All the kortexem assembled were backing away; a momentary look of annoyance crossed Fregren’s features, quickly controlled.
“If you will collect your sword,” Fregren said, “we can enter the school and get on with the . . . celebration.”
Something about the way he said it caused ice to touch Thal’s heart. Blakstar removed will-giver from the paving stones and slid it back into its sheath. The company mounted and rode past the statues, still shocked by what they had witnessed; Thal saw their eyes darting to the huge statues now flanking the entrance; they rode past the imposing forms of Sir Karble and the young kortexi who rode with them, entering the school and home of the kortexi order.
Chapter 10
One obscure branch of the maghi order is the alchemist, although neither the white, nor the black claim to be the source of this group, as neither sees the alchemist as a wielder of elemental forces. There is some speculation that they are an offshoot of the methaghi, but each of the three factions among the gray order is silent when queried. . . . It is possible that they come from one of the kailu orders, since they are makers of all poisons and noxious diseases, concocted through their strange experiments. . . .
from The Higher Orders, written by order of the Fereghen, atno 1739
“I’m glad she’s still asleep,” Tevvy said, looking around the stable warily. “No one knows about this but my father and I.” He moved between the stalls, holding a small, shielded lantern in front of him.
Rokwolf followed him with Sutugno, still sleeping and slung over his shoulder. “Not as glad as I am.” Rokwolf mumbled under his breath.
“She really thinks that you two have already had sex?” Tevvy asked, stopping next to a stall with several barrels stacked inside. “This is it,” he noted, doing something to one of the barrels out of Rokwolf’s view.
Had Tevvy looked, he would have seen Rokwolf’s ears flush. “Yes,” Rokwolf admitted, “she has a memory of every last detail, but I swear nothing happened!” he finished with vehemence.
Tevvy looked back at his seklesi companion. “No need to get angry about it,” he said, “I believe you, but you have to admit the circumstances are, uh, suspicious.” The barrels lifted of their own accord, revealing a hidden stairway.
“That’s what frightens me, Tevvy,” Rokwolf noted, his voice resigned. He slipped past the awemi and started down the steep stairs.
Tevvy followed, pulling the trap door closed behind him, then he moved past Rokwolf with the lantern to light their way. The stairs spiraled once, ending in a narrow passage that went forward about twenty feet before turning to their right.
“But what frightens me even more,” Rokwolf went on in a whisper, “is that, just as I was falling asleep, I think something happened: there was a flash of purple light, then I started dreaming, and she figured prominently in many of those dreams.”
“Erotic?” Tevvy asked.
Rokwolf nodded. “But they all occurred in the strangest place,” he added, “the swamp.”
Tevvy shrugged. “It’s been on your mind, and mine, for that matter,” he noted, “so that’s no surprise.” Tevvy stopped and looked up at his taller companion. “I do not know how much you have been told about physical relations between a male and a female, and I’m not sure how much of what I know about awemam will apply to wetham, but once an awema gets her first taste of sex, she becomes almost insatiable, or so I have been told. The same is true of an awemi, although not to the same degree; if a wetha is similar, and she totally believes that you have had sex,” he went on, pointing to Sutugno, “then she will be, how can I put this, demanding until you give her what she thinks you already have, again, and again, and again, and she will not take ‘no’ for an answer.”
“I know,” Rokwolf replied, his face tragic. “I tried to explain this to my twin and his wife, but I do not believe they were listening, since they were more concerned with getting her away from Klaybear, whom she wants to kill.”
“Seriously?” Tevvy looked surprised.
Rokwolf nodded. “She was supposed to be married the day after Shigmar was destroyed,” he added, “and the kailu she was going to marry was one of those killed by the orthek . . . ,” he left the thought unfinished.
“. . . Klaybear enacted,” Tevvy finished, “I get it. So her mind is unbalanced and has been tampered with,” he noted, then pointed to the bracelets she wore. “Maybe those special bracelets will help mitigate some of the effects, since you said Klare and Klaybear tried to heal the damage to her mind but could not fix all of it, nor could they remove the spurious memory.” Tevvy thought for a moment. “Any idea what you will do if she wakes up wanting to satisfy certain desires?”
Rokwolf touched his pouch. “I took some of my twin’s sleeping potions . . . ,” he started to say, but Tevvy interrupted him.
“That’s only a delay tactic,” the awemi said, “and will probably make things worse.” Tevvy paused for a moment, thinking. “You have two basic choices,” he went on, “give in or get rid of her.” Rokwolf made a choking sound when he heard this. “Since you talk like you do not want to give in, then we must consider ways of getting rid of her; my father has connections with the slave trade, and she is attractive enough that she could be sold to the red kailum as kara, although she would probably run away or be killed before they made much use of her.” The seklesi continued to make choking sounds. “No? I also have access to many compounds that can introduce a fatal disease of your choice, or maybe a poison: there are several that are relatively painless; there is also a Green Beast next door to the school here; I could get you some of their tainted ale, then you could leave her there: sooner or later she would be taken to feed the morgle.”
Rokwolf spluttered for several moments before he finally found his voice. “Have you lost your mind?” he hissed. “What you are proposing is to murder her, or to sell her into slavery, which is as good as killing her; are you mad?”
“Not at all,” Tevvy replied. “I was being realistic about the situation. . . .”
“But I cannot, would not, ever do any of those things,” Rokwolf protested, “so don’t even suggest them.”
“. . . and logical,” Tevvy went on, “with which you appear to be having difficulty at this moment, something that astonishes me, because, in all the time I have known you, I’ve never seen you behave this way. What this tells me is that you have more feelings for her than you are willing to admit, remarkable in itself, since you met her for the first time hours ago.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Rokwolf admitted, “remember that she is Klare’s best friend, so I met Sutugno the first time I met Klare. The girls always claimed that Sutugno came along when I visited Klaybear so that I did not feel like the ‘odd wethi out,’ or so they called it. I always thought, at least later on, it was to make Rebeth jealous; now I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?” Tevvy asked.
“As my twin and Klare became more involved with each other,” he went on, “we were left more on our own; sometimes we talked, and sometimes we did, well, other things.”
Tevvy laughed softly. “You did what all young people do: you explored.”
“We did nothing against the vows of our orders,” Rokwolf protested, “we spent lots of time kissing, at least until she became more involved with Rebeth, and I, with Marilee, or so I thought, but we never kissed like that, in fact,” he went on, feeling sheepish, “we never kissed at all.”
Tevvy laughed again. “That’s because you were young, at first, and later, she was meant for another,” he said, “your older brother, Delgart, although I do not think either one of them has any idea, and that makes it quite amusing, to me anyway.” Rokwolf felt furious; Tevvy suddenly apologized. “I am sorry, my friend; I did not mean to upset you: I want to help you with your current problem. I know it sounds harsh, but you should forget about your former interest: you have more immediate and pressing–pun intended–concerns.”
“Oh, that’s very funny,” Ro
kwolf noted sarcastically.
“Sorry,” Tevvy said, “I couldn’t resist. All joking aside, you really only have two choices: give in to her and break one of your vows, or you can make it ‘legal’ and within the bounds of your vows.”
Rokwolf groaned. “Not you, too!” he exclaimed.
“What? Do you mean I’m not the only one to make this suggestion?” Tevvy asked, sounding surprised.
“Klare said almost the same thing,” Rokwolf replied tragically.
“In this case, and probably most others,” Tevvy said, “she is right. Look, as the head of an order, my father has the legal authority to join the two of you, especially since it is inter-order; we could make it a private affair and keep it secret, if that makes it any easier.” He reached out and clasped Rokwolf’s forearm.
Rokwolf composed his face, making it unreadable. “I’ll consider it,” he replied in a noncommittal voice.
Tevvy slipped silently into the dark room, opening and closing the door without a sound; he glided across the floor to the bed where two people slept peacefully, unaware of his presence, stopping next to the larger sleeping figure. A dagger appeared in his hand, and he leaned over and held it to the figure’s throat.
“Caught you,” Tevvy hissed, and the eyes snapped open.
“Did you?” the figure asked. “Look down.”
Tevvy looked down and saw the figure’s hand holding a dagger to Tevvy’s hip.
“Aah, Dad,” Tevvy said, pulling his dagger away and sheathing it, “you always trick me with the old dagger under the sheet ploy.”
Meekor laughed. “If that were true,” he said, “you would not be here to greet me.” They embraced each other fondly; the movement awakened the other figure.
“Telvor!” Varla demanded. “What are you doing, waking us up in the middle of the night? Do you know what time it is?”
Tevvy shrugged. “Must be two hours before dawn,” he guessed, going around the bed to embrace his mother.
She hugged him fiercely. “We heard terrible things happened in Shigmar,” she noted, “and we feared the worst.”
“Your mother feared the worst,” Meekor noted, “I knew better, although I have not heard from some of my friends there: Headmaster Myron or Master Avril.”
Tevvy sat on the bed next to his mother. “Master Avril was killed before the city was attacked, when we discovered a nest of insiders. Some were captured but died before they could be questioned, so the kailu masters tried to get information from the dead wethem,” his mother gasped and covered her mouth, “but it went wrong, and one of the corpses exploded. In the blast, Master Avril saved Headmaster Myron, but was himself, killed. The Headmaster died with the others when the city was destroyed by the power of Shigmar’s staff.”
“Hang on a minute, son,” Meekor said, “I think you’ve started at the end; you need to return to the beginning, which was when you left here.”
“Oh, Meekor,” Varla protested, “can’t it wait ‘til morning?”
Meekor shook his head. “If I’m reading all the signs right, this is more important than sleep; our son has become involved in something great.”
“He’s right, mother,” Tevvy said. “Do you remember Shigmar’s prophecy?”
His parents both nodded. “The one referring to the Chosen of the One, as I believe it is translated,” Meekor said.
“I’ve seen the original tablet on which it was first recorded,” Tevvy said.
“You’re joking,” Meekor said, but Tevvy shook his head. “How?” Meekor asked.
“In the sewers of Shigmar,” Tevvy explained, “there is a secret door that can only be opened in two ways: first, by using Sir Karble’s sword, and second, by each of the chosen described in the prophecy.” Tevvy held up his hand. “This hand can open that door, a door that has been shut since the days of Karble, Shigmar, and Melbarth.” Varla gasped again. “Father, look at this,” Tevvy said, holding his arm forward, “look at the largest design on these bracers.”
Meekor grabbed and lit the lantern next to his bed, then pulled on a pair of spectacles. “Did you have those made,” he asked after examining the design. “It’s better than my design; well done, son, you’ve improved it!”
“I did not have them made, dad,” he said, “they were made by Melbarth and left for us in that secret place; they are teka-enhanced; each one of us has a pair, and they protect our minds from tampering. They also allow us to find each other and signal each other. However, this is all beside the point, in the room is also a tablet with the original prophecy, and we discovered errors in our current copies from the original, but those errors are not that important now. Do you remember the chosen described as the ‘cunning mouse?’”
Meekor nodded; Varla still had her hands over her mouth.
Tevvy simply pointed to himself.
“I knew it!” Meekor exclaimed. “We all knew it!”
“You all suspected it, dear,” Varla corrected, slowly lowering her hands.
“I wonder if Myron and Avril realized it,” Meekor mused, still looking at his wife, “when all of them showed up together at Shigmar, as I’m sure they did.” He looked back at his son. “Am I right?”
“They never really said,” Tevvy replied, “but all of us did show up there, yes.”
“To your story, then,” Meekor said.
Varla turned and pulled the rope next to her side of the bed; father and son both looked at her quizzically. “I can see that this will take all morning,” she said, “and I do not feel like reliving my son’s harrowing adventures without some breakfast.”
“Mother, isn’t it early for breakfast?” Tevvy asked.
“It was not my choice to get up two hours before the sun,” she replied.
“I suppose not,” Tevvy replied sheepishly.
The door opened and a round face with curly blonde hair poked inside. “Yes, mistress?” his young voice asked.
“We want breakfast for four,” Varla said, “as soon as they can get everything going.”
“Four, mother?” Tevvy said.
“Quiet, Telvor!” she said. “On your way, stop and wake my maid; tell her I need her right away.”
“Your maid, mistress?” the young awemi asked.
Varla nodded to Tevvy, then said, “yes, my maid. You know who I mean?” she asked, nodding again to Tevvy.
Comprehension dawned on the boy’s round face. “Oh, yes mistress; I’ll wake her at once.” His face vanished and the door closed.
“Wasn’t that Daybor?” Tevvy asked.
“I believe it was,” Varla replied.
“And what was that about a maid?” Tevvy asked. “I don’t recall you having or needing one before.”
“I don’t,” Varla admitted. “It is punishment for misbehavior. The girl came from a well-to-do family, and when she arrived, felt that she deserved better treatment than everyone else. She convinced one of the other new girls to be her maidservant. I thought that it was appropriate punishment for . . . ,” but Varla stopped when the door flew opened and an awema with the same curly blonde hair and round, although prettier, face stopped in the doorway.
“Telvor?” she said, “did my brother speak truly?”
Tevvy smiled at her. “Elanor, I have . . . ,” Tevvy started to say, but she stopped him, flying into his arms and knocking him back into his mother.
“Telvor!” Varla exclaimed, pushing the two of them off her.
“Sorry, mistress,” Elanor said, smiling at Tevvy’s mother, then she looked at Tevvy with her wide, round eyes. “I was so worried for you,” she said softly, and then she kissed him.
Tevvy’s face flushed. “Elanor!” he said after she released him. “We are not alone!”
“They know,” Elanor nodded to Tevvy’s parents, kissing him again.
Tevvy turned and looked first at his father and then his mother. “How?” he asked.
Meekor laughed at him; Varla replied with an exasperated look. “This is not the sort of thing that you can
hide from your mother,” she noted, “nor should you try!”
“Think back, son,” Meekor said, still chuckling, “and I think that you will realize how we knew without being told.”
His father’s reply at first surprised Tevvy, but then he thought back; he realized that the two of them had entered the school at the same time, so had all of their classes together. But as he let his mind wander back over all of their moments together, he recognized that both his parents had arranged things so that the two of them were often together: doing chores together, class work together, field assignments together, they even spent much of their free time together.
Tevvy looked shrewdly at his parents. “You two planned this,” he noted.
“What a thing to suggest!” Varla protested with mock surprise.
“And you want to complain?” Meekor asked. “No, we did not plan for this result, but we were quite happy when we noticed what was happening, before either of you did.” He smiled warmly.
Elanor was still holding Tevvy tightly, with her head buried in his shoulder. “I’m not complaining,” she sighed, “except about how long you were gone.”
“Yes, and I’m still waiting to hear exactly what happened,” Meekor added, with feigned impatience.
“You’d better humor your father,” Varla said, touching Tevvy’s arm fondly, “or he’ll keep hounding us until you do.”
Meekor looked at his wife, then turned to his son, jerking his head back toward Varla. “See what I have to put up with all day long: are you sure you want to go through with this?” he asked, nodding toward Elanor.
“It’s too late for that,” Elanor said, “he’s already made his vow; all that remains is to make it legal.”
Meekor shrugged. “I can do that, anytime,” he said.
Varla looked at her son and Elanor shrewdly. “It would take me a few days to make the arrangements.”
The Redemption, Volume 1 Page 84