JULIEN
II
Chapter 56
Deep conditioning
“Isn't Xarax with you?” asked Dillik.
“Good morning to you too, Dillik! Come and settle in here between us and let me go back to sleep.”
“All right. Don't you know where Xarax is, then?”
“He's off on a mission.”
“A mission? What mission? He never told me about any mission!”
“It's a secret mission. That's why he didn't tell you.”
“Well, all right, but he could have told me he was going away! I woke up and found that he wasn't there, and I don't like waking up alone.”
“Don't blame him. It was just something that came up this evening. Anyway, you were asleep when we left and he didn't want to wake you.”
“Well, he should have!”
“Hey, what are you two talking about?” said Ambar, sleepily. “Has Xarax gone?”
“Go back to sleep, Ambar. I need some rest.”
“So that means I have to sleep on your behalf? Perhaps you'd like me to pee for you, too?”
“That's not what I meant at all. And Dillik, keep your hands to yourself, because I'm not in the mood. I really do need some sleep. Cuddle up with Ambar instead.”
“Aren't you well?”
“No, I just got woken up in the middle of the night, that's all.”
“What? They woke you up? I didn't hear anything. What's going on?”
“Ambar, please,” said Julien. “Don't you start too. Just have a nice quiet cuddle with Dillik and then go back to sleep. And don't tell anyone about me getting up in the night. It's a secret.”
oo0oo
He was able to sleep in for a long time and once he had a nice big breakfast inside him Julien felt rather more ready to deal with the previous night's events. Fortunately nobody had come in to disturb him, as sometimes happened if something urgent came up during the night. He decided to take charge and answer everyone's questions before they could even be asked.
“Xarax had to leave during the night,” he said. “It was something that came up suddenly and it had to be dealt with. You don't need to worry, but I want you to keep this to yourselves, all right? If anyone asks where he is, just say that you don't know. And if anyone tries to push you for an answer, come and tell me straight away.”
“What if it's Tannder or Subadar?”
“You don't talk to anyone – not even each other. All right?”
“When's he coming back?” asked Dillik.
“I don't know exactly, but I don't think it will be too long.”
“And then will you tell us what happened?”
“Dillik, it's a secret, and that means it's secret from everyone.”
“But...”
“I know. You, Ambar and Niil, you're different from the others. But there are some things I can't share even with you. And now I'd like us to talk about something else, all right?”
oo0oo
Days went by, days in which nobody dared to question him about his friend's absence now that he'd made it known that he didn't want to talk about it. One good thing about his status as Emperor was that he could at least impose his will if he thought it necessary, although he was very much aware that this was a power to be used very sparingly.
Dillik tried to put a good face on it even though he was clearly worried, and when on the second evening Julien found him crying alone in his bed he invited him to share a common bed with himself and Ambar until Xarax returned.
Niil had been made aware of the situation and had decided to stay in Ksantir, where Xarax would be able to find him easily. He even accepted the fact that Julien wasn't able to explain exactly what was happening: he said that as far as he was concerned he was happy to do whatever his friend needed.
Of course it was impossible for Julien not to speculate about what Xarax was doing and why, but he didn't have enough information to come up with any answers. The only thing that seemed clear was that Xarax was keeping his distance so as not to kill him – and what made it even more shocking was that killing the Emperor in certain circumstances was apparently one of the haptir's primary duties! It was a wonder that Xarax had managed to overcome what was normally a rigid sense of duty...
oo0oo
Finally, on the eleventh day, Xarax returned, his arrival coinciding with that of the evening meal. He was lacking in colour and clearly exhausted, but he still appeared more or less his usual self. He arrived sitting on Niil's shoulder but quickly jumped, first onto that of a delighted Dillik, and then on to Julien.
Xarax, my friend, Julien told him, you look shattered. We'd better go to the bathroom so that I can feed you, and then you look like you need some sleep. You can tell me all about it once you're fully recovered.
All right. I am feeling tired, to be honest.
“I’m going to feed Xarax,” said Julien, getting up.
“I'm coming too!” declared Dillik, adding, as he saw that Julien was about to argue, “I know how it works, so I'm not going to faint or anything.”
Julien got undressed and then stood naked in the shower room, holding a sponge bag which would give Xarax the signal to stop, and offered his neck to the haptir. He had time to reflect that if Xarax hadn't managed to solve the problem that had sent him into temporary exile this was likely to be his final moment alive. And then the process began: the teeth puncturing his flesh, followed by the slightly nauseous feeling that he was about to pass out, and then the sudden powerful growth of excitement which, on this occasion, ended with a violent orgasm strong enough to make him lean on Dillik for support. Dillik was both surprised and amused, especially when his laď got a copious spraying in the process.
“Wow!” he commented. “It looks like you're really happy to have Xarax back!”
“Go and put him to bed, and change your laď while you're at it. I'm going to have a shower.”
“Still, you might have warned me...”
“I'm sorry. It's not like I did it deliberately.”
“It's a pity to waste it, that's all.”
oo0oo
Xarax wasn't a particularly good story-teller, but he did have a talent for making you share what he had experienced, and that's what he did for Julien the following morning. The moment he had seen the klirk in Julien's mind, clear and exact in every detail, something inside him had changed. Switching instantly into that state of combat readiness in which the outside world seems frozen in time he was suddenly filled with a certainty: his duty, indeed, his entire raison d'ętre, was to prevent such a deviation from the Unchangeable Order of things. As suddenly as a foul stench can trigger nausea, the sight of that perfect klirk in the Emperor's mind filled him with disgust, like some vile, corrupt matter. He was the Emperor's Haptir, the one whose duty was to defend the universe of the Nine Worlds from such abominations, and it was his duty to end it, immediately, as the Emperor's Haptirs had always done throughout the long history of the R'hinz, whenever this situation had arisen. The Emperor had to die so that his mind, reduced to its basic essence and purged of all aberrations, could manifest itself in a new body and so go on preserving the integrity of the Nine Worlds.
However, this wasn't a conscious train of thought but, rather, a deep, irresistible impulse, which drove him along just as the soaring of pleasure, for Dillik, led inexorably towards an unstoppable orgasm when the trigger point had been reached...
Dillik!
It wasn't the Emperor Yulmir that Xarax was about to kill, it was Dillik's friend Julien – who was also Xarax's own friend...
But Julien was also Yulmir...
Despite his confusion Xarax somehow regained control of his actions. He realised that he should not act without further information. Fighting a conditioning that had been written into him at a genetic level he emerged from his trance and forced himself to answer Julien's suggestion that he, Xarax, was in possession of the key to that 'safe', which was in reality the Sang kang, the Secret Chamber.
Actually, he had said, you possess it too. If you look carefully you'll find that you can visualise that klirk without any help from me.
The conversation rolled on in its inevitable way. Xarax realised that he had to stay as far away from Julien as possible: he knew that it would only take a moment's distraction for the impulse to kill to seize control of him again, and it was impossible to think clearly in that situation.
The last few seconds with Julien had been extremely difficult, and Xarax still found it hard to understand how he had managed to allow the boy to remain alive despite the monstrous hunger that was raging through him, commanding him to attack with teeth and claws, to tear the boy's delicate flesh to ribbons and to slake a raging thirst which had always been there, lurking at the very centre of his being, and of whose presence he had been unaware until that moment.
When Julien had disappeared at last, leaving him in the cold mist of Dvârinn, he didn't feel relief but, rather, a terrible frustration. If he had had the power to do so he would have immediately launched himself after the prey which he had just allowed to escape. But Xarax was no Guide and so Julien was now out of reach – which was, of course, exactly what Xarax had wanted. But this didn't diminish his rage. Despite his relatively modest size a haptir is equipped with claws that are almost as sharp as a nagtri, and although the surrounding vegetation was prickly and tough it really didn't offer much resistance. But some of the nearby rocks now bore scars that would last for thousands of years.
Eventually the crisis passed and Xarax, drained of a lot of his energy, was able to think clearly again. He knew that what had just happened was probably unprecedented in the history of the R'hinz. There could be no doubt that in the past a number of Emperors had died with their throat cut by their haptir. He was fairly sure that he would have been unable to resist the impulse to do just that if his basic haptir nature had not been so radically changed by the strange relationship he had with Dillik.
He was also terribly shocked to discover that he had been conditioned in such a way without having had the least inkling of it. His relief at having overcome it was mingled with a measure of legitimate pride. Nor did he feel any guilt: he had certainly failed in his Duty, but if that duty meant that he had to destroy someone he loved without having any say in the matter, he was sure that such a duty must be evil.
The following few days had been terrible. Although he was completely convinced and was sure that his reasoning was correct, the conditioning continued to work at the very core of his being, demanding that he should commit a murder which his conscious mind had utterly rejected. From time to time, usually when he was least expecting it, he was again seized by a murderous insanity that drove him to destroy everything around him in a paroxysm of frustrated rage.
But Xarax wasn't an ordinary creature driven by instinct: he was a highly intelligent, cultured and sophisticated being. Furthermore, he possessed an unshakable will and had acquired, over a long existence, immense experience in dealing with the art of training both his body and his mind.
When he realised that it would not be possible to uproot his conditioning he first contemplated putting an end to his life. An honourable suicide would be a good way to bring a long, experience-filled life to a close. But, quite apart from the fact that he was loath to cause Dillik what would certainly be great pain, he was convinced that as soon as the Council of Mirrors found out that the Emperor had lost his haptir they would insist on 'presenting' him with a new one. And that new substitute would also be conditioned, and that conditioning would encounter no resistance. So Julien would die, and he was fairly sure that a system that had already lasted thousands of years would find a way, fairly easily, to generate a new body for the Emperor.
So he decided that suicide wasn't the answer, at least not until he'd had plenty of opportunity to teach Julien how to deal with the many dangers that threatened him, and also to offer Dillik some advise on living without 'his' haptir.
In order to do that he decided to look upon his conditioning like a loaded weapon that had no safety catch. To stop it from self-triggering he developed an underlying reflex function of constant awareness, rather like the one which controls a human sphincter and so prevents untimely excretion. In other words, he managed to hold his impulse to murder in check in the same manner in which a person manages not to wet the bed or soil his underwear in public. For anyone else this would have taken a considerable period of time, but Xarax was determined, and it only took him eight days to master the process.
Once he was satisfied with the result he went, exhausted but profoundly happy, to Niil and asked him to take him back to the Palace. And now that he was back they would have to try to untangle the threads of a story which was looking more and more complicated.
oo0oo