by Chris Reher
It seemed an eternity before the twins fought their way back above the waves, disoriented in the dark. Someone flailed in the water nearby, screaming for help. Galen looked back to the ship and after some moments saw Yala topside, yelling something at him. The emissary was behind her with a firm grip on the girl’s tunic, preventing her from leaping after Galen and Chor. Desperate, Galen looked about for some means to get back on board and found none. Both he and Chor had expended every bit of chi’ro and physical strength they had managed to recover over these past few hours, with perhaps just enough adrenaline remaining to help them reach the shore. He realized that he had to leave Yala behind, alone at the mercy of the emissaries’ anger. The helpless rage he felt was stronger than any he had harbored against the priests up until now.
Suddenly something seemed to tug him into another direction. He felt a presence nearby, a very familiar sensation that could only be a surge of chi’ro. Tuning into the essence, the twins replied in astonished relief. A vortex of chi’ro rose up before them and Galen reached for it as if it were a rope tossed to a drowning man. They found themselves lifted up and backward, bodies suddenly weightless as they spun through cold, empty space. I'm dead, Galen thought. I'm dead and it doesn't hurt, after all.
* * *
Then he landed and it did hurt. Chor landed on top of him and that hurt even more. They lay motionless, unable to breathe, unable to move.
“Galen?” he heard finally, through the ringing in his ears. “Chor?” He began to move various parts of his body, unsure of which belonged to him and which to Chor. His twin was also slow to recover, content to remain draped over Galen indefinitely. “Here,” Galen managed.
Aletha made no move to help them as they extricated themselves, testing their limbs, checking for new injuries. Galen looked around and discovered a pleasant campsite, fire neatly banked for the night, her boat moored securely nearby. The ground was springy with a bed of evergreen needles and mosses, the tangy scent of brine berries mingled with the smoke of the fire. The night air carried a chill, hinting that she had reached the northern strait where cooler air flowed past the mountains to the island chain guarding Phrar’s coast. She seemed to be in no immediate need of rescue or of protection by the nearly incapacitated twins.
“What was that all about?” Aletha exclaimed. “Were those emissaries? Just look at you!” The brothers, well rested and in good repair the last time she had seen them, where covered in torn rags and a mass of half-healed bruises and cuts. “You’re freezing. Come to the fire,” she said, dismayed to see them dragging themselves to its warmth, obviously fatigued beyond endurance. She added more wood to the fire and fanned the flames.
Galen raised his slashed hand over his head to slow the bleeding. “How did you find us?”
“I didn’t mean to, believe me.”
“Aletha, I—”
“I have no idea how I found you. I felt you a few hours ago, or I thought I did. But I’ve been trying to use less chi’ro – I think maybe the emissaries can feel it when I do. But just now there was something so… wrong. You seemed to be in pain, or very angry, I’m not sure. I tried to send you some chi’ro from that riser north of here. And then when I felt you grab it, I just reached out and pulled you through. It was so easy!”
Galen scanned the area and found the riser she had mentioned, now mostly depleted. “You created a conduit of sorts. A connection from one place to another where space doesn’t exist. Some of us train many years to learn how to do this. Not everyone succeeds.”
Aletha set that bit of information aside for later contemplation. “Why are you in such bad shape? You’re completely gone over. What happened?” She placed her hand onto Chor’s bruised face, apparently plucking energy from the ambient chi’ro as effortlessly as her lungs took in air. He closed his eyes as her ministrations began to take effect and the throbbing pain around his eye receded. She then took Galen’s damaged hand, distressed to find his palm skewered. She closed her hands around it as if to shake it in greeting, unmindful of the blood that soaked her blouse. Minutes passed before she released it to wrap it in a length of cloth torn from Chor’s shirt. “Is that a burn?” Steeling herself, she placed her hand over the blisters caused by Tsingao’s torch and felt them burst. “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed when a loud groan escaped his clenched teeth. He grimaced, holding his breath against the pain, but placed his hand over hers until the damaged nerves calmed and his skin began its process of healing.
“So what happened to you?” She upended a water skin to wash the gore from her hands.
“Emissaries. They came to the village after you left. With mercenaries. I was in a cloud of chi and didn’t feel them coming. They attacked and I killed some of them. Some of your people were hurt—”
“Minh! What about Minh?”
“I didn’t see her after it started. She wasn’t among the injured.”
She jumped up. “I have to get back there!”
Chor caught her arm. “They were there because we were, that much is clear. The best thing you can do for your people is to stay away from them.”
She shook him off. “Don’t touch me.” She stepped around the fire and stood staring into the night, fuming silently. “You saved my life, Homeworlders,” she said finally. “And now I've saved you. We are even. Clearly, we’re in danger and it’s safer if we travel together but I don’t even want to talk to you until we reach that damn launch.”
“Would you please listen...” Galen began.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “To what? More lies? Haven't I had enough?”
“No more lies,” he said. “You've had enough.”
She took a shuddering breath and slowly came about to face them. “Then you won't deny that I've... been with both of you?”
Both twins shook their heads.
“How often?”
“I don’t know.”
All color drained from her face but her expression remained frozen. “I believe it would be possible for me to kill both of you and it wouldn’t take much effort.”
Galen remembered the sudden flight over what had surely been many miles when her conduit had carried them with only a meager riser to fuel it. “You could,” he said finally. “But maybe you could hear what I have to tell you, first.”
Seething, she wanted to refuse his explanation, but then her need to know, to put more of these odd pieces into place, overwhelmed her and she nodded. She sat on her bedroll but with her tightly crossed arms and angry jut of chin looked far from restful. “Talk, then.”
Galen exhaled sharply. Would this day never end? “Well...” He scratched his head, unsure of where to begin. “Aletha,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Chor and I... well...”
Aletha drummed her fingers on her arm.
“All right,” he took another breath. “Chor and I not twins. We’re not even brothers.”
“What...” Aletha looked from one to the other. “Of course you are.”
He shook his head. “I am he and he is me. There is no difference. My name is Galen Chor and there is only one of us here. He can no more act on his own accord—”
“—than I could,” Chor finished, the distant expression on his face gone. “You see two of us here, but there is only one mind, one will.”
Aletha shook her head, slowly. “No,” she whispered. “That is not possible.”
“Do you really think even twins can look as alike as we do? Sound as alike? Do you really think you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between two people, no matter how closely related, when you make love to them?” Both men moved up on their knees, their movements eerily identical, and lifted the hem of their tattered blouses.
“By the Gods...” she murmured, as baffled as the men aboard the emissary ship had been when she saw the long, twisted scar twisting along both twins' ribcages. No conceivable coincidence would ever produce two scars so completely identical. She watched them replace their shirts, again each movement the same.
“It's easier for me if I don't have to move both bodies separately,” they said, speaking as one. “Having two bodies is like hammering a nail with one hand and writing a letter with the other. You ought to—”
“Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop talking like that!”
The twins fell silent.
“Stop it,” she repeated, near tears. “Make him go back to sleep, like he always is. Don't both look at me like that!”
Galen nodded and Chor stood up to walk away from the camp, toward the boat where he busied himself with their packs. “I'm sorry, Aletha,” Galen said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
Unable to look at either of them, Aletha lowered her head onto her folded arms. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because it didn’t matter. I was sent here to fetch you, nothing more. You are equal only to the La’il and I had no expectation this would mean anything to you once we return to the Homeworld.”
Aletha was silent for a long while before she lifted her head from her arms. “Is that what you think?” she said, her voice tightly controlled as if to keep it from trembling. “That this doesn’t mean anything to me? Did it mean nothing to you? Did it mean so little that you would lie to me, play with me?”
“Things weren’t supposed to go this way. There just hasn’t been a good moment to tell you the truth. First I was ordered to tell you nothing, for your own good. We had no idea how you would get on with all this. You’ve got gods and giants and monsters in the seas. You are going to a better place; I was just trying to get you there the easiest way I know how. You might never even have known that Chor and I are one person. But then things changed. Things got complicated. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you the truth since we got to the village. I thought we had time and I was worried how you’d feel about this. I wish it hadn’t happened like this.”
She lifted her head. “So do I! Complicated, indeed! How did any of this give you the freedom to...” She gestured toward Chor.
He scratched his chin. “Well, it's like this: Does it matter if I touch you with my right hand or my left? Or look at you with my right eye or my left? Hardly. It’s no different with Chor. He’s just another part of my body, completely interchangeable. I don’t even know if I'm Galen or Chor right now.”
Aletha crossed the space between them to crouch before him, taking some time to examine his face very closely. He was not prepared when she raised a fist and punched his shoulder, forcing a groan from him when the still tender wound there flared painfully. “Galen,” she informed him and moved back to her side of the fire. “Galen got that in Delann’s bathhouse.”
He held his breath until the pain stopped. “I suppose I deserved that,” he exhaled finally. “All right, I'm the one you thought of as Galen. But it doesn't make any difference who you think we are. In my mind I’ve always been just one person. It just seemed easier to pretend whatever was convenient. That’s why I didn’t try to make us look different. I've only been in this state a few weeks. I can barely prevent us from moving in complete synchronicity. And so one of us is always more or less immobile or doing mindless things requiring no concentration. If I didn’t have to think for two separate bodies I don’t think we would have been captured in the village. I just wasn’t able to defend both of us. Both of me. Whatever. Eventually, it seemed to be a personality, as though Chor was the quiet one, or like he didn't care or was even only half-bright. But whether he was me or I was him when I was with you, I have no idea. It didn’t matter; it was both me. There is no one else here.” Galen paused his fumbling explanation to study her expression. Dammit, how was she taking this? “You've got to believe that I meant you no harm. I thought you loathed the giants, that it would complicate matters. I don't know what apocalyptic legend has been shaped around the giants but I've heard enough about them to worry that it would change things.”
She frowned. “Giants? What are you talking about?”
He bit his lip. “Uh, well…”
She raised a hand and pointed a finger directly at his face. “This is the moment you stop lying to me, Homeworlder.”
He lowered his head to run both hands through his hair and then fussed needlessly with the bandage around his palm. “I’ve never been very good at lying,” he said ruefully. “My greatest flaw, La’il thinks.”
Aletha grimaced, unimpressed by his admission.
“I guess I justified it because the way I am now is not important. Once home, Chor will be gone, I will be just me again and it’ll make no difference to anyone what I was on this moon.”
“What are you talking about? What will happen to Chor?”
“I was made like this so we could come here to find you. In my true form, I would never blend in with your people here.” He studied his blank-faced twin for a moment. “I am one of the giants you people fear so much.”
“Giants?” she said. “You? That legend is true?”
He nodded. “The giants were not some monstrous creatures in your past. Everyone on the Homeworld is a giant compared to you. Your people here were giants once, too. This moon changed you over the years, many hundreds of years, and made you smaller. The same happened on Chenoweth. We, on the Homeworld, remained the same.”
“You mean,” she said after pondering his words for a while, “that in order for you to be made smaller, the La'il had to cut you in half?”
He nodded again, surprised when she chuckled tiredly, shaking her head. “I see,” he said, experimenting with a thin smile, “that maybe you don’t fear giants quite as much as I thought.”
“Why should I? You've destroyed one myth after another these past few weeks. You took away everything I’ve ever thought to be true and replaced it with lies. How can I possibly know what is real now? What am I to believe?”
“I don’t know. I have also been misled. Lied to. Used by the La’il in more ways than one. I know that now.”
“That isn’t making me feel any better!”
Chor had returned to the fire with a pail of water and some things he had found in their baggage. Both men started to peel off their sodden clothing, shivering in the cool night air while they rinsed the blood from their wounds. Aletha turned away, unwilling to allow herself to be affected by this casual intimacy, the sight of his battered body, or the fact that it was displayed twice before her.
“I am sorry; you can believe that,” he said. “I’m sorry about all of this. I know it’s upsetting.”
“Upsetting? It’s outrageous!”
Dressed in dry clothing now, Chor once again returned to his absent daydreams, staring off into the night. Galen held his hands out to the fire, wishing that he, too, could get some sleep. Several days’ worth of sleep, in fact. He knew he sounded irritable when he spoke. “Outrageous would have been if Chor had accepted some of the offers he got from the women in your village. You wanted him to. You teased him about it. That would have been me, Aletha.”
“How noble of you to decline!” She glared at him, torn between wanting to hurt him for his deception and the sudden need to come to him, let him fold his strong body around her, and let this darkness pass over them. Doing either of these things might ward off the disturbing truth hovering around their camp like the shadows thrown up by the fire. She turned her eyes skyward as if searching for meaning among the clouds. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“What do you mean?”
“She,” Aletha pointed up. “When she puts you back together, you will once again be a giant, won't you? Legends tell of people more than twice our size. You’re practically there already! How much larger will you be when we get home?”
He only nodded.
“And me?”
“You are not one of the giants. I know that now.”
Her eyes traveled to Chor, then back to Galen. “What will happen to me? You are taking me to a place where people don't even look like me. Why would anyone think I’d be happy there? I’m going to help you fight some stupid war against people I didn't even
know existed and then what?”
“I swear to you, I believed the La’il would somehow change your shape as well. It just never occurred to me to wonder how she’d do this. I don’t often see limits to her abilities.”
“Is it possible that I, too, have another half on the Homeworld Perhaps I can be restored, as well!”
“No,” he sighed. “I don’t think that’s likely. Before you left the village, I had a long conversation with Minh. You are not of the Homeworld. You were born here, and your parents were, too. Your talents are the result of some genetic coincidence making you the balance of power between the Homeworld and Chenoweth. You have no family on the Homeworld. We’ve both been deceived about that. After I found this out I was coming to tell you everything, but you had left.”
Aletha shook her head, her movement barely perceptible. “No,” she said. “That can’t be! I’m a weapon? That’s all? I have no other purpose?”
“Of course you do! You can do many things on the Homeworld, once Chenoweth has been dealt with. Think of all the things you’ve already learned here, with very little chi. With proper training you—”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Enough!” She began to say something, then didn't, began to move, then didn't. He thought she would cry, but then she didn’t. The things she had learned in this hour had stunned her so completely that he almost wished that she would cry. Or shout at him. Anything but this.
“Aletha,” he said finally. “I can’t ask you to return with me. This isn’t your fight any more.”
Her eyes were on Chor’s immobile face. “You can’t return without me because you can’t open the seal. And even if you could, La’il would kill you for failing to bring me down there.”
“She’d come up with something worse than that.”