by Rae, M. C.
“Tarameen?” Clove’s voice was filled with concern as he looked at the black-haired, blue-eyed young man whose skin had just turned pale. “What happened? Are you okay?”
Clove’s inquiry was met by a blank stare and quivering lips. Tarameen rose from his seat, barely bothering to explain as he started from the hall. “She’ll be here. She told me if this came, she would come here first and to find her. I’m sorry, Clove, I must go.”
The Systerian was well known for his unusual reproach. He had never accustomed himself to the standards the others had. In fact, where Tarameen was concerned, abnormalities were standard. Discipline was no light affair at the Cove. Irregularities were often culled out hard and quick. For Tarameen, however, exceptions had been granted. That was, ever since he had become some sort of pet project of the Loren’s. He was untouchable. The relationship between the immortal and the peasant pupil was seen by most as curious and bizarre. No one, not even Tarameen’s few friends, knew the nature of this familiarity. It was known only that, whenever Tallis was in residence, the two rarely parted company. Rumors festered that they were lovers, but Clove and anyone whom Tarameen actually held in kinship, doubted it. Tarameen did not speak often of his private time with Tallis, but what he did say told anyone listening that he saw himself much too unimportant in the Loren’s eyes for anything such as that to happen.
The evident result of Tallis’s sequestering the young apprentice’s time was a heretofore unprecedented mastery of sorcery by a mortal. It wasn’t by mere chance or the result of standard training that he was the finest student the Cove had ever produced. His studies from this venerable institution, however, had little to do with his skills. All students of the Cove, at the end of their teachings, could call forth a seedling from a peapod. Only Tarameen, however, could call forth a sapling from an acorn or make the water of a stream flow backward. A very useful skill to have during Systerium spring when snow melted from the mountains and rains washed away villages. Precisely why Tallis had singled out this lad, however, was anyone’s guess. Even the Masters seemed perplexed, and Tallis for her part, rarely explained her peculiarities.
The renewed gong of the tower bell called those who remained behind in the hall to attention. The students all settled down to the morning meal as the headmaster, Lenu, rose from the head table, quieting low whispers.
“Everyone, I am certain you have heard the joyous news. It is true: we shall have a sovereign once more. Since Empress Andresa’s passing, the throne of the empire she spent her life forging has remained for years in wanting. But now, the Gods shall choose one worthy to rule for all eternity, an immortal whose longevity will insure prosperity and stability. They have requested all immortals, therefore, to convene at Palace Aurora, and hence, many of our faculty must depart in service of that call. Due to this requirement, all lessons for the remainder of the week are canceled.”
Clanking mugs filled with frothy milk clicked, raised in toasts as though they contained ale. Men barely more than boys cheered, each patting a neighbor’s back as if to congratulate the other on the birth of first sons. Short-lived were the revelries, however, as merriment and excited shouts deadened in the shadow of a horrific tumult.
A roll of thunder. A great clatter. Wind like fury. At the back of the hall, the doors flew open. Plates flew from tables, students from benches. Four hundred heads whipped about in unison as the female winged-figure strode purposefully the length of the hall.
Lenu dipped his head quickly and cleared his throat before talking. An observant man would have noticed how he attempted to hide his shuddering. While he managed to keep all but his hands still, the waiver of his squeaky tenor betrayed him. “Lady Tallis! To what do we owe your unexpected visit on this joyful occasion? One might think you would have been off to Solas by now, coming all the way out from Lorelei, as you must.”
“Joyful occasion?” she questioned, her face screwed up to reflect her misunderstanding. It was then she became aware of Lenu’s disquieted state. “Dismiss it from your mind, Lenu. This is not the hour, and I shall never have that purpose with any sort of derived intention.” Lenu’s body slacked in relief. “I seek my pupil.”
“Milady’s pardon.” Clove inched forward. Few ever were permitted to speak with the Loren. Or, perhaps it was that few ever dared. Given her place in their history and future prophecies, few mortals braved the attempt. “Tarameen just left, in search of you, if I had to make a hopeful wager.”
Fear struck in Tallis’s eyes. She quickly nodded her acknowledgements to Clove and was gone.
*******
Tallis’s history at the Cove did not resemble simplicity. She had always done her best to foster the dispersion of the ways of sorcery to those who possessed both the gift and sufficient determination. It was a valuable tool; it helped ensure prosperity and equality through all reaches of the empire. Still, the same sorcery taught with beneficial intent had become, much to her disappointment, an equal instrument of corruption. Often, the pupils selected to be trained were cherry-picked from the most well connected families of all the islands. After their lessons were fulfilled and upon returning home, they floated unopposed into positions of undue influence in their island’s local governments. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and magical power corrupts abhorrently.
Tarameen was different. Cherry-picked, yes, but for a noble reason. Tallis had found him on Systerium during a diplomatic mission on behalf of Lorelei. At sixteen and having had no mentor, he showed a natural ability for sorcery that perplexed her, reminding her of herself, as though he too knew the ways inherently. Tarameen had fashioned himself a street performer, using the skills he’d developed by observing his island’s sorcerers. He learned to do simple tricks at the market and in the thoroughfares. He pursued the craft, not to gain power or privilege, but only to provide for his own welfare. She brought him to the Cove, and had returned often to personally monitor his instruction. She realized his disadvantage, starting his residence several years later than was habitual. She did not doubt his ability to excel. But would he prove unable to resist the temptations of power? Her occasional visits were meant to deter him from such a change of character. In five years, he had grown older and wiser under her tutelage. Tarameen was a powerful sorcerer, but far more importantly and impressively, he had grown into a man of integrity, kindness, humility and compassion.
And then, despite every effort to stop herself, he had grown into the man she loved.
Tarameen, of course, knew not Tallis’s heart. She was a Loren. From birth, many of their kind were disciplined to negate emotion, to subsume them in lieu of the necessary, the practical. This manner was particularly engrained in girls and those of the lower classes. That the poor should never feel saddened, betrayed, or exploited played well into the pyramid that was the Loren social structure. Emotions inspired want, and those in power had too much interest in having those beneath them not want for anything.
Lorelei was a land of treacherous cliffs and craggy plains. Resources were limited, and what little wealth there was was hoarded by a small number of families. The rest of the population depended on the favor and need of this echelon for their livelihood, but took from the land what little it had to offer. Had it not been for the Lorens’ ability to fly, even they would have found Lorelei too inhospitable. As it was, the palace of their client king and its environs were nested on the only buildable, wide patch of soil on the island. The remainder of the population made homes which clung to the cliffs like a bird’s nest. The only entrance into these abodes, or ashmum, was via a rooftop terrace, from which one descended down three or four levels to rounded rooms with floors woven of wool, not built of wood.
Tallis had come into the world with all three burdens possible to one of her race. She was poor, she was female, and within days of her birth, she was an orphan. Tallis had been raised as a poor palace slave, though few living knew of her meager beginnings centuries ago. She comported herself in modern company as one born of high rank
s, not by any intention to deceive, but by the consequence of her resolve, her wisdom, and her aloof demeanor. This stoic grace, however, was assignable mostly to her upbringing. To this day, Tarameen had yet to see her resolve crack in earnest. There was a reason cynics used the turn of phrase, “As easy as making a Loren smile.” He respected her, held her in awe, and always was stunned that she should value his development so highly. But love her? He did not think himself worthy of the honor.
Immediately, when their kinship and studies had ensued, the Loren spoke of the need for privacy. Words of magic were powerful things, and those she had intended to teach Tarameen were the most powerful of all, she told him. The cave they made use of was not far from the Cove, only fifteen or so minutes by foot. It was tucked into a hidden crevice in the foothills one would not see unless he was told to look for it. After he had seen ashmums, when at Tallis’s insistance he spent his holidays at her remote shack on Lorelei, he wondered if the cave’s precipitous location was a way she felt more at ease. Like retreating to familiar ground, it was as though, on some level, she was making them a home of their own.
Or perhaps that was merely his overactive imagination. It wasn’t as though there were many other places for them to meet. The Cove had been designed with communal living in mind for its residents, and isolation from those who might wish to interlope in effort to learn whatever limited aspect of magic spying could afford them. The nearest village or port was half a day’s journey by horse. Even her private apartment, high in the Master’s house, a place no one but occasional servants entered and then never in her presence, wasn’t without its insecurities. Surely, the cave was their place simply because there was no other place to be had.
As expected, it was here that she came to find him now.
He faced the back of the cavern, deep thoughts and anxious expectations at first blinding him to her presence. As she stepped down, past the cave mouth and into the interior, he wondered if she did so purposefully with a heavy foot in order to alert him. He did not wait for her to speak.
“Is this the day of prophecy you talked about?”
Tallis drew near and sat next to him on a cushion, one of several comforts they had squirreled away to give the cavern a sense of humanity. She stared blankly at the same spot on the damp, mossy wall as did he. “No, but soon it comes, I fear. Much too soon.”
The sentiment was shared. He tried, somewhat failingly, to maintain a stiff upper lip, to ward off tears that threatened to fall. Why he should be moved to such a display, she wouldn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. He would not make the burden of his heart, hers. Certainly, it would touch her to know that he treasured their time so much it would hurt him to lose it. Or would she think his morose turn was at the fate of the immortals? Some of the Masters at the Cove were immortal, and in his years of study, he must have grown to admire them, she might assume.
Finally, with a sigh of exasperation, he asked, “Will you be safe?”
It was a consideration she had never entertained, whether or not the fulfillment of the prophecy with which she was cursed signaled her own demise as well. Tallis realized in the brief reflection of the moment that, perhaps, she had assumed simply that it had. Her time, had she kept her mortality, would have come and gone ages ago. If she had not been the Loren, whatever would have become of her? Likely, she would have grown old and gray as a palace slave. Maybe she would have been married off, if the king’s Master Servant, the Muhshish, had thought she was proper servant-breeding material. Or, had fate truly cursed her, she may have become one of the prince’s kept vessels, a slave made to serve for his pleasure and a device for his entertainment whenever he wished to use her as such. In the days before she had left Lorelei, the king’s second eldest son had eyed her with malicious intent more than once, though she did not know if it was to harm her or in consideration of her alternative uses to him.
Would that have been worse than this fate, though? Destined to become the murderer of an entire class of Andresium society, of good souls —even amongst bad, as there were— whom she knew were as much victims of fate as was she?
“I… I don’t know.” The lack of clarity, a feeling with which she was utterly unfamiliar, tugged at her resolve, and made her backbone feel insufficient to support her frame. Reaching out a hand to grasp the damp cave wall, Tallis shored up her stance. “The prophecy says only that I would be the first and the last. All have an end of days, Tarameen, even immortals. So much is unclear to me now, I cannot even speculate as to whether or not I will survive. I am the gilteren, but any knowledge of that which has passed since I was embodied comes to me only through my own eyes and through the use of this body’s senses. I knew all that was, but I do not know what will be. Time has given me wisdom, but it has not spared me from surprise. I always assumed, for example, that I’d have more time, that we would have more time.”
His hopeful eyes met hers as he spun around. “We?”
Fearing she had revealed the contents of her heart, Tallis was quick to qualify. “Yes, to train.” His face dulled, but she persevered. “So much I could teach you yet. Still so much for you to learn. But even if this should be my end, you will remain. I’d like you to be able to carry on with all the knowledge I can give you. Words are only a start to knowledge. There is so much more to what can be spoken than that which can be uttered by the tongue.”
His anticipation fizzled. “Oh, right.” Turning back to examine the pool of still waters, Tarameen was barely able to repress a chuckle under his breath.
“Why do you laugh?”
“It’s… It’s just for a moment, I thought… It’s nothing.”
Tarameen’s head turned just enough to take in her profile. He had been in Tallis’s presence numerous times, both in private and in the company of others, and yet, never had he touched her with purpose. In recent months, even the few times his hand would accidentally brush hers, whilst handing her a book or reaching to her, in case she should fall over a craggy nook, for example, the effect on his soul and body was alike that of the soil when meteors rained down from the heavens. Looking at her olive skin and bright eyes of vibrant green, he became aware of just how much he yearned to reach out to her now. Her black hair, raven and often wild, was tied behind her head in a careless knot. Yet, one rebel strand brushed over her cheek. It made him cringe to think now of how tempted he was by something so transitory, when Tallis sat beside him with the weight of the world and the fate of hundreds on her shoulders.
“How do you do it?”
Her inquisitive eyes focused on him. “What?”
Tarameen’s hand waved out in front of his chest in some vague indication of everything and nothing. “You must be consumed with doubt, uncertainty. Even one as wise and as brave as you should be moved. Yet, you don’t even flinch.”
“It is the Loren way.”
As though that explained it all. It wasn’t that the statement contradicted the truth, but it certainly did not contain the whole of it.
“I am a creature of fate, of prophecy,” she continued, perhaps sensing that he didn’t understand. “We all are to some degree. A tree may yell at the wind and want to make its way to the sea, but if it should take itself from the ground, it will die. This is something bigger than I. Maybe you have no way of understanding, as do I, just how fleeting mortal wants and ways are.”
“Fleeting or not, they are still real.” She turned, a look of —he wasn’t certain, longing?— played in his eyes. “You told me something like that last night in my dream, Lady Tallis.”
“I’m in your dreams now?”
Even for a stoic, he recognized her attempt at playfulness. Still, he pushed away the temptation to admit just how often she visited him in his sleeping hours.
He continued with his watery recollection. “You were in the Great Hall with me, alone. All around, the walls were falling down. I was terrified, overwhelmed. I felt in utter danger, as though staying any longer would be the death of me. You told me not to be
afraid, that I was to go on a great journey, and though I’d face dangers and challenges, I shouldn’t be scared. You would come to find me.”
Expectation filled his features, and she found her breath escaping her control in a way she did not understand. “I do not know what journeys life will bring to you, Tarameen. But, if it were given to me to make the choice, I would accompany you on every step you take in this world. Without hesitation.”
“Why?”
At first, he wondered if he had imagined it. When he looked more closely, Tarameen knew there was no denying. One traitor curve of her mouth rose. A misty glimmer twinkled in the corner of her eye. The hair hanging down over her face blocked his sight of this small miracle. He could resist no longer. With great caution, his hand extended out as a finger curled around the disobedient strand and moved it away. Her eyes followed as his hand swept over her cheek.
“Lorens don’t typically show emotion, Tarameen, but we do feel,” she muttered, her voice unusually quiet. One might take the fact as a sign of unease. “Emotions, though… I don’t know what to do with them other than to bury them. I am not practiced in the art of acting on my emotions. Yet, some of the moments when I am with you, I find myself dizzy with feeling. There are things you inspire in me that undo centuries of discipline. Your effect on me is consuming. Moments like this one now, when I am here with you and everything outside this cave and this time and this place doesn’t exist in the same realm as do we, I am hijacked. My eyes refuse to drift from yours. My hand tells me touch, and I can scarcely recall my control before it has drifted away from my side. My feet carry me to you, longing to pass time which I have not, and knowing how it should be spent in meditation of what’s to come. Even now, listen to how my tongue prattles. It lays bare all these weaknesses of my resolve. My purpose has been subverted. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t understand the use of it all. At this point in my existence, to allow myself to feel… What is the point in that? My fate is not my own. My destiny is not to seek out the longings of my own heart. I am the Loren. How can I allow myself to love?”