Exceptional Kyre's Channel Only Has Reruns. THE TRINING Book Three : Only I Know How the Play Ends by Jay Squires

BOOK III Chapter Thirty-five                          FROM PREVIOUS CHAPTER              “Oh, no, no. My, no, it’s still on.” He stood, leaning against the door-frame, legs crossed at the ankle, arms crossed at the chest, looking every bit the sophisticate. “It’s just that you’re about to waste your time in defensive mode when it’s not necessary. You were concerned that the relief for the waltzing guards had come and you might have dozens or hundreds of guards about to converge on the suite. Perhaps you should understand the pliancy of time … when in the right hands.” He paused, uncrossing one of his arms, and tapped his chin with his finger. Then he smiled wryly. “That’s what makes the play possible, you know? Only about two minutes of your life has passed since you entered the suite. You’ll still have time to get back to your room, even to make the bed, before Glnot Rhuether arrives. I don’t want you to hurt yourself on the way.”           “But then you’d already have seen that on the stage.”           He grinned and touched his fingertips to his brow, offering a flamboyant salute. “You are a good student, my son.”                                   AND NOW. . .   “I’m not your student,” I mumbled, realizing I might as well have said it loudly and distinctly. Nothing was secret around Kyre. I turned the knob and pushed the door open. So only two minutes had passed.  That meant the guards probably had given up the struggle but not yet the humiliation of being belly-to-belly. They would be trying to avoid looking into each other’s eyes as they moved in slow circles around the porch. Their replacements, if they’d been about to arrive within those two minutes, may have  found themselves lying on the carpet in one of the maze of hallways, instead, wondering why their shoelaces were suddenly tied together; if not that, it could be simple amazement that they were somehow hopelessly lost though they had navigated these hallways a hundred times before. If Kyre couldn't keep each of the myriad of activities coordinated within the pliancy of time, of what value was pliancy? At the landing, I cast my eyes down the stairs, scanning the first floor. I refused to abandon common sense, regardless of Kyre’s word. "Whoops," came just as easily out of the bird's beak or one of the Viktor's mouths. I descended the stairs, looking to the right over the railing. A fine place for someone to ambush me. The shadows turned out to be unoccupied. Crossing the living room to the front door, I caught a glimpse between the drapes of the sweat-drenched back of one guard and a blur of the other’s bewildered gape-eyed face as he made his turn toward me. Then it was his back, and the other was facing me, a rictus twisting his lips. I’d seen that horror-filled grin before on the faces of more than one of my Kabeezan soldiers when they encountered the boogeyman clambering up the hillside to get them. They realized it was a childhood fantasy, but they also knew at that moment the boogeyman was real. Their mouths held grins while their eyes bulged, even though I tried to reason them through it. Rhuether’s mass-hypnosis had worked at nearly its greatest efficiency there—only to be exceeded later on by the giant Ziltinaur, the evil Santa with his bagful of soldiers. That was Rhuether's masterpiece, though he paid dearly for it, almost dying. I went out onto the porch. “Mmmmmmmuh … Aummmmmmmm,” their moans chorused, and they renewed their shimmying against each other as they struggled to face me. Not under their control, their bodies kept circling slowly away from me, like a moon orbiting its planet. “I’ll be out of your way in just a moment,” I told them. “ Aummmmmmmm,” they protested,  slow-twirling farther away from me, toward the railing at the corner of the suite. I crossed the garden to the palace door and removed the key from my pocket. Slotting it, I gave the knob a turn and pulled it toward me enough to angle a view of the hallway. I didn’t want to be surprised by the replacements if—in spite of Kyre's manipulation—they happened to be turning the corner and heading toward the door. Empty. Slipping inside, I closed the door, then stopped and stared at it. I couldn’t leave these two, toward whom I felt no personal enmity, to be discovered by their replacements in a career-altering position. On the other hand, I didn't want two newly freed and very angry guards racing in pursuit of me. First things first, I'd have to keep them muted until later. As far as I knew, there were no distance restrictions to my magic, so I could remove the spell the moment Rhuether and I were in the room together. At that point, Rhuether's guards would be at parade rest outside the door, given the orders not to open it for any reason. Now I would extricate them, still muted, from their embrace, but the moment they reached for their weapons, they’d find they were moving as under water; very thick, syrupy water. Fixing the image in my mind, I pushed open the door and watched them pull, tentatively, away from each other. They stood about a foot apart, glaring. They were out of my range of hearing, but their faces were contorted in the effort to speak. The one who had been leaning against the balustrade earlier shoved his open palms into his partner’s chest, a herculean effort that registered as engorged veins and tendons in his neck. The assaulted one’s gaping mouth and widened eyes reflected his amazement as his chest and shoulders rocked back. He returned a right palm, almost as an afterthought, into his aggressor’s chest.   With that, they seemed, simultaneously, to tire of expressing their masculinity. I waited until they slogged their way toward their weapons, casting bewildered glances at each other, and then I clicked the door closed and turned to face the empty hallway. Kyre’s words rolled as on a loop through my mind: “Only I know how the play ends.” The words had faded while I worked out my solution for the guards and watched their sluggish pantomime, but the moment I closed the door his words droned back to fill every corner of my mind. Was my choice in altering their spell also a part of the unrolling of my destiny? For Kyre to know how the play ended meant he had already watched it to its conclusion. He said my antics of expressing my grief, of pleading to have him kill me, added to the moments of tension leading to the climax. I got to the end of the hall and peered around the corner to the right. No guards.  Next I would pass the one leading to Rhuether’s garden and suite.  I strained to listen. It could be a game-ender to peek my head around that corner and find myself face-to-face with Rhuether and his retinue on their way to my room. But why? Why worry? It was all part of the acting out of the play. Kyre promised I would get to my room before Rhuether and would have time to make the bed and tidy things before he arrived. “Only I know how the play ends.” The ending ... Axtilla didn’t even know of her part in the play's ending until shortly before she died. If then. Kyre knew whether her death was voluntary.  Clearly, Kyre gave me the lie when he refused to disclose how the play would end. How did he put it? It would complicate the fulfillment of—what?—the fulfillment of certain activities if I knew them beforehand. But what difference are complications if he knows how the play ends? I passed the hallway without bothering to look to the right, crossed another and came to the corridor that would take me past the dining room where Rhuether and Axtilla had hosted the banquet in my honor. The next hallway would take me to my room. After I made my turn, I stopped. Only Kyre knows how the play will end.  I returned to the cross-hallway and turned toward the kitchen. My nostrils were assailed, not unpleasantly, by cooking meat. Listening at the door for Chiel’s voice among the clatter of metal against metal, and punctuation of laughter and bantering, I knocked.  As before, immediate silence followed. A few moments later the door opened a crack and Chiel’s head protruded. “General Doctrex,” he said, and he stopped, appraising me through blinking eyes. “You don’t look well, Sir.” I nodded. “Chiel …” “Yes, Sir.” “It’s time.” He threw open the door and half-stumbled out into the corridor. For a moment, I thought a hug was imminent. This was his moment—what all his preparation had culminated in. “You’re ready?” “I’m ready. You need to send your courier with the letter.” A grin spread beneath glassy eyes. “He’ll be on his crossan in ten minutes time.” His white chef’s uniform rippled at the chest from his heartbeat. “You’re okay?” “Yes. Hurry, Chiel.” He grinned and disappeared behind the door.  I proceeded toward my room. I was not prepared for what looking down on my bed would do to me. A breath seemed to come from nowhere. I let out the trapped air in a sudden rush. The sheets, crumpled, hanging to the floor on the far side, held the mingled scents of our bodies. The pillow still bore the imprint of Axtilla’s head. I flopped onto the bed and buried my face in the pillow, inhaling the fragrance—even if imagined—of her hair. What did hallucination matter, if it brought her closer to me? I released a snort. I was mad anyway. Who but a madman would carry on conversations with a bird? Was it a victory when I complained to Almighty Kyre about the indignity of that? I laughed, feeling my breath's heat in the pillow. Where was the victory? Instead, he reacquainted me with the jellybean-breathed self I was before—how mad was this?—before I bashed my head against the boulders, or drowned, or both, and became Pondria. No, not Pondria! Raising to my elbows, I shook my head violently. I took tufts of hair in each hand and had the urge to rip both handfuls out. No, not Pondria. I was General Doctrex to myself and my men. I had to be cajoled to be Pondria later, by a stupid bird in the garden. I rolled to my side and scrunched the pillow between both arms. Why was I laughing? I didn't feel like laughing. I ran my sandpapery cheek forward and back against the pillow case. I took a few breaths of air, then continued again. Once the bird convinced me I was Pondria, then Axtilla—Axtilla tried to make me into Doctrex again. Still laughing, I flopped to my back. Doctrex! Some rational faculty in me worried that I might not be able to stop laughing. Just to prove I could, I did stop, but then began sputtering through closed lips until another laugh ripped through.                        TO BE CONTINUED   CHARACTERS & TERMS (AS NEEDED): DOCTREX: THUMBNAIL: PROTAGONIST, GENERAL OF THE KABEEZAN ARMY, IN LOVE WITH AXTILLA. At the book’s beginning, he is discovered by Axtilla on the Kyrean shore, unconscious, near death from a wound on his side. She heals him, over time, in her cave. He has no memory. She is convinced he is Pondria, Glnot Rhuether’s brother, returned from the sea to fulfill Kyre’s prophesy, and bring about the dreaded Trining.      Later, when Axtilla gets bitten by a viper and is near death, Doctrex carves an “X” in the bite and sucks out the venom. At the moment he is sure she is dying, she wakes from her coma. He’s astounded to see her wound is healed. For what he tried to do, she humorously names him Doctor “X”. He combines the syllables and is known thereafter as Doctrex.      She comes to fear him less, and it seems she has feelings for him. They bond together to face and destroy Rhuether, thus fulfilling prophecy.     They get separated.     Axtilla goes on alone to the Palace, is captured, then is purported to have become engaged to Rhuether.      Doctrex joins the Kabeezan Military who are travelling to the Far Northern Province to battle Rhuether’s forces.      Ultimately is captured and turned over to Rhuether at the Palace of Qarnolt. AXTILLA: THUMBNAIL: PROTAGONIST, BANISHED BY HER PEOPLE TO THE CAVES BY THE KYREAN SEA, WHERE SHE FINDS DOCTREX. In the opening of the book, she finds him unconscious on the shore of the Kyrean Sea. She’s convinced he is Pondria. Already she has been banished by her people, the Kyreans, for publicly warning them to beware of the insidious deceit of Pondria (Rhuether’s brother), who would come among them with honeyed words, but destructive intentions. Axtilla’s god is the great Kyre. Axtilla had been the only keeper of the sacred “Tablets of Kyre”, instructed by her father (at that time the leader of the backsliding Kyrean people) to commit the tablets to memory. When she accomplished this, she develops the ability to communicate with Kyre through her dreams.       So now she makes a pact with Doctrex to fulfill the Kyrean Prophesy by defeating Glnot Rhuether together. She gets separated from Doctrex and alone, she finds her way to Rhuether’s palace. She is captured, but later Rhuether announces she is to be his bride and empress. GLNOT RHUETHER: THUMBNAIL: ANTAGONIST, EMPEROR OF THE FAR NORTHERN PROVINCE WHOSE AMBITION IS RULE OF ALL THE PROVINCES. According to the Tablets of Kyre, Glnot Rhuether will bring about the prophecy of the Trining, the destruction of the Kyrean Civilization. The only event that will prevent the Trining will be Rhuether’s destruction at the hands of Axtilla and Rhuether’s brother, Pondria. Rhuether, though, claims Axtilla has agreed to be his wife and empress and the wedding is forthcoming. Doctrex, who Axtilla believes is Pondria, is on a quest to join with Axtilla to bring about Rhuether’s destruction. PONDRIA: THUMBNAIL: Pondria is Glnot Rhuether’s conjoined (at the ribs) twin brother, murdered when Rhuether separates him and throws him into the sea. According to the Tablets of Kyre, Pondria will be reborn from the sea for the purpose of fulfilling his part of the prophesy. "Pondria will move like sweet-tasting water among my people," Kyre warns, "and my people will drink the water and find it refreshing to their spirit. And even while they want more of the sweet tasting water, a slow poison begins to creep into their spirit." (See Axtilla, above)     Recognized

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