Student of Kyme (2 page)

Whenever
Huriel and I stopped for the night in a town or village, hara would
look at me with interest, but their sensual glances merely annoyed
me. I was feeling very peculiar. Once, perhaps noticing this,
Huriel steeled himself with obvious great effort and asked if I
‘needed anything’. I knew what he meant, but said, ‘Like
what?’

‘
Do you want to take aruna?’ he asked, deadpan.

I
laughed. ‘With you? Do you want to with me?’ I knew the answer to
that, of course, but even so I enjoyed his discomfort.

‘
Gesaril, I would rather eat my own tongue, if you must know.
Do you need to or not?’

‘
You’re too romantic for me,’ I replied. ‘Don’t worry, I can
contain myself.’

‘
Is there still a problem?’ Huriel asked, a triumph for him,
since the words made me go cold and awkward.

‘
No,’ I answered. ‘I’m enjoying being alone for a while,
that’s all. Surely even you can understand that, given my
problem.’

He nodded
once. ‘Good. I’ve taken on the task of being your mentor.
Regardless of our opinions of each other, you must approach me if
you have any needs, or want advice. I hope you feel you can speak
to me.’

‘
Of course,’ I said. ‘You’ve been very open and
welcoming.’

He didn’t
respond to that.

We came
into Kyme from the west, and I loved it at once. It was so full of
atmosphere, sort of brooding and mysterious, far darker than the
Shadowvales, where I’d grown up. I liked that aspect. Life in the
Shadowvales is often like wallowing in sweet marshmallow. I sensed
a whiff of threat in Kyme, as if ancient resentful spirits lurked
in the hanging eaves of the buildings.

Huriel
lives in what I suppose was once a grand town house owned by rich
humans. It has a courtyard in front of it, stables, and a large
garden at the back. He’d told me he was part of the inner cabal of
the Library Codexiae, close to Malakess, the High Codexia himself.
Huriel is very smug about his good connections. Anyway, he let me
wander around the house and pick a room for myself from the seven
that were available. I didn’t choose the biggest or the airiest,
but a middle sized room right at the top of the house, on the third
storey, which has a sort of haunted feel to it. I wonder why I like
that, seeing as I’ve so recently got rid of a haunting that scared
the wits from me (and I’m not talking about the haunting of love).
But I’ve seen no real ghosts yet, despite the scratching sounds in
the walls, and the room feels like mine. I lie on the bed alone for
hours, just dozing. I don’t want to think, because all the wrong
thoughts pop out, but how can you stop yourself when your brain is
so active? I don’t want faces in my head, but his is there before
me constantly. He is so strange-looking. I really don’t know why he
affected me the way he did. It’s an aura he has. It’s like a flame,
and other hara lie around his feet like insects burned to crisps,
drawn to the light only to perish within it. I realise now that
part of me really is dead, as surely as if he’d taken a knife to it
with his own hand. I am angry because he made me out to be a liar,
a delusional fool and a manipulative schemer. Perhaps I am those
things in some ways, but I was not alone in what happened between
us. It is not fair I was made the scapegoat. Yet even knowing this,
I can’t find it in my heart to hate him. If I had friends, they’d
say to me that time will heal everything and I’ll get over it and
forget about him. Can this be true? How can it be possible to feel
this way and then for it all simply to disappear? I hope it is
true. I really do.

Now, I am
tired. I have exhausted myself with feeling. I kneel upon the wide
windowsill, my cheek pressed against the glass. I look two minutes
into the future. My hands in my lap look too thin, too vulnerable.
My notebook lies open and I can see that one of my hairs has fallen
down and lies curled there on the page half filled with writing.
Once he put his hand upon my hair, and he said to me that he would
always be there for me. Now I am alone. Two minutes into the
future. I will put down my pen.

Aloytsday, Flowermoon, 30

Yesterday, I got such a horrible shock, it’s inspired me to
start writing again. I haven’t done any for about three weeks,
because to be honest, I haven’t felt like I’ve had anything to say.
The thought of writing more about pointless longing just tires me
out and I can’t be bothered.

I haven’t
seen that much of Kyme yet, because I tend to stay around the house
and garden. It’s such an old place, and the atmosphere comforts me.
It’s like going into a ‘no place’, where nothing else exists.
There’s a walled orchard I like and I go there every morning, just
to sit on a mossy old stone bench and listen to the birds. In the
distance, I can hear the sounds of hara going about their lives. I
want to be like them, do normal things, think normal things or else
not think at all.

Huriel
has put me to work, and I actually quite enjoy it. Huriel changes
when he’s among old books. Some of his haughtiness goes away. He’s
glad I’m interested in his work. Malakess has given him the task of
transcribing some very old human works on the occult and ceremonial
magic. I love the old fashioned words and like to read them aloud.
I think Huriel likes to hear them too. He doesn’t hate me as much
now, because I’ve been behaving myself. He has a staff of two hara
– Ystayne and Rayzie - who cook and clean the house. They seem all
right, although they’re wary of me. I don’t know how much hara in
Kyme know about me, or how I nearly ruined one of the most
respected hienamas in the country. Because I think they’re thinking
bad thoughts about me, I don’t want to speak to them, but I might
be wrong.

I now
have almost a pleasant friendship with Huriel, and we’ve got a
pretty boring daily routine, but it makes me feel secure, so I’m
not complaining. Life is slow and regular. We’ve agreed to leave my
caste ascension work until I’ve settled in some more.

Sometimes, I can go for hours at a time and not think about
my nemesis. I never thought I’d write those words and mean them. I
sent a letter to my parents, again not sure how much the hara in
Jesith might have told them, but explaining that my education had
taken a turn for the better, and I’d been taken on by none other
than a Codexia of Kyme. I talked about the books, which I know
won’t interest my parents at all, and described how wonderfully
dark and strange Kyme is. They won’t like that either. If something
doesn’t emanate light and loveliness, my parents tend to put their
hands over their ears, shut their eyes, and start humming
loudly.

But, on
to my shock…

High
Codexia Malakess spends a lot of time in Almagabra, fraternising
with the Gelaming, and making plans for the world. From what
Huriel’s told me about him, I couldn’t help imagining him as
looking like some kind of human wizard with a long grey beard or
something. I know that’s ridiculous, but the idea of him just oozes
fustiness and old age, as in pictures I’ve seen in some of Huriel’s
books: serious men pointing at arcane instruments of alchemy, not
looking at one another, their postures stiff and graceless. Anyway,
yesterday morning at breakfast, Huriel said that Malakess was back
in Kyme and coming to visit. He wanted to discuss with Huriel his
recent meetings.

‘
Do you want me to make myself scarce?’ I asked.

Huriel
frowned. ‘No. Just don’t get in the way or be impertinent. Do you
think you can manage that?’

‘
I’ve been perfectly good, as you well know!’ I
said.

Huriel’s
frown changed to a smile. ‘I know. I have noticed. You might be
bored though. Perhaps you should finally go out and about a bit.
Take the day off.’

I
realised, by the cold feeling that went through my stomach, that I
might be developing a phobia about the outside. ‘I don’t mind
working.’

‘
Gesaril,’ Huriel said sternly. ‘I get the impression you
really should go out.’

He could
read my mind, I suppose. ‘Oh, all right, then.’

We hadn’t
even finished breakfast when somehar knocked at the front door. One
of Huriel’s staff went to answer it, and then conducted the visitor
to the dining room. I looked up from the remains of my meal, saw
him, and the cold inside me turned to ice. Ysobi har Jesith was
standing at the threshold. (There: his name). It was like some
hideous ghost. He was very tall, more so than hara tend to be, with
the same bony-faced attenuated appearance. The impression lasted
only a moment, but even so, it hit me like a punch to the stomach.
Hara were talking, but I couldn’t hear anything. Eventually, the
sound of my name penetrated my trance. ‘Gesaril… Gesaril!’ It was
Huriel. ‘This is High Codexia Malakess. Where are your
manners?’

‘
I’m sorry,’ I blurted, physically incapable of looking at
that har again. ‘I feel ill. Excuse me, tiahaara.’

Almost
blind, I lurched from my chair and ran from the room. I fled to my
own room, threw myself on the bed, and erupted into a fit of
weeping. I realised, with horrible sick despair, how much I was
still in love with Ysobi, no matter how I’d tried to squash all the
feelings flat, fold them away and close the lid on them. How could
life be so cruel? Why did it have to throw this har who looked like
Ysobi in my path? Malakess har Kyme. Not a grey beard in sight. He
was beautiful to me.

Huriel
came to find me only minutes later. No doubt he’d been embarrassed
having to explain to his great teacher that he’d taken on a lunatic
like me. ‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’ he asked
me.

‘
Nothing,’ I said. Pathetic.

‘
You look like you saw a ghost down there. What was it you saw
in Malakess?’

Couldn’t
Huriel see it himself? He knew Ysobi well, and had trained him here
in Kyme. I thought the similarity was obvious, and certainly didn’t
want to say it. An inventive fiction was in order. ‘I’m sorry,
Huriel. I must have embarrassed you. The fact is, I think I’ve got
a problem about going out. I was thinking about it when Tiahaar
Malakess arrived, and it made me feel physically sick.’

Huriel
sat down on my bed and folded his arms. ‘We’ll have to do something
about that.’

I nodded.
‘Yes… I really am sorry. Ag knows what it must have looked like, me
running out like that. I thought I was going to vomit.’

‘
Stay up here for a while,’ Huriel said. ‘Calm down. Then go
into the garden, take some air. Perhaps you’d feel better going
beyond the grounds with somehar else. We’ll talk about it with
Ystayne and Rayzie.’

‘
Do we have to?’

‘
There are no secrets in this house,’ Huriel said. ‘They’re
good hara. They’ll help you.’

He patted
one of my legs and then left me.

I curled
onto my side, and I swear I could smell Ysobi’s personal scent
around me. Morning sunlight came in through the window, filtered
green by the Virginia creeper that had stretched tendrils over it.
The day was so beautiful and mellow and there I was, remembering
the way Ysobi used to smile at me, how he was always so pleased
when I got something right in my caste work, because I could be
such a nasty petulant thing and liked to annoy him by not working.
When I did something well, he saw it as an achievement for both of
us. Back then, in those days when I had begun to see him as more
than a teacher, I thought he had exorcised the ghosts of my past,
but in fact he’d invoked them. He’d opened me up, as if I was
spread-eagled on a dissecting board, and had started fiddling
around with my insides. He didn’t know about my past, of course. I
didn’t tell him, when I should have done.

Curled in
on myself, I tried to banish the image of Ysobi’s face from my
mind. I wept because I knew I could never see him again. He had a
chesnari, who had fought for him and won. Once Ysobi had truly
realised what I’d felt for him, he’d acted horrified and had backed
off, even though he’d been responsible, for the most part, for
making me feel that way. I know he’d wanted to make me love him but
once he’d achieved that, it became a nuisance, so he’d abandoned me
without a second thought. Jassenah, his divine consort, had been
free to gloat. I wonder if they ever talk about me? If so, it’s
probably to laugh. I was just a harling to them, and a messed up
one at that. Their pity would be worse than their scorn. Why, why,
why did my stupid parents send me to Jesith?

Such
thoughts are pointless. It is torture. Love is a vile thing. It’s a
disease. I’m still infected, but once I’m over it, and I’ve decided
I will get over it one day, it’ll never ever happen
again.

Later

After an
hour or so, I felt stable enough to go back downstairs and out into
the garden. One of the staff, Ystayne, was out there, kneeling on
the lawn next to the herb bed, cutting some sprigs for lunch with a
pair of tiny silver scissors. He was so precise about it. It made
me feel warm inside for some reason. I wandered over to watch him
and he glanced at me over his shoulder. ‘I heard you had a fit at
breakfast.’

‘
Hmm, yes,’ I said. ‘I’m scared of going beyond this
house.’

Ystayne
twitched a smile. ‘Oh dear. Do you want to come into town with me
later?’