Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  23

  The Tournament Begins

  As in days of old, various weapons and pieces of armour were made available by their owners for the use of the participants. The old Elphaereans had instituted this policy so that these contests would be accessible to anyone, not just the wealthy. This meant that the earlier bouts of the day were filled with a lot of what Tiri Lighthammer called “flailing.” By early morning many an unskilled Phaerlander newly arrived at the city with high hopes had been dispatched quickly by one of Lighthammer’s more skilled recruits. Zero’s desire to win the tournament had grown stronger in the past few months, but her victory, she realized, was by no means assured. Her worthiest opponents, the three Thrall sisters, were still in the running, as was Fargold, the fellow with the long nose who was always trying to meet her eyes.

  So far Zero had been living up to the stories that were circulating about her. Her sense of balance, the deftness with which she moved her blade, and the great intricacy and strategy of her footwork that day were immaculate. By noon she had won seven matches, all by disarms. She was one of the frontrunners and the clear crowd favourite, but you would hardly have known it to look at her. She kept what little could be seen of her face expressionless and seemed to fight completely without emotion. All of her focus centred trance-like on her sword.

  As word spread of the startling new swordswoman, an even larger crowd began to gather at Two-Spell Well. Barkers and hawkers worked their way amongst packs and hordes and gangs of all kinds of creatures from underearth to oversky. There was a great beauty in their variety that caught in Zero’s throat when she first looked out over the crowd. And that first win, when she raised her sword before them in victory — that first great cheer thrilled her. But Zero knew that too much thrill would be bad for her focus, so with great discipline she restricted it as much as she could. Her next salute had very little flourish. In fact, it was a little automatic. Still, the crowd roared.

  Not everyone was delighted with Zero, though. Montither, who had won just as often that day, watched her progress through narrowed, envious eyes. He wasn’t popular at all with the crowd. It wasn’t just that he always managed to win inelegantly, with lots of clubbing, whacking, hacking, and one obviously unnecessary kick to a young northern lad who was already down, it was that he did so by a great advantage in weaponry. While everyone else in the competition used swords and shields, which were at their hardest made of iron, Montither had access to a small armoury of solid steel shields, sabres, dirks, daggers, axes, and rapiers. The collection had arrived the previous night, a surprise gift from his newly reformed and officially forgiven kwisling father, an attempt at reconciliation. The craftsmanship of these weapons — the engraving, for instance, which decorated the hilt of the sword and the crest of the shield — was sumptuous and impressive.

  When he had first arrived at Two-Spell Well, adorned in his brilliant new armour, Montither knew for a little while the glory of mass adulation. But when he switched his steel broadsword for a serrated steel sabre halfway through his first fight and used it to hack a jagged wound into a young northerner’s shoulder, there were shouts of protest. Several bloody battles later, aided in changing his weapons and armament by his cronies, Gnasher and Ring’o’pins, Montither had won several more victories but lost the approval of the crowd.

  His greatest advantage, he discovered to his surprise, was not so much the sword of steel but the shield and breastplate of steel. These were much harder and far superior to the thin, battered iron and leathers worn by his opponents and afforded him the luxury of absorbing many blows that should have defeated him. Fargold, for instance, had become a superb swordsman under Lighthammer’s tutelage and several times got in under Montither’s guard, close enough to deal him deadly thrusts, but these, to the crowd’s loud disappointment, did little more than glance off the hard steel. The third time it happened, Montither followed up with a sudden slash at the back of Fargold’s retreating thigh. It must have cut through his leathers and severed a hamstring, for he fell immediately in great agony to the ground and proceeded to bleed and scream. Veneetha Azucena scowled, obviously not pleased. While Fargold was removed groaning to the infirmary, the crowd turned on Montither with boos. But Montither merely bowed in return and wiped the blood lustfully on his leather jerkin.

  He would show them ruthless. He knew all about ruthless. He had his dear friend Gnasher out there somewhere. And Gnasher had a little mirror, and if a moment ever called for it, Gnasher was quite prepared to use that mirror in a thoroughly nasty way. But that moment had not come yet. No, in fact all of Montither’s successes so far had come from no other advantage but those of wealth, strength, and superior equipment.

  After each contest the victors would determine their next match by drawing straws. In the early afternoon, Asnina and Atathu drew each other, but they had agreed ahead of time not to fight if this happened. As a result they both had to withdraw from the Tourney. Despite herself, Zero felt relieved at this. As much as she coveted the prize, she dreaded having to fight any of the Thrall sisters.

  In the next round her relief was complete when Montither drew his biggest and brawniest opponent so far — the third and largest Thrall sister, Imalgha. All decked out in bright orange war paint and thrallish leathers, the magnificence of her physique was apparent to all. She didn’t have the reach of Montither, but her shoulders were twice as broad. Her forearms were as thick as small trees and she held her bronze blade with the unwavering precision only seen in the eyes of those deep in sword thrall. Close to her, as he’d always been ever since he’d heard the first whisper of her return to Ulde, stood the wiry, intent Lirodello, his eyes as big and round as plums. He was in a thrall of his own.

  Zero, too, drew a most challenging opponent: a mighty warrior, heretofore unknown. A chimerant, he had the head of a bull but spoke and acted like a man. Zero took him in dispassionately, immediately noticing the weaknesses in his armour and the slack grip with which he held his sword.

  By now, the much-fattened crowd had divided into cheering sections based on their preferred champions. Zero had a very large contingent, including the Nains Belphegor and Tomtenisse Doombeard and all their newly arrived family and friends, who were many.

  Montither’s match did not at first go well. Imalgha was stronger and clearly a more skillful fighter and it looked as though she would dispatch him early in their bout. Montither relied, as usual, on the hardness of his armour and a lot of sheer, wild whackery. He came at the noble Thrall like a mad slasher, but she had noticed the joining places of his armour and was directing her sword deftly to those spots as Lighthammer had taught her. He responded with ever more errant blows, all of which she skillfully deflected, but every time her bronze sword took a head-on hit, a small chip flew out of it. Montither’s plan was to continue absorbing her blows until inevitably his sword would whittle the Thrall blade down to its weakest point and then it would break. But this was not happening. She kept finding ways to turn her blade sideways and deflect his thrusts without damage, while her own darting point grew ever closer to a place in his shoulder where she knew her sword could enter. All the while a thoroughly incensed Lirodello stalked back and forth among a group of his fellow kitchen Thralls. The small flecks of purple foam gathering at the corners of his grim, grey-lipped mouth gave clear evidence of the trouble he was having containing his outrage.

  Montither might have lost that bout, but just as Imalgha found him with his guard wide open and swooped in with her hacked sword for the thrust, the sun somehow caught her right in the eyes and she was momentarily blinded. Before she could recover, Montither bashed her brutally over the head with such force she staggered to the ground. Here, another bright sun flash caught her eyes and before she could rise Montither struck her sword out of her hand with a crude double-handed swing.

  Lirodello, his eyes two black, steaming tar bubbles, had to be restrained by his fellow Thralls from rushing at Montither with a knife. As it was he shrieked non-sto
p “Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” The crowd took up the chant, “Cheat! Cheat! Cheat!” but Montither insisted that his tactics fell easily within the terms of fight “by all means.” Veneetha Azucena reluctantly agreed with this and his victory was allowed to stand.

  24

  The Crossing

  Xemion and Bargest kept the fastest pace possible. As they came to the parklands surrounding the Great Kone, the dog, his great black snout to the ground, made as if to lead them right by it, perhaps with some other crossing point in mind, but Xemion stopped him. “No, I want to cross over here the same way I did before.”

  Bargest cocked his head, but before he could protest, Xemion had his finger up in the dog’s face. “No!” he said, his voice made more intense by the poor condition of his vocal cords.

  And so the two hurried toward the Great Kone, each step leading them deeper and deeper into its shadow. They didn’t have too far to go before they reached the place where, by Xemion’s reckoning, Saheli had kissed him. He felt a despairing rush of desire shoot through him at this memory, but he had not come here for nostalgia. He had come this way for a reason. There were many bricks missing in this part of the wall and he was trying to find the exact gap his eyes had landed on that day. He did his best to stand in the same position he’d been in when she kissed him, but the gaps in the brickwork that he could see from here were still too numerous for him to be sure. He glowered at Bargest, who was gazing at him impatiently, and said, “Look away.” When the dog complied he tilted his head as he had that day. He felt a little foolish doing this, but when he did he finally found what he was looking for. Because of the different position of the sun at this time of day, this particular gap was still in shadow, but he was certain he’d found the right one. He walked closer until his eyes adjusted. What he saw, even though he half expected it, still shocked him. The letter on the Kone that the missing brick revealed had changed. It was no longer the letter X — at least not entirely. Only the right half of it, in the shape of an arrowhead, was still visible on the left side of the space. On the other side was half of the letter O. He felt his knees tremble. A wave of terror ran through him and the same pain ignited by the memory of her kiss ignited tenfold. He looked to the sky in agony but there was no relief to be had there. Nor would there ever be relief from this particular pain. The Great Kone had begun to turn! Whatever that meant to the world, it meant one certain thing for him: He was a spellbinder.

  “Well, that might be,” he proclaimed angrily to Bargest as they hurried off, “but I do not have to abide by it. I may have had a spell forced upon me by that woman but I don’t have to ever do a spell of my own.” Bargest reared up and barked fiercely in that great muddy voice of his. He barked again and again, causing numerous long-beaked crows and ravens to rise up indignantly from the top of the Kone.

  For a second Xemion’s sense of strength and purpose had faded and he almost reached for that last morsel of wafer in his cloak, but as he and Bargest raced toward the wall he thought better of it. Better to wait till he got to the Tourney. Who knew when he might need to be at his strongest.

  25

  The Challenge

  A mood of thrilled expectation filled the crowd when Zero, with her usual skill, at last disarmed the Minotaur. At the signal from Veneetha Azucena that the match was now over, the loser bowed his two sharp horns all the way down until they touched the ground at Zero’s feet. The crowd cheered this gallant act as he made his way with dignity out of the arena. Finally, Zero would face Montither. In anticipation of this, the spectators started to spill over the rim of the arena and crowd into the bowl area itself. This limited the space the swordfighters had to contest in.

  Zero felt the presence of the crowd close around her. She felt the stone of the bowl vibrate with their screams, and when the trumpets blared after her name was called, she almost smiled. Falling back on her training, Zero took a deep breath, slow and long. Easily she exhaled, feeling the excited turmoil in her belly subside. She had done her best to blight whatever beauty some of them thought she had. Her hair had been cut short, she had blackened her cheeks under her eyes to keep out the sun, and, like the Thrall sisters, she had painted orange chevrons on her cheekbones. She was going to win. She could feel it.

  It was right around this time that she spotted out of the corner of her eye a cowled man approaching her from the middle of the crowd. When he noticed that she had seen him, he waved and began pushing his way toward her. But the crowd was thick and he was having trouble getting through. “Saheli!” he yelled.

  Zero quickly averted her eyes and concentrated. She didn’t know who Saheli was, but something about the sound of that name caused a strange distracting pain in her chest.

  “Saheli,” he yelled again.

  Just then Montither, who had finally taken up Glittervein’s new sword, was going through a slowed-down version of some of his favourite sword moves before the crowd. In the midst of it there was only one moment when he showed his true speed, making a quick thrust forward at the air in the exact posture Glittervein had taught him. He did this with such great force and with such a murderous look on his face that Xemion’s heart began to race. He could see that Glittervein had done a magnificent job finishing the sword. Any dents Xemion had made in it the night before had been hammered right out of existence, the whole blade sharpened to a deadly steel point.

  He wanted to barge through the crowd to warn Saheli about the danger she was in, but he felt weak and spiritless. And now that he had seen her up close, he wasn’t even sure that it actually was Saheli. This girl seemed bigger than Saheli, and what little of her face wasn’t covered by the helmet was covered with paint. But whoever she was, she might die soon if he did nothing. He groped through the pockets of the robe in search of the wafer, but he couldn’t find it. Frantically his hand darted into pocket after pocket.

  Suddenly there was the sound of fanfare. Three enormous song Thralls marched by, each one blasting a large, curved horn with a wide bell of bronze that, when it tolled, sounded like the bellow of an elephant. The sun caught and flared off first one and then another of these shining bells and the two blinding flashes touched off something in Xemion’s mind. Suddenly it was as though he was standing once again before The Grimoire as last night’s lightning ignited its pages. He reeled back as the bright blue letters of that last spell seemed to burn in the air before him — Spell to Make a Sword Which May Never Be Defeated.

  “No!” Xemion cursed. He waved his arms as though this might dissipate the letters. But still they hung there, luminous and blindingly bright, tempting him. If he could cast a spell to turn the Great Kone, he could cast this spell, too. And an undefeatable sword could definitely save this girl. But even if he did choose to willfully cast a spell, he still needed something — something like a sword — to cast a spell upon. He didn’t actually make the decision, he just did it. He crouched among the milling crowd, and there, with one knee on the ground, he took out the painted sword. He knew if he spoke the spell now it would be by his will and his alone. The bronze bell flashed again and the words re-ignited in his mind brighter than before. But this time he didn’t look away. He didn’t throw up his arm to protect himself. He looked directly at those shining letters and heard them in his mind. Still, he had a strong urge to go and find something else — anything else but this silver painted stick to cast them upon. But there was no time. He gritted his teeth and began to say the words of the spell. At first he spoke very quickly and in a hoarse whisper.

  Iron, wood, steel, and stone,

  Muscle, gristle, flesh, and bone.

  Pierce all metal you may meet.

  You may never taste defeat!

  Always vict’ry ever sweet!

  After he finished, the glowing letters slowly faded away. He examined the painted sword. Nothing seemed to have changed at all. Those places where its long soak in the castle swamp had worn away the silver still revealed the paper-white surface beneath. In fact, some of the material was so wat
erlogged it had become swollen and spongy.

  Zero and Montither were taking their places before the crowd. Angrily, Xemion spoke the spell again, this time slightly slower, but when he finished the sword still seemed unchanged. Enraged, he banged the hilt on the stone ground so hard the people packed in around him looked down and backed away with some alarm. But now something was happening with the sword. It felt more solid and heavier in his hand. He examined it closely, trembling. Yes, it had definitely changed! It was no longer silver. It was a cold grey colour with a strange green tint that only showed at certain angles. Xemion was certain now, and the joy of it almost made him forget the terror he felt knowing he had bound a spell for the second time. But he hardly had a moment to take in the significance of this fact. The match would start any second. And for all he knew Montither might choose to end it with one quick thrust. Xemion stood up with the sword and pushed his way forcefully through the crowd.

  Zero kept her eyes closed as Veneetha Azucena approached to initiate the match. When she opened them again, she saw that the man in the hood was now standing almost beside her. A cloak the same shade of blue as the sky overhead hung about his lean, long frame so that most of his face was cast in shadow.

  Xemion tried calling the name the crowd knew her by. “Zero! Zero!”

  Still she ignored him.

  “Zero, I bring you a much better sword.” He held the weapon before her. “This is a much better sword for you, Zero.”