Azoth Magen Quercus raised his hand, gesturing for silence. He moved closer to Melia — to Ilex and Melia — observing them at various angles, as Melia had done with the image on the final folio of Chimera Veritas. She and Ilex were now a living embodiment of that manuscript illumination, one she assumed by his ongoing skepticism even the Azoth Magen had never seen. Though more anxious with each passing minute, Melia realized she could not expect Quercus or anyone on Council to understand the complexity of the situation immediately. She also soon realized that neither she nor Ilex could ever fully explain how they had achieved mutual conjunction. Doing so — admitting they had collaborated with the Rebel Branch — would put them at an even greater risk of erasure. As problematic as the initial reaction was proving to be, living among alchemists as a conjoined pair would surely be preferable to living out their mortality among people of the outside world.
“Scribe Ravenea!” called Quercus. “Approach.”
Ravenea stood directly in front of Melia and smiled. Melia could not ascertain whether she was seeing Ravenea through her own eyes or through Ilex’s. Either way, her memories of Ravenea remained her own — none of Ilex’s thoughts overran or interfered with hers. This realization was as comforting as it was perplexing.
“Did the manuscripts show any potential anomalies?” asked Quercus.
“No. None whatsoever,” replied Ravenea. “I assure you now, as I did weeks ago, everything aligned as it always does with conjunctive pairs.”
“Then,” Quercus addressed Ilex and Melia, “what have you done? How do you explain this . . . this . . . blasphemy?”
“Forgive me, Azoth Magen,” said Ravenea before either Ilex or Melia could respond, “but I do not believe this conjunction to be blasphemous. It is . . . unorthodox, perhaps. But I would contend that Ilex and Melia have enacted the Sacrament of Sacraments. They have become the living embodiment — the Quintessence, if you will — of the Primordial Myth. They have re-enacted the First Conjunction, that of Aralia and Osmanthus. Their achievement is to be honoured, revered even. Certainly not scorned.”
“Your opinion is noted, Scribe Ravenea,” replied Quercus dryly. “Whether or not it will be the official reading of the conjunction will be decided among the Elders.”
Instead of signalling the traditional, celebratory procession from the cliff face back to the main Council grounds, Azoth Magen Quercus requested that all Council members, other than the Elders, return immediately to their chambers.
“Have you nothing to say?” asked Quercus.
Melia shook her head.
“Perhaps . . . she . . . he . . . it has something to hide,” suggested Azoth Ailanthus.
Melia grimaced. As dreadful as she felt being scrutinized by the Elders at the cliff face, she suspected the worst was yet to come. She and Ilex were escorted through the forest to Azothian Chambers. Despite the discomfort of being grasped on each arm by an Azoth, the process of walking was easier than anticipated. Melia had feared having to coordinate one of her limbs with one of Ilex’s. Instead, she simply focused her intention on walking, and they managed to move forward together without incident, as if both legs were her own. Perhaps Ilex’s attention was likewise focused on moving along through the forest. After all, though they had been conjoined for less than an hour, she recognized that a shared intention would in all likelihood result in a shared success, whether the goal was to walk or otherwise.
Moments after being confined to her chambers, Melia lit a Lapidarian candle, and then walked it and her newly conjoined body to the large mahogany wardrobe on the opposite wall, slid one of its panels to the side, and stood before the exposed mirror. She gasped . . . or at least she felt like she had. But now, looking into the mirror, she saw Ilex reflecting back at her; he had been the one to gasp. She moved closer to the reflected image and held out her hand. Against the glass, she held her hand to his. She touched him — a cold, smooth mirage of reality.
“Can you see me?” she asked him.
“No,” his reflection responded. “I can hear you, but I see myself.”
“Then why did you gasp upon seeing yourself?”
“I didn’t gasp. You did,” he said.
“No. Yes. I suppose I did.”
“I think you are in control of my — our — body.”
“Then how are you speaking?”
Melia watched Ilex shrug and shake his head. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I didn’t shrug,” she said.
He looked confused.
“I didn’t shrug, but I saw you shrug,” she explained. “Your shrug suggests I am not in complete control of our body.”
“No. Yes. I suppose not.”
Melia tilted her head. She watched Ilex’s reflection tilt his head simultaneously.
“Did you do that?” she asked.
“No. I simply allowed my body to . . . react, to follow you.”
“Interesting,” she said. “That certainly holds potential.”
He laughed. She laughed. Melia watched his face. She held her fingers up to her own cheek and watched his reflection turn his head to kiss the palm of her hand. They smiled, eyes glistening.
“Let me see you,” he said. “Let me see you in the mirror.”
“How? Perhaps your appearance is to dominate. Perhaps I am simply to exist within your body.”
“No. They saw you earlier. Ravenea and Quercus and the others. They saw us — both of us, each of us.”
“Yes. Of course. I’d forgotten. But how?”
“I don’t know. Apparently, we have much to learn, my love.”
“Much to learn.”
Thus, they spent their first night together, hour upon hour in the candlelit darkness, enchanted by one another and by the possibilities that awaited them.
Neither Melia nor Ilex revealed anything regarding the Sephrim or the rebels during the six-week period dubbed later by Ravenea as the Inquisition of Conjunction. They were questioned relentlessly. When not being interrogated in Elder Council sessions — which lasted several hours per day — they were set upon by Council members with countless questions and comments. Lapidarian Scribe Obeche was particularly ruthless, seemingly unable to abandon the notion that Ilex and Melia were in alliance with the Rebel Branch. Obeche found support for his cause through fellow Lapidarian Scribe Ruis, who had organized a schedule of alchemists to keep watch over the Lapis. I fear Ilex and Melia will attempt to increase the Flaw, he reportedly told Obeche and his allies. The Initiates, meanwhile, tended merely to stare, moving cautiously to the side if Ilex and Melia passed by. “Good morning, Scribe Melia,” one of them would say. “Good morning, Initiate,” Ilex would respond, purposely attempting to startle them.
One evening, as they strolled amidst the glistening trees of the Amber Garden, Melia confronted him. “Why do you continue to do that?”
“Do what?”
“Frighten the Initiates.”
“They are not frightened, Melia. They are amused, as am I. They have dubbed us Meliex, and it has already caught on among the orders. What do you think?”
“I am Melia,” she responded, adamant.
After hours of questioning over the weeks by the Elders, pendant reading by the Azoths, manuscript consultation by the Readers, and research by the Senior Magistrates (into the phenomenon of mutual conjunction, about which little beyond the Primordial Myth could be ascertained), Azoth Magen Quercus announced at a general assembly of Council that Ilex and Melia had been cleared of all suspicion and would be returning to their duties as a Novillian Scribe. The vast majority of alchemists — including Cedar and Amur — accepted this proclamation. For them, Council business, including finding a new Initiate, continued as usual. A few — such as Obeche and Ruis — continued to voice dissent or, alternatively, silently stare at them as one might eye an enemy or traitor. A few others — in particular, Ravenea and S
aule — became even closer friends with Melia, spending hours away from Council business to chat about existence and eternity while walking along the garden paths or sitting in the branches of the ancient wisteria late into the evenings. At other times, Melia would purposely and willingly enter the shadows — as they had come to refer to a phenomenon of mutual conjunction which allowed one person to dominate and one to retreat — when Ilex desired time alone with his friends, especially with Amur or Wu Tong. Melia had little interest in observing the activities they pursued in her virtual absence.
What was now their chambers had been Melia’s alone before the conjunction. Since she had been of a higher Order than Ilex, the Elders agreed that together they would occupy a spot on Council as Novillian Scribe and thus reside in the Novillian section of residence chambers. A rotation in Orders of Council would soon ensure that Ilex’s former chambers among the Lapidarian Scribes would be filled by an ascending Reader. Ilex vacated his chambers and moved his possessions into Melia’s. A room once tidy and minimalist in its decor was now a cluttered mess of Ilex’s paraphernalia. This inconvenience was one of the many aspects of mutual conjunction that tested Melia’s patience.
“Why do you need this?” she would ask, picking up an obtrusive and seemingly useless object that Ilex had placed on one of her bookcases. “I like it” or “That could prove useful someday” became Ilex’s stock phrases. Melia sighed. “I will forgo this if you will forgo that,” he would interject on occasion, holding an object of his in one hand and an item of hers in the other. She would then consciously take control of the hand holding her item and alternately place it back in its original location or place it in a box of their belongings that eventually would be removed from the premises, if not from Council dimension altogether. Perhaps it would have been better after all if the Elders had simply seen fit to banish them from Council dimension. Then she and Ilex could have started again with only a few possessions each rather than having to negotiate over every object. But such practical considerations were not the concern of the Elder Council. I am sure you will come to a compromise, Azoth Ailanthus repeatedly said whenever Melia or Ilex approached him on matters not directly affecting Council business. Thus, they worked out all such details through necessity or concession.
“Why do you think they could sense nothing of Dracaen or the others in our pendant?” Melia asked Ilex as they lay in bed one night. She had been waiting quite a while to ask him this question, afraid that doing so aloud during the Inquisition or its immediate aftermath might affect their conjoined pendant.
“How can we know the intricacies of our bloodlines and the effects of Sephrim?” responded Ilex.
“Until we can safely meet and consult with Dracaen, we must discover its intricacies as we progress,” said Melia, more as a promise to herself than advice to Ilex.
The days and weeks thereafter went by filled primarily with Council business. For their part, Ilex and Melia required several months to adjust to one another in ways they had never had to do before. Melia fulfilled most of the Novillian duties during the first months as a conjoined pair — Ilex merely observing as if in apprenticeship. Ilex, meanwhile, would dominate during intervals that Novillian knowledge was not specifically needed, such as when a Magistrate required help on an Initiate lesson. Day-to-day physical adjustments ranged from the trivial to the complex, involving everything from pouring tea to manuscript inscription, from mixing ink to making love. The latter took extensive practice since two sets of sexual organs could not be physically present at the same time. Achieving a level of sexual intimacy that satisfied both Ilex and Melia took some creative manoeuvring that involved shifting from one body to the other repeatedly. This constant shifting was difficult work, ultimately detracting from any pleasurable results. Eventually, self-satisfaction became their norm — one body and mind prominent while the other merely observed from varying degrees of dormancy.
“I could help,” Saule suggested to Melia one evening during a conversation in the wisteria tree.
Melia laughed, “Someday perhaps, but we are doing just fine on our own for now.”
She could feel Ilex stir slightly from his dormant state in the shadows, to which he had retreated out of politeness — etiquette they had firmly agreed upon to allow them each a certain level of privacy within individual friendships. Clearly the thought of engaging sexually with Saule had momentarily appealed to him. But Melia had no interest in pursuing the matter. She had no intention of sharing Ilex with anyone, let alone sharing herself. She was not about to let their mutual conjunction become the breaking point for a promise they had made to each other over a century ago to be different than most other alchemists of Council dimension. Of course, like any other alchemist, Melia knew that time passing within an eternity could lead one, or in this case two, to a change of heart and its inherent desires.
Council Dimension — 1816
For the century or so that progressed between the day they first held hands to the glorious night of passion before the Sacrament of Conjunction, Ilex and Melia had shared an intensity of physical and emotional intimacy enviable to all who knew them. Their friends both on Council and in the protectorate libraries would marvel aloud at the constancy of their love, seeking advice on their own relationships. In this sense, Ilex and Melia had become counsellors of a sort — listening to problems and proffering suggestions on all manner of situations. Regardless of their places in the orders, they had achieved an impressive reputation for their generosity and kindness and sound advice.
After the conjunction, everything changed. In the immediate aftermath, Council members seemed either fascinated or repulsed. Ilex and Melia moved between one state and the other at intervals of seconds or hours or days, depending on a variety of factors. One such factor included the rank of the individual or groups with whom they interacted. Those alchemists newest to the Council exhibited pure curiosity; indeed, the new Junior Initiate — Linden — would stare at them outright, smiling satisfactorily when Melia would shift to Ilex or vice versa. Those in the higher orders showed far more concern — worry about the precedent this mutual conjunction might set; fear that if such conjunctions became the norm, the entire structure of the Council would change. Even after the Inquisition, the Elders had expressed concerns regarding the standard of one hundred and one members, questioning how to remain stable when two minds — two beings — existed in one body. On a practical level, after ranking Ilex and Melia as one Novillian Scribe, they set about filling the spaces left in the Orders of Council from Lapidarian Scribe downward. On a philosophical level, however, they discussed whether the Alchemists’ Council comprised the bodies or minds of its members. How could two be separated into one or the other when both mind and body are mutually conjoined? Several Elder Council sessions were called to debate these and other such questions over the initial few years.
Of course, the Council need not have worried or debated. In the sixteen years since the conjunction, no conjunctive pair had been able to replicate the results. Granted, the Sacrament of Conjunction had occurred only three times in those sixteen years, but hundreds had occurred over the millennia. Thus, the Elder Council concluded the virtual impossibility of mutual conjunction, decreeing Ilex and Melia the exception. And as the declared exception, they endured increasing hostility, especially from the growing faction who believed them to be associated with the Rebel Branch simply by virtue of their difference from other conjoined pairs. Dracaen himself appeared unconcerned; indeed, he required little from them beyond the occasional drops of blood and reports on their well-being. In good time, he said repeatedly, the enigmas of bloodline alchemy will eventually be deciphered thanks to your conjunction. For now, simply be yourselves.
“Obeche has been especially vocal of late,” complained Melia to Ilex. They were standing on the balcony of their chambers overlooking Council grounds. The sun was setting, the sky, as always in Council dimension, splendid in its array of colours.
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“It makes no difference. His track record is not exactly stellar,” replied Ilex. Though they were alone and at no risk of being overheard by Obeche, they spoke softly. They could not take the chance that anyone on a nearby balcony or close to a window might overhear.
Melia sighed. “Though I would not have wanted to lose you, sometimes I wish we’d never had the bloodline confirmed, never succeeded at mutual conjunction. I am weary of the ongoing suspicion.”
“I cannot agree with you, Melia. Enduring the occasional insult — or even outright condemnation by Obeche — is nothing to bear in comparison to what I would have suffered with the loss of you. We made the only reasoned decision.”
“We made the only impassioned decision,” responded Melia. “Reason did not prevail.”
“Even so, I would not choose otherwise, my love. I would not make a different choice despite my anguish.”
Melia immediately felt Ilex begin to retract himself into the shadows.
“Wait! I don’t understand,” said Melia. “What anguish?”
Ilex remained silent.
“Ilex, talk to me. What is the matter? What anguish? Are you exaggerating your feelings to spare mine? Is your love for me waning?”
“How can you ask that?”
“How can you retreat from me in this moment?” She could sense his discomfort.
“I do not want you to feel the grief I feel.”
“What grief? What are you saying?”
“I miss you,” he said.
“But I am here, closer than ever.”
“No. I miss you as you before you were us. I want to touch you — physically — the way we used to do. Do you remember those first few times we dared to touch? Do you remember that day in the classroom with the honey?”
The Flaw in the Stone Page 5