Jorm

by Alan Bayman

  I hurried over to her. The lights began to dim. She sat up, grabbing me roughly as I came near.

  “You’re alive, lover,” she said in Orc, hands digging into my arms, her dark eyes intense. The golden traces in her runes vanished as the candle light returned to normal. She was sweating and panting, and her body seemed to thrum like it did shortly after her passions were spent.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. My hand went to her face, and she grinned and pressed her cheek against it. For another instant, my world shattered again.

  We were making love right there on Alula’s bed. The Shan-Lo was crying and I was holding her. Then both of us were yelling at Alula as Shan-Lo scrambled to find a weapon. Then we were making love again, this time with Alula joining us. And then again, we were back to staring at each other, my hand on her cheek, as though nothing had happened. I would have staggered back if Shan-Lo hadn’t had so strong a hold of me.

  “What’s the matter,” she asked.

  I made a hand gesture she had taught me, meaning “dangerous to speak”.

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked over at Alula suspiciously, who was staring over at us wide eyed with her mouth open. I shook my head, put my hand to my throat, and made the symbol for “danger.” I was calming down, but I absolutely did not want to use the Nepherine power a third time. With these strange visions (Hallucinations? Dreams? Illusions?) I worried for what they had done to me already. Besides, after the third time I used it I would need to change my name.

  Shan-Lo and Alula talked. Shan-Lo’s story corroborated with mine, and when Shen-Lo got to the death of her son, she winced, but nodded for Shan-Lo to continue. For a moment I wondered why she was not as upset, but then I remembered that Alula was the one that turned him into a zombie in the first place. She probably figured that she could do so again.

  Alula seemed more interested in the new magic I had shown. With quill and parchment, I told her that I could sing spells. She went pale when she read my words. I tried to reach for the parchment piece, to ask her what was wrong, but she pulled away.

  “I need to be alone for a while,” she said quietly, heading for the door. “Stay here tonight. You won’t be disturbed.” With that she left.

  25.

  That night Shan-Lo seemed to be ravenous. Rarely was she so passionate, and never so sustained. I felt the echo of my song hummed through her, easing her fatigue as it brought us closer.

  As it did we split again, or rather the moment split, into a thousand other moments. A lifetime of what could have been washed between us, where my hand went one way, or another, where a word became a kiss, where heated passion or even anger became conversation, or simply sleep.

  They branched out into a great mandala of intimacy, love, sharing, with strife and anger branched out in the far remote recesses of possibility.

  We felt them wither away, collapsing into the nothingness of what could have been, made alive only in our memory. The worlds we shared drifted away until only two remained. In one we lay tangled together, our passions spent. In the other we simply spent the whole-time laying side by side gazing into one another’s eyes.

  I was not sure which one was real until she brought a hand up and lightly touched my shoulder, and I briefly broke eye contact to look at it. Her hand was warm and glistening with sweat.

  “Did all of that happen?” I asked.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” Her voice was soft, faint, and tinged with confusion.

  “You miss her,” she said suddenly. I immediately knew she was speaking of Shailyn. We had this conversation already, but we were having it again.

  “Yes,” I said. The magic didn’t seem to be affecting my voice. I did not know why I knew it wouldn’t.

  “But you do not speak of her. Nor do you seek her.” Shan-Lo’s hand danced over my heart, like it had when we talked before, but it hadn’t happened.

  “What do you mean, seek her? She passed away three hundred years ago.” I knew the answer already, but this is how the conversation went.

  “But you know Necromancy,” she frowned. I could see in her eyes she was speaking like it was rehearsed, that she knew what I was about to say.

  “Ah, I see your meaning. Humans are not the same as Orcs. They do not wait around on the other side of the veil, looking after their loved ones and descendants. They pass on to be reincarnated. A reincarnated soul cannot be called across the Veil.”

  “So, you think she has given up on you, and moved on,” her hand glided across my cheek.

  “She would have had to. Unless she somehow studied Necromancy in her life, she wouldn’t know how to stay.”

  In the other possibility this conversation made Shan-Lo angry. She wanted to know how I was so sure Shailyn wasn’t waiting for me across the Veil and accused me of being a cruel husband by ignoring my departed wife.

  We gazed at each other, unseeing as we watched the fight play out. In that dream it ended our relationship. In this one, our closeness survived, but we were locked together like the land and the moon; sometimes a little close and sometimes a little further, but never quite touching, and never drifting away.

  “This is so strange,” she said. “We’ve done so much, yet we didn’t, and now I feel stuck with you like a boat caught along a great current, without being able to turn or anything.”

  “I know, I don’t know why this is happening, or how. Just that it has something to do with the magic I used.”

  “I can feel it leaving me,” she sat up a little, looking around. “I can only faintly see the other us now.” She squinted at the door as I was storming out of it, in the dream.

  “What are they doing now,” she asked after a moment.

  “I don’t think I should say,” I replied. “It seems like if I tell you, it will make it more real, and if I told you enough, it would make this the dream, the vision would become the way we are.”

  She nodded in assent. “What now?”

  “Now, we wait for Alula.”

  In the silence of our waiting I thought of all the things we experienced in that didn’t happen. Or did they? Even though we didn’t physically carry out those actions, we remembered them is if we did. How important was a false memory of what could have happened, if it is as clear and detailed as if it did?

  I could tell Shan-Lo was having similar thoughts as we looked at each other. Dream or not, we knew on a deeper level now, where words were less needed.

  Eventually, Alula returned, bringing the dawns light with her as she opened the door. She looked tired and haggard, and her eyes were red rimmed from crying. She sat down next to her table in the middle of the room, leaning heavily against it.

  “My son is dead,” she said in a tired half choke, tears returning to her eyes. “He can’t come back, without a heavy price to be paid.” She seemed to sag further into the table.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Maybe you are, but you’ll only feel it when your fourth chakra is awake,” she said coldly. Then she shook her head.

  “I am tired. I am angry. You make an easy target to make do with, but it is not your fault. It is mine.” She looked at me, with an intense look I could not decipher. Loathing, hatred, desire?

  In some of the more farfetched visions of Shan-Lo and I together (near the edge of the mandala), Alula had returned early. In a few of those she had attacked us, but in most of them she had joined in.

  “I spoke with the head of my order,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. Her voice carried more strength as she sat up.

  “She told me about you. She said that you are the man who will always walk two paths, between living and death, and between what must and what must not be. You are the ripple in the fulcrum.”

  She stood up and seemed to draw strength from the room around her. It made sense, this cottage being her place of power. She looked at me, suddenly regal, her dark eyes still smoldering.

  “She told me to be honest and forthright with you, and you would likely be so in tu
rn. So, I will. She told me you have the power to bring my son back. That power is not in necromancy, but in your voice. But you must care enough to do so. Sincerely, care. You are my best chance at bringing him back.

  “I am willing to serve you in any way I can to convince you to care.” She leaned forward, ever so slightly, but the suggestion was clearly made.

  That explained why the desire was there, and the anger.

  “You don’t have to sleep with me to garner my good will,” I said.

  “If you’re not interested, just say so, though I’m not sure if I’ll believe you, as I can see what goes on in your chakras,” she gave a flirtatious smile.

  “But perhaps you’re a man of monogamy? You don’t strike me as such. Few men are, and no Orcs that I know of,” she looked back and fourth between Shan-Lo and I.

  Shan-Lo broke in before I could respond.

  “He is Ha-Tu. He should have many lovers. But no more than three wives.”

  “What!?” We hadn’t talked at all about this, but it was the last thing I expected her to say.

  She looked pointedly at me and continued.

  “But his wives should be free to find strong Orcs to make babies with, since he cannot. Among them he would raise his closest guards and craftsmen, and one who would take his mantle should he pass.”

  Ha-Tu. She was treating me as one of the undead chieftains of the past. Did that mean she saw me as her chieftain? No, she was still in a clan of her own.

  But she had always been ambitious. If I became a chieftain, a real Ha-Tu, then she could become one of my wives. A chieftain’s wife is like nobility among Orcs. Plus, she could have children with whatever Orc she desired, and most Orcs would gain status in doing so.

  It would make her childhood love available. That is where she was going, this was mostly for him. Even with what passed between us, I still knew her feelings for him. But it was okay. I had my Shailyn, and she had her childhood love.

  People think that love comes in some sort of limited quantity, and that it must be doled out to one and one person only. That in loving more than one person that somehow puts limits on it, and you would have to take away your love from one person to give it to someone else.

  But it is infinite. It can be divided so and remain infinite. The only limits it has are those imposed on it through fear and jealousy, be they real or otherwise.

  That is why I could miss Shailyn, care for Shan-Lo, and look after Tina without any conflict. And why I could accept that Shan-Lo saw others and Tina would eventually find someone to be with (or so I imagined). I suppose there is jealousy for some. But jealousy comes from what we do have in limited supply: time. But I am undead. Time has lost most of is meaning.

  I would have liked to keep them all for myself, and who wouldn’t? But I knew that the only way for that to happen was to collar them, and I was no slaver.

  I had been lost on thought and had stopped paying attention to the conversation. When I refocused, Shan-Lo and Alula had been talking, and of all things, flirting. Shan-Lo was telling Alula some of the things we had done together in the vision we had, and Alula’s smoldering stare was now fixed on her.

  Things did not progress from there, but the promise of future endeavors hung heavy in the air.

  Alula wanted me to sing her son back to life, but first I had to care enough to do it right. She offered to summon spirits and other beings to help me understand and use my power. In that she aimed to seduce me, but in knowing her motivations, I did not mind.

  Shan-Lo wanted me to become a Ha-Tu. I decided to look into it. If anything, it would give me a new identity for when I sing a third time and have to give up the name “Jorm”.

  EPOLOGUE

  Returning home and finding Tina was a tiring endeavor. Adan was furious with me. Tina had gotten it into her head that I had been killed and had approached Adan in such a panicked state that he had left her in his room on powerful sleeping tonics until he could find me.

  “Don’t do that to the woman,” he snarled. “She’s delicate enough as it is. Either take her with you or stop romping about at night. You should know better.”

  I agreed to calm him down, then never left her side for several weeks.

  During such time, I began to plan. I would have my revenge. I would free the slaves, living or otherwise. I still sometimes glimpse things. The look like ghosts of what might have been. Could this be a budding talent in the art of Divination, or something more? I do not know. I must study more. So much to study, plan, and learn…

  …I grow tired of writing, for now. The hour is late. Ash falls gently down through the shattered ceiling and onto my desk as I quill these last few pages. The ruins are all that is left now, in this once great castle. I just received a summons from the Emperor, as one of his last subjects, to the throne room. I wasn’t sure the room even still existed. Ash and soot mar the pages as I write the final one…

  …At the same time, my quill writes under the gentile light of several lanterns placed over my clean new marble writing desk; a gift from one of my colleagues. The high ceiling of my office room has celestial drawings carefully etched into the wood, enchanted to glow softly like the night sky when the lamps go out. Through the adjacent door I can hear students chatting in the hall as they get ready for my next lecture. They speak of love and tiny intrigues as though they were newly founded discoveries that they themselves invented (bless them). As this last page is written, the noise grows louder as more of them file in.

  Which one of these moments is real? Which is just the dream of what could have been? I must continue writing, to find out. For it is all happening as I write it and as it happened at once.

  I will give my lecture or see the Emperor. Then I will pick up my quill again, and see what has happened, as I remember it.

  Excerpt (foreshadowing)

  Sacrificial magic is the oldest and most primitive of magics. Simply put, one takes an object and destroys it, freeing the currents within. The practitioner then scrambles for those freed currents to weave them into whatever desired effect. The result is oftentimes reckless, inefficient, and riddled with side effects. However, the mental strain of weaving Sacrificial magic is magnitudes less than virtually any other Art, and so may come in use in times of exhaustion. Be cautious, however. Those that often practice the Art of Sacrifice will quickly find that objects (and people) they hold emotional attachments to are more effective to use in their castings. It is easy to begin perceiving such attachments as a mere focus for their rituals and can readily lead to the most diabolical of acts. Therefore, the Art of Sacrifice is deemed illegal in most civilized lands.

  It is interesting to note that many a layman assume a correlation between Necromancy and Sacrificial magic. Indeed, many an act lauded as vile acts of Necromancy were in fact committed by a Sacrificial Mage.

  But know this; there is a commonality, in that Necromancy deals in the end of Life, and Sacrifice in the destruction of all things, Life included. That is where their similarities end. To compare the Sacrificial Arts to Necromancy is the equivalent of comparing a boy sharpening a stick to make a spear, to that of a Master Weaponsmith at his forge.

  --Narmathere, Master Necromancer