Student of Kyme

by Constantine, Storm

  Three weeks after I’d summoned the Mahallatu, I decided to revisit them to enquire about their progress. This time, I did not go out to the woods, but lit a ring of candles on the floor in my bedroom. I locked the door to prevent any surprise intrusions and then composed myself within the circle to meditate.

  I met with the Twelve in the back room of the inn at the end of all time. The inn was hidden, approached by a single narrow track, within a mighty forest. The trees were in full summer garb, immense and brooding. The horses of the Twelve were tied up outside the inn. The building itself was silent, no merriment within. Dim orange lights gleamed from the diamond-paned windows. I went inside. There was no one to direct me, so I simply walked through the many small rooms of the building until I found the farthest chamber. Here there was a table, and around it sat the Twelve.

  I bowed before Merim and told him why I was there. I could see his face now, sharp featured and watchful. His eyes still burned red, as if filled with blood. ‘Our work is hampered,’ he said.

  ‘By what?’

  His companions did not speak to me. Their heads were bowed, faces hidden beneath cowls. Ornamental daggers lay on the table before each of them. Weapons bared.

  Merim looked me directly in the eye. My own eyes watered from that smouldering stare. ‘Give me a soul,’ he said.

  A face flashed before my inner eye. Jassenah. His name was a shout in my mind. I knew this was what Merim wanted; my sanction to take his life. For a second, I wavered, considered it. Then I shook my head. ‘Don’t trick me,’ I said. ‘I created you. You are an expression of my thoughts and desires. It is I who make the conditions, not you. Therefore, I will not give you a soul. Do my bidding, as I directed you to do.’

  Merim laughed at me. ‘You don’t want Ysobi badly enough,’ he said. ‘Or you would rid yourself of this impediment.’

  ‘Ysobi is the impediment, not Jassenah,’ I replied. ‘I wish no ill upon him. Let me make one thing clear. I summoned you not to deliver Ysobi to me, but to make him see things for himself. There is a difference. I have faith in my own truth.’

  ‘You want him to suffer,’ Merim said simply. ‘Or will you be like him and lie to yourself about that? You have been spurned, yet he continues to play with your heart. He throws it into the air. He throws it against a wall. It bounces back to him. And when he’s tired of playing, he leaves it lying in the cold, and goes to commune with his chesnari in the ethers. He doesn’t speak of you; of course he doesn’t. You are his secret, his sustenance. Your feelings are a fire to him; he is never cold as long as you gaze upon him.’ Again, Merim laughed, but I could not speak. Ultimately, Merim was the voice of my heart anyway. ‘You desire vengeance,’ Merim continued, in a conversational tone. He made a languid gesture with one hand. ‘Would not the greatest vengeance be to destroy all that Ysobi has? He could lose everything, even the friends he trusts. If this is what you want, then ask it.’

  I had to speak the truth. ‘All I will say is this: I want him to suffer as I have suffered. I want him to feel the pain I feel. It is not right that he drifts like a gracious swan through life while his games turn me inside out. It’s not fair!’

  Since when has life been fair? I hadn’t even uttered those words as a child when innocence had been taken from me so brutally. Perhaps now this was my shout against the injustice of what hara can do to one another. Perhaps…

  ‘Let no harm come to Jassenah or the harling,’ I said. ‘That is the only condition.’

  Merim inclined his head. ‘As you wish.’

  That night I dreamed what happened. I saw Merim gather the Gallatu to him; strange half harish creatures with spiny leathery wings that were like huge attenuated hands with webbed fingers. They did not have ordinary feet either, but claws like carrion birds. Their wild black hair grew all the way down their spines. They were partly like bats and partly like spiders. These beings fawned around Merim, who touched them lightly, smiling down upon them. At his word, they took off in a leathery rustle, diving this way and that up into a night sky, where the moon hung unnaturally large. The Gallatu flew to the house where Ysobi lay asleep. They roosted upon the roof, preening themselves, flexing their wings. They flapped down into Ysobi’s dreams. I saw his bed engulfed by them. It was as if they devoured him. Yet in reality, I knew, even as I dreamed myself, that he simply writhed in the clutch of a nightmare. I could see his room in both realities: moonlight fell upon him, clear and cold. His breath steamed upon the air. And shadows flickered in and out of being over his bed.

  I knew, because of things I’d learned in Kyme, that humans had been far frailer than Wraeththu. Their bodies had often been unable to combat efficiently hostile organisms that had attacked them. This had resulted in long-standing illness; a thing more or less unknown to harakind and therefore frightening to those of us born after the days of humanity had passed. Also, human bodies could turn upon themselves, in effect creating disease and illness that were merely symptoms of deeper-seated psychological hurts and ailments. I think the latter is what assailed Ysobi, for after the night I dreamed of the Gallatu, he fell ill.

  I was first made aware of this because he missed a meeting. Initially, I was filled with anger, fear and the certainty he’d decided no longer to see me. After I’d sat in our meeting place for an hour, my anxiety increasing with every passing moment, I wondered whether I should go to the Ivy House to find out why he hadn’t turned up. But then my pride marched in to complain about that. I mustn’t. I must resist. So I went through the day in agony, unable to ask anyhar if they knew anything. I thought that perhaps this was the path my magic had taken: the only way to cleanse me of Ysobi was for him to make the decision to end our friendship. I was too weak to do it myself. But when I went home I discovered the truth. Huriel was not there.

  Rayzie came to me in the hallway and said, ‘Ysobi is… afflicted. Huriel has gone to him.’ He looked at me in a knowing kind of way, but perhaps I imagined that.

  ‘Afflicted?’ I said. ‘In what way?’

  Rayzie shrugged. ‘He collapsed. From what I heard it is as if his body just sort of… shut down. He can’t rise from his bed.’

  ‘How strange,’ I said.

  ‘It is,’ Rayzie said. ‘Huriel is very worried about it. He came home briefly about an hour ago. Will you go to the Ivy House?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. If Huriel wants me, he’ll call for me.’

  Rayzie narrowed his eyes a little; they were full of unspoken remarks. ‘Dinner will be ready shortly. Would you prefer to eat with Ystayne and I this evening?’

  I hesitated. ‘No… I have some work I want to do. I’ll eat alone, but thank you for thinking of me.’

  Rayzie inclined his head. ‘As you like, although I believe meal times should be occasions when we forget about work.’

  I didn’t know whether to feel horrified or elated, although I confess I felt a little of both. Was I responsible for Ysobi’s condition or was it merely coincidence? An image of the Gallatu flashed across my inner eye. I saw them crouched upon the roof of Ysobi’s residence. Waiting.

  Two candles burned upon the table in the dining room, but otherwise the lights were turned off. I did not feel like eating. After Rayzie had brought me a plate of food, I left it to go cold and instead stared out at the garden. So much had happened to me since I’d come to Kyme. My life could have gone in any direction, but the decisions I’d made had driven it along certain courses. If I hadn’t cared about what others thought of me, if I’d still been with Malakess, could Ysobi have affected me as strongly? Or would it have all been the same and just created an even bigger mess of my life? How could I tell? What if I’d gone to Immanion? How I wished then that could have been possible. It seemed to me that everything was ruined in Kyme. Just as I’d started to establish myself, Ysobi had come back into my life; this ghost, this haunting. I let him into me to possess me. I let it happen. Why?

  I pressed my hands hard against my eyes, conscious once more of an ache behind them. A
n ailing brain. Let me be free… be free…

  When I lowered my hands, I saw an apparition in the garden, through the glass, beyond the reflection of the candle light. A white shape, motionless. I knew what it was: my Nagini spirit. I’d not seen him for so long. Perhaps I had never really seen him and he was just a conjuration of my mind, a representation of my higher self. Had he come in judgement or compassion? I stood up and went to stand close to the window. I could see the pale form, clad in tasselled robes, the face concealed. He watched me. I felt as if he could see right into me. Come then! I thought, as loudly as I could. If you have an opinion to express, then express it. Didn’t you guide my feet upon the road that night as I walked to my first meeting here with Ysobi? Didn’t you know all that would happen after?

  Then I was looking only at the darkness. Perhaps a trick of the light. There had been nothing there.

  Huriel returned to the house just after eleven. He found me in the parlour, where I sat staring into the flames of the fire. It felt like the eve of battle. Outside, in the wind, the sound of hooves, the reek of hot breath, the stink of vengeance. I was numb.

  I looked up as Huriel came into the room. I felt that I saw him properly for the first time in ages. He looked tired, worn out. I’d seen pictures of humans; perhaps it was true to say he looked older. He nodded his head abruptly to me in greeting and sat down in the chair opposite mine. ‘Would you like a drink?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes please.’

  I went to the cupboard where he kept his liquors: all Rayzie’s neatly labelled bottles, some with pictures of flowers and birds in his own spidery hand. I took a bottle Rayzie had called ‘Forbidden Potion’. A name like this usually meant the alcohol content was potentially lethal. When I removed the stopper, at first a bad smell came out, and then a scent of summer time. I poured Huriel a glass, poured one for myself.

  After I’d sat down again, Huriel did not speak for several minutes. I let the time tick by. I wouldn’t ask him anything. If I turned to look out through the window, perhaps I’d see my Nagini spirit out there, or perhaps just a reflection of the fire. A log cracked. It was a catalyst.

  ‘Ysobi has fallen into some kind of coma,’ Huriel said. ‘The phylarch’s physicians can’t pinpoint the cause, although they presume it’s connected with something way back. Some speak of the legacies of inception – perhaps death for us is this way, natural death.’ He leaned back in his chair, let his head flop back so that he stared at the ceiling. ‘For some moments, about two hours ago, he came out of his strange sleep. He raved, as if in great fear or pain. Eventually, the physicians had to drug him back to the state he was in before.’

  I said nothing, although my heart had begun to beat faster. I felt nervous.

  ‘Before he succumbed to unconsciousness,’ Huriel said, as if each word was a thorn he had to expel from his throat, ‘he did speak.’ Huriel raised his head again, stared me in the eye. ‘He said your name, Gesaril.’

  I felt guilty about that, there was no mistaking it, but also gratified. Wasn’t this what I’d worked for?

  Huriel’s gaze kept me skewered. I could not look away without appearing furtive.

  ‘He reached out his hand as if you stood before him,’ Huriel said. ‘I believe he did see you there. He said, “you must love me. You must always love me. Because that is the only way I can experience my love for you. Forgive me for what I did to you.”’ Huriel rubbed his face, swallowed. ‘A smile came to him, then. It was like a light inside him. Perhaps you did go to him, part of you did.’

  I stood up. ‘No! I would never go to him. How dare he fantasise that I did. He doesn’t deserve that respite!’

  ‘Gesaril…?’ Huriel appeared confused. He’d expected me to melt and weep, beg to be taken to see Ysobi; of this I am sure.

  ‘Don’t ask me, Huriel. Whatever is in your mind, don’t you ask me!’

  Huriel frowned. ‘But… isn’t this what you want? You were right all along. He lied to me. He lied to everyone, even himself, and let you take the blame. But the truth is out, as it will always come out. You should forgive him now. Perhaps that is the only thing that will save him – and yourself, for that matter.’

  ‘And even in this worst of conditions, he still manipulates me,’ I cried. ‘If I don’t go to him now, and he should die, hara will say it was because I was cruel and cold. How ironic.’

  ‘Sit down!’ Huriel commanded. ‘Sit down, Gesaril. Listen to me.’

  I hesitated then obeyed him, my hands plunged between my thighs. I felt cornered, threatened, in the wrong. How could I be? I’d revealed the truth.

  ‘You’ve seen Ysobi every day virtually since the day he came here.’ Huriel said. ‘Why can’t you go to him now?’

  ‘Because this is the time it ends,’ I said. ‘All I ever wanted was for him to speak the truth. Now he has. And I am free.’

  I don’t know what I expected Huriel to say next but I certainly did not expect him to droop forward and put his head in his hands. I could not hear him weeping, but his shoulders shook. Why was I so hardhearted? I couldn’t even go to him. He wept for that har. Who had wept for me?

  After a minute or so, he spoke. ‘I know what he did to you, Gesaril. I know how he made you into a creature of stone. And maybe it is too late for him, but don’t do this to yourself.’

  ‘It’s too late. It’s done.’

  Huriel shook his head. He did not bother to wipe away the tears that fell freely. ‘You do not understand us,’ he said hoarsely. ‘And we do not understand you… I’m speaking of the generations. We are still so… so… infected with what we were before. No matter how enlightened we strive to be, or tell ourselves we are, inside ourselves lies a human child. It is not the same for you. And what concerns me most is that we might unwittingly pass this infection on to our sons – through our actions, our beliefs. What has happened with Ysobi and you is a prime example. I was not blameless. I looked at the situation through human eyes. A relationship between two hara is such a small thing in the scheme of things, and yet it is a reflection of the greatest thing. If we cannot manage our hearts, how can we manage our reality? For this reason, I say to you, Gesaril, do not be consumed by your own hurt and desire for vengeance. Be har, be aware of how, in many ways, you are superior in kind to those who came before you. Go to Ysobi, and release him, as you desire release. Give him your forgiveness. Do not be concerned this will simply give him satisfaction, or let him off the hook. You should see him for what he is: damaged - more so than you ever were, despite the horrors of your childhood.’ He sighed. ‘I can say no more. I know that I haven’t helped you as I could have done. I know that I’ve regarded this situation as nothing more than the hot desires of a young har getting to know the realms of emotion and aruna. I’ve thought, oh, he’ll grow out of it. That was unfair, and I’m sorry.’

  I did not answer for some moments, but then said. ‘He must go, Huriel. If I do this for you, and for him, he must return to Jesith.’

  Huriel nodded. ‘I couldn’t agree more, but… this isn’t just for him and me, Gesaril. It’s for you too.’

  I laughed and could hear the hollow ring of my bitterness in the sound. ‘Oh, make no mistake, Huriel. None of this has been for me. None of it.’

  It was the smell of sickness that struck me first; something that we rarely smell. Humans must have lived with this constantly. It isn’t so much a physical smell, although I’m sure that in some cases of illness, when the body in some way decayed, then that would have been present, but this… this was a psychic stench. It was the aroma of shattered hope and dreams.

  The room was not oppressive; the windows had been thrown open and the fresh scent of the landscape at night sought to fill the air. Candles burned upon nearly every available surface. A hienama with two acolytes had clearly been performing some kind of healing ritual. As I entered the room, he was packing away his paraphernalia into a black cloth, tied with a cord. This har, who I did not know, eyed me stonily. He said nothing to me, bu
t left the room, his two apprentices trailing behind. No doubt he had felt the presence of the Gallatu around this house, heard the scratch of their claws upon the roof shingles and the leathery creak of their wings in the night breeze.

  Huriel had mentioned, awkwardly, that Jassenah had been contacted by the most powerful of Kyme’s Listeners, those strange hara who seem more at home in the ethers than in reality, and whose task it is to relay psychic information. I took Huriel’s remark to mean that the incomparable Jassenah would soon be on his way to Kyme, if he wasn’t already. And yet it had my name Ysobi had spoken in his fevered state, not Jassenah’s.

  Now I was alone with the one who had dismantled my being. I stared at him, wondering if I had ever truly known him. The blankets were pulled up to his chest. He was unclothed, his collarbones stark, like handles. He did not look different, particularly. It wasn’t as if he’d been devoured by a wasting sickness. He just looked exhausted. I couldn’t find any feeling inside me. I didn’t feel angry, sad, shocked, or in love. It was like stepping outside of time.

  ‘Are you awake, Ysobi?’ I asked.

  He opened his eyes; they looked black in the candle light.

  ‘I see that you are,’ I said. I was waiting for the accusation. Perhaps he would beg or plead with me to release him from this curse. Perhaps there would be anger.

  ‘I might be a pioneer,’ he said weakly. ‘They think this might be the end for us. We don’t know. But then, I am young by harish standards. There are others far older than me… can this be death?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that,’ I said.

  He smiled, not looking at me. ‘We shall see. But still, there are things that must be said. I have to make peace with myself, just in case.’

  ‘I will listen.’

  He gestured for me to sit at the end of the bed and I did so.

  ‘You must understand,’ he said, ‘that when I met you I had already made up my mind as to how I wanted my life to be. You were an inconvenience, Gesaril. I thought I’d reached a safe place, but then there was you. It wasn’t your fault. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to help you, set you on a strong path, but then I wanted to be with you also. I just couldn’t admit it, because I believed I was happy. As far as I was concerned, my life was complete.’