by Victor Poole
"What?" he asked, looking spooked.
"Are those precious stones?" Ajalia demanded, pointing to the base of the dragon temple. Delmar turned red again.
"Um," he said. Ajalia leapt off her horse, and bent low against the ground. She pushed her fingers against the gleaming stones, which were green, and red, and blue.
"Where did you find these?" Ajalia asked. She pressed her hands over the precious gems, which were cool against her touch. She put her face down, and tried to see how deep the stones went. A part of her was thinking of digging them out of the wall, and taking them into one of her hoards. She stood up, and looked along the wall of the dragon temple. Her mouth dropped open at the hundreds of gleaming gems that lined the wall of the building.
"Delmar," Ajalia said. Delmar was blushing furiously. He pretended that she hadn't spoken, and led the horse away, towards the back of the dragon temple. "Delmar!" Ajalia shouted, running after him.
"I only used the parts of the stone that were the nicest, and a lot of it is in one piece," Delmar said quickly. "I used the sunlight that was leftover on the mountain. There was a lot of energy from the sun, just lying around on the rocks. It wasn't very hard. I only pushed the sunlight into the rocks, and I stayed away from all the houses. I didn't hurt anyone, I swear."
"Delmar, is that gold?" Ajalia demanded. She pointed at the roof of the temple, where a gleam of ruddy yellow showed in the sunlight.
"Maybe, I don't know, don't you want to see the back stables?" Delmar said, looking a little scared. "Look, I made the stables bigger, because I know you like horses," Delmar said loudly, and he pulled the black horse around the corner of the new gray dragon temple. Ajalia, feeling strange sensations in her bones, followed him. Her whole mind was a blank. She could not think of what was going to happen now. Her whole plan for the future had been predicated on the idea of relative poverty; she had meant to bring her master here, to guide the people gently into a more stable and prosperous life. She had meant to teach Delmar slowly about money, and how to create profits, and savings, from his transactions among the people. She had meant to do many things, and none of her plans had involved Delmar's apparently effortless ability to draw raw gold and precious gems out of the earth, and to shape them into elegant buildings.
Ajalia felt her shoulders and her elbows going into a tingling state of numb shock. She reminded herself to breathe, and she fixed her eyes on the black horse's tail. I am still sleeping, Ajalia told herself sternly. I am in the farm palace, and I am sleeping. I have overextended myself, she told herself, and I am overwrought, and Maren will come in and chastise me into eating some filling pudding. Ajalia saw the black horse vanish into a dark shadow, and she blinked, and looked around. Black, elegant walls were threaded through with veins of raw gold, and precious gems shone like hundreds of eyes from every surface of the stables.
"Oh, my," Ajalia said. She could no longer feel her legs. She heard Delmar calling out from inside the stables; he told her that he was going to unsaddle the horse. Ajalia tried to laugh, because she thought that the situation was absurd, but only a dry gurgle came out of her throat.
"Are you okay?" Delmar asked, coming out from under the stable roof, and staring at her.
"Yes," Ajalia said. Her voice was dry. She turned, and walked on trembling limbs towards the back of the dragon palace. I am seeing things, she told herself. None of this is real, she thought, and she walked towards the back entrance, and went inside. She began to climb the stairs, and her knees were shaking. I am going to go into my own room, Ajalia told herself, and I am going to lie down until I feel better.
She felt her chin and her cheeks shaking a little; she put a hand to her face, and her palm was dry, and warm. I'm not sick, she told herself, and I'm not crazy. I'm tired, she assured herself. I am very, very tired, and as soon as I have had some rest, I will go and find Delmar.
Ajalia put one hand against the smooth wall of the stairwell, and she felt a glassy texture below her fingers. She looked at the wall, and a crazy laugh built up in her chest. I'm not crazy, Ajalia told herself. Delmar made this, she said in her mind, and then she turned her eyes away from the blue stones that danced through the walls like drops of sparkling rain, and she went quickly up the stairs, and to the place where her room had been in the white dragon temple in Slavithe.
The doors of this room were nicer; they had been filled with two carvings of horses that stood guard with their ears pricked, and their faces turned out into the hall. The carvings were only about an inch deep; Ajalia ran her fingers over the dark gray stone, and touched the eyes of the nearest horse. She opened one door, and stood in the darkened hallway, asking herself if she actually felt ready to go into the room beyond.
Delmar made this for me, Ajalia told herself, and she felt both like crying and laughing. My room at home only had one door, Ajalia thought, and she pressed her palm against the horse on the door that was still closed. She pushed open this door as well, and the sunlight that burst over the railing of her open balcony filled up the hall where she stood.
Ajalia stepped into the room that Delmar had made for her, and she felt as if she had moved into a palace from a story. The walls were threaded through with gold, and with spun rings of silver. A series of red gems, in the shape of tiny horses, had been laid in along the edges of the walls, and the floor was coated with a substance that Ajalia suspected was crushed emeralds, laid into the same gray stone that formed the walls and ceiling.
She sat down in the middle of the floor, and stared out at the balcony. Green tendrils of growth were visible at either side of the balcony, where the slopes of the mountain ran down around the depression where the dragon temple lay. Ajalia could see an edge of the city of Talbos, and the blue gleam of the ocean beyond.
She did not know what to think. She did not know how she felt. She wanted all of life to slow down for a while; things, she told herself, kept happening around her, and she did not feel as though she had had time to process any of them.
She began to think through the things that Delmar had told her. He had taken the top of the mountain, and made a land bridge to Saroyan. Ajalia still felt entirely unable to wrap her mind around this idea. How, she asked herself, was that possible? She wondered if she had heard Delmar wrong. Perhaps, she thought, he had meant that he had played with the cords of energy that ran through the sky above the sea that lay between the land of Leopath and the coast of Saroyan.
But, Ajalia told herself, Delmar had also said that Leed and Philas had gone over to Saroyan on this land bridge. She put her face into her hands, and rubbed at her eyes. She heard footsteps coming up the hall, and into the room behind her.
"Is that you?" she asked.
"Yes," Delmar said. "I took care of your horse." Ajalia did not take her hands away from her face.
"How did you do this?" she asked. Delmar looked at her, and he put his hands down into his pockets.
"Magic," he said. "Does it bother you?" Ajalia heard a rim of nervousness in Delmar's voice. She looked up at him.
"It's perfect," she told him. "I love it. I just feel crazy right now."
Delmar came and sat next to her on the floor.
"I put your desk there," he told her, pointing to a stone desk that lay near the balcony.
"Yes," Ajalia said. She turned to look at Delmar. His beard, she saw, had grown in thickly over the last few days, and it curled now, like a reddish-gold bush, over his jaw. His blue eyes were turned on her, and he was watching her tentatively. "How did you shape so much stone?" Ajalia asked him.
"I carried the dragon temple over to here," Delmar said, "and I made a copy. I made a shape of the dragon temple, with magic, and then I drew up the stone inside the mountain, and pushed it into the shape I had made of the temple. Do you like it?" he asked again.
"Delmar," Ajalia said. She felt dizzy. "There are little red horses, Delmar," she said, pointing at the walls.
"Yes," he said anxiously.
"But where did you find stones
like this?" she asked, turning to him earnestly. Delmar looked uncomfortable. He shrugged.
"I found some of them," he said. "I made some of them."
"But how is it possible to make gems?" she asked. "And how did you make those pictures of horses on my doors? How did you do all of this?"
Delmar was turning pink again.
"I did it with magic," he said. "And," he added hesitantly, "I did it mostly for you."
"What do you mean?" she asked. Delmar cleared his throat, and gathered Ajalia's hands into his.
"Ajalia," Delmar said seriously. Ajalia felt her heart drop down into her shoes. She could not say anything at all. "Will you be my wife, Jay?" Delmar asked, and Ajalia, who could no longer keep herself from smiling, launched herself at Delmar.
Mop was exploring the dragon temple when Delmar dragged Ajalia down the stairs to show her everything. He had talked Ajalia out of consummating their love on the spot, barely, by explaining that he wanted to marry her in the East, and that he was hoping to buy her from her master.
"Well, that's very romantic," Ajalia said, desisting in her efforts at once.
"Really?" Delmar asked eagerly. "I wasn't sure if you would be offended at my wanting to buy you."
"I think that's very romantic," Ajalia said. "Now, when are you going to be made king?"
Delmar laughed, and showed her the rest of the dragon temple. He told her that her boys in Slavithe had helped to keep people away from the temple there, so that there would be no accidental casualties when he put the white stone temple back in its place in the ground.
"Leed came back to Talbos with me," Delmar told Ajalia. "He said that he had had some more thoughts about Philas, and that he was going to come and watch me build the rest of the temple here in Talbos."
"Did you fly there, and back?" Ajalia asked. She thought that Delmar was not answering her about the king matter because he was embarrassed, but she was not ready to ask him why he did not want to say. She was holding his hand, and looking at him, and thinking about how lucky she was, and how handsome Delmar was.
"Yes," Delmar said. He glanced at her, and then he smiled. "I was going to not tell you," he said, "but I really want to. We're going to have the coronation party over the water. It's going to be a surprise. Philas is going over to Saroyan, and Leed says he'll bring him back tomorrow, and we'll be crowned together."
Ajalia burst out laughing. She had a sudden image of Delmar and Philas standing next to each other, like little boys at a birthday party, being handed their crowns, and glaring solemnly out at the assembled people.
"What?" Delmar asked, looking with some consternation at Ajalia. She tried to restrain herself, but the idea of Delmar and Philas being twin kings was too much for her. She sat down on the steps, and put her face in her hands. "I don't know why it's so funny," Delmar told her. "There used to be a great accord between the two lands."
"Was there really?" Ajalia asked. Delmar nodded.
"The ships from Slavithe used to go there for the coronations," Delmar said, "and several princesses of Saroyan have married Thief Lords here. I'm probably distantly related to Philas, though it's so far back that it hardly counts."
"You told me that Tree sent soldiers to Saroyan," Ajalia said, "and the king of Talbos did as well. Was that king Talbos, or king Fernos?"
"Talbos sent his commanding men," Delmar said. "That was before the whole business of my father, and the rift in the royal family."
"Why are your cousins' names the same as your uncles' names?" Ajalia asked suddenly. She had been wondering about this ever since she had been introduced to the young men in the wooden palace that lay on the far slope of the black mountain, but something had told her that it would be seen as massively indelicate to mention the fact that Delmar's uncle seemed to have named all three of his sons after the princes in the palace. "And," Ajalia added swiftly, "where are Fallor and Elan now? And your aunt," she added.
"Elan has joined our side," Delmar recited, "Fallor turned ugly after he found out his father was dead, and is in prison, possibly permanently, and my aunt Corintha has gone to Saroyan to live in permanent retirement."
Delmar looked at Ajalia, and she saw that he was hoping she would approve of his efficiency. She saw a gleam in his eyes, and told herself that he was about to explain the oddly-named cousins. A shudder of satisfaction thunked in her heart, and she settled in to listen.
"The man who presides in the wooden palace is my great uncle, Gregor. Gregor and Maren are brother and sister to king Fernos. Talbos was their father, the old king, who, in his old age, passed the throne to Fernos." Delmar drew a deep breath. "After my father was banished, and sold as a slave into the Saroyan markets, my great-grandfather Talbos split off the remainder of his family from king Fernos. My great-grandfather built the wooden palace, just before he died, and made my great uncle Gregor swear that he would restore the honor of the family by overshadowing the children of Fernos with his own sons." Delmar looked expectantly at Ajalia, who did not know what to say. "Gregor had only one son then, and he renamed him Simon," Delmar added. "Simon died early, and when Gregor had three more sons, he named them after my uncles. He never had any daughters, so they call one of the house jackens Corintha, to replace my aunt. My great uncle Gregor thought it would be funny to name the other house jacken Fernos, and they never accepted Lerond as family at all, so when Corintha married him they didn't name anything after him. That whole side of the family lives separate from the rest of Talbos, to protest the reign of Fernos. They were all furious with my grandfather, for selling my father as a slave, instead of killing him. Some of my uncles have gone after my father before, in Slavithe, but they've never gotten away with it. They all think I'm pretty great now, though," Delmar added, frowning. Ajalia got the strong impression, from Delmar's tone, that he did not approve of his relations' attitude towards the death of his father.
Delmar took Ajalia through the rooms of the dragon temple. She was relieved to find that most of the walls were bare and plain; Delmar seemed to have concentrated most of his energies, in the way of decorating with precious stones, in her bedroom, on the roof, and in the stables. There were pieces of gems lodged through many of the walls, but these pieces were rough-shaped stones, and did not shine quite so much as the gems that Ajalia had seen in her own bedroom.
She asked him again how he had done it, and he launched into a detailed explanation of the composition of stone beneath the black mountain, and of the way he had shaped some of the lights below the ground into shining gems. Ajalia told him that she was impressed with his ability to make stones gleam with clear color, and Delmar, making a rather poo-pooing kind of noise, explained how easy it was to do so. Ajalia, as she listened to him talk, thought that it did not sound easy at all.
"I have been studying this kind of thing for a long time," Delmar added, glancing at her sideways as they came through the back of the dragon temple. Mop had attached himself to them somewhere along the great hall, and he bounced behind them now, uttering noises like a small and vicious monkey. "All of those books that I kept from my father," Delmar said, "were about corrupt versions of magic, but there were little pieces that were true, even if they were turned upside down and inside out. I've been thinking about those books for a long time, and I'm starting to work out for myself how to use the magic."
"I hadn't thought about doing that," Ajalia said. "I thought you said that the other old book I got for you had magic like this?" She waved at the green mountainside, which surrounded the back enclosure of the dragon temple on every side.
"It did," Delmar said. "It told about shaping water below the ground, and making soil. It didn't talk about the gems," Delmar added with a sly smile. "The bad books talk about that, though, and their ways don't work, but it gave me the idea that it was possible."
"I'm not quite following you," Ajalia said, trying to untangle her thoughts. She wanted to nail down for herself what Delmar had done. She leaned on the ornate fence of black stone that Delmar ha
d constructed in front of the stables, and stared at the black horse. The black horse was nosing contentedly through a small heap of wiry grass. "What is that?" she asked, pointing at the grass. Delmar pretended not to see what she was pointing at. "What is that?" she asked again. "Where did it come from?"
"I made it," Delmar said, his lips barely moving. Ajalia stared at Delmar. "Would you like to see?" Delmar asked in a strained voice.
"Yes," Ajalia said. Delmar coughed, and started to blush. He nodded towards the horse.
"There, see?" Delmar said. Ajalia looked. A second heap of wiry grass now lay beside the first. She blinked.
"How did you do that?" she asked. Delmar shrugged.
"I put some sunlight into the ground. There are bits of grass there. So then it grows." Delmar looked steadily at Ajalia, but his cheeks looked as though they were burning.
"You can't seriously tell me that there are grass seeds in that rock," Ajalia said, pointing at the black stone that formed the floor of the stables where the horse stood.
"Well, there aren't," Delmar mumbled.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"There aren't any seeds," Delmar said. The redness of his skin was climbing now into his hairline. Ajalia had seen Chad blush this much, but she had never seen Delmar look so embarrassed before.
"Delmar, are you creating life with magic?" Ajalia asked. Delmar made an inarticulate noise with his lips.
"Maybe," he said, when she stared at him for several minutes. "Possibly," he said. "I guess."
"I need to go sit down," Ajalia said, and she walked to the pavilion that lay behind the dragon temple, and sat on the bench that ran around the rim. Delmar followed her slowly, and put his foot against the bench.
"Are you mad at me?" Delmar asked cautiously. Ajalia looked at him, and she tried to figure out why she would be mad.
"I'm not mad," Ajalia said. Delmar was watching her. He sat down next to her, and folded his hands together. "Did the old books you used to read talk about creating life?" she asked finally.