, surely you don’t believe in those old superstitions?”

  “He told me himself about middle magicians and how they are needed to initiate certain spells.”

  “But I’m sure he wouldn’t have told you he was one,” Sarabin said.

  “He has a red hand. Isn’t that supposed to mean he’s a middle m
agician?”

  “Xemion, of course not,” Veneetha said. “That was never true. Some people are born with red hands, some with green hands. I assure you that Mr. Vallaine is not a so-called middle mage. That would be most unwelcome here.”

  “I just need to be sure that it was her.”

  She sighed and looked a little exasperated. “Well, can you describe her face to me? I saw the chosen ones as they left.”

  Xemion tried to picture Saheli’s face. He’d never thought before of trying to put the magic of its facets, of its angles and elegance, into words. But her face kept turning and sliding away from him and the words that came were “she has eyes that switch from green to blue if you catch them when her mood is changing.”

  “Something … more immediate perhaps?”

  He wanted to say that she was beautiful and that she had a look of great goodness in her eyes, but there was fear, too. But instead he said “her hair is long and black and it comes down to about here when she wears it down but she had it piled up on top for a while. She was wearing it like that yesterday. It came down but she might’ve put it back up again. She has high cheekbones and—”

  “There were several like that.”

  “She was wearing a green cloak with a—”

  “No, I’m afraid that won’t help. When I saw them they were all dressed the same, in fatigues, for as soon as they were inducted they were quickly divested not only of their old names but of their old garments as well.”

  “She has a diagonal scar over her left eyebrow.”

  Azucena frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t recall anything like that. But if her hair were down over her face, I might have missed it.”

  “Well then, just let me go where they are camped and—”

  “Xemion, not even I may know that detail.”

  “No!”

  “Yes, it was always that way in the Phaer Academies. They know where I am, but not I them. We keep our legions separate, so that we cannot all be caught in one trap.”