Murder.
10
The twingle is the fulcrum of creation on which a single past and two futures balance.
FROM THE MEDICAL PRIMER BY SUNFIRE ARMIPOTENS.
In the dank cellar of the local Hostel of Fulgur, day lasted as long as a candlewick, night endured until another candle was lit. AscendantSun craved sunshine, but DawnGlow dissuaded him from leaving his subterranean lair. The miserable light outside was not worth the risk. The sun, still infected by the Ill-weather, burnt little better than a candle, and the days were sickly and fleeting.
AscendantSun’s nursery lay behind a false wall that they had erected at one end of the cellar. Empty mead casks hid its cramped entrance. It was certainly not salubrious, but it was secure from discovery by all except the most suspicious imaginations.
Both the main part of the cellar and the nursery were spotlessly clean. All the grime and cobwebs had been brushed away, in part for AscendantSun’s comfort, but also to avoid any telltale disturbances that might betray his presence if the cellar was searched. Nobody would question a basement subject to such obsessive cleaning. Such foibles were not uncommon among Ors.
Hopefully, these precautions were unnecessary. As the only Fulgur in Tincranny, DawnGlow used the hostel as his private residence. Other Fulgurs rarely visited Tincranny. They preferred to frequent more urbane locales. And the home of the interim Minister-Governor was exempt from the frequent random searches inflicted on most buildings in Tincranny since the Orstretcherists’ flight.
The Consensus of Lineages was intent on rooting out any remaining Orstretcherists quietly residing in Tincranny. Occasionally, DawnGlow brought news of some old acquaintance of AscendantSun who had been interrogated or incarcerated. Many had never dabbled in Stretcherism. DawnGlow’s promises to help them were not particularly convincing.
When AscendantSun finally lost patience, and pushed him on the matter, DawnGlow snapped, “My first priority is our safety. Most of those taken into custody will be freed whenever they repudiate their heresy.”
“Even those who were never Orstretcherists in the first place?” AscendantSun asked.
“They will have to get on with it and take the oath,” DawnGlow said as he started up the stairs. “I took it, beneath Tincranny’s gnomon, under the gaze of most of the city’s populace. I did it to put my loyalty to the Consensus beyond doubt. It’s just an empty formula. Nothing more.”
“And what about those who aren’t released?” AscendantSun demanded. “What about those who disappear?”
DawnGlow paused and looked down at him with a melancholic expression. He sighed. “Only the Harbinger knows.” He ran up the stairs and slammed the door of the cellar shut behind him.
Another evening, DawnGlow announced that the Consensus of Lineages had persuaded his lineage to elect him its minister so that his assignment as governor-minister could be made permanent.
The news brought mixed emotions. It increased AscendantSun’s security. But, what had DawnGlow done to impress the Consensus so much?
DawnGlow shrugged off AscendantSun’s tentative questions. “I would rather keep my private and public lives separate.”
In the end, AscendantSun stopped asking. DawnGlow was under enough strain living a double life. His collaboration with the Consensus, whatever its extent, protected AscendantSun. To condemn DawnGlow for it was hypocritical and ungrateful.
Preparation for division began as it always did—with feasting. AscendantSun’s lithe frame had to be enveloped in fat to initiate the process of turning one into two, so he consumed as much food as he could stomach. The daily gluttony was a pleasure at first, then a chore. He was permanently bloated and leaden, and sweated through sleepless nights.
His body softened, its brawn smothered beneath spreading fleshy layers. His muscles ached. His skin prickled under the strain. Each day, he surveyed his bloated figure for progress. Every sagging deposit of body fat was stretched, pinched, or patted to gauge its increase. Every day brought dissatisfaction and plaguing doubts that he was losing weight instead of gaining it. The exact mass at which division would begin was random and therefore unknowable. The uncertainty aggravated his disgruntlement. Had he lost the capacity to divide? Was his biology mocking him?
DawnGlow tried to keep up his friend’s spirits. “Don’t worry,” he said whenever AscendantSun spoke of his doubts. “You will be talking out the back of your head in no time.”
And then it happened. Desperate feasting became involuntary gorging. The hunger became insatiable. The instinct honed by many divisions assured AscendantSun that the process of one becoming two had begun. As the days and weeks passed, further body changes confirmed this conviction. He shed his golden curls, and his neck thickened. The flexibility of his arms at the shoulders increased, while his spine stiffened. His shoulder blades, pelvis, and ribs ached as the bones began to grow offshoots, stretching and raising the skin on his back to form a large hump. As it grew, sleeping on his back and then on his side became impossible, and he was forced to snatch what rest he could while sitting upright. He was constantly tired, short of breath, and prone to grinding headaches. His facial muscles ticked and twitched, stretched on his elongating skull. Standing up became a chore, as his body became more ungainly. Despite these discomforts, his spirits were high. The protuberance on his back was a second ribcage, a tent of flesh and bone in which a second heart would soon beat.
One morning, a pat on the shoulder woke him.
“Your breakfast is served,” DawnGlow announced with a grin as he placed a tray before him. Still half-asleep, AscendantSun scooped up a spoon of thick porridge. Instead of his mouth, it pressed against a foreign, featureless surface. Hot gruel seared his back. He dropped the spoon and cursed. DawnGlow stumbled backward into a corner as he convulsed into laughter.
“What by all the Lights is wrong with me?” AscendantSun exclaimed.
“You blind fool, open your eyes,” DawnGlow stuttered through his giggles.
The truth slowly dawned. AscendantSun gently reached for the back of his head. There were the familiar contours of his face, his lips and nose. He opened his old eyes and looked upon the cellar as a dizzying panorama. He had been tracking the development of the eyes in the back of his head for weeks, but dazed by his sudden awakening, he had forgotten their existence. With difficulty, AscendantSun closed his new eyes and twisted around to view his friend with his old ones.
“Good trick, is it not? A nurse played the same prank on me during my last division,” DawnGlow said. “I turned you around while you slept, and then I tapped you on the shoulder in such a way that you thought your front was your back.”
“It plays nicely on sense confusion,” AscendantSun said. “Must try it myself whenever I get the chance.” It was great that this crucial landmark in the division had been reached, but his amusement at his friend’s joke was tinged with apprehension and sadness. Death or exile would deny AscendantSun the opportunity to perpetrate the same jape.
He practiced blinking and winking his two sets of eyes, till he had mastered them. With his rear eyes, he studied in a mirror the blurry features of the new visage gradually sharpening on the back of his head. He tried to hasten the development of this second face. When not too addled by sense confusion and fatigue, he stretched the new muscles with grimaces and smiles, twitched invisible nostrils, and opened and closed the nascent mouth, still veiled by skin.
When the thinning membrane that sealed his new lips broke, his whole body shuddered with retching spasms, as new lungs struggled to expel viscous phlegm from their airways and gasp their first agonizing breaths. The convulsions disabled him. It was humiliating to be unable to wipe away the creeping rivulets of drool dripping from his new chin, soaking through his cloak and oozing onto the floor.
He was a plant. He had been a warrior, a legate, a minister, a philosopher, and a priest, but now he was reduced to a flesh vegetable. He no longer controlled his body. Its whims controlled him. Why did he decide t
o divide? Why did the tortures of previous divisions fail to dissuade him? He had let silly, romantic dreams of one becoming two cloud his judgment. He had succumbed to his fear of oblivion. What cost had this vanity? Six months had passed, and all he had done was satisfy his folly. While the Harbinger planned to massacre his friends and bring the destruction of his race ever closer, AscendantSun lay helpless, steeped in his own drool.
When DawnGlow came with AscendantSun’s supper, he cleaned up the mess without a word. AscendantSun was too despondent to speak as DawnGlow wiped his face with a dry corner of his sodden garment. DawnGlow stripped him, used the garments to soak up the mucous on the floor, and threw them to one side. He laid a fresh cloak over AscendantSun’s naked shoulders. Shivering, AscendantSun squeezed the cloak about him.
“You survived this trial many times before,” DawnGlow said. “You know you can get through this.”
“I know,” AscendantSun said, his old eyes staring at the floor. He wanted to nod but his neck was too stiff.
“And you know there is no way back now. The process cannot be reversed. You must move forward and complete division.”
“Yes,” AscendantSun said, grimacing.
“I know this is very difficult for you,” DawnGlow said. “It is as arduous for me when I divide. You know that. I appreciate how hard it is to be reminded we are prisoners of our biology. But remember, I am with you every step of the way. We are Ors after all, and Ors look after each other.”
More indignities followed as AscendantSun’s new digestive tract sputtered into life. He detested the worm. He called it that in his lowest moments. It was nothing better than a parasite feeding off of him.
Dizzying sense confusion added to his misery. Reality was slipping away as he sank into the mire of his multiplied senses. His four eyes saw too much in a single glance for him to make sense of it, and he struggled to focus. Sounds echoed in two pairs of ears. Was he hungry or was it the worm? When he scratched his face, which face he was scratching, and was the itch on it?
One morning, as he rubbed his cheeks, powdery flakes of dry skin fell away. With difficulty, he examined his reflection. The first molt had begun. The tattoos on his old face were peeling away with the loose scales of dead skin. The old AscendantSun was dying with them. He had reached the fulcrum of division, the epicenter of creation, the sliver of time between his previous life and future lives.
The divergent drumming of twin hearts heralded that his single consciousness had split in two. They were confused at first. Both controlled the same body, had the same mastery of its limbs, and experienced the same dizzying multiplicity of senses. If they stilled, they could even hear each other’s whispery thoughts.
It was futile to worry about which body ultimately would be theirs. The important thing was to expedite division. They agreed on the terms of their joint tenancy of their conjoined bodies, the twingle. If both attempted to use the same limb at the same time, it jammed, and seeing with one pair of eyes would ease their sense confusion. Because each was willing to concede to the other, they drew lots to decide the matter. One took charge of the older body and its left arm, while the other adopted the new body and the right arm. They practiced the same convention regarding the two legs, though this was a formality since they could not stand.
The constant companionship was good. They shared lifetimes of reminiscences. As their sense of confusion waned, they played battlefield against each other on a makeshift board that DawnGlow had carved into the floor. AscendantSun had brought his pieces with him into hiding.
With two of them now feeding the process, the twingle’s development accelerated. Buds on the shoulders and pelvis of the new body stretched into new limbs. The new mouth teethed, while a new tooth emerged to replenish the old mouth’s lost molar. Further shedding of spent layers of skin smoothed away scars. Spasms toned muscles. It became difficult to tell apart the old and new frames, so perfect was their symmetry. The twins possibly switched bodies by accident sometimes.
Each passing day brought nearer the completion of division, and freedom from their increasingly irksome physical attachment. Division’s end was as imprecise as its beginning. As time dragged on, the uncertainty turned eager anticipation into impatience. Every time they closed their eyes to rest, they prayed this sleep would be their last as a twingle.
DawnGlow crawled into the nursery. The twins were still asleep. He tickled one of their arms with a feather, and the twingle briefly quivered with movement. They were ready to be woken. He shook them gently till their eyes fluttered open.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“Yes,” they chorused.
“You should be. You have been asleep for eleven days,” DawnGlow said.
The deep sleep, the last stage of division, was over. They reached back and prodded the bridge of dead skin still binding them together. They began twisting their heads and bodies till the scab broke with a crack and they tumbled free of each other. DawnGlow first checked that they had not peeled from their backs the new skin beneath the dead tissue. Satisfied that all was well, DawnGlow let the twins devour their breakfast, while he rubbed away the loose crusts of dead scales off their backs with a yellow pumice stone.
“So, what are you going to call yourselves?” he asked them.
“I will keep the name AscendantSun,” one said.
“I have no name as yet,” the other said.
“Then I will call you NoName for now,” DawnGlow said. The lightness of his tone masked his disquiet.
As he tattooed the appropriate glyphs on the new AscendantSun’s brow, the implications of the new arrangement stampeded through his mind. Did the twins not trust him enough to say what would eventually be on NoName’s blank forehead? Perhaps it was destined never to bear a permanent name, just a series of disposable identities to baffle the Harbinger’s minions. The other twin’s adoption of their progenitor’s name reinforced the impression of NoName’s ephemeral nature. It was as if he was to be excised from posterity after they parted company. On meeting AscendantSun, the Orstretcherists in the mountains would assume he was the original. They would never know of his twin and the terrible purpose for which he was created.
NoName was more a detached limb than an individual. The revelation was disturbing, but it also made NoName’s approaching death a little easier to bear.
11
Bright eyes once mine stared back at me,
Fragile mirrors of memory,
A spiritual symmetry
In the ceaseless flow of destiny,
Doomed by writhing currents to change
From the selfsame into the strange.
FROM A PAEAN TO THE OTHER SELF BY SUMMERDAWN FEROCITAS.
AscendantSun’s Mixies were losing. His opponent’s gnomon edged ever closer to victory. Two players of equal ability should play to a draw, but it rarely happened. The Ors had always a slight advantage. AscendantSun was not bothered that the odds were against him. It added to the challenge. Besides, it was his turn to play Ors after this game.
Steps in the cellar stilled NoName’s hand in the midst of moving a batonaxer. The twins held their breath. NoName’s face was a perfect reflection of AscendantSun’s suspense.
DawnGlow announced his presence. He asked AscendantSun to join him outside.
The twins exhaled. NoName finished his move.
AscendantSun crawled into the main part of the cellar.
DawnGlow helped him to his feet and handed him a brace of batonaxes. AscendantSun recognized DawnGlow’s most prized possession.
“I want you to have these,” DawnGlow said. “NoName can use your old weapons.”
With reverent tenderness, AscendantSun took the batonaxes. He had often coveted them. The double-bitted axe heads and spikes shone in the candlelight, the soaring eagles etched across their polished surfaces elevated by the reflected lambency. He stretched them in and out of attack and defense positions. They were light and well balanced, but he was cautious about spinning them till he had
more practice.
“I will return them to you in the same excellent condition,” AscendantSun promised.
“You misunderstand me,” DawnGlow said. “They are a present.”
AscendantSun was horrified by his friend’s intention to part with such precious heirlooms. He read the golden symbols on the shafts. “The name of one of your ancestors is inscribed on them,” he said. “If I am arrested, these weapons can be traced back to you.”
“Think of it as an extra incentive not to get caught.”
“If I am captured, what will you say when legionaries turn up on your doorstep with these weapons?”
DawnGlow smiled. “I will say, ‘Thank you very much for finding my batonaxes. I was wondering where I had left them. AscendantSun must have stolen them.’ They will believe me because they think you capable of any crime. And I will find solace in my weapons’ return if you are arrested. You are a far greater danger to me than those batonaxes. They, at least, are immune to interrogation.”
“I would never betray you,” AscendantSun declared.
“Then keep the batonaxes,” DawnGlow said. “My weapons will protect you when I cannot.”
New bodies had to relearn old skills. Batonaxes were not weapons for unpracticed hands. Wielded with skill, they could defeat any number of attackers, but in a careless instant they could turn on their wielder. As muscles strengthened and reflexes sharpened, AscendantSun and his twin introduced batonaxe drills to their exercise regimen. Each took turns to perform the wielding dances that practiced footwork and the basic thrust, cut, and parry movements while the other tapped out the rhythm with a stick and critiqued the dancer’s technique. Time and time again, they danced to the quickening beat till every motion was an impeccable expression of murderous grace.
A Bright Power Rising Page 15