The Pleasure of Memory (22 page)

The door bridged a nearly two feet deep passage through the rock. Bracing a hand against the outer wall, he leaned cautiously forward and peered into the room. A dozen firebrands were spaced at even intervals along the walls so that the cave was actually quite well illuminated. In fact, it wasn’t even a cave at all, not in the traditional sense. The room was square and spacious, easily thirty feet long and nearly as wide. The walls were smooth as the surface of a maiden’s bedroom and painted sky blue. The floor was polished marble with a grand carpet at its center, and it was warmer than the outside air, probably due to the torches.

“How did you light all these so quickly?” he called to the monk. When he got no response, he readjusted his grip on the cliff face and eased his head in further. “Hello?”

The monk was loitering at the far wall, a dozen paces to his left. He stood with his back to Beam before a long wooden table covered with a multitude of colorful glass jars full of equally colorful powders and liquids. Shelves lined the wall above the table, each crowded with candles, wine bottles, and tin canisters. The room’s air was heady and aromatic with the scent of incense and herbs.

“I won’t be long,” the man said as he ran his finger along a series of smaller clay vials sitting on the first shelf above the table. He took one from the middle, removed the lid, and tapped the green powder into a clay mortar.

Beam’s mouth dried up just thinking about going inside. It wasn’t that he lacked experience with the terrors of his flesh. In truth, it was quite the opposite. As a matter of record, he’d fought this selfsame fear a thousand times in environments far more treacherous than this one. In those cases, however, he’d been alone and less vulnerable.

He willed himself a half-pace deeper into the cave, but even that miserly distance brought the room collapsing down on him. He couldn’t get his breath. He fell back against the jamb with his arm anchored safely outside the cave, half in and half out of the door. He was dismayed to note how vigorously his legs were shaking.

He closed his eyes. The cool night air whispering through the door felt like freedom. He needed to take his elixir if he was going in, but the thought of enduring the vomiting ritual again was simply unbearable. He didn’t think he could do it, not after the day he’d just suffered, not with his ribs in such a state. Maybe it’d be best to camp outside after all. He could sleep behind the barb-cedar hedge and take his chances. Nothing mortal could ever get through them. With their thousands of lethal barbs, they were as secure as a cell wall.

“What are you doing out there?” the monk called.

Beam dragged a sleeve across his mouth, steadied himself, and then leaned bravely into the room to look back at the monk. A torch was mounted on the wall slightly above eye level just inside the door. It rested in an iron brace that was older than the hills. He was surprised to see that the flambeau wasn’t even wood, but a thick rod of iron capped with a few inches of some reddish colored metal. More than that, the flame had a peculiar green tint to it.

Curiosity pulled rank on fear. With his back still pressed securely against the doorframe, he slid a half step further into the room and held an open hand up toward the flame. He’d never seen a torch like this before. There was no bundling on it. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn the reddish metal at the end was itself burning. He eased a half step closer, his hand still locked tightly on the doorjamb. The flambeau had to be a lamp of some sort. The shaft was likely a kind of tube filled with oil. He tapped a nail against the metal taper. It didn’t sound hollow.

The granite floor suddenly shimmied beneath him.

He seized the wall. A rush of cool air washed over his damp legs. He’d ventured too far in! He was having a seizure!

He threw himself back at the door, but instead of an opening he found only rock. At first, he thought he’d made a turn somewhere in the two steps he’d taken, that maybe the door was still there, but around a corner he couldn’t see. However, a quick inspection told him that idea was bullshit. The door was simply gone! There
was
no door!

He threw himself against the blue wall and beat his fists on the stone as if he could open it by sheer force of will. “Goddamn it!” he cried, “What the hell is this?”

Horror tightened like a noose. While he’d been distracted by the torch, the exit had sealed on him. Worse, there was no evidence that a door had ever existed there at all. There were no cracks, no outlines, no latch or hinges. There was nothing but cold and unyielding rock.

He slapped at the wall. “What is this?” he yelled at the monk, “Let me out of here!”

His stomach surged into his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He turned and fell back against the stone. The walls were sliding toward him. The ceiling was spinning downward in slow, dream-like motion. The monk was miles away.

“Treachery!” Beam yelled as he slid along the wall to the ground, “What’ve you done, you bastard?”

Maybe the monk couldn’t hear him. The man hadn’t even looked back. Maybe he was too far away. Maybe the monk wasn’t there at all!

He felt the floor gather up around him. He landed hard on his rear, biting his tongue on impact. He fumbled at the buckle on his chest, but his fingers were thick as clay. He had to get to his quiver. He needed the elixir! He needed it now!

To his shock, the weapons belt miraculously fell free. He dragged the quiver around to his lap. His hands were shaking like a dry drunk. The stitching ripped as he clawed at the side pocket for the vial.

There it was! The elixir. It was in his hands.

He pawed at the stopper, but his hands were slick with sweat, his fingers numb and unresponsive. The vial slipped through his hands. He watched in horror as it clattered to the marble floor. It stopped rolling several feet out in the middle of the carpet, but it might just as well have been a mile. Fear had him paralyzed. He couldn’t call out, couldn’t even blink the sweat from his eyes. Bile washed against the back of his throat. He was going to be sick.

The monk appeared above him. He was looking down at him from a mile up in the cave. Then his form cascaded downward like a stream of water suddenly cut from the pitcher. The man’s face swelled into view, blocking the world behind him. He was attacking! He had to be!

Beam tried to warn him off, but his voice was useless. The monk could take everything he owned and there wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do to prevent it. He never should’ve trusted the man. He should’ve let the stinking savages have him back at the house. He never should have intervened!

The monk came at him and Beam could do nothing to resist. The bastard grabbed his face with both hands. He turned his head from one side to the other. What the hell was he doing? Was he a blood drinker? He wanted to yell out, to demand the monk leave him be, but his voice was lost.

The monk’s fingers probed his skull. He felt them skulking around in the flesh behind his ears, first one and then the other. The man was touching his stumps, goddamn him! The pressure of his fingers there were intense and unbearable, like the dull end of nails driving into his skull!

“I apologize for the drama of the door,” the man said, his voice as loud as a hammer beating a pan, “I suspected a half-breed Vaemyn would share the same terror common to full bloods, but I couldn’t be sure.”

The realization of what had happened landed like a thunderclap. The son of a bitch knew his secret!

The monk still had his head. His face again swelled into view before Beam. “Yes, I know what you are,” the man said, “I suspected it when you first appeared. You were too fast to be Parhronii, and then you were far too reluctant to enter the cave. But I wasn’t certain until I felt the stubs where you amputated your oteuryns.”

A small flask materialized before Beam’s eyes. It swayed back and forth in his vision, blurring into three, and then four, and then one again.

“I began mixing this as soon as we arrived,” the man screamed, “It’ll soothe your fears.”

An arm slipped behind his shoulders. Beam felt himself shudder as the man pulled him forward. Nausea swelled with the sudden motion. The urge to urinate was almost unbearable, though he fought it with all his will. Don’t let me do it, he pleaded to the gods. Please, I beg of you. Don’t let me piss myself. Not now. Not in front of the monk!

Then something warm and sweet trickled into his mouth, and with it a soothing heat radiated across his tongue and down his throat. The sensation spread quickly into his chest and washed through his belly, and the panic immediately began to ease. His heart was slowing. He could breathe again.

“This’ll cut the dread caused by your confinement fear.” The voice was still loud, but didn’t hurt so much now. “In a few minutes, you’ll sleep.”

Beam felt himself sliding along the wall. The floor was rising up toward him, but he had no urge to resist. Before he hit, the strong arm caught him and gently lowered him the remaining inches to the carpet as the lights gradually faded around him.

XII

AN ELEMENTARY DIALOGUE

EAM OPENED HIS EYES.

He was lying on his belly with his cheek against something coarse and prickly.

He thought at first he was back in the cave where he’d found the sword, but the weapon was resting there on the carpet beside him. He thought of the strange battle between the Vaemyn and the dark knight. He thought of his trip down the mountain, and the patrolling savages, and the cabin, and all the events that led him to lying on the floor of this unnatural cave.

He shoved himself up onto his side and grabbed his chest. The pouch was still there. He almost laughed with relief. His next stop was his crotch where he was equally relieved to find his leathers dry.

A pair of dirty bare feet stepped into view beside him. A hand lowered a metal plate of food to his lap. He couldn’t quite bring the plate into focus.

“How long have I been out?” he asked. His voice felt drier than a hangover.

“Not long,” the monk said, “Less than an hour.”

The memory of the door rushed in. The damned monk had tricked him. He sent an obligatory scowl up at the man. “You’re a real prick,” he said, “You know that?”

“Really? You’re welcome.”

“You might’ve warned me before you closed the door.”

“I treated you immediately.”

“I could’ve treated myself before I came in.”

“You wouldn’t have.” The man stepped over Beam and crossed back to the table.

Beam pushed himself up and shimmied himself back against the wall. “You don’t know that,” he said, “I have my own tonic. If you hadn’t been such a sneaky bastard, I could’ve taken it before you sealed the goddamned door. Better yet, before you even opened it.”

The monk sat down on a tall stool, one of two sitting before the long table. He picked a vial up from the table and shook it in Beam’s direction. “Is this the nostrum you’re referring to?”

“Where’d you get that?” Beam asked, though he clearly remembered it rolling out of reach immediately before the fit took him.

“This elixir’s older than the hills.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“Because I brewed it,” the man said.

Beam laughed at that. “You sincerely expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t give a shimlin’s rub what you believe,” the man said, “This blue leaf stamped here on the bottom is my symbol. My guess is you bought it from Sarrigh. A miserable old Parhronii in a red wagon painted up with pictures of serpents, nymphs, and saints?”

Beam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, “How could you possibly know that?”

“I brew some of the tonics the weasel sells. He knows better than to sell it after the first year. Of course, he does whatever he wants to because he’s a lying, cheating scoundrel. You’re lucky it didn’t kill you.”

Beam popped a chunk of meat in his mouth and thought about the tonic. Judging by the monk’s threadbare clothes, he had no doubt the man needed the income. It looked like he needed a lot more than what the elixirs were providing.

“What’s that mean?” he asked as he chewed, “That I’m lucky it didn’t kill me?”

“The elixirs are sadly prone to going rancid after a span of just over a year,” the monk said, “They sour because of an issue around the preservation process for Elm Worms. They just do not keep well. After an extremely precise period of time, thirty-three days over one year, in fact, their blood extract curdles into a kind of venom. I’ve been trying to find a remedy for it, but...” The man shrugged and took a bite of cheese. “It’s unimportant. I’m working on it.”

“Why don’t the savages use this stuff?” Beam asked, “Works like a charm for me.”

The man didn’t look at him. “I only developed the test formula around ten years ago. It’s been a project in development since. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve evolved the recipe enough that it’ll work for the Vaemyn. Their phobia runs very deep. It’s more than a cultural phenomenon, it’s actually biological.”