Second Kiss (5 page)

“Please wake up, Ettinender,” Yarra beseeched, stroking back a lock of the man's yellow hair from his forehead.

“It won't be today, I fear,” the man with the green hand lamented.

⚔

When Xemion finally emerged from underground, the sun was no longer in the sky. He was greeted by Sarabin, who was just returning. Sarabin's expression was unreadable. But his eyes didn't meet Xemion's. “I am sorry, young man. I have been unable to locate anyone at all by the name of Saheli among those who … remain.”

This statement shook Xemion's whole being. Fear became cold panic in an instant and there were now goodly portions of anger accompanying it. “What do you mean those who remain?” he demanded, his voice raised.

“It has always been the strategy of the Phaer militia to spread its forces widely over the terrain. I'm afraid that the thirty-six have already been posted elsewhere.”

“Take me to her then.” Xemion's voice verged on outright anger.

“That is the problem. The elite forces train in a secret location, and I'm afraid they departed for it immediately after noon.”

“No!”

“I'm afraid it is so.”

“Where?”

“I'm afraid I am not told such things.”

“But someone must know where they've gone.”

“If anyone, only Veneetha Azucena herself.”

Xemion Pleads

V
eneetha
Azucena crossed the ample floor space of her apartment on the top floor of an old tower at the foot of Phaerpoint and gazed out over the sea below. “But before you spoke the vow,” she said, “we did ask all to declare if there were any reason of attachment or safety that should prevent them from committing at this time. We asked quite clearly and no one protested.”

“But I didn't know we would be separated when I spoke that vow. I thought by speaking it I would be staying with her. My vow that I made to the woman who raised me to stay with her until she comes of age precedes my vow to you.”

Veneetha was not as tall as she'd seemed upon the stage in the Panthemium conducting the vow yesterday morning. But she was still imposing. She had thrown a red robe embroidered with golden lions over her slight night garments and the contrast with her dark skin and the rich black coils of her hair seemed most becoming to Xemion even in his upset.

“Well, you
are
with her, are you not? In the sense that we are all with one another in one endeavour. In the sense that—”

“But I'm not even certain it
was
her. I have to make sure that it was her up there and that she's safe.”

“How could you not be certain?” She turned from the window and walked to the middle of the room, where she stood in a beam of moonlight streaming in through a crystal dome in the ceiling. It was much like the dome that had illuminated the sunscope that Xemion used in Ilde to project the stories onto the wall.

“After we were separated, I only saw her from behind. I never saw her face.”

“Surely, you recognized her in the way she moved, in the way she held herself.” As if to illustrate this, she opened her arms in a lyrical gesture.

“I have to be certain. The gates to the stadium were left open when that Pathan and his kwislings came marching in. That's how we got separated in the first place. I didn't see her after that. I don't know if she might have been taken or if she forgot who she was. Maybe she got dragged out the gates—”

“How could she have forgotten who she was?” asked Sarabin, who had been waiting silently beside the doorway.

“On our journey here she had to drink from the well of forgetting.”

A curious look came over Veneetha Azucena's features and she drew closer to him. “But the magic of those waters has had no real effect since before the spell fire — since Musea was a young woman.”

“But it is supposed to have been bound by spoken spells by the old mages What if someone with a red hand were to initiate it?”

She looked up sharply. “Whatever can you mean?”

“Your man, Vallaine. He shook hands with us after—”

At this Azucena trilled with laughter. “Oh, surely you don't believe in those old superstitions?”

“He told me himself about middle magicians and how they are needed to initiate certain spells.”

“But I'm sure he wouldn't have told you he
was
one,” Sarabin said.

“He has a red hand. Isn't that supposed to mean he's a middle magician?”

“Xemion, of course not,” Veneetha said. “That was never true. Some people are born with red hands, some with green hands. I assure you that Mr. Vallaine is not a so-called middle mage. That would be most unwelcome here.”

“I just need to be sure that it was her.”

She sighed and looked a little exasperated. “Well, can you describe her face to me? I saw the chosen ones as they left.”

Xemion tried to picture Saheli's face. He'd never thought before of trying to put the magic of its facets, of its angles and elegance, into words. But her face kept turning and sliding away from him and the words that came were “she has eyes that switch from green to blue if you catch them when her mood is changing.”

“Something … more immediate perhaps?”

He wanted to say that she was beautiful and that she had a look of great goodness in her eyes, but there was fear, too. But instead he said “her hair is long and black and it comes down to about here when she wears it down but she had it piled up on top for a while. She was wearing it like that yesterday. It came down but she might've put it back up again. She has high cheekbones and—”

“There were several like that.”

“She was wearing a green cloak with a—”

“No, I'm afraid that won't help. When I saw them they were all dressed the same, in fatigues, for as soon as they were inducted they were quickly divested not only of their old names but of their old garments as well.”

“She has a diagonal scar over her left eyebrow.”

Azucena frowned, trying to remember. “I don't recall anything like that. But if her hair were down over her face, I might have missed it.”

“Well then, just let me go where they are camped and—”

“Xemion, not even I may know that detail.”

“No!”

“Yes, it was always that way in the Phaer Academies. They know where I am, but not I them. We keep our legions separate, so that we cannot all be caught in one trap.”

Xemion persisted. “Then my friend Tharfen would know. If she met with her brother Torgee at noon she would also have seen Saheli.”

“Well, there you have it then. Mr. Sarabin, please summon the quartermaster's assistant, Lirodello, and we'll find the girl and get her up here and relieve this poor fellow of his dreadful doubts.” Sarabin nodded and quietly closed the door as he left.

As they awaited his return, Drathis, one of the pale, one-eyed youths whom Veneetha had rescued from the Pathans, came into the chamber through a door at the rear of the apartment and approached Xemion. He wore a black patch over his left eye, but what could be seen of the rest of his face was young and handsome. There was a delicacy to it that suggested great sensitivity. The only unusual thing was that one blue eye, which seemed never to be looking straight at anyone. Xemion kept trying to meet it as he approached but never quite felt any connection.

“Drathis,” Veneetha said, frowning, “you were going to stay with the others until I returned.”

Drathis shook his head. He walked straight up to Xemion, facing him.

“My, my,” Veneetha said.

Drathis kept tilting and swaying his head as though he were trying to position that eye to look at Xemion directly. Finally he succeeded. And he and Xemion both smiled.

“My goodness!” Veneetha let out a burble of sandy laughter. “I don't know what's got into you, Drathis. I have never seen him greet anyone and I've certainly never seen him smile.”

Drathis, still holding Xemion's gaze, reached his right hand across to Xemion's left hand. He took it and held it gently, nodding. Then, with Veneetha looking on and shaking her head with amazement, he turned and left the room as he had entered it.

“You look as stunned as I am,” she said, half chortling to Xemion, who was standing there gazing at his hand and looking troubled.

“I felt something strange when he touched my hand.”

This clearly caught Veneetha Azucena's interest. “Really? Well, Xemion. You are one of the rare ones. Very few can feel that.”

“What is it?”

She spoke quietly, solemnly, when she answered. “Many think that the magic our peoples once had stemmed from the Great Kone or from other lesser texts, or that all magic was originally blood magic such as that exercised across the western sea by the Necromancer of Arthenow. But some of us believe it is not the spell, it is the spellbinder, who has a natural magic. Spells just channel it. Even in the time of the spell kones, most of our people could spin a kone and get satisfactory results, but the Pathans could not at all. Drathis here has that tendency in rather larger amounts. He is, of course, innocent of any will to the spellcraft, but nevertheless the current runs in him. That is what you are sensing. That is why the Pathans took him from his home when he was four years old. Unfortunately for him, he had a full resonant voice, and that, alas, is one of their chief indicators.” Xemion shook his head. “They took his eye and a piece of his brain from behind his eye and tried to keep him and it alive separately … so it could become a kind of living eye for a … living kone … of which I can hardly bare to speak this late at night.”

“I'm so sorry,” Xemion said, hiding the rich resonance of his own voice even more carefully than usual.

“We all are,” Veneetha Azucena said. Just then Sarabin returned with Lirodello the Thrall. The last time Xemion had seen Lirodello, his naturally comic features had seemed always on the verge of glee and humour. There was none of that in his face now. The news wasn't good. Indeed, there had been a Tharfen in the assembly at noon, but she was little more than a child. All those who were underage were taken down immediately to Vallaine's ship, the
Mammuth
, which had sailed into Phaer Bay just this morning. Vallaine was voyaging to the continent with a hold full of precious gems, in search of weaponry and supplies, and would drop the young ones off on the way. He is not due back for at least six weeks.

“But you saw my friend, Saheli, when we were standing in the crowd yesterday morning,” Xemion said urgently to Lirodello. “She was the one with dark black hair and a diagonal scar over her left eyebrow?”

“I do wish I could confirm that for you,” the lachrymose Lirodello said with a tip of his flat hat. “But I confess I had eyes for only one girl there: Vortasa.” He looked at Azucena with large doleful eyes when he said this. “Alas, she held onto her sword harder than she held onto me and so she and her two sisters have been sent away. I found her and lost her all in the same day.”

“Surely you would remember my friend,” Xemion persisted. “She has such long, dark hair and—”

“Xemion,” Sarabin interrupted “You obviously know nothing of what it's like when a Thrall finds his—”

“I see nothing else,” Lirodello sighed, cupping his hands together in prayerful union.

“Well, the two of you have much in common,” Veneetha said, gazing sympathetically at Xemion. “But as you see, Xemion, I can bring your slightly unreasonable dread no immediate relief. But I can tell you this — they will be sending a messenger from the camp in three weeks in order to summon me to the celebration of second skin. I will make you a deal. At that time, even if I have to breach protocol, provided of course you have done your service to us here, I will discover if there is one such as you describe with the scar over the left eye. And then you may at least proceed here with more ease about her safety to shore you up in your labours.”

“I can't wait three weeks.”

“You will need to, Xemion. In any case, you know it's her.”

Xemion glared. “No, I don't. I hope it's her. I suspect it's her. But …” He couldn't say
but I have dreamed a thousand times that she would be taken from me
. He couldn't say
I feared from the very moment I saw her that I would lose her
. He could only say, “I need to know today that she is safe. And if she's not safe, then—”

“Then what?” Veneetha was beginning to get annoyed. “You will break your very solemn vow and attempt to leave us so that you can scour the wilderness to find her with your little practice sword and slay whatever dragon she may be captive to?”

Xemion looked down at the painted sword, which still hung in the leather scabbard at his side. But there was no time for embarrassment. “I believe she is my warrior beloved,” he blurted out.

“Ha!” Veneetha Azucena's laughter trilled again. “Is this news to anyone?” She turned around and looked with amusement at Sarabin and Lirodello. “Well, Xemion, if you know about the tradition of warrior beloveds then you must know about the ordeal of not knowing.”

“I know there are ordeals … in stories.”

“Well, this is more than a story. This is the real thing. So don't take this impending ordeal as a sign against your feeling of being her beloved. Rejoice that it is more likely proof of it, for you have begun your ordeal of not knowing.”

“But—”

“But what? It's classic. You can't get to her. Not tonight. Not tomorrow.”

“But—”

“Feel in your heart and you know it's her. Who else would it be?”

“I need to see her face.”

“You need faith.”

“I need proof.”

“Well, then … your sanest, not to mention most honourable, course is to stay here as you are called and pledged to do. With waiting here you will get your surety in three weeks.”

“Three weeks of not knowing?”

“Yes. Just put aside your ideal of the standard form of knightliness. This service you give unto the Phaer people will far outlast the deeds any mere knight might ever unleash on fields of glory. By taking this hard course you gain your surety in three weeks, and in your ordeal, let's say you perform a great deed for the Phaer culture forever.”