Chapter 27.

The tavern looked as if a great battle had been fought in it. The same bodies as before now lay flung across various parts of the room. Chairs and tables lay overturned or shattered. The Kobachs had siphoned off what they could of Miradomon’s power through Tynec, but they couldn’t absorb such adverse energy, and it had spun off them like a whirling storm front. Confined, rebounding through the building, it had wreaked demonic vengeance on everything beyond the Kobach circle.

Now, though the Kobachs still defensively maintained their circle, Grohd sat beside his hearth, where he had started a fire after crawling away from them. His pants were soaked with grynne that had poured across the floor when his stored kegs ruptured in the tumult. Bozadon Reket remained seated beside the others. Both he and Grohd had been persuaded by Ronnæm to volunteer. They had linked up with the Kobachs most reluctantly, but were now giving thanks to the gods that they had done so, as it had surely saved their lives.

Reket was utterly drained after the experience, but he tingled with a strange light-headed vigor that no previous experience in his life had ever generated. It reminded him a little of the pinnacle moment in sex except that, now it had passed, he didn’t feel like going to sleep. Being a Kobach might offer some advantages, but he was going to reserve judgment until he had the opportunity to try this again; and he had no intention of ever doing that.

Thunder shook the floor beneath them. A cold wind swirled and danced in the middle of the room, buffeting everyone. Grohd whined, “Oh, no, it’s come for us!” and crawled into hiding behind the bar again.

In the center of the Kobach circle, three silver beings appeared—one of them carrying a cat and another bearing an unconscious young woman. The wind dissipated. the members of the circle stood up.

Lyrec touched each individual of his group, and the protective crex retreated until he held it in his hand again, the strange, blunt silver sword. Talenyecis barely noticed as the silver coating withdrew from her; her eyes remained glazed with the dazzle of a memory of travel between time and space. Nor did she notice as Lyrec gently lifted Lewyn’s body out of her arms.

Ronnæm stared in wonder at his granddaughter. One of his group handed a cloak to him. He took it and draped it over her naked form. Then Lyrec handed her to him. Ronnæm pressed her against him in joy. Lyrec whispered to Borregad, “Would you care to do the honors?”

The cat, still annoyed at being abandoned, muttered beneath his breath as he strode over to Ronnæm and held up the black sphere. When the old king did nothing, he snarled, “I’m not on stilts, you know.” Ronnæm’s mouth dropped open. Bozadon Reket gasped. Then Borregad saw the tears in Ronnæm’s eyes and his tone softened. “I-I have to touch her head, you see. Could you lower her down just the smallest bit?”

In something of a daze, the old king obeyed. The cat stood on his hind legs and reached up with both paws to place the globe against Lewyn’s forehead. It sank from sight. Lyrec said, “Concentrate, Borregad.” The cat silenced him with a smoldering glance, then did as he instructed. The globe soon bobbed into view again above her eyes. The cat retrieved it, but held it away from him. Relieved of its contents and no longer bonded by Miradomon’s powers, the globe crumbled to dust. 

Borregad dropped to all fours. “She’ll sleep awhile,” he said, “When she wakes, she’ll know her father’s dead because I’ve told her about it, so it won’t be such a shock. But the rest of recent history is far too tangled for me to implant—I don’t know how you all intend to sort it out, but you’ll have to teach her.” When no one moved, he added, “You might prefer to let her sleep in a bed. Your arms are going to get tired.”

Malchavik, clutching his own daughter to him, said, “The glomengue is right. There are two buildings outside. I’ll show you, old friend, come.” He and Pavra led the way, but Ronnæm paused and bowed his head humbly to the cat before leaving.

Borregad turned to Lyrec. “Did you see that? He honored me. I could get to like this. Are cats allowed to be kings?”

“This is preposterous,” declared Reket.

“You wait,” warned the cat, “when I’m the king I’ll have you executed for that. I never forget anything.”

Reket’s mouth worked but no sound came out. Lyrec moved in between him and Borregad. “Excuse me. This is Talenyecis, she’s a swordsman who helped us eliminate Ladomirus. The circumstances, however, have left her a little unhinged, as you can see. I thought perhaps you might be able to—”

“Yes, thank you, of course,” said Reket, seeing a chance to escape the cat’s sharp tongue. He grabbed her wrist and drew Talenyecis sharply away before Lyrec could warn him of her potentially lethal habits.

“You say Ladomirus is gone?” one of the Kobachs asked. “What of the war?”

“I doubt there’ll be a war. Your young king should have his own mind back now that Miradomon’s not here to suppress it. I’m sure he’ll order it stopped. If I understand your system of governance, he’s technically no longer king anyway. It falls to his sister to initiate such an event. In the meantime, I find it difficult to imagine that any loose band of unguided mercenaries will bother risking their necks over a castle that is probably sinking into the ground as we speak. They’re experiencing an earthquake.  I’m sure the ones who survive will surrender to the superior forces of Secamelan. Even they have that much sense.”

“Then we have time for the dead now,” the Kobach replied.

Lyrec took Elystroya’s hand and said to Borregad, “We’re going off for awhile. Why don’t you get Grohd out from behind the bar and have him give you that grynne he promised you. After which you can regale these unfortunates with tales of your brave deeds today.”

“Lyrec, there’s something you should—”

“It’s all right, I know already. But thank you, old friend.”

He led her outside.

*****

They stood in the yard near the stable, under a night sky sprinkled with stars. One star in particular seemed far brighter and larger than the rest—nearly as bright as the moon. It hadn’t been there on any previous night. Lyrec wondered if he had seen it before. The cold he found refreshing.

“What did Borregad mean?” Elystroya asked.

“He meant that you remain unfinished. You’re not human yet. When he put you in Yadani’s body, he had no time to give you more than the barest knowledge of what we are. Pure facts, but no emotions. Poor Yadani—she might as well not have been there.”

“What are these emotions?”

“The chemical instincts that these beings operate with. They have individual names such as hate, greed, yearning. Another, called love. When I embraced you in the cavern, you didn’t respond with anything at all. You lack any experience with these instincts. You might feel toward me as you always did—at least I hope so.”

“I do, of course I do. How could I ever lose that?”

“Yes, but what we shared in our world, in our original selves, I’ve learned, has to evolve into its equivalent here, and it will be contaminated by all these human emotions. It isn’t pure. Yadani was for all purposes a blank emotionally. For whatever reason she had been robbed of memory or thought, so you can’t draw upon her experience to aid your own.”

She became contemplative.  She asked, “Is it better? In this form?”

“Better?” he said. “No, not better. I’m not sure we can make the analogy. They are unalike. These creatures experience overwhelming waves of emotion, sometimes so intense that they’re blinded to everything. I’ve gone from unplumbed depths of despair to unmatchable ecstasy.”

“Once,” she began slowly, “when Miradomon wanted to speak with me, he placed me in Lewyn’s body. She was still in the grip of terror from his capturing her. I didn’t really understand it then. It was all bound up in her chemistry—it’s all physical and not abstract. The emotional state her body occupied drove me into a corner—I could hardly tolerate existing and I retreated. It was torment, I drowned in what she felt.” She sought his eyes in the darkness. “How is it you survived all this so well?”

“Oh, not well. But the scars are internal, unlike Miradomon’s nature.  What he was bled outward. That body he occupied wasn’t designed for the energy burning in him. There are bound to be scars for you, too. Unavoidably. I have to live with some things that are abhorrent to me. Things I did, had to do.”

“Why?”

“Shh. Listen, please. Miradomon used these emotions as his chief weapons. He boiled the blood of race upon race until they frothed with hate at the sight of one another. He very nearly won it all. That’s how strong these emotions are. They’re elementary to every one of these beings. And while they can be harnessed the way he did, used as weapons against oneself, to live here you need them. To reject emotion is to deny the potential of life here; to be cold is to be nothing.”

“We could go elsewhere.”

“Maybe. But our realm is gone—and you no longer have a crex. Even if we found another world like ours to inhabit, you couldn’t survive there. You have this form now and no means to change it.  If Miradomon spoke the truth, then all the inhabited worlds here are similar to this one anyway. We might search forever and never find one like ours, and I won’t go anywhere without you. I searched for you, convinced that you were lost to me.  To find you after experiencing the depth of that loss—you can’t imagine what that feels like.  All that chemistry is in play in me.” He looked into her eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No. I don’t. But how can I yet?  Right now, finish what Borregad began.”

He took her hands in his, he told her to close her eyes. Then, closing his own, he gave her the gift that was also a curse.

Delicately he touched her mind, slowly let the range of emotions he had known fill her. So much of it was rage, the heat of anger that the soldiers had ignited in him.  He wished then that Nydien had been available to tap into, remembering her gentleness, remembering their coupling—his pleasant memory passed into Elystroya as a commingling of joy, pleasure, and finally ecstasy. Even as she absorbed that, Lyrec was realizing in shock and sorrow that Nydien had not been among the Kobach survivors standing in the tavern. His grief and loss was imparted, too, before he could withdraw contact.

Opening his eyes, he found Elystroya weeping. She experienced his misery, magnified in that moment by his fondness for Nydien. Now she embraced him, and they mourned, held each other in shared silence, and finally, swept along, arrived at a moment of private reunion as humans.

After awhile, Lyrec looked up into the night and said, “See that star that’s flowered into a great source of light? New worlds are being created as we stand here.  I wonder if that’s his—could we see it so soon? Creation from the chaos he desired?  I wonder how long it will shine like that.”

“However long,” she replied, “we’ll watch it together.”

“Among these people. And Borregad.”

She laughed softly and wiped at her cheeks. “He saved us, you know. “

“Yes, I suppose he did. Rescued the crex, rescued you and me and Lewyn.” They fell silent awhile. Lyrec glanced toward the tavern. “Oh, oh,” he said.

“What is it?”

“I just realized—once he figures that out, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Never?” She laughed.

Seated on a stump a few feet away, the cat grinned and answered, “’pon my soul!”