Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  To make matters worse, the wood from the severed staircase had been ignited by one of the fallen chandeliers and it was burning fiercely a few feet away from the lone beam that was supporting the loft. Zero tried to keep herself clear of it. Her fight was accurate, valiant, and brave, but slowly the spell-made sword came at her and began to drive her toward it. And every time it succeeded in getting inside her defences it would hack away a little piece of her breastplate so that after a time, the clasps that kept the two sides together were cut through and began to come undone. Jagged images of her mother ripping her clothes off in a crying, screaming rage burned through Zero’s mind and her terror all but overcame her, but she willed it away as best she could.

  “Make it stop!” she screamed even more desperately at Xemion. She was tiring, but the sword was tireless. Grey with exhaustion, Xemion stood near her now, trying to get close enough to grab the sword’s hilt. “Stop. I command you!” he screamed.

  Zero was near enough to the fire now that she could feel its intense heat. With the next hack of the sword, the last link in the clasp of her armour was cut through. The breastplate spun open. Another hack and it fell in two pieces. She was fighting now in her tunic. Terrified, she picked up the largest piece of her breastplate and used it as a shield.

  Xemion kept trying to grab the sword, but he was slow and weary and it easily dodged, avoiding his grasp as it closed in on Zero. Soon she would be overcome. The children screamed. The terrible moment was upon them. The sword had finally stricken the last fragment of the shield from Zero’s hand. There she stood, backed up against the fire as the loft teetered above her. With one quick, sharp blow the sword steered the sunflower staff into the flames.

  “No!” Zero bellowed as her staff began to burn. She held it as long as she could, but it was dry and hollow and the flames began to lick up its length from the inside, climbing to her hand. She swung the staff back and forth, trying to put the flames out. She spun it, leaving a brief wheel of fire rolling through the air, but within seconds her knuckles were scorched and she had to throw it down. There, finally, she stood defenceless and terrified before the dreaded spellcraft. And now Xemion knew the sword would end it just as Vallaine had feared it would end. The sword drew back, its shining point aimed surely at her wildly beating heart. It seemed to notch itself into place in the shadows like an arrow in a crossbow. The children on the loft wailed with terror. The Nains hollered with rage. The Thralls shrieked. But nothing could prevent the flight of that sword to Zero’s chest.

  There was a sickening thud when it struck, and an eye-burning burst of sparks. For several seconds, everyone was blinded, but then, as the darkening sparks fell to the flagstone floor, all could see what had come to pass. There lay Xemion, flat on his back with the hilt of the spell-made sword protruding from his chest. At the last moment he had summoned all his remaining strength and flung himself in its path.

  By now the Nains had succeeded in getting one of the stone tables up against the wall. They began climbing up and rescuing the children. Barrels of Glittervein’s beer were overturned to put out the fires. Furious, desperate mothers began to secure and soothe their terrified children. And there stood Zero, her breast heaving with the effort of each breath as she looked down over the fallen Xemion, her hand covering her mouth, almost remembering him. At that moment there was a terrible howl. It was Bargest. He had finally disobeyed his master’s order to stay put outside the Panthemium. Those who had not fled the castle watched the giant dog as he approached his master’s body. Sniffing and whining his way forward, he leaned his long snout over Xemion’s chest and emitted a grievous, long whimper. “Please. Please, O moon. O stars, I beg you,” the dog whispered as he began to lick Xemion’s wounded brow urgently. “O Earth, I entreat thee.” In the midst of this, with an errant nudge of his nose, Bargest knocked the sword hilt over and onto the floor.

  But where was the rest of the blade if it wasn’t stuck through Xemion’s heart and into the floor? Zero bent over him, gently opened the hole in Xemion’s chain mail and tunic, and saw the darkening bruise where the full force of the blade had struck him. There was no incision, nothing imbedded. She looked around, and for the first time saw the sparkling, golden particles that were falling all around them like stardust. And then she realized — all but the hilt of the sword had shattered and burst into a million pieces when it hit his chest. A second longer and Zero might have also noticed that, after landing softly on the grey flagstones, the particles began to move slowly toward one another, little particles forming bigger particles. But just then there was a rattling gasp as the fallen Xemion, whose own sword had been unable to pierce him, attempted to take in air. Someone cried out “He lives! He lives!”

  There was a gurgling sound and Xemion suddenly coughed and his eyes fluttered open. He tried to focus. Seeing Zero, he tried to speak, but no words would come, just croaks and coughs. Zero stared down at him, frightened and confused, still breathing so heavily from her own exertions that her lungs felt as if they were burning. A streak of blood-matted hair hung down the side of her face where the wound still brimmed and dripped. The arm of one side of her tunic had been scorched by fire and still smouldered. His eyes closed and a name came to her lips. She said the name — “Xemion” — and a tiny welcome morsel of peace entered her heart. Then she turned and ran down the aisle to help Asnina the Thrall, who, having fainted from the pain of the sword thrust through her shoulder, was just now regaining consciousness.

  The next time he opened his eyes, Xemion became aware of another face peering at him. Much of it was covered in blood and his vision was blurry. It was hard to focus. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” Veneetha Azucena shouted. As she bent in closer he could see that the blood had run like a cloak all down one shoulder and was slowly dripping off her fingers. “You have betrayed us. You’ve betrayed us!” she shrieked.

  Xemion was only dimly aware of what happened next. He couldn’t remain conscious. Hands grabbed his body and lifted him. The one they called Zero, the one he knew as Saheli, shouted something. He heard Bargest’s growled supplications, and then, just as everything was slipping away, a voice that might have been Vallaine’s said, “Get him out of here. We can’t have him anywhere in this city.”

  Xemion felt himself being lifted and carried along. His last thought as he lost consciousness completely was of the sword. What had happened to it?

  ⚔

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the scattered particles of the sword were gravitating toward one another. First the blade reassembled — all but one small particle — its point. For a while it slowly revolved, seeking this one infinitesimally small missing piece, but when it came full circle and still hadn’t located it, it began to jerk and tug its way across the stone floor in search of the hilt. This it found easily, close to the place where it had fallen from Xemion’s chest. Then, just as these two pieces joined with a click that emitted a sudden, brief light, Veneetha Azucena reached down and grabbed it, her hand and wrist likewise lit by that sudden brightness, which lingered for several seconds.

  32

  Prisoner

  Xemion’s arms and legs felt as cold and brittle as twigs. He could just barely move the tips of his fingers and breathing took great effort, but he summoned the strength to swivel his eyes around and see where he was. Something tore inside him and he winced. He had a sense of some impending catastrophe, but he didn’t know what it was. Outside, seabirds called to one another and, far off, he could hear the slow retreating pulse of the tide. His sense of dread deepened as the images of the day came back to him: his sword arcing toward Saheli’s neck, him down on his knees in the crowd speaking that accursed spell.

  “No!” His freezing fingers twitched into fists. “No!” he cried again. How could he have been such a fool? And Saheli — the way she looked when the helmet was stricken from her face and everyone in the crowd gasped at her beauty. Her lips, which had touched his lips. All this time he had just been living until th
e next time that would happen, but now how could there ever be a next time? He had saved her from Montither, and he would never regret that, but at what terrible cost?

  It was dark and cold in this place, and for a long time Xemion just lay there with an intense, bereaved sense of loneliness that almost made him want to die. Someone had wrapped Vallaine’s cloak about him, but he was still so cold he might have already been a cadaver on a block of ice. Nor did he move when vibrations suddenly came up through the bare stone floor. Someone had entered the building. Upstairs. He both heard and felt the closing of what sounded like a heavy gate and he knew where he was: one of the old towers at the end of the Lion’s Paws. Without moving his head he could see a horizontal, slit-like window, which would have given him a panoramic view of the bay if he were standing, but from this prone position only revealed a dark ribbon of night sky — mostly the curve of the bone-white moon and that red planet, larger than he had ever seen it.

  He rolled his head over to the right. The dim light from the window reflected off the iron bars of a door, locked and bolted against his escape. He must be in the storage room. This room, which had originally been the receiving area for any cargo from those ships not granted entrance to the inner harbour, was one floor below the part of the tower looking back along the docks and toward the city. Xemion could hear a shuffling sound on the stairs. But was it one or two pairs of footsteps?

  He turned a little more so he could just see past the barred door and into the stairwell beyond. He wrapped the cloak around himself and ducked his head into it. First a yellow glow and then a figure carrying a lamp emerged from the stairwell. It was Veneetha Azucena and there was someone else behind her but he couldn’t quite make out who it was. When she got to the bars she shone her lamp right in on him.

  “Ah, there you are,” she said in a voice much softened from earlier that night.

  Xemion couldn’t even grunt in reply. He could see just the edge of what must have been a bandage wrapped about her head, but she had covered most of it with a green copper helmet. He detected a slight swelling at the left side of her face, but other than that there were no signs of the injury the sword had inflicted.

  “I’ve brought you some blankets,” she said gently. “I’m sorry we didn’t think of it earlier. You must’ve spent a chilly few hours in here.” She passed two thick blankets through the bars and, using her staff, pushed them across the floor to where he lay. Still peeking out from under Vallaine’s cloak, Xemion tried to get a glimpse of the other figure that was lurking in the stairwell. “I’m sorry to have accused you of betraying us,” she said with that slight edge of sand in the honey of her voice. “Now that I know the full story, I realize you were only doing your best for all of us. You’ll be happy to know I have sent word out to apprehend Mr. Glittervein, and if he’s anywhere in Ulde, I assure you we will find him.”

  “Greetings, Xemion.” Vallaine now stepped out of the darkness of the stairwell and stood beside her, his gaunt face lit on one side by the flickering lamp. Somehow Xemion wasn’t surprised.

  “Yes,” Vallaine said, smiling, “I survived.” He held up his hand to show Xemion that it was once again dark red, but Xemion could also see the hollow cheeks and look of strain on his face. “It took me much less time to recover than I thought it would.”

  Xemion again gave the most minimal of responses.

  “We owe you a great debt of gratitude,” Vallaine said. “I don’t know where you got the strength to accomplish all that you did in so short a t—”

  Veneetha Azucena interrupted. “Xemion, you must wrap those blankets around you. You look so terribly cold.”

  Xemion eyed them helplessly. “I can’t.”

  “It’s that second spell he bound,” Vallaine told her. “I would think it’s really taking a toll on him right now.”

  “Well, I for one cannot bear to see him suffer like this.”

  Veneetha Azucena took out a set of keys and opened the storage room door. Xemion felt the warmth of her hand in his own and then the two of them wrapped him all round in the blankets. “Here, drink this,” Vallaine said, tilting a flask of some warm, sweet liquid between Xemion’s cold, blue lips. “It will help with the spell-shock.”

  Xemion recognized the taste.

  “It is ambrosia,” Vallaine said. “It will give you strength.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve had some before?”

  “From your cloak.”

  “In truth?”

  Xemion nodded and once again a look of suspicion crossed his brow, but Vallaine gave a little laugh.

  “Why, I searched all over for that wafer,” he said. “So that was what gave you such strength!”

  “You see,” Veneetha Azucena said cheerily. “You never know when you lose something who might find it and what good it might do them.”

  “Do you feel that warming you up?” Vallaine asked in his most empathetic voice. Xemion nodded. The drink was not as powerful as the wafer, but slowly its effects made their way through his system. For a while there was silence as Vallaine continued rubbing Xemion’s hands and Veneetha Azucena took his frozen feet into her lap and did her best to warm them with her hands and body heat.

  “I’m afraid we have something quite difficult to tell you,” she said at last, looking sideways at Vallaine.

  “Xemion,” Vallaine began, “it is miraculous that you managed to save Saheli and destroy the book of spells. But I didn’t know when I told you about the spell book that you would use it to cast a spell of your own.”

  Somewhat energized by the ambrosia now, Xemion replied, “I didn’t want to bind a spell. It was the only way to save Saheli.” His voice came back to him, brittle and angry. He hardly recognized it as his own.

  “Yes, but do you realize what you cast your spell upon?”

  “A stick.”

  “No, Xemion. That was so much more than just a stick.”

  Veneetha Azucena cut in almost curtly. “Vallaine has examined your sword and he claims it was not originally a sword at all. It was — is the staff of a mage.”

  Xemion looked back in disbelief.

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” Vallaine said, shaking his head and nervously twirling one side of his moustache. “I did advise you to rid yourself of that stick, did I not? But I had no idea it was a spell staff or I would have taken it from you myself. I told you how a spell staff is made. Do you remember? It is a long scroll of spells handwritten by the mage who makes it. When you cast your spell upon that so-called sword of yours, you cast it upon a thousand other spells at once — all of them the work of a master mage.”

  Xemion was too stunned to say anything.

  “His name was Shalaminsar,” Veneetha Azucena said. “The last of the Nain mages. Vallaine says he was slain in Ilde by the Pathans, but before he died he must have cast his last spell upon his staff to draw someone like you to it, so that it might bind to you and work through you.”

  “But he would never have dreamed that you would turn it into a play sword and then cast your own spell upon it.” Vallaine spoke with soft regret. “Do you see what has happened? You have cast a spell upon a thousand spells. Can you imagine a thousand cross-spells all manifesting at once?” Vallaine’s voice rose in a way that revealed his anguish at this thought. “And now, yes, the Great Kone is turning and the magic is rising again — but to what new chaos and confliction? I … I sought to end this era of cross-spells that’s been upon us, make the world anew, pure and simple, but this, if we let it go forward, will only make matters infinitely worse.”

  “None of this was known to me until last night.” Veneetha Azucena’s tone verged on anger. Indeed she couldn’t help shooting an accusatory glance at Vallaine. “I would’ve stopped it somehow if I’d known. Please be assured of that. But now the damage is done and all our efforts are in great jeopardy because of it.”

  “We do understand that it’s in no way your fault,” Vallaine added with a slight frown. “But unfortunat
ely this spell sword of yours is very dangerous, and now that it has been made you cannot destroy it any more than it was able to destroy you. Even now, as the Great Kone slowly takes up its revolution, the spell you cast on it must be working on the spells written on the staff. All those spell-crossed creatures whose pain you witnessed in Ulde will be nothing to what these thousand crossed spells may inflict on us. We can’t take the chance. There is an isle across the eastern sea known as Wizard’s Isle. On the entire great globe there is no other place farther from the Great Kone. Its power is so weak there it has almost no effect.”

  “It will be so much safer for everyone if you should just go and stay there a … a while,” Veneetha Azucena said.

  “For how long?” Xemion asked. In the ensuing silence Vallaine and Veneetha Azucena briefly caught each other’s eye before looking away.

  “Aside from the dangers of the innumerable cross-spells you have likely instigated, there is also, according to Mr. Vallaine here, the danger of you and what your power may turn you into,” Veneetha Azucena said, a slight quaver in her voice.

  “What she means is,” Vallaine continued, “in the previous era we had seven great mages on the Phaer Isle, each one balancing out the others. But as of now, in this era, Xemion, there is only one. You. You, who though wise and compassionate, have not even one equal, let alone six to balance you out.”

  “And?”

  “And when there is only one mage and that mage has as much power as you do — there is nothing to prevent the possibility of him becoming a war mage.”

  At this Xemion saw an image from his childhood. A vision of himself upon a great horse in full gallop, his sword held high, an army at his back. But he shook his head adamantly. “No!” The warmth of the ambrosia radiated into his core, and as it melted the ice within, certain wild emotions were beginning to be freed.

  “I’m afraid so,” Veneetha Azucena countered with a sad but determined look on her face.