Second Kiss (23 page)

“We are both different,” Xemion said, his heart sinking. “We've had to grow up.”

“But you are so different.” Saheli blurted this out and seemed to immediately regret it.

“Look, I love you, Saheli,” he said desperately. “I always have and that will never ch—”

She cut him off with a curt wave of her hand. “Well, there's no sense in that now,” she said very quietly. There followed a long silence in which even Saheli stopped her agitated movements and became still. Whatever else happened, Xemion knew she would not be leaving Ulde with him tonight.

“I have one request before you go, Saheli.” He hung his head and gripped the bars tightly, but he could barely say it. In fact, the words came out in a whisper. “Kiss me … just one more time.”

Saheli's heart thumped like a great battle drum on a very cold day. Her chill and shaking redoubled. Yes, she had kissed him. And he'd suffered for her. And she had loved him then. And if he was now who he had been then, she would kiss him again and again. But he was no longer that young boy. He was now—

“I can't.”

This hit Xemion hard. The word was out of his mouth before he could even think about it. “Please.”

“Xemion, I can't. I can't even make myself do it.”

“I beg you. Just hold me for a moment then. I'm going away forever and may never see you again in all of this life.” She looked straight at him now and could no longer hide the truth of it from him or herself. She had felt it the moment she'd walked in. There was a strange, haunted shadow that clung to him and hid from him. The horror she had been trying to deny swept over her, a horror at what he'd become.

Xemion felt it, too, and he wanted to rip the bars open and take her in his arms and scream that it wasn't true. He wanted to reach and pull her to him the way the knights in the
Phaer Tales
had pulled their true loves to them and overcome all obstacles with a kiss. But even through his own pain he could see the awful struggle she was having with herself and he felt a deep mercy rise in him and strengthen him. She turned away and he let her.

“You have given me so much and none of this is your fault and I can see how much you want this and I wish I could give it to you, but—” Her voice dropped to a whisper, “I can't.”

He said nothing as she pushed away from him for the last time and stood in the shadow of the door to the stairwell. She had her fists up to her eyes trying to stop her tears. She stepped deeper into the shadow so that he couldn't see her, but he heard a sob.

“You see what spellcraft has done?” she shouted in a wretched half-enraged, half-anguished voice. “It has ruined
this
love for me, too.” And then, without a goodbye, she turned and ran up the stairs.

“Goodbye, Saheli!” he yelled after her in a voice torn with emotion. “I will never stop loving you.”

Not until he heard the slamming of the door above did he allow his own sobs to burst out of him. And when they did, it felt like it would tear him in half. It was as though two kones, two stories were turning against each other, ripping themselves apart in his chest. He felt like he could weep for the rest of his life if only tears would come. For a long time he sat and felt the presence of magic welling up inside him, and he cursed it. What good would it be even if he could burst open these walls with a word? What use was power if it couldn't get him what he wanted? There was no spell … there had never been a spell in all of time to make someone come to you of her own free will.

Bird Sight

T
he
clouds were stalled overhead like a herd of botched sky creatures, frozen in mid-stampede. Random horns, misplaced hooves, inexplicable extra heads strained over detached beast bodies, unrecognizable but strangely familiar. Xemion flew low over the waves, the mist rising up off the sea. At the horizon was his ghost ship; its prow a skull, its oars bones. It lay at anchor, rising and falling on the surface of the sea. Xemion wished he could avoid the grim vessel, but he soared onward ever closer. On its deck, a huge Cyclops, nine feet tall, peered with his one eye through a telescope. When he saw the bird approaching, he held out the back of his hand and Xemion swept down and alighted on it. The Cyclops removed the roll of paper that had been affixed to Xemion's leg and gazed at the picture on it. Whatever it was, it caused him to let out a great whoop of joy and raise his fist in the air. He turned and spoke to someone in a black Pathan visor standing beside him and then drew something on the paper. Xemion tried to see it, but the image kept shuffling around and dissolving away from his understanding. The one-eyed giant affixed the message to Xemion's leg and again sent him soaring up over the waves. The wind was with him but there was even more unwillingness now. As he approached the dark cliffs of Ulde, he tried his utmost to resist the forward motion. Still Xemion sped on. It was his fate. The dark cliff loomed and he saw the smoking mountain atop it. He flew higher and closer. And there, awaiting him at the top, stood a solitary figure. Xemion wanted to reel back. He did not want to see this face. But the eye in the middle of Xemion's forehead could not look away. Everything was at risk. He tried to cry out but his voice only yielded a strange bird sound. Xemion gasped in his dream as he drew closer to the smithy. The more he felt repelled by that short, scar-faced figure who awaited him, the faster he flew toward him.

Xemion awoke with the figure of Glittervein still shimmering before him. In all the calamity of yesterday, he had barely thought of the man. Now, as he looked up through the small horizontal slit in the wall, fear flooded through him. It was not quite dawn yet but the entire seascape before him was eerily lit by a strange alignment of celestial bodies. The full moon was still suspended low over the horizon and that blood-red planet beside it had swelled to twice its normal size. The effect of this upon the ebbing tide was extraordinary. The sea had drawn back from the shore, far beyond the inner harbour. Almost the entire bottom of the bay beyond it now was exposed, its mud glistening, small puddles and pools reflecting the moonlight here and there where water had gathered in the deeper depressions. The beach, which was normally a narrow curve of jagged rocks against the cliffs, had become a wide expanse of mud and sand, interrupted here and there by clumps of seaweed, numerous boulders, and the debris of long-ago sunken ships.

Just below the red planet and the moon, far off in the distance, Xemion spied a square sail just coming over the horizon. At first he thought it must be the
Mammuth
come to take him and Vallaine to the Wizard's Isle, but as it drew closer he saw the size of the sail and knew it could not be the
Mammuth
. This was the huge, skull-prowed warship from Xemion's dream, and as the dawn mist rose from the waves it sped ever closer to the shore.

Xemion reacted quickly. He sensed he was alone in the tower, but he called out anyway. “Is anyone there?” He gulped down some ambrosia in the hope that it might give him strength to break free. He had hardly begun his futile rattling of the bars before a deep canine call reverberated back. “I beg you hear me, O master.” It was Bargest. He was waiting faithfully outside the tower.

“Bargest! Bargest! You must alert the city.

“O master, do not bid me leave thee. I beg you.”

In his deepest spellbinding voice, Xemion shouted back, “This is your final test, Bargest. You must run now as you have never run, up to the city, and awaken everyone. You must roar like you've never roared before. Go, Bargest. Now!”

Bargest looked out to sea and saw the bone galleon floating in. It had a long prow that rode high out of the water and was now being propelled at high speed by massive warriors who rowed in quick, joyous unison. Bargest bounded down from the foot of the tower to the drained bottom of the harbour floor. Like a black bolt of lightning his massive paws launched him across the muddy flats of the bay to the foot of the Uldestack promontory on the opposite side. This was the promontory with the narrow footpath along its top, which Glittervein had blocked with the third of his gates. Bargest leapt now from the foot of the harbour, aiming to land immediately behind the gate. He almost didn't make it. His front paws caught the top ledge and he clung there for a while close to falling. But when his front paws began to slip, his back legs started to rip and scurry up the rock until finally he pushed himself up and over the edge. Now he tore up the track and shot past the huge smokestack and down the hill.

“Awake, I beg you! Awake!” he roared as he turned onto the High Street. Something had come unsprung in him now so that when he stood up to his full size he was much more massive than even Xemion would have expected. “I beg you, awake! Awake, I implore you.” he roared. As he arrived at the Castle Road, his voice was so loud it could be heard two blocks away at the Panthemium. There, Ewin Gilder, one of the few teetotalers unaffected by Glittervein's drugged wine, was getting an early start to his day. A new high house had fallen in the night and he was just wheeling his first wheelbarrow load full of broken bits of stone along the road beside the sea wall when, seeing the giant dog barrelling toward him, he ran off, leaving his wheelbarrow where it was. “Behold the beach. I beg,” the dog howled as he bolted by. When he reached the square, Bargest came upon many people passed out from Glittervein's drugged wine. He set about grabbing them by their clothing and shaking them so that soon, due to his efforts, the awakened were awakening others.

By now the first bright rim of the sun was rising from the horizon, its long, low beams shimmering through the grey, wraithlike mist. Those awakened by the dog looked over the sea wall that ran along the edge of Phaer Point and saw the warship drawing ever closer to the shore. All heads turned to the gate tower high up on the sea wall, and there, to everyone's relief, was Glittervein, scurrying up the ladder and into the gatehouse.

“No! Don't open it! Don't open it,” someone screamed as he put his hand on the wheel.

“Pardon me?” the Nain yelled back, holding his hand to his ear. “Did you say open it?'” He shrugged as if in assent to this suggestion and began to turn the wheel.

Two citizens frantically scrambled up the ladder in an effort to stop Glittervein, but he had planned for this. He waited until they were nearly at the top, then bent down to release a single catch and the ladder fell away from the platform and clanged to the ground, leaving his would-be captors groaning and broken-limbed on the ground, the first of many casualties that day.

The Only Sword There Is

V
eneetha
Azucena had awakened just before dawn in preparation for the arrival of the
Mammuth
. But it wasn't until she heard the baying of Bargest that she opened the third-floor window of her tower and gazed out of the sea below and then up at the gate tower where Glittervein was gleefully opening the gate into the cavern that she realized what was going on. She took action instantly. “Shoot the Nain,” she yelled. “Shoot him now!”

“We have no bowmen.” The voice of her sergeant-at-arms arose from the foot of her tower, where he was roughly shaking an unconscious archer. “They have all been drugged.” He picked up the man's bow and waved it at her. “And their bowstrings have been cut.”

“Oh, my world. What have I done, what have I done?” she cried, holding her hands over her mouth. She had that feeling that she'd seen this coming a thousand times and still hadn't managed to avoid it. She looked around her room desperately. Drathis with his eye patch and the other two young spellbinders whose lives she had worked so hard to reclaim from the Pathans were holding hands quietly on the divan. Their nurse, Magga Goochelar, hovered around in front of them, gnawing on her nails, her eyes wide with fear.

“Imalgha!” Veneetha Azucena shrieked. The burly Thralleen emerged from the room she had slept in, wide-eyed and ready. Never far away, Lirodello, his eyes slightly smaller than plums now, peered possessively over her shoulder.

“Imalgha. We are being invaded,” she shouted as she pointed out the window at Glittervein. “He's raised the gate at the Lion's Paws. We have to stop them before they get to the Lion's Mouth and the tunnel. Gather up whoever you can find. Get your swords. Get anything. Shovels, knives, anything that will serve as a weapon. And don't delay. Where is Lighthammer?” she screamed to her maid. “Somebody find Vallaine!”

As Imalgha and Lirodello hurried out, Veneetha Azucena reached to retrieve her own sword. Then, with a cold jolt of fear, she remembered. It had been ruined by that spellworked monstrosity the previous night. But she had to have a weapon!

She looked out of the window desperately and saw that the warship had reached the shallows. The attackers were jumping over its prow, wading toward the shore. There were Cyclopes, and Thralls, and Kagars, but all were clearly in the hire of the black-helmeted Pathans spread among them in positions of command. At their head she spied the coat-of-arms of the black-clad figure from her most recent nightmare: Akka Smissm. She scanned the city's fortifications. Most of her soldiers were still passed out, and even those who weren't were largely unarmed, their swords ruined in last night's rampage. Something had to stop these invaders or the city and all its inhabitants were doomed.

Hesitating only a moment before she made her decision, she opened the golden trunk where she had locked Xemion's sword. It didn't look like the staff of a mage. It looked like a good, solid sword. Maybe it had de-spelled in the night. Delicately she touched it now and almost thought she sensed a cold shiver flicker either in or out of it, she couldn't be sure. She had doubted Vallaine's theory about cross-spells from the beginning. Certainly she felt nothing like that in it now. Anyway, she did not have the luxury of moral qualms in this moment, she told herself. It was the only sword there was. She grabbed it out of the trunk and flinched. Yes, she definitely felt a charge in it. In fact, so much so she almost put it down again. But she didn't. She clutched it tighter. And then, having gone so far, something else occurred to her. Perhaps if there was magic in it, it was time, as Vallaine had hinted last night, to take back the magic. She hesitated a moment, but then, shaking her head woefully, held the sword out the window and aimed it directly at the distant Glittervein.

“By whatever power there is in this sword,” she intoned with terrible urgency, “let him be stopped.” If any of the sword's supernatural powers still inhabited it, they seemed to have no effect on the Nain. He just kept turning his traitor's wheel.

“Drathis, come here, please.” She beckoned to the largest of the spellbinders, the one who had touched Xemion. Jerkily, Drathis arose from the divan and walked toward her with the other two trailing along behind, still holding hands. Veneetha Azucena took the spellbinder's palm in her left hand, and with her right hand, as the three spellbinders broke into uncanny shrieks, she aimed the sword out the window and again uttered her curse. But again there was no apparent effect.

Despairingly, she looked at the nurse, and the spellbinders grew very quiet. “This is the time we talked about,” she said in a trembling voice. “You know where you have to take them, don't you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” The nurse nodded, quaking with fear. “But—”

“Then don't delay.”

“I won't, ma'am.”

Before she left, Veneetha Azucena bent down and gave Drathis a bitter kiss on the mouth. “Goodbye, sweet Drathis,” she sighed. And with that she ran out the door, sword in hand.

⚔

Down on the tidal flats, the attackers raced in the direction of the Lion's Paws. The sea gate between these two massive limbs of stone would normally have protected the city even on a day like today when the waters were at their lowest possible ebb, but Glittervein had taken care of that. The entrance to the inner harbour was wide open and he was now cheerily raising the great iron gate at the Lion's Mouth.

The mercenaries had almost reached the narrow entrance to the inner harbour known as the Lion's Paws. They had been ordered to maintain silence, but felt like whooping and laughing as they ran, their cutlasses drawn, eager for the riches and slaves to be had in the soft city above. Just before they reached the opening, though, something, which appeared at first to be a muddy kelp-strewn sea monster, arose in front of them and blocked their way. It was Tiri Lighthammer. And he was standing right between the Lion's Paws, his shoulders so broad there was little more than an inch to spare on either side of them. The gate might be fully raised, but now he was the gate. Perhaps it was the drunkenness that had allowed him to fall so limberly last night, for he had landed unconscious but face up in the already withdrawing tide. Awakened from his slumber in the mud by the cries of Bargest, he swayed now, blinked at the mercenaries who rushed toward him, and, in an instant, had his sword of steel up, out, and ready to fight.

The attackers paused for a moment when he first rose in front of them, but seeing that he was just an old man, they charged, finally allowing themselves to scream with glee as they raised their swords. They thought they could quickly hack him down, but Lighthammer had been waiting fifty years for this moment. Holding his ground, he fended off their blows expertly, his own solid steel blade quick and accurate. He stabbed ruthlessly, right through armour. He hacked at exposed fingers and necks, slashed through leather jerkins, and all the while warded off a hundred blows, till a heap of men twenty-thick lay in front of him, groaning and bleeding.

Then there was a loud horn blast, causing the rest of the attackers to stand back. At once a large black-armoured Pathan with the emblem of the royal household emblazoned on his breastplate rode forward, nearly crushing the back of the poor gorehorse he sat upon. It was well into the morning now and the sun shone brightly on the Royal Pathan headdress. Lighthammer stepped forward out of the gateway he'd been so successfully blocking and, raising his sword over his head, yelled “Come on then!”

The Pathan yelled in a voice like shattering glass.

“What's that? You want to surrender?” Lighthammer screamed back.

With that the Pathan rode over to his squire at the rim of the crowd and took up his new meteor hammer, a weapon consisting of a large black spiked ball on the end of a long chain that was fitted to a swivelling haft. Sitting astride the gorehorse, he held the haft out parallel to the ground so that the chain and the ball hung down straight. He spurred the horse on. As he neared Tiri Lighthammer, he lifted his arm high and swung the great black ball in a full circle at Lighthammer's head. Tiri Lighthammer stood there bleeding profusely from his wounds, staggering slightly as though he might soon fall, but when the ball came at him he stepped nimbly back into the opening as rider and ball rode by. He laughed out loud and stepped back out in front of the gateway. “Come on!”

Incredibly, the Pathan rode around the muddy perimeter and came at him again. Again Lighthammer ducked in and again he laughed as his assailant rode by. The Pathan Prince must have been young and untaught in the ways of warfare, because he then angrily rode his horse straight at Tiri Lighthammer and swung his ball forward at the last moment thinking to have it connect with its target vertically. This succeeded to some degree, but when it hit his right shoulder, Lighthammer held on to the chain and tugged it forward with him as he fell. The Pathan was jerked forward off of his horse head over heels so that he landed on his back not far from Tiri Lighthammer. Lighthammer, although weakened by the loss of blood, was first to his feet, but instead of allowing his opponent to regain his own feet before resuming the battle he breached the warrior code and brought his boot down upon the Pathan's neck. The glassy voice shrieked in outrage. Lighthammer bent down and grabbed the upper half of the beaked helmet and yanked it off the crystal head of its wearer. Akka Smissm's only son, Angathon, unleashed screams such as that battlefield had never known as the bright sun poured down upon the delicate crystal of his brow. Even as the others now rushed at the fainting Tiri Lighthammer, those crystal facets with their deeply recessed lozenge-shaped eyes turned a charry black. Quickly, their edges curled like ashes as they withered and whitened, and the Pathan died, the second prince to do so at Lighthammer's hand. He didn't have long left to live now himself, but he could hear the sound of Veneetha Azucena and the others running up behind him and he was almost certain, even as he let his own life go and fell, that he'd held off the enemy long enough.