by Victor Poole
"You can't laugh at me!" Delmar cried. He directed his glowing fist at Ajalia's chest, and let long bolts of vibrant blue shoot across the grass. The blue light connected with Ajalia's rib cage, and she felt long shivers of exquisite sunlight ripple over her bones. Her body shook a little, and she saw dark lengths of color, like the pile of the dead Bain, fall away from her skin and clothes. A crackling sound went over her, and then she felt her legs send powerful tendrils of light into the earth; her hips creaked, and this time she saw, without looking for it first, barreling cords of gold and red shimmering up from the earth, unbidden, into her legs, and around her torso.
"Are you seeing this?" Ajalia asked, glancing up from her body to Delmar, who was staring at her in shock.
"That was not supposed to do that," he said hoarsely. Ajalia laughed at him again, and his cheeks burned. "It is not nice," he said loudly, "to laugh at people."
"I'm not laughing at you," Ajalia said, laughter burbling still in her ribs, "this is just very funny."
"This is not funny!" Delmar shouted, but Ajalia looked so bright and strong after his attack, that his lips curled, against his will, into a small smile. "I'm very serious!" he added, smoothing out his face. "And I'm your enemy now," he added, as if he thought she had missed his intent to disarm or harm her.
"Kill it," Ajalia said again, pointing to the hunk of white shard that lay in the grass, like an abandoned cloak.
"It's dead," Delmar said dismissively. "And, according to you, I'm trying to kill you," he said, his face twisting into an expression of deep wounding. Ajalia saw that he was not nearly as wounded as he looked. "That's what you said," he added.
"Try it," Ajalia coaxed. "As an experiment. Shoot a little magic into it."
"No!" Delmar said. "It's a waste of time. That thing isn't anything at all."
"Do you want me to kill it?" Ajalia asked, raising her hand, which, she saw, now glowed a faint reddish color from all the light that had seeped into her from the earth. "I think you must have taken my father out of my bones," she remarked, looking over her hand and wrist. The shadows that had fallen away from her were scattered in thick scraps around her feet; they were like thick, murky pieces of colored darkness. Delmar frowned at what she had said, and waved his hand that was not still holding a great cloud of blue energy from the sky.
"The magic doesn't work like that," he said. "You didn't have anything in your bones. I don't know what those things are, but they can't be from another person."
"How do you know?" Ajalia demanded, her cheeks flushing. "Everyone you know is afraid of your mother. Everything you know about magic is passed down from Jerome, who killed his brother. You said Jerome couldn't use the magic himself. How do you know that everything you learned isn't wrong?" she asked. "I am better at using your powers than you are, and that white piece," she said, pointing at the ugly shard, "is from your mother's soul. I saw her insides, before I killed her, and I took out the golden light she had taken from you."
Delmar's body jolted, and he stepped close to Ajalia.
"What did you say?" he asked. "What did you say?" he repeated, and Ajalia saw that his eyes were bright and wild.
"I took out your piece from inside of her body," Ajalia said, "before I killed her. She told me she married you." Delmar moved backwards, and he looked at Ajalia as if he had seen a ghost. His head moved slowly from side to side, and he cleared his throat.
"No," he said, "that's impossible. She never married me."
"Right," Ajalia said, "so that bit of you was just, I don't know, floating around in space, and she picked it up?"
"You never told me that she said that," Delmar said. He looked enormously upset.
"I did too," Ajalia said. "I told you she said that."
"But you didn't say she actually had part of me," Delmar shot back. "I thought you were trying to intimidate me."
"Into doing what?" Ajalia cried.
"I don't know!" Delmar shouted. "Something my mother wouldn't like!" Ajalia stared at Delmar, and Delmar stared at Ajalia. Between them, in the long grass, and turned ugly in the morning sunlight that came between the trees, lay the opaque white piece of Delmar's mother.
"Kill it," she said, and pointed at the piece. Delmar looked at Ajalia for a long moment, and Ajalia thought that she could see Delmar thinking it over. She thought he was trying to decide if she was worth it, or if she was only trying to trick him. She could not imagine what he thought she would trick him into. Finally, with his eyes fixed on Ajalia, Delmar sent a long, thunderous spike of blue light into the heart of the white shard, and it exploded with a smell that Ajalia was sure would poison all the nearby trees.
When he had done it, Ajalia saw Delmar shiver violently, and then fall down onto his knees.
"You're fine," she told him, and retrieved her fallen bag. She got astride her black horse, and rode up beside him. He scrambled to his feet, and moved away from the black horse. "He isn't going to bite you," Ajalia said reasonably, and held out her hand.
"What are you doing?" Delmar asked suspiciously.
"Let's get your books," Ajalia said.
"The metheros won't let me near there," Delmar said, his face creased in annoyance.
"They will now," Ajalia told him. "They didn't want your mother there. And I don't blame them," she added.
"I don't like horses," Delmar muttered, but he let Ajalia help him onto the horse.
"That's just your mother talking," Ajalia said, and wrapped his arms around her waist. She turned the horse back through the trees, the way they had come, and she and Delmar rode away from the stench of the exploded white piece.
"Now," Ajalia said, when they had put a little distance between them and the place where Delmar's mother had met her final end, "tell me about Ocher."
"I don't want to talk about that," Delmar said.
"I do," Ajalia said brightly. Delmar was sitting stiffly on the horse, his spine rigid, and his legs held out, away from the black horse's sides. Ajalia waited a little, and then nudged Delmar with her elbow.
"I don't know," Delmar said, his voice aggrieved and annoyed. "I don't know why he's so interested in you."
"Yes, you do," Ajalia said patiently. "I want to know what Ocher would get out of marrying someone like me." Delmar muttered something inaudible beneath his breath, and Ajalia turned to look at him. "You are a great baby," she told him, and kissed him.
"I'm not a baby," Delmar retorted quietly, but he was smiling.
"Ocher," Ajalia said. "He's going to be Thief Lord for you," she added. Her face was turned forward, but she listened with her body, to see how he would react to this news. Delmar's chest and arms seemed unnaturally still.
"I'm never going back," he said.
"Why does Ocher like me?" Ajalia asked.
"Because you're pretty," Delmar said, annoyed. "I can't tell you what Ocher thinks about."
Ajalia reflected that this morning was not unfolding in the way she had expected. She had been sure that Delmar would fall all to bits; she had expected him to have a fever, or to get sick and weak, as she had been when her arms had opened up. Delmar now was like an abrasive scab; she could not quite bring herself to abandon him in the woods, but he was irritating her in a petty, incessant way. He had often made her truly, deeply angry, but now he seemed incapable even of rousing her ire; he merely annoyed her, and she wished he was past whatever stage his spirit was passing through now.
"Does Ocher have the white brand?" Ajalia asked Delmar, as the shadows of the trees thickened, and the forest transitioned from the black trees into the colorful ones. The undergrowth became more thick and wild; Ajalia was sure that the poison tree lay just a little to her left. They were gradually nearing the place where the screeching metheros lived.
"Yes," Delmar said. He sounded distracted to Ajalia, as though he were busy tabulating a score of some kind.
"Do you think you're a bad person?" Ajalia asked him suddenly. She felt him start a little, and draw back from her on the horse.
She could feel him shift his weight, and settle uneasily down behind her. She had left her saddle in the city; she almost thought she would be returning to the dragon temple by nightfall. She could no longer guess what new development could pop up in her relation to Delmar; he had surprised her so many times that she was beginning to give up on the idea of planning ahead.
"Of course I'm a bad person," Delmar said, his voice shifting uncomfortably.
"You're not a bad person," Ajalia exclaimed.
"Yes, I am," Delmar insisted. "Everyone knows that I'm bad."
"Everyone?" Ajalia asked. She worked one hand into the black horse's thick mane; Denai, she suspected, had been brushing the black horse's hair in his spare time. "So all of the guards, and all of the Talbos renegades, and the wild people that live in the mountains, and all of the Slavithe people who believe in magic, and watch for the dead falcon, all of those people already know that you're bad?" she asked. She imagined Delmar frowning; she could see in her mind's eye just how his brow would crease up.
"Well, they don't know," he admitted. "But they would know," he said, "if I ever went back."
"Sweet love," Ajalia said to Delmar, and she tried to keep her voice level, "you are not a bad person."
"I am too," Delmar said morosely, and Ajalia bit back a smile. "You don't know what I'm really like," Delmar added. He sounded angry.
"You are like I used to be," Ajalia observed. She guided the horse around a long cluster of brown-leaved bushes, and into a darker, more shadowed part of the forest. "You know how you tried to attack me, just now?" she asked him. She pictured him blushing, and looking down at the ground, and she smiled.
"Maybe," he said cautiously. She laughed. "Stop laughing at me!" Delmar exclaimed.
"I will stop laughing at you," Ajalia told Delmar, "when you stop believing in your manifest destiny as the ultimate evil."
Ajalia heard an offended silence emanate pointedly from behind her.
"I'm not a nice person," Delmar warned her.
"Oh, I know you're not nice," Ajalia said, "but that isn't your fault."
"What?" Delmar exclaimed. "That's not right," he said. "You can't tell me I'm good, and then tell me I'm bad in the same breath."
"I didn't say that," Ajalia told him.
"You did too," he said. He sounded quite victorious. "You said I wasn't nice."
"I said I knew you weren't nice," Ajalia said, "and I said that it wasn't your fault you weren't nice." She listened to Delmar chewing this over for some time; finally, he took a deep breath.
"Are you trying to say," he said, "that you don't think I'm bad?" Ajalia bit back a laugh, and nodded seriously.
"Yes," she said, with a straight face. "That is what I'm saying."
"Oh," Delmar said. The large hollow formed of thick tree roots came into view; they had passed far into metheros country, and the screeching creatures had let them be.
"I told you it was your mother they didn't want," Ajalia told Delmar, in a low voice.
"But if you're right," Delmar said, and Ajalia interrupted him.
"How can I be wrong?" she demanded. "You exploded her nasty white energy back there."
"All right, fine," Delmar snapped. "You're right. Hooray for you."
"Yes," Ajalia said firmly.
"You don't need to show off," Delmar said. His voice was thin and snippy.
"You had a horrible mother," Ajalia told him. "Lots of people have horrible mothers. I also had a horrible mother." She rode the black horse to the great hollow, and slipped her leg over the black withers. She led the horse to a tree with a low branch, and tied the rope there. Delmar sat on the back of the black animal, and glared mutinously at Ajalia.
"You're being very mean to me," he said. His face was screwed up into a mask of fear and doubt; Ajalia saw that he was afraid of his mother, and that he had never been alone before. She saw that he was finding out what it was like to be alone in his own mind. "And," Delmar added, as though he had just thought of it, "your mother wasn't a witch."
Ajalia put her hands on the edge of the great hollow, and she tried to think of what she wanted to say. She told herself that she didn't want to say anything at all, and then she looked back at Delmar, and saw the terror-stricken whiteness in his cheeks.
"My mother wore two faces," Ajalia said finally, and she began to gather the thick books that lined the edge of the hollow. Many of the books were falling apart; their bindings were loose, and threads, and scraps of leather, and painted manuscript hung out from the sides. "Do you need these?" she asked, holding one ragged tome up, and looking at Delmar. He was looking at her as though she were some species of insect.
"How could your mother be a witch?" he demanded. "She wasn't from Slavithe, was she?"
"Anyone can hurt someone else," Ajalia said. "You don't have to be born in Slavithe to become evil."
"But she can't be a witch," Delmar protested. "That makes no sense. All the magic is here, with the children of Bakroth and his wife."
"But Bakroth brought slaves from all over," Ajalia pointed out. "So the magic had to come from somewhere else, which means it is other places." Ajalia watched Delmar think this over. She lifted the book again. "I'm going to ask you an honest question," she said, "and I want you to think for a moment before you answer me."
Delmar looked at her, and then at the book. Ajalia watched his breath expand cautiously in his chest; she thought that he was still feeling around inside, trying to find the place where his mother had lain concealed.
"Does Ocher want to use me?" Ajalia asked suddenly. The idea had just occurred to her; she had been so focused on Delmar, and on his mother's twisted theft of his powers, that she had yet to consider the role a man might play in the theft of magic. She remembered now the dark shadows that Delmar had thrust out of her body with his light bolt from the blue sky, and she shivered a little. She remembered her father now, and a shudder of revulsion passed between her shoulder blades.
"Does Ocher know?" she asked him. Delmar got slowly off the horse, and came to the hollow. He put his hands on the books, and stroked them, as if they were tender children. "Does he know he would be stealing me, and twisting me for his own purposes?" she asked. Delmar met her eyes for a brief moment.
"Yes," he said, so quietly that she almost didn't hear. Ajalia put the book down that she was holding, and her mind wandered to Philas, and the strange attachment she had felt to him, before Delmar had begun to hold her hand, and then to kiss her.
"You hid my money pouch from me," she said, "for a very long time." She looked at him, and waited for his eyes to clear. He was glaring over his books, and she thought that he was thinking of how he would be able to pack them neatly. There were more of them than she had expected, and many of them were heavy.
"I told you I was bad," he murmured, without looking up. Ajalia felt a desire to laugh, mingled with a sharp stab of sorrow. She saw Delmar, and she could see that he did not see himself clearly at all. She wanted to rip away whatever bandages his mother had laid over his eyes; she wanted him to see himself as she saw him. She wanted to heal the great rifts that lay all throughout his soul.
"I was going to ask you," Ajalia said, trying to wipe away the pain she felt on his behalf, "if these books are as valuable to you as you say." She looked from the books to Delmar, and watched his eyes. "I want to leave them behind," she told him. "You don't know any magic at all," she pointed out. "They can't be very useful books."
"But they're mine," Delmar murmured, and he stroked the covers again. Ajalia felt suddenly impatient. She asked herself what her end goal was; she asked herself why she was still here, in the forest, mooning over the old books next to Delmar. Impatience surged in her chest, and she looked around the hollow.
"I could trade you," she said. She did not mean what she said, but she hated to see Delmar standing like this, listless and sad, his mouth drawn down into a frown, and his shoulders still. "I could give you something, in exchange for the books," Ajalia said. She thought at
once of the slim leather book that she had concealed in her bag; she was sure that Delmar was thinking of the same thing.
"Where is it?" he asked her.
"What?" she said. She kept her eyes neutral.
"The book," Delmar said impatiently, "the book I got for you, with the translation stone."
"You didn't get it for me," Ajalia said, bristling.
"I did," Delmar said. "You never would have gotten it without me."
"She told me you'd try to take it from me," Ajalia said.
"That old woman was a witch," Delmar said. "You can't listen to anything she says."
"If I do magic," Ajalia said, "does that make me a witch, too?"
Delmar almost said yes, but Ajalia saw him stop himself just in time. His eyes were hard, and the anger in his face shocked her.
"So you'll try to kill me, as well," Ajalia said.
"Of course not," Delmar said, but Ajalia did not believe him. She saw that he looked at her, and saw her through his mother's eyes. She saw that his mind was formed against her, and that his heart was not caught up to his old thoughts. She could see, from the expression on his face, that he thought he loved her, and she felt, in the tendrils of heat that spread out from his heart towards her, that he did love her, but that the beliefs his mother had built up around his mind were stronger than his love was for her now.
Ajalia felt just as she had when Philas had turned strange and drunk, that final time, just after he had helped her dress for the meeting in the Slavithe market. Philas had been solicitous, and tender, until his weakness had overtaken him. After that, his face had changed, and his eyes had been calculating and keen. Ajalia saw, in Delmar's eyes, a sorrowful weakness, a sadness. She thought that he did not see how much he hated her, because of the way his mother had taught him to live.
"Delmar," Ajalia said. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her arms were beginning to feel strange, and cold, but she kept her voice level, and kind. "I'd like to try an experiment, Delmar," Ajalia said gently. Delmar turned morosely back to his books, and stroked their spines.
"I guess we could put them back," he said.