Missing Piece

by Robert Priest

  The Nains by now had laid aside their picks and were holding their torches high to give Xemion light, watching him with a mixture of fear and excitement. “Go! Go!” they called out. Others had stopped their toils and were looking on in amazement. But with each repeat of the spell, he was becoming weaker. One more step, one more spell, and he came to the broken body of the prince. Just beyond it, emanating from between a split in a thick sheet of crystal, he heard a voice, quite close, shout “Get me out of here!” He peered through the opening, and there, standing, gasping and teetering slightly in the alcove, was Tharfen.

  “Get me out of here,” she repeated, and from the roughness of her voice Xemion assumed she had been screaming. She coughed. She had probably breathed in a lot of dust, but otherwise she seemed unhurt.

  Xemion felt weaker now, but he shoved his hand through and into the alcove and spoke the spell one more time. He felt the crystal crack again and split enough for her to squeeze through.

  Neither of them said anything. They just looked at each other by the light of the Nain’s torches flickering down on them. Xemion began to shake and nearly lost his balance. Tharfen took his hand and he felt a surge of strength. “Thank you,” she said, her voice ragged. Still holding his hand and half supporting him, she led him up out of the crack. There was a lot of cheering from disparate points about the beach as they emerged. A cry went up. “Tharfen lives! She lives! Tharfen lives!”

  Slowly, too weary to speak, they walked across the battlefield to the cliff, where they were lifted up to the city by rope and pulley. Having fought in several campaigns previously, Tharfen’s heart had become somewhat hardened to the sights of the battlefield. But tonight’s gory scene was an exception. Seeing the bodies of the slain and wounded, whether those of the enemy or of the defenders, gripped her heart. She did her best to hide these feelings, but suddenly she stopped, and a look of great sadness came over her face as she gazed down on one of the fallen. He was lying on his back; his arms stretched wide, an arrow through his neck. It was the poet. For the first time she saw his withered left hand. She remembered how she had chided him to take up arms instead of the pen, and once again guilt flooded her.

  “Did you know him?” Xemion asked quietly.

  “Not very well,” she answered. There was a slight rough tremble in her voice and she coughed. “He claimed to love me, and I was … I was unkind to him.” To the body on the ground she said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “What is that in his right hand?” Xemion asked. Tharfen knelt down, pried open the already stiffening fingers, and gently tugged out a folded piece of paper. As she opened it and silently read it, tears rolled from her eyes. “I told him never to use the word love in any poem about me,” she told Xemion in a whisper. He looked at her and finally saw that she was no longer the child he had played with in Ilde. For the first time he was able to see that she had become an impressive young woman. She handed him the note and he read it.

  There is no **** to fill this empty space,

  no worthy word, no numeral or text.

  Except for one forbidden, in disgrace,

  too simple for a concept so complex.

  I won’t say ****. No, I forbid my soul

  to conjure such a thing in but a line.

  I’d rather leave the brutal silence whole

  than use some blunted sound to speak of mine.

  But still this **** will not go un-professed

  for want of something simple as a word.

  In between the words in silence it’s expressed,

  in emptiness its echo may be heard,

  and that goes on eternally and true,

  though I am gone, my **** is still with you.

  Xemion looked into her eyes and saw the tears there, and he felt it not just from the piece of her that was inside of him, but from his own heart, too.

  “What was his name?”

  “I never asked,” she said guiltily.

  One of the wounded lying nearby, having overheard them, said “Everybody just called him Poet.”

  Tharfen reached to take the poem back, and quietly said “Goodbye, Poet.” She almost bent down to leave a parting kiss on his pale cheek, but just then Xemion said “Hang on.” He grabbed the paper back from her and turned it over. “There’s something else on the other side. It’s from Torgee. He has sent us a message.”

  “He is alive, then!” she exclaimed, relieved. “I knew he would be. I knew Torgee wouldn’t be dead.” More tears slid down her cheeks. “Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said looking up at the sky.

  “He says that Montither and a troop of kwislings are on their way to … to where I have been keeping Saheli.”

  “You have been keeping Saheli?”

  Despite his weakness, Xemion was feeling a new sense of urgency. “Yes, yes. But she’s no longer there.” He sensed Tharfen was angry. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk it. She is not there now, though, but the books are.”

  Tharfen barely had time to feel the rush of relief that Saheli was alive. “The books?” she asked.

  “Thousands of them. They all came out of the locket library I brought from Ilde. They are the last of our literature, and Montither will definitely burn them.”

  With everything she had just been through and all the news she had just received, Tharfen was experiencing a great turmoil of feelings. But there was no time for reflection. “We have to stop him,” she said fiercely.

  Xemion looked so desperate, but he was stronger with Tharfen there. He was worn out after the output of magic, but the piece of him inside her was fresh.

  “I’m glad you said ‘we’ because I’m going to need you, Tharfen.”

  She knew just what he meant. He took her hand and he felt the strength of her and the strength of his missing piece flowing into him. Quietly murmuring a spell, he hurled both of them like two spears in one hand toward Vallaine’s tower.

  62

  Full Saheli

  Holding a torch to light the way, Saheli strode through the smoke, through the dead and the dying. She was scared and worried, but for the first time in many years she was almost fully herself and that felt good. She zigged and zagged, stepping over limbs and puddles, trusting the sense that told her Torgee was nearby, and still alive. She finally found him close to the west gate. He was sitting on the ground, his back up against the wall where the poet had been. He was slumped forward and she couldn’t quite see his face, but she knew it was him. The feeling was so strong in her now it almost had a pulse. She swooped in and took his hand. It was still warm. “Torgee! Torgee!” she cried. She planted the torch in the ground, then leaned over and kissed him. Instantly he opened his eyes and looked at her. That part of him that had been so close to stepping onto the raft and disappearing forever over the waters stepped back now, tugged by something that was anchored deep in the world of the living.

  “Torgee. Torgee. Don’t die,” she begged.

  “I won’t,” he answered in a whisper, and for the first time she felt her heart beat. Not in her, but in the piece of her in him.

  His voice was low and it sounded as though it were striking two slightly different tones at once. “I felt you coming alive,” he whispered, looking intently into her eyes, his face drawn with pain.

  “I felt you dying,” she said. “That’s why I came to get you. Xemion saved me and now I’m going to save you.”

  Soon after, Mr. Stilpkin and two of his apprentices arrived with a stretcher and gently lifted Torgee onto it. Saheli walked along with them as they headed back to the infirmary. “I’m going to have to stay close to you,” she said, smiling.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her.

  “Oh, it’s not just for your sake,” she said. “I’m not sure my heart will go on beating if it gets too far from the piece of it that’s still inside you.”

 
He didn’t know what it was. Something had changed in her. But whatever it was it made him love her more.

  63

  Close

  When Xemion and Tharfen came down on the ledge of the seventh-floor window of Vallaine’s tower, they could see Montither and his troops below. They had hacked back the thorn bushes and were in the process of stripping the branches from a huge felled tree with the obvious intent of using it as a battering ram. It was growing ever darker, but Xemion and Tharfen’s arrival did not go unnoticed. Someone unleashed an arrow from below, but they dodged it and ducked inside the window.

  Xemion glanced over at the withered body of Bargest in the corner of the room. Standing on the table beside his once loyal dog sat an enormous black raven about three feet high. Xemion recognized the brilliant black eyes that fixed him with their intent stare. “Bargest!”

  The bird cawed “Bargest.”

  “He’s been turned into a raven. He used to be my war dog,” Xemion explained. He looked happy to see this transformation, but his voice was noticeably trembling. “I think I’m going into spellshock,” he told Tharfen urgently. “We have to hurry.”

  He was so weak that Tharfen had to hold him up to steady him. They made their way over to the book-lined wall. The locket still hung from a nail there, its two halves open, its insides bare but for the tiny empty slots that had once contained the miniature versions of all the books. With a shaking hand Xemion lifted the locket by its silver chain and held it in his palm. Still holding onto Tharfen with his other hand, drawing strength from her, he began to speak a spell, but soon his voice tapered off and he looked desperately at Tharfen. From down below came the first loud crash of the battering ram. It shook the whole tower.

  “If I say this spell and shrink the books, I will not have the strength to save us.”

  She looked at him and saw that he was willing to give her an out. “I’ve been saved enough for one day,” she said wryly, “and besides, if I had to choose, I’d sooner die here fighting to save Elphaerean literature than sealed up inside that crystal tomb.”

  She looked around the large room, her eyes scanning the shelves. Xemion had arranged the books alphabetically by author. One name caught her eye: Anonymous. Again the battering ram beat at the door seven storeys below.

  “Just one moment,” she said. She withdrew the sheet of paper with the poet’s last poem on it, removed the book from its place on the shelf, inserted the poem between its pages, and put the book back. She nodded to Xemion and he understood.

  “We will have to be very close to each other,” he said. Self-consciously the two of them embraced and Xemion positioned the opened locket in his palm. He looked into Tharfen’s eyes. He was cold but she was fiery hot as he began to intone the spell. When he finished speaking the spell, nothing happened. He slumped against her and she could feel his body shaking.

  “It’s too late. I’m too weak,” he said.

  “No, you’re not. We just have to be more open,” she told him, “like Mr. Stilpkin said. The piece of you in me is still strong.” She hated doing this but she was too tired to resist what she knew had to be done. “Look, Xemion, I’m sorry I told that old teacher you could read,” she said. And she meant it.

  “You were brave to come after me to warn me about the examiner,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I hit you with stones. I’m sorry I started hating the stories.”

  It was hard for them to keep eye contact. It made them both feel so unguarded. But they had to be unguarded right now.

  “I liked you when you were twelve years old,” he said.

  She couldn’t help it. This statement touched her and tears welled in her eyes.

  The tower shook with the impact of the battering ram. It took everything in her not to tear her eyes away from him, but the spell was so close to happening. If she could just be a little more open to her truth.

  “Everything changed when Saheli came,” she said.

  “I had no right to let you think she had died.”

  “You changed so much when she came. It hurt.”

  “I couldn’t help it. It was like I was under a spell.”

  It was taking all of Tharfen’s courage to continue. “Well, if you really must know, it broke my heart.”

  “I’m sorry, Tharfen.”

  “Well, you were clearly meant for Saheli.” Again the battering ram struck and still the spell remained stalled. “I hope you will forgive me,” she said.

  “But she’s a different Saheli now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now that the missing piece of her returned to her, she’s changed. She’s someone else now.”

  “And?”

  “And that special feeling I had for her is gone. It is for her, too, I can tell.”

  They looked at each other for a long time, about as open as two people with their history could be. Still there was no movement from the books.

  She had no choice but to say what she said next. “It is possible that I love you,” she said a little angrily, blushing.

  He swallowed hard and blushed and it came to him as a complete surprise that she might be his beloved. As weak as he was, he was flabbergasted. It was like an eclipse had finally ended. He wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t. He wanted to say that it was possible that he loved her too, but he didn’t need to. The books began to move.

  It started slowly. Books that not so long ago had burst out of other books now shrank back into them. These host books then shrank and returned to whatever volume they had burst from so that more and more rapidly the colourful array of spines grew narrower and narrower until there were fewer than thirty books left. Speaking quietly but steadily, Xemion drew the books into his palm, where they rested, hardly larger than fish scales. He spoke one more phrase and with it these almost transparent mini volumes of Elphaerean literature flew into the tiny slots in the locket library. When this was done he closed the locket and slumped against Tharfen.

  “Give them to the raven,” he told her. He straightened up and held the locket out to her.

  “The raven,” the raven repeated.

  Beginning to shake a little herself, Tharfen walked over to the raven, opened the chain that held the locket library, and placed it gently around the bird’s neck.

  “To Mr. Stilpkin,” Xemion said.

  “Mr. Stilpkin,” the raven cawed almost questioningly.

  Tharfen lifted the raven to the window ledge. “To the man with the green hand,” she said, and pointed in the direction of Mr. Stilpkin’s hospital. The raven paused a moment.

  “You have been the best dog in the tower,” Xemion told him. “Now you must be the best raven.”

  “The best raven.”

  With that, the large bird lifted off of the window ledge and flew into the sky. Down below, Montither’s crew was repeatedly driving their battering ram full force against the tower door.

  “I could stand to the side of the door and kill them one by one as they come up the stairs,” Tharfen said. “But if they should get by me, what will you do?”

  “I can still fight,” Xemion said.

  “It doesn’t look like it,” she said. Again the battering ram hammered at the door. The door was strong, they knew, but it wouldn’t be able to withstand many more blows.

  “I’m drained, but I’m not done,” he said. The shakiness of his voice belied the proud look in his eyes.

  Tharfen looked to the window. “Can you climb?”

  64

  Atathu’s Truth

  Lirodello had been swept back from the clifftop with the first charge of the enemy from the siege machines, but he had gone into full battle thrall immediately. Just as it had been during the Second Battle of Phaer Bay, his knife was deadly. He moved like his lithe younger self, deftly and with sublime accuracy. All down the promontory, precision lunge by p
recision slash, he took a heavy toll on the invaders. Arrows had found him and steel blades and rapiers came at him, Titans charged and spears veered toward him. Many a man would have been stopped, but Lirodello had always been unusually strong and resilient.

  Even now, his body wracked with the pain and fatigue of the battle, he could not let himself lie back on the ground. He was bleeding, yes, from several wounds, but he was still sitting up, his back against the wall at the foot of Phaer Point.

  Wincing at the pain from a wound on his thigh, he slowly got up and made his way back toward the cliff. “Atathu!” he called out. He heard other voices amongst the wounded and dying, but not hers. It wasn’t until he got back close to the cliff’s edge that he finally found her. There was a great circle of fallen warriors around her and she lay at the centre of it, her sword still gripped in one hand, the other holding a harpoon that had pierced her right shoulder.

  She smiled when she saw him.

  “Atathu!” He limped toward her and knelt down to hold her hand.

  “I didn’t think I could be so strong,” she said roughly. He squeezed her hand. “I thought I was hard before, but I was nothing. I was nothing all my life until last night, Lirodello.” The tears rolled freely down her face. “They said you would never love me, but I knew you would. Without the truth of your love at last, I would have lived in vain. I would have died useless. But now I die strong.”

  Lirodello remained silent, his bloodied face awash in tears of his own. Shaking his head, he held her in his arms as her hand released its grip on the harpoon and her head fell to one side.