by Victor Poole
Ajalia looked at Philas for a moment, and she tried to see his future. She could see nothing within him but a swirl of fog. Curious, Ajalia reached below the floor of the dragon temple, and closed one hand around a bright line of red light. As she talked to Philas, she studied his insides.
"Coren is the youngest son of the last Thief Lord," Ajalia said. She told herself that she was buying time, and that if Philas was to be the king, he would have to know these things anyway. She was not sure yet if she wanted to make Philas king, but the idea intrigued her, and made her insides tingle with excitement. She had already thought of binding together Salveith and Talbos into a brace of thriving lands, intertwined with strong ties and heavy trade agreements, but now she thought of adding a third city. Slavithe, Talbos, and Saroyan, she thought, and she very nearly licked her lips. She was only partly thinking of her master now; a large part of her mind was turning over the shape of the future, of her future with Delmar, and thinking of what a fine thing it would be, to have three cities tied closely together into a symbiotic triangle of prosperity. Her master, she thought, would never turn down such a prize, but she herself was turning over the possibilities, and they were manifold and glorious.
"The Thief Lord who was in power when we came in the caravan," Ajalia told Philas, "was named Simon. He was a prince from Talbos. His father, the king of Talbos, banished him when he was a young man, and sold him as a slave to Saroyan." Philas's eyes brightened with interest at this news.
"Really?" he said, and then he seemed to hear how friendly he sounded, and he clamped down his mouth again over his tongue. This time Ajalia did smile, but not in a mocking way.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "Simon was a slave, and the man who was then the Thief Lord in Slavithe, a man named Tree, sent to Saroyan, and bought Simon."
"How did Simon become the Thief Lord?" Philas demanded. Ajalia saw that Philas was forgetting the indignity of his position; Philas was clearly being drawn into the tense interest of the city, which Ajalia herself had begun to lose herself in some time ago. Ajalia settled down in a chair, her fingers tight over the cord of red light, and she began, very slowly, to lift through the lights in Philas's soul, and to sift away the fog of gray that was over his whole being. She could see no colors in Philas; there was only a thick, ugly mass of obscuring gray. She wondered if this was the result of drink, or of Philas's attitude towards himself, and his rough treatment of others. Ajalia thought that perhaps it was a combination of both. Her mouth pattered on, her mind fixed only partially on the recital she gave, as she began to run a light mesh of red color slowly through Philas's soul. The red mesh burned away some of the fog, and revealed a slightly thinner layer of gray beneath it.
"The king of Talbos is Delmar's grandfather," Ajalia told Philas, her eyes fixed on his chest as she spoke. "The king of Talbos was the father of Simon, who is the father to Delmar, and to Coren."
"There are three sons," Philas interrupted. Ajalia nodded without looking away from what she was doing.
"Delmar is the oldest, then there is Wall, who is eighteen, and Coren, whom you have met," she said. "Wall has run away with Yelin, and is hiding in some cave that Delmar and Coren know about. Delmar has sent for him. I imagine Wall and Yelin will appear in my house shortly, guarded." Ajalia shifted her shoulders a little, and sighed. "Tree was the Thief Lord, and he was married to a witch. They really do have magic here," Ajalia added, glancing up at Philas, who grimaced, and wiggled his fingers within the restraints that held his arms down.
"Apparently," Philas said.
"Yes, the magic is real," Ajalia said, looking again at Philas's soul. "It took me a while to come to terms with it, but they do magic here, and there are witches. The witches are evil," she said, "and there are priests who have no power, but who try to hunt and destroy the witches. I am not sure what purpose the priests serve here," she said. "They, I think, teach basic magic to the boy children, and they might teach some traditions, but everyone seems to hate the priests, and the priests can't seem to fight against the witches at all. The Thief Lord has a large body of men under his command, called the witch hunters, and they track and destroy the witches, when they are found."
"Witches," Philas said, sounding a little amused.
"Yes," Ajalia said, nodding. "Witches. I have one in the house now, under close guard. She does not seem to be as bad as the others were. We had a fight here, last night," Ajalia said. "A spy from Talbos came here, and told me that you were in the city. He said I was needed at a meeting with some of the other spies, and one man that I already knew. Anyway, when I came back from that, some witches got into the house, and tried to kidnap Coren."
"Coren is the youngest son," Philas said, as though he were practicing. Ajalia nodded.
"Delmar is the Thief Lord now," she said. "His mother was a witch, and I killed her. His father was corrupt, and now he's dead as well. Anyway, there were witches here last night, and they were followed in by a large group of priests. The priests killed some of the witches, and then Ocher helped me kill the rest of the priests." Philas, who had followed this speech with lowered brows, now looked at her.
"This all sounds very chaotic," he said. Ajalia nodded. "It sounds like a war," Philas added, and Ajalia remembered the time in the woods, when Philas told her that there would be a war.
"Not a war like I expected," Ajalia said. "We aren't going to have that kind of war. It's a war of magic." She had sifted away much of the gray fog from Philas's soul now, and a thin, battered remnant of soul was revealed.
Philas was composed of pure gold, and of iridescent reds and jewel greens, but the colors were exceedingly thin, and only faint gleams of light remained. Ajalia dug into the earth for the lights, but then she stopped.
"Philas," she said.
"Yes," Philas said, looking thoughtful.
"I'm going to see if you are able to do any magic," Ajalia said. "I have tried, before this, to help people get their lost selves back, and it hasn't worked out the way I wanted it do. It did with Delmar," she said quickly, "but he already knows how to reach into himself. I think the others I have done this to have not known how to maintain a strong connection to themselves, so the change has not lasted."
"What are you saying about my lost self?" Philas asked jokingly. "Can you see it?" he asked, smiling.
"Yes, actually," Ajalia replied. "I can see it."
She went to the lamp that lay on the floor near the door, and carried it to a table near the chair where she had been sitting. She drew the table close to her chair, and then sat down again.
"What does my soul look like?" Philas asked, squirming a little, and grinning. Ajalia got the slim leather book, the one she had given to Leed to read, out of her bag, and opened it up. "What's that?" Philas asked her. Ajalia retrieved the translation stone, and began to skim through the book. She was looking not for a particular word or phrase, but for a kind of feeling. She remembered what Leed had told her, and she knew that the book taught how to connect to the lights of the earth and sky.
"It's a book about magic," Ajalia said, turning a page.
"Are you going to teach me how to conjure things?" Philas asked, his lips twitching irreverently.
"Yes," Ajalia said. "I'm going to try that." Philas saw that she was serious, and his own face grew sober.
"Is that what happened to your scars?" he asked, after a brief pause. "Did you magic them away?"
"Yes," Ajalia said, her eyes flicking from the translation stone to the pages of the book. The book was not terrifically long, and she had an idea that what she was looking for would be in the first third of its pages. She found it, after some searching, and began, laboriously, to read aloud. "When you have found a being," she read out, pausing between each word, and checking the change in the letters from old to contemporary Slavithe. Many of the spellings were either the same, or similar enough to be comprehensible, for which Ajalia was profoundly grateful. "Who is detached from the land and sky," she read. "You must first remove the smirches o
f corruption from the soul. None but a pure heart can find attachment in the colors of the earth."
When Ajalia reached this part, she glanced up at Philas, and looked for further evidence of darkness. She had strained away the dark gray fog, but she looked now for the ugly colored shadows that had been in Delmar, and in the witches, and in Minna. She did not know what these shadows were, but she was sure that they were not pure, or desirable.
"What are you looking at me for?" Philas asked. He sounded a little nervous. He had been listening to her read from the book, and he had grown gradually quieter and more somber. Ajalia remembered the time that Delmar had begun to tell her more about the magic. I thought he was mad, Ajalia remembered, and she smiled. She had the cord of red light twisted around her hand, and the light made a gentle glow against her skin.
"I'm looking for corruption in you," Ajalia said. Philas let out a bark of laughter. Ajalia found the place where the shadows lingered, in between the spaces of Philas's ribs, and she quickly formed a white ball of mixed light, from the sky and earth. Philas, she found, could hear the crackle of the shivering white light. He sat up in alarm.
"What are you doing now?" he demanded.
"Burning out the corruption," Ajalia said, and she sent the crackling ball of white light straight at Philas's ribcage. Philas took in a sharp breath when the magic hit him. He looked as though he was experiencing an awful cramp in his chest.
"Well, that is not comfortable," Philas told her. "Don't do magic on me anymore, okay?" Ajalia mixed another ball, and sent it at Philas's neck, where some of the colored shadows had begun to show. The places where the shadows had lain in between his ribs were glowing brightly now in his soul, and the dark shadows were dripping down towards the floor. "Ow," Philas said, twisting his neck. "Did you do it again?" he demanded. "Stop it," he added. "And also, I don't believe in magic."
"I didn't, either," Ajalia said. She watched more ugly shadows peep up in Philas's hips, and around his spine. She made a face, which Philas clearly noted, because he took in a breath.
"Please don't do more things to me," Philas said. "Why do you look like that?"
"Because there are awful shadows all through your body. They're tucked in around all of your bones. Is that why you drink?" she asked suddenly. She began to gather a length of light from the stars above, and tangle them around her fingers. Philas was watching her warily.
"I drink because I can," he said cautiously, "and because I'm a terrible person, and drinking helps me live with myself."
"I've been learning things about myself," Ajalia said, reaching deep into the earth for the red-gold lights that burned hard and bright. "I've been finding out that I can do things to other people. I can change the way people's souls look."
"That's not possible," Philas said stubbornly. "Souls aren't real."
"Yours is gold," Ajalia said. "Delmar's is kind of like that, but he has a lot more blue and green. You have red in your soul." Philas looked a little shaken by the sincerity in her voice, but he shook his head.
"Magic isn't real," he said. "I'm probably hallucinating."
"Sure," Ajalia said agreeably, and then she sent a thick bolt of blue magic straight at Philas's heart. Philas gasped as though he had been stabbed through the chest; his body arched against the golden lights that bound him to the chair, and his arms strained upwards.
"Oh," he said, in a long, drawn-out breath. His whole body was heaving, as though he had just come up from deep underwater, and Ajalia watched with satisfaction as the dark, colored shadows bled away from Philas. She turned her attention back to the pages of the book, and began to read.
"When the soul is clean," she read slowly, "and the heart is prepared, the subject must desire the mother earth; he must—" here, Ajalia came to a word she did not recognize, and she pored over the translation stone. She put her lower lip between her teeth, and slowly worked out the shape of the unfamiliar word.
Philas was still heaving like a bellows; his eyes were bright, and he looked thoroughly awake.
"That actually felt kind of good," he said brightly, and Ajalia told herself that Philas had been drinking to cover the sensations those shadows had made in his body. She glanced up at him, and saw that the dark, sallow look he had worn into the dragon temple earlier that day was completely gone. Philas looked ten years younger; his complexion was bright, and his eyes were darting around the room eagerly, as if he was looking for something challenging to do.
"Embrasure," Ajalia said cautiously. "He must, um, embrasure the lights of the earth. I'm not exactly sure what that means," Ajalia told Philas. "I would guess that you need to take pieces of your own soul, and wind them down into the gold lights that run deep beneath the earth. That is something like what I did to Delmar, when I healed him."
"Are there lights under the earth?" Philas asked. He looked jittery, as though he were itching to go for a long run. "Are you going to come with me to Saroyan?" he demanded impatiently. "I've decided that I'm going to be king there," he added. "I'm going to try, anyway," he said with a grin. "Hey," Philas said quickly, before Ajalia could speak, "I'm really sorry I was such an ass. I was really awful. There's no excuse for it. I'm sorry. Can I apologize to Delmar, before I go?" he added anxiously. "I'm sorry I'm taking up so much of your time like this. And I'm sorry I lied to you before. I did know that Lim had my stuff. I mean, I was pretty sure he had it, but I could never find it. I'm really sorry, Jay," he said again. A look of genuine pain was coming into his eyes, and growing there, like a deep sorrow. "I'm sorry," Philas said. "Hey, I shouldn't have asked you to come with me. I need to do all that myself. Becoming king, I mean," he explained. He was speaking so rapidly that Ajalia could only stare at him. His words washed over her like an avalanche. "I remember the time that you said I was only chasing after you because you'd met Delmar," he said in a rush. "That was probably true, you know. I mean," he said, looking chagrined, "it is true. I did do that. I always liked you, I mean I like being around you, but I got jealous. I could see you liked somebody. You were kind of glowy, and stuff. Anyway, I was a real jerk, and I'm sorry." Philas stopped, and drew a deep breath. He switched into the Eastern tongue, and his words began to flow more quickly. "I should never have kissed you, or pretended that I was the one who made you glow, and I'm really sorry, and if you like, I'll go away to Saroyan, and I'm going to be king there, and I won't forget that you believed in me, and I'm sorry for drinking so much, and I was kind of rude to Darien and Leed, which was also wrong, and I should have sent Leed back sooner, because he was really useful, and I wanted to keep him away from you because I was jealous, and you don't need to forgive me or anything, because you can be super angry forever and ever, and I will just have to deal with how much you dislike me, because I actually do deserve it." Philas stopped, and took in another long breath. "So I'm sorry," he said. He frowned. "And please don't forgive me for a long time," he added, "because I have to prove that I'm really different, and I don't think I even like myself anymore, so don't do that. Unless you want to. And I do want to speak to Delmar. I'll stay here in this chair and be very quiet," he added quickly, "if you want me to. Oh!" he said, as though a new thought had only just occurred to him. He starting talking again in the Slavithe language. "I'm sorry if you felt like I was pressuring you," he said in Slavithe. "I just wanted to say I was sorry. I can—I mean, I won't speak the East anymore. And don't tell me if you want me to or not, because that is rude of me to even bring it up. Never mind. I'm sorry again. And for that, too. You wanted me to connect to the earth. Are there lights in the earth? Should I do that now?"
Philas looked anxiously at Ajalia, his lips working back and forth. Ajalia, who had been sitting beneath this tirade of words in something like shock, opened her mouth, and then closed it without saying anything. They sat in silence for a few minutes; Ajalia could see that Philas wanted to say a great deal more, but that he was restraining himself for her sake.
"I'll come back," Ajalia said, and she put her leather book ba
ck into her bag, and slowly left the room. She walked towards the back of the dragon temple, towards the stairs, and she thought about what Philas had said. She had thought he had changed before, when he had been forced to stop drinking, but that had been before she had learned to see the colors of people's souls. She wondered now if Philas could have transformed so much in the space of a few seconds. Ajalia trusted herself, but she had been duped by Philas before, and she wanted a second opinion. She went up to the second floor, and poked around until she found Leed, who was sleeping just inside her room again. The boy was curled into a tight ball on the floor. Ajalia shook Leed awake. Leed sat up, rubbing his eyes, and stifled a yawn.
"What do you need me for?" Leed asked.
"Come and tell me if Philas is lying to me," Ajalia said softly. Leed's eyes gleamed in the darkness, but he stood up, and followed Ajalia. She locked her door again, and went with the boy to the stairs. "How are you getting in my room?" she asked. Her voice was not angry in the least; she was curious. She did not mind Leed staying in the room; the boy was like a lucky talisman to her, and he had said he didn't like sleeping around other boys. She understood his desire to have a private space.
"I climb down to the balcony from the roof," Leed said. "I climb down on the carving of the dragon's tail." Ajalia nodded. They passed down the stairs, and came into the darkened hall. "What is Philas doing here?" Leed asked. Ajalia had a hard time keeping track of who knew what in the dragon temple; she wanted to get into a calm and steady routine, but she suspected that Slavithe, and consequently, the dragon temple, would be in upheaval for some time yet.
"He came for money, like you said," Ajalia said. "Now we are talking about other things."
"Did you give him the money?" Leed asked with a smile. Ajalia grinned, and said that she hadn't. Leed's smile widened, and he shoved his hands into his ragged pockets.