by Victor Poole
Finally, the process was complete, and Bain was only a pile of thin, colored shadows against the ground. He had died some time before the golden threads passed through his heart; Ajalia had seen the light go out of his eyes, and his spine go limp.
Delmar opened his fist, and the last golden lights he had drawn from the earth sank down into his skin.
"He's gone," Ajalia said. Delmar nodded, and wiped his forearm against his face. He wobbled a little, and Ajalia dismounted her horse. She went to Bain, or what was left of him, and crouched down over the pile of shadows.
"Can you see it?" Delmar asked. Ajalia nodded. "What does he look like?" Delmar asked. He sat down in the sand, and put his face into his hands.
"He looks like old scraps of cloth, with the colors faded out," Ajalia said. "What was he?"
"He was a living shadow," Delmar said, without raising his head. "His body had been taken by the witches, but his soul was left behind, to serve their will." Delmar sighed, and scrubbed his knuckles against his temples. "He isn't my father's son," Delmar said. His voice sounded stretched thin; weary lines had appeared around his eyes. "The shadows are taught to say that they are sons of the Thief Lord," Delmar said. "Only those who look for the dead falcon will see such a shadow, and to be a son of the Thief Lord gives power."
"So the shadows lie," Ajalia said. Delmar nodded.
"To stay alive," he said, "they claim to be his. None who follow the true magic will kill a son of a Thief Lord."
"Because of what that son may become?" Ajalia asked.
"Because of what he might be," Delmar said. He sighed, and stretched out his elbows. Ajalia felt sorry for Delmar now; his expression was pitiable.
"What might he be?" Ajalia asked. Delmar sighed again, and rocked, as though he were going to stand up. He sat back, hard, in the sand. "Do you know you have holes?" Ajalia asked him. He glanced at her, and then looked away.
"No," he said, and his voice was flat. "I don't have holes."
"You do," Ajalia insisted. "You've got tears all over your body, and the light seeps out."
"Anyway," Delmar said, talking a little over her, "I can kill the shadows, because I'm actually a son of the Thief Lord, so I don't believe them."
"That doesn't make any sense," Ajalia told him. "How would you tell?"
"I just would," Delmar said impatiently.
"But how?" Ajalia asked.
"I don't have holes," Delmar said loudly, and he stood up. His body shook a little to the side, and Ajalia watched to see if he would fall down. He stumbled, and braced himself against his knees. "I just know," he said.
Ajalia was tempted to ask Delmar if he understood how babies were made, but she restrained herself.
"Does Ocher have any children?" she asked instead. Delmar looked sharply at her.
"Only the oldest receives the magic," Delmar said finally. "There's only me."
"You're the only son who counts?" Ajalia asked. Delmar nodded. He had put his elbows on his knees; his head was bowed down towards the sand, and his hair fell loosely about his head. Ajalia could just see the gleam of his earring in the moonlight.
"Is this all folklore?" she asked him.
"It's in the books," Delmar told her. "The books teach how the magic works. It isn't like magic," he said, "the way they talk about magic, where you're from. It's more like the weather."
"How do we talk about magic in the East?" Ajalia asked, bemused. Delmar waved a hand at her, and stood up straight. He breathed deeply, and stretched his lower back.
"Like anyone else in the world would think of magic," Delmar said. "Magic words, or gods."
"You have no gods," Ajalia said, and she thought of the merchant who had kept the beautiful braided bridle with red beads.
"No, it isn't like that," Delmar said. He went to the horse, and clambered clumsily aboard. "I need my books," he said. Ajalia grinned at him, and he pretended not to see.
"Are you like I was, then?" she asked him. "Too upset to walk?" Delmar glared at her; she saw that his mouth was pinched.
"That is not very nice," he observed tartly.
"You're awful to me, all the time," she told him. His eyebrows puckered.
"I'm not mean," he said.
"You're caustic and wounding," she told him. She kicked sand over the scraps of color that had been Bain. "Sometimes I can hardly stand to be around you," she added, without malice.
"That's a horrible thing to say," Delmar said. She looked up at him.
"It's true," she said. "I've tried to never see you again about six times now."
She saw that Delmar's face was drawn into a pensive frown.
"I don't think you mean that," Delmar said slowly.
"Because you don't want it to be true?" Ajalia asked him, smiling. "Why couldn't you hear Bain before?" she asked. "He was next to me when we were walking, earlier tonight. He spoke to me then. Why couldn't you hear him?" She watched Delmar, whose shoulders were hunched as he sat on the black horse's back.
"You're mean," Delmar said.
"Was it because of your mother?" Ajalia guessed. "Do you not hear things that your mother wouldn't like you to hear?"
THE SCREECHING METHEROS
Delmar lifted his leg with an effort, and slipped off the horse. He tried to stand up with dignity, but his legs shook, and he had to hang on to the horse's shoulder to keep from falling.
"Are you going to walk away in wounded silence, now?" she asked him.
"This is not funny," Delmar said stiffly. She saw that he wanted to leave her, but that he was also trying not to throw up.
"Why does the magic make you sick?" she asked him. "I don't feel sick, when I do the magic."
"I don't feel sick," Delmar said, and she could see that he was lying.
"You have holes all through you," she told him. Ajalia stepped closer, and poked Delmar on the arm. He hissed, and moved away from her.
"That hurts!" he exclaimed. She laughed at him. "What?" he demanded.
"You're a big baby," Ajalia told him.
"I am not," Delmar snapped.
"How is the magic like the weather?" she asked, and took up the rope of the horse. Delmar watched her suspiciously, as though he were trying to see if she was making fun of him. Ajalia began to walk through the white sand towards the road. The tree line was too thick here to admit the passage of her horse. Delmar stumbled along behind her after a moment. "I don't know how we're going to move your books," she added over her shoulder.
"Where are we going?" Delmar asked. Ajalia didn't know, but she wasn't going to tell him that yet.
"How is it like weather?" she asked again. "And why wasn't Ocher interested in Beryl's duplicity?"
Delmar caught up to Ajalia, and wrapped his hand around hers. His skin was flushed and warm.
"Where are we going?" he asked again. She nudged him with her elbow. He sighed. "The magic isn't like you think it is," he said again. He sounded world-weary and wary.
"How do you think I think it is?" she asked. He shrugged.
"Silly," he admitted.
"Well, I don't think it's silly," she told him. He frowned at her. His knees were still trembling, but Ajalia saw that he could walk easily.
"Yes," he said, "you do. Everyone does, who doesn't believe."
"You don't know that," Ajalia said. "You're just saying that because of some other reason."
"Because of what other reason?" Delmar demanded.
"I don't know," she said. "Probably something to do with your mother." Delmar stopped walking, and let go of Ajalia's hand.
"You have to stop bringing up my mother," he said loudly. Ajalia glanced at the white wall that ran along beside them, and wondered how many of the city guards knew about the hidden passages inside the great walls.
"Why?" Ajalia asked. Delmar made an indignant noise, like a wet cat.
"Because," Delmar said. "She is not as bad as you think she is."
"No," Ajalia agreed, "I'm sure she's much worse than I think now." Delmar made
a disbelieving noise. Ajalia smiled, but she had the courtesy not to laugh at him.
"You are wrong about my family," Delmar said stoutly.
"You just stabbed your father in the neck," she pointed out tactfully. Delmar waved his hands, and made a dismissive chortle.
"No," he said, "I probably did some other thing." He stared at Ajalia. Ajalia grabbed at Delmar's hand. She held his fingers up into the strained moonlight, and the blood on his skin was a mottled black.
"This is blood," Ajalia told him. "You murdered your father." Delmar's face blanched; he looked as though he wanted to run away.
"I don't think I did that," he said weakly. Ajalia stared at Delmar; she could not imagine why he was saying this, but then she thought of the long tears she had seen inside of him, and she began to understand.
"Delmar," she told him. He watched her with narrowed eyes.
"Yes?" he asked cautiously.
"Let's go back to your hollow," she suggested, "and pack up your books." Delmar's mouth was pushed into a thin line.
"Why are you being friendly now?" he asked her. She smiled at him.
"I'm being sneaky," she told him. She let go of his hand, and pulled the black horse forward. Ajalia could sense Delmar's full attention fixed on her back.
"Sneaky how?" he demanded. She heard his footsteps coming along behind her through the sand. "What do you want?" he asked. She thought that he was trying to decide if he should run away from her. She thought that his mind was slipping in and out of reality, like a fish in a tide pool, that flops and gasps for air.
"It's going to be daylight soon," Ajalia said. The sky was not lightening yet, but the night was thinner than it had been, and the darkness was growing filmy.
"How are you being sneaky?" Delmar asked.
"I like kissing you," Ajalia said vaguely. She glanced at Delmar, and saw that he was thinking over this. "And I want to be alone with you," she said, which, she told herself, was perfectly true. Delmar examined her face.
"But we're alone now," he prompted, his eyebrows knotted.
"Yes, and I like your hollow," Ajalia suggested. "Remember how I like kissing you?" Delmar watched her, and a smile was beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth.
"You're lying to me," he said, but he sounded pleased. They came in sight of the road, and Ajalia saw that a group of oxen and carts was gathered before the white gates. She put a hand out, and pulled Delmar closer to the tree line, and out of sight. They waited in the darkness below the leaves, and when the white gates opened with a grinding roar, and the carts went in, Ajalia drew the black horse into the road. She kept to the side, near the trees. Delmar followed slowly behind; she wondered if he was going to run away from her. She glanced back, and saw that he was smiling slyly at her. Then he's not going to run away, she told herself, and she began to imagine the long, thick threads of gold light that ran like vibrant veins beneath the ground.
When the trees thinned, Ajalia turned into the forest, and Delmar caught up with her. He was no longer shaking, but Ajalia saw that there was a pale sheen of sweat along his brow; he looked fevered.
"I know what you're lying about," Delmar told her.
"How is magic like the weather?" she asked him. "And why does Ocher want me as a wife?" Delmar frowned, and looked askance at her.
"I don't want to talk about that," he said. She saw that she had distracted him, for now. She did not have a fully-formed plan, but she could see that Delmar was weak, and she wanted to gather more information about the strange rips in his soul. She had half an idea that she would be able to heal up the rifts, if she knew where they had come from.
"So you do know why Ocher wants me," she said.
"Yes," he said, "but I won't talk about it."
"Why?" she asked. "Because it's sordid?" They walked in silence for several minutes through the undergrowth; the colored leaves of the bushes and trees hung like heavy shadows through the tall trunks of the trees.
"The magic is just energy that is already there," Delmar said finally. Ajalia saw that he was avoiding her second question; she made a note of his discomfort, and told herself to dig at him again when he was less on guard. "Anyone," he said, "could get to the magic, if they believed it was there, and tried to reach it."
"As long as they were pure," Ajalia put in.
"Yes," Delmar said. Ajalia reached out, and touched the back of his hand. He did not look up at her.
"What makes someone pure?" she asked. She remembered the first time he had told her about the golden lights, and how he had said that she had the white brand. She took a small pulse of golden light from one of the thick cords of magic below the ground, and she passed the orb into Delmar's hand. She watched him; he was staring at the ground, and his eyebrows were drawn close. He looked unhappy. His cheeks had a sickly pallor. She saw that he hadn't noticed her put the magic into his skin, and she watched the golden light flood through his hand, and then escape through a tear above his elbow. The gold light dribbled out of Delmar, and dropped invisibly down into the earth. Ajalia withdrew her hand, and thought of Delmar's mother.
"How do you get the white brand?" she asked him. He stepped over a fallen branch, and his leg caught in some long twigs. He bent down to pull at the twining twigs, and Ajalia saw, in the fold of his doubled-over back, a gleaming shard of the same ugly white matter that had formed Delmar's mother's hideous false soul. Ajalia froze, and looked at the place. Angry scratches and deep tears were all around the place; the fragment was like a crooked piece of a broken pot. It nestled in Delmar's body like a burrowing parasite. Ajalia led the black horse forward through the trees, and she began to know things about Delmar, that she had seen when she looked at the thick, opaque shard. Her mind was roving over the details of his body; her inner vision had picked up facts that now began to scroll through her mind, like horrible memories of some traumatic sight.
Delmar, Ajalia saw, had tried to claw his mother out; he had turned the magic on himself, in an attempt to get the white shard out.
Ajalia had pitied Delmar before this, but she had never thought that he knew what he was, or that he was aware of the reality around him. Now she glanced back at him, as he straightened up, and stepped towards her, and she saw that he had maimed himself in an attempt to be free. She felt oddly detached towards him now; she felt as though he were a person she had never met. This new side of Delmar had been secret from her. She told herself that she ought to be happy; if he knew that his mother was in him, and had tried to get rid of her, then he was not as horrible as she often felt he was. This thought did not make her feel any better. If he had known, she thought, he should have asked her for help.
She walked slowly through the forest, the rope of the horse clutched tightly in her hand, and she thought of what she was going to do. Her options opened out before her again; she felt as though her head would begin to spin, from the changes in her feelings. Delmar, she reflected, made her feel too many contradictory things. One moment, she told herself, she was ready to lead him through the world, and the next she never wanted to see him again. She could hear the crunch of his footsteps behind her.
They were nearing the place where the screeching metheros lived. When Ajalia passed under a thick growth of moss that heaped like broken ashes of green, a numbing shriek pierced the dark quiet of the forest. Ajalia turned, and looked back at Delmar. He waved a hand at her to come back.
"Is that a metheros?" Ajalia shouted over the deafening scream. The sound was high and vibrating; it shot in through Ajalia's ears, and seemed to rattle dangerously in her skull.
"Come back," Delmar shouted. "They must not like you anymore." Ajalia looked at Delmar, and she felt oddly as though she were looking at a new man.
"I think it's you," Ajalia called. Delmar laughed at her, and stepped forward. A second cry joined the first, and then a third. Ajalia was sure that she was right. "Go back," she shouted at Delmar. He frowned, and shook his head at her. "I think it's you they're screaming at," she repeated, an
d Delmar smiled cockily.
"That's impossible," he said, and to prove his point, he stepped forward again. Empty peels, and rinds of rotten fruit, pelted down through the leaves, and impacted with wet slaps against Delmar's face and clothes. None of the projectiles were aimed anywhere close to Ajalia, or the black horse. Delmar stared up at the trees, his eyes wide. His mouth was stretched open incredulously. The pallor of his skin, together with the look of absolute shock, made him look terrifically ill.
"Go back!" Ajalia shouted over the deafening noise. "I'll get your books," she told Delmar. His cheeks were stained with chunks of wet slime, and his clothes were rapidly collecting the marks of the garbage and debris that were still shooting down from the trees. "Are you just going to stand there?" she shouted. Delmar glanced at her. She saw that his face was burning, and his ears were red.
"I'm getting my books out," Delmar muttered. Ajalia saw his lips move, but she couldn't hear any sound.
"Delmar, go back," she called. He stepped forward, and a slim body, like a furred snake with many limbs, shot out of the trees, and attached itself to Delmar's neck. Ajalia dropped the rope; the black horse snorted, his ears pinned flat, and shifted uneasily. She ran to Delmar, and helped him wrestle the furry creature away. "Go back," she shouted, clutching the biting metheros to her chest. The metheros was gray, and had several wiry legs on each side of its long, narrow body. Its tail whipped back and forth; Delmar hurried back into the trees, and Ajalia threw the twisting creature in the opposite direction. She snatched up the rope that dangled below the black horse's chin, and led the agitated animal after Delmar.