by Guy Antibes
“She actually said they might cut me open,” Sam said.
“Only if you agree to it,” Hilsa said. She looked at Moranna, who shrugged.
The girl finally swallowed. “I’m just an escort. I didn’t sit in on the meetings, but from I could tell, Leader Torkin echoed that same sentiment. Sam won’t be forced to do anything.”
But Sam knew there were plenty of ways to persuade a person to do something they didn’t want to do. He wondered if his reticence was an overreaction, but since Sinna hadn’t specifically agreed that an operation might be necessary, there was nothing Sam could do at this point. He was stuck far away from anything. If he left, he wouldn’t even know where to head.
“Time to go,” Moranna said.
Sam looked down at her clean plate. Didn’t she get enough to eat?
She must have noticed Sam’s eyes. “This is my free day,” she said. “I get one day per week to eat whatever I want. Every other day I must watch what I put in my mouth.”
“I watch what I eat for every meal, and even snacks,” Sam said.
“You do?”
“That’s how I get food into my mouth.”
Hilsa laughed.
Moranna pursed her lips, but she ended up smiling. “Being around so many Zogazin is catching, isn’t it?”
Sam just smiled. “Let’s go.” He winked at Hilsa and left breakfast feeling much better. A little joke wasn’t such a bad way to get out of a funk, he thought.
They returned to the hospital.
“This is where I leave you,” Moranna said. “I will be back at lunchtime.” She left through another door, leaving Sam standing in front of the desk in the tidy foyer.
“Pilkis Sorenon will take you from here,” the young man behind the desk said.
A tall, pre-maturely-white-haired man strolled into the foyer. He rubbed his hands. “Where is my victim?”
The attendant pointed to Sam.
“You are Pilkis Sorenon?”
“I am, Sam Smith. I have heard and read about you. You have quite a reputation. Come this way to my office, where I will conduct the initial observation.”
Sam followed the man through the door Pilkis entered. They turned to the right and walked down a long hallway to a row of doors. His observer pushed one open.
“After you, Sam Smith.”
Sam walked into a very orderly room. Books covered the shelves. A tiny round table was surrounded by only two chairs. “Sit here.”
Pilkis grabbed a notebook and a pencil before taking the other chair.
“I have been called many names in my time, but presently, around here I am called a pollen magician. I have even met your host in Tolloy, Plantian Plunk. We are going to evaluate you for the next few days. First of all, I’d like you to tell me of your early life before you left the town in which you were born. I am most interested in your relationship with pollen.”
Sam began to spout his usual abbreviated version, but Pilkis put his hand on Sam’s wrist. “Stop. I can tell a story that has been rehearsed. Give me details and your feelings. What did you consider as barriers? What triumphs did you have?”
For the rest of the morning, Sam gave Pilkis Sorenon a very detailed version of his life until the time he had reached Baskin. Sam’s interviewer stopped him many times for clarifications or requests to dig deeper into his memories. Sorenon’s notebook appeared to be about full. The man shook his writing hand.
“So eventful. I didn’t know anything about Banna and Ionie Plunk, other than Plantian had said one of his daughters had died and the other was in Toraltia.”
Sam didn’t correct him. “We will be having lunch?”
“You will,” Pilkis said. “I need to review my notes. We will start again when you return. I am sure Moranna Goranan is waiting for you. Follow the red arrows out of the hospital. They should disgorge you into the foyer.”
Moranna stood when Sam entered. Her eyes brightened, and that show of interest helped Sam shake off some of his fatigue from talking so much in the morning.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Not as tired as you,” Sam said.
“You won’t catch me with a comment so feeble,” Moranna said. “I hardly did anything this morning. I mostly waited for lunchtime.”
“I need something refreshing to drink. My throat is rough from so much talking,” Sam said.
“I know just the place.”
She led Sam to a part of the Order’s property where there was a small restaurant. They walked into a half-empty dining room. “Since this place charges money, only those who are willing to pay come. You will purchase our lunch?” she said with some trepidation.
“I will pay as long as I can spice my food up a bit.”
She beamed Sam a smile. “I’m sure I can come up with something.”
Sam looked at the modest menu, all written up in Zogazin. “This is a test?”
“Why do you ask?” Moranna asked innocently.
“I can’t make out all the words,” Sam said.
She leaned over, “Which words do you recognize?”
Sam looked at her peering at the menu. She was a pretty girl, even after leading him to a lesson. He pointed out about ten words that he gave her the meaning of and told her basically what the menu meant, but he had no idea about many of the words describing the food.
The server came with two cups of water, a tiny notebook in hand, and said something in Zogazin.
Sam frowned. “If he can’t speak Polistian, I suppose we can get up and go. I am increasingly offended by this server,” Sam said angrily.
The woman looked alarmed. “Please, don’t be,” she said in perfectly good Polistian, but gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “I am sorry, miss.”
Moranna put her face in her hands as Sam smiled triumphantly. He raised his eyebrows. “Could you tell me what is good today?” he asked in Polistian.
“We have some fresh fish caught this morning and rushed to Alloren.”
“I’ll have that along with some salt and pepper.”
“Oh. I can also bring a savory sauce that a few of our people like. Will that do?”
“Very much so.” Sam grinned at a mortified Moranna. “And you?”
“Me? I guess my lesson didn’t work out very well, did it?”
Sam laughed. “Sure it did. We both learned different things from the same lesson.”
She smiled, but Sam could tell she wasn’t pleased with the situation.
“Let’s just enjoy our meal,” Sam said. “If you want to tutor me, please go ahead.”
Moranna took a sip of water. “Very well.”
She began to point to table implements and items around the dining room. Sam knew some of the words, and he asked to write down the words he didn’t know. That seemed to mollify her.
When they were done, Sam liked the fish much better with the savory sauce, which Moranna ignored, and Moranna spent most of the time drilling Sam with Zogazin words. She wasn’t joking about insisting that Sam pay for the lunch, and somehow she looked a little less pretty on their walk back to the hospital.
“Thank you,” Sam said to her as they parted at the door.
“I will be here to escort you back to the house,” she said, her voice was flat and a little cold.
Sam sighed and entered the hospital.
“You can go back to Proctor Sorenon’s office.”
Sam nodded to the attendant and found Sorenon reading in his notebook.
“How was lunch?” Sam asked. “Delicious for me, and I think a bit bitter for Moranna Goranan. She had arranged to have the server talk in Zogazin, but I tricked the server into speaking Polistian. It was an awkward meal after that.”
“Ah, Moranna can be a little touchy. She is very pretty, very intense, and very smart, but…” Pilkis shrugged. “She will bounce back. She always does.”
Sam hoped so. He didn’t mean to show up the young woman, but he guessed trying too hard to fit in had made Sam a bit obnoxious, more
like a Hizorian, Sam thought. He decided he would apologize if the opportunity arose. “You have more notes to take?”
Pilkis Sorenon looked back down at his scribblings. “You arrived in Baskin, I believe…”
Sam got all the way to his exile before the proctor closed his notebook. “More of the same tomorrow. Let us see if Moranna has been able to bring herself to take you back.”
Pilkis got up and walked Sam to the foyer. “You have led an interesting life for one so young. I am not sure the lack of pollen magic has been detrimental to your development. Although painful, I think you have done as well as anyone could in our world of pollen makers.”
Sam had had similar thoughts at various times during his life after Cherryton. If it hadn’t been for Harrison Dimple taking him under his wing after his parents had cast him out, he doubted he would be listening to Proctor Sorenon’s observations.
Moranna rose from her seat as they walked into the foyer. “Your charge is ready to return.”
They stepped out into the darkness. Sam hadn’t realized he had taken so much of Pilkis’s time.
“I am sorry to have had you wait so long. Proctor Pilkis doesn’t have a window in his office, so I had no idea it was so late,” Sam said. He recognized a good time to apologize. “I’m sorry if I offended you at lunch.”
Moranna stopped him. “I am sorry I was offended, too. My skin is usually a bit thicker, but you were able to pierce my sensitivity with ease. I’m not sure I know why that is, so since we have both apologized to each other, I suppose we are even, are we not?”
Sam laughed. “More than even. Perhaps we can continue my Zogazin studies on our way back to the house.”
Moranna smiled a genuine smile in the lamplight. “I would be happy to.” She looked much nicer with a brighter face, Sam thought.
Chapter Twenty-One
~
I t took two more days with Pilkis to go through Sam’s adventures on The Twisted Wind, Tolloy, and his flight to Hizor. Sam guessed he remembered more of the experiences since they weren’t as old, and Pilkis’s insistent questioning about how he felt and perceived each situation extended Sam’s story.
“What now?” Sam said, and he stretched in his chair. All the remembering tired him out as much as a workout with swords. He missed the exercise.
“Tomorrow we start with demonstrations. I want to test your pollen sight with and without the assistance of gold. It was interesting that your ability to view ward layers was enhanced with a lump of gold on your forehead. I don’t know what that means, but we should document your capabilities, both aided and unaided, before we can think of doing anything else.”
Sam and Moranna walked a different way home. Since he finished while the sun was just setting, there were more things to point out. He had taken the liberty of bringing his notebook, which he put to good use on their stroll. It seemed to meet with the girl’s approval.
Sam walked into the flat, sighed, and collapsed on the easy chair in the sitting room.
Hilsa walked out of the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a towel. “Did they thrash you, today?”
“My brain carries the stripes of their mental whips,” Sam said.
“Good for you!” she said. “Did you make up with the girl?”
Sam sat up. “How did you know about that?”
Hilsa laughed. “Everything you do is reported, and Moranna wasn’t too excited about describing how you thwarted her at lunch.”
“I was obnoxious.”
She shrugged. “Exposing a joke is counted as a victory in Zogaz. She didn’t like being defeated.”
“We both apologized the same evening on the walk back.”
Hilsa looked surprised. “Really? She didn’t report it until today, you know.”
“Is there any significance to that?”
“Probably,” Hilsa said. “Moranna is a very proud girl. I don’t know her, but my friends do. She is close to becoming a pollen magician, but it seems there are tests to be performed, and she is getting closer.”
Sam grunted. “I wonder if I will pass the same tests, at least the ones I can.”
“You already have, Sam. Professor Plunk documented your abilities in detail. The proctors are taking their time to do the same in their own way. I don’t know if Moranna knows yet, but I wonder if there will be another ice storm when she does.”
“Ice storm,” Sam said. He nodded. “I guess I have survived one already. Is there much jealousy in the Order of Ren?”
Hilsa giggled. “There is jealousy whereever there is more than one human. The issue is how much people control their jealous emotions. For many people, it is an easy task, and for others, it is an insurmountable one. This applies to the Zogazin as much as any other people.”
“It isn’t clear-cut and permanent either, is it? Jealousy ebbs and flows,” Sam said. “I knew a girl in Tolloy named Norna. She was very jealous of me until we became friends, then the jealousy dissipated into a friendly competition, I’d like to think.”
Hilsa looked pleased. “That is a very good observation, and I believe it to be true. Such a thing is a dynamic. Jealousy can return if incubated by changing circumstances.”
Sam smiled. He figured it was that way for a whole host of emotions, and, he posited, love worked the same way, even though he hadn’t yet experienced it thoroughly. Perhaps something like that was in operation when Viktar Kreb and Banna Plunk parted ways.
Again he wondered what would happen if he met up with Winnie Bentwick again, assuming she hadn’t married. She might be a mother by now, Sam thought. The notion disappointed him.
Sam broke out of his thoughts. “What about dinner?”
“I am going out into Alloren with friends. Do you want to join us?”
Sam suddenly felt a bit shy. “Perhaps I will have something downstairs. I’m not too late, am I?”
Hilsa shook her head. “Not for another half-an-hour.”
“I think I will exercise in the back garden, so I can work out with my sword and get a little play time with Emmy,” Sam said.
“A little physical exercise does wonders for a brain thinking too many idle thoughts,” Hilsa said, laughing.
Sam ate by himself in the dining room. He found that the older woman who served him worked for the Order..
“These rooms are used often?” Sam asked her when she brought out Sam’s food. He had his little bag of spices on the table ready for use.
“For visitors,” the gray-haired woman said. “You occupy one set, and a Vaarekian woman has arrived today to live in another. I use the one that is attached to the kitchen, and one is currently idle. Sometimes we are full and other times I live here by myself. Never a dull moment until it gets dull, I say.” She laughed and returned to her kitchen.
Sam used his bag sparingly since he didn’t know how long he would be staying at the Order’s facilities. He had finished his meal and was about to re-enter the kitchen to see if there were any scraps he could take to Emmy. Sam turned and looked into familiar eyes.
“Hello, Banna,” he said.
Banna Plunk sighed. “I knew I would run into you sooner or later. I suppose it is sooner. How have you been?”
“I am being thoroughly examined, oddity that I am.”
She managed a smile. “You seem to have spent too much time in Zogaz, it seems.”
“I found that it might be easier to be a little more jovial,” Sam said, “than risk suppressing any kind of mirth and getting depressed. Hizor does that to you.”
“Not to me,” Banna said.
The housekeeper put her head out the door. “Oh good. I was about to give you up for lost,” she said giggling. “I won’t be a minute.”
The housekeeper took more than a minute, but Sam took the opportunity to see how those he had left behind in Vaarek were doing.
“Mito is in Hizor, and Father, I am afraid, is on his way here. That is why I have shown up, waiting for him. Viktar is tightening his grip even tighter. You enraged him, y
ou know.”
“I hope I didn’t ruin your plans, but I had no desire to be drafted into his army.”
Banna grunted. “You made that entirely clear, I think, and just about ignited a war between Zogaz and Vaarek. It is currently smoldering,” she said. “I applaud your accomplishment. I wish I had thought of it. Viktar will move prematurely, I am sure.”
Sam hadn’t thought his actions were so precipitous. He had something to talk to Hilsa about. The Zogazin ex-cook was more aware of what had happened in Tolloy than Banna would be.
“What has the Order threatened to do to you?” Banna said.
“Nothing yet. They are gathering data. My unique capabilities and non-capabilities are going to start to be measured tomorrow. I spent the last three days giving Proctor Pilkis Sorenon my life story.”
“The Order didn’t hold back on the investigators,” Banna said. “Even I have heard of Pilkis Sorenon. My father sings his praises as the pinnacle of pollen magicians in the world.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“How could you unless someone told you? Do you need to escape?”
Sam laughed. “I am not a prisoner,” he said. “I could have left the Order grounds tonight if I desired.”
Banna sat back. “Perhaps I am a bit paranoid. My life has not been my own since I returned to Polistia, until the present. Renatee Dinik had called for Mito to join him, presumably since you left Hizor to come to Alloren. The Zogazin aren’t exactly as they are seen by everyone else.” She stopped and looked at Sam so long she made him uncomfortable. “Of course. You probably know this. The rest of the world looks down on the Zogazin as flighty do-nothings, but they are more clever than the rest of Polistia.”
Sam nodded. “Many things they make are more clever than anything I have seen, from keys to toilets.”
Banna nodded and stopped talking when her meal arrived. “We will talk again later. Go and do whatever you had planned before I showed up.”
“Emmy is in the stables. I was going to practice sword forms and find something good to feed her.”
“I might join you after I eat this.” She grimaced when she looked at her food.
Sam tossed her his bag of spices. “These might make the food more palatable. It did for me, but you will need more than what I used.” He received another bit of a smile for his offer.