Work Text:
I swept through the books in the castle's grand library, parsing for those that looked somewhat useful or at least friendly. One of them had to hold the key to helping me contact Sarkan. If there was a chance that he was in the Tower then I might be able to make a kind of link. The Tower, I realize with a jolt so strong it leaves me breathless, is occupying a place in my heart I reserve for home.
Deep into the night, shadows wreathed the corners of the room now illuminated only by magical lamps. I was hanging off the middle of a ladder when my hands brushed against a book. It made a kind of purring vibration underneath my touch, like a satisfied cat. This continued as I lifted it off the shelf, rumbling softly down my arm. Back on the ground, I examined the book.
It was small, the size of a man's two open palms. The cover was cornflower blue, made of some soft hide and soft as butter, as though the cover might have been cut from the same leather of Sarkan's own waistcoat. Unlike the dragon embroidered on his, the cover was decorated with gold arabesques and peacocks. It looked expensive, doubly so, held by my own tanned and slighted smudged peasant's hand.
I opened the book and saw that I could read the script. It was a spell book from a magician who had bartered his services to the Nubian King a hundred years ago. In the introduction, the nameless magician said that he had recorded his common spells and some of those he head learned from Nubian magic-workers. It was full of drawings from his travels, spells regarding the desert, and a small encyclopedia of the Djinn. Each of these had its allures but I tried to remain focused on my task. My finger slid to the back of the book, following the purr in its elegant pages.
There, in hand that had begun to mimic the flourishes of the Nubian language and in a ink flecked with sands of many hues, I found what I was looking for.
“To transport a simalcrum of oneself.” I read it through quickly. It was based on the reflective abilities of water. I wondered whether the King's mirrors for viewing far away might work on the same principles.
The spell words were unlike Jaga's or even the woodwife from my valley. I tried pronouncing parts of them and they felt like drams of sweet and spiced honey wine. Relieved, I realized that they too drew their song from the wild, in a foreign and fascinating way. They sang of desert stars, coffee and cardamom, spiked lizards slumbering under the presence of boulders, silver pelts, blooming sweet almonds in the breeze. There was human life to it too, cold and clear, of water pots hidden beneath the sand to gather precious drinking water in their dusty bellies. Its magic was edged with the sound of bangles and the lick of a bonfire, the deep sound of a native drum like a heavy stone dropped into deep waters.
This was a spell I could work. Maybe not easily, but it was possible.
First I gathered the necessary ingredients. The castle wasn't so different from the forest when it came to parsing. There were spices from the kitchen and the great big pepper pot on the King's dining table. The bowl I stole from a display case and the knife I took from the belt of a sleeping guard. I brought the pitcher of water from my own breakfast tray. I brought everything back to one of the library's small rooms in the basement where a collection about ancient furniture was allowed to rot in seclusion.
All ready, I opened the book and placed its sky-blue satin place marker down the crease between the spell's pages.
I began,
"Azzkarmush Azzkaram Binolothoroz Amrit Ku'liramm".
It seemed that the working's words were written in a dialect of the spell language I knew. Once more, magic flowed through me but this time the river of it touched different inner banks. This magic was the same but it had originated in a desert oasis somewhere and had shaped itself through the journey it made to me here, now, in Kralia. In the singing of it, new tributaries were opened up in me as well. I felt dry and cracked creeks made full for the first time.
Still chanting, I took the bowl, placed it on the floor before me, and filled it with water. I rested on my knees, my face craned above the water. Singing the spell louder now, I let the place I wanted to be surge out of me, focusing on creating its image on the water. Slowly, the reflection changed. Instead of showing me, a shadowed smudge, my eyes glinting with hope, an image of the Tower library came into view across the water's surface, growing like living frost and just as detailed.
In it, Sarkan was standing by a shelf off to the the image's right. The afternoon light was streaming upon the side of his face. He looked hagard but beautiful, gilded. Sarkan, of course, had a book out and was reading intently, perhaps desperately, turning pages with his elegant fingers.
At the sight of him, my heart surged into my words and the image snapped into fixed clarity.
My hand groped for the knife beside me. I didn't want to turn away in case he disappeared but the spell held. I grasped the knife in both hands. Willing myself into the handle, down the blade, all that I was, I tried to send into it, not so much of a projection as a streaming into. The metal go hot beneath my fingers.
My chanting became loud and strong, as I became caught up in the working. I pushed my will, myself, down the shaft of the blade into the very tip of the knife. There I held myself, on that tip. I let the magic of the working gather around me, full and heavy against the tiny point. Then I plunged the knife down until it struck the back of the bowl, releasing the magic.
I landed on the ground, thrown from somewhere now out of sight. Hard and crunching. Book dropped, Sarkan was beside me in an instant.
“What are you doing you little fool? How did you get here?”
“I found a spell in the castle library,” I said, heaving myself up. My hair and clothing askew from the drop, “and I don't know if I am really here.”
“What idiocy are you speaking now?” He placed a hand on my shoulder, at first checking that I was solid, then to help me stand up.
“I think I may be a simalcrum,” I paused, wondering at my arms and hands, so real. Could it be possible that this was only some kind of illusion?
Sarkan looked me full in the face and raised a dark eyebrow.“Do you even know what that is?”, he asked, dryly.
“I needed to come and speak to you.”
“You did not! You need to be at the castle, all of you, whatever or where ever you are. Have you spoken with the King? Is he sending help? What of the Queen, has the Wood corrupted her?” Sarkan was shaking me as the torrent of questions rushed from him.
His nearness and the motion confused me. “I, I don't... stop that right now! I haven't been able to convince him. I spoke to him, but no, he did nothing.”
He stopped. Sarkan was was clearly disappointed. His head drooped and although he kept his hands on my shoulders he was more using me to support himself. I truly looked at him. There were bruises the color of purple plums around his eyes. He had lost weight and his clothes were beginning to fray at the collar. Had he been using so much of his magic fighting the Wood that he didn't even have enough left for new clothes? He had been working hard, fighting battles on too many fronts, and the weight of his efforts was evident in his exhausted posture.
“What are we going to do?” I moved my face so that it was close to his. My rich hair formed a tent around us.
“We keep fighting.” His words rushed out, automatic.
It was too much. My heart wrenched and the questions I had felt that I needed so badly to ask simply fell away. Here he was. Weary perhaps, but fierce, smelling of fire and iron.
All the exhaustion and fear that I'd felt in the capitol, he'd met ten-fold here.
I cupped his face in my hands and kissed him.
It took him a few moments to respond. I didn't care. I needed to kindle a flame inside him and to see that he could roar into life again, that Sarkan, the Dragon, was still himself.
Finally, with a desperate, low sound sound his arms flew around me and his lips responded to mine. He was like a man reaching for a healing draught. Each kiss felt like a sob.
He moved to kiss my neck. My shoulder seemed to tingle and the veins leading into my head sang in gentle tunes. I let my head fall back. I realized that between his kisses he was murmuring spells, unintentional magical crooning, that spilled like warm flame lapping over my body. Triumphant, I brought him back to face me and began pushing off his clothes.
It was his turn to stop us.
Sarkan froze, a chain pulled tight, and then pushed me back, his hands once again rigid, even painful upon my shoulders.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, furious. This wasn't happening again. I stared into his coal eyes, daring him to answer for his actions. The forest animal within me furious and confused.
“We must focus on the work at hand… the Wood...” He was breathing heavily but his arms stayed firm, holding the empty space between us. “The Wood will know that you are here, distracting me.”
“Distracting you? Is that what you think that I am here to do? Is that what this is?”
"You aren't understanding. I don't have time for this.”
“You don't have time for this or you don't want this?” I said, driving my gaze into him.
“What is the difference? This relation,” and he drew the word painfully between his teeth, “is impossible.”
Did he say this because I was village woman with forest magic? I knew it couldn't be true but here he was, pushing me away. It was a horrible lie that tried to fashion our future out if its ugliness. But what could I do while he was yet divided in his desires?
“I know that you are hurt. I know that you are tired. I know that a hundred years ago you loved a woman who didn't love you back. I know that I am not the partner you imagined for yourself. I know that the Wood is waiting for us to slip up,” here I laughed a little, barking, sarcastic, “I know that all too well. I know that we may die fighting it, today or tomorrow, and I know that one day each one of us will die no matter what we do.”
As I spoke, my sadness for the stupidity that kept him from love welled up within me like tears, like magic itself. He simply stared at me, eyes wide with shock or perhaps betrayal.
“I know all these things and yet I know that we are in this together, you and I. Our magics touch and work together and tell us something new about ourselves and each other and this world. We are in relation, as you say, we are connected. I know that I might not have been the person you wanted or imagined you would have but I am here, before you, and that is the truth of it.”
As I made my final pronouncement, the walls of the tower room burst forth with magic, streaming and flying out of the cracks between the stones. It welled up from the floor, whipping around us like whirlpool at the base of certain waterfalls. It was clear as water might be, but also vibrant with colors such as Robbin's egg blue, reed brown, poppy red, wheat gold, and storm grey.
It swirled around us, closing in, pressing us together. Sarkan's eyes were startled and wide and his arms enclosed me protectively.
I wasn't afraid.
This was the magic that ran within me. It connected with the magic of the spindle and the magic of the simalcrum spell. It formed a tunnel around us, gathering our bodies together and forcing us closer.
“My love...” Sarkan began to say. He was cut off with crash as my magic broke over and fell over us. The magic grabbed hold of me, tearing me out of his embrace.
My body was pulled out as a stone being lifted out of the water. There was a moment of resistance before I broke the surface. I found myself hunched on the floor of the library room, bowl askew, water seeping into thick carpet. Sarkan was gone and there was nothing left of our meeting but a blue flame that blossomed in the center of my hand.