The Fog of Forgetting (23 page)

Chase was happy that they had parted from Hesam at the stern of Rysta's boat. Evelyn was acting a little crazy. He touched her shoulder lightly.

“Ev, we never had a chance.”

Evelyn shrugged away from his touch.

“Knox, you said if I thought of something, you'd be in. Are you in?”

Knox grinned at her. “What are you thinking?”

“Don't worry about it,” she snapped, and bent down to relaunch the skiff. She settled into the little boat and began to row. “Get some supplies and meet me at the outlet to the river.”

The three boys watched as Evelyn rowed out of the cavern and toward Rysta's ship. Knox headed down the tunnel toward the gathering room. Chase interrupted him.

“C'mon, Knox, you can't be serious.”

Knox spread a scarf out on the table and began piling up fruit and what remained of their dinner, happy to have a sense of purpose again. Chase put his hand on the scarf. Knox slapped it away.

“Knox!” Chase bellowed.

“What? No one's asking you or Teddy to do anything. I told her I was in, and I'm in. I'm bored of Metria,” he said, honestly. “I prefer risking it in Melor.”

“Are you
that
stupid?”

“Don't say stupid,” chided Teddy. Chase gave him a look of exasperation.

“It's not Melor you have to worry about, Knox. It's Exor! You heard Rothermel and Rysta. All we have to do is make one wrong move and we're toast. Game over!”

Knox stopped what he was doing and looked straight into Chase's eyes. “I'm going with Evelyn. You and Teddy can stay here, but I'm going. You can't stop me.”

“I'm going, too,” said Teddy.

Knox grinned. “Team Thompson.”

“Like hell I can't!” Chase yelled. “You're not doing this again, Knox! This time you'll do what I tell you to do!”

Knox knotted the bundle neatly and hoisted it off the table. He stuffed a few blankets in the crook of his arm. He took a step to the right. Chase mirrored him.

“Sure you want to try that?” Knox asked.

Chase didn't budge.

Knox put down his load. His face wore the same expression as when the Exorians first attacked: grim, determined. Chase tried reasoning with him once more.

“Think for a minute. This is too dangerous.”

“Sorry,” said Knox, deadly calm.

Chase moved to block him.

Knox shook his head. “
Don't
.”

Chase planted his feet and squared his shoulders.

With a lightning-quick jab, Knox drove a fist into Chase's chest, just below the heart. Chase's lungs exploded. He fell to his knees, unable to breathe.

“
Intent is the greatest weapon of all
. A great man once said that,” said Knox, brushing past his older brother. “C'mon, Ted, if you're coming.”

“Come with us, Chase,” Teddy implored.

Chase couldn't answer, still gasping from having the wind knocked out of him. Teddy gave his brother a sad look and followed Knox out into the tunnel.

It took several long seconds before Chase was able to stand up. He ran without thinking, as fast as he could, so angry he could see nothing but a blinding, white light. When he got to the beach, Knox and Teddy were in a skiff halfway across the lagoon. He waded in behind them. Before he knew it, he was swimming, pulling at the water with vicious strokes.

“Knox, STOP!” Chase cried out.

Stop … stop … stop
echoed in the cavern, sounding weaker and more desperate than he would have liked.

“Knox! I'll do it! I'm in.”

I'm in … I'm in … I'm in
, the echo called back at him.

The skiff slowed, allowing Chase to catch up. He climbed into the boat, dripping wet, and hauled his fist back. He punched Knox in the face as hard as he could. Knox grunted, more in surprise than pain, and fell back against the gunwale, almost capsizing them. Chase grabbed the oars and sat down in Knox's place.

“Don't
ever
do that again!” he growled.

Knox stayed silent, huddled against the seat, hiding a grin.

Chase pulled the skiff up into the lee of the peninsula that separated the river and the bay. They waited. The moon rose, leaving a silver trail across the river. He wrung out the apron of his tunic and gazed at the stars. He tried to use Hesam's technique to chart their position and contemplated how soon it would be before he would stoop to speaking to Knox again. He gave his tunic another angry twist. After what seemed like hours, a rhythmic chopping broke the silence. Evelyn was coming toward them, rowing quickly.

Teddy signaled her with a soft Melorian owl hoot.
Hoo-hoo
.

Evelyn pulled alongside their skiff. She, too, was sopping wet.

“I got us something to trade,” she panted, clearly pleased to see all three of them. She reached beneath the folds of her wet tunic. Rysta's necklace came tumbling out into her hands, its stone pendant swaying between her fingers.

“You stole it?” Chase gasped in disbelief.

“There's no time to explain now. We have to get moving,” she said. Evelyn put her back into the oars and glided swiftly into the mouth of the bay. Her skiff moved rapidly ahead, as if drawn by some unseen current. It would quickly outpace the boys' skiff and their scant supplies if they didn't figure something out. Knox blew a low whistle to catch Evelyn's attention. She slowed and let them come alongside.

“I don't know what's going on; you're moving really fast,” Knox said. “We can't keep up.”

“Throw me the bowline,” she whispered.

Knox threw it to her. She tied it to the stern of her skiff.

“Ted, get in the boat with Evelyn to even out the weight,” said Knox.

When Teddy was settled in her boat, Evelyn passed him the necklace. She had tried to put it on before, but it resisted her. It suddenly got too heavy and her arms wouldn't move. Teddy had no problem, however. The necklace slipped easily over his head. Its stone pendant swung at his navel. Evelyn began to row again.

The boats slid in tandem toward the mouth of the bay. The sky above was clear, but the stars seemed small and distant. Except for the occasional drip of water from the oars, there was no sound.

“Chase! Knox!” Teddy called back to his brothers, his head hanging over the gunwale of Evelyn's skiff, the necklace dangling perilously close to the water. He pointed down into the depths. “Look!” The water rolled like oil past the skiff's bow. Chase couldn't see anything. Teddy jabbed his finger downwards again. “See?”

The smallest glimmer of movement caught Chase's eye, a foot or more below the bay's inky surface. The giant silhouette of a turtle, green and shimmering, swam up beside the boat, then surfaced. A wizened face protruded from the mottled shell; its flippers waved lazily just beneath the water, rotating in circles, easily keeping abreast of the skiff. As if called by some unseen command, several mounds of shells rose from the water, surrounding them like small mountains.

“What do you think?” whispered Knox. “Should we turn around?”

Chase hesitated. The skiff hadn't lost any momentum, and the turtles weren't slowing them down. Teddy reached out his hand to touch the turtle nearest his boat. His hand made contact with the top of the large, slippery shell. The stone at the end of the necklace broke the water's surface and then, suddenly, all the turtles submerged.

“Whoa? Where'd they go?” asked Knox.

“Where do you think?” Evelyn called back grimly. “We need to get moving!”

They rowed harder and the two skiffs sped across the river. A breeze picked up as they approached the middle; telltale ripples in the trail of moonlight showed that the current was flowing downstream, opposite of where they wanted to go, but again, it seemed to make little difference to the speed of Evelyn's skiff. They easily gained the river and made swift progress against the current, dragging Chase and Knox's boat behind them.

“Keep thinking you want to go upstream, Ted,” called Chase, on a hunch. He could barely feel any resistance against his oars.

“Why?” Teddy yelled back.

“I think the necklace is helping us move—like an engine.”

“Or magic.”

“Or something.” Chase sighed. He peered nervously across the river toward the bay. It didn't seem like they were being followed.

He stopped rowing, letting Evelyn's boat pull them for a minute, and turned around fully. Knox was crouched in the bow. Ahead, Evelyn was rowing hard. Beyond her, he saw Teddy with Rysta's necklace around his neck, a small, dark smudge against the immense, moonlit sky. The gravity of what they'd just done hit him. Like a dream, a vision came to him of an army of Exorians marching toward them, led by a flaming pillar of fire. He groaned inwardly. Even with the necklace, they would be no match for a half-immortal enemy hunting them. They had just handed Dankar the advantage.

L
ouis lay in darkness, blindfolded and alone. The initiate's cell was a shallow indentation cut high in one of the rock spires that towered above the Dwellings, facing West. The ledge he was on was just wide enough to stretch out on and no more: One careless move would launch him several hundred feet down onto the desert basin below. He scratched cautiously at the sweaty blindfold that stuck to his face and resisted the urge to remove it. The scribe who brought him here had said only one thing:
The heart shares its secrets in the dark
.

He tried to lie quietly to preserve his body water for as long as possible. There had been no indication of how long he might be out here. His other senses had grown more keen to compensate for his lack of sight, and he was aware of the slightest shift in the air. If pressed, he could describe in detail every pebble that was sticking to his back. But there was no one to tell such things to and no one to guide him. All he knew for certain was that if he survived, there were only two possible places for him to go: to the arena to begin warrior training, or to the cliff encampments to become a scribe. The immediate goal was to survive. He thought of the countless others before him who had endured this test—and of those who didn't. What had happened to them? Did they give up and roll off the ledge to their deaths? How tempted might he be to do the same before the end? He licked his cracked lips and tried to ignore the growing hunger pains in his belly. As an outlier his fate was all the more uncertain; his daylights were unpredictable. Not even Dankar could foresee the outcome.

Louis tried to focus his attention by reviewing every detail of his trip back from Melor. An image came to him, unbidden, of Frankie riding a camel with her legs sticking straight out. He laughed out loud, breaking the tomblike silence. His throat ached with thirst. He stopped swallowing to collect saliva in a pool in his mouth, then let it trickle slowly down the back of his throat to ease the pain. He drifted in and out of sleep, growing more and more unsure of whether he was awake or asleep. Memories spun in his head as vividly as if he were seeing them with open, waking eyes, but they made no sense. One moment he was standing in the courtyard, watching Dankar with Frankie. The next, he and Frankie were walking together under the green canopy of the Melorian forest. She was singing.

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques

Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

Sonnez-les-matines, Sonnez les matines

din-dan-don

Real bells tolled loudly as the song ended.

I must be dreaming
, Louis thought to himself. He tried to wake up, but he was stuck in the dream. The tone of the bells deepened and stretched until they became the muted blast of a horn. He recognized the sound from somewhere.
Where was it?
He struggled to remember, the answer tantalizingly close, but couldn't.

A chill swept over him—unfamiliar, but welcome. The dappled light of the forest faded into a filmy gray, as if he were standing inside of a cloud. The horn bleated, persistent and mournful. Then, the ground shifted beneath him and began to sway. Above him, a sheet of fabric flapped aimlessly, making sharp cracking noises. A spray of water slapped his face. The cloud crowded in. A steady pounding sound took the place of the horn, and it felt like waves were tugging at his clothing. He felt their wet weight on his skin. Louis struggled to his knees, retching. A voice from somewhere in the fog called out to him. He turned in its direction. Frankie stood there, almost within arm's reach, her nut-brown eyes staring into his.

“You left me!” she said accusingly, pointing at him.

Louis tried to reply, but his throat was too raw to speak. The fog fell like a curtain over Frankie, obscuring her from his view. When it lifted again, a different little girl stood there pointing at him. This one had blonde pigtails and wore a yellow T-shirt. Her eyes were the color of the ocean. A searing pain erupted in Louis's head.

“You left me!” she said, just like Frankie.

The pain intensified. The sound of the surf crashed loudly in his ears.

“
You left me!
” the girl in pigtails shouted. Her face crumpled into tears.

The pain in Louis's head pulsed, strobe-like, and shattered in an agonizing spasm that evaporated the fog and the little girl. Other fragments of memory came back to him, slowly at first, and then in a rushing stream: a house by the sea, a sailboat, a woman handing him a sweater. Then, from far away, he saw the girl in the pigtails waving to him from a beach.

“Grace,” he moaned, not caring anymore what might happen to him. “I'm here! I'm right here!”

Frankie stirred, jarred out of sleep by a sound. She opened her eyes and listened, but the sound didn't repeat. Silver-purple moonlight shone into her bedroom through the open window and lit on the bed, stool, and broom that were the room's only furnishings. She crossed over to the window and looked out, as she did almost every night. In the near distance she could make out the silhouettes of the pit-houses: mud-daubed huts where the women and children of Exor lived. Beyond them, dark shadows holding torches moved silently along the shoulders and steppes of the cliff. By day, Exor was a silent and seemingly abandoned place, but at night it came alive. The scent of cooking hung in the air, and people traveled back and forth, attending to their work in the comfort of the cooler night air.

Frankie spent hours watching the shadows roam the periphery of her vision, wondering if any of them were Louis. She hadn't seen him since the first day here, when he had brought her to this room. She tried to keep him from leaving, but he was impatient. He wanted to begin his initiation.

“I have to prepare,” he told her, prowling the room and scowling at her like the first time she'd seen him. “Soon we'll know if I have the strength to become a warrior.”

“I hope not,” she said to him, pouting.

Louis sighed and knelt in front of her and looked her in the eye. “If I survive but am too weak to undergo the training, I will have to become a scribe—a personal attendant and guard of Dankar. Don't wish that fate on me, Frankie, please.”

“Why not? Then you could come back and be with me.”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “No matter what happens, I will not live here again.”

This made her cry. She knew it was true.

“I'm never going to see you again, am I?”

“No, but I may see you from time to time—from afar.”

“But I won't recognize you if you're one of
them
.”

He patted her shoulder and—this one time—didn't tell her not to cry. Then, he stood up to say good-bye.

“We have traveled the same path for many miles, Frankie, but our time together has ended, as all things must end. Be brave. Do not anger Dankar by being disobedient or unhappy in his presence. Do as he says and things will go well for you here.”

“But what's going to happen to you?”

“That is for my daylights to decide. You are an Exorian now and, like me, you must learn to find strength in the least likely of places.” He squeezed her shoulder and strode out of the room.

Since that day, she had only spoken to Dankar—and mostly only to answer his questions, which were unending and confusing. He wanted to know about things she had never thought about, such as: Who are the leaders of your country? To whom do they pay tribute? How many armies do they command? What weapons do they use? She couldn't tell him anything, which made him very angry. He told her she was lucky he had taken her in because there were many dangers in Ayda, including a kind of beast called a
tehuantl
that hunted little girls at night. He told her not to come out of her room until she could be more useful.

But, he also promised to bring her sister to her. For this reason, and because Louis had warned her to be good, she kept to herself and stayed out of Dankar's way, spending most of her time looking out her window, waiting for Evelyn, and hoping that Louis was still alive.