Chapter XIX
Indeed I have not forgotten Jon's unnerving somnolent idiosyncracies, nor have I neglected contemplation of their probable effect upon the ensnarer – and oh, but the word is most suitable – of his heart. As much as it may seem that I have overlooked this little nuance, such is not the case. If it has been overlooked at all, the doing was Jon's alone. But what surprise there? What surprise that a man should not write of his newest lover's strange immunity to the creeping coldness of his slumbering bones, itself a quirk of which he was entirely unaware? There should be no surprise; he could not have done it. Jon did not himself know what had driven away every lover save Odfrin so swiftly from his side; none of them had been particularly inclined to speak of it, as you may well imagine. So do not be surprised that our dear pompous-pimpled Ambassador has not provided you with a neat, tidy explanation of why his new Nord stayed snuggled sure and certain by his side through the night. Such a demand is purely ridiculous.
But in the interest of assuaging the uncertainties of any other, less bold, doubters amongst you: here, take this as your short form explanation. It was not that Odfrin was somehow immune to the alienating effect of Jon's stiff, soul-emptied slumber, but rather that that character of slumber did not exist. For from the first instant Jon slept in those round, milky arms he slept as any other man; flushed, warm, and flexible. Alive, and a solid, comforting, hairy strength for a woman's cheek to rest on in the night. Gone was the corpse-cold breasted terror; gone, and for as long as he stayed in that tangle-haired woman's mangled bed. Longer, in truth, for his sleep stayed natural and easy for weeks even after his departure, and would only return – only – returnlapsevert – when - - the – the – e – E – - DAY - - -
A melting emerald's innards; tacky as sugar rich sap with the humid-huffing of the forest; suffused to supersaturation in mesophyll-filtered murk; oozing and fusing and candy-candle swamp frothing. The trees moss moist and warm as womer under my fingers, against my back; serpents sighing sultry in their hanging coitus coils overhead, draping languid jade vividity across broad branches, their spines slung in the curves of sweaty, dangling breasts; the trill of the lubo bird spinning slow in the distance. The single shaft of solid sunlight breaking the canopy, rearing around the fluttering hive-sleeve of home and shattering against its silken microplanes into short lived spirals and effervescent twirls, beaming the marble backbone into tawny, arch-spined effulgence; the stairs a carpet of light unrolled to the earthy forest floor's dim edge, prickled with silhouetted unstars; a crowd of blackly twinkling figures, arrayed across the blinding steps; the huddled wretch in their shadow.
And the two mer facing my home's grandest entrance and the household arrayed upon it; one huge, towering, overwhelmingly tall, callused golden hands dangling by his wide hips; the other – the other. My height. Smooth curves from crown to heel, like dolloping honey. Her hands – her nimble hands – her broken nails hahahaha – twining impatience in the small of her back. Both back in their own outlandish work wear; tawny and tight-fitted robes, straight-swept and speckled everywhere with pockets and buckles, their long, bare toes poking out from the hems atop the algae-slicked earth, both with their ten thousand tiny brown braids dangling and interwoven to their ankles, sheening luscious red in the fragmented sunlight. Our horses at their backs, manes dripping to the ground like the ichor of animunculi. The land longed to leave me. Thus did I take my leave from my land.
Tsirelsyn spread his broad hands, bowing. "It has been a delightful visit, !# $$!$," he said to my sun-robed father on the steps. "Your family has been so welcoming to us. It is a pain to depart so soon, I must say."
I could not see, given the brilliance, but I know my father smiled; he had befriended the enormous soil consultant very quickly. But then, so had everyone else the fucking cunts. "It certainly is," he answered. "I don't know that my table staff will be good for anything for a month, they've been so distraught at your going. Haven't you, now?"
A clamor like the waking of birds answered him, and the stairs fairly fluttered with flailing silhouetted arms. My father laughed over it all.
"Go on, then, go on!" he chuckled. "Say goodbye to your Son."
A gaggle of young – and not so young – girls tumbled eagerly down the steps and into the gloom of the jungle. They threw themselves enthusiastically at the huge, delightedly laughing soil-sorcerer, surrounding him in a massive many-armed hug, pressing kisses on him wherever they could reach. He gave each one a pat and a proper bent-kneed monkey's hug – some also took the opportunity for a proper kiss – and then shooed them on back up the steps. His daughter sidled back into position, shaking her gorgeous head at the retreating flood of womerly affection.
"Ah, Tsiri," my father chuckled, "you really must tell me your secret, some day."
"No secret," the big mer answered. "Just love."
"You apply it better than anyone I've ever met, though. It truly has been a joy to have you here, Tsiri. I didn't expect, when I wrote for a soil consultant, that I would instead get a friend I would miss for the rest of my life."
"There is no need to miss us," Tsirelsyn replied gently. "For you will always have us. We are not truly parted. There is always this moment."
My father choked out a chuckle, then stepped forward for his own dwarfing embrace against the huge mer's broad chest. He stepped back after a long moment, gripping soil-sorcerer's arm warmly.
"Be well, Son. Be well," he said, and patted the mer's arm.
"Speaking of sons," he went on, more briskly, "where's mine? It's not usually his way to be late to something like this."
I stirred, but Tsirelsyn's deep voice answered before I could say a word.
"He is here," he said, and raised one long hand to beckon toward me.
"I am here," I agreed quietly as I straightened up and stepped forward from my place in the shadows of the trees to the side of the entrance yard. I brought my fingers to the warm nose of the horse waiting dark and silent at my back, and - AND HIS FIST IN MY HAIR BROKE MY BROW ON THE STEPS - together we strode forward to the gathering's nexus; in terror, to the border of sun and shade where broken-minded madness huddled, fixated on my form; in bravery, to the soil-sorceress's side.
Father appraised me gravely, his narrow, night-wet black eyes glittering. "ReaDYYY - - then - ! – profiles sliced from shadow hahahaHAhggghh that soft chin haha that slumped spine hurrrghh both broken I broke both and there's nothing they can ever – my son?" he said at last, and held out one bronzed, alloy-callused hand.
I – s – spit – scowlsneered – bowed low over his palm, and pressed a kiss into the patina-crusted creases of his skin. "I am – AM – WILL NOT – AM – I AM NOT I AM – ready, father."
He smiled fondly down, and raised me back to my full height with fingers chucked beneath my chin.
"I know you are. You are eager for it, I know, though separation clouds your ardor in this moment. And that is good; eagerness will fuel your study, and your practice, and your skill. But do not grow over-fond of Alinor, ! 3%1234. I expect him back within a century, you hear me, Tsiri?" His eyes jumped over my head.
"I hear you," the soil consultant answered wryly, smiling with one side of his wide, full-lipped mouth. "But I'm afraid that there's little I can do. The peril is inherent; there is no way to learn our craft except to be bound by it. If he has any talent at all – and I know that he does – he will become intertwined with our soil. That much is inevitable."
"Oh?" One sharp, shining eyebrow quirked. "Well. Well, and yet. And yet, what of this?" He bent suddenly, crouching low to the ground, his silken shroud fluttering and flashing a forge-glinting aura-outline. His strong fingers shoveled into the littered, moss-slick earth. Muscles trembled in my back, like a horse in horror. The hunched figure gave a gulping spasm in the shadow of the stairs; a flash like cast-off creatia, the glimmer of eyes like dead stars. Tendons clenched, and the hand of my father rose, dribbling crumbles of ochre soil like dead skin.
"My land, from my hands to yours," Father said, cupping the mossy mound in his palms before me. "Keep it near you, always, and do not forget that it is this land and no other to which you belong." His palms parted, and cool earth tumbled to my skin – and mud up my nose across my teeth down my shirt –
"I – I – yes, father." I moved to stow the soil in one of the sacks slung across my horse's sleek black spine. I turned toward the silent, stiff-gilt womer, but my hands, and the soil in them, swung opposite; to dirty, tangled golden twine hidden in shadow.
A huge hand caught my shoulder – and I thought he would throttle me dead there on the steps but the paw of the dirt wizard – gently before I had even completed my turn.
"Are you sure you don't want to come as well?" Tsirelsyn asked of my father with a creasing, twinkling smile. "You've learned much yourself of the nature of our craft in just this short time. For this little bit of soil will indeed do as you supposed, in instinct," he said, touching the back of my cupped palms with fingers that made mine seem a child's. "It will bind your son to this place, in heart and mind and soul. But weakly, weakly, and fading as the soil is sundered. We can do you better, though, if you wish it. If this is the course you would have us take."
"What do you mean?" Father asked. I could only blink up, silent, at the smile-lined face high above. The corners of my eyes crawled; in one a snapped spine and a tangle of lank, limp-sun-hopeful locks; in the other, amber sculpted lips and gaze of black and gold, still and closed and cold.
"We are edaphomancers," Tsirelsyn answered simply. "We can bind your son to this soil with undying security. I had not thought of such… it is not usually a matter of consideration. But we can do it, to seed a strong tie to this place in your son. If he agrees?" He put the question gently, peering down at me with his soft, chromatically cloven eyes. "It is not normally done to intertwine an apprentice with the soil of his homeland any more than exists already, but if you think it would give you comfort, away from your home, or that it would give your father comfort in the assurity that you would return, then I see – see – see – see no reason why we cannot do so for you. We can make you this soil's unto eternity, if you wish."
I hesitated. I could not think. My eyes were crowded with profile and profile; the heat hung heavy on my tongue, like a sick dog in summer. There was too much, too much pulsing beneath my skin, too much throbbing in the supersaturated scenesssssss.
"What would be the effect?"
The soil-sorcerer's shoulders shrugged. "A consciousness. A connection between you and this land. Never overt, never overwhelming, never ceasing. You will simply sense that you are this land's, and this land is yours. A difficult thing to take on just before your departure, but the reunion will be sweeter than you can imagine. And it will preclude any immobilizing entanglements, at least, with the soil of Alinor." He paused, appraising my eyes carefully. 'Would you like to proceed?"
"Think of it, son," Father said quietly. "Never to be truly parted from your home. To always have that comfort in the back of your mind. Think of it." His hand came up to the back of my neck, gritty and wet with the earth he offered – and he slammed his hand hard against my neck and my knees hit the ground but I spit in his face anyway and he yelled like a tiger. His face was right by mine and blood-blister red and twisted like taut twine and I couldn't even tell what he was –
"Yes. Yes, very well, Father."
"Excellent!" He beamed at me, sharp teeth shining in the sun, broad cheeks folding into taut, sharp-edged crinkles. "Tsiri?"
"Are you sure?" the huge mer asked gently, dichromic eyes probing with careful concern. No doubt but that that preternatural perception of his had noted the tic in my eye, the quaver in my fingers, the forge-gleam on my brow. It was not the anxiety of the offer, but of the leaving itself, and of the cowardice in it, and of the irresistibility of it, and of the – very good times I had with those two even if it is all at an end. His voice lowered. "What is wrong, young one? There is a tension in you. There is nothing to fear in the soil. It is warmth, and comfort incarnate; the return to absolute trust and dependence. You have never known an intimacy to compare, save in the womb. It is not to be feared. Will you accept it?"
There was no thought in me. There was no reason. But something – something moved my tongue – my tongue – MY TONGUE! ground into the dirt and he shouted Eat it! Eat it! Eat it, you shame! You filth! You disgrace of my loins! and I struggled but my hands were tied behind my back and he always was stronger than me from ox wrangling and just kept pounding my face into the dirt again and again and the grit he had stuffed into my mouth was sour and metallic and grated against the back of my throat and across my gums. You piece of shit, he said, you disgusting little cretin! Choke! and wrenched tighter on my hair. Choke on it! he said Choke and die! but I only laughed, and then a coiled cord of silk from his own sleeve was around my throat and I really was choking, and all I could see was red bathed horizon and shifting feet white and gold in terror but I laughed, I laughed, I laughed as I choked on silk and soil. And then a jerk and a release, and I fell flat to the ground coughing out choke-chuckles and the dirt idiot was saying Enough ! 3236%4! This is not the way – and I spoke.
"Yes."
His eyes till searched mine, not convinced. The pressure of his hands eased momentarily, as though he would withdraw, refuse, and the moment quavered like a plucked string; my eyes dilated wide with a sharp ache. Stilled, and his brow clenched, but the mouth moved on. Vibration shivered up his throat; time twanged past his teeth.
"Very well. It shall be done, then. And in its doing, we – we - - his rough fingers on my chin, and I spat in his ugly face too. But he just blinked and talked like he didn't have saliva drying on his cheeks like I hadn't – He said, You have done grave ill to my daughter. Graver than you could ever know. My stomach roils with abhorrence for your profanity, and my father's fist longs to crush you into the powder it so could so easily render your bones. To stop your own father's humiliations sends my heart ashudder with shame, though I know in my mind that I must. That is the reaction of instinct. That is the reaction you would understand. But I will not follow it. Because for all that it seems that you are nothing but a vile, willful villain, a degenerate disgrace upon your race by your own choice and revelation, I know that this is but an illusion. I know it, though I cannot now feel it. What you have done, you have done from necessity, not from freedom. And I recognize that you and I are not so different. Though my heart screams out that you are no kin to my spirit, I know that there is that in me which covers the unwilling flesh of womer, just as in you there is a seed of accepting gentleness. How, then, could I condemn you? I understand you. I am you. I love you. I love you, though I cannot now touch it.
I laughed in the enormous weakling's face, and coughed mud on his wrist. P-pussy, I choked out, and laughed till my ribs hurt even more than their breaking had. Let me kill him, Son Father growled as he grabbed my hair again, He is worthless. He is nothing! Let me kill him, and at least obtain the vengeance of pride. No, the dirt magician answered, and knocked father's serrated shard away from my throat. I cannot allow that he said To harm in return to harm is only to feed the cycle of sundering. We must respond with love, not with hate. There is that within your son that it is still beautiful. There is hope for him, if we but try. He looked at me directly then, eyes, to eyes, just inches apart, and black-gold blazed to black and gold and I stopped laughing. He said Your mother died in your birth, didn't she? And I said How did you know that? And he said It is written on the bone of your heart. You have never been shown the path to memory. Sundering is your sole association with your mother and the Mother, the vector of the horizon, love. I understand. My mother, too, died with my birth. But you need not fear any longer. There is comfort. There is a golden dream. There is memory's omnipresence. She has not abandoned you completely. There is ambericity. I will show you. I will bind you to the womb of myth. I will show you love in a handful of earth. And – and his fingers – his fingers –
His fingers plucked up a piece of ochre earth from the crumbled clod in my palms – swabbed amber mud from my tongue – cupped my jaw gently; eased open my mouth and laid the segment of soil on my trembling tongue. Then slash and dash mud-marks across my cheeks and forehead and I couldn't move as though every muscle had been bound – dragged a moss-moist thumb-palleted dab across my face; blew on my eyes, and touched soil to their lids. Another flash of pain as dilation flickers flexed in my eyes – and his voice There is only one way to show you. You see most that closest to your eye. AND THEN! Then! Those huge fingers! Patterned in soil-scrawls! Etched in earth! Those huge fingers, pressing down! Pressing down! down! down! rubbing dirt deep into my eye! and I screamed! I screamed as a blink made me blind! – and he pressed my palms forcefully together, rubbing the grit and gunk of the earth into the smoothness of my skin. Then he stepped back in the jungle gloom, and turned toward the line of figures arrayed in the shaft of sunlight anointing the blazing marble steps. I could not stop blinking, my eyelids tingling with wet clay – the pain! the pain! colloids crunching, smashed by flesh to flesh! – and with each flicker, the flare of figure to either side; gloom and gold, glassy and peach-rush luscious; shuddering and silent.
"I told you that we cannot do much for your soil without a dedicated edaphomancer in permanent position," Tsirelsyn said, bowing his head briefly to my father's shining form, "and that is true. And yet – we can do some. We can ameliorate your troubles temporarily. You have given me your son, to train; to become the eventual edaphomancer of this land." I have taken your son from your hands, which would dispel him. I bind him now to Nirn's nourishment, to the actualization of ambericity, that he might learn love. I seat understanding in his sight. "And so as I bind him anew to this earth which has birthed him – a proto-consecration of his dedication – I too tangle your unraveling earth." I entwine this slayer of soil with soil itself, and heal it thereby. An embrace is the only true victory.
"Cehseekye."
And the daughter stirred at my side.
"Father."
The dirt magician watched his precious little girl come closer with eyes dripping that overtly sorrowful look fathers of well-tasted womer always have that only pretends at sadness but is really just a disguise for jealousy that they are too cowardly to do the same and I smiled again in spite of the eye he had blinded.
She stopped before him, soft-featured face blank, black and gold gaze staring, wide mouth flat and hard despite her lush lips. Her father's voice lowered.
Can you do this my… daughter? "Ready now, Cehs?"
Silence. Those eyes. That mask-perfect mouth. Those eyes. That body, oh hahahahaha, that bruise-tenderized body. And she said You want me to embrace evil and haha, that rich voice scraped to rawness, and Yes said the Son.
Her chin rose. Her mouth twisted. As the Son wills for his daughter, so shall it be. I am given to degradation. "I am."
"Then let us begin." I am so sorry, mother.
And she was before me. Completely paralyzing, overwhelming in her simple existence, and the other dwindled to a buzzing gnat under the power of her eyes, her mouth, her hair, her neck, her shoulders, those lush, flushed shoulders. She stared directly at me, and those black and gold eyes swallowed my soul in the obsession of emptiness; there was nothing in the world save her gaze's gravity, its golden grasp, its well-black brink, its severed observation – silent-screaming in the night-wight's hell-hole I pounded her soul into with my – and then she was stepping forward, and her eyes were so close to mine, perfectly level, and her lips were right there. I could not breathe. I could not breathe, until she stepped around me, and then I could gasp in the dry, herb-musted perfume of her flesh. She swung close behind me, and pressed her soft body close against my back, laid her arms, her amber arms, her peach-downed arms along mine and raised my bony wrists with her fingers; horizontal before me, palms up. And she laid her tiny hands curled up in mine.
Her father came forward, looming, shading, the sun splintered on his net-woven braids. He knelt, a massive hunch like a beast in the trees, and his knees hit the wet earth at the edge of the jungles' gleam and our day-sheath's shine, draped in the red-gold chatoyancy of his hair; forehead pressed to the soil at my feet as his daughter's breasts pressed against my back – her claws clamped on my cheeks and I struggled, my spitting bloody, muddy defiance and it hurt so much but nothing to when – His head rose. His eyes met mine. His hands – those huge golden paws – floated up like dreams, and wrapped closeness around mine, around his daughter's, around mine and his daughter's. And she spoke behind me, puffed musk soil-air into my hair just as his mouth moved below; a syllable of swallowed sound rolling over and over upon itself in their throats, humming against my head, throbbing through my feet. The moment's supersaturation ripened. Ripened, and raveled; for the mer's braids reared and wriggled as one; up, to twine about his thick golden forearms and around his daughter's wrists and about my biceps; down, and frizz-web winding through the ochre soil; as his daughter's teeth ratcheted around my first vertebrae, a mother's cub-dangling prerogative, and her live-licks sealed a snaking skein-coccoon round my head, my trembling throat, sealing us together, together, pressed in her darkness, snugged in her webbed warmth. Her hot mouth sent tremors crawling across my skin like ripples over water, like the creeping trail of her hair tying around my shoulders, my chest, down to mingle with her father's – and their hair, their hair, their hair came for me! Lancing strands! Supple needles! Sifting through my skin and toward the dirt, the grit, the grime they had shoved in my mouth! and in my eye! my eye! my eye! Centrex of soil, my eye! – and womb-warm, soft, smooth, dark, with her pressed against me, around me, tight, inseparable, vast, and my muscles trembled with a flesh-memory expressible only by hue, only by the amber rub of the crumble-twined earth expanding below me, above me, through me, and ensnaring my limbs with snake-strangling strength and I could not want to, could not wish to break those bonds, for they tied me in ALL! ALL was around me! ALL was close! ALL was intimate! All was wound through the soil's webbed weave piercing ALL that I was, and there was no fear! No loneliness! No sorrow, only – the chains! The chains, everywhere! All of me bound! ALL of me snared! All of me snugged inside all of you! You! You! TERROR! I SAW! I SAW I bound in WE bound in ME, and my own self the chains! The chains, sewn with me forever! My fingers! My skin! My tongue! My heart! My bones! My veins! My member! My eye! My eye! MY EYYYYYYEEEEEEEE - - - - -
And then – the sundering. Soil shroud shredded like rotten fabric, its strand-snares snapping, tearing, ripping deep in my skull, the earth tangle sucking sharply loose, and my remaining eye seared in shafting sun, and I cried like a newborn babe on my family's marble stairs. I cried at the coldness of it, the aloneness, the insurmountable separation, the mocking memory of the earth's grip throbbing in my veins with the imperceptible shivers of the echo-shivers of the land I had never before truly known, the raw wound-wetness of my new-bared skin in the sun, in the empty air. I cried with the ache of the vacant socket in my skull, selfsame as the absence of soil. I cried with the slice of the shard in my fist. I flailed, and cringed on my back across the stairs, the horrified faces of my father and family towering around me in shocked dismay, but I didn't care; the only thought in me was of the renewed wound. That, and her. I cried at the thought of her; so close, so warm, so soft, so perfect, so impossible to approach; fate-bound separate by her own edaphomancy.
A shape blocked the sun; Tsirelsyn, and I sobbed as his hair curtained us together in awful mimicry. My fingers clutched his neck convulsively.
"You are wrong," he said, and there were tears in his heterochromic eyes. "To remember is not to mock. Memory is a gift, and that only which can bring intimacy's return. Never forget that. Never forget that. Intimacy can be reclaimed. Intimacy will be reclaimed. And you are now part of the effort; bound, in all times possible and impossible." He searched my near catatonic gaze, his own shining with silt like stars and almost frantic; disconnectedly disconcerting, from that eternally imperturbable face. His fingers fumbled, and something smooth, hard, and sharp slipped into my hand; back into my hand, for it had fallen in my flailing. I gripped it convulsively, as though magnetized. Then he pressed his lips to mine, and pulled back, his huge hands under my neck and spine, lifting me up into an unsteady, huddled lean against his side. The sun seared past my squint; I could see only the black unstar shining flicker of my father's silhouette.
"It is done." Tsirelsyn's voice rumbled in the firm flesh pressed against my head.
"What have you done?" Father was too shocked to be furious.
'What you have requested. What your son agreed to. What my heart forbore, and then called for regardless. We have shown your son the soil that is his, in the only way that could be done; by placing it before his eye. Not clean. Not easy. Frayed, and snarled, and tangled, and terrible. And wonderful. It is the point of the thing. So much, so fast – we do not do such to all for a reason, ! #4%1!. And in honesty I do not know why I agreed to do such today. My heart forbore it, and yet its necessity could not be denied. I would be more clear, my friend, if I could."
"But – Son! – my son!"
"He will be well," the mer rumbled. "He is merely assimilating the capacity for memory – and, consequently, for sorrow – that so many in this land have surrendered. He will be well."
'But – his eye!" My fingers clenched. My empty eyelid fluttered, reflex bewildered.
"Is similarly well," Tsirelsyn answered. "And will guide him yet. It is not gone, but rather bound to this land and its people, that he might always see the soul of your soil. That he might never be free from love." His hand rubbed my arm comfortingly, and I nearly collapsed closer against him. But I did not; my spine stiffened, and I straightened up on my own, blinking my single fleshly eye.
"I am fine, father," I said, and with surprising firmness given the ache in my soul. The sun-sodden faces peered alarmedly in on me, fragrance veils aflutter in alarm. "Truly."
"Are you certain, son?" Father said tentatively. "You do not look well. Your eye – your departure could be postponed a few days, if –"
"No," I said sharply, slashing a line through the air with my clenched fist, the fist imprinting around a newborn shard of stone. "No, we will leave now." The thought of abandoning that place, my home, my soil, made my eye-socket sear, but to linger on would be a worse agony. Tsirelsyn touched my shoulder in understanding.
"I am certain, father," I preempted as the metal-weathered mer opened his mouth to question again. "We will leave now."
"It is best," Tsirelsyn agreed. "Your son has begun his training with us already, this day. To delay would only exacerbate his trials. Better to go. He must go with us, now. We will teach him the beauty of his bonds.
Take him Father said, and his voice rang sneer-sodden in my echoing ears, though I cannot fathom the depth of your motivation in harboring such a man-muscled disgrace as what I once called my son has become. I would have him slain like the mannish beast he is. Take him, and bind him, but never bring him back.
"He will return to you," Tsirelsyn said. "That is the promise he has sewn into himself this day. But such must be done. Here are his bonds; the soil web. His eye is in the earth, and will be in the earth. We will return him to you when it has opened. Do not fear."
His hand pressed my shoulder. I twitched a smile to Father's frowning uncertainty, the bronze-browed ring-crowd's stark, sun-boiled stares, and turned on the steps. The jungle's cathedral vault loomed gloom-green before me; the frond-filtered canopy, white-ribbed sycamore ceiling sultry serpent slung; the plantation platform arms stretching marble-mellow beneath the leaves; our mares, vibrant as void, manes oozing head to hock like oil fall fountains, stamping split-clawed hoof-prints in the duff; and her. Cehs. Cehseekye. The daughter. The Mother. Already mounted and ease-seated sideback in her tawny poly-pocketed robes, hair back in its sleek net-weave and cloaking her smooth shoulders, eyes still the same, despite what we had shared; still split, still sealed, still shielded, still separate. I froze, a moment, my hands trembling, my eye quavering, my lungs seizing at the sight. Then a shadow moved by the stairs, and my head turned; turned, and there was she, the other, broken, bent, shaking, huddled against the stairs; there was her fierce-frizz congealed to lank-lackluster round her crumpled face in oily, bronze clog-braids; there were the hands that had fed me, eased me, stroked me, gone from nimble to nervous, twitching, and spastic; there was the throat, there were the shoulders, there were the breasts I had felt on my mouth, my tongue, lush-lovely to slack-hollow; and there were her eyes, the eyes that had winked at me in the dark like stars, the eyes that stared up at me with just as much emptiness, just as much distance, just as much sundered sorrow as those of the elf, even her incredible capacity for sequestration overcome, her sole inflexibility exploited, the eyes that had spilled warmth and comfort with every starry flash, and seen me down and down for who I was and what I could never be; effervescent luminescence to spine-shattered harrow. I met those eyes. I held them, with my one. I swelled with a sympathy for their sorrow of a depth that I could never have imagined before that day; an aching, heartrending supersaturated co-sorrow for all that she had gone through because of me. The soil itself sobbed with it. Then I walked on, and I mounted my bareback black horse, and I rode away from the soil twined round my soul, from my father, and from the woman whose arms had held such unexpected love. I rode away from land and love I had known toward that which I never could. I followed the soil-sorcerer's daughter, and I followed by will – coercion because they tied my hands to my ankles under the horse's hot belly with the chains they had strung through my muscles and I kicked and screamed and struggled against the pain and the chains and the terror of the memory of so much so close so intrusive so overpowering so subsuming for as long as I could. And I couldn't do it at first but after a while I laughed too because whatever they did they couldn't erase me or the fact that I pounded that earth magician's dirty little daughter into the ground just as hard as I ever pounded that fat piece of yellow-headed man pussy and she'll never, never, never forget that moment no matter how many times go by, never forget me in – in - - ! - ! ! - ! !
- and thusly did the incompleteness of Odfrin's power, perhaps merely virtue of her mannish blood, or perhaps learned long ago, by the dilution of Jon's capacity for understanding implied in their entanglement, shield the man from his cold-fleshed void-nights and keep him bound by her side.