Disintegration: The Todor Trilogy, Book Two

by Jenna Newell Hiott

  “Good,” Golath replied, his gaze fixed to the west. “I want you to go over the plan one more time.”

  “Archigadh has ten Zobanite guards with him at all times and his chambers are in the west wing of the palace. His twenty-four women live in the palace, too, and each of them has two Zobanite guards. Soman’s chambers are in the east wing and he is always covered by five Zobanite guards. The palace itself is surrounded by another ten Zobanite guards. All of this means that there will be ninety-nine Zobanites in and around the palace when we attack,” Gemynd said, reciting the plan he’d come to know as well as his own name. “When we reach Zoban, a small team of Iturtian warriors will break off and move to the tunnels beneath the armory. At the same time, you and I will move to the cellars beneath the palace. When the signal is given, you and I will terminate every Zobanite in and around the palace, while the others destroy the contents of the armory. No one is to harm a single Terrene. If all goes perfectly, our work will be undetected and we will systematically move from building to building, destroying Zobanites as we go.

  “That is an unlikely scenario, however, as an alarm will most likely be raised, at which time we will mobilize our army into battle formation. Our warriors know how to fight within the tunnels and how to use the escape passages to draw the Zobanites out into the open. There they will find us waiting for them and either the Zobanites will surrender or they will die.”

  Golath nodded his head slowly, his eyes closed as though he were watching the battle unfold within his mind. “I can tell that you are unhappy with the plan,” he said in psychspeak. “Tell me your thoughts.”

  Gemynd shifted his weight as he deliberated. “The plan is sound,” he said after several moments. “It’s just that I question its necessity. You and I can control all the Zobanites. We can just walk right into their compound and take over. There is no need to put other Iturtians at risk. There is no need for war at all. We can rule Todor without bloodshed.”

  “I wonder,” Golath said, “how much of this has to do with your concern for the safety of Iturtians and how much of it is about your reluctance to fight your Zobanite friend.”

  “I will follow your orders,” Gemynd replied, knowing that he would. At the same time, he knew that he wanted no harm to come to Soman. “I would just like you to consider that there is another way.”

  “My son, I have spent my life thinking of every possible option for Iturtia to take the throne,” Golath said. “Yes, war is unnecessary from our point of view. We do not need it to take the throne, but we may need it to keep the throne. In order for Iturtia to maintain power after I am gone, after you are gone, our people must be united. There is no better way to keep a people united than to pit them against a common enemy. When the children and grandchildren of our warriors tell the tales of how their forebears fought against the Zobanites and won, they will stand united. The people need to believe they played a role in the cause if they are going to protect and defend it. Do you understand this?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gemynd said and pressed his lips together. He did understand his father’s reasoning. It made sense. But he could not stop his heart from hoping for an easier way.

  “When we reach Zoban, I will take the east wing of the palace. You will take the west,” Golath said to Gemynd’s mind.

  Gemynd turned his head and looked at his father. “What?” he asked aloud, though he knew Golath could not hear him over the howling of the wind.

  Golath turned to face Gemynd, and even though all but his eyes were covered, Gemynd recognized the hard-set determination on the man’s face. “You will do as I say,” Golath said in psychspeak.

  “Do you not trust me to do my duty?” Gemynd asked, knowing his father probably had every right to doubt him, for the truth was, he doubted himself. If he was truly up to the task of killing Soman, why had he fought so hard to save his life? Other than being a Zobanite, Soman had never done anything wrong in his entire life. Did he deserve to be murdered in his sleep?

  “I simply want to spare you the grief of killing your friend,” Golath replied. “I see no point in forcing you to kill him when I can so easily take care of it myself.”

  “You see no point?” Gemynd argued, all the while wondering why. “The Director must have the honor of destroying the Chief. That is the point. It will not do for me to take that honor from you. You are the Director and you must take the Chief.”

  “You will do as I say,” Golath repeated, staring straight ahead.

  Gemynd looked down at the ground between their feet. The sand seemed to blow in every direction at once, sometimes covering their boots and sometimes revealing them. “Yes, sir,” he said reluctantly, then looked out across the desert to watch the sun disappear behind Zoban Mountain in the distance, painting its orange and red fire across the sky. But a strange-looking cloud hovering over the top of it caught his eye. “Is that smoke?”

  Golath looked towards the mountain and nodded. “It could be,” he said. “If so, something very large was burning recently. It could be the city.”

  Gemynd squinted his eyes and tried to focus on the smoky cloud, but it was difficult to see through an ever-moving curtain of blowing sand. “What does this mean for us?”

  Golath shrugged. “Probably nothing,” he said in psychspeak. “Their city is mostly made of stone. Much of it will not burn and I’m sure the people are safe from fire. If we are very fortunate, fire could destroy their food supplies, but we won’t know anything until our scouts return with word.”

  Gemynd narrowed his eyes as he watched the cloud and wondered if Soman had been harmed in the fire. Iturtian scouts have said that he appears to have made a full recovery from the fever, but it was still a mystery as to what caused the fever. Was he truly well enough to outrun a fire if needed?

  As Gemynd pondered these things, a subtle movement caught his eye and suddenly Numa stood before him. She wore the deep red tunic and leggings of Iturtia and the wind caused her hair to whip about her head like flames gone out of control. Gemynd could see her lips moving, but could hear nothing over the wind. As he watched her lips, a thick red liquid began to ooze from her mouth, glossing her lips with its foul gleam. It was much too thick, too insidious, to be blood. No, this was something else entirely. It was venom.

  Gemynd watched, mesmerized, as the clot of venom left her mouth and floated towards him, splitting into two. Before he could react, the two snakes of venom bored through his ears and began to slither through his mind. It was then that he recognized them. These were the words he had come to dread. It was Numa’s voice telling him that she never loved him; that she was disgusted by the sight of him and that she would torment him forever. He stepped towards her then and raised his hand to strike her, just as he had every other time he’d heard those cursed words.

  But this time he stopped. Rather than turning from him or cowering away, Numa lifted her chin to him, her chest puffed out like a blackbird defending its nest.

  Gemynd looked into her eyes. There was something different there. Something he hadn’t seen in what felt like a lifetime. The difference was subtle, but it was there. There was a sharpness, a fullness of life within those green eyes. As he studied them, he was washed with a sense of familiarity. These were the eyes he had looked into his entire life. The eyes that looked back at him with nothing but love.

  “You love me,” Gemynd said aloud, unsure if it was a statement, a question, or a command.

  Numa lifted her arms above her head and brought them back down slowly, the wind dissipating at her command. “Always,” she replied and with a single finger, lightly touched the back of Gemynd’s hand.

  In that instant Gemynd knew that this was the real Numa. This was not a dream nor a specter nor a product of his madness. This was his true wife standing before him.

  “Why have you returned here?” Golath asked tersely.

  Numa’s eyes moved from Gemynd to Golath and back again. “I have come to apologize. I turned my back on you. I judged you—both o
f you—for your way of life and it was not my place to do so. I was wrong, so very wrong, and I am sorry for it.”

  “Your judgment is of no consequence,” Golath replied. “Betrayal, on the other hand, is of grave importance. You made a vow to my son and you broke it.”

  “We have all made vows that we were unable to keep,” Numa replied. “I am here now. I have come back to make things right.”

  “You left me,” Gemynd said, feeling stupefied by the suddenness of her arrival.

  Numa took a step towards Gemynd. “I am so sorry, my love,” she said. “I begged you to show me the pit. You did not want to, but I insisted. I promised you our love would be stronger if you took me there. I know what it took for you to show me the pit. I know that by taking me there it meant you trusted me completely. And my leaving was a rejection, it was a betrayal of your trust. I’ve known you my whole life. I know that trust means everything to you. If I could change the past, I would have made it so that rather than leaving you, I remained next to you and told you how I admired your strength and your courage. I would have told you that your bravery in opening yourself completely to me caused me to love you even more than I already had. But if I can change the past, I haven’t yet learned how. All I can do is let it go.

  “I love you, Gemynd, and I always will. I make no excuse for myself and only say that I was wrong. My heart breaks more for the pain I caused you than it even does in being without you. You are the love that sustains my Lifeforce. I know that trust will have to be rebuilt between us, but can you forgive me? Can we be husband and wife once more?”

  Gemynd tried with all his might to hold on to his anger. The anger that had kept him safe from being lost to despair without her. But, like a fistful of water, the harder he tried to grasp it, the less there was to hold, until it all but disappeared. He lightly reached out and touched her perfect cheek and, when he did, a sense of wholeness returned to him. A void he was unaware of had been filled and he knew he needed it to stay that way. He needed this feeling of wholeness more than he needed air to breath. Gemynd pulled Numa tightly against him as he said, “My love, I forgive you. Come here.”

  “I want to go to the pit again,” Numa said, pulling back. “I want to prove my loyalty to you, to both of you.”

  Gemynd felt the earth sway beneath his feet. He was not ready to face this again so soon. “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Now is the time for courage, son,” Golath said to Gemynd’s mind. “Be the man she needs you to be and she will stay in your life forever.”

  “Or she could leave me again. I cannot bear it.”

  “If you refuse to do it on your own, then you will do it because I order it,” Golath continued in psychspeak. “I need your mind clear when we march tonight, not muddled with this new distraction. You will go to the pit with her now. I will await you in my chambers.”

  Gemynd gritted his teeth together. “Very well,” he said and looked at Numa. “Take us to the pit.”

  And just like that Gemynd and Numa stood on the landing overlooking the pit as they had four weeks earlier.

  Gemynd kept his eyes locked on Numa. Would she leave him again? He didn’t really think that she would, but his fear made him want to be in complete control of the situation. The pit was hot, the orange glow from the pit fire reflected off of Numa’s white skin. It was all exactly as it had been before and Gemynd briefly wondered if they had, indeed, gone back in time.

  “Thank you,” Numa said and smiled at him. “For trusting me enough to bring me here again.” She leaned in towards him and kissed him lightly on the lips. The soft, moist warmth of her lips on his ignited a bonfire of memories within him.

  “Look at all of it,” Gemynd said, gesturing at the pit floor with a sweep of his arm. “Really look at it. This is who I am.”

  Numa looked over the rail, her expression unreadable. Gemynd watched her eyes as she took in the battle training as well as the level one training of the children. She did not flinch as she saw the rats chewing on a young boy’s face. She did not turn away from the sight of girls being branded near the fire. She did not grimace when she studied the reamers.

  “I am truly trying to understand all of this,” she said after several moments. “I believe this is all for the best because you do. And I believe in you. But it is difficult for me to endure the suffering of others.”

  “I know,” Gemynd said and squeezed her hand. “I saw you heal the Iturtians from Tolnick. I know you did that because you cannot bear suffering.”

  “I need you to explain to me the reason for training your people this way,” she said. “Is it truly because the end result justifies the suffering?”

  Gemynd looked out across his pit and pondered his answer. “I learned a great many things during the time that I studied to be a Keeper,” he said. “My father has tried to convince me that the Truths are nonsense and in many ways I agree with him. But there has always been a bit of that wisdom that has stayed with me. I often recall a study I read on the 6th Truth: Suffering is not necessary and is a result of choice. The author of the study suggested that the Truth should really read: Suffering is not necessary and is a result of one’s own choice. That made sense to me and changed the way I looked at suffering. Now I see that each and every one of those people down there is responsible for his own suffering. Even if I am the one holding the brand, the choice of whether or not to suffer lies within the student whose skin I burn. Likewise, if I suffer, I hold no one responsible for it but myself.”

  Numa was quiet again as she continued to watch the training. “And the people of Aerie?” she asked after a time. “Did they choose their suffering?”

  Gemynd nodded. “They chose deception and isolation in order to turn a blind eye to the corruption of the Keepers. An easy thing to do while sitting atop a pile of jewels. They chose to maintain a way of life built on lies rather than risk losing their wealth. Those are all choices that disrupt the Oneness of Life. Their suffering was inevitable.”

  Numa laced her fingers through his with one hand and reached up to turn his face toward hers with the other. The flickering shadows from the flames played across her cheeks, but there was a deep seriousness within her eyes. “I mean no judgment when I ask this. I am sincerely searching for understanding,” she said and Gemynd felt his stomach muscles tense. “Do you truly take no responsibility for the deaths of our fellow Aerites? For Keeper Stout?”

  Gemynd did not have to think up an answer for he’d asked himself that same question countless times already. “I mourn the loss of them and all of Aerie. There is an ache in my heart from the absence of many of them; an ache that I will carry with me always. I miss Keeper Stout more than I could put into words and I regret that he is no longer in Todor. I admit freely that I am the one who destroyed Aerie. I am a killer, my love. You must know that. I took the lives of our friends and family,” he said. When she still didn’t turn away, he continued, “But, no, I do not bear the responsibility for the suffering they endured. One can only be responsible for one’s own suffering.”

  “That brings me some relief,” Numa said and looked down at their entwined hands. “Because I have the ability to help others in so many ways, I find it difficult to withhold help, to allow suffering to continue. I have already learned that sometimes my aid does not end suffering, but only shifts it to someone else. To know that everyone is responsible for his own suffering alleviates my guilt and frees me to help others only when I desire it.”

  Gemynd smiled at her, astonished that she would so readily understand his point of view. “You amaze me,” he said.

  Numa pushed her lips out and looked down at the railing. “As you have been completely open with me, I must be with you,” she said and Gemynd instantly knew he did not want to hear whatever she would say next. “I went to Zoban before I came here.”

  Gemynd felt a twinge of anger tease his mind. “Why?” he asked cautiously.

  “I wanted to see if Soman was well,” she answered then look
ed up at him. “I want no more secrets between us. Not ever. I went to see him first because I needed to appease my guilt over not healing him as fully as I could have, and because I had not yet decided that I wanted to come back to you. I had mostly decided, but was afraid you would not have me. And I was afraid of the darkness here. There was a moment when I nearly gave myself to Soman, I was so drawn to the safety there. But he is the one who helped me see that the only choice I would make is to be with you. Even on the eve of war, his loyalty to you knows no bounds.”

  Gemynd traced his finger along the scar on his cheek, never taking his eyes off Numa. Conflicting emotions washed through him: anger and possessiveness of Numa; relief that, despite everything, Soman did not betray him. “You are here now,” he said, mostly to reassure himself.

  “Yes,” she said and kissed his cheek. “I am where I belong.”

  “When you spoke of feeling guilt over withholding your help, was it only because you did not heal Soman? Or did you witness some sort of suffering in Zoban?” Gemynd asked, piecing her story together.

  “There was a fire,” she said, confirming his suspicions. “I helped put the fire out, but I could have done more. Much more. But I knew that, if I did, it could negatively affect Iturtians. My loyalty is with you, your father and your people. I could do no more for Zoban.”

  Gemynd let out a long, slow breath, feeling as though he’d been holding it in for years. “We are truly in this together,” he said.

  “There is something else I must share with you; something even more important than all of that,” she said, excitement suddenly dancing in her eyes. “I may have a solution to the problem of who will rule Todor. One that does not involve war.”