The Pleasure of Memory (19 page)

Beam instinctively touched his bruised cheek. “What, the eye? Nah, couldn’t be. The only kinsmen of yours I’ve met recently are floating downriver in chunks.”

The warrior’s grin evaporated. “You’re going to be an asshole to the end, aren’t you?”

Beam shrugged. “Love me for the way Calina made me. Who are you to second guess a goddess?”

The warrior sliced the air between them with three vicious strokes, and then began inching forward. “You’ve been a pain in our ass for quite some time now,” he said, “Like a boil that won’t properly suffer a lancing.”

Beam continued easing his way backward. “Trust me, friend,” he said, forcing a grin, “The feeling’s mutual.”

“Are you going to give me the caeyl? Or will you do me the favor of resisting so I can pick it from your corpse?”

“Sure, I’ll give it to you,” Beam said, “Like I gave it to your cousins out there. Just give me a minute to grab my sword.” He looked past the warrior at his sword resting uselessly against the fallen tree a dozen paces away. Even from here, he could see the red eye in the golden eagle’s claw. It was practically glowing in the shadows.

“You don’t have a minute.” The warrior lunged.

Beam only barely missed having his belly sliced opened by parrying the blade with his comparatively tiny knife.

The warrior attacked again. This time his blade tip caught the edge of Beam’s hand. Beam watched with great disappointment as his knife flipped off into the leaves on a spray of blood.

“Son of a bitch!” Beam yelled at him as he tucked the wounded hand under his arm.

The warrior was grinning as he leveled his sword tip toward Beam’s face. “I wish I could convey just how thankful I am to be the one who found you,” he said, “Calina blesses me with your blood.”

Beam again glanced at his own sword. He needed to get to it if he wanted to live. He just had to find a way around the little inconvenience of a sword tip circling the space before his face.

Still backing away, he said to the savage, “I tell you what. You put down your weapon and I swear to gods I’ll let you go with your skin intact.”

The warrior’s eyes darkened. “You’re an itch I’ve wanted to scratch for a long, long time,” he said like he meant it. He pressed forward with another lunge. Beam only barely swiveled out of the way in time.

“Goddamn it!” Beam shouted at him, “You should know you’re really testing my patience!”

“That’s quite amusing, skeechka,” the warrior snarled back, “But I don’t have time for your games. I’m going to kill you now. And I believe I’ll keep your ears as a memento.”

The warrior attacked.

The blade sliced across Beam’s belly, coming close enough to hear the scratch of steel on leather. He spun away, nearly falling for the effort. The savage sliced at him again, and then again, pressing in more boldly with each assault as Beam evaded him with rapidly diminishing margins.

Beam realized his final seconds were quickly ticking down, and he suffered a surge of irritation for it. The truth was he was about to be murdered at the hands of his own guilt. All for the memories of a goddamned monk! It was almost funny.

The warrior feigned left, but then attacked right. Beam dodged too late and braced himself for the incoming strike. But instead of the cold burn of steel, there was a brilliant pulse of red light followed by the pleasure of cold metal in his hands. He heard a shrill scream. Something hot and wet sprayed his face.

He landed on his back with the bastard savage sprawled atop him and the prick’s short sword spiked in the dirt an inch from his ear. The weight of the body was driving Beam’s own hilt so deeply into his gut that he couldn’t draw a breath. With great effort, he rolled the corpse off him and scrambled back from the murder, backing away on his hands and knees with his breath returning in gags and fits.

It was all too unbelievable. Buried to the hilt in the dead Vaemyn’s chest was his sword, his new sword, the sword he’d last seen leaning against the tree twenty feet away. Blood streaked the golden handle and coated the red crystal eye. It felt like a dream, unreal and unbelievable. He looked back at the lonely tree. When had he grabbed it?
How
had he grabbed it? It’d been too far away to reach. It had to be some kind of hallucination, the clutch of confusion brought on by the fever of battle.

He climbed stiffly to his feet. He spit some blood into the dirt. He wiped his hands on his britches as he walked over to the corpse. It didn’t matter how he’d reached his sword, he told himself. It was there when he needed it, and he couldn’t waste the time or energy pursuing foolish theories even if he’d had the time and energy to spare, which he most certainly did not. Instead, he braced the corpse with a foot and pulled the weapon free.

There was no time to ponder it now, not with an infestation of warriors crawling up the hill toward him. He had to get the hell out of there. He scooped up his knife and ran for the tree.

The armored figure was still standing back by the house. He had his hands raised out in the air before him as if trying to stop an approaching wagon. The monk was now on his feet and had somehow gotten his hands on the black-masked man’s staff or scepter, which he held leveled spear-like toward the man. He wore an expression of rage fierce enough to melt steel. Beam figured the masked man would be well advised to do more than just stand there with his hands up. The fourth savage was nowhere to be seen.

The mage yelled something threatening at the masked man just as a pungent, metallic scent filled the air. Before Beam could process what he was seeing, a blue bolt of lightning erupted from the end of the monk’s staff and sizzled across the yard toward the masked man. In the same instant, a similar charge of yellow light streaked out from the raised hands of his opponent. The peculiar lightning streams met in the middle, exploding into each other in a great, rolling ball of green fire.

Beam couldn’t believe what he was looking at. The fireball raged a yard above the ground, skewered in place by opposing streaks of lightning. Black smoke roiled up from the corpses smoldering just beneath it.

The monk appeared even wilder than before, with his teeth bared and long hair floating eerily around his head. Gone was the victim. Gone was the pathetic, defeated hermit. Gone was the image of a gentle, troubled man that had so compelled Beam to lay his head on the block for a man he didn’t even know.

Never mind, he told himself, it means nothing now. The savages would be pouring over the edge of the climb at any minute. It was time to put an end to this so he could make his retreat while he still had some skin to protect.

He shoved his weapons over the side of the fallen tree and into the yard, and then scrambled over himself. Once free of the tree’s shield he felt the true power of the blaze. Even from so far away, the heat felt as intense as standing next to a smelting furnace. The sickening reek of the corpses broiling in the grass beneath the fireball was nearly unbearable.

He could see the monk was tiring quickly, and he understood his defeat would leave Beam with the masked man’s undivided attention. Though he wanted nothing more than to run like hell, he knew this was a variable he couldn’t leave hanging behind him. He had to finish what he’d started. So he spiked his sword into the dirt and quickly spanned his crossbow. He dropped a bolt into place, moved a few paces to the side for a clearer shot, then cradled the bow against his shoulder and took aim at the armored man. The bolt buried itself deep into the soldier’s forehead.

Beam was about to applaud his remarkable skills of marksmanship when the unthinkable happened. The masked man remained standing. His fight with the monk didn’t even waver. The feathered bolt stuck out from the middle of its forehead like a misplaced antler, exactly as planned, but it had no more effect than to draw the man’s attention.

The masked man was looking directly at him now with eyes that burned in reflection of the yellow lightning. Even as he fought the monk, even as that bizarre light issued from his hands, even as he struggled for control of that fireball raging between them, his attention was focused on Beam.

In that unbelievably bizarre moment, Beam realized that the man wasn’t wearing a mask at all. In fact, he wasn’t even a man, not by any definition Beam was familiar with. That black, oily substance covering his face was skin. Stranger even than his flesh, his eyes weren’t just reflecting the light, they looked to be actually glowing from within, burning with the same yellow flame as the lightning issuing from his hands.

Impossible, Beam told himself as he quickly reloaded his bow. Maybe he was still back in the cave, still suffering the delusions brought on by that fouled rabbit. Maybe he was asleep and chained to the deliriums brought on by his wounds. Maybe he was dying. And yet, dream or no, delusion or no, reality or no, it made no difference in the end. He simply refused to yield.

He raised the crossbow and fired again, and again the bolt buried itself into the man’s head, penetrating the right temple, but this time the shot had consequences. The man’s yellow charge wavered briefly, just long enough that the monk was able to force the fireball back toward it. The flames rolled closer to the man, to within yards of it, a roiling ball of frenzied green light that looked more liquid than fire.

That did it. Whatever manner of creature this was, man or beast or something yet unnamed, it now had to focus its full attention on its battle with the monk. It staggered back from the inferno, its face bubbling in the heat. Black liquid spattered its armor and streaked down its chest as if he were a wax figure melting before a fire.

Beam couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Nothing could have survived so close to that fireball, and yet the strange creature continued fighting despite it. It was unexplainable.

Enough is enough, Beam told himself again. He’d done what he could. He’d given it his all and had nothing to show for it but a couple lost bolts and the attention of a murderer. The hermit monk was on his own. It was time to make his exit.

He turned to gather his weapons, but the sword was gone. Then he spied it. It was back by the tree. It was standing upright leaning against the bark. He remembered spiking it in the dirt, and right there before his feet was the hole it’d left as evidence. As he looked back at the sword, he saw the light. The eye wasn’t just dimly glowing; it was a brilliant flame, a beacon of crimson light that raged through the blood drying on the hilt, sending spikes of light dancing around it.

“What the hell is this?” he whispered.

The sound of the battle faded behind him. A voice materialized in his head, the same voice from the cave, the same voice that led him to the sword, to the strange crystalline room with the remains of the proud Vaemyn.

Trust your memories, Be’ahm. You must trust your memories.

Beam threw a hand to his eyes and fought back the illusion. That’s all it was, an illusion brought on by a weak mind and a tendency for self-indulgence. Helping the monk had been a childish act of pride and arrogance just the same as it had been with Gerd, and he was a fool and a sap for having succumbed to it. He had to leave! He had to get the hell out of here and back to Parhron and the city, back to the modern life. He had to get away from this nightmare before it consumed him!

When he opened his eyes again, he was holding the sword.

Blood rushed into his head, hot and demanding, and for just an instant, he felt faint. This could not be! The silvery blade rose up before him. The eye just beneath his grip was nearly blinding in its brilliance. Then he felt himself turning. It was the only way he could register the sensation. He
felt
himself turning back toward the battle,
felt
himself walking forward,
felt
himself leveling the sword at the man or creature or whatever the hell this thing was that so vexed the monk.

The dark soldier craned its head back at him, tracking him with its obscene eyes even as it continued its fight with the monk. Its face was boiling now. The radiance of heat shimmered from its head. The bolts still jutted out from its forehead, though they were drifting lower as the creature’s flesh melted. The odor of hot tar smothered the air even above the stench of the burning dead.

Beam
felt
himself moving quickly around behind the tarry bastard, the sword leveled lethally in his hands. And then, much to his horror, he
felt
himself charging toward it.

The blade pierced the armor as easily as a pitchfork pierces straw. He rammed into the beast at a full run.

He bounced back from the impact and collapsed into the smoking grass, yet somehow maintained enough self-control to roll quickly away from the heat. A screech ripped through the forest, a shrill, penetrating wail as cold as death. He knew the sound. He’d heard it before. He’d heard it in the cave, and it was as terrible in life as it’d been in his dream.

The shrieking beast continued to hurl its yellow energy at the monk even after it’d dropped to its knees. The sword’s hilt jutted out from its back, and the red light from the eye embedded in the pommel bathed the world in crimson radiance. The scream grew higher in pitch. Beam scrambled back against the log house and clapped his hands to his head. The horrible noise pulsed through his skull like a seizure, shuddering down his spine and into his limbs until every bone in his body wanted to throw itself free of him.