“Tell me. I’ll do anything.”
“You must stand down your guards and take a single tent out into the desert. Take no weapons with you, for the Lord of Fire will know. You must spend one single night, out in the desert, not as a kalif but as a man.”
The Kalif’s face went white. “I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” the confessor said. “Hazarans have been spending nights in the desert since before your birth. Those you raided had no weapons. This is what the Lord of Fire asks of you. To show you are repentant, you must spend one night away from your blood-stained steel and your ill-gotten gains.”
~
Majid rode away from the Oasis of Touma a troubled man. He knew that the confessor spoke sense, yet the idea of spending a night alone in the desert filled him with terror. His guards were silent as they rode around him, and even the thought of them not being near caused his heart to race.
One of Majid’s guards looked at him and for a moment Majid saw the face of the boy from the camp, before the vision shifted and he realized he was simply looking at one of his men.
This couldn’t go on.
When he reached his luxurious encampment, so large it was a small city, Majid went straight to his tent to pray.
He prayed long and hard, seeking the Lord of Fire’s forgiveness for what he had done. The confessor’s words would not leave him. She was correct: he hadn’t shown true repentance, and it wasn’t this life that troubled him, it was the afterlife.
Majid sent one of his men to get him a small traveling tent.
He started to pack.
~
Majid had forgotten what it was like, out in the true desert, with no creature but his horse for company. Foreigners said the desert was quiet, silent even, but it wasn’t true. The wind howled past the rock formations that spotted the Hazara, and blew at the dunes so that the sands constantly spilled and shifted.
The gusts shook his tent, causing the buckles to jingle and the fabric to snap like the sound of a whip. Every moment Majid imagined someone was outside, fumbling with the knots, preparing to jump in and swing at him with a sharp scimitar, take his head from his shoulders, and leave it out in the desert for the sun to dry out.
Majid felt under his pillow, taking comfort from the hilt of the heavy dagger he’d brought with him. He wasn’t sure if the Lord of Fire bargained, but surely he could see that Majid genuinely sought forgiveness. He wouldn’t take offence at this slight change to what the confessor had said, would he?
When it came, his sleep was fitful.
~
Majid woke to the sound of heavy breathing. He had been having a nightmare, but this was different. Was he still dreaming? Majid looked up and screamed.
A man hovered over him.
In the darkness the man’s face was a void. As Majid’s eyes adjusted he saw that the man’s face was blank because his head was wrapped in black fabric. The cloth covered him from head to toe.
The man in black lowered himself so that he was looming directly over Majid, his chest rising and falling with passion and his breath loud in Majid’s ears.
“Who… who are you?” Majid asked.
“I am a messenger from the Lord of Fire,” the man in black said.
“You’re the devotee from the confessor’s tent. You’re him, aren’t you?” Majid said, his voice trembling. “The boy. I made a mistake. I left you alive.”
In one final act of desperation, Majid moved. “Tish-tassine,” he called, activating a nightlamp, bathing the tent in its bright glow and revealing the man in complete detail. At the same time he brought the dagger out from under his pillow.
Yet the man in black was faster. He grabbed Majid’s wrist and squeezed, until the dagger fell out of Majid’s grip. Majid felt the man’s speed and strength, and knew he was facing a warrior.
The man in black pulled the material away from his face.
“No,” Majid’s son said. “I am not him. But I was one of those who wielded the swords, and followed your orders.”
Majid saw that his son’s haunted eyes mirrored his own.
“You made no mistakes, Father” his son said. “You left none alive. The boy would never have made it out of the desert. But like you, I cannot find peace.”
Majid felt a blade slice across his throat, and as the warmth of his lifeblood gushed out, he wondered about the afterlife.
“You made me do those things,” his son said, “and one of us deserves to be free.”
Splice
Aleks could feel it coming. “Not now,” he muttered. “Please, not now.”
“As you all know, this is the most delicate part of the process,” Master Fyodor was saying, “so be careful. This is where your chosen strains join together, merging to become one.”
Aleks and six other young men hovered over their benches, peering down through the open holes of their transmuters with expressions of concentration as they watched their gloved hands work.
“You have a very brief window,” Master Fyodor said. “Those of you who are trying for a third strain must enter it into the primordial ooze within the next five seconds.”
The glowing symbols on the transmuter were hurting Aleks’s eyes. His neck ached from the bent angle, and he fought to control the shaking of his hands as he picked up the jellied pebble with his tongs and dropped it into the middle of the ooze.
“There,” he whispered. He’d added the third and final strain. He could close the seals on the transmuter, Master Fyodor would activate the runes, and in three days it would present him with a seed.
Then he felt it come again. “No,” he groaned to himself. He pulled his head away but he was too late. The familiar onset of a nosebleed was bad enough, but not here, not now!
With horror, Aleks saw a single drop of blood fall out of his nose and fly through the air, to slip neatly through the open viewing port of the transmuter and land with a sudden speck of red on top of the ooze.
“Students,” Master Fyodor said, “please step back from your transmuters.”
Aleks pulled back, looking hurriedly to the left and right, but no one had noticed that he’d inadvertently added his own blood to the primordial ooze.
“Please,” Master Fyodor said when he came to Aleks’s bench, “step back from the bench, Aleks. I’m looking forward to this. I can’t wait to see yet another of your marvelous creations.”
“Master Fyodor…” Aleks said.
Before he could say anything, his teacher had closed the seals on the transmuter and spoken the words that would activate it, incubating the primordial ooze and transforming it into a healthy seed. Master Fyodor then dripped essence from a small flask into a funnel on the incubator’s side, where it would be absorbed by the ooze and condensed in the seed.
Aleks had spent weeks gathering his three strains, building them from a multitude of other stock to give his seed the properties he wanted. It was to be a guardian plant – a small warrior to protect a field of crops from the ravages of birds and rabbits. What effect would the droplet of blood have? Would it have any effect at all?
“You may go, students,” Master Fyodor said. “I will see you in three days.”
Aleks hurried over to his teacher, wondering what he would say. This would ruin his entire project; the master would give him no grade at all, and instead of finishing at the top of his class, he would end up somewhere in the middle.
Aleks opened his mouth to speak, his head tilted to the side as he blinked rapidly, when another voice came from behind him.
“Master Fyodor.” It was a girl’s voice. Vera’s voice. “I’m having trouble understanding the transmuter’s second stage.”
Aleks turned to look at her. Lord of the Sun, she was pretty. She had a tip of her raven-black hair twisted thoughtfully into her mouth, and her blue eyes sparkled with intelligence. Like him, she didn’t seem to have many friends among the other students. How could he say what he needed to say in front of Vera?
“I have an ap
pointment I must keep, Vera,” Master Fyodor said, “but why don’t you ask Aleks here? I’m sure he can explain it to you.”
Master Fyodor busied himself putting books into a bag, while Vera turned to Aleks expectantly. Aleks opened his mouth, blushed, and then turned and fled.
~
Three days later, the students collected their seeds, and by now Aleks felt it was too late to say anything to Master Fyodor. Along with everyone else, he planted his seed a finger’s depth into the rich soil of the Lyceum of Cultivation in the living city of Rosarva, capital of Vezna.
Over the next month the plants grew according to the characteristics the students had imbued them with. Some were wide and spiked, used for fences and walls. Others were tall and willowy, with two trunks forked like legs, and rope-like arms; these would make good laborers or even warriors. Aleks’s guardian plant grew as he had designed it – light green to camouflage itself amongst fields of crops, thin and spindly so it would bow in a breeze but not break, and with a splash of color across its head to attract harmful insects to its waiting mouth.
Aleks received praise from Master Fyodor, as well as resentful glances from the other students, but as he stood and regarded his work, he knew that something was wrong.
The arm-like stems were thicker and stronger than he thought he’d designed. For the head, he’d taken inspiration from a plant that trapped flies between two spiked leaves, but this head was much bigger than he had meant it to be. Where it should have had thorns on the edge of its mouth, Aleks’s plant instead had what appeared to be teeth: spiked like thorns, but white and hard like his own.
Aleks knew though that he couldn’t say anything to Master Fyodor or anyone else. He realized now that he didn’t want them to destroy the thing he’d created. Aleks felt a strange bond with it; there was a part of him here. And now it was time to call it to life.
Each student held a tiny vial of essence in one hand and stood in front of his or her plant. Their creations would each receive five drops. For some, this would allow their slow-moving and simple plants to live for many years. For others, there would be just a brief explosion of life and activity before the essence worked its way through the plant’s system and killed it.
“Students,” Master Fyodor said. “You may now activate your creations.”
Aleks stepped forward, his hands gloved to protect them from any accidental spillage of the deadly liquid. He allowed his five drops of essence to fall into the guardian plant’s open mouth, and then spoke the activation sequence he’d built into the splicing.
“Mohl-tour. Ahn-sahl-ahna,” Aleks said.
The guardian plant straightened, turning its head first to the left, and then to the right. It swayed a little, even though there was no breeze, and then stopped when it faced Aleks, seeming to regard him, though it had no eyes.
Aleks tilted his head and smiled. It seemed happy to be alive.
“Well done,” Master Fyodor said. “Soon you will be able to call yourselves cultivators.”
The teacher went to each student in turn, congratulating them and shaking their hands. Master Fyodor clapped Aleks on the back when he came to the blinking young man, saying he was impressed by Aleks’s guardian plant, and would like to talk to him about it sometime.
Master Fyodor moved on, and Aleks turned once more to his creation. He frowned and tilted his head to the side in perplexity. Had it moved? Wasn’t it standing a little more to the left now compared to before?
Aleks knew that in a month or two Master Fyodor would try to help him sell it to someone; perhaps a farmer or another cultivator. He would be meaning well, but Aleks wasn’t sure if he wanted to sell it.
Couldn’t he just keep it, for a little while?
~
Aleks was on his way home when he heard a female voice from behind him.
“Aleks!”
He turned. It was Vera.
“Ho, Vera,” Aleks said. He tried to think of something to say. “Congratulations. Your climbing vine is thriving.”
“Thanks,” Vera said. “I just came over to congratulate you, actually. I can't believe how much your guardian plant has grown.”
“I made a mistake actually,” Aleks said.
“I’ll bet it was nothing.” She chuckled. “You’re the type who probably can’t sleep when you make the slightest slip. I only tried two strains and my hands were shaking so much afterwards that I couldn’t make my dinner.”
“I thought you did well,” Aleks said. “There are some things I can show you though, if you’re interested.” He thought about the strains she might find easier to work with.
“You always tilt your head when you’re thinking, did you know that?”
“Really?” Aleks said.
“Yes.” Vera smiled, stepping closer to him. “Really. You think a lot.”
“I wish I didn’t think so much,” Aleks said. “I wish I didn’t have nosebleeds and cough so much and get out of breath when I run.” He instantly wished he could take the words back.
“Oh, Aleks. Clever is better than strong any day,” Vera said. "I was wondering—" She suddenly stopped. "What is it?"
Aleks's mouth had dropped open. Vera followed the direction of his gaze.
It was the guardian plant. It stood among some taller trees forty or fifty paces away. Aleks could swear it was watching them.
“How did it get out of the Lyceum?” Vera wondered.
“It’s as if it’s been imprinted,” Aleks said. “You know what I mean — given a place to guard.”
“Or a person.” Vera grinned. “It knows its creator.”
Aleks looked back at the guardian plant. “Stay here,” he said to Vera, smiling. “I want to try something.”
He walked away from Vera, ten paces, and then twenty, his eyes on the guardian plant the entire time. “Look,” Aleks called, “it’s not watching me at all. It’s watching you.”
“Why would it watch me?”
“I don’t know,” Aleks said, shrugging as he came back to Vera. “I’ll have to get it back inside the Lyceum though.”
Deep inside, Aleks wondered. Why was the guardian plant interested in Vera?
He liked Vera a lot.
How much of him was in his creation?
~
In the weeks that followed Aleks and Vera spent more time together. They both graduated from the Lyceum, and Aleks and Vera’s parents began to discuss the idea of a match between the two.
Aleks visited the Lyceum, and each time marveled at the guardian plant’s rapid growth. Even Master Fyodor said he couldn’t understand it — the strains Aleks had used only gave the creature the ability to eat insects. How could it increase in size so quickly?
Aleks solved the problem, although he decided not to tell Master Fyodor. The guardian plant was supposed to ward off birds. Standing pensively at the Lyceum with his head tilted in thought, Aleks’s gaze was on the closed jaws and the splash of color across the plant’s now barrel-sized head when it happened. He saw a pigeon fly too close to the guardian plant. Almost faster than Aleks’s eyes could follow, the jaws opened and the teeth closed down. Blood gushed out as the bird was crushed and then swallowed. Aleks told Vera, who also cautioned him not to say anything.
Yet Aleks still hadn’t told Vera the truth – that there was something of himself in his creation.
Then one day the guardian plant disappeared. Master Fyodor was perturbed; he’d thought to garner a tidy profit for Aleks, but Aleks told him not to worry. A notice was put up at the Lyceum, asking for the people of Rosarva to be on the lookout for Aleks’s guardian plant.
Strangely, Aleks missed it, and found himself wondering what had become of it, yet he was also disconcerted. With all of his other creations, he’d known exactly what traits he’d given them. Perhaps it would be best if he never saw it again.
~
“Look who it is?” a husky male voice spoke. “It’s the two bookworms. Why cultivate in the sun when you can bury yourself in you
r books?”
“Go find a hole yourself, Lev,” Aleks said.
“The worm speaks,” said the second newcomer, Sergei.
“You’ve certainly got your heads together, you two,” Lev said. He walked slowly forward, and then shoved both of their heads so that Aleks and Vera’s crowns cracked together painfully.
Vera cried out in pain, while rage began to surge within Aleks. But though he could feel anger running through his veins, he knew he was too weak to handle either of his tormenters on his own, let alone both Sergei and Lev together.
Aleks opened his mouth to call Lev a coward, but then he saw it, standing behind Lev, taller than all of them. “Lev, look out!” Aleks cried.
“What…?” Lev said.
A vine whipped out from the guardian plant, and as Aleks looked on in terrible fascination he saw that the vine was tipped with thorns. The vine wrapped itself around Lev’s neck, thorns digging into the soft flesh of the youth’s neck, and then it pulled.
Lev’s eyes were wide with shock and his face turned white as blood gushed from his throat. He fell to one knee, pressing both hands to the gaping wound.
“Sergei,” Aleks said. “Quick. Get out of here.”
Aleks put himself between the guardian plant and Vera and Sergei. When he saw that Sergei had made it away, he turned and pushed Vera to get her moving. The guardian plant reared up, the vines whistling through the air. Aleks remembered again how it seemed to think it needed to protect her. The plant hesitated – did it know its creator?
Aleks turned away from it and ran.
~
Aleks was at his home in the living city. The walls of the residence where he lived with his parents were made up of two oaks, their trunks pressed together as if kissing, and Aleks lived in the space created underneath. Draughts often made it cold, and Aleks shivered.
He wondered where he should look for the guardian plant. People were out hunting for it, flasks of poisonous liquid clutched in their hands. Some even had enchanted swords from Altura, or a prismatic orb or two at their belt. Aleks almost felt sorry for his creation.
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