Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  Xemion persisted. “Then my friend Tharfen would know. If she met with her brother Torgee at noon she would also have seen Saheli.”

  “Well, there you have it then. Mr. Sarabin, please summon the quartermaster’s assistant, Lirodello, and we’ll find the girl and get her up here and relieve this poor fellow of his dreadful doubts.” Sarabin nodded and quietly closed the door as he left.

  As they awaited his return, Drathis, one of the pale, one-eyed youths whom Veneetha had rescued from the Pathans, came into the chamber through a door at the rear of the apartment and approached Xemion. He wore a black patch over his left eye, but what could be seen of the rest of his face was young and handsome. There was a delicacy to it that suggested great sensitivity. The only unusual thing was that one blue eye, which seemed never to be looking straight at anyone. Xemion kept trying to meet it as he approached but never quite felt any connection.

  “Drathis,” Veneetha said, frowning, “you were going to stay with the others until I returned.”

  Drathis shook his head. He walked straight up to Xemion, facing him.

  “My, my,” Veneetha said.

  Drathis kept tilting and swaying his head as though he were trying to position that eye to look at Xemion directly. Finally he succeeded. And he and Xemion both smiled.

  “My goodness!” Veneetha let out a burble of sandy laughter. “I don’t know what’s got into you, Drathis. I have never seen him greet anyone and I’ve certainly never seen him smile.”

  Drathis, still holding Xemion’s gaze, reached his right hand across to Xemion’s left hand. He took it and held it gently, nodding. Then, with Veneetha looking on and shaking her head with amazement, he turned and left the room as he had entered it.

  “You look as stunned as I am,” she said, half chortling to Xemion, who was standing there gazing at his hand and looking troubled.

  “I felt something strange when he touched my hand.”

  This clearly caught Veneetha Azucena’s interest. “Really? Well, Xemion. You are one of the rare ones. Very few can feel that.”

  “What is it?”

  She spoke quietly, solemnly, when she answered. “Many think that the magic our peoples once had stemmed from the Great Kone or from other lesser texts, or that all magic was originally blood magic such as that exercised across the western sea by the Necromancer of Arthenow. But some of us believe it is not the spell, it is the spellbinder, who has a natural magic. Spells just channel it. Even in the time of the spell kones, most of our people could spin a kone and get satisfactory results, but the Pathans could not at all. Drathis here has that tendency in rather larger amounts. He is, of course, innocent of any will to the spellcraft, but nevertheless the current runs in him. That is what you are sensing. That is why the Pathans took him from his home when he was four years old. Unfortunately for him, he had a full resonant voice, and that, alas, is one of their chief indicators.” Xemion shook his head. “They took his eye and a piece of his brain from behind his eye and tried to keep him and it alive separately … so it could become a kind of living eye for a … living kone … of which I can hardly bare to speak this late at night.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Xemion said, hiding the rich resonance of his own voice even more carefully than usual.

  “We all are,” Veneetha Azucena said. Just then Sarabin returned with Lirodello the Thrall. The last time Xemion had seen Lirodello, his naturally comic features had seemed always on the verge of glee and humour. There was none of that in his face now. The news wasn’t good. Indeed, there had been a Tharfen in the assembly at noon, but she was little more than a child. All those who were underage were taken down immediately to Vallaine’s ship, the Mammuth, which had sailed into Phaer Bay just this morning. Vallaine was voyaging to the continent with a hold full of precious gems, in search of weaponry and supplies, and would drop the young ones off on the way. He is not due back for at least six weeks.

  “But you saw my friend, Saheli, when we were standing in the crowd yesterday morning,” Xemion said urgently to Lirodello. “She was the one with dark black hair and a diagonal scar over her left eyebrow?”

  “I do wish I could confirm that for you,” the lachrymose Lirodello said with a tip of his flat hat. “But I confess I had eyes for only one girl there: Vortasa.” He looked at Azucena with large doleful eyes when he said this. “Alas, she held onto her sword harder than she held onto me and so she and her two sisters have been sent away. I found her and lost her all in the same day.”

  “Surely you would remember my friend,” Xemion persisted. “She has such long, dark hair and—”

  “Xemion,” Sarabin interrupted “You obviously know nothing of what it’s like when a Thrall finds his—”

  “I see nothing else,” Lirodello sighed, cupping his hands together in prayerful union.

  “Well, the two of you have much in common,” Veneetha said, gazing sympathetically at Xemion. “But as you see, Xemion, I can bring your slightly unreasonable dread no immediate relief. But I can tell you this — they will be sending a messenger from the camp in three weeks in order to summon me to the celebration of second skin. I will make you a deal. At that time, even if I have to breach protocol, provided of course you have done your service to us here, I will discover if there is one such as you describe with the scar over the left eye. And then you may at least proceed here with more ease about her safety to shore you up in your labours.”

  “I can’t wait three weeks.”

  “You will need to, Xemion. In any case, you know it’s her.”

  Xemion glared. “No, I don’t. I hope it’s her. I suspect it’s her. But …” He couldn’t say but I have dreamed a thousand times that she would be taken from me. He couldn’t say I feared from the very moment I saw her that I would lose her. He could only say, “I need to know today that she is safe. And if she’s not safe, then—”

  “Then what?” Veneetha was beginning to get annoyed. “You will break your very solemn vow and attempt to leave us so that you can scour the wilderness to find her with your little practice sword and slay whatever dragon she may be captive to?”

  Xemion looked down at the painted sword, which still hung in the leather scabbard at his side. But there was no time for embarrassment. “I believe she is my warrior beloved,” he blurted out.

  “Ha!” Veneetha Azucena’s laughter trilled again. “Is this news to anyone?” She turned around and looked with amusement at Sarabin and Lirodello. “Well, Xemion, if you know about the tradition of warrior beloveds then you must know about the ordeal of not knowing.”

  “I know there are ordeals … in stories.”

  “Well, this is more than a story. This is the real thing. So don’t take this impending ordeal as a sign against your feeling of being her beloved. Rejoice that it is more likely proof of it, for you have begun your ordeal of not knowing.”

  “But—”

  “But what? It’s classic. You can’t get to her. Not tonight. Not tomorrow.”

  “But—”

  “Feel in your heart and you know it’s her. Who else would it be?”

  “I need to see her face.”

  “You need faith.”

  “I need proof.”

  “Well, then … your sanest, not to mention most honourable, course is to stay here as you are called and pledged to do. With waiting here you will get your surety in three weeks.”

  “Three weeks of not knowing?”

  “Yes. Just put aside your ideal of the standard form of knightliness. This service you give unto the Phaer people will far outlast the deeds any mere knight might ever unleash on fields of glory. By taking this hard course you gain your surety in three weeks, and in your ordeal, let’s say you perform a great deed for the Phaer culture forever.”

  “I don’t think I could stand it.”

  “I think you can and you will and you must.” Veneetha Azucena did her best to hide her irritation, but she stared at him firmly. “That’s without reminding you that you have made a
vow to us and are bonded to us. I could, therefore, put you in chains and make you do it, but I would not have it that way. So instead I’ll say that I promise you your long days of scribing will not go unrewarded. Someday if you come to me and you require some favour, if it is possibly within my power I will grant it.”

  “But if there are long days of scribing, when will I even receive instruction in the sword?”

  Here she paused and looked at Sarabin questioningly. The old man nodded very slightly.

  “The problem is this, Xemion,” he said. “We don’t know how it will fare with Ettinender. We do know that he will be doing no further scribing in the near future and that Yarra cannot possibly keep up with the dictation all by himself. And I’m sure you would not have us every day lose more and more of our literature.”

  “But she couldn’t be dictating all day long, surely? Even if I just attended the instructions when she was resting—”

  “Unfortunately, there is a problem with that approach,” Sarabin said sorrowfully. “You see, there are those among the instructors here who might have no real objection to relics of the spellwork. But if any of them is likely to object to an old woman who recites from a memory enabled by the spell waters, or a dog who is enabled by some kind of spell to speak aloud, that person would be our most important instructor, Tiri Lighthammer.”

  “No one despises the spellcraft more than Lighthammer,” Veneetha Azucena interjected.

  “And rightly so,” Sarabin continued. “But, when it comes to a chance of recovering so much of our lost literature—”

  “We can’t be such purists as he,” Veneetha Azucena finished. “We’ve made a compromise. We’ve let the old woman keep the dog, without which she says she might die of loneliness. And we can’t take the chance that Lighthammer would intervene and stop it. And we certainly can’t afford to lose him. So he simply cannot know about this. So, I’m afraid we cannot have you going in and out of his instructions because the old man is canny and he will know something is up.”

  “No!” Xemion’s heart was beating terribly fast.

  “We will have to say that you have an illness. That you are under quarantine,” Veneetha Azucena said, eying him with great sympathy but firmness.

  “No!”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Sarabin.

  “I won’t do it.”

  “You will,” Azucena said firmly.

  “It is wrong that it happened this way. No one would have chosen for us to be parted in this manner.”

  “It wouldn’t be an ordeal if you chose it,” Sarabin said, punctuating his remark with a little click of his hooks.

  “If you really believe that she is your warrior beloved,” Veneetha Azucena said, lifting a warm hand to Xemion’s shoulder, “my advice to you is that you must love your ordeal as you bear it because ultimately it is part of what brings you back to her. You cannot get to her, except by going through this pain. So love it for that.”

  ⚔

  Lirodello lead Xemion through the darkening streets of Ulde to his new quarters. Xemion’s disappointment and anger had him on the urge of hostility, but Lirodello was intent on comforting him.

  “I want you to know, brother, that you are not alone in this. I only met my Vortasa a day ago. Our eyes only met briefly but in that instant she and I were bound together for all of time. Vortasa. Vortasa.” He did a little spin on one foot. “Did you not see her? There were three sisters, huge like battle Thralls. With shoulders like oxen and arms like oak branches, but lovely; lovely, my friend, as life itself.”

  Along with everything else, Xemion was now feeling slightly embarrassed. “And now just as quickly she is gone and like you I know not when I will see her next,” Lirodello continued, choking back a sob. “Have you not felt it, too, my brother?” Lirodello beseeched him, touching his arm gently. “Have you not felt it, that when the girl goes, she pulls the very heart thread with her, unravelling it over great distance till one’s heart is thin, stretched empty but still utterly and forever attached?”

  Xemion nodded, turning slightly to remove Lirodello’s hand from his arm. Lirodello smiled up one side of his face. “We are brothers in this, my brother. Brothers in longing. Brothers in separation.” It was getting darker. Seabirds were shrieking overhead and the salt breeze was drifting in steadily through the circuitous streets. Xemion sighed with despair as they approached his new residence. Most of those who were to remain in Ulde had been housed in the series of barracks near the stadium where Xemion had spent his first night. This new residence was on the third floor of an old marble tenement four streets over. “I want you to know that I already feel a strong bond with you,” Lirodello said, “and though you may not have your beloved, you do at least have my friendship during this time.” And with that he tipped his flat hat and swept it down in a bow. Standing back up, he stretched his hand out. Xemion reluctantly took the thin grey appendage and shook it, feeling a surprising strength there.

  6

  Quill and Blade, Blade and Quill

  It was true: Xemion had an ordeal to go through. But not all of it would be faced alone. The whole colony had very difficult times ahead. But no one knew that yet. Xemion showed up obediently the next morning at the underdome, and with Yarra holding the cone up to the old woman’s mouth, he scribed for twelve hours straight. When he emerged, it was nighttime already. He could hear from the next neighbourhood the sounds of carousing kitchen Thralls, celebrating the first day of their service. They sounded very jolly, and Xemion almost wished he could join them, but he was officially in quarantine, an almost secret resident of Ulde, and he had no choice but to make his way back to his solitary quarters alone. Later, Sarabin came by with his supper and thanked him and complimented him on the strength of his commitment to his vow. But Xemion knew the vow had nothing to do with it. He would break it in an instant if he knew where to look, how to find her.

  The next day moved even more agonizingly slowly. And the next slower still. He felt like going down into the underdome and bellowing and cursing and kicking the papers and pens about. Once, while Musea napped, he actually did throw his quill pen. But it was a futile gesture. Being but a feather, it hardly flew any distance before twirling down to the floor. Suddenly there was a dark flash that caused Xemion to draw back instinctively. In an instant the dog, Bargest, had crossed the floor, scooped up the quill in his massive mouth, and brought it humbly to Xemion, setting it down at his feet and looking up at him expectantly, following every move of his hand.

  Recovering from his surprise, Xemion picked up the feather, said a sullen “good boy,” and gave the dog a biscuit he had brought with him for breakfast. The dog gobbled it down with one quick tilt of his head and waited at Xemion’s feet.

  Now that he could see him properly, Xemion realized the dog was much bigger than he had thought. The face was a long, wolfish triangle and the lips, when lifted in supplication, revealed long, full incisors. His jaws were massive and his paws huge — easily as big as Xemion’s hands. When it became clear to the dog that no more biscuits would be offered, he slid through the shadows back to Musea’s feet. Soon after that, Musea awoke and Xemion and Yarra went wearily back to work.

  There was never any rest from his thoughts of Saheli and where she might be and whom she might be with. And when such thoughts inevitably brought him back to Tharfen and Montither, and particularly what Montither had done to him, he seethed with rage and a growing hatred that filled his head with homicidal visions. Still, Xemion laboured away, day after day, until his wrists were sore with the writing and his neck ached and his back hurt. He did his best to take Veneetha’s advice and try to love this ordeal, but he couldn’t help but despise it, and that only made it worse.

  Musea would often have recited all night long had it not been for Bargest. The dog seemed to supervise the old Thrall. For when her voice grew so faint she could barely be heard at all, and yet she still continued trying to tell her tale, the dog would lick her toes and make her giggle,
or start to beg for water or meat and so distract her long enough for her to get off the wheel of narration and realize she needed to rest.

  “My lady, I beseech, cease before my heart bursts. I beg you.” As always, the dog adopted the most miserable posture possible when he begged. He flattened his long pointed chin and cask-sized chest to the floor, kneeling down with his tail tucked between his back legs and whining pitifully in a high puppy voice that was disgraceful to hear. “Please, I beg you.” Sometimes when Musea fell into a brief slumber the beast would transfer his fascination to Xemion, staring at him with infinite longing in his eyes, and no matter how Xemion glared back, he would not stop.

  During the second week, Musea began to recite from the works of the great Elphaerean poet Huzzuh. Many of these poems left Xemion unmoved. They were complex, confusing, and far too full of rhymes. But when she got to his crowning achievement, the book wherein he made his breakthrough into the liberty and glory of free verse, there were piercing poems that so expressed the way Xemion felt that he almost wept. And when he lay sleeplessly in his bed that night he found that he remembered them perfectly. Indeed, having them play over and over in his head gave him some of the only moments of relief that he would experience, not only during this ordeal but in the many ordeals ahead.

  The next week Musea moved on to a famous book about military strategy and then to an advanced manual on swordsmanship. Xemion took heart at this fortunate turn of events and began to practice secretly with his painted sword each night, glad once again that he had not discarded it as Vallaine had advised. Because he was living on the third floor of a house in an unpopulated neighbourhood of Ulde, and because he had no access to any outdoor space, he was forced to practise out on the remains of an extended balcony that jutted out dangerously from the side of the building. The floor was slanted and cracked and the railings had fallen off long ago, but it was the only place with enough room to perform some of the extended movements such as the star’s thrust. Because he only ever had time to practise after dark, and because the silver paint he had used on the sword was made from the bodies of luminous sea urchins, the sword lit up, glowing brightly in the night. Unbeknownst to Xemion, the motions of his sword work — the diagonals, the circles, ellipses, waves, and points of it — shone like luminous green phantasms of an unknown alphabet to the excited eyes of the many runaway Thrall children who lived secretly nearby. They soon grew so fascinated by the light that they began to track him through the street as he walked to and from the underdome, and sometimes, especially when he returned home after dark, he would hear the little ones whispering, “Look! Look, the shining sword,” as they scurried from shadow to shadow, following him along.