The Nemisin Star (65 page)

Margus gave a
delighted grin.

“I am a
witness, remember? I spoke to you in private; I would afford your
opponent the same courtesy.”

Torrullin
pointed at Margus. “The Kallanon are neutral; do not try
anything.”

“Neutral? I
doubt that, but I will behave. This makes an intriguing change of
sparring partner.”

“Remember who
you are dealing with, Margus.”

“I know
Enchanter, a Dragonne Queen. I would not dare presume mastery.”

Torrullin
left, gesturing Tristamil and Vannis to accompany him. They retired
to the kitchens where Saska prepared a pasta dish.

Nobody
spoke.

“The Kallanon
are not neutral, are they, Majesty?” Margus ventured.

“No one is
ever truly neutral. Fence sitters maybe, but then self-interest
rules them, does it not?”

“And they
always choose the winning side.”

“Sadly, yes,
but they serve a purpose.”

“You are for
Torrullin, naturally.”

“I am.”

“Will you
report our conversation to him?”

“If you
request that I do not, I shall give you that assurance.”

Margus
shrugged. “Torrullin knows me; there is nothing that can be said
here that he is not already aware of.”

“Nobody is
that forthcoming.”

“He guesses
accurately.”

“Ah. Are you
afraid of him?” Abdiah adroitly took control of the
conversation.

Margus
considered. “Sometimes. He is an exceptional sorcerer, but he is
also incredibly emotional and complicated. I admit I use it against
him. His beloved family is his greatest vulnerability.”

“How fortunate
you have not that problem.” Abdiah looked away as she said that;
she did not want him to see the gleam in her eyes. “You have no
family, I seem to recall someone mentioning.”

“No.” His
voice was flat.

“Thus reason
suggests you may have been emotional and complicated under those
conditions. In reality you are therefore shallow.”

Margus was
silent, which wholly astonished her. She thought he would react
with aggression. “I do not agree.”

No,
she
thought,
because you can think.
“You desired Valaris and you
murdered to get it, someone stopped you and now you are about
vengeance. There is nothing complicated there, Darak Or. In fact it
is predictable for your kind.”

“Planning
revenge such as mine takes forethought.”

“That merely
makes you clever.”

“Are you
goading me?”

Abdiah
chuckled. “Torrullin asked me the same question earlier. I am not
goading you; I want you to talk to me, not hedge around things I am
already aware of.”

“Why is that
important?”

“Why are you
afraid?”

“I do not have
to stay for this.”

“No - you are
a master at flail-and-flight. It appears to me that you are not
really involved, and I mean the real you. Are you not wearing a
mask for the man you regard as your equal?”

“Listen, bitch
–”

“Now, now,
surely that kind of behaviour is immature?”

“You dare call
me a child?”

Aha.
“How old were you when you became an Immortal?”

“That is not
relevant.”

“How old?”
Abdiah roared in her Dragonne voice, shaking the Keep.

“Twenty-four,”
he squeaked.

“Not a child,
a man-child. Were you married?”

“I thought you
knew.” Margus felt undermined and used anger to cover the
deficiency. Much like Torrullin.

“I forget.
Were you married?”

“I was
betrothed.”

“Sexually
active?”

Margus turned
away and then swung back. “I was twenty-four, betrothed to the
woman I loved and I was a virgin. I lost her, my parents, my
siblings, and every chance at a normal life! Happy now? By the way,
Torrullin knows this.”

“I doubt he
knows your growth was stunted early.”

“I am far
older than he is.”

“Agreed, yet
you missed that period where a man-child matures into an adult. It
does not detract from your power or your knowledge, but it explains
why you are uncomplicated. Deviousness and evil does not an
emotionally mature man make, does it? Are you still a virgin?”
Abdiah was merciless.

“I find desire
and passion distasteful, as well as a waste of time. Look at the
knots our Enchanter gets into; during strife his libido engages
anew. No, thank you.”

“Perhaps you
prefer men or boys.”

“You insult
me,” Margus returned with pure contempt.

“Yet you
relate to Torrullin, alone of …”

“I do not
desire him. I do relate to him; much of his psyche is like to mine.
I feel kinship. It is not sexually driven.”

“You like
him.”

Margus smiled.
“Weird, isn’t it?”

Abdiah
inclined her great head. “No, Darak Or. We are often drawn to those
most like ourselves, even knowing the intense friction it can
result in. Likely Torrullin will admit to the same.”

Margus looked
away and said nothing, and Abdiah held her peace. She granted him
the opportunity to think. In her experience, a well-chosen silence
could prompt another to reveal truths not generally aired.

He did not
disappoint.

“I need him to
feel complete,” Margus said after a while, as if finishing an
internal conversation. “I do not care if he knows this, for it is
the truth and will not affect my actions.” A pause, and Abdiah
reflected upon the astonishing sense of honour in the man. “He
curtailed it twenty odd years ago, before I was ready, and I admit
I did not know at the time. When I re-emerged I knew it was more
than revenge that brought me back, and my revenge, in fact, became
as complicated as I was able to safely devise to gain more time
with him. I sought face time, but even leading and following world
to world for months brought a certain satisfaction; a game of hide
and seek we both played, aware of the other every moment. The
status of marauder suited him and brought him closer. In some
convoluted manner I think he revelled in it. It made him angry and,
like me, Torrullin feeds on anger …”

“Were you
attempting to recreate him in your image?” Abdiah interrupted.

“No, Majesty,”
Margus smiled, looking at her. “I did not need to.”

Abdiah nodded
to herself, knowing there was truth in that claim. “By enslaving
him in the etheric …”

“He will ever
be at my side. I hope, naturally, such a course will prove
superfluous.”

“A
compromise,” Abdiah muttered, echoing an earlier statement to
Torrullin. “A doll is not the same as a baby.”

Margus
frowned.

“Both of you
settle for second best, Darak Or,” Abdiah insisted. “Why is that
enough?”

“Time.”

She snorted.
“Excuse me?”

“Time has no
meaning on the other side.”

She began to
understand and then lost him before she could probe further.

He turned from
her to face the opening Torrullin had used, for he sensed him
emerge. Margus smiled and Torrullin returned the gesture with
serenity, nodding fractionally.

Abdiah looked
from one to the other, and sighed. Their minds were set. Both
desired the time the invisible realms could gift them. It would not
be a great stand-off where one would emerge the clear victor; it
would be a continuation of the situation as it was between them at
present, and no one on Valaris or anywhere would get caught in the
crossfire.

A boon asked
and awarded, and the price was the harmful otherness of a timeless
sanctuary from mortality. Stranger still, both desired the land of
shadows. They were meeting each other halfway.

She resigned
herself to war in her universe and for the first time wondered
whether the Kallanon had not read the timing of the prophecy
inaccurately.

Perhaps they
misunderstood more than the timing.

Abdiah moved
away, deep in thought, searching inwardly among the knots for a
glimmer of pale light to grab onto.

Lasting
answers lie within the serene embrace of nature.

~ Awl

Torrke

“
N
o
walls,” Abdiah said. “Nothing man-made and no magic.”

Thus they
trudged along the stone road laid precisely to the contours of the
land, including bends and dips to be in harmony with the whole.

At the point
where it diverged east and west, they went east towards the gloom
of evening, accompanied by the sorry drip of rain from the
darkening trees, the branches mournfully whispering as they passed.
It felt like a pilgrimage, that slow and measured walk, and in a
sense it was, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

The road wound
upon itself to cross a simple stone bridge, a brimming river, and
gradually the land drowned in the night. The rain intensified,
drilling upon shoulders and bare heads, but no one paid it
heed.

Under a
leafless grandfather of a tree, bent and heavy with age, they
finally halted. It was as good a place as any, and far from walls.
The Keep was not in sight and it was no longer a looming presence
in the dark; the valley felt as ancient as it ever had.

Again Abdiah
warned against the use of magic and thus they built a fire under
the spreading branches, although not close enough to cause the
elderly soul harm.

Twines of old
grasses, recently snow covered, and faggots of twisted wood, dead
sticks, found by touch in the dark, and the fire flared
uncertainly, sputtering as it attempted to conquer the sodden fuel,
before steadying into a welcoming glow.

The rain
ceased, and clouds chased each other away. Hide and seek in the
heavens. The air became bone-chilling cold as residue heat
dissipated into an opening sky. The moon would rise after midnight;
it was true dark.

“Torrullin, it
is your turn,” Quilla said. He appeared even smaller with slick
feathers, and shivered. He spoke of arresting time, a feat he
finally considered the Enchanter versed in.

Torrullin did
not raise his gaze from a fierce contemplation of the flames.
Saska’s slender hands continually intruded upon the image, feeding
the fire and staying periodically to garner warmth. It concentrated
his focus. He heard the Q’lin’la, although he paid no immediate
heed; there was something essential to consider first.

Had any of
them felt it? The stir of recognition under the stone road,
stronger with every foot placed before the other? Had they heard
the soft song of awakening in the river? And when the rain let up,
had they sensed the breathless expectancy?

He spent
little time in experiencing normality. If he had wandered this road
as a sentient, using only his Goddess-given abilities and senses,
he would have been aware the valley waited, before this night. The
magic waited. To step closer to the Light he had to acknowledge
what was natural.

He hoped
Tristamil felt it.

It was not too
late, for he was here now. Torrke awaited him, with patience. Why?
Tomorrow was destruction, the acquiescence granted in the
withdrawal of this old magic, and it knew that. Why return, why
wait to return … to be destroyed? To die? With him? For him? For
Valaris?

A saviour? Was
Torrke potentially a saviour, one that had to die to arise
stronger? Perhaps, for the valley would require added strength, and
that came from unselfish sacrifice, but a saviour needed to be
acknowledged, or it died in loneliness, its gift a hollow
thing.

Torrullin
lifted his gaze when he noticed a subtle sign in Saska’s hands, a
prompt, a question, a revealing, and found her watching him.

She knew.

Yellow eyes
widened and he reached for her hands across the fire, impulsive,
and she grasped them, eyes dancing confirmation.

She was the
Lady of Life.

Saska knew
where Torrke’s heart lay. She knew where his lay and already
understood what needed to be done; she could not tell him, not
merely because the understanding had to be his, but because they
were simply too far apart.

“I am sorry,”
he murmured, acceptance growing with every second. “It doesn’t
work, does it, when we are separate.”

Her face
twisted on a smile and a sob.

Quilla smiled
and Abdiah looked on in silence, eyes bright.

Tristamil and
Vannis glanced at each other and dared to hope. In their minds
lurked a terror - Torrullin was close to the darker shadows, the
kind that would not allow him to exit an invisible realm.

Those shadows
included abandoning Saska.

Tristamil
understood what Caballa attempted to tell him.

Abdiah had
shouted it at him. He made love to Skye and, although it was laced
with sadness and all manner of emotions, the Light had stirred
because he admitted where his heart was. As his father did here,
with Saska.

Torrke waited
for acknowledgement.

Tristamil
gasped inaudibly and reached out and grasped that waiting, to
recognise it, to hold it, to have it ready for his father.

The Light
infused him. It filled him utterly, and its sheer beauty undid
him.

He was alive
again.

Torrullin
stepped over the fire holding Saska’s hands.

He knelt
before her and bowed his head. A reverence. Penitence.

“My Lady, my
love, forgive me.”

“Don’t kneel
before me,” she sobbed, and undid her hands from his to lay them on
either side of his face, lifting it.

“I shall
kneel, for I was wrong about much, but mostly about us. My Life, my
Light, and I did not want to see. Why was I blind?”

“Not blind, my
love; distracted.” She knelt, keeping her palms pressed to his
cheeks, feeling them warm under her fingers. So vital, so much life
in him. “I forgive you, my Lord, and hope you find it in your heart
to see my repentance. My sin was the worse.”