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Chapter 12: Bitterness Taste
Kolalha’s smile froze, warped as if it were being pinched and pulled from both ends. The tips of his fingers shook and more than one watcher expressed the disappointed opinion that the fight was at its end. Then Kolalha’s face congealed into a mask contoured with shadows, and without expression, he began to weave the concept of his answering delusional. There was a murmur of relief and approval: the duel would go on.
All these things passed through Silver’s perception like faint brushes of mothwings against stone. The ring fell from his numb grasp and his legs buckled. He would have followed the way of the circle of brass but for the rigid hand which shot out from beside him and steadied him. He almost smiled—the creation propping up the creator ((was this evidence of independent will on the part of the creation or merely symptoms of the creator’s own self-love embedded into the creation’s subconscious?)) (oh, but he and the philosophy of God had deserted each other a long time ago)—then smile stretched into a grimace of pain as the Agonyzel spoke.
“1” she said, and it was a mass of needles pressing themselves against his skin, slipping from her surface into his flesh. In a flash of hot pain, the numbers cascading down Silver’s vision froze, spun in place, and turned into a fanged plain of
111111111111111111111111111111…111…111111111………11111111…11111111…111……111111111111111111111111111…1…11111111111…111111111…11…111…1……11111111111111111…11111111111…111111111……111111…11111111…1111111…111111111111111111111111111111…11111111111
a never-ending field of singular thorns; a blood-hungry question. It was the first thing all delusionals ever asked: Fathermaster, may I kill? May I offend? Silver ripped his hand away from the Agonyzel’s poisonous grasp and cried “Yes!” grinning fiercely through the taste of heat in his mouth, half-afraid of this thing he had created and could barely control, yet exultant exultant exultant at its gorgeous, merciless power.
She was gone before he could draw another breath. She stalked toward Kolalha with the obscene, jerking grace of an insect. Her hair and dress floated about her like chained fog. She knelt before him, and though Kolalha’s eyes were still closed as he muttered his own poetry of delusion, Silver saw his chest heave rapidly through a difficulty of breathing.
The Agonyzel could not speak in words, and so Silver envoiced her, made her lips move, induced atoms around her head to tremble with sound: “Look at me.” It was the gentlest of belled whispers.
Kolalha looked.
Silver’s head burned with the effort. Just those three words and already the numbers were afrenzied, calculating distances and tiny echoes—paths of figurative light—the movements of minute muscles in the Agonyzel’s face: muscles that governed the tautening and pursing of her lips—the subtle changing of temperature around her skin. Three words. He wanted to vomit. God of Dog-eating Hell and Heaven, it had been a long time since he’d done this. And he was too old, too old for such strain. He should have drunk something before the duel, taken something, popped a Happy Drug, or cut off his head so it wouldn’t pain him so much.
He could laugh, because gods, it felt good. It was pain, but a pain he could control like he controlled little else in his itinerant and pointless life.
Without knowing why, he lifted his hand to touch his upper lip and found that his nose was bleeding.
He bent his head down so that his hair would hide him, then he jutted his tongue out to lick at the trickle of his blood. He felt drained and powerful all at once. Looking up through the white spray of his lashes, he observed as
—Kolalha looked.
Kolalha’s eyes widened in confusion (in recognition, in horror, in acknowledgment, in longing), and Silver watched, wordless as an enwebbed white spider.
Kolalha’s hands fell to his sides; midword, he fell silent. He didn’t move when the Agonyzel reached out to touch him with fingers colder than ice. He didn’t back away, even when his skin darkened and shriveled at her touch. When the Agonyzel pulled back her hand, he remained quiescent, as trusting as a child; then she laid his cheek open with her nails and he screamed. He bled.
Kolalha had made the classic, fatal mistake of believing that a mind-trick was real. He compounded this by attacking the Agonyzel, casting spells of sulfur and shimmering bows of powder and dust. She clawed at him and drew true blood with each swipe.
The background murmurings of the crowd rose until it was a diffused roar. The sight of blood titillated them: they found it more poetic than the most tenderly crafted delusional, more eloquent than the butterflies of light drifting down from the chandeliers. It was poetry such that they could understand, and they understood it to mean Kolalha’s defeat.
The only one who remained untouched by Silver’s apparent victory was Silver himself. For Kolalha’s unfinished delusional had appeared at last.
It was a delusional created completely through broad intuition, its fabrication accomplished in a half-unconscious state. It was vague and crude and graceless. Its outline shimmered chaotically in and out of existence, the very antithesis of the Agonyzel’s cold, precise beauty; but it could function according to the creator’s will, even though its creator did not animate its every movement. Silver could almost envy such casualness in the formation of delusionals if he weren’t so thoroughly repulsed by such sloppiness.
Finally, the delusional more or less solidified (though its surface still crawled with unwound, writhing threads). It appeared before Silver as a dog in the first stages of binary fission. The heads—one black and one white—had already split apart and were lolling from rubbery necks on opposite sides of the torso.
A dog reproducing in this way was a common sight, but like most everyone else, Silver still loathed the act as unnatural. He edged away, trying to keep his concentration on the Agonyzel’s attack, but the two-headed dog dragged itself after him, trying to lick his feet. Its insistence might have been comical if it hadn’t been so revolting. After a few tottering steps, the dog halted, swung its heads and splattered the skirt of Silver’s dress with drool. Irritated and more than a little alarmed, Silver slackened his attack on Kolalha. He was gathering reasons why the dog couldn’t possibly exist, when the animal curled its necks in painful contortion so that its muzzles would meet in a hideous parody of a kiss.
The monstrous heads slobbered all over each other, their tongues obscenely wet as they laved each other’s brown-rotted teeth. Moments passed in which nothing was heard but the liquid squelch of their saliva. Then white one’s eyes rolled madly in what could be only be interpreted as bestial enjoyment, and titters of embarrassment punctuated the crowd.
Silver momentarily lost all the capacity for thought as he caught his breath, mortified. The Agonyzel ceased her attack and turned to gaze at him with infinite disdain. He tried to compose himself, tried to reason that no one would know the significance of this but he and Kolalha.
And at the precise instant of that thought the black head pulled away, arching like a snake. A thread of yellow saliva quivered between the dogs’ lips and fell viscidly onto the floor, as the black bitch cried in a voice so familiar it burned, “I love you, pa—”
The command lanced out without conscious effort. Suddenly, the Agonyzel was there. Kolalha’s vitriol and magic and denial had rendered her wisp-like, and her edges were smudged with drooping flesh. But hatred ensouled her, made her like flame, and her hands were strong when she seized the writhing dog—a hand around each neck—and pulled it apart. The Agonyzel disappeared in the spray of entrails, blood, and wriggling intestines, the threads of delusion holding her together dissolving in the sheer force of Silver’s rage. Then Silver propelled himself through drops of pulped flesh still suspended in midair, and, catching Kolalha by the arms, engulfed his mouth in a savage kiss.
Kolalha struggled, maniacally trying to bite as Silver’s tongue tunneled down his throat. The moment Silver relaxed his grip, Kolalha broke free and dragged the back of his hand across his lips. “Is that how you solve all your problems, Silverlight?” he asked in a voice heavy with contempt. “Through sexual advances?”
Silver licked his lips with every appearance of cheerful malevolence. “Why dear, I thought you wanted it. What else was that two-headed kissy-kissy dog for?” He laughed lightly, but he could feel loathing staring out of his eyes. The taste of Kolalha’s saliva sizzled on his tongue, and he gave it up quickly to the numbers. “True, it’s just about the worst come on I have ever had the displeasure of receiving, but you know what they say about us wizards never wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings.” He ignored his spectators’ fickle laughter as the numbers returned their verdict. In their patterned rainfall, he found Kolalha’s shape, the rhythm of his breathing, the throb of his pulse. The taste of him was all-encompassing: a smell, a sound, a color, and an emotion all at once.
It was pain that hung over Kolalha’s soul, and hatred, and love lost, and strangely enough, a sense of inevitable defeat—tears formed and ready to fall. How human he was, a mix of mad, pitiful humors like the faithless Kynea, the incredible Poliloa, like Lattu, Giollaen, Culvase, Ajora, everyone!
Silver felt compassion and revulsion both. Weakness, all. He flinched from them, but to completely deny those emotions would be to deny all powers of delusion. His mouth full of acid, Silver hurriedly sought the word…and it didn’t come.
The perfect sense understanding of Kolalha given to him by the numbers began to break apart and fade. Meanwhile, his opponent stalked circles onto the marble floor, gesturing wildly. Only a moment more and Kolalha would succeed in creating another delusional, then all of Silver’s condescending sympathy would be lost in thoughts of frantic self-preservation.
Trembling with anxiety, Silver fumbled for the word, that single full expression of Kolalha’s nature, but it eluded capture. Invoked with the sense understanding of Kolalha’s animal body, it would have given Silver a direct and intimate access to the areas of Kolalha’s mind most susceptible to delusion. It would have given him a power akin to that which conscience held over a man. But the damned word would not come.
So he sought alternatives, other images which might unnerve Kolalha as much as the Agonyzel girl. But no inspiration came, no revelation of points of weakness he could strike at, and in his panic, Silver began to consider the horrifying prospect of meeting Kolalha skin on skin, all guards down, in the hallowed manner of a true duel between delusionaries.
It was a disgusting thought, to place himself at the mercy of one of the “wizards” of Nupentha, a pretender with ideas above his station, a delusionary with delusions of grandeur. Then again, he had no choice. Silver closed his eyes to the delusional that was even then coalescing at Kolalha’s feet, and made his way step by step toward the first true battle he would fight since decades.
At the first touch of Silver’s hand on his wrist, Kolalha spun away, lips stretched taut to show teeth, eyes bulging with outrage: an instinctive response. The game of touch could be deadly, it was the final resort of a duelist with no other options and Silver knew that though Kolalha dearly wanted to hurt him, the other feared his touch as much as Silver feared his.
They crouched trapped in each other for an instant in which the world slowed and condensed. The slightest twitch of muscle was a tunnel of corded sound; the smallest flicker of expression was a scent to burn lungs. Silver’s languorous black eyes met Kolalha’s fiery brown, and it was the latter which widened with resignation.
They went into each other’s open arms as though they’d been born for it. Hands met in midair, wet palms kissed, and skin between knuckles wrinkled beneath insistent fingernails (blue-lacquered and red). As one they fell to their knees. Silver heard a muffled complaint “Oh gods, they’re doing the boring old hand thing! I’m going to get a drink!” then all awareness misted away as he invaded Kolalha and felt Kolalha invade him.
All of a sudden, there it was: the shared landscape of their minds. It was a desolate place. The ground was pocked and scarred and brittled, as if it were skin afflicted by eczema. Twin suns, red and indistinguishable, hung from a sky ripped jagged by black pillars.
Silver turned the landscape of mind about him, and found that he could not. Unease trailed cold fingers down his spine. He glanced down and saw that he was in a semblance of a physical body, and not of his own, but of a flabby, liver-spotted bulk, the fat nearly protruding out of the skin in deformed lumps. Unease clamored until he could barely think.
He tasted the air and the numbers confirmed his fears: Kolalha, the landscape was all Kolalha’s, not a shared world in which they could bargain reality as equals. He swore softly, realizing that he had walked into a trap.
The land whispered in sentient tremors underneath his bare feet, A trap a year in the making, yes. Welcome, to my mindcage, Silky. I made that pretty body just for you. I’ve been working on it for a long time: since that day you drove Anaroe mad, in fact. I hope you like.
Then the suns roared like twin gongs: “What is her name, your daughter?”
Already weak from the shock of betrayal, Silver recoiled violently at the question and the numbers scattered away from his mind. Blown away like dust, they vanished into nothing. It was like being stripped naked by flames—first of the dignity of clothing, then of skin and flesh. Silver reeled with disorientation. “It’s not important,” he stammered. “I swear it isn’t.” Then quickly, almost at the same breath, he begged, “Leave her out of this!”
The ground laughed and whirled around his feet. He fell heavily on his arm. Hissing with pain, he peered at the wide, messy scratch and tried to brush away specks of moist dirt. Somehow, the grimy blood made him all the more conscious of his nakedness. Now more frightened than he had been the whole night, he opened his mouth to twist the conversation away, to try to take back his damning revelation of vulnerability. But the words that bubbled from his mouth were not his own.
“All protective now, aren’t we? Where did you learn how to be a father, Silver, from watching plays and melodramas? Ooh, the perfect father! But take off your mask and what kind of a father are you, Silverlight? You’re a happy daddy-whore! Any innocent, little girl would be proud to look up to you and see herself in your shoes someday! Imagine that.
“But oh, you’re not even a proper whore anymore; so sorry, I forgot. Nobody wants you because you’re crazy and old—drug-dependent! Only Golden Leaves would have you now…because it’s not even a proper house. Oxacytzoi is a boor, and his son is a gullible ninny: even a washed-out delusionary dog like you could manipulate his affections. So what does that make you?”
Silver clutched at his head, panted, clenched his wobbly jaws shut. The taste of Kollaha’s control was a mucoid bitterness at the back of his throat. He dug his nails onto the earth and smiled grimly when he felt Kolalha wince. A nail broke and gushed fluid, but Silver clawed harder. You cheating bitch.
The land answered, But of course! Now answer my questions, Silkfingers. I’ve replied to your little whinings. Do the polite thing.
Insisted the suns, “What is her name?”
Silver’s own teeth chewed viciously on his tongue until he opened his mouth in agony. He spat blood, and the words ripped themselves out of his throat. “What kind of a father are you, Silver? Are you raising a whore-child, is that it? Are you going to pimp her, Silver? What kind of a father does that make you?”
“Tell us her name!” the suns screamed.
The landscape said, Answer. At least one question. It’s only polite. Protocol, protocol.
Silver cried feebly, You speak of protocol when you corrupt it like this!
Kolalha’s laughter spilled angrily from Silver’s mouth. “I corrupt it only because you corrupted everything I’ve been living for. Now answer me!”
“Her name!”
“Say it! What are you?”
At least one answer, any one. I’m not picky.
Silver caught his breath, feeling a shiver run through his entire body. He was aware of only one desire and that was to have this farce of a battle end. Enough. Yes! I will say it! Please, please let go of me.
The bitterness of this humiliation was so intense, Silver was unable distinguish the taste of it from Kolalha’s presence in his throat. He was vaguely surprised when he discovered that he could control the body he was trapped in. “Please,” he said, and surprised himself into silence. The temptation to scream obscenities rose up like a need to vomit, but Silver restrained himself tremblingly. It had to end. If he had to debase himself to deflect Kolalha’s wrath, then so be it. He would play the part.
“I am nothing,” he breathed into the caked earth. “I am nothing. I am a poor excuse for a delusionary. I’m a desperate whore. I—I let people use me, even though I don’t want them to—because, because, no one would let me stay anywhere otherwise. And I’m scared I’d have to go back to eating bad food that makes me sick and wearing scratchy clothes and sleeping in the street near shake-whores with lice in their hair. I’m scared of being attacked and beaten up, of getting diarrhea from dirty water. I’m a liar and a coward. I’m no good at anything.” He felt tears burn his eyes. “Dear God, I’m a bad father. I’m not fit to take care of anyone, I can’t even take care of myself.”
Throughout his gibbering, a quiet, cynical voice kept telling him that he was overdoing it, that Kolalha was already satisfied. He could stop his act now. It was unnecessary. It was at that point that he began to cry, frantically and inconsolably.
He woke with his damp face pressed to Kolalha’s feet and the sound of laughter in his ears.
Silent and aflame with embarrassment, Silver crawled away, too ashamed of himself to try standing up. He made his way to a corner, flinching away from mocking adolescents pulling at his hair and dress, making feeble snarls at people who humorously tried to sit on his back. He curled up in his corner, waiting for his little daughter to come and make a fuss over him and kiss his face, to tell him that she loved him and would love him no matter what. He didn’t move, even when passing guests in glittering clothes flung the contents of their wineglasses at him. Even when the wizards came before him and mercilessly discussed his mistakes between themselves, ignoring him completely.
He waited a long time. During his wait, Oxacytzoi came and emptied a whole bowl of punch over his head. Poliloa came and stood before him like a black mountain, as if she were mourning his death. “Poor pet, my poor, weak, spineless Silverlight,” she said. “I am very disappointed in you. You must make it up to me tonight.” She went away without a backward glance. Giollaen did not come.
The wizards finished their colorful display. The party guests dispersed, like dust blown away and vanishing into nothing. The servants came and cleaned and disappeared. And Silver was left alone with the blue moonlight, wondering, wondering when his daughter would come and find him again. He waited a long time.
Kolalha and Silver fought! Rousing combat music played from nowhere!
Kolalha threw a Fireball at Silver but Silver dodged and took only half damage. Silver’s black but somehow rainbow-like colorful eyes flickered like gleams of iridescent orbs in (gentle and pretty) fury. Picking himself up from the floor, Silver tossed back his long silvery-white silken hair, spread his fingers and shot thin streams of prismatic light at Kolalha.
Kolalha’s vision became blurred and he took damage to his Armor Class, even though his Hitpoints remained untouched. Kolalha began to cast the spell Invisibility, but Silver tried to disrupt his concentration by stylishly casting two consecutive Fire Arrows at him. This tactic worked. K’s spell fizzled and he lost nineteen Hitpoints, but the tricksy mage K had a Scroll of Conjuration which he decided to use at once.
K summoned a huge spider, and while S was dealing with it, he shrewdly and sneakily fried S with a slew of Magic Missiles.
S lost all his remaining Hitpoints and crumpled pathetically.
Then S said lifted his perfect neck with eyes glittering in glee, “Ouch, dammit. You could have finished me off with a Level 3 spell at least. I mean, Magic Missile? Honey, that’s practically the first spell anyone learns! I’m insulted! Hmmph!” He gets to his feet and tosses his hair, which was still in its normal beautiful perfect condition. It emanated True Beauty and blinds the angelic stars of the heavens. (Or it would have, if the roof hadn’t been in the way.)
And K shouted disbelievingly, “You’re supposed to be dead! Your Hitpoints have been reduced to zero! Unfair! I thought we were playing by D&D 3-point-something-edition rules?!”
And S said through cherry-flavored lip-glossed, pouty lips, “Don’t be silly, darling. We’re playing by Quavirules and I’m Quavi’s Precious Gay Gary Stu!!!!” He lifted his robes around his knees, prancing gracefully, like a colorful white pony in a meadow. He tossed his gorgeous white waves of silken shimmery shininess (spreading their strawberry-peach-mango-with-a-hint-of-mint perfume across the room) and singsonged in a falsetto, “I am Maria Susannah de Perfectessisima! I can’t ever die!!!!!”
Then Silver laughed evilly (but delicately with a kind of flirtatious sweetness). Lightning flashed and rainbow-colored smoke smoked through the room. Then S cast the spell Time Stop, and while everyone was frozen and helpless, he pulled out his Level-Draining Fire-Ice-Lightning-Acid-Enchanted Eyebrow Pencil of Doom 60 and killed everybody in the room just to show that not only was he pretty and slutty, he could kick ass too!
Then after seeing blood on his hands, he realized what he had done. “Oh noes! I did a badbad thing!!!!1” he cried. And Silver went:
ANGST
And he tossed back his streaming waves (and rivers and lakes and oceans and bays) of glistening white hair and tried to hide his desolate angstiness in its beautiful liquidy beauty. ANGST! And he did something with his eyelashes too, but I’ve used palm fronds and curtains and white sprays (and silken screens?) already so I can’t describe it anymore… ( Awwww. ANGST! (Shredded leaves? Strips of cirrus cloud? Eyelashly eyelashes? Help me out here!)
At this point, Hair, who was actually the True Protagonist of OFiPfD, got frickin’ tired of being tossed around and it detached itself from Silver’s head. Then it traveled via flocks of migratory ducks, spreading peace, love, democracy, and metrosexuality to all four corners of the world. It succeeded in turning all geeks into fashion plates just in time for the new millennium 3000.
And then someone I forgot to mention lived happily ever after.
And. (End.)
Now wasn’t that a beautifully choreographed and space-efficient fight scene? If only I could write like this all the time! But I’m afraid the inspiration strikes me only at the rarest moments.
Um. This is Very Important. Silver’s hair doesn’t smell like strawberry-peach-mango-with-a-hint-of-mint. It smells nicer than that. Less fruity too.
I just wanted to make that clear.
Thanks to lack thereof and Lauren Wolfe. Thanks to lack thereof especially, because she’s the most perfectly nice person I’ve ever met, in the Net or out of it. And to Lauren Wolfe, dear, what do you mean “spoiler?” Gaspness! Did you really believe Silver and Lesser were going to, er, engage in you-know-what? For shame, dear, he’s her father! /laughs/ Oh, but who knows…?
Makes me wonder though. Did…did you guys read OFiPfD just so you could see S and L get together? In that way? And I had such faith in humanity. /cries affectingly into a Kleenex/ Ah well.
In case any of my former reviewers who haven’t reviewed this but might be reading: hi to Queen of Insects and lessthan too. Miss you.
I’d leave a note for fire-breathing kitten too, I suppose, but I don’t think she’s read up to this chapter in case: hi fire-breathing kitten! Thanks for the review. Just point out the parts you can’t understand and I’ll try to fix ‘em.
General Notes:
I’ve changed Chapter 9 quite a bit. You don’t need to review again unless you’d like to tell me that the first one was a less of a disaster than the revised version. However, if you are nice, you will tell me what you think of chapter 12. (The proper one, not the alternate chapter 12, o’keese? I already know that one’s de-lovely and amazing.)
I’m looking particularly askance at the holding-hands part of the duel. Is it too abrupt? Is it anticlimactic? Did you get any idea of what’s supposed to really happen in a fair mind-duel thingy? And did Silver’s reaction strike you as understandable or over-exaggerated? All suggestions are welcome.
This is in essence, a thousand-word Author’s Note. Awrmegawr, am I unprofessional or what?
