Thomas paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. "I've been trying to think who Essca reminds me of. Her appearance, her mannerisms. The way she nibbled at her lip when trying to think, and it's just come to me. Connie Laz. The girl we rescued in the Southern Continent. She could have been her twin sister! The resemblance was quite remarkable."
"It's just your memory playing tricks on you," said Lirenna. "There's a superficial resemblance, maybe, and so the picture your memory conjures up is influenced by your more recent memory of a woman you actually met."
"Maybe," conceded Thomas, but the frown remained, as if he couldn't quite believe it. "There's something else, though. After a time of distrust from the other Gem Lords, she eventually came to be fully accepted as one of them, even taking the name of a gemstone like the others, and because it had been Tak who'd rescued her, because it was Tak she loved more than any of the others, she chose the name of a blue gemstone, as a gesture of her support and loyalty to him in particular. Lapis Lazuli." He looked at his wife, who just stared back, not getting it. "Lapis Lazuli!" he pressed. "Lazuli! Laz! As in Connie Laz! You see?"
"A coincidence," said Lirenna firmly. "Or do you think it was Essca herself, somehow still alive after three thousand years?"
Thomas turned away from her smiling face, stood and crossed the room. Then he turned back to her. "These memories of mine. I've told you I think I might be Tak's reincarnation..."
"Even though every cleric and priest we've talked to says it never happens? That once a soul goes to judgement it never comes back."
"Maybe they don't know everything. And if I am Tak's reincarnation, maybe Connie Laz was Essca's reincarnation. Maybe she had all Essca's memories just as I'm getting all of Tak's. Now that I think of it, she looked at me very strangely all through the voyage home, as if she knew something. Some wonderful secret. One of the men joked to me at one point that she had a crush on me. What if she did have all Essca's memories? What if she'd eventually come to believe that she was Essca, and came to love Tak just as the original Essca did?"
Then he frowned, though. "But why would she have associated me with Tak? I bear some physical resemblance, at least in size and build, but apart from that we don't look much alike. Could she somehow have just known I was Tak's reincarnation? Could she have sensed it somehow? And there's something else I've just thought of. Once Essca had given them the idea of copying the Gem Lords, of naming themselves after gems, some of the other apprentices did the same thing. One of Lord Emerald's students called herself Jade, for instance, and some years after King Lamont's death Barl took on a couple of promising lads who went on to become almost as powerful as any of the Gem Lords themselves. They called themselves Jasper and Garnet and they were inseparable." He leaned forward, staring at his wife meaningfully. "Those two fellows we met in the Ruby Keep were called Jasper and Garnet. They even looked like them!"
"I doubt there's anything sinister about that," said Lirenna with a smile. "If they were living in a castle built by the Gem Lords. They might have come across references to them. Notes, records, that sort of thing. They might have found it amusing to adopt their names for themselves."
"But they said they couldn't read," said Thomas, looking unhappy. He shook his head, dismissing the problem. "You're right, though. There's probably some kind of simple explanation. Hell, there's probably thousands of explanations. Why am I getting myself so worked up about it? I mean, it's not as if they were the original Jasper and Garnet, still alive after three thousand years! That really would be something to get worked up about!" He laughed nervously, earning him a worried frown from his concerned wife.
Lirenna saw that he was working himself into a state and took his hand, pulling him back to sit beside her. "Now you're just being silly," she scolded. "You started with a woman who looks a bit like Lapis Lazuli and has a similar name and you're building a great tower of fantasy on it. Now calm down! Connie Laz was just a woman. A poor shipwreck victim whom you rescued and brought back with you. Nothing more than that. Understand?"
Thomas nodded gratefully. "You're right. Sorry. It's just, you know. The coincidences..."
"Are just coincidences. Coincidences happen. You know that." He nodded again. "Now, tell me what happened next."
She was staring at him expectantly, her bright eyes fixed on his as she waited for the story to continue, and Thomas laughed, suddenly overwhelmed by the depth and strength of his love for her. In that moment he understood exactly how Tak had felt when he'd learned that Essca had been arrested and thrown into a dungeon. If it had been Lenny, he thought, what wouldn't I have done to get her out? Nothing. Nothing at all. He'd have done anything to save her, and damn the consequences!
He suddenly realised just how alike he and Tak were, just as if he really were Tak's reincarnation, and he spent several moments in uncomfortable contemplation until his impatient wife brought him back with a prod from a sharp fingernail.
"Ah yes," he said, forcing a smile. "Now where was I?"
☆☆☆
"He remembers me!" sang Lapis Lazuli happily, dancing around the imaging chamber, in which Thomas was continuing the story of Tak's life. "He remembers how we met!"
Topaz shared an amused grin with Jasper and Garnet, but Lord Ruby frowned. "He remembers how Tak first met you," he corrected. "You keep forgetting that that is not Tak. Tak is dead. That is Thomas Gown, who has been gifted with some of Tak's memories and spellcasting abilities. He will never be Tak, and he will never love you the way Tak did. You have to let Tak go and accept that he is dead. Otherwise you..."
"You never liked me!" cried the woman furiously, her brilliant blue eyes spitting hatred at him. "Right from the first moment, you disliked me! You would have left me in that dungeon, to be tortured and killed, just for the sake of your precious deal!"
"Don't be ridiculous," replied the Gem Lord. "I didn't know you then. As I grew to know you, I grew to love you as much as Tak did, to respect you as a valued member of the team."
"You pretended to get on with me, you mean. For the sake of the unity of the Gem Lords. You couldn't risk a split with Tak over me so you put on an act. Even pretending to love me when it suited your purposes."
"I did, do, love you," protested Lord Ruby, feeling ridiculous having this conversation in front of the others. "How many times have we been married? At least as many times as you've been married to Tak."
"But you would never have risked everything for me, would you? Not like Tak. He was willing to throw away your stupid little deal to save me. He confronted a King for me, after having known me for less than a day. Did you ever love me like that? Did you ever love anyone like that?"
She didn't wait for an answer but rushed on. "That kind of love doesn't die! It lives on, in him!" She pointed at Thomas's image, sitting on the cot in his cabin aboard the Jules Verne. She sat on the bed beside him, inside the image of Lirenna, so that it seemed as though the wizard was looking at her. She reached out towards his face, the tips of her fingers stopping a bare fraction of an inch from his cheek, not wanting to spoil the illusion that he was actually there by feeling empty air where his warm flesh should have been.
"It isn't Tak," repeated the Gem Lord slowly and patiently. "Tak is dead. That is Thomas Gown, happily married with a son. He won't be interested in you. He will remember how Tak loved you but he will never love you himself."
"No!" screamed the woman, her hands flying to her ears to shut out his voice, her eyes screwed shut. "No! He will love me! He will!" She jumped to her feet and glared at Lirenna with pure hatred. "He'd love me if not for her! If she died..."
"Laz!" roared Lord Ruby in alarm. "Would you destroy everything we've worked for? He needs to come to us of his own free will! Will he do that if we kill his wife?"
"He'll lose her anyway when he comes to us. He'll have to watch her grow old and die while he lives on and on and on."
"Not necessarily. Not if he brings her with him. She's a wizard, just as he is, and she's human enough to undergo the transformation. There's no reason they can't both be Gem Lords..."
"NO!" screamed Lapis Lazuli, her face contorted into a scarlet mask of demonic fury. "I'll kill her first! He's mine! Mine!"
Topaz took her gently by the elbow, careful in case she lashed out at him. "Calm down, Laz," he said softly. "What if he does bring her with him? You know how it is with we immortals. We marry for a time, for a few decades or a century or two, until we grow tired of our partners and marry someone else. No marriage, no matter how great the love at first, can survive eternity. Look how it was with you and Tak. You've been married, what? Six times? That's five times you've grown sick of each other and split up, only to get back together again after a time apart with other partners. It'll be the same with him and the demi shae, you'll see. He'll grow bored with her in time and split up from her, and then he can be yours again." He looked at Lirenna and licked his lips. "And she'll be looking for a new partner as well."
"Listen to him," agreed Lord Ruby. "He's right. Suppose he stays with Lirenna for a thousand years. So what? What's a thousand years to us? He will be yours again..."
"If he finds a way to save us," interrupted the girl. "What if he can't? He'd been trying for centuries without success before he died. If he can't, we'll be faced with just a few short centuries before we all die. I will not spend the last years of my life watching him with another woman. I will not!" She glared at Lirenna again, and they all saw the promise of murder in her eyes.
So intent was she on the demi shae, though, that she failed to see Lord Ruby creep up on her from behind. He gently touched the back of her neck and she slumped, unconscious, in his arms.
"Take her back to her own realms," he told Topaz, handing her over. "In future, she is to be watched at all times. And see that all the Umbilici are guarded. I don't want her seeking out the demi shae and doing something stupid."
Topaz nodded and carried the woman gently out of the room.
"Such passion," said Jasper with admiration. "So rare to see such passion in an immortal. I wonder if she'll make love with that kind of energy?"
"You can find out when we're finished here," said the Gem Lord irritably. "Let's listen to what the host's saying. We need to know how much he's remembering. How far the process has gone."
"Is it time to contact him directly?" asked Garnet. "Explain what's happening to him?"
"Not yet," replied the Gem Lord. "Not until he remembers the moment of Tak's transformation. But that won't be long now, I think. Not long."
Jasper and Garnet nodded in unison, and Lord Ruby raised the sound, bringing Thomas's voice back into the imaging chamber.