The Malmillard Codex (11 page)

"Damn you, Val," Madryn whispered. "I've
been trying to wake you since sunrise."

Val shifted on his hard bed, irritated at
Madryn. How dare she wake him without his express orders? And he
had given no such orders, he knew. Well, she'd be sorry. He knew
full well how to make her sorry for disobeying him.

Something pressed into his left buttock. It
felt very much like a rock. Why were there rocks in his bed, he
wondered idly? Shouldn't he be on his thick feather bed, with his
dozens of pillows and the silken sheets?

Val opened his mouth to ask Madryn why there
were rocks in his bed, and why his head was pounding so. Had he too
much wine at dinner? Why had she allowed it, damn her?

Then his mouth shut with an audible
snap.

Valerik. He was Valerik. Valerik the slave.
Not Valaren the lord.

Then why did he remember being both?

Who was he?

Another groan issued from Val's mouth as
Madryn eased his head up and fed him sips of brackish water.

"Damn you, Val," she repeated in a shaky
voice, "I thought you dead. They had to pry your arms and legs from
around me after we'd washed ashore."

Val struggled to sit up. At last, with
Madryn's strong arms supporting him, he was able to look around
him.

They were on a sandy shore and the sun was
beaming down rays like copper swords. All around them lay the
litter and debris of a shipwreck. Spars and ropes in Gordian knots.
Barrels split and whole, lumber and bits of cargo. Women and men
lying bloated and white, never to sail again, some with the chains
of the galley slave still encircling their ankles. Others,
passengers and crew alike, wandered amidst the wreckage, picking
out useful articles, dragging split and sodden lumber to throw on a
roaring fire down the beach.

Val took another sip of water, then shifted
and squirmed.

There
was
a rock under his
buttocks.

He lost consciousness again.

***

Madryn grinned across the table at Lord
Valaren Starseeker.

"Checkmate, my lord," she said as she moved
her queen onto a red square.

Valaren leaned back in his cushioned
armchair. His dark eyes sparkled in the candlelight. He grinned in
return.

"How did you learn to play chess so well,
Commander?" he asked as he reached for his silver goblet and took a
sip of his favorite vintage.

Madryn laughed as she slid her own chair
back from the small table inset with the chessboard of red and
black marble squares. Her long legs sprawled across the thick rug
that carpeted the small study, glossy black boots in sharp contrast
to the multicolored embroidery. "We don't have swords in our hands
every second, my lord," she replied. "There are weeks, months even,
when we spend all our time practicing our strokes and playing
games."

"Nothing more than that?" asked Valaren
smoothly, his own smile answering hers, thick with hidden
meaning.

Madryn looked at him, her violet-gray eyes
narrowed. This man disturbed her, those eyes said. But he attracted
her even more.

"What else would we do, my lord?" she asked,
the smile gone from her narrow brown face. She sat up straighter in
her hard chair.

Valaren nodded at her, watched as she
twisted and turned her eyes away in discomfort. His power over her
was growing day by day.

Good. This one would take all his powers to
subdue.

He only hoped they would be enough.

***

Val awoke again and again that long and
painful day, and each time his confusion was greater than before.
His memories overlay and intermingled with those of another man,
and he had great trouble, each time he awoke, deciphering just who
and what he was.

He wanted to tell Madryn about his dreams.
But she was in them, always; a part of every scene, every moment.
Val had to find out what she felt for Lord Valaren Starseeker. He
had to follow the dreams to the end…and hope that he would remain
at the end.

At last Val awoke and stayed that way for
some time, drinking tiny sips of water, wincing as each wave of
pain shot through his battered head. By sunset he had recovered
enough to walk a few steps, his muscles sore, his head still tender
from the glancing blow it had received when the mainmast had broken
free and landed atop them.

"You saw it coming and threw your body over
mine," Madryn told him as they paced slowly up and down the beach,
Val's strength returning with every step. "Not satisfied with
saving my life once, you had to go and do it again. Now what am I
to do with you?"

Val looked over at her face, so near to his
own. They were walking—stumbling, rather, in his condition, he
thought wryly—back toward the fire that had been started from the
ruins of the
Atria
. A savory smell wafted towards them…fish
sizzling on heated stones.

Madryn looked straight ahead. Val examined
her profile: straight nose, firm chin, high forehead, and amber
hair in a thick braid down her back. She had taken a swim earlier,
washed most of the grime and blood away.

Val's mind whirled in confusion. He looked
at Madryn and saw another woman overlaying her, a faint ghost of a
woman in midnight blue and gold, even as his odd and fragmented
memories of Valaren Starseeker overlay those of the slave
Valerik.

What had happened to him after that blow to
his head? Why did he have memories of a man he'd never met? Were
the dreams he'd been experiencing, ever since that strange
confrontation in the alley in Karleon, now simply becoming more
accessible?

"Madryn," he began, hesitant, not sure if he
could tell her about what was happening within his head, "when the
mast hit us—"

"And you saved my life?" she interrupted
with a sidelong grin. It split her profile most intriguingly from
his viewpoint, and he was overcome with a brief but sharp memory of
that smile in different days. He remembered her crooked grin across
a table from him—from him? From Lord Valaren, surely?—after beating
him at chess. It had been a hotly contested game, and Madryn had
beaten him after hours of move and countermove.

But how could he remember something that had
happened to another man? Had Lord Valaren Starseeker somehow come
back, possessing a slave's mind as he had possessed their bodies in
life? For Starseeker was dead, Val knew…

And Madryn had desired Lord Valaren
Starseeker. Val was convinced of that, not only from things she had
told him, but from fragments of that other man's memories that
flashed like comets across his sleeping mind. Madryn had wanted him
with a passion that matched the slave Valerik's for her. But Lord
Valaren had not wanted her…not, at least, in that same way.

This too Val knew from the alien images that
thronged in his mind, overlaying and intermingling with his own
thoughts.

Why had Madryn, to Val the most incredible
of women, wasted her passions on one such as Lord Valaren? How had
Val gained these memories, memories of a man that he knew he never
was, could never have been? Where had they come from? And what, in
the names of all the gods whose names he did not know…what was he
going to tell Madryn?

***

The dark voice gave a whinnying laugh. "The
storm was a bit much, was it not?"

Cold answered with an invisible shrug. "It
was necessary. The meeting in the alleyway taught the part. Now the
stage is set for the play to be acted."

The globe floated within a thin inky mist.
Tendrils of the mist wavered and fought for position, twining and
twisting together like disembodied fingers of Nibiat warriors. Deep
within the floating globe there was the image of two tiny figures
walking along a sandy shore, their arms draped about each
other.

"No suspicion as yet?" asked the dark.

"None in the least," assured cold.

"You are too sure, it seems to me," replied
dark in an ebony whine. "We have waited long for our plans to come
to fruition. It would be bad to lose our advantages now, when we
are so close to our ultimate goal."

A frigid wind blew through the chamber,
across rows of books bound in warty skin, around tall glass jars
containing grinning heads. The gust rifled piles of papers on the
top of a long desk, papers held secure with weights of lead-filled
skulls.

Cold was laughing. "We will obtain the final
pieces to our puzzle, brother dear," promised cold, when the laugh
had died away at last. "What was found before shall be found again.
And before all is lost forever."

Outside the tall stone tower, a sizzle and
crack of lightning spat across a jet sky. Stars jostled against
each other outside the open window, gathering to spy on the
inhabitants of the round, sad room.

"See that it is so, then," reminded the dark
voice. "I would have them suffer anew."

"Suffering, after all, is our business,
brother," agreed cold.

A stone lying on the windowsill cracked wide
in the icy air and split into twin sections. One piece fell out the
window, tumbling for long, slow instants before it reached the sere
and arid soil, where nothing dared to grow.

The stars
spread over them in a canopy of glory. The sound of waves breaking
on the shore was a soft and distant accompaniment to their words.
Val and Madryn lay side by side on the warm sands, separated by an
arm's length of sand, sheltered by a high jumble of rocks from a
blazing fire and the remnants of survivors. Madryn was still, her
breathing soft and gentle. Val twisted and turned, his face a mask
of pain and confusion.

Five days had passed since the wreck of the
Atria.

Val enjoyed every moment of every one of
those sun-drenched days. He ate his fill of shellfish and regained
his strength, first walking and then running up and down the sandy
shale. He spent every waking moment in Madryn's company, ignoring
the others as he spoke with her, watched her walk and sit and eat;
waiting for that crooked smile to light up her narrow face. On the
third day, she taught him to swim, laughing at his mad antics and
the clumsy paddling of his thick, strong arms.

But at night…at night, there were the
dreams. The first night Val slept poorly, drifting in a daze far
short of true sleep. But as his bruised and battered head began to
heal, he slept…and the dreams began in earnest.

Each night, as soon as his eyes closed, Val
found himself in the body and in the world of Lord Valaren
Starseeker. He walked through marble palaces, he ate from golden
plates, he slept in feather beds, and he dressed in silks and
satin. It was a life that was at once familiar and utterly alien to
Valerik the slave. He had all the things in his dreams that he had
ever wanted.

And he hated it all. Lord Valaren was a
cruel, arrogant man, full of his own importance, viciously
belittling others. Anything that he could not control infuriated
him; anyone who dared to cross him irritated him; and any who did
not share his desires astonished him.

Madryn infuriated, irritated and astonished
Lord Valaren. To a great extent, Val could understand the man's
feelings; Madryn often had the same effect on him.

But not for the same reasons.

Val began to dread sleep, to hate the man
whose mind he inhabited during the long reaches of the night.

How could Madryn have wanted a man like
Valaren Starseeker?

***

Captain Zenobio had survived his ship and
another was sure to be on its way, he told the other survivors each
morning. The ship had the great good luck to weather the storm just
long enough to wreck within sight—and reach—of the shore. The
captain assured the remainder of his passengers and crew that they
had landed just to the south of the city of Lakazsh. A messenger
had been sent to the city on a hastily rigged raft, and it was only
a matter of time, the captain kept repeating, before a ship arrived
to take them the rest of the way.

Many of the passengers had survived the
storm, as well as a good portion of the crew. The galley slaves,
naturally, had perished, save for a pair who had managed to slip
their emaciated ankles from the manacles that bound them to their
stations.

But by the second day, Madryn had given up
all hope of finding Daemon alive. The great black stallion had been
housed under a temporary shelter on the afterdeck, tied down to
prevent him from breaking a leg on the rolling, tossing ship. After
the storm struck, no one had the time or the opportunity to check
on his condition. The last time any of the survivors remembered
seeing the horse was just before a huge wave broke over the
stern.

Val hated to think of the stallion being
gone. He offered his clumsy condolences to Madryn on the third day,
laying a hand on her arm.

Madryn looked at him, her violet-gray eyes
heavy with unshed tears.

"Thank you, Val," she murmured.

Then she had spoken no more of Daemon.

***

A ship hove into view on the morning of the
sixth day. Val awakened with the sunrise, tired and confused from
his uneasy night spent as another man. He looked around at once for
Madryn. She slept near him every night, within touching distance,
often waking him for sips of water when his restless dreaming woke
her. Once he'd had a fever raging through him, his body racked with
chills; Madryn clung to him, the heat of her body soothing him in
his pain.

But Madryn spoke little during the passing
days. Her eyes were glued to the sea, or fixed with a calculating
air on the rough, rocky cliffs that rose above their beach. Val
could tell that she was counting the days left before the great
yearly caravan left Lakazsh for the south; the caravan that she was
determined to be a member of, at whatever cost.

So Val was very glad to see the rescue ship
come into view. It was indeed the one promised by Captain Zenobio,
and the survivors were loaded into the ship's boats and taken
aboard before the sun was fully overhead.