The Pleasure of Memory (36 page)

He moved closer, forcing himself beyond the limits of his pain and terror. His hands were shaking violently. He spit a wad of thick saliva into the dirt, and pressed another half-pace. He was nearly there, nearly within striking range.

A sharp pain spiked his skull.

He winced and grabbed his brow. The image of the blinding light mounted atop the sword blurred and doubled. Vertigo seized him. He staggered a half step to the side and nearly fell, saved only by the support of his staff. He was burning up. Bile washed into his throat. His chest felt heavy as a keystone. The Blood Caeyl was squeezing the life out of him. He couldn’t breathe.

Unable to maintain his balance any longer, he threw himself back away from the light while he still had the strength. He stumbled back a few paces before falling roughly into the dirt.

The pressure in his chest immediately began to recede. The terrible burning faded from his skin. His stomach settled. He again spit out a wad of the tenacious saliva, and wiped his face against his sleeve. It felt like a miracle, like being stuck under water until the point of drowning and then released just as his heart was about to explode. It’d come on with his nearness to the Blood Caeyl. Move closer and suffer, ease back and live. The truth was the Blood Caeyl wasn’t harming Beam at all. The Blood Caeyl was protecting him.

He cursed and slapped the dirt. Blood of the gods, he should’ve expected this! It was a Caeyllth Blade for gods’ sakes! He should’ve known it would behave this way. Just as he should’ve listened to the sentry that first day back on the Old Forest Road. Just as he should’ve known Prae was summoning Divinic Demons. He should’ve sensed the massive energy surge that would follow a time-space event of that magnitude. Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he? Why had he failed?

Because he’d grown complacent. Because he’d stopped listening. Because he was a fool!

He dropped back into the dirt and threw his forearm across his eyes. His grief and anger swelled in, hot and commanding. A deep sense of impending doom seized him.

“No,” he heard himself whisper, “No. Don’t submit. Don’t submit. You have to stay in the light!”

Since the days of his youth, his natural tendency had always been to see the abyss of despair and to march straight into it. But he couldn’t allow it this time. This time, there was no room for the indulgence of self-pity or willful submission to the cold comfort of depression. The smell of calamity was strong. For once, he had to refuse his true nature. For once, he had to stay in the light. He had to start thinking like a caeyl mage instead of the village idiot. If he didn’t, everything would be lost.

XVII

THE INDWELLER’S TRUTH

T HAD TO BE THE MOST INTENSE SUNRISE HE’D EVER SEEN, AND SURELY THE WARMEST.

If it was this hot at dawn, how in the hell was it going to feel at noon?

He sensed someone loitering near him. “What time is it now?” he asked them.

“Wake up, Beam.”

Beam looked over and found Brother Dael walking beside him. He was dressed as he was always dressed, in his simple, worn, black-wool robe. His thinning white hair dribbled down over his shoulders like that last snow of the season, the weak one that leaves those thin, anemic icicles weeping from the eves like frozen tears. He walked with his hands clasped casually behind his back, just as he always had.

“What are you doing here?” Beam asked him.

“My dear, Beam,” Dael said, smiling warmly, “You’re talking in your sleep again.”

“I talk in my sleep?” Beam asked him.

Brother Dael shook his head and laughed. It was, as usual, the happiest, most gregarious laugh Beam had ever heard. “If you were awake,” Dael said, grinning at him, “You’d know that, wouldn’t you?”

It was a typical Dael paradox, one Beam could never find an approach to. Perplexed, or maybe just plain confused, he asked again, “Please, Dael. Tell me the truth. Do I talk in my sleep?”

“Does a monk float?”

Beam wasn’t sure what to make of that. “I don’t understand what that means.”

The monk slipped his arm around Beam’s shoulder. “It’s really most simple,” he whispered to Beam as if sharing a deep secret, “You’re talking in your sleep again, my sweet child. You always have. You always will. Your best conversations are lived while you sleep.”

Beam noticed that Dael stood a head taller than he did, but that couldn’t be right. None of this was right. Dael was a short man, shorter than he was at least. And he was long dead. This was all fouled up. Everything was out of balance.

“I’m confused,” Beam said carefully, “Who would I talk to in my sleep?”

“The Other.”

“The other? What other? There’s no other. I sleep alone.”

“You’re not alone, Beam. The Other is always with you.” Dael was facing him now, his hands clasping Beam’s face affectionately. They were the same height again.

“The other? What other? The other who?”

“The Other.”

“Who, Dael? Who’s the other? You’re not making any sense.”

But Dael had already turned and was walking away. He was far ahead of Beam now.

“Wait!” Beam called to him, “You’re leaving me here?”

The monk stopped. He was so far away, Beam couldn’t make out his features, yet he somehow knew Dael was frowning.

“You can come with me if you choose,” Dael whispered into his ear, “And yet, I know you won’t, my child. You never have, have you? You never really wanted to.”

Beam felt his eyes scald. Was he crying? Why would he be crying? “What do you mean?” he called back to the monk, “Please, Brother Dael. Please, don’t leave me again!”

“You can follow me or you can wake up, Beam. The choice is yours. It’s always been yours.”

“Follow you where?”

He was too late; Dael was already walking away. The monk’s image grew hazy and less tangible with each step until he simply dissolved into the blinding light of the rising red sun.

“Dael!” Beam called to him, “Dael, wait! You have to wait for me!”

“You’re not ready,” Dael’s voice whispered back, “Not yet.”

“Ready? Ready for what?”

“You have to be ready, my son.”

“I don’t understand! Ready for what?”

“Wake up, Beam.”

∞

Beam felt himself floating back to life and he offered neither assistance nor opposition to the motion. He simply let himself drift up and out of the darkness.

Something hard slapped his leg. He snapped his eyes open to see the sword lying across his lap. The sight of it left him both relieved and irritated. He must have been holding it in his sleep. The gem in the hilt had been reflecting back the light of a torch. That was obviously the root of the dream, the source of the intense light.

It’d only been a dream.

He muttered a curse. What a miserable way to wake up. A nightmare was one thing; at least waking from it brought the gift of relief. But dreams of better times? Dreams of lost friends and happier places? Those dreams only brought on the sickness of melancholy and nostalgia for a time long past recovery.

Dael’s face still simmered in his mind, a remnant from a dream that simply wouldn’t die. Beam tried to push him away, but it only seemed to make the image that much more real. The face sent him back to his youth, back to the Priory, all the way back to that first day.

It had been early when Dael found him so many years ago, so early that the rising sun had only just begun to part the night’s gloom. He remembered sitting alone there on those dull stone steps, a little boy abandoned by the only family he knew. He remembered watching his uncle’s wagon driving off into the shadows of the great stone buildings crowding the narrow street. He could still hear the soulful echoes of those hooves clopping against the cobblestone as his uncle deserted him. How long had he sat there on that last step with his little pack of dried cheese and stale bread? How long had he sat there on those cold bricks, all alone, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to fail this test that he didn’t understand for fear that in doing so he’d be abandoned forever?

He’d waited there until the sun eased its way above the dark brick buildings and the flies returned to the dung piles littering the commons. He waited until the streets slowly filled with people. He waited until he knew his uncle wasn’t playing tricks after all. He waited until he knew his uncle was never coming back.

He couldn’t remember feeling anger or resentment toward the man who’d abandoned him. He only remembered feeling like a tiny grain of dirt lost amid the endless sands. He was different from all the other Parhronii he’d ever known, with his horns and the ability to see the taer-cael of others through walls and darkness. He’d been different enough that it scared the people around him, scared them so thoroughly that he now found himself sitting alone on the steps of a strange priory in the middle of a frightening city.

Then Brother Dael was kneeling before him wearing a smile that offered hope. Brother Dael, squeezing his shoulders so gently, so reassuringly. He remembered looking into Dael’s aged, caring eyes on that lonely step and finally understanding nothing was going to change and everything was going to change, that he’d always be different, that he’d never be a faceless member of that crowd swirling around them. As he looked up into that dear face, he knew Brother Dael was there to save him. He understood that he was going to be safe with this kind old man. He understood that he’d never have to be alone again.

He often wished he were back in that worn down priory, back among the indwellers where everyone was different and everyone was the same, back in the warm, unconditional love of Brother Dael.

He dragged the sword higher up onto his lap. The blade was warmer than it should’ve been after a night in the damp cold of the tunnel. He ran a finger along the entwined snakes and stroked the blood-red eye gripped so sincerely in that golden talon. It was hot to the touch. At first, he thought it must have been lying too close to one of the torches, but the nearest was yards away.

A shadow swelled over him. Beam looked up to see the monk staring down at him. He wasn’t wearing his mail, but just that loose white shirt. His long hair fell unfettered over his shoulders. The light of the torches simmered green and unnatural behind him. He stood there glowing against the gloom like a bad premonition.

Beam turned his attention back to the sword. Seeing the man who’d misled him down into these godsforsaken tunnels only riled his grief further. Maybe the fool would simply get the message and go away.

But the monk didn’t move. He just stood there scowling down at him. Beam knew the look too well. It was the same look thrown at him by the adults in his childhood, the look that identified him as a horned freak who was clearly a threat to their own precious brats. The memory felt like a knife stab.

Unable to bear it any longer, Beam sent him a warning look and said, “What the hell are you looking at?”

“Your face.”

“Again with my face? Are you going to start insulting me already this morning?”

“No, it’s not that.” Chance squatted down before him. He wagged a finger at Beam’s face. “I mean it’s…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Chance tapped the flat surface of Beam’s sword with his index finger. “I think you should look at this.”

“I know. I grabbed it in my sleep.”

“No. Look at your reflection.”

Beam hesitated to comply. He didn’t like the way the man was gaping at him. And yet, he knew it wasn’t the man’s presence at all. Something wasn’t right. He suddenly had the irrational fear that one look in the sword blade would change everything.

He tipped the flat of the blade up toward him, but it was several heartbeats before he found the courage to look. At first, he couldn’t make sense of it. The face staring back at him wasn’t the same face he’d seen there yesterday. This face was smooth and untarnished. The swelling, the black eye, the cuts were all missing from this face.

He shoved the sword off his lap and into the dirt. “What kind of bullshit is this?”

The monk was staring back at him like he was looking at a dying man and didn’t know how to share the news. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

Beam studied him. “What did you do to me? Is this a trick? Did you drug me again? Is this a hallucination or what?”

Chance slowly shook his head. “No, if it’s a hallucination, we’re both suffering it.”

Beam pushed his fists out onto his knees and slowly unfurled his fingers. The flesh on his palms was smooth and pink. There were no abrasions, no cuts, no split nails. Even the calluses he’d earned digging around in the savages’ tombs were gone. “Gods almighty,” he whispered.