Of Two Minds in Lanais
by Eugie Foster
The peals of the water clock had taken on that crystalline, evocative quality so enchanting to my muse when I heard the first frantic hails. I opened my eyes and waved away the blue clouds of incense.
The smoldering myrrh intensified the effect from the bard’s leaf, but it also obscured the smells of offal wafting in from the city streets below—a smell that now intruded, doubly strong from the effects of the leaf, upon my senses. The miasma that accompanied the summer days of Lanais clung to everything—food, clothes, the citizens themselves.
“Kyr, please. Answer me.”
I recognized Malei’s nasal drone as it called my name from the scrying glass. I never should have taught her that summoning spell. Malei was a lovely thing, hair like waves of midnight silk pouring through your fingers, and eyes bluer than faceted corundum from the East. Wherever she walked, men tumbled.
I scrambled up from my desk, careful not to upset the pots of ink. A touch of my fingers on the scrye, and the link was complete.
“What is it, Mai? I’m working.”
“Can you c—come down to the Roc and Wherry?”
Wherry-ferry-berry-carry. Her voice ricocheted in my head, a result of the bard’s leaf I had ingested. “This can’t wait? I’m writing the Duke’s nuptial poem.”
“Please, Kyr. I—I need help.”
It didn’t take an infusion of leaf to notice she was crying. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“C—can you just come down? Please? You were the only one I could summon.”
Again, I wished I hadn’t taught her that spell. Malei had a bevy of other admirers she could have called upon for rescue and coin. I was sure I owed this particular favor to being the most convenient.
“I’m on my way.”
“T—thank you.”
I tapped the counter-link sigil to sever the spell’s connection.
The Roc and Wherry was in the Marketplace, a section of Lanais I preferred to avoid. Populated by dock men and roustabouts, it was a nexus for underworld traffic. The first two bearers I hailed refused to take me, pedaling away with a sharp shake of their heads when I told them my destination, and the third would only convey me to the perimeter before forcing me out. The wheels of his rickshaw threw a cloud of dust over me as he careened away.
Even so, it didn’t take long to find Malei. I headed toward the biggest commotion. Malei drew crowds like iron shavings to a lodestone. Sure enough, there was a cluster of on-lookers in front of the Roc and Wherry.
I peeped between the shoulders of a pair of boatswains and glimpsed her sprawled in the dirt. Two of the Duke’s wardens stood over her, half loitering, half curbing the crowd, while a third chanted an incantation. I recognized it as a variant of the spell I had taught Mai. He was summoning a bearer.
I pushed through the throng, but the warden men were not so easily budged.
“City business,” the one with the jagged scar over his nose snarled. “Keep away.”
Sway-flay-Mai. The echoes had become mere whispers. The bard’s leaf was wearing off. Probably just as well. “I’m a friend of hers,” I said. “She was waiting for me.”
“So?”
I flipped a silver crown at him and he snatched it from the air. He sneered at me from underneath his regulation helm. “Bearer’s coming,” he said. “Make it quick.”
I kneeled by Malei’s side. She was pale beneath her face powder, her breath coming in shallow pants, and her eyes were sunken as though they were set in two bruises. “Mai? Sweetheart?”
Her eyes flickered open. “Kyr?”
“It’s me.”
A tear streaked her face, tracking a line through the dust and makeup. “Oh, Kyr. I waited and waited and you took so long getting here!”
“The bearer’s on its way, love. What happened?”
Her hand fumbled for mine and she pulled me close. I almost dropped the jagged crystal she pressed into my hand, the edges of it biting into my palm. “They took Calise,” she whispered. “You have to get her back.”
At this proximity, I could smell the barley malt on her breath, and beneath it, the sweet tang of evening sight—the recreational herb of choice in these parts. She’d been chewing it, or sipping it, having herself a nice private party, as I had suspected. “Shh, sweets. Just lie still.”
I pocketed the crystal as the bearer arrived.
“What happened?” I asked Scar-nose.
He shrugged. “A citizen reported that a courtesan fainted in the street. She’s obviously splashed.” He sounded disgusted.
“Where are you sending her?”
“Traveler’s Haven.”
“You can’t!” I should have let it go. Malei would land feet down like she always did without my intervention. But I couldn’t. Traveler’s Haven was where they sent the derelicts and the indebted to rot.
“She’s got no papers,” he said. “And no coin.”
“I’m Kyr Daitakerou, the Duke’s versifier. I’ll pay for a healer and the fine for her papers.”
He grunted. “The closest healer is Haro. You accept his expenses?”
“Yes.”
Scar-nose shaped his ham-fists into a spell of legal binding. “Noted and recorded,” he said.
I lifted Malei into the rickshaw’s padded lounger and watched as it rolled away. My crowns had been well spent. Scar-nose had drawn a glowing ward across the rickshaw gate as a warning that the vehicle traveled under the warden’s edict. Malei and her bearer wouldn’t be accosted en route.
The Duke’s men marched off, and gradually the crowd dispersed. I was stuck in the middle of the Marketplace without an escort, and I’d flashed coin around as though I was leaking it. Foolish. I should have paid the double fee and ridden along with Malei to Haro’s.
I attached myself to the trailing edge of a cluster of drunken spice merchants, hoping to camouflage my status as solitary mark. But before we had stumped more than ten paces, a member of the Tettsui, one of the largest street gangs in the city, intercepted us.
His hair had been sheared into the shape of a hammer—classic Tettsui insignia—the better to see the sigils tattooed on his head and neck. He was a brazen one. The runes were obviously mind spells. Quite illegal. Hammer-hair touched the activation whorl above his ear and the sigils began to glow. It was a linking spell, one of the more popular ones with the gangs. Now the rest of Hammer-hair’s gang could watch the fun, seeing what he saw, hearing what he heard.
Unfortunately, what he saw was me. “Just him.” His grimy finger picked me out.
The merchants slunk off, abandoning me to the Tettsui without a qualm. Whatever had become of civic responsibility? Behind me, two shadows blocked my retreat. A glance confirmed they were Hammer-hair’s friends. One of them, linking sigils already glowing on his bald crown, sported a leather vest with a distinctive hammer crest. His companion hefted a crusted pickaxe in one hand while activating his linking sigils with the other.
“Look at the mouse,” Leather-vest said.
Hammer-hair drew a null sphere from his sleeve. “Has it got any cheese?”
Worse and worse. The little obsidian sphere could deliver a charge of raw, unshaped power upon contact, blowing out all weaker spells on or about the victim. It also hurt. A lot.
“Squeak, squeak,” I said. I handed over my coin sash.
Pickaxe nudged me with his tool. “Mousie’s holding out on us.”
“I’m not. Really, that’s it.”
“We saw the bint pass you the gem.”
They wanted Malei’s crystal?
“He could’ve spelled it,” Leather-vest said. “A little hidey spell for a little mouse.”
Hammer-hair thumbed the activation symbol on the null sphere. It began to hum. “’S why I got a trap.”
Trap-snap-zap. If the null sphere hit me, I’d go down—not exactly a good position for defense—so I did something desperate. I smashed my fist into the cluster of nerves in Hammer-hair’s elbow. It felt like I’d bashed my hand into an anvil. But he dropped the null sphere.
And I caught it.
Bard’s leaf sharpens the wit. And speeds the body. My rush of panic had brought on an encore appearance of the drug and it was doing a jig in my system, giving me uncanny speed and reflexes. I slammed the business side of the null sphere against the biggest sigil on Hammer-hair’s skull. He shrieked and his skin glowed a pretty red. Behind me, Pickaxe and Leather-vest reeled, clutching their heads. I hoped the sphere’s loop would knock them silly, but I didn’t stick around to find out.
I shoved Leather-vest against a wall and pelted down the closest alley. Ducking through garbage-strewn lanes and vaulting over ramshackle gates, I ran until the blood roared in my ears, turning at random without thought to direction. I stopped only when I slipped on a rotting cabbage leaf and careened into an abandoned stall. The stench of overripe vegetables and sun-fermented fruit suffused me as I gasped and panted. I strained to listen over my labored breathing. There were no sounds of pursuit.
I had escaped.
But no. I hadn’t escaped, not truly. Every Tettsui in the city now knew my features and they would hunt me down for what I had done. The tale of the last man who’d offended them was still whispered in darkened ale stoops and pleasure houses. They say the Tettsui gave him to their pet flesh mage who blighted every part of him save his tongue. His tongue they saved so they could listen to his never-ending pleas for death. It was not a tale I wanted to test.
It was a long walk back to my rooms, made longer by the bard’s leaf conjuring will-o-wisp voices that rang and spun in my mind, luring me into dead ends and cul-de-sacs. Twice I had to double back after becoming lost in the sprawl of streets.
I was desperately footsore and strangled in dust by the time I finally found my way home. My home. It had been a nice little sanctuary. I would miss it.
I bundled a change of clothing into a pack and tossed in the bag of gold and silver crowns I kept in a hidden chamber of my water clock. Then I secured my truly important belongings.
I brushed my fingers over the tomes of my journals, my poetry, my verse—the most precious things I possessed. In those hundreds of pages lay years of my life, my very soul, seared by ink-stained fingers into parchment. They were far too heavy to carry with me in headlong flight, but I too have a few illegal magics about me.
Tattooed onto the roof of my mouth was a linking spell, much like the one the Tettsui used. However, instead of linking to other minds, I used mine to link to tiny runes, carved into the brittle wooden covers of my books.
“Barasu shiragoma,” I said. At the words, the sigils in my mouth triggered, and I felt that small part of my thoughts that the contraband mage had structured and corralled off come alive. It was a small segment really, but I had given up my ability to taste in order to make room for it. It was a fair price. Eating had never been high on my list of recreations.
I linked, one by one, to each rune carved in wood and stored the exact shape, each curve and edge, into where I had once savored juicy berries, felt the bite of mustard weed on my tongue, and rolled the pungent flavor of smoked sweetmeats in my mouth. Bound to each rune, I had spelled mnemonics that, when triggered, would allow me to recall, word for word, the poems and writings committed to my books.
While I waited for the spell to complete, I changed out of my dusty clothes. The crystal that Malei had palmed to me fell on the floor.
Damned thing. I should have handed it over. I picked it up. As soon as my fingertips closed around it, tiny runes etched into the stone sprang to life, glowing scintillating amber. I squinted at them. I couldn’t decipher the text; the charm was too complex and obscure, not the simple things of everyday spellery. I recognized the symbol for mind, though.
It was something illegal then, a bit of black market frippery. Except the spell was too intricate for a quartz conduit. Quartz is fine for unsophisticated spells like luck pendants or beauty charms, but it’s too flimsy for anything more elegant. I stared at the stone, large as my thumb. My stomach performed a cartwheel and dropped to my ankles when I realized what I was holding. It was translucent corundum, a white sapphire.
Gods above. What had Malei gotten herself into? A white sapphire of this size could buy half of Lanais.
I’m not sure what happened next. The gemstone flashed a prismatic hail of colors. Power wrapped around the spell still going in my head, like two candle flames joined. For an eye blink, I struggled to control it, to stop it from overwhelming me, and then I fell back, lost in strobing brightness and color.
Faster than panic, it was over. I blinked up at my dingy ceiling, vaguely amazed that I had managed to avoid bashing my head against the desk. I could feel the alien spell’s residue. It had piggy-backed my memory spell and inserted something into my head. My runes were still intact, but the place where once I had experienced sweet, sour, and bitter was full—completely, totally, full—which my mnemonic runes alone should not have done. What would have happened, I wondered, if I had not had spare room in my brain?
Mind engorged and ears faintly buzzing, I intoned the closing incantation of my linking spell: Amogarihs Usarab. My knees shook, but I forced myself to stand and find a scrap of silk to wrap the sapphire in. As soon as I was safely out of the Tettsui’s province, I would contract a healer or a mind mage to sort it out.
I hailed a bearer with my scrye to take me to the city gates. While I waited, I threw my books into the fireplace and conjured a conflagration. The blaze devoured the pages, turning my memoirs, my verse into a smoldering pile of gray ashes. I hated doing it, but any hedge witch could track my whereabouts from as intimate a connection as my journals.
The bearer arrived before I could disgrace myself by breaking down and blubbering. But I hesitated. I had left Malei at Haro’s. I had promised to be responsible for her.
Damnation.
“Take me to Master Haro’s,” I told him.
For the whole ride, I railed silently at myself as I scanned the streets for telltale hammer insignia. I was a fool. Worse, I was a fool and a romantic. Malei could take care of herself. She had more than enough willing protectors.
I was still telling myself that when one of Haro’s apprentices greeted me at the door.
“How may I serve?” she asked.
“I’m here to see a girl that was brought in earlier. Her name’s Malei.”
“And you are?”
“Kyr Daitakerou.”
The girl shuffled a sheaf of chits in a basket. “Ah, yes. Under ‘to be paid by.’ We used a standard purgative potion to fix her up, but Master Haro had to overpower another spell in order to cast it.”
Undoubtedly an expensive procedure. “Oh. Um, good.”
“Would you like to pay now?”
Not really. “May I see her first?”
“Of course.” The apprentice led me through the house, past closed doors of different shapes and colors. We passed a round green door with the symbol for “contagious” painted over it, and a jagged red door with the symbol for “burn” before we came to a plain wooden door. She opened it.
Malei was inside, reclining on a pallet of straw. “Kyr!” She bounded up when she saw me. “I feel great! Not even a case of next days!” Her eyes were bright and she looked hale and whole and well. She threw herself into my arms, and all my lingering reservations about returning were swept away in the perfume of her hair and the softness of her arms.
The apprentice cleared her throat. “Master Haro’s fee is three gold crowns.”
Mai wiggled in a delightful fashion against me, the better to take my mind off the money, while I fumbled out the coins. “C’mon, let’s puff out of here,” she said, laughing.
I wasn’t going to complain. The apprentice bustled us to the door.
But standing on Haro’s walkway, I realized I didn’t know where to go. I stopped short. “We can’t go back to my place, sweeting. The Tettsui want my head.”
Malei didn’t seem surprised. She tugged me onward like a playful puppy. “You still got the sapphire though, right?”
I let her pull me, although knowing Mai, she didn’t have any better destination in mind. “What was in that? It knocked me off my feet.”
She swiveled to face me, aghast. “You set it off?”
“Why? What does it do?”
I watched her chew on her lovely mouth. “Nothing.”
“You lie like a child caught with a pocketful of sugar. What’d you get me mixed up in?”
She wrung her hands together, eyes downcast. “We have to find Calise.”
“Who’s Calise?”
“My big sister.”
Malei had a big sister?
“She studied under Master Eiketsu. She can help with the counter spell.”
Malei had a big sister who knew mind magery? The name of Eiketsu was infamous in Lanais. He used to be chief advisor until he was discovered tampering with the Duke’s mind. Eiketsu fled and the Duke had outlawed mind spells ever since.
“What exactly did I hex myself with?”
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Calise found me at the Roc and Wherry. I was just finishing my second glass of evening sight, and she came in, and I thought she was trying to make me go home.”
There was a tremor in her voice. I wondered if it was for her, or for me.
“Some Tettsui came in and starting throwing spells at her, but she passed me the sapphire right before she went down. I caught the tail end of the spell they tossed. I—I ran away and called you and—and I was so scared and you took forever getting there!”
I had a rogue mind spell doing who-knew-what to my head and she complained about my tardiness. Typical. “I’m sorry I took so long, sweetheart, but you have to tell me what the spell does.”
Her lips trembled. “I—It’s a death spell, Kyr.” She burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “You’re always so clever with magic. I didn’t think you’d turn it on!”
A death spell. I had activated a death spell. “How long do I have?” I was surprised at how calm I sounded. Part of me wanted to shake her and shout in her face, but the other part was resigned. Malei was going to be the death of me. How terribly predictable.
“I don’t know.” Her words came out in a rush. “Calise was telling me about how the Duke was making it so it’d spread through the linkers. Once the symptoms started showing up they’d have to turn themselves in or die. But she’d got the counter spell smuggled out in the sapphire and—”
“Wait, the counter’s in the sapphire?” Things were looking better. Would I be spared an ignominious death?
“Uh huh. In sorcerer’s tongue.”
Nope, the rock over my grave would definitely read: He died an ignominious death. Scholars of sorcerer’s tongue were a rare and secretive breed. They didn’t advertise. “Did your sister say anything else about how the spell works?”
Malei didn’t get a chance to answer that rather vital question. I saw a shimmer of magic. Four Tettsui thugs, all with link sigils glowing, appeared before us.
“Run!” I shoved Malei behind me. For my heroism, the first thug, the one with a black braid wrapped around his head, smacked his fist into my gut. All of the breath locked up between my stomach and my throat, and I doubled over.
I heard Malei scream.
Black-braid kicked my legs out from under me and I landed in the dust. He lifted me up by my shirtfront, his fist pulled back.
Behind him, a Tettsui with a hammer-embroidered patch over one eye shaped symbols in the air. “Master Tettsui wants him insides in,” he said.
Was that a good thing? Anything that kept me from being pummeled was a good thing, right?
“Wasn’t gonna knock the stuffing out,” Black-braid said. “Just stir it around a little.” He drove his fist into my stomach.
So much for good things.
One-eye completed his spell.
I was so tired. I felt a yawn tugging my jaw. My eyes fluttered, even as I strained to keep them open. The agony of Black-braid’s fist thudding into me again wasn’t enough to keep me awake. My last thought, before the walls of grayness fell, was to wonder if Malei was all right.
I woke up with the grit of sand in my mouth and feeling like seven rickshaws had rolled over my stomach.
“Can’t you hurry up?” That was Malei speaking. “They’ll be back soon.”
“I’m doing the best I can.” I didn’t recognize that voice, although she sounded familiar. Like Malei, I realized, except less nasal. “The damned lock is spelled.”
I opened my eyes. Torches ringed a tiny, stone room. The light hurt my eyes. I twitched them shut again, but not before a moan escaped my lips.
“I think your friend’s coming around. Check on him, will you? If I do manage to undo this door, I don’t fancy carrying him.”
I felt soft hands supporting me, helping me sit up. I risked squinting open my eyelids. The light wasn’t as painful this time. Mai looked well. I didn’t see any bruises or blood, but her hair was disheveled and the front of her dress had been ripped. It gaped open providing me with a decidedly immodest view.
A spear of agony tore through me, starting at my head and sheering through my groin. I screamed, or rather grunted, my teeth locked shut in a rictus of pain. Mai dropped me like a cheap trinket and my head thumped to the stone floor. I barely felt it. I was too busy having every muscle in my body spasm tight, locking me in a vise of agony. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t think; I couldn’t move. My world was pain and nothing more.
And just as I was certain that I was going to die—hoping I would, if only the anguish would stop—the fit left me.
“Wha-wzzat?” My tongue felt weighted, a lump of meat in my mouth.
“The death spell, I would hazard.” Looking through tear-blurred eyes, I saw a woman in an unadorned student’s robe kneeling over me. She was Malei’s sister as surely as the Duke hated mind mages. She had the same midnight hair and brilliant blue eyes. But where Malei was lovely, her sister was not. Calise had lines creasing her face, the kind made by frowning and thinking of unpleasant things.
“What’s going on? What’s happening?” Malei stood in the corner, as far away from me as it was possible to be in our windowless cell.
“Mai, be still,” Calise said. “He’s done for now. Can you sit up?”
Belatedly, I realized the last was addressed to me. “Nnk suh,” I said. I tried again. “I think so.”
“Good. We don’t have time for pampering.”
Pampering? I’d just been wracked by the gods of suffering. If anyone deserved pampering, it was me.
“Quick, give me the sapphire,” she said.
“Uh?”
She glared at me. Did I say she had the same eyes as Malei? Scratch that. Malei’s eyes are soft and shining, like a clear summer sky. Her sister’s were cold and sharp. The way she looked at me, I felt like I’d been plunged into an ice-crusted pond after being dragged through a field of knife shards.
“Mai said she gave the sapphire to you.” She enunciated her words as though I were a half-wit. “I assume you had the presence of mind to do a concealing spell so the Tettsui couldn’t lift it. Hand. It. Over.”
Well, no, I didn’t have any such presence, but I hated to admit it. I stuck my hand into my pocket. Nope. So much for wild hopes. “I don’t have it.”
She scowled. “You didn’t spell it.”
“Um, no.”
“Great. That’s just fabulous.” She rubbed her eyes. “Because of your lack of foresight, we’re as good as meat. Without the counter spell to bargain with, we don’t have anything to keep the Tettsui from roasting us.”
“My lack of . . . wait. Let me get this straight. You’re blaming me for this?” Indignant? Who, me?
“And another thing, how could you be stupid enough to activate an unknown spell?”
I spluttered at her. There were so many things I wanted to say, they all jumbled together. I was reduced to inarticulate flailing.
“Cee?” Malei crept closer. “How come the Tettsui want to pound us so bad? You said you were going to give out the counter spell to the mage council.”
Calise’s scowl deepened. “Why do you think? Master Tettsui sees it as a way to pile up coin and cement his power base. He wants all the street linkers to come begging to him. What’s he care if it blows out every underground mind mage in the city that doesn’t give in to his extortion? Less competition.”
“Besides, I didn’t activate it. It turned itself on.” One of my retorts powered through the bottleneck. Not my first choice, but it was something.
“What?” Calise stared at me.
“It turned itself on. What sort of dumb spell doesn’t have proper safeguards?”
“That’s not possible.”
“Then I guess I imagined the glowing runes, the flash of light, and being knocked flat on my back.”
My sarcasm went unacknowledged. “What were you doing?”
“If you must know, I was in the middle of a link and store spell. As soon as I touched the sapphire, the runes started glowing. Next thing, I’m zapped and blinking on the ground.”
“Wait. You had a memory spell going?” A smile appeared on her face. And then I realized I’d been completely wrong about Malei’s sister. Calise wasn’t plain at all; she was beautiful. If Calise smiled, Malei would have to turn over her title as fairest in the city, no contest.
Calise reached for me, and before I knew what she was doing, she was probing the back of my neck, her fingers busy in my hair.
“What exactly are you doing?”
“Where are your linking sigils? I need to see how they’re written before I can go in.”
“Go in?”
The smile went away, and I found myself mourning it. “Into your mind. The sapphire was set for me to activate so I could pull the counter. It may have recognized your linking spell and dumped its contents into you. The Tettsui have the sapphire, but maybe they won’t be able to figure out the spell.”
“Oh.” I had a thought. Despite what Calise seemed to believe, I was capable of having them. “But if you link minds with me, won’t it get you too? Isn’t that how it spreads?” Yes, I was concerned for Calise’s welfare, but I wasn’t too pleased by the idea of sharing my mind either. I’d never opened myself to another nor did I have any desire to start with a shrew—albeit a beautiful shrew—who thought I had the intellect of a table.
“Probably. But we’re running out of options. Or would you prefer having your joints liquefied by their flesh mage?”
“Barasu shiragoma,” I said and opened my mouth.
I felt Calise’s fingers against my teeth. She tipped my head back. “Clever.” It was grudging. She peered in and I saw the tips of her fingers flash. She was making a sorcerous shaping. A glowing green line of power appeared. With her other hand, she reached up to a spot behind her ear. Her hair began to shimmer, illuminated by unseen runes on her scalp. She touched the line in her hand to my mouth and the world spun and shifted.
I gaped at myself, a ridiculous expression on my face, with my head tilted back and my mouth wide open. Memories played out before my mind’s eye that I had never experienced: fighting over a rag doll with a young Malei, saving an orange kitten with sad eyes from being stoned by street urchins, straining to hold a spell through fatigue and searing headache, crying and alone in an empty apprentice barracks. And the tastes! Flavors I had forgotten filled my mouth. I sampled cream cakes dripping with honey, and red wine mulled with apples—
Enough! Her voice reverberated in my skull. It took me a moment to realize she hadn’t spoken aloud. I felt Calise’s anger like a prickle of heat in my throat. Those are private!
It was easy to think words back at her, so elegant, so simple to speak mind-to-mind. Sorry. And I was truly sorry. I hoped she could feel it as I’d felt her anger. I’ve never linked with a person before.
What, never? Astonishment sprang from her like breaking glass. I’d assumed, when you said you had a linking spell—
No.
Oh. Well, first off, you have to relax or we won’t be able to meld properly. Try to forget that I’m here.
Easy for her to think. Forget that someone was in my head, privy to all of my private discourses, things I’d never shared with anyone. Sure. Of course, as soon as I thought that, snippets of my fantasy life, my ambitions, my niggling self-doubts and small-minded peeves, scrolled across our shared perceptions.
Damnation. Help! That isn’t—
She was amused. Wonderful. Try doing something that takes up a lot of your attention. Recite a spell or something.
I floundered in our shared minds and grasped at the first idea that popped into my head. I could write a poem!
There once was a lass named Calise, who— No, maybe I couldn’t. I really wished I had some bard’s leaf. I closed my eyes and struggled not to remember the thing I had done as an apprentice with three buckets of tar, a chicken, and my master’s shoes.
Now you’re blocking me completely out. She was exasperated with me but trying not to be. I couldn’t blame her.
“Mai” Hearing Calise speak was strange, like a double echo. I heard her first in her head and then in mine. “Got any bard’s leaf on you?”
She wouldn’t, I thought. They nabbed us straight from Haro’s.
“Here.” Malei astonished me by handing Calise a handful of the distinctive purple leaves. She giggled. “Master Haro was such a snuggle-bear. After he fixed me up, I asked him for a tour of his shop. You wouldn’t believe the stockpile of herbs he’s got.”
An opportunistic little sticky-paws, that was Malei; gods bless her.
Calise gave me the leaves. Can you chew them straight?
Even before she’d finished the thought, I’d popped the whole bunch of them into my mouth. It was one of the few perks of not being able to taste. I remembered how bitter bard’s leaf was. Most people couldn’t stomach them even brewed and sweetened.
Undiluted by water, I felt the first effects of the leaf immediately. Sounds crystallized, colors sharpened, and I felt the characteristic tremble in my arms.
What do you need me to do? I thought to Calise.
You already did it. I’m in.
In-twin-fin-win. The sound of her thoughts bounced around in my head, but I was focused, alive. And we were mind linking. That hadn’t hurt much after all.
What now? I thought.
I’m going through your memory storage. Wait . . . Found it! Seems the Duke’s death spell affects the system in gradually incremental severity levels. The first stage is virtually symptom free. Initial signs include muscle tremor and loss of coordination. The second stage—
She laughed—a vibration from the bottom of my heels to the back of my tongue. What? What is it?
You’re in the second stage, Kyr. The Duke has a twisted sense of humor. In the second stage, the spell wracks the victim whenever they encounter something that would trigger their, err, lascivious impulses.
Ah. Malei’s ripped gown. If I blushed, would Calise feel it? And the third stage?
The convulsions don’t stop.
Can you do the counter spell?
She was frustrated—a splinter of prickles along my spine. Frustration was not what I was hoping for. It’s too big.
What do you mean ‘it’s too big?’
I can’t hold it all. Fall-gall-stall. I felt her scowl. It was a recurring expression for her. She began sorting through her memories and I realized what she was going to do. Not sacrifice one of her senses, no, she didn’t know that spell. Instead, she was going to remove days, weeks, maybe even years of her life, her memories, in order to make space.
Wait, no! I didn’t allow myself time to reconsider. With a thought, I purged the runes that could bring back my writing. Between one blink and another, quicker than years of love and toil should be able to vanish, they were gone. My books were ashes, and now the only connection I had to them was wiped away. They were just words, I told myself. I could make new words. I felt like crying.
Store your memories in me, I thought to her.
I felt her hand on mine. The tangible feel of her gratitude in my mind—warm and somehow smelling of cinnamon—made my sacrifice a little less devastating.
She poured herself into me. First she gave me ripe cherries, sticky from the tree, tasting of sun and rain and sweetness. Then egg tarts thick with vanilla and the tang of cloves, still warm from the oven. And bread (her, our, my father’s bread) full of savory seeds and herbs, brittle on the outside, soft as clouds and melting on my tongue on the inside. The smell, the taste of my (her) father’s bread spiraled us into a new memory out of her control. I watched father die—raving and crazed—victim of a stray mind spell from a wizard’s duel. It was a turning point for her (me). I learned sorcerer’s tongue with her, unearthed old magics, struggled to understand the sicknesses of the wits and how to cure them. I was there when she helped her master, Eiketsu, escape the Duke’s men.
I’m filling up. I almost didn’t think it, tempted to let her erase a little of me. Calise, behind her scowls and sharp tongue, had a beautiful heart. She mourned the suffering of others, took responsibility for the innocents and the victims. I wondered if she’d let me court her if we lived past today.
It’s enough. I got it. Her hands wove in the air. Linked to her as I was, I understood what she was doing, but it was like holding a half-remembered dream. She pulled unfamiliar, familiar shapes out of the air and spoke words in a language I’d never heard before, yet made sense anyway. A flash of light dazzled my eyes, and I sprawled backwards.
At the apex of the counter spell, Calise severed our link. It was disorienting, seeing her look at me instead of my agog expression through her eyes. I much preferred this view. With her face sheened with sweat, she was the loveliest thing I had ever seen.
“Done. We’re free of the Duke’s spell,” she said.
“A world of hurray.”
“Kyr, by and by, I don’t court,” she said. “But if you’d like to come around, I’d welcome you.”
You-true-blue. “Really?”
The door to our cell slammed open. Three Tettsui, all wielding bone hammers, entered. Behind them, a stocky man stepped through. He was older but not frail yet—maybe he’d never become frail—with a shock of white hair and a gem-speckled staff.
I recognized him from street gossip. It was Master Tettsui himself.
“All awake? Good, good.” Tettsui’s voice made me think of a treacherous cave pool—dark and icy and dangerous. “As it transpires, I never bothered with sorcerer’s tongue in my youth. Sticky, cumbersome language. Ah well. Your gain.”
He hadn’t worked out the counter spell. I felt like pointing and laughing, but thought better of it.
“So it would appear I need you to translate it for me.”
“After which,” Calise said, “you’ll kill us. Not exactly rich incentive.”
Tettsui gestured to one of his entourage. I recognized Black-braid from earlier. He grabbed Malei in a clumsy lunge and dragged her forward, twisting her arm at a cruel angle.
I scrambled to my feet. The other two thugs stepped up, more than happy to thump me back down.
With a flick of his fingers, Tettsui leveled a slowdown spell over me. I felt like I’d been dumped into mud up to my shoulders. The heavy-hands chuckled; Tettsui ignored me. He was only interested in Calise and Malei.
“Such a pretty thing your sister is,” Tettsui said. “It’d be a pity to have that beauty melt away like candle wax.” He ran his fingers over Mai’s face. She whimpered. “You will all die. It is the manner of your death which hinges upon your cooperation, Eiketsu’s protégé,” he glanced at Calise. “Oh yes, I know who you are.”
That’s when I saw it. The bard’s leaf showed it to me. Black-braid had a tic under his eye. Words bubbled and rolled in my head: Muscle tremor and loss of coordination. And there, I saw a tremor in the second guard’s neck. Was that guard three swaying? Oh, yes. Thank you gods. And finally, at last, I saw a tiny, itty, inconsequential, muscle in Tettsui’s jaw twitch.
They needed the counter spell to save their own hides. Certainly they wanted to pad their stack of crowns, but they were also nose deep in yesterday’s refuse. I did laugh then.
Everyone turned to look at me. Perhaps I should have exerted more self-control.
Tettsui eyed me like an unpleasant mess in the road. He pointed the tip of his staff at me and the gemstones began to glow.
“Uh, better give them something sweet, Calise!” I shouted. Not my clearest statement, I admit. But it was enough. Comprehension skittered into place and stomped its foot. I was glad she’d spent some time in my odd psyche.
She pulled open her robe and flashed the guards and Tettsui. And me. She and Malei were definitely sisters.
Tettsui and his men went down, gurgling and twitching as nice as could be. Definitely stage two. I was betting they’d been under the Duke’s vicious spell for longer than me, a bet I was relieved to win.
Malei danced away from Black-braid and kicked him in the side. Calise drove her fist into Tettsui’s face as he plunged forward. Sweet lasses, those two.
As soon as Tettsui dropped, his spell on me did too, and I could move again. We slipped out of the wide open door. The dungeon was happily unoriginal in design. Up a flight of steps, through a hidden door tapestry, and we emerged in a Marketplace ale stoop. A surprised Tettsui guard didn’t have time to do more than reach for his hammer before Malei flung apart her gown and left him drooling and thrashing behind us.
We lost ourselves in the labyrinth streets while onlookers gasped and called for a healer. So easily we were away, home free.
After that, it was simple as smiling. Calise got the counter spell to the mage council who are casting it in a broad swath and teaching it to all the apprentices.
When Calise said she didn’t court, she meant it. As soon as she decided she was fine with me worshipping her—after an evening of feasting and dancing—she threw convention and tradition to the wind. Eschewing the usual betrothal negotiations, she immediately started talking ceremonies and cookware. I thought I was coming down with a relapse of the death spell, but as it turns out, it was just my reflexive bachelor twitches giving their last gasp.
To tell the truth, I’m enchanted by the idea of Calise standing by my side and sleeping in my arms ‘till death us part. When she smiles, or wondrous of all, laughs, and she turns her beautiful, glowing face up to me, I feel like I can do anything, be anything, for her. And I’ve even acquired a profound fondness for her frequent, brow-furrowed scowls. I figure when she does that it’s easy for other men to miss how beautiful she is—cuts down on the competition.
Besides, it’s more healthful to go along with whatever my Calise wants. I’ve seen her right hook.
The Tettsui remain unhappy with us. We could probably call upon the council to protect us from them, but Calise and I aren’t the kind to live behind guards and shield spells. We’re moving to Yekisa, a city that doesn’t have a ban on mind magic. The resident mind mage informed me that she expects there to be an opening for a court poet before too long.
Malei decided to stay in Lanais. I thought she’d be upset at Calise and me for getting together, but when we told her, she just kissed me on the cheek and told me to be good. Last time I saw her, she was traipsing around on Haro’s arm, happy as a kitten with a ball of string.
I was worried about her, but according to Calise, Haro dabbled a bit in flesh magery and sorcery when he was an apprentice. Guess the Tettsui know better than to mess with him.
One day, I will write an epic poem about this.
About the Author
Eugie Foster (1971 – 2014) grew up in the Midwest, earning a Master of Arts degree in Developmental Psychology before retiring from academia to writing. She has published numerous works and received many awards including but not limited to: the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette, the 2011 and 2012 Drabblecast People’s Choice Award for Best Story, and the 2009 Bards and Sages Author of the Year award. Her website is http://www.eugiefoster.com/.
“Of Two Minds in Lanais” was originally published in Issue #48 of Leading Edge in October 2004.