The Pleasure of Memory (28 page)

Then Chance was gone.

The air felt suddenly hollow. Beam marched into the middle of the empty room. He felt antsy, even uneasy. His stomach was starting to burn.

He pulled on his boots. He walked back to the table. He grabbed his weapons from his bedding. He walked over to the wall separating him from the outside world and placed a hand against it. He wasn’t even sure where the door had been. Maybe next to that third torch? He pressed his ear into the stone. Was that a scraping sound? Was that the vibration of a pick blow? Impossible! He was imagining things. The monk had put insecure thoughts in his head and his mind was running away with them.

He fell back from the wall and buckled the weapons belt across his chest, though he couldn’t remember making the decision to don it.

He found himself standing at the table again. As he strapped the scabbard belt around his waist, he envisioned a score of warriors working outside beyond the wall. He imagined them whittling away at the stone with their own picks and chisels as one of those strange creatures with the tarry skin and seamless armor barked commands. Then Chance's words superimposed themselves over the image: You’ll be unable to open it. You’ll be alone with the Vaemyn.

“Alone with my fate,” Beam whispered. He lifted a torch from the wall.

A rumble breached the silence.

Beam wheeled toward it. It was the cabinet sliding back against the dark exit to the tunnel. The color of the wood had somehow changed. It was blurry and out of focus. The sight served him up a surge of terror so intense, he couldn’t breathe. The door was closing fast, too fast. He had to decide. He had to decide now!

He shoved himself away from the table and only barely slipped through the shrinking space in time to avoid being crushed in it. He’d just barely cleared it when he jerked to a neck-breaking stop on the other side. The torch flipped from his hand. He heard it land in the sand behind him.

The tongue of his scabbard belt had wedged in the closing rock. He was pinned so tightly against the wall that he had scarcely the room to breathe. The cabinet was gone, replaced by a solid wall of granite that was cold and tight against his cheek. He couldn’t even turn his head enough to see his feet. Moving by feel, he managed to pull the knife from his boot. He slid the blade between his belly and the stone, and sliced off the excess leather.

He fell away from the wall like a released spring, landing hard on the gravel and rolling roughly down the steep slope to the main tunnel below.

For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Then he forced himself upright, moving against the war cries of his pains. He propped himself up on an elbow in the dirt and gravel, and looked up into the darkness where the door had been. The severed tongue of his belt stuck out from the stone above him like a twig lodged in hardened mud. He was about to sling a curse when a distant howl drifted up from somewhere deep in the bowels of the tunnel to his right. Beam froze, listening. The pulse in his ears was nearly deafening.

The howl quickly faded off into the distance, replaced by the sound of feet scuffing across the gravel behind him. Beam flew to his feet and swung his torch at the sound. A ghostly figure screeched and leapt back from the flames.

“Get away!” Beam yelled as he swung the torch back and forth at it, “I mean it! I’ll kill you! I swear to gods, I’ll cut you open!”

“Beam, stop! It’s me!”

Beam froze with his torch thrust out before him. His heart was pounding so hard he was seeing spots. And then he saw it. It was no ghost. It was Chance. And in that moment, he could’ve murdered the man with his bare hands, monk or not. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, “Trying to kill me with fright?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Beam wrapped an arm around his wailing ribs. “Well you did, you son of a bitch,” he said, wincing, “Damn near scared me out of clean britches! What are you doing skulking around in the shadows? Don’t tell me you’re already lost!”

“No, I was waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me? Why? To surprise me? Because you sure as hell succeeded.”

“I was waiting in case you didn’t make it out in time. I wasn’t going to leave you in there. If you weren’t out once the door sealed, I was planning to go back in and get you.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Beam choked, “I nearly lost an arm for nothing?”

“I called out to you, but you appeared…preoccupied. Looked like you were doing some kind of dance against the door. Next thing I knew, you were rolling around on the ground.”

“Some kind of dance against the door? Are you serious? I got caught in the goddamned door! Why the hell didn’t you just help me?”

Chance leaned into his staff. “I didn’t know what you were doing. It looked…personal.”

They stared at each other for a beat, and then Chance started laughing.

Beam swiped the sweaty hair back from his face and then looked at his damp palm glistening in the torchlight. “Well,” he said, trying to look serious, “I guess I should consider myself lucky it was only my belt I caught in the door, yeah?”

“You have no idea how lucky,” Chance said, grinning down at him, “There are some wounds even I refuse to tend.”

Another howl silenced their humor. Beam held his torch out and studied the dark tunnel behind them. “What was that?”

“I don’t really know.”

“You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know? You told me you travel these tunnels all the time.”

“That is not what I said,” Chance said back, “I said I’ve
travelled
them. Not that you should allow yourself to get jagged up by it. It likely means nothing; sounds carry down here. They can echo on forever. The source is almost certainly miles from here.”

“You don’t sound too damned sure.”

“I’m quite sure.” With that Chance turned and began walking

Beam watched his reluctant companion marching away while a bubble of torch light rolled along in tandem on the tunnel’s rough surface. Before following, he looked back into the darkness again. “Sounds echo on forever, my ass,” he whispered to himself, “What kind of mess did I get into this time?”

XIV

THE VAEMYD

OONTA’AR LAY ON HER BACK IN THE GRASS, SAVORING THE WARM SUN ON HER FACE.

A blue blanket spread out beneath her like a beautiful boat floating through an endless sea of amber grain. The dense grass surrounded her blanket, rising above it like the railing to her ship, the ripening heads of grain whispering soothingly in the soft breeze. A slender goblet of summer wine balanced gracefully on her chest, her fingers entwined about the stem. She watched it rise and fall with her breathing as thin clouds slipped across the blue square of sky hovering high above her.

A change in the rhythm of the grass foretold someone approaching from the field. The goblet dissolved from her hand. She rolled to her belly and brushed the wisps of hair back from her face, and then lowered her oteuryns into the soft blanket.

The image of Pa’ana materialized in her mind. He was walking toward her through the field, gliding unhurriedly through the grass with his arms outstretched, his open hands brushing over the heads of grain. His pale hair hanged loose and unfettered over his shoulders. His oteuryns glistened beneath his ears like mother of pearl. His smile flamed brighter than the sun. He wore the same bronze cloak with the deep sleeves and braided hemp belt they’d interred him in.

He entered from the grass at the frayed edge of her cloth boat. She felt the tickle of joy as she pushed herself up to her knees. It was a joy housed in bittersweet memories. She urged him closer, gesturing him forward with her thoughts.

But Pa’ana did not move closer. Instead, he remained in the meadow, his bare toes just moments from the edge of her blue blanket. He was no longer smiling, but only stood there watching her seriously.

This change in tradition perplexed her. She shifted her trance state. She compelled him into her boat, summoned him hard enough to risk breaking the trance altogether. And yet her efforts were useless. Something was terribly wrong.

Her joy wavered, threatened away by the cold edge of anger. She didn’t deserve this! Her meditations were all she had left of him, and she hated the world for denying it of her.

She floated to her feet and walked toward him, but he drifted back in tandem, slipping deeper into the grass so that the distance between them remained unchanged. She was about to step off the blanket when Pa’ana raised his hand to stop her.

“Turn away from me, Koo,” he whispered, “You can’t think of me anymore. You must think only of yourself now, my sweet. The time has come to close this book. The story’s ended.”

Anger washed in, hot and barbed. Her old wounds were again scraped open by the hard edge of resentment.
She needed him, goddamn it! His memory was the only warmth she had left in this miserably cold world, and she refused to be denied it! She stepped off the boat and ran toward him.

As her feet left the blanket, his memory fragmented, blown away like dandelion seeds fleeing on a belligerent wind. She was alone again. She was more alone than she’d ever been.

Koonta’ar awoke to a head snap that sent a jolt of pain sizzling down the entire length of her spine. She winced, but managed to keep silent.

Nice work, she told herself as she waited for the pain to fade. Oh, and by the way, welcome back to hell. She slugged the hot dirt and then snuck a quick look around. The last thing she needed was to have her warriors witness such a clumsy emergence from her trance state. She was a leader, after all. She was their example. There was no time for the luxury of mourning, not now, not today. She was stronger than that. She had to be.

A pang of guilt seized her. Her grief was becoming a liability, and it was unbecoming of an officer. At first, being out in the field in pursuit of the Parhronii had been a welcomed distraction, but as the trail took its toll on her strength, it became harder and harder to resist her dark memories. Pa'ana had been dead for months now, and she’d used her work to put him behind her. Not to forget him, that was impossible, but only to distance herself from the pain of his memory.

She buried her eyes in her hands and cursed her weakness. Her emotions were escaping the forbidden box she kept chained and locked deep inside her more and more frequently these past days. It made her vulnerable, and she hated herself for it. She had to accept the word of the Elders if she were ever to feel normal again. Pa’ana’s death had been an accident, nothing more. Not treason. Not murder. Just a terrible, unforgivable accident.

She pushed herself to her feet. She was so tired she needed the cliff wall for support. Once up, she brushed the dirt from her leggings and smoothed back a renegade lock of hair. She looked up at the sun standing directly above her. The light poured straight down between the cliff wall and the cedar barb hedge so that her shadow was a dark pool at her feet. The heat was nearly unbearable against her face and bare arms. It made her silver arm bands feel like burning coals against her biceps. She turned back to the hedge, readjusted her sword, tightened her belt, and ducked out through the concealed passage and into the blistering heat of the open plains.

Thirty warriors lay scattered about the field before her, sleeping, talking, or quietly thinking of home under the burdensome sun. The heat was so intense out here in the plains that it smelled constantly of burning grass. She shaded her eyes and looked out at the long hill line nearly a mile south of camp where the silhouettes of two tiny sentinels marched dutifully against the blue sky atop the distant ridge. Even from this distance, she could sense their exhaustion.

None of them had so much as closed their eyes in the last forty-eight hours. They’d been pursuing the Parhronii rogue for weeks now, though it felt like she’d been chasing him her whole life. Time and again, he’d managed to evade them, even when they had him trapped and no mortal escape seemed possible. Even falling into a murderous waterfall hadn’t stopped him. In fact, it’d actually abetted his escape.

She should have just ordered him shot back there on the road along with his cohort, and been done with it. This chase was long past tedious, and she had explicit plans for demonstrating her displeasure once they finally stood face to face. Fortunately, that time seemed to be nearly at hand. After an endless night of tracking him up and down that miserable stream, she now had him cornered like the animal he was.

The bad news was that his tracks had terminated at the face of the cliff where it appeared as if he’d vanished straight into the rock itself, which shouldn’t have been a surprise given the company he was keeping. Just when it seemed the hunt couldn’t get worse, the Parhronii’s damned luck had driven him straight into the arms of the Blue Caeyl Mage.

Her fatigue rallied for another attack, and for the first time in two days, she just couldn’t find the strength to resist. Instead, she submitted to its assault, collapsing to her knees in the dirt. She needed to close her eyes for just a bit, just long enough to regroup. So she lowered her face from the sun, closed her eyes, and tried to put the woes of the world behind her.