Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  It presented the information packed into a gap between two instants. Thoughts, words and images, all delivered in a flicker. When Ametheus had blinked against the sun, it had gone, but the memory of the message had never faded.

  Take this message as a sign of my trust, that I know where to find you and yet keep it a secret between us. I am Annah and I am dying. I want to give you something I have learnt before I go. I am like you, I am flawed in the eyes of our time, but I understand Order, I have been forced to learn its many ways, and I think I can show you a way to end the persecution it delivers upon you. Come to me. Come in secret, for the wizards here will not understand. I am watched, I am in a cage. I cannot come to you. There will be great risk, but I know you have a way of shrouding yourself. You passed me in Culcarägh one day, and I sensed your movement but could not gain your sight. You probably don’t remember me, but I have thought of you ever since that day, and I have studied what you have done and what has been done unto you. Nobody can repair what has been broken in the name of Order, but I can see to it that you are made stronger. I can offer my friendship, until I am gone.

  After that had followed the directions to her chamber, and when he should come, but the words of promise had lingered the most clearly. I can offer my friendship, until I am gone. A brief taste of her life had punctuated the end of the message like a sip of truth—a seal of blood. A friend, she had said. A friend.

  “Are you going to inspect me all day or can I have the pleasure of seeing you too?” Her voice was soft, warm, with a hint of tiredness or sadness beneath the surface. “There’s no one but me down here to see you.”

  She was speaking to him! She knew he was there! He held his breath. He hadn’t ever planned to reveal himself. No, she couldn’t see him. She wouldn’t find it a pleasure. She would be horrified. Everyone was horrified, the first time—forever after, with most of them.

  “It’s all right. I know about your brothers, and I know which one you are, Ethan. The body is just a vessel for the soul, and it is your soul I care for, your soul I wish to speak to. Appearances can be changed, or have you not thought to turn your power upon your own deformity yet?”

  He had thought of it, but he knew he didn’t have the fine control he’d need to work on something as complicated as his own body. Fine control required the patterns of Order, and those he would never touch.

  “Have it your way then. I am comfortable speaking to the air. I do it all the time.” There was no bitterness to her comment, rather a kind of gentle humour. She pointed to the chalice on her workbench. “See? I am trying to make a new metal, an alloy. They don’t like it when I smelt the gold and silver together to make electrum, but they’d be more than unhappy if they learnt my real work on this. I’m trying to weave a mix of Order and Chaos spells so they unify inside the alloy. It will be the first time the world has seen mend-metal. You’ll be able to dent it or scratch it or even break it and the inner index will always return it to be like the original. The pulse fluctuates from Order to Chaos and back again. The Chaos releases material from the Order structure, the Order binds the elements into their pattern. Instead of needing a spell to be cast upon it every time it is damaged, my spell is a continuum, it lives in the metal itself. It works because it maintains the balance around the origin. Well, almost. I haven’t got it right yet, but I’m close.”

  Magic, she was working on magic. Ametheus hated magic. He stared at her, not seeing her for a while, wishing she would be otherwise so she could be his friend. What had he expected? She was a wizard, she was in the college in Kingsmeet. Of course she would be working on magic.

  “I’ve written a book about you, did you know that? I called it Thricety, it’s got all the facts I’ve been able to find, without the horror-stories and old-wives’ tales. I wanted to show the others how unique and special you really are, and the benefits of allowing you to be free, but they condemned the book and took it away! They won’t let anyone read it. Now what’s the use of that, I ask you? All those years of work, and nobody but me to gain from it. Knowledge should be spread out again once it has been collected, like honey on bread. Yes, I like that, like honey on bread.” She bent over her manuscript again, and scribbled furiously in the margin.

  Ametheus glanced around the room. All the walls, the floor and the low roof were that steel-blue metal. A bed, a chest of drawers, other furniture laid out haphazardly, clothes draped upon them—a closed-off area in the corner. She had a fire burning in the little forge. He liked fires. He could watch fires for hours on end. The flames danced with unpredictable beauty, those ever-changing forms within the fire.

  “This is all that I am allowed, in here, all that I own. Not much for the daughter of an earl-palatine, wouldn’t you say? He’s forgotten he had a daughter; I’m such a disgrace to the good name. So now I’m in this prison with the door that I can’t close, where everyone can come in, but I can never leave. The blue metal is gallium—lattice-bonded gallium. It’s the only thing they could find that I couldn’t tear down with my forbidden Chaos flux. It’s too fluid, it becomes liquid just after water would boil; it just becomes a mess. If you have to use your power, keep it away from the walls. Come, Ethan, we don’t have much time. I have nothing to hide in here. Please don’t hide from me. I can’t look at you with your strange cloaking spell. It brings tears to my eyes. Let me speak to a face, at least.”

  If she was a prisoner of the wizards, then she couldn’t be a threat to him. Ethan scrunched up his face as he tried to think. Logic wasn’t one of his strong points. He definitely had a headache now, a real pounder. Annah must be a good person, because she kept a fire burning, he decided. He wanted her to like him. He wanted to have a friend.

  Ethan opened the hood of the cloak just a little bit, so that Seus could peep out from the front. It wasn’t his true face, but then Seus was the best-looking of the three, and that was all she should see. Best-looking? Well, that was like saying that a frog was prettier than a toad, he supposed. He knew how ugly he was. Seus had a somewhat noble, handsome face, and so long as he kept a firm grip on his cloak, she didn’t need to see anything else. The only problem was that Seus’s eyes wouldn’t follow her properly and he was prone to dropping comments which often made no sense in the present at all.

  Her eyes brightened at once. “Oh, there you are! And I was looking way off to the left! I am glad you came to me, I feel so privileged to have you here. Please, have a chair.”

  Who was she, this woman who smiled at him, this woman that didn’t fear him? A privilege to have him near? Almost everybody he’d ever met considered him a curse.

  “I-I’d r-r-rather sss-sss-stand. I b-b-break th-things.” He always stuttered when he spoke through one of his brothers, but it seemed worse than ever.

  She smiled. “Yes, but of course! What is the good of having Order spells, if there’s nothing broken to fix? Go ahead, I have nothing here I don’t mind breaking myself.”

  Ametheus pulled out the widest-looking chair, and eased down upon it. It sagged under his weight, but held, for the moment. He kept his feet wide in case it yielded to the Chaos of his omnium cloak and disintegrated.

  “I l-liked y-your m-m-message. It w-was p-pretty.”

  “The sun-glower pattern? I hoped it would work. It was the only way I could send a message without them knowing. They take me out to see the sunshine once a week. I had the spell prepared, and it was gone before they could stop me. They didn’t know what I’d done, or where I’d sent the essence, but they suspected something, because I haven’t been allowed out since.”

  How long had it been since he’d received the message? Two weeks? Three? He couldn’t tell. He just knew that he’d walked most of the way, because he wouldn’t use magic unless he really had to, and time-jumping messed up his mind.

  “Am-m I l-late?

  “Only by ten days. Don’t worry, I’m still alive, so it’s not too late.”

  “I-I d-didn’t kn-n-now wh-when to ss-ssay h-h-hullo. Ji-Annah, Annah!
A d-day is-ss too p-p-precise for m-me.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, it would be, wouldn’t it? I’m sorry. I really must find out more about you. I know so little.”

  They talked for some time, just about what he’d done and where he’d been, what he liked and didn’t—simple talk, the kind of talking that was strange and joyous to Ametheus. As they talked, his nervousness faded, although his stutter remained. Then she began to explain why she’d called to him, what his presence meant to her. He didn’t follow a lot of what she talked about. It was complicated and to do with magic, but he didn’t let on how the explanation was passing him by—he preferred to watch the way her delicate hands danced in the air as she outlined her ideas on Chaos and Order and the balance which should exist between them. When she looked at him he nodded with his brother’s head. Whenever she smiled at him, his thoughts would spin.

  She wanted to try a spell called Wholefood; one they would perform together, right there in the blue room. She was excited about it, and he became excited for her. He tried to warn her how unruly his power was, but she just insisted that they try, at least once. “I’ll protect the walls from inside. I’ve done it before, but I need your strength to fill a fractal that is powerful enough. I can’t make the flux and contain it. I can’t do it alone.”

  Flux. That was what she called his silver essence. He hadn’t known that it had a special name. The Order essence, that terrifying golden vapour, she called flax. She would weave it around his burst of power, very tightly, so that the Chaos was contained, and the result would be a harmony of the two opposing natures.

  “Wh-what will it b-be?”

  “Something wonderful,” she answered. “A food that will never diminish. Nobody need ever go hungry again.”

  Ametheus knew about hunger. He’d spent years and years being hungry. It would be a good thing, he decided. She was so excited. She collected flax in her palm and drew him out into a space on the floor by his hand. He realised that his cloak must have slipped open.

  “Why? Why did you betray me?!” asked Seus suddenly, in a clear voice.

  Ethan reeled. He hadn’t meant to allow Seus to speak of his own accord, but in his eagerness to pay attention to Annah he’d let his grip on his brother’s mind slip. He fought to regain control. The cynical brother was interfering in their fun, blurting out things that had nothing to do with them.

  Annah looked confused. “Ethan? I…I never did. Nobody knows you’re here, only me. What do you mean?” She looked hurt, scared. All his hopes of friendship seemed to be crumbling to dust.

  “N-no! J-just ig-ig-ignore him! I-I didn’t m-mean to s-s-say that!”

  She looked at him askance, and then understanding dawned on her face. “That’s not Ethan I’m seeing, is it? You’re still hiding somewhere in the cloak! That’s one of your brothers, isn’t it?”

  Stupid stupid stupid brother Seus. Now she knew he was ugly. He thought of putting Seus to sleep with a hard knock to the head, but he couldn’t do that. He needed Seus, he needed him now, to use the magic that he would one day know.

  “I-I’m ready to c-c-cast the s-spell n-n-now,” he said, holding up his hand and wrenching the horrid silver flux from the liquid clarity of the air just as Seus had shown him.

  Annah didn’t hesitate to bring her golden essence to him, and to weave it quickly into her desired design.

  Their hands met, and Ametheus released his hold on the flux. The gold and silver flared brightly on contact, Annah’s design spun wildly, then a rainbow formed in its place, a glistening, solid rainbow, taking the form of an apple.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, “I didn’t know the colours would come out like that! It’s beautiful. Don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

  The apple looked solid and shiny. It was just the right size. Annah held it up to him on a flat hand. “Here, you have the first bite. You deserve it, for being so brave and coming here. Oh, I’m so happy, I was right, I was right! Take it. It’s a token of our friendship. I’m sure it tastes very nice. I worked on the flavour index for months.”

  The rainbow colours shifted slowly across the skin. He reached for it, but didn’t get to take it. For as he reached up he felt sudden probing fingers of essence rush past, around and over him. Someone had entered the room behind him; someone was searching through the room! He whipped his cloak closed across his face and dived to the side. Annah just froze where she was, standing with the raised apple, a shocked look on her face.

  The searching fingers came again, and Ametheus stumbled against the chair and kicked it aside as he ran. There was nowhere to hide in this room! He knew those searching fingers; he had felt that kind of power before, in a forest in Orenland, in a shack in Rundirrian Run, any number of times across Oldenworld. Wizards! More than one.

  They were massed around the exit, five of them, a terrible web of shimmering power growing between their hands, searching the room, seeking him out. One ginger-haired wizard ran forward and snatched at Annah’s arm, and began to drag her away with a snarl on his lips, dragging her toward the door. She lashed out with a burst of red-hot flame, and he howled and fell away from her.

  “How can you do this!” Annah cried. “He trusted me. He trusted me!”

  “Just as we trusted that you would find a way to meet, before the end!” shouted an old white-haired wizard, casting a swirl of liquid gold which wrapped around Annah and seemed to prevent her from casting a counter-spell.

  Two younger wizards leapt for her, a bitter-faced woman and a burly, balding man. They caught her by her feet. They began to drag her toward the door again.

  “No, I won’t let you take me out! You’ll kill him if I’m out! They’ll kill you, Ethan!” She kicked and thrashed and tripped the burly man up by his legs. She jumped to her feet and slapped the woman across her face with her metal wristband. Annah was so slender, so light, and yet she became a sudden slashing, kicking and striking fury, leaping from one wizard to the next. The wizards backed away from her.

  “Then stay in here!” the white-haired wizard shouted, signalling to the others.

  “Ametheus!” they said, and he was paralysed.

  “Ethan!” Annah shouted. “Ethan, no! Don’t listen to them.” She understood his dilemma. When he heard that name, all three were called. All three would strive to take control—his own name that drove him mad. She’d probably written about it in her book. She was wrong about her wasted work. Someone else had read her notes.

  “Ametheus!” they shouted, and brother Amyar woke to the call.

  “Ethan!” she cried, looking around for him but not seeing him.

  “Ametheus!” they cried, then the door slammed and a bolt thudded home.

  “No!” Annah wailed. “No! How can you do this?”

  They were trapped in the blue room. The rage that was Amyar flooded into him like a hot poison. Only then did Ethan realise how stupid it had been to come here with his angry brother asleep. He could not use his normal technique for escaping from trouble, he could not ‘step back’ into the past that Amyar had seen, because it was too long ago since Amyar had been conscious. There was a limit on how far Ethan could reach into his brother’s mind, and he only spanned a few hours at most. Amyar had been put to sleep long before they had come near Kingsmeet, long before he would suspect something to do with the wizards was being planned. And now Amyar was right there with him, in the same moment. There was no recent past to step into, no way out of the blue room through his angry brother.

  Something tightened around them, something had changed. “Oh Gods no,” said Annah. It was growing warmer. Ethan desperately tried to think. He could still escape, but he could only step forward, into Seus, and he could only do that alone, for she did not exist in his future yet. He could not save Annah.

  She crumpled to the floor with a keening animal wail.

  He ran to her, lifted her in his arms.

  “No!” she cried. “These shackles bind me to this room. The metal is in my blood.
I cannot leave with you. The room is my prison. I will die beyond it, without their antidotes! I will die in it! Leave me here! Go!”

  He held onto her, wanting to say goodbye, wanting to ask her to forgive him, but he could not. He held her to one side and turned his head so that he could see her with his true eye. She didn’t even flinch when she saw his pasty face. “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  He couldn’t let go.

  “In your m-message, you s-said you were d-d-dying. What w-were you dying of?” he asked.

  She looked up into his eye. “Hatred. I am dying of hatred. They forced me to be something I am not. I refuse to eat while they keep me in bondage, and they refuse to set me free.”

  An oppressive heat pierced the room. The walls became yellow.

  “Let me go! Save yourself, Ethan! Save yourself! I will be free at last. Go, my friend, go!”

  She slipped from his awkward arms, slapped his grasping hands aside, backing away from him on the floor. Tears were streaming down her face.

  Then brother Seus saw, and brought the vision unto Ethan, and then he knew, that she would be sealed in this tomb of gallium, that the wizards would melt the walls, roof and floor an instant forward of where he was standing in time, and that in only one future could he live. He must flee into Seus or be entombed himself.

  Seus gripped his stunned awareness with brutish force, for he had Amyar to assist him. Ethan was wrenched forward, into the future Seus witnessed, to the foremost limit of the ‘now’ which intersected with Ethan’s mind. He experienced the blinding flash and painful jolt that always came with moving faster than the laws of space and time allowed. Chaos broke him and rebuilt him in the same instant, but it was another instant, taken from a life that was not yet his own.

  He lurched to his knees on a purple carpet—the upper corridor. He drew a shuddering breath and scrambled to his feet, running for the exit. He was alone, but she was still trapped in that room in the basement. A solid whump! shook the building underfoot. Annah!