

NOT NOW, NOT EVER



by M. C. A. Hogarth


Smashwords Edition 
Copyright 2010 M.C.A. Hogarth

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TRUTH

The young man needed only one glance at the body stretched over the stone table, white hair spilling over white stone to pool on the cold marble floor. He turned to the Emperor standing beside him and in an act of conscious violence, asked, "What did you do to her?"
Compelled by the direct question to answer, Argent Star, Northern Emperor and Guardian of Truth, said, "Nothing." Like Silent Chain, the younger man, he wore a human shape; he had just come from retrieving the body, and hadn't wanted to alarm the natives. "Nothing. She did this to herself... as usual."
Silent Chain strode to the table. He was dressed in a black that matched the steel gray of his shoulder-length hair, shades too extreme for the pallor of the hall with its vast milky vaults. He wore his human facade far more easily than Argent Star did his own, but he was young yet, and could remember a time when his heart beat more than once a few years, a few decades, a few centuries.
Argent Star did not join Silent Chain at the table; he knew what the other man saw. Sheathed in samite, the Empress of the East slept nearly without breath, hair a thin veil for the stone. Her fragile limbs had sent a tremor through his soul when he'd gathered her from the wet sands of Qezelaar where she'd turned the hurricane. To save a handful of mortal souls, she had done this to herself... and he could not stop her. He had never been able to stop her, in all their long lives.
"Damn it all... help her!"
"I can't."
"You can't?" Silent Chain looked over his shoulder. "I thought you said you couldn't lie!"
"I'm can't," Argent Star said. "Lie," he said as an afterthought, to clarify. "Or help her."
"You're the healer. All the Le'enle look to you for the healing arts." Silent Chain turned from her, hands clenched at his sides. "She needs you."
"I said I would not save her from her indiscretions if she left the Paths again, Roderic. She chose her way... and I cannot help her."
Silent Chain glared at him, and Argent Star met his gaze. Perhaps in time, when the younger man was better versed in his own mantle, he would Know how much Argent Star regretted making that promise, that prophecy--for him, they were the same--but it had been done. He was the North, and Truth, and words became his prison walls.
Silent Chain bent to gather the Empress into his arms, her white hair hissing as it slid off the stone.
"Where are you going?"
"Why don't you ask yourself?" Silent Chain snapped, and strode away. Argent watched them go: the newest Le'enle Emperor, raised by mortals . . . and Analeil Distant Song, Empress of the East, Justice and too-fond lover of mortals, slack in his embrace.



LOVE

Kithless Day opened the door and gasped. "Roderic!"
"Laeyesa, help me."
Hastily, Kithless Day stood aside as the man stepped into her cottage. She followed as he strode to a back room, resting his burden on a bed in a round circle of sunlight. He arranged Distant Song's arms so that they crossed over her rib cage and tucked her hair behind one ear.
"What happened?" Kithless Day said, standing at the door. "Oh, Roderic . . . is she dead?"
"Near enough," Silent Chain answered. He sat on the chair beside the bed and pressed his hand to his forehead. "For the love of J'mi-en, Laeyesa. I didn't know where else to go."
A tiny smile fluttered over her mouth. She wore the traditional Le'enle shape, the First Form from which they had evolved: soft curls rested on her scaled shoulders, and her long muzzle was not quite a deer's, nor a fox's. Thus they'd been born, ages upon ages ago, in a place beyond the universe to which they'd fled. "You Knew enough to find me. You didn't ask, did you?"
He blinked. "No--I just came." The man's eyes lit here and there in the room, out the window at the velvet-green hills and the pale sky. "Where is this?"
"Don't you know?"
Silent Chain closed his eyes. "I suppose I do. In the South. Lisera?" When she nodded, he sighed. "It comes and goes. Sometimes I ask and I ask, and nothing comes . . . and other times, Knowledge will touch me and I won't even notice."
"It's that way with all of the Compass Rose, when they're new to their duties and their Guardian Virtues," Kithless Day said, then sat across from him. "In time, it will be easier. It was so with your predecessor Vivid Wind. Now, tell me why you have her, and why not Argent Star."
"He did have her! But he wouldn't heal her!"
"Wouldn't, or couldn't?" she asked gently, then shook her head as he opened his mouth. "Ssh. She did something that took her off J'hena, didn't she. She left the Paths."
Silent Chain nodded. "She turned a hurricane aside to save the mortals on the shore."
She reached for his hand. "And for whatever reason, Argent Star couldn't heal her, so you took her away?"
Again, the Emperor nodded. He rubbed Kithless's fingers between his own, tan skin against honey-brown fur. "I still don't understand how it can be so evil to save lives, Laeyesa."
"You will Know why, in time," Kithless Day said, touching his human face. A gray stubble rasped against her fingertips. "But until then, you will have to be satisfied with knowing that we are born with these restrictions, written into our souls: that with great power must come difficult responsibilities. One of those is not to save others from their destiny. They have their own paths, dear heart."
"It's hard to walk your path when you're dead," Silent Chain answered, pale eyes intent on hers. "And I'm not about to let Distant wither away because God doesn't stretch the rules."
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to take her to Jinao's Gate."
Kithless canted her head, then laughed at his expression. "You just came to that, didn't you?"
"Yes." He shook his head. "But the Gate. . . ."
"Is dangerous, yes," she answered. "But perhaps there is more than one reason it is named the place of great change."
 "A'Satar-isa'A," Silent Chain murmured, then lifted his head. "Tell them where we've gone, if we're not back soon?"
Kithless Day stood back as he turned and scooped the slack figure of the East into his arms. She smiled. "Soon as you and she would count it? Or soon as the rest of the Le'enle would?"
He laughed. "Either one." Leaning forward, he kissed her downy cheek. "Thank you, Laeyesa."
Kithless Day, Empress of the West and Love, hugged them both, one arm beneath Distant Song's head, the other around Silent Chain's waist. "Come home soon. Come home healthy."



KNOWLEDGE

Her body had definitely lost weight in the short distance between Teza, seat of Truth, and Lisera. Silent Chain hugged it, strengthened the magical bonds that gave it definition with his own soul-stuff. It was not an easy task, as he didn't know how best to do it, and the Knowledge did not mystically surface as he worked, frustrated and afraid. But at last, his jury-rigging worked enough for him to chance the trip to Jinao's Gate and he left Love's cottage to make the attempt.
Silent Chain's flesh pebbled as he rose through the space above Lisera's atmosphere: a psychosomatic reaction to his perception of the cold, since his body wasn't real. He hovered there for a while with Distant Song in his arms, staring at the system primary. Waves of overly excited particles passed through them both as the sun threw its magnetic tantrums.
He lifted one knee and rested Distant Song across it, combing her hair from her face as it floated around them both. "I don't suppose you know where A'Satar-isa'A is," he said to her serenely empty face. He sighed and touched her cheek, just beneath her eye. "I'm not going to let you fade, madam. Not when you're the only one left whose heart beats several times a minute instead of several times a millennium. Even if we have to wander around looking for that Gate for the rest of eternity."
 He paused, just in case she wanted to miraculously wake. When she didn't, he shook his head and pulled her back against his chest. "You were the first to have faith in me. I won't break faith with you now."
Then he lifted a hand, closed his eyes and made a fist, feeling the fabric of space crushing against his palm. He packed it hard until it glittered in the corners of his eyes, and then he forced himself and Distant Song through it.
His transitions into the Vague still hurt. Silent Chain muttered about finesse and scanned the prickly gray nothingness surrounding them. Theoretically, the Vague would transport them to their destination without travel. He had been born in this universe, not the one the Le'enle had originated in, but supposedly every Le'enle knew the location of the Gate. If anyone did, he should, no matter how new his title. Silent Chain gripped Distant Song firmly by the waist, and thought hard of the ingress... harder... praying--
--and found himself floating in space again. The wisps of the Vague remained visible, an anomaly in his experience, and a steady, hard radiation rained against his back.
Silent Chain renewed his grasp on Distant Song's body and turned slowly, taking in the steady light of faraway stars. He could sense no worlds, no life--nothing but cold vacuum and the fires of distant suns.
Directly behind him was the Gate. It was not shaped like one, despite the Le'enle penchant for such absurdities. No, this was a blinding white hole, a puncture that snarled the multiple tapestries of the surrounding spaces and then tore them, sucking the strands down into nowhere. The center of the Gate, if center it had, fountained light and energy like a geyser. The heat off it warmed Silent Chain's cheeks and nose.
"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea, lady," he muttered. But he advanced on the thing, taking her with him. It burned away their shells. Their thoughts. Then it started on more serious things.



JUSTICE

Distant Song coughed and sat up. The mii'vas slid thickly off her naked body, dragging her hair down her side in slick panels. She lifted her arms and watched the scintillating liquid drip off her hands into the bath. "Oh . . . oh, J'mi-en. . . ."
From beside her came a crow of delight. "It worked! By God, it worked!" Silent Chain shook back his mane and laughed. "Damn, that hurt! But it was worth it!"
"What worked?" Distant Song asked, blinking sticky lashes.
"Not his wild scheme, most certainly," said a caustic baritone above them.
"Joachim!" she exclaimed, stunned at his haggard appearance.
"What do you mean it didn't work?" Silent Chain said. "We're here and she's awake, isn't she?"
The older man shook his head, frustrated. "You don't know? You, Knowledge, don't know? You almost died there in the Gate. Both of you!"
"The Gate?" Distant Song asked, brow furrowing.
"He took you to A'Satar-isa'A."
"What!" Distant Song turned to the man beside her in the pool, silver eyes wide. "You took us into Jinao's Gate?"
"I thought it would heal you!" Silent Chain said.
"You thought it would what?" Distant Song stared at him, torn between horror and a certain unwilling admiration for his chutzpah.
"You needed healing and he wasn't helping," Silent Chain said, exasperated. "I had to do something, and I couldn't just throw you in there, so I went too."
"The two of you melted," Argent Star said. "Into one, big mass of soul-stuff. Everyone could hear you both screaming from across the universe. By the time I came for you, you'd nearly lost any useful differentiation."
"So, it wasn't me that healed her, but you...." Silent Chain frowned. "But you said you wouldn't. You can't lie."
"No, I can't. But I didn't heal her." Argent Star folded his arms. He was wearing his Le'enle shape in silver and white, and managed to look even more tired than he had while human. "I healed the mass that was you both. After that, I separated you and left you in the bath to sleep off the rest of it."
Silent Chain grinned. He walked up the steps out of the bath and stood on the white stone floor, dripping the precious mii'vas, fluid so rare and so vital it could only be distilled by the eldest single individual of their species. "So, in the future if I want you to do something you said you wouldn't, I just have to look for a loophole and exploit it?"
"Yes—" Argent Star answered, magically compelled, and then, startled and angry, "Roderic!"
"Admit it, old man. You wanted to help her and couldn't. I made it possible. You should be grateful."
Argent Star's eyes narrowed. "Don't push me, Silent Chain."
"Someone has to keep you young. These stone walls will suffocate you soon enough without someone like me," Silent Chain answered blithely. Glancing at Distant Song, he amended, "Someone like us." He shook off the rest of the liquid and dressed. "Thanks for picking us up," he said at the door and then left.
Argent Star gently brushed the mii'vas scattered on the floor back into the pool, then leaned down and touched the surface of the liquid. It cleared to rainbow smoothness.
Distant Song caught his hand. "Joachim . . ."
"Please, Analeil. Not now."
She shook her head. "I'm not upset." She stretched out her arms to him, waited through his hesitation until he could draw her from the bath and into his embrace. She rested her white cheek against his chest, listened for the heart-beat: there, once, a soft thump. Then nothing.
"He is fond of you, in his way," she said.
"He is dangerous in his rule-breaking."
Distant Song laughed, low in her throat. "So I am, as you've told me often enough. At least he breaks rules to help other Le'enle. I'm still doing it for people who will live the tiniest fraction of my lifespan."
He stroked back her hair, smoothed by the fluid shaped from Time and the Vague and his own magic into the only stuff that could heal immortal souls. "I wish you would promise me you won't walk off the Paths."
"And if I did, you wouldn't care enough about me to wish that I wouldn't, I am betting," Distant Song smiled as his mouth opened, and she pressed her fingers to it. "Ssh, I phrased it that way so you wouldn't have to answer. So don't."
"I don't know how many loopholes Silent Chain will be able to find for us."
"Then one day I'll meet what Fate deals me," Distant Song said, a tremor running up her bare back.
Argent Star was so still she could hear her own blood in her ears. "I don't know how you can hold that kind of thought. Analeil--"
"Sssh," she said. The hurricane's white waters . . . the lullaby of a mother, trembling voice against the wind . . . the flames of a thousand souls, too bright against the darkness . . . "Not now." She closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of him, the warmth of his arms around her body, the heady taste-feel of the mii'vas. "Not ever."
"But if you keep on—"
Again she touched his mouth and shook her head. "No," she whispered. "Don't finish. I have never wanted your prophecies, Joachim... and neither have you. We have now. That's enough."
He rested his face against her wet hair and listened to her nearly mortal heartbeat and let it be enough.

***

About the author:

M.C.A. Hogarth has been many things--a web database architect, product manager, technical writer and massage therapist--but is currently a parent, artist, writer and anthropologist to aliens.

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