Lovers' Vows

Not knowing when I would be allowed to write again, I found myself taking great care to remember as many details as I could. I came out of a period of self-reflection when I realized I’d been walking steeply uphill for the last mile. My legs collapsed. My knees struck sand. I laughed in spite of my wrists being bound. From beneath the sand came the sound of rocks crunching. Although the fall had scraped my hands and knees, I couldn’t help but smile. The desert was at an end. The steady drizzle washed bloody sand from my palms.

Rocky hills had replaced the endless sand. Compared to the open desert, the new surroundings seemed like a forest. The squat trees every few miles were like explosions of green—a color I had almost forgotten. A desert fox shot from one clump of vegetation to another. The sudden mammalian presence made me stop and blink.

“We made it,” said Lilly.

The Hunter snorted. “What makes you say that? I don’t know where the shrine is. Do you? For all we know we’re miles off.”

The Fool grunted excitedly, trying to get someone’s attention. When I turned to look where the man was pointing, I saw nothing for several seconds. Then, just as I was about to dismiss the Fool’s antics, I caught a glimpse of soft, yellow light.

“Look,” I breathed. “There’s a house or something…”

The Hunter came as close to smiling as I could imagine. “I can almost smell the food.”

***

The house turned out to be a great many houses surrounding a large church. Warm fires glowed inside the windows. I smelled food and almost cried.

A door opened, and a shout rang out. “The pilgrims have come!”

Within moments, the pilgrims were surrounded by monks, their heads bald and shiny in the rain. I felt hands guiding me softly, gently toward warmth. The shock of a dry house and warm food being nudged toward my face was too much. I passed out.

When I woke, I was in a room filled with incense and pillows. There was a tea cup on the ground in front of me. Someone had untied my hands for the time being. When I drank the tea, my tongue recoiled in shock. Taste! It was a forgotten sensation, eroded by weeks of water and lizard meat. Gradually, my sense of the room widened. The other pilgrims were sitting on pillows that lined the walls. Monks were bustling in and out, carrying steaming trays of meat and pastries. I noticed that most of the monks bore bruises on the face and arms, but I thought nothing of it at the time.

“Don’t eat too fast,” said a monk with a black eye. “Or your stomach won’t take it. Normally we wouldn’t mind. But food has become rather scarce.”

I tore into the feast before me. Warm rice felt like ambrosia, leaving salts and seasoning in my mouth and burning my throat on the way down. The warmth settled in my stomach and spread to my hands, feet, and toes. Only the Wizard engorged himself to the point of purging. But the monks were quick to clean up the mess and burned more incense to cover the smell. The Wizard dug back into the food without a second thought.

“What do you mean?” I asked the monk. “Food isn’t scarce at all.”

“To you, perhaps,” said the monk. “But this is nothing like the feast we usually serve the pilgrims when they cross the desert. We’ve begun rationing because of the war.”

We all just blinked.

“You don’t know, then? We received the official word weeks ago.”

The Wizard grumbled, “It took us a bit longer than that to get here.”

“I see,” said the monk. “Then, it pains me to tell you that the South Sea Nations are once again at war with the Morl Nation.” He bowed his head in prayer for a full thirty seconds then came back up for air. “Don’t worry too much, though,” the monk went on. “We won’t see any fighting this far north. Then again we also can’t expect the twice-a-year food shipments this year—probably not next year either. Who knows when the church will have the resources to support more pilgrimages to the mountain shrine? You will be the last visitors for a long time.”

“How long?” I asked.

“The last war ran fifteen years,” said the monk. “Now that the morls have their own territory alongside Lopesa, a fresh army, economic weapons… who knows?”

“What caused it?” I wondered.

“Please understand,” said the monk. “This monastery is not a fountain of current information—isolated as we are. We received word two weeks ago, just after the strange weather began, via messenger pigeons. It’s a wonder they made it, considering the size of those clouds. The message was brief. The morls launched an attack in the middle of the night, sweeping across miles of Lopesan countryside—all the way to the South Sea—before the sun rose. We were ordered to send any and all resources south immediately. Of course, we don’t have any—except the shrine. And we can hardly send that.”

The monk must have noticed that several of the pilgrims were having trouble keeping their eyes open. He smiled and said, “You may stay the night in this room. There are blankets in the far corner, and the pillows make excellent bedding. It may not seem like much, but we live sparsely here. And I have a feeling that you are accustomed to much worse. Please call out if you are in need. I look forward to hearing an account of your journey.”

With a deep bow, he left us alone in the candlelit room. I managed to arrange several pillows into a bed and found it heavenly. Yet, I couldn’t sleep. The rumble of the storm outside kept me awake—that and the thought of bloodshed in the south. If I had still been working on the Ariel Angel, I would probably have been conscripted into the Seadom navy by now. The ship had probably already been commandeered for military uses, its cargo dumped into the sea. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw books sinking to the bottom of the ocean, their pages flapping in slow motion as they disintegrated. Although Asuana had given me strict instructions not to leave the room and had sent me to bed with bound wrists, I found myself sneaking out of the building and standing under a rainy eave.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” said a voice. Lilly stood in the shadows, leaning against the wooden structure.

“Oh, we’re on speaking terms?” I said.

She didn’t answer but motioned for me to follow. We flitted from building to building, moving toward the outskirts of the monastery.

When she finally stopped, she whispered, “I can’t have people see me talking to a suspected murderer. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you killed Sir Mau. We both saw that weird smile. He was obviously trying to tell us something. But he couldn’t.”

“And yet you went and told everyone I did it anyway?” I said. “And that I’m a necromancer.”

To my surprise, she moved in close as if she were going to kiss me, then even closer, pinning my bound wrists gently against my body and putting her lips next to my ear in a way that gave me goosebumps. To anyone watching us, it would look like she was nibbling my ear. In the barest whisper, such that even I could barely hear her above the rain, she said, “I can’t have people here knowing that I’m a necromancer. And whoever compelled Sir Mau to lie is obviously a powerful necromancer of some sort themselves. So it only makes sense to solve two problems at once. Now, whoever was manipulating Sir Mau’s soul will think their plan is working. They want us all to believe you’re the killer, so… now a lot of us do.” Then to my amazement, she kissed the lobe of my ear. It was a feeling I will never forget. “You didn’t have to play along. But thank you for trusting me.” I was so overwhelmed by the tactile sensation of her kiss that I almost missed what she said next, “There’s one more thing. When I told you I couldn’t feel love… I wasn’t quite saying what I wanted to say…”

I pulled back as best I could, “I believe the words you used were ‘dead inside’ and that kissing made you want to vomit.” As much as it pained me, I wasn’t sure if I should trust her. Was she just trying to manipulate me? For this reason, I decided not to mention that the Hunter already knew she was a necromancer and thus knew she was lying about me being one. I figured I could use as many aces up my sleeve as I could get. Everyone else seemed to have figured this out long ago, including Lilly.

“Sometimes I can’t,” she said, looking down at the puddle we were both standing in. “Look, I don’t want to get into it, but when I was growing up, sometimes my father would do things… Not to me, mind you. Never to me. But sometimes to other people… let’s just say he was a ruthless businessman. He had to be. He was building an empire to give to me when he died. He used to say that to be an empress, I had to be strong. So… I got strong.”

Her lip trembled for the briefest moment, making me wonder what she had seen that had hardened her so much.

“But when I told everyone you were the necromancer and you went along with it,” she said. “I realized I do feel something. Honestly, I think it started that night we… you know… practiced.”

“You felt something?” I dared to say. “When we kissed?”

“It wasn’t because of the kiss itself,” she retorted. “That was obviously awkward.”

“Yeah, obviously,” I said.

“I practice kissed you because I wanted to prove to myself that I was strong enough to kiss someone without feeling anything… My father always said we should keep the doors to our hearts shut tight. But I think mine opened up a bit that night. And now, when I think of how we might never be able to go home again, and how there might not even be a South Sea Nations or an Overlai Tobacco anymore, I don’t know…” She pulled away and looked into my eyes. “I guess I’m just glad that I’m with someone who knows my secrets. And knows how to keep them.”

I suddenly needed to tell her how I felt, or I would die. “When I said I love you,” I blurted, “Father Ori had a knife to my throat. He told me to say it. I think it was just to make you leave. Like, he knew it was a bad time to say something like that, so he made me do it.” She seemed to be searching my eyes to determine if I was bullshitting, and I wasn’t sure if the timing of my words presently were any better than the last time, but I decided to go for it anyway. “I did mean it though. Lilly, I…”

“He let you live?” she interrupted. Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear me say it. Or maybe she still didn’t trust me.

“I don’t think he likes killing people,” I looked through the cascade of droplets falling from the eave. “Honestly, he’s probably watching us right now.”

We both looked into the night, like lovers wondering if we were going to be caught for our transgressions. Just loud enough that if a certain morl were watching he would hear, I said, “He told me I’m supposed to stay here and let you all go on without me to the shrine. He said my time on this pilgrimage has come to an end. I predict that will be easy now that everyone thinks I’m a murderer and a necromancer.” I indicated my bound wrists. The thought of her heading for the shrine without me compelled me to try to confess my feelings once again. “I want to tell you something, though, Lilly–”

“I want to make a promise to you, Nial,” she interrupted again. “After I go to the shrine and ask my question, I don’t want to go home again. I don’t want to take over Overlai Tobacco, if it’s even still there. I don’t want to go back to the South Sea Nations at all. Let’s go north.”

“Beyond the mountains?” I said. “No one has ever come back.”

“Maybe we can find out together.”

“Is that a promise?”

“If you want it to be,” she said. “I think you were right about my father being dead. I don’t know why, but I can feel it. When he first went missing, I tried to summon him and I couldn’t, so I thought maybe he’d been kidnapped or something. But… I don’t know, I’ve had this feeling someone may have killed him. Maybe it was Father Ori, but I need to know for sure. And when I find out at the shrine…” Rooftops drummed in the rain.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m going to rip their soul out of their body.”

“Wait—”

“Professor Octavius has been teaching me about magic,” she said. “He says that magic is ninety percent instinct, and when people get angry enough, they can do things that they could never have done otherwise. And he agrees with Asuana that the shrine might be some kind of magical amplifier. Like, you can use magic on people anywhere in the South Sea Nations. All I want is to get there, find out who killed him, and rip that person’s soul to shreds in the most painful way possible, and then…”

“And then?”

“The end.” She gave me a soft kiss on the lips. “Then, maybe we can be part of each other’s happily ever afters.” She looked down: “If you think you’d want that…”

I found enough feelings for both of us welling up in my own heart. “I’d like that,” I said. It was all I could get out without my throat choking up. For the third time, I tried, “Lilly, I have to tell you—”

But she put her finger on my lips. “No. I’m not good at talking about feelings. Let’s just make a promise instead.” She kissed me again. “When this story is over, let’s make a new one. Together.”

Tears in our eyes, we sealed our vows with a kiss.

Dear Human, even I, a morl born several centuries ago, find a tear or two in my eyes when I think of the young, dysfunctional love shared by these two seventeen-year-olds of your species. I’ve always had a soft spot for human stories, and for the way young humans make such heart-felt promises. I once graded an essay by a youngling who described Lilly and Nial as two grains of sand promising they will never part. I thought it was an apt metaphor: that humans are specs of dust who spend lifetimes underestimating the winds of change.

And yes, if you were wondering, I was watching them from beyond the curtain of rain that poured over the eave like a waterfall. At the time, I was merely celebrating that their union would afford me more levers of control. As you now know, Dear Human, love is a lever.

***

I was eating breakfast the next morning when I heard a voice beside me. “I must speak with you,” hissed one of the bruised monks. Startled, I spilled tea onto the chest of my white robes.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

“They’re yours,” said the monk, leading me away from the others. “You purchased them with your initial deposit.” The monk led me into a storeroom of sorts, filled with boxes and murky light from a single candle. Then, the monk punched me in the stomach.