The Ardor - 3. Chapter 3

I awoke. For the eighty-sixth time, it took me several moments to remember where I was. Still, it was different this time. I wasn’t drenched in sweat; no fragments of images, no faint memories of emotions not mine, no haunting sounds echoed through my mind. There was nothing but serenity. I hadn’t wakened once, torn out of sleep by my own screams. I became aware of the warm shape behind me and felt the subtle movements of his breathing. Could it have been his mere presence bringing me a peaceful night at last? In silence, I laughed at myself. Not being sure whether it had been a night was the least ridiculous part of this thought. My amusement increased when I realized that Maraki had slung his arm around me and held me tight but gently. Close up, his muscles inspired even more awe. I wondered about the extent of his strength. The realization that I was prone to find out for myself ended my joyful mood with a vengeance. Part of me still refused to believe that he would hurt me. No question, he was capable of it, physically, but there was something about him, behind the gruff demeanor, that told me my hope was more than wishful thinking. He stirred.

In a blur, Maraki jumped up. I followed his example because he must have noticed a danger I hadn’t. I scanned the cell but couldn’t find anything unusual. My heart beat fast, pounding against my ribs, and my breathing accelerated. Maraki didn’t come very far, since the cloak wound itself around his feet and made him stumble. He scrambled away on all fours until he reached the wall. He sat down, his back pressed against the grey stone.

“What has happened?” My body was poised to run.

“I shouldn’t… I mustn’t… “

Every muscle in his face was strained, and his eyes focused on his arm, which he held away from him like it was something dangerous or disgusting.

“What is with your arm?”

I had a theory what that was about, but it was too absurd.

“It’s… it’s…” Maraki looked up, straight into my eyes. His features hardened. He lowered his arm. “It’s nothing.”

I expected him to end this sentence with ‘human’, as he had done the Cycle before. In less than a Fraction, he erected his defenses again, his impenetrable façade. The energy of shock drained from me. I walked towards him. I’d gotten a short glimpse at the true Maraki, not the mask he used to wear when around strangers. I stopped before him. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me.

“Was that about you holding me?”

He jumped to his feet. Staring down at me, he tilted his head to the side and tensed up his muscles; his arms and his chest bulged out, while his stomach flattened. “It’s nothing.”

His roaring voice didn’t frighten me. I lay my head back and looked into his eyes. His body was all threat, but his eyes, their amber depths, told of different emotions: pain and fear and despair, but no anger.

“Don’t do this. It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. But don’t do this.” I didn’t intend to, but disappointment wove itself into my words.

Maraki’s tension dissolved; he raised his head; the feelings in his eyes persisted. He looked down at me in silence. I couldn’t bear this any longer and turned around, having the need to put more distance between us. His hand on my shoulder stopped me.

“I’m sorry.” The real Maraki was speaking to me. He removed his hand. “Yes, it was about me holding you.”

I faced him. “But where’s the problem? I don’t mind. You put your arm around me while you were sleeping. No big thing.”

His eyes went down to the ground. “I’m shak’nai’dar.” He paused, looking for the right words. “I’m a same-mate-seeker.”

It took me a moment to comprehend. “You want a male partner?”

He nodded, still staring down at his feet.

“So, there isn’t any problem.”

His eyes shot up and wrinkles formed on his forehead.

“With all other males I know, there is every problem when they learn about it.”

A grin split my lips. “You already noticed that I’m peculiar.”

That didn’t ease his doubts.

“Sit down with me. It’s time you learn some things about Elyran.”

I grasped his hand, pulling him down with me. He didn’t resist. Sitting cross-legged, I faced Maraki while he was leaning against the wall.

“I’ve lived with my uncle Temiran since I was three years old.”

“Why didn’t your sire parents raise you? Humans live with their sire parents, don’t they?”

Though he interrupted me right at the start, his sincere interest curved up my lips.

“My parents died in the Second Teleran-Nur’Zhul War.”

Maraki put his right hand on his left shoulder and dragged it down in a diagonal line over his upper body. “May your ancestors be honored.”

He expressed his condolence for the death of my parents, I assumed. I nodded my head. This reaction must have been appropriate since he showed no signs of irritation. I made a mental note to ask him about the term ‘sire parents’ later.

“My uncle is a sorcerer and quite an important one in Telera, though he’d deny that. He lives in a place called Eleiya Spire, which is a tower built of red stone with some huts surrounding it. It’s almost a small village housing the servants. As a child, I thought that it was the most boring place in the world. There were books, thousands of books, but not a single playfellow of my age. And the exciting places, my uncle’s laboratories and the ritual room, were off-limits to me. So I befriended the servants. When I was fifteen or sixteen Orbits old, some of those friendships became a little deeper.”

He leaned a little more towards me, his interest kindled by the last sentence.

“There was a maid named Ekra who had the hots for me. She showed me some things that aren’t to be found in my uncle’s books.”

For the first time, I heard him laugh. A deep, rumbling sound echoed through the cell and resonated within me.

“You were quite the heart breaker, weren’t you?”

He laughed some more, and I snickered with him.

“Not quite. There was just one other person whom I got that close to. It was one of the menials, and his name was Tavo.”

Maraki’s mood changed, became broodier. His face showed an equal mix of disbelief and comprehension.

“And you two…”

“…did a lot more than lying in each other’s arms.”

“Which one did you prefer?”

The moment he had finished the question he regretted it; I could tell by the way he pressed his mouth into a thin line. I wanted to answer nonetheless. “Both experiences were wonderful; very different from each other, but wonderful. I couldn’t decide between the two then, and I can’t decide now.”

“But there must have been others, after them…” He hesitated. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t want to…” He gathered himself. “Accept my apologies.” He bent his head.

A simple gesture, but powerful enough to make me swallow.

“You did nothing wrong. And the answer is no, there weren’t any others after them.”

He raised his head and stared at me.

“It’s the truth.” I held eye contact, for he should know that I wasn’t lying. “I left Eleiya Spire shortly after sharing beds with Ekra and Tavo. As a thief, it is necessary to have no bonds whatsoever. I abode by this credo.”

The slightest smile replaced the disbelief on Maraki’s face. “You must have been a lonely man.”

This time, I couldn’t answer. I lowered my gaze to the ground as he had done before. Maraki rested his hand on my shoulder.

“If there’s anyone who understands how that feels, it’s me.”

I placed my hand on his, looked up into his eyes, and smiled. The moment passed, and we both took our hands away.

“Do you now believe me that there isn’t any problem?”

“I should’ve controlled myself in the first place, but no harm was done.”

A short pause followed. The little nod of his head was the outer sign that he had come to a decision. “You shared with me the paths of your life. This is a great honor. For me, you’re no longer a stranger.”

I wasn’t sure, but for Maraki, we had come to a point of pre-friendship. I didn’t have a better word for it. The Ogrushkai were precise when it came to describing relationships.

My mind raced to find the right thing to say. “I hope I’ll call you friend someday.”

The breadth of Maraki’s smile left no doubt I had hit the spot with my answer. A thought occurred to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh out. His amusement didn’t fade, but he furrowed his brows.

“I know you are into males. You know I had both, males and females, and we don’t even know some of the more basic facts like our age.”

Maraki cracked up as well. The more often I heard him laugh the more adorable that sound became.

“I’m twenty-one Orbits old,” he said, “and was born on the fifteenth Sirk, forty-nine eighty-two after the Fall.”

So the Ogrushkai used the standard calendar.

“Ha. I’m older than you: twenty-two Orbits; fifth Zraad, forty-nine eighty-two after the Fall.”

“Only five Tenths. That doesn’t count as older.”

“Of course. I’m older and wiser, so I’m the boss here.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest.

“You wish. I’m taller and stronger.”

“You swore not to hurt me.”

“I don’t have to hurt you to show you who’s in charge.”

Maraki grabbed me with one hand at my waist and got up from the floor. When he was on his feet, he raised his arm until his elbow was on the level of his head. I dangled there unable to do anything about this humiliation. Maraki had fully extended his arm and didn’t show any sign of effort.

“You younglings! No respect for the elderly.”

He laughed some more and lowered me down to the ground. My face went sour.

He stopped laughing and worry wrinkled his face. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to…”

“No. I just figured…” I didn’t dare to finish that sentence, because it would freak him out.

“Don’t spare me. If we want to become friends, we’ve got to trust each other.”

His words knotted up my guts. We knew each other for one and a half Cycle, and he had seen right into me, knowing what my hesitance was about. He deserved to know.

“If you can do this, what are you capable of when in full Ardor?”

The pain, the despair, the fear resurfaced. His terror increased when imagination tortured him with images of the things he could do to me. I took his hands into mine.

“Stop it, Maraki!”

His eyes focused on me.

“Whatever you’ve seen, it won’t come about. I simply know.”

He looked at our touching hands.

“Those hands won’t harm me. Trust me. I’m a thief and a scoundrel. Knowing things like this is a necessity for my profession.”

His eyes found mine again. I smiled, putting into it as much warmth and encouragement as I could muster.

“You’re having more trust in me than I have in myself.”

“That’s what friends in the making are supposed to do.”

Maraki’s lips curved up.

We spent the Cycle talking, that is, most of the time it was I babbling. It’d take him a little more time to open up, but that was okay for me. I told him about the everyday life in Eleiya Spire, my uncle’s quirks, and the little river where I used to go fishing. At first, I feared to bore him senseless, but every time I stopped, he encouraged me to go on. The arrival of the guard with our meals hushed me. This time, he was more careful and put down the bowls just within Maraki’s reach, leaving us without a word. Maraki got the bowls and handed me one. We sat opposite of each other in the middle of the cell, eating in silence. He finished his serving when I wasn’t even half done with mine.

“You must really like it since you are almost inhaling that stuff.”

He grinned, baring his tusks.

“As a warrior, I’m used to eat what I’m given.”

Not surprising at all, but his occupation was a new bit of information. The roaring of Maraki’s stomach brought me back to the present. I was already full up and extended my arm, offering him my leftovers.

“You didn’t eat yesterday. I can’t take it. You’ll starve. Your face hair already stopped growing.”

I was torn between being amused and being moved. “It’s nice that you are worried about me, but there’s no reason. I never had ‘face hair’.”

He furrowed his brows and his forehead creased. “I thought human males always have face hair.”

I fought not to burst out laughing. “Normally, they do. Almost no male of my mother’s side had ‘face hair’. At least, that’s what my uncle told me. We call it beard, by the way.”

I extended my arm a little more, and he accepted the bowl. “My gratefulness, your honor.” He dragged his index and little finger over his heart.

He finished his second meal as fast as the first.

“Ogrushkai never have… beards. Our bodies don’t have any hair. And no Ogrushkai does have the color of your hair. It looks like a field of wheat before harvest.”

The Ogrushkai had a sense for poetry after all. At least, this one had.

“This was the most beautiful way someone has described my hair I’ve ever heard.”

Maraki’s face turned to a darker shade of green. So, this was how a blushed Ogrushkai looked like.

I didn’t mean to embarrass him and wanted to defuse the situation. “The color of your eyes is most unusual. No human eye looks like this.”

“…like liquid gold sprinkled with amber suspended in honey,” I added inside my head only.

“Many Ogrushkai do share my eye color. Some have red eyes, some have brown eyes, but there is no one of my race having sky-colored eyes like you.”

He did it again. Simply calling my eyes blue didn’t suffice. Instead, he used a picture that made a shiver run up and down my spine. For some long Fractions, we looked at each other. I noticed the faint hue in his eyes.

“You’re entering the Ardor, aren’t you? It’s showing in your eyes.”

He nodded. When it came to the Ardor, his tongue tied up even more than usual.

“I’ll wait over there.”

His mouth opened, but he closed it again without saying what was on his mind. He walked off to the opposite side of the room.

The situation felt as odd as yesterday, even odder, now that we had established a first connection. My curiosity, whispering to me to turn around, had gained in strength, but so had my respect for him. I started to count the fractures in the wall.

The sun was warm on my skin. I looked up into the sky. White clouds, like small balls of cotton, drifted around lazily. The sounds of various birds and the endless song of the crickets united into a symphony, crescendoing and decrescendoing in a delicate pattern. I bent my knee and let the blades of grass slide through my fingers. I turned my head. There, a Unit’s walk away, was Eleiya Spire, rising against the small formation of rocks that surrounded it. The conic shape of the main tower, with the spherical attachments along its outside, shone bright red in the sunlight. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the huts below it. It was almost mealtime, and I wondered which delicacies would be served. The orchards and kitchen gardens added a myriad of colors to the scenery. I couldn’t discern a single person, but the blur of busy movement was visible even from this distance. A flicker on the horizon caught my attention, making me turn away from my former home. Something moved into my direction, filling my whole field of vision. It had to be very fast, and soon I recognized it as a dark violet wall, growing rapidly in height. It’d reach Eleiya Spire before it’d reach me. I began to run and screamed warnings, though I knew that it was futile. The wall arrived at the rocks. As it passed through them, they dissolved into tiny particles of the same color as the barrier. Those motes, entrained in the surge of the movement, quickly lost any resemblance to their former shape. The wall was at least some hundred Steps high and continued its way through Eleiya Spire. I prayed to the gods that my uncle’s magic could save them. A Fraction later, nothing remained. The tower, the huts, and the gardens had vanished. And with them, the people I had called family. All this happened in an unworldly silence. Destruction on this scale should be ear deafening, but there was only silence. Even the animals had ceased to sing, fleeing from inevitable death. I fell on my knees and screamed. The barrier was close. I raised my arms in a pathetic attempt to shield me.