by Victor Poole
"I won't fall down anymore," Ajalia said.
"How do you know that?" Delmar demanded. He rolled over, and climbed almost into her lap before lying down again. "You're very weak," he observed.
A flush of heat was on her cheeks, and down her back. His eyes were just as bright as they had been before; she had forgotten that his eyes made her feel comfortable and cozy.
"I want to be angry," she muttered.
"You can be angry," he said soothingly. "You can hate things."
Ajalia set her teeth together.
"I'm dangerous," she said, "when I am not like this."
"I know," Delmar said.
"No, you don't," she said quickly. "You don't believe me about things. You think I'm silly."
"I don't think you're silly at all," Delmar said at once. "I think you're wonderful."
"But you don't think I'm dangerous," Ajalia countered. A silence followed this.
"No," he admitted. "I don't."
"Well, I am," she said, angry tears rolling down her cheeks. "I'm deadly. I used to be."
"Okay," Delmar said agreeably.
"Don't agree with me," Ajalia cried. "I don't like it. You don't understand!" She turned her body away from him; the slim leather book, the book that Bakroth wrote about how the magic worked, came out from under her upper arm, and tumbled into the hollow. Delmar picked up the book.
"Do you want to read this with me?" he asked. "When the sun comes up?" He watched the side of her face, which was all he could see. The trees above them rustled in a breeze, and the leaves made a solid mesh of shadows over the hollow.
"I don't want to do anything at all with you," Ajalia said.
What she did not know, and what she was unlikely ever to find out, was what would have happened to her at this stage of her emotional crisis if Delmar had not presented her with a convenient direction for her strong feelings to go. She had been on the cusp of an actual breakdown; when she had risen up, the bare purpose of returning to Slavithe clear in her mind, she had been in the grip of a power that she did not understand. When Delmar had put his arms around her, and stopped her, he had cut off the blossoming of her career into internal darkness; it was this avoidance of interior death that made her tremble with rage now. Ajalia, now that she had realized the inevitability of the coming storm within her, longed for it to come and swallow her whole. She wanted the fight in her to be over, and the walls that held back all the bad memories to break down. She was not willing to precipitate the crisis herself, but when it rose and presented itself, she went to meet it as a bride. She did not know what she was wishing for, or she would not have desired it. Her instincts, to turn away permanently from the darkness, were correct; she was not strong enough to withstand the blinding, searing knowledge that was hidden in her. Had it come forth without protection, without a buffer, and taken her in the state of sorrow she was in now, she would have lost what remnants of herself she had preserved from the taint of her family.
Delmar sensed something of this, or he thought that he did. At any rate, he saw the need to be near her until she no longer had a wild look in her eyes.
Ajalia was still; her back radiated anger. Delmar inched closer, and put his large hand on her waist, where her hip curved up into the darkness.
"Don't try to help me," she said in a muffled voice.
"Jay," Delmar murmured.
"No!" she shouted. She turned on him. Long streams of sweat and tears were on her face; her nose was wet with snot. "Stop liking me!" she said violently. "Stop it! I'm bad!"
Delmar coaxed his hands around her, and lifted her closer. He made gentle shushing noises with his lips. Ajalia shut out the picture of him; she tried to stand up, to run away, and found that her muscles had stopped working again. She could not lift her arms.
"Why is this happening to me?" she asked him desperately.
"I don't know," he said.
"I want it to stop," she said. He smoothed the tears away from her cheeks with the back of his fingers.
"Maybe it will stop someday," he suggested. He pulled her into his arms, and tucked her hair behind her ears. "You've got pins in your hair," he told her.
"I know," she said. He was a little above her; Ajalia's head was pillowed on his bare shoulder. He put his fingers into her hair, and drew out the pins, one by one.
"Thank you," she said. She sniffled. "I can't wipe my nose," she said. Ajalia began to laugh. "I'm ruining your clothes," she said, her voice rising slightly.
"I hate my clothes," Delmar said quietly, gathering a piece of his shirt that she wore, and wiping the sweat and snot from her face. Ajalia watched the long muscle that ran in a dark fold from his neck to the end of his shoulder. She wanted to touch it. A strange, floating feeling was in her elbows and her upper arms; she could not command her limbs.
"I don't think you made me feel this way," Ajalia said. Her voice sounded oddly detached to her own ears. She wanted something from Delmar, and she did not know what it was. "With your magic," she said, "I don't think I'm like this because of the magic."
"You are," he said, "but the magic didn't make you like this. Magic just brought it up."
"Are you saying I've always been like this?" Ajalia asked.
"No," he said, "but almost forever." He picked up her hand, and laid her palm against his chest. She sighed, and there were tears in her sigh. "I don't mind when you cry," he told her. "I like it."
"No you don't," Ajalia said fiercely. "I bet you hate it."
"I don't," Delmar said. "I like taking care of you." Ajalia could hear from his voice that he meant it; she turned her eyes up towards him, and examined the shadows of his jaw. His skin was like pale blue blood in the darkness. "The sun will come, soon," Delmar told her. He nestled her body close against him, and put his free arm firmly around her waist.
"You're taking advantage of how I feel right now," Ajalia said. She tried to stop herself from yawning, and could not. Delmar's flesh was intoxicating. He was like fire and hot liquor in a man's body. Her cheek was against his shoulder; a mad desire to kiss his skin rose up in her. Ajalia squashed this desire. She settled her nose more thoroughly against the firm shape of his shoulder, and pretended to be asleep.
"Good night, little bird," Delmar said contentedly. His voice was low, and relaxed, and unutterably adorable. Ajalia chewed on the inside of her cheek. She made a muffled, strangled sound, and he laughed. "I love you," Delmar whispered into her hair. Ajalia pretended that she hadn't heard. She lay in his arms like a wounded starling, and her spine relaxed a little. The fear and disgust that coursed through her body was loosening its hold; Delmar was washing it free with tenderness. Ajalia, as she was now, was not capable of love; she was incapable of anything but dread and rage. Delmar saw the tenderness of her wounded soul, and he soothed her into a kind of trance.
He waited now until she was asleep, and then began, silently, stealthily, to draw beads of golden light into his palm. He reached underneath the shirt that Ajalia wore, and spread the magic quietly into her naked back.
Ajalia sighed in sleep; her face turned against Delmar's neck, and her mouth opened a little. Her cheeks relaxed. Delmar kissed Ajalia's hair, and withdrew his hand. He pressed his fingers into the rough bark of the tree, and droplets of golden light gathered again into his palm.
THE FINAL ATTACK
When Ajalia woke up, she was alone. The sun was not yet near midday; it shone with a brilliant radiance into the forest at an angle, and painted the trees gold and shimmering green. Ajalia's whole body was almost unbearably sore; she felt as though she had been pummeled with stones. She lay for a long time without moving, her eyes gazing into the gaps between the trees, where the leaves hung together like curtains. She breathed in the cool morning air for an hour before she realized that she could breathe more easily now; the stabbing, shooting pains in her ribs had died away into an irritating ache.
With a sigh, Ajalia stretched her arms. A strange soreness was in her wrists; the pain was not sharp l
ike it had been the night before. She could feel a sweet torment, like a sour vessel of waters, pouring through her body. The maw of black fear was gone. Easing up onto her elbows, she examined the wrappings on her left arm. The tingling zing from the crushed leaves was gone, and the skin felt strangely clean under the bindings. She looked around for her knife; it was nowhere to be seen. The slim leather book lay against a rise in the roots, but the hollow was otherwise empty. The pieces of cloth that had tangled over the hollow were gone, as was her outer robe and her pouch. The sunlit hollow was full of homey sunshine. Ajalia lay back against the twisting roots, and thought that Delmar's hiding place was the most comfortable, beautiful place she had ever been in.
Ajalia plucked at the threads that lay snugly within the cream bandages; a rim of dried blood spread through the edge of the torn fabric. She wanted to see the injuries beneath; she imagined that the skin would be fresh and healed, the scratches from the scars seeming now only to be bare red lines on her skin. She pictured the black brands changed into golden or white tracings; they would look all right, she thought, if they changed color. She did not believe that the brands would ever disappear.
Delmar seemed to have vanished completely; she could not imagine what he was doing, or where he had taken her clothes. She picked up the leather book, and opened it before she realized that the stone rectangle with the cyphers was still in the bag; she had removed it, along with the other things, when she had cut apart the seams and hidden pockets of the shift. She looked around the hollow.
Standing up, Ajalia went towards the edge of the rim of bark; she peered over. Somewhere, she thought, perhaps, Delmar had tucked away the pouch. She hoped that he had not taken it with him. She did not think he would lose it, and she thought she would be able to get her things back easily enough, but she wanted the stone piece on her person. She wanted to learn the letters.
She had a curious blankness in her mind; she could not remember where she was supposed to be right now. She had a general sense of foreboding, or of doom; she knew that she had some urgent, ultimate purpose to fulfill. She just couldn't think of what it was.
Ajalia found to her surprise that she wanted Delmar to come back. He had often made her feel annoyed, irritated, trapped, even, but now, just at this moment, she felt only empty without him. She told herself that she had felt the same way about Philas; she told herself that what she felt was a result of her own negligence. Ajalia thought that kissing was for babies; she should never had let go of the knife in the first place, although she carefully edited out the part of the memory where she had not been able to stand, and where Delmar had taken the knife from her.
She told herself that she had often gotten out of worse situations. She failed to remember, conveniently, that her body was still sore, and weak as a little child's.
Ajalia could see nothing of the bag in the leaves and dirt around the hollow; she did not think to look up. She turned the pages of the book, and imagined a large man with a black beard, writing in the thick old pages. Her memory felt moth-eaten; she couldn't remember if Delmar had said how Bakroth had been killed. She thought the brother, Jerome, had killed him, but there was something about Talbos that had happened first.
Ajalia traced her fingers over the ink on the pages; they were thick pages, a little yellow with age, and the edges were a little bit crumbly. The ink was black, like death. She had seen old manuscripts and scrolls, in the memory palace of her master's house, but she did not think she had ever seen ink just like this. There was something curiously dark and mysterious about this ink. The letters that rolled up against the pages were wild. They bristled with something that felt like danger. She wanted to know what the words said.
A rustle of sound came distantly through the leaves. Ajalia got up silently, and slipped out of the hollow, the slim leather book clasped tight against her body. She dripped down the outside of the rim of bark like a crawling snake, and crouched in the dirt. Long green leaves like ferns thrust through the soil near her; she felt the air against her face, and smelled decomposing vegetation. The smell was healthy somehow, clean.
The sound came closer; she waited, her head pressed against the back of the hollow, until the sound stopped. She peered over the rim of turning roots, and saw Delmar climbing over the edge of the hollow.
"I thought you might be Lim," Ajalia said. She stood up and crawled over the edge of the bark.
"Oh, hello," Delmar said. Ajalia watched him as he dropped a bag of food, and a bundle of clothes into the forked roots of the tree.
"You don't seem very worried about me leaving you," Ajalia pointed out.
"I'm not," Delmar said. "Here." He pulled a long piece of bread from his bag and held it out to her. The bread was stuffed with strange spices and meats. Ajalia had not thought before this how hungry she was. She touched Delmar's fingers as she took it; his skin was still warm, but he did not try to take her hand. She took the bread and sat against the farthest tree trunk.
"How are you?" Delmar asked cheerfully.
"What happened during the plague?" Ajalia asked.
"What?" Delmar said, but his voice was aloof. Ajalia chewed on a corner of the bread.
"You said," Ajalia told him, "that your father was disowned because of his behavior during the great plague, or something. What was that?"
Delmar sat in the hollow. He had found another shirt somewhere; this one was as unremarkable as the others, but it was a different shade of brown. His hair was wet from the dew.
"You don't forget things," Delmar observed.
"No," she agreed.
He regarded her carefully.
"I had imagined our conversation going differently this morning," Delmar said finally.
"Well," Ajalia said. "Sorry." She sounded unrepentant.
"How are your arms?" Delmar asked. She did not reply. He sighed. "Fine," he said. "Fine, but it's boring, and you'll like me less afterwards."
"Because of your father?" Ajalia asked. He nodded. Ajalia wanted to know why he thought she would care about the behavior of his father when she had already, she thought, made it thoroughly clear the she thought the Thief Lord was a blot upon the face of the world, but she waited to see what Delmar would say first.
"There was a plague," he began, and stopped.
"Yes," Ajalia said encouragingly.
"This is really boring," he said apologetically, "and a very stupid story."
"That's fine," Ajalia said. "I fell down about twenty times yesterday."
"Only about six, and what does that have to do with anything?" Delmar asked.
Ajalia shrugged. "Falling down is boring."
"Not when it leads to kissing," Delmar said earnestly. She caught him staring at her mouth; he looked down.
"So there was a plague," Ajalia prompted.
"It wasn't really a proper plague," Delmar hedged, fumbling with the hem of the bag he had brought. "I mean, everyone died, and most people were super sick," he said, "but it wasn't, like, scary." He looked at her.
"I can't understand what you just said," Ajalia told him. "What is a proper plague like?"
"Oh," Delmar said easily, "the real plagues are worse. They eat you from the inside, and they rot in your mouth. This sickness was just, you know, fevers and dying." He looked at her; his blue eyes were filled with an expression of honesty and childlike belief that Ajalia found utterly incomprehensible. She could not find out within herself, or within the range of her wide experience, any excuse, any reason for how Delmar could have reached his age, and his physical maturity, and still retained the almost untouched state of innocence and sincerity that he constantly displayed. If she thought that he would have had any conception of her words, she would have asked him how he had gotten this way.
"Do you have these worse plagues often?" she asked finally.
"Oh, never anymore," Delmar said. "We had them a hundred and fifty years ago, when the witches were here."
"Witches?" Ajalia asked. "Are there witches now?"
&n
bsp; "No," Delmar said. "I think that woman was the last one. My father killed most of them during the plague."
"What woman?" Ajalia asked. "Was that the behavior that was punished?"
"No, he was following orders about killing the witches," Delmar said. "And these were different witches. They didn't start the plagues, but their grandmothers did, and Talbos, the king, he thought they were going to do it again."
Ajalia blinked.
"Okay," she said. "Slow down. What woman was the last witch?"
"Where we got this," Delmar said, pointing to the slim leather book. "That was her. I think she was the last."
"Eccsa's mother?" Ajalia asked. "The old woman you tried to kill?"
"She's dead now," Delmar said with satisfaction. If he saw the look of consternation on Ajalia's face, he ignored it. "They stole most of the records and books, and destroyed a lot of the spells," he explained.
"What are the spells?" Ajalia asked. She still did not believe in magic. She saw the lights that Delmar brought forth, and felt the burning when they touched her skin, but she refused to believe in magic as a real part of the world. When Delmar had spoken before of Bakroth, and of Jerome, he had seemed to speak of stories. She had thought he knew the magic was not real. She stared down at her bread. A roiling sick feeling was turning over in her stomach; she was beginning to believe that Delmar was mad.
"The spells are stories," Delmar said. "Stories about how Bakroth did different things."
"Like what?" she prompted. She felt as though she were teasing out a long tangled string of spiky whip-cord. Delmar was so earnest, and so eager, and his eyes and face were so full of submerged excitement at sharing his secrets, that Ajalia's chest hurt. She thought that he was insane. His behavior as a whole, she reflected, made more sense if he was slightly off in the head. She watched his mouth as he spoke.
"Bakroth dug under the sands to establish the road," Delmar said. "He thought there would be white limestone under the desert, and he had a whole pack of prisoners and slaves dig up a trench through the desert. When the flooding came again, the sands washed up over the gravel, and the sands shifted down again. Now the road is there."