The Pleasure of Memory (24 page)

Beam’s discomfort was starting to rage. There was the distinct possibility that the man sitting beside him might be a few coins short of a purse. He refilled his mug and braced himself with another slug before turning to face the storm full on.

“Brother,” he began, “Think this—”

The monk again slapped the table. “My name is Chance!”

Beam winced at that. “Chance,” he said, watching the man, “Yeah, got it.”

The man only glowered back at him.

“So, let’s think this through,
Chance
,” Beam continued, “There are more forms of life in this world than a thousand men could explore in their combined lifetimes. Why, just this morning, an animal that looked like a hairy turtle with long legs and a mouth full of teeth chased me halfway through the damned forest. The damned thing was—”

“A bogsquag.”

“Excuse me?”

“The animal that chased you. It’s called a bogsquag. There’s nothing mystical about it. It lives in the forest.”

“Exactly my point,” Beam said, stabbing the table with his finger, “You’ve vindicated my argument. Just because I’ve never seen one before doesn’t mean it’s a monster. It’s just an animal I’ve never seen before. The same theory holds true for that thing back at your house. Think about it. Someone who’s never met a Baeldon might easily mistake one for a…a giant, for example.”

Chance shook his head. “Blood of the gods,” he said softly, “You’re not a skeptic. You’re just unenlightened.”

Beam laughed at that. “
I’m
unenlightened? That’s rich. If you knew the things I’ve seen in my travels, you’d understand how much bullshit is wrapped around that statement. Some cultures have mystical explanations for farts, for Calina’s sake.”

“How did that happen?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some primitive once farted into a fire and sent the flames—”

“Not that! I mean how did your face come to look like a sausage?”

Beam feigned insult. “Now that’s just rude, Brother. We’re born with the looks Calina gave us, for gods’ sakes. It isn’t right to insult folks about things they’ve no control over.”

“Are you telling me you were born with your face beaten to a pulp?”

Beam paused. Then he laughed. “Oh, that,” he said, “No, that came from a little swim I took back by the falls, courtesy of our friends out there. But you’ll find comfort in the fact that I left them in far worse shape.”

“Is that right?”

“More or less.” Beam considered another drink, but pushed the mug away instead. He was surprised to find himself a little drunker than he should be. He wrote it off to the altitude.

“That part of the forest is a bad place to travel uninvited,” Chance said.

“Didn’t have much choice,” Beam said, “Found myself with the options of taking a swim at the falls or donating my skin to the savages. I’d take the swim again any day.”

“There’s another question I’ve been waiting to ask you.”

“I can’t wait.”

Chance leaned into the table sideway, propping himself on an elbow. He was staring at Beam a tad more intensely than Beam appreciated.

When the man didn’t proceed, Beam said, “You got something to say, Brother? If so, just do it.”

After a moment, Chance shrugged his eyebrows, and then waved a finger toward Beam’s head. “Didn’t that hurt?”

“What, the face? Damn me, no. Never felt a thing. I was knocked senseless long before the pain set in.”

“Not your face. The oteuryns.”

“Oh. The horns.” Beam carefully touched the exposed stub of bone behind his left ear. It was cut quite flush to the skin. Still, even amputated, the organs remained intensely sensitive. “You have no idea,” he said, thinking back on it, “Having an eye gouged out couldn’t hurt that much.”

“For the love of Pentyrfal, why in the world would you do something like that? Cut off a healthy piece of flesh, I mean?”

Beam shrugged. “It was a constant bloody reminder, that’s why.”

“Of what?”

“Imagine the blood of the person you hate most in the world pumping under your skin.”

“Go on.”

Beam didn’t go on. What was he doing? Why was he telling this stranger anything? It wasn’t any of his damned business, was it? It was just the wine making him chatty as a nun. He needed to get his shit together before he ended up the monk’s girlfriend and spent the night spooning on the carpet with him. He grabbed the wine jug and poured another shot after all.

“Who did they remind you of?” Chance pressed.

“Doesn’t matter,” Beam said, “I just wanted them gone.” He downed the wine and dropped the mug back to the table.

“I suspect you have more history with the Vaemyn than simple heritage.”

“What business is it of yours?” Beam said, “I just wanted the foul bastards out of my blood, if that’s all right with you. I couldn’t cut them out of me, but I sure as hell could cut the evidence off me.”

Chance took a sip of his wine.

“In retrospect,” Beam continued despite his better intentions, “It may not have been my best decision. It was like being blinded, I guess. The taer-cael was like a second set of eyes. I still catch some vibrations, but they’re too muddied to be of any use. In fact, now they’re more distraction than help.”

“When did you do it?”

Beam thought back. Had it really been so many years ago? Good gods, it didn’t seem possible. It seemed like he’d looked away for just a few minutes and his life had flown by.

“You’re scowling,” Chance said, “Again, I might add.”

“Suppose I haven’t thought of it in a while. Man, you should’ve seen it when the butcher made the first cut.”

Chance frowned. “Butcher?”

Beam laughed. “Yeah, a meat butcher. He was also the local bleeder and poker dealer.”

Chance’s eyes swelled.

Beam waved away his alarm. “Relax, Brother. It’s not as bad as you’d think. There were only three people in Notown with the right equipment: The healer, the blacksmith, and the butcher. The healer was a guttersnipe drunk who could kill a man lancing a boil. The blacksmith hated me because of his finger. That only left the butcher.”

“Gods above,” Chance said with a wave, “I don’t know why I’m asking this, but what happened to the blacksmith’s finger?”

“Disagreement over cards. He’d owed me money for a year and always had some excuse why he couldn’t pay. I finally got tired of it and took his finger as collateral on the debt.”

Chance again shrugged his eyebrows. Then he sat up with his wine and finished it off. As he set the mug back down on the table, he said, “You are some kind of man.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.

“Don’t look at me that way,” Beam said quickly, “I gave the finger back as soon as he paid me off.”

Chance didn’t say a word.

“Anyway,” Beam continued, “When the butcher made the first snip, the blood must’ve squirted a good ten feet across the room. It was bloodier than dehorning a bull. By the time he’d finished, the tavern looked like it’d hosted a murder. Took five guys to hold me down, and I damned well bathed them all in blood.”

Chance poured more wine into his mug. “Those have got to be the two foulest stories I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear.”

“I don’t know how bad the second horn went. I passed out a couple minutes after the first cut. But, I saw the room afterward. It was a nasty piece of work.”

The alcohol was making the memories bigger, uglier, and more impressive than they really were. He berated himself for having opened his mouth at all. That wasn’t an episode he particularly wanted to revisit, not tonight. It was time for a smart man to retreat.

“I swear I haven’t taken anything stronger than water in some time,” he said to the monk, taking care not to slur, “Getting a bit drunker than I should. As stimulating as this conversation has been, I do believe I’d best hit the straw, if you don’t mind.”

Chance nodded. “Agreed.”

Then the man stood up and crossed the room to a large, humpbacked wooden chest squatting against the wall on the far side of a huge wardrobe. He heaved the lid open and began rummaging through the contents.

Beam moved to stand up, but quickly lost his balance and fell back onto his stool. Laughing, he said, “Brother, you’re doing nine hells of a lot better than I am. Then again, nobody can drink like a monk. I know. I’ve spent enough time with them.”

Chance pulled out of the chest long enough to send him a foul look. “Blood of the gods,” he cursed, “I’m not a goddamned monk!”

“Right.”

Moments later, Chance dropped an impressive pile of blankets on the great rug just before the place where the door used to be. Beam stumbled off his stool and staggered as straight a line as he could manage toward the pile. It was only by Chance’s proximity and an offered hand that he didn’t fall flat on his face. He was suddenly so drunk he could barely stand. On the bright side, for the first time that day, nothing hurt. As he plummeted into the target, he planned a trajectory that would land him in the midst of the pile. He was fading to black before he even hit the wool.

∞

Chance lay on his back staring up at the torch flickering gently on its iron sconce above him. The green flames were burning so gently, so contently, he found himself in envy of them.

Down here on the floor, the world was a storm. The day’s events had taken him prisoner. The images raced through his head like a hurricane: Luren, Prae, the Vaemyn, the wyrlaerd, the future, the past, war, despair. He couldn’t even track one of the horrors for any functional length of time before then next shoved it out of the way and stepped in to take its place.

Luren was gone, most certainly a prisoner of Prae and his lackeys. A wyrlaerd, a Divinic Demon, walked this earth for the first time in a thousand years, and it seemed reasonable to assume there were more still out there. The Vaemyn had risen in arms, an event so improbable, so preposterous, it was nearly unthinkable in its absurdity. And the demon had indicated that the Baeldons and Parhronii were now at war, another utter impossibility. Put all together, it portended dire times for this region and the world at large.

And yet, the image most troubling his thoughts was that of the strange man snoring across the room.

He rolled his head toward the sleeping pile of drunken lout tangled in the blankets a few yards away. When Beam had first appeared back at the house, Chance hadn’t been sure what to make of him. He had shaggy, dirty, shoulder-length black hair and a coarse, unkempt beard. He was dressed in rough green buckskin britches and an overshirt that was nearly long enough to be a coat. He wore a heavy black belt at his waist and a broad weapons belt strapped across his chest. He looked every bit the smuggler, rogue, and backwoodsman type that’d be party to an enterprise of sabotage and assassination such as occurred this afternoon. That the man had intervened against the Vaemyn was completely unexpected; that he’d attack a wyrlaerd as if it were just another competing rogue was simply unbelievable.

The wine had worked about as well as he’d expected, loosened his tongue and started an elementary dialogue. The man was clearly not much inclined toward volunteering information. In fact, the only conversation he’d managed to drag out of the rogue had been limited to anecdotes involving his bravado. But when it came to the reason he was in the forest at all, or the means by which he’d come to possess the Caeyllth Blade, or why Prae was so vigorously pursuing him, he remained a mystery.

But come morning, there’d be questions asked. And rogue or not, if the man had any sense of self-preservation, he’d best be prepared to answer them. The wyrlaerd had been looking for this lout, that much was certain, and they’d clearly been chasing him for some time, most likely for the sword.

The sword.

That was the crowning gem on this nightmare. He knew from his near two centuries of study that the sword was a Caeyllth Blade, known through history as a demonslayer. And though they no longer existed in this world, he’d known what it was the instant he’d laid eyes on it. The eye embedded in its hilt was a Blood Caeyl, a caeyl that hadn’t been seen in this world for generations. They were the first of the three primary caeyls to lose their energy to whatever unknown anomaly was destroying the caeylsphere. But before they died out a few centuries ago, the Blood Caeyls had been the most potent stones of power ever known to this world. Even now, even from clear across the room, he could feel its energy thrumming through the caeylsphere at the farthest edge of his consciousness, like the sound of distant drums vibrating against his skin.

His thoughts drifted to the wyrlaerd. Like the Blood Caeyls, none had existed on this mortal plane for a thousand years, though he knew enough about them to recognize one standing before him. Demons couldn’t exist on this plane unless summoned by a bearer of the Fire Caeyls, and the only Fire Caeyl Mage known today was Prae the Biled. And true to those facts, the creature had spoken the lunatic’s wretched name. He’d declared Prae his master.

Prae! He should’ve murdered that bastard when they were boys. Even in his youth he’d known it’d come to this eventually, to a dark moment of regret for opportunities lost. If any of this were as it appeared, if truth were found for even one factor in this drama, it would mean the worst of times. And in that case, he’d own sole responsibility for it, for the wars that were certain to follow, for the lives that would be lost, for the suffering that would be endured. He’d been too weak these past decades, too complacent, too damned content simply gliding through life with his head in the clouds, and he hated himself for it.