Second Kiss

by Robert Priest

  “I’ve spun my tell-kone on this seven times, Xemion,” Vallaine said, “and seven times it has come up deep seven with an X.”

  “Did you not feel an unseemly rage when you fought with that sword?” Veneetha Azucena asked. “Were you not ready to slay a young woman whom you held as your own beloved?”

  Xemion winced. “But I stopped it!” he said. “I turned it away at the last second.”

  “Just barely,” Vallaine countered. “What will happen next time?”

  Xemion hung his head and the great grief of his life flowed into him. Vallaine nodded toward Veneetha Azucena, his face also drawn in sadness.

  “I’m so sorry, Xemion.” Veneetha Azucena spoke gently and sincerely. “None of this is your fault. You have given us so much and done your utmost for us and it is grievous to have to send one with such a great heart away from our gathering, quite likely forever.”

  The inevitability of what they were telling him began to sink in, gripping Xemion’s heart. He thought of Saheli. He pictured her again in that moment when she kissed him outside the Great Kone. The scent of her hair. The heat of her skin.

  “It is a long journey across the sea,” Vallaine said, clearing his throat. “Tomorrow, soon after dawn, I have had word that the Mammuth is returning. It will sail in to this harbour and you and I must travel to Wizard’s Isle, off the northern coast of Arthenow, where the blood magic runs strongest. Who knows, you and I may perhaps go travelling in those realms and do a great deal of good there someday.”

  Xemion flinched, remembering the taste of his own blood when the Pathan had forced him to drink.

  “This is what they did in the days of the Elphaereans when there was trouble with mages,” Vallaine said. “It is exile. But it is honourable and it is at least not—”

  “I don’t want to go. I want to stay here and be part of this.”

  Veneetha Azucena let go of the heavy sigh she’d been holding back.

  “I did everything I could.”

  “I know,” Vallaine agreed, giving the side of his moustache a series of good solid tugs.

  “I’ve been true to you. And true to Saheli.” Xemion wanted to say more but he could feel the tears rising in his throat.

  “Yes, you have,” Veneetha Azucena acknowledged. “And if what Vallaine saw of the future in the Nexis was correct, you truly saved Saheli’s life yesterday. And that will continue on in goodness for all of us here and I thank you for that and for the literature you’ve saved for us also, but …”

  “I just wish I had foreseen this in the Nexis,” Vallaine said regretfully. “But there is some spell bound about you greater than any I have ever known. This future that sends you into exile, I tell you I did not see it anywhere. Though I did at least warn you of the difficulty between you and the maid.”

  Xemion took another long drink from the flask and felt the heat move deep into his bones. The realization of what lay before him was becoming more real by the moment, but he had one last hope.

  “I want to see Saheli before I go.”

  Xemion did not miss the quick look of concern that passed between Vallaine and Veneetha Azucena.

  “She is not doing well,” Vallaine said gravely. “She has had almost as many tribulations as you have today.”

  “I have to see her one more time,” he insisted.

  Again Veneetha Azucena and Vallaine exchanged a glance. Then Vallaine shrugged. “Very well,” he said, “but she is still very disturbed — both in body and mind. The effects of ancient spells, when they wear off suddenly, as it did with her, are unpredictable and sometimes dangerous. So you must be very gentle with her.”

  Xemion wanted to shout “I have always been very gentle with her.” But before he could wrench these words out of his heart he remembered his sword speeding toward her neck and instead said “of course I will be.”

  “Xemion, you have done something great,” Vallaine said as he and Veneetha Azucena stood to leave. “You have saved Saheli and given new life to the Phaer purpose. In time, I hope you will be proud of that.” He put the cork in the flask and placed it on the floor beside Xemion. “Drink this if the coldness comes into you again.” With that, the two stepped back out of the storage room.

  “I am sorry to do this,” said Veneetha Azucena as she re-locked the door.

  “We have to take every possible precaution,” Vallaine added.

  “And now I had better go and get a few hours sleep,” Veneetha Azucena said. She turned to leave, but hesitated, then wheeled back around to face Xemion.

  “Xemion, this must seem very dreadful to you at this moment, but I want you to know that some people think there have always been crossed spells. My mother taught me to consider the whole world as one big stretched mesh of such stuff. There are billions of contesting wishes and wills and underwills and overwills and spells and vows in every move we make. The trick is to be bound by neither one nor the other entirely. It has been my experience that there is a way to ride the line between the two or the three or the four, to centre yourself among them and ride the nexus of your own will to your own avail. Do you understand? That is what choice is. And everyone — even you — can still find a way to choose. Do you see?”

  “I don’t see what choice I have in this moment,” he protested. “I have no choice at all.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Vallaine said, shaking his head. “This is something he just has to do.”

  “Very well, then. I just wanted to make sure I had said that.” She, too, shook her head sadly. “Xemion, we will see you just before dawn tomorrow.”

  Xemion listened as they ascended the stairs and continued across the floor above and exited the building.

  33

  Words to a Song

  Zero had pulled herself together enough to visit Asnina in the infirmary, where her shoulder wound was being treated by Stilpkin, a rotund, red-faced man with a green hand. Asnina’s sister Atathu sat on the bed beside her, stoically stroking her hair, her jaw thrust forward angrily. The one they called Fargold was there, too, but he was only semi-conscious, having obviously been administered some strong herbs to help with the pain in the back of his thigh where Montither had cut him. Even through his daze, though, his eyes kept fastening on Zero as though he needed something from her or had something urgent to say. Just as she had always done at the camp in the mountains, she did her best never to meet his gaze. There had been little feeling then, but now something stirred in her memory whenever she felt his eyes upon her. And more than just her memory, it was as though part of her was part of him, and…. She shuddered and turned away.

  It was then that Imalgha, the third and largest of the Thrall sisters, arrived, announcing she couldn’t stay long. Veneetha Azucena had asked her to join her personal bodyguard to replace Ormuntia, the huge battle Thrall who had also been wounded by the sword and now lay unconscious on a cot beside Asnina. For a brief time the three sisters, who were clearly almost as shaken by the day’s events as Zero, joined hands and prepared to say a prayer to their Thrall goddess, Loceklis. Zero had often witnessed them doing this but she had never before consented to join in when they invited her. So great was her need for comfort tonight, she reconsidered. Placing one of her palms over Imalgha’s broad knuckles, she silently took part in their communion. Afterward, she waited hopefully, but if the Thrall sisters received any solace from their prayer, none of it reached Zero.

  She was leaving when she found the doorway blocked by a striking young woman with long, curly red hair. She was of average height and very slender, wearing a ground-length yellow dress bound about the waist with a red sash. There was something about the woman’s eyes that troubled Saheli. Something about that very slightly freckled face that seemed familiar.

  “Saheli,” the young woman said, a little surprised and slightly offended by the blank stare she was receiving.

  Again that name reverberated down the long dark hallways of Zero’s memory. She struggled to remember. Perhaps if the young
woman had been as short as she was three months ago, before her growth spurt, Saheli would have recognized her. Or maybe a headband would have jogged her memory, but there was no headband.

  “It’s Tharfen,” the young woman said impatiently.

  “Tharfen,” Zero repeated. And then she said the other name “Saheli.”

  “Where is he?” Tharfen asked.

  “Where is who?”

  “Torgee, of course.” At that moment she noticed her brother lying on the bed nearby and she brushed past and rushed over to the boy Zero only knew as Fargold.

  “Tharfen,” Torgee mumbled. Tharfen frowned, examining the wound in his thigh. “I guess you must’ve sat on a knife or something, eh?”

  “Zero,” Torgee called. And then he called “Saheli.” But she was already gone.

  As soon as she left the infirmary and headed back toward the Panthemium, a terrible sense of shame came over Zero. She felt as though she had done something deeply wrong and would soon be caught. She felt like a sneak and a coward. Even the fact that she had held off the sword earlier that evening meant nothing to her. It was as though the tiny gears she had once imagined operating in the locket library were at work in her own mind, unlocking deeper and deeper codes, smaller and smaller tumblers falling into place, moving the mechanism toward some awesome final opening whose revelation might well destroy her. And all of this was happening in triple time so that one thing could no longer be just one thing. The way her heart was beating arrhythmically, hot and cold. The way she could be Zero and … Saheli.

  When she got back to the room she removed the last few shreds of her battered armour and lay down in her smock on the cot. She kept trying to sleep but every time she began the long, slow slide into unconsciousness some small sound, some twitch or spasm, would yank her up and keep her awake and remembering. Saheli. Her name was Saheli.

  All night sad and shocking memories tore through her consciousness. But just before Vallaine came there was a change in her. Perhaps she had finally remembered something different, or even beautiful, for in amongst the other expressions that crossed her face there was an occasional smile. It came and went, but the more the sorrows seemed to gather at her centre and weigh her down, the deeper the arc of that smile grew, until eventually there were moments when she was smiling full out and nodding her head as though in affirmation. Eventually, she felt a calmness overtake her. She started rocking back and forth, gripping her hands together palm to palm, and whispering “Thank you. Thank you” as she wept. In the middle of this reverie, there came a knock at the door.

  Zero did not instantly recognize the man at the door. She stared at him blankly, and it wasn’t until he raised his red-tinted hand that the memory returned. But when it did, it flooded in and she recalled the last time she’d seen him outside the Great Kone, when he’d told her to forget her pain. He was not, however, the figure of health he had been then. He looked ragged and worn and weak. When he told her of Xemion’s request, she acknowledged him with only the slightest of nods before rising from her cot.

  Seeing her in the light, Vallaine closely examined the cut over her brow. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  She backed away, self-conscious about being in her smock and slightly affronted by his nearness. “It’s nothing,” she answered, her voice a little hoarse and still quaking from the turmoil of her recent emotions.

  “Yet you look as though you’re suffering extreme pain.”

  “I’m just very tired.”

  “You must be after your day of battles.”

  She nodded noncommittally.

  “Especially your battle with the spell-made sword.”

  Her glance was suddenly fierce and angry. “I don’t want to talk or even think about that!”

  “I’m sure you don’t, Saheli, but there are things I must tell you.”

  Fortunately, Veneetha Azucena had sent Vallaine in her carriage. Otherwise Saheli didn’t know how she would have made her weary way from the Panthemium to the mouth of the tunnel. As Vallaine guided the horse over the cobbled streets, he began to tell her all that had happened to Xemion. Whatever it was that had made her smile earlier was soon gone with all his talk of spellcraft. The sea wind blew cold on her skin and it felt like every ounce of her was trembling. Vallaine could see that his account was disturbing her. He spoke as gently as he possibly could, but he didn’t have long and she needed to know the truth before they arrived.

  By the time the two descended through the tunnel and reached the narrow walkway that ran along the top of the eastern side of the Lion’s Arms, the full story had been told and a tense silence hung between them. Saheli could hear the crying of gulls riding the sea wind. The blank-faced moon had laid a golden pathway across the dark, withdrawing waters. For a second, before Vallaine opened the door to the tower, she wished she could run out onto that pathway and disappear forever into the night rather than face what she knew lay ahead of her.

  “Saheli!” Xemion said when she came down from the stairwell.

  She nodded and said his name in return, “Xemion,” but she kept her eyes averted, the lantern hanging low at her side.

  “You remember me now,” he said.

  “Yes, I remember myself. And Vallaine has told me everything else,” she answered. “I’m sorry … I’m sorry for what you’ve been through.”

  “And I’m sorry for what you’ve been through,” Xemion responded, wishing she would look at him. But she hadn’t yet. Not directly into his eyes.

  “Don’t worry. That is past.” She said it so jubilantly he frowned. “Now I have hope. And you, too, have suffered.”

  “What do you mean, you have hope?” he asked, half-wishing that her answer might somehow include his own secret hope — that they would flee this place this very night and never return.

  “When your sword struck me … I suddenly saw my mother,” she said at last. Xemion looked with a slight shudder at the raw cut that had crisscrossed the scar. “Not as she was at the place with the wells. I saw her as she really was … is, and now I know something. You remember how I used to hear that melody? I sang it to you once.”

  Xemion nodded.

  “Well, after your sword cut me the words started coming back to me.” She recited them hurriedly and in a casual voice, trying to deaden the effect they were having on her. “Open my heart; open the door, every day to love her more.” Here her voice broke with a quickly quashed sob. “Break O wave upon the shore. Every day I’ll love her more.”

  She looked at him as though what she would say next was entirely obvious. “And now I know what happened to her. This is something I had forgotten even before I drank that accursed water. Someone — I think it might have been my uncle or maybe my grandfather — he had some kind of spell kone. I think it was handwritten by him. I think he was trying to revive the spellcraft or something, I don’t know, but he turned this big waist-high spell kone just as she was singing me that song and … and I think he turned the kone backward. I think … well, I know … I remember it so clearly: he cranked the handle clockwise instead of counterclockwise and somehow, I don’t know how, her song must have been pulled into the spell and … and I think it ran it in reverse.”

  She was speaking quickly yet the sound of her heartbeat was always there in her voice, pushing through it like some trapped creature trying to break free. “Every day after that, instead of loving me more and more, she loved me less and less. And at first it was just so gradual I hardly noticed, but slowly she got nastier and nastier with me and then it deepened and hardened and she began to get enraged with me and … she took to hitting me really, really hard … and when at the end, just before you found me, Xemion, that was the day she gave me this.”

  She pointed to her eyebrow where the newly opened scar was. “She meant to … kill me, I think, but I moved. Then she tried to … to drown me. She said she was doing it because she hated the sight of me.”

  Saheli glanced quickly at Xemion as she said this, her nostrils flaring
with emotion. “Well, now I know she didn’t really hate me. She was hexed. In fact, every hateful thing she did to me originated from one thing — love. Don’t you see? I know from every slap to my face, every horrible curse she spat at me, that she loved me deeply. And so all my pain is a blessing. All my wounds are gifts of love, do you see?”

  Her jaw was trembling, her expression a mixture of horror and wild, manic faith. “And that’s why I have hope. Because I can undo all that. I can go back to those wells and find her and … and I’ll find a way to undo that spell, I swear I will, and then I’ll know at last what the truth of her love is.”

  Xemion shook his head. “Saheli, that’s so horrible.”

  “That’s spellcraft, Xemion,” she came back accusingly. “That is what spellcraft does to human love. It turns a mother against her own child.” Her eyes fleetingly met his for the first time, but it was enough for him to see the intensity of her anger.

  “I made the sword for you,” he protested. “To save you.”

  “But that’s the last thing I would have wanted. I would rather have died than …” With an effort she managed to reel her anger in. “But don’t worry. Vallaine has told me all about it. I know he put it to you in a way that made you think you had no choice. I accept that. Not because he said so. I just know that when I looked down on you lying there and thought you were dead that I felt a terrible pain in my heart as though I had just lost a great friend … or more than just a friend, a great …” She bit her bottom lip and Xemion waited full of hope for her to finish, but she didn’t finish. She just shook her head and shrugged her shoulders as though there were no words for whatever this final concept might have been.

  “Now they tell me that you must leave and go away across the sea and never return. They say it is because you’ve become a spellbinder and that you may be dangerous. And I hate that. I hate spellcraft. I hate it for what it did to my mother and me.” She dared to look up now, directly into his eyes for the first time, and just as he saw the change in her she saw the change in him and both were afraid. “And for what it has done to you,” she said, her nostrils flaring. “You … you seem so utterly different.”