The Pleasure of Memory (34 page)

He swiped his hair back from his face; it felt as wet and cold as if he’d just taken a swim in a mountain stream. He was fully dripping in sweat now. His stomach churned enthusiastically. His knees threatened to revolt.

He watched the monk stand up again, watched him turn to face him with the vial held out, watched him floating threateningly closer with his arms outstretched like he was going to attack him.

“Beam, you need to take a drink,” the monk said. His words echoed wildly around the darkness. “Your affliction is returning. This will help subdue it.”

“See, there’s another thing!” Beam said with a finger leveled threateningly at the man, “You’re always telling me what to do! Always pushing me around! Always trying to get me to do something I don’t want to do!”

Beam looked down at his pointing hand. It was trembling hard enough to break a wrist. He reeled it back in and locked it under his other arm. He looked up to see the ceiling hovering just inches above his head. In the same instance, the walls shuddered strangely, like metal sheets wavering before an infernal heat. The space was condensing around him. The tunnel was collapsing! It was going to crush him! He was going to die down here, just him and that miserable monk. They’d be trapped here for all eternity!

“Take a drink,” Chance said as he floated closer with the tonic still held out.

Poison, Beam thought. The man drugged him to get him down here and now he was going to kill him with some arcane poison! Panic fully seized him. He charged at Chance. He grabbed the man by the mail and shoved him roughly back against the wall with his forearm buried in the man’s neck. “I should’ve killed you back on the trail!” he yelled into the monk’s face, “I should’ve slit your throat when I had the stinking chance!”

Chance dug his thumbs into the soft flesh under Beam’s elbow. Beam suffered a shock of pain that screamed into his back and down his spine. He cried out and fell back away from him.

“It’s going to be all right,” Chance said as he rubbed his throat.

Beam couldn’t move. He could only stand there in the middle of the corridor and pray to the gods he didn’t piss himself. Again!

“You’ll be fine, Beam. Just take a sip of the medicine.”

“Fine?” Beam heard someone shriek, “Are you serious? Fine? I’m losing my mind down here! The ceiling’s moving! I can see it! It’s unstable, don’t you see that? It’s going to collapse on us. Look at those timbers there! Damn me if they’re not rotted straight through. We’re going to die down here! We’re going to die down here and it’s your bloody fault!”

The man’s form blurred in and out of focus. Beam watched him as he bit the cork loose, watched him as he swam closer.

“This will ease your pain,” the monk said from a mile away. His voice sounded low and ominous like distant thunder.

Beam’s teeth were chattering so hard now he couldn’t speak. The proffered elixir shuffled into two, then three, then one vial. The walls were swelling in on him. He couldn’t breathe.

An arm slid around his shoulders. Something hard pressed against his mouth. A warm fluid flowed over his tongue, sweet and tingling. He’d barely swallowed it when the anger loosened its grip and his knees disappeared beneath him. The walls slid past as he drifted toward the dirt. His anger, his fear, even his doubt melted away until there was nothing left but warmth and the sweet pressure of sleep.

∞

Chance stood over Beam, watching the man snore. He should’ve seen this little episode coming by the fit the man had thrown when they passed the collapsed hatch a few hours earlier. The man could be histrionic as a little girl, but he’d practically had a seizure when he learned the exit was unfit for passage.

And yet, who could have guessed the elixir would wear off so quickly? It should’ve lasted at least thirty-six hours if not a full forty-eight, but it’d dissipated in less than a day. He’d somehow miscalculated something, whether the measurements for the potion or his assessment of the man’s affliction, he wasn’t certain. Another error in judgment that had nearly led to calamity. Another error in judgment in a long line of them.

Chance sighed and wiped at his eyes. Self-abuse won’t help Beam, he told himself. It won’t help him find Luren. It won’t build him a new house and it won’t help him inform the Allies. It won’t help anyone. It was little more than an indulgent episode of self-flagellation whose only outcome would be to kindle the fire of his guilt. And what a fire it was.

He studied the stoneware vial in his hand. Perhaps the half-breed had developed some kind of tolerance to the medication after so many years of using it. It was something he’d have to explore.

Definitely, just as soon as life returned to normal.

He stepped over Beam’s sleeping form and knelt down before the half-breed’s weapons. He lifted the empty quiver and began replacing the arrows that’d spilled out in his haste to free the vial. He stopped at that thought and shook his head. No. Not arrows, he reminded himself. Bolts. The half-breed had been very clear about that.

When he’d replaced all the bolts, he lifted the flask to his ear and shook it. It was about three quarters full. It’d probably be best to tend to it himself, administering it to Beam on regular intervals before the man needed it. As he knelt there before the half-breed’s weapons, he noticed the sword leaning against the wall before him. The eye looked down on the half-breed from its perch in the talon grip of the pommel. It looked strangely purposeful, as if it were protecting Beam, standing guard over him as he slept.

He leaned closer and peered into the crimson eye. He studied it carefully, probing past the surface and into its heart. There was an unmistakable light glimmering from deep inside it, a kind of ethereal fire very much like his blue caeyl, though more corporeal, more animalistic in nature. The light swirled beneath the glassy surface like a lightning storm in a pillbox. This was indeed a caeyl, he was certain of it. It was a Blood Caeyl, and if all the lore he knew about this weapon were true, that tiny storm was a harbinger of very bad times ahead.

He slipped back onto his heels and pressed his palms to his eyes. His mind was swimming in exhaustion, and thinking about the Caeyllth Blade was only fouling the chaos further. It was critical that he put it behind him, that he forget about the nightmare that was this past day, at least for the night. He walked back to his pack and stowed the flask there. Once he’d secured the pack, he rolled his blanket out along the wall. Beam had cleared a patch of dirt for him there, removing the stones and rocks he said would feel like someone sticking a knife in his back as he slept.

The man was an enigma. He was as crude and selfish a rogue as Chance had ever met. And he had a much harder side, a bloodier side that Chance prayed he’d never have to face. Yet, when he’d spoken of his lost benefactor, Brother Dael, his emotions were so clear, so intense they were nearly physical. The simple fact that he’d even stopped to help Chance back at the house spoke volumes. He’d thrown in his assistance when he could’ve easily slipped past the melee and been miles away before the Vaemyn finished. He was a perfect study in contradictions.

A wrenching yawn seized Chance. Gods, it was late. He needed to clear his mind. He needed sleep. It felt like weeks since he last slept. He lay down on half his blanket and then pulled the rest over him. It was a terrible time to think of such things, in the final moments before sleep when the mind is most vulnerable to fear and despair. He needed to meditate, to escape this harsh reality before it ate him alive.

The ground beneath him was obstinate. He twisted around in search of a comfortable pose, but it was a wasted effort. There was no good position for sleeping on such hard scrabble in the cold damp of a tunnel. He opted at last to roll onto his back and try to lie as still as he could manage as he waited for sleep to take him away.

∞

Koonta’ar walked in from a night as dark as her mood.

A small fire shimmered against the dark plains a hundred feet ahead. A few tents hunkered down around it in protest of the night. Shadowy figures moved in the shadows beyond the sparse flames, though the usual enthusiasm felt at the end of a routine day’s march was missing. No sound came from the camp, no laughter, no banter, none of the usual noises of settling troops.

She’d had doubts about allowing the fire, fearing the smoke could alert the fugitives below to their presence. In the end, however, she was certain they’d never make their exit here anyway, not so far south. It would be a strategically illogical move, one the caeyl mage would never consider. Besides, her warriors were utterly exhausted. They desperately needed a hot meal and a distraction from their exhaustion, and so she’d allowed them the luxury of a fire on the condition they build it at least a hundred feet downwind of the small hill the hatch sat atop, and they’d keep it going only as long as necessary to prepare their food.

She entered the camp and stopped before the small campfire. Warriors lay scattered about the camp. Some had already retired to their tents. Some had thrown out a blanket, eaten and gone directly to sleep. Others had simply dropped where they stood and slept in the grass, blankets be damned. The only members of the party not sleeping or preparing for sleep were the three unlucky warriors who had drawn the short straws. They were stationed in a triad around the hatch for the first two-hour watch.

A big warrior rested across the fire from her, sitting cross-legged on a red and blue striped wool blanket and smoking a slender white pipe. He was a giant among her people, cresting six and a half feet and weighing in at nearly three hundred pounds of sound muscle. His hair was a couple shades closer to brown-blonde than was typical for the Vaemysh, who normally boasted hair the color of white sand, and he wore it loose over his shoulders now as he wound down from their day. His complexion was also duskier than normal for his race, putting him in the category of ‘dark skinned’ among their people, though she’d always considered the term vulgar. His armor was piled to the side, leaving him to relax in his soft, tawny buckskins and bare feet.

He was watching her and smiling familiarly.

“Evening, Mawby,” she said, “How’s your trail?”

The burly Vaemyn grinned and nodded and waved his pipe in salute. “Trail’s good, Kad’r. Having the time of my life. Wouldn’t have missed this outing for the world, by gods.”

She felt a chill at his use of the word ‘Kadeer’. It felt foreign, and uninvited. Still, she forced a smile back at him. “Well, if you’ve enjoyed yourself so far, you just wait’ll we reach Sken te’Fau.”

“The swamp?” he said, squinting through the pipe smoke, “Nothing more than dirty water and a few flies.” He drew in a toke, turned his face up toward the stars, and puffed out a string of smoke rings.

“It doesn’t worry you?” she asked, “Not even a smidge?”

“Reckon I can’t find any reason to sweat it.”

“No? Most of the company’s been sweating it since we got the orders.”

“Bah! What’s a ghost going to do? Scare the water out of me? I seriously doubt it. In fact, I got me a cousin who went to the crypt owing me money some years back. If I see her, maybe she’ll share some hidden stash with me, jh’ven?”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

“Ay’a,” he said with a wink, “The gods’ righteous truth, that.”

“Have you seen Maeryc?”

He waved the pipe off to his left. “Last I saw he was heading over toward the hill. The boy’s been looking a little rough these past couple days.”

“We’ve all had a tough road of it,” she said, “This pursuit seems endless.”

He watched her for a bit, looking like he had something more to say, but like he couldn’t find a way to kick the words out. Then he sent her a grin that looked like it took more work than it should have, and said, “I’m sure you’re right, Koo.”

It was a most peculiar moment. She knew him well enough to sense there was something bothering him, and she sincerely wanted to pursue it, but her urgency to check on the guards up by the hatch trumped her desire. So instead, she just smiled at him and nodded. “Thanks, Maw. We’ll talk about it later. Don’t be up too late. You look as tired as I feel.”

The warrior blew a stream of smoke into the fire. “You’re always quite the flatterer, Koo.”

“And drown this fire before too late.”

“Ay’a, I’ll see to it.”

Koonta made her way toward the low hill that served as a base for the hatch, sliding her open palms along the tips of the tall, heady grass and gazing up into the starry sky as she walked. The moon hadn’t risen yet and the milky smear of Mengrae’s Blade was in full blaze across the dark expanse of sky. A chorus of frogs sang in the distance. The air tasted as fresh as a winter snow. If she hadn’t been so damned tired, she’d stay out a while and enjoy it.

The ground rose gently at first, growing more steep as she made her way up toward the hatch. She was nearly at the top of the hill when she heard the voices, and the sound boiled her anger to a pitch. They knew better than to be chatting while standing guard, she didn’t care how damned tired they were. She’d have someone’s head for this. Then, as she crept up the hill closer to the hatch, she realized it wasn’t
voices
at all. It was one voice. And of all the warriors in her company, it was Maeryc’s!

She couldn’t believe it. What was he thinking? She expected more from her brother and Mawby than from any of the other warriors in their company. They’d grown up together, and they’d served in the army their entire adult lives together. Beyond that, Maeryc was as far from a slouch on the trail as a beggar was from riches. He was a professional’s professional. Gods, he was one of their best!