The Pleasure of Memory (5 page)

He braced himself against the coarse bark and groped his way to his feet. His strength was returning, and with it came anger. The bastards had nearly gotten him killed. He again peered around the curve of the tree and was about to lob a curse at the bastard when he was struck by something odd. This savage had his nearly white hair cropped short and spiky in the tradition of men from Northern Parhron. He’d never seen such a look on a Vaemyn before. The savages traditionally wore their pale hair long and tightly braided for combat. He wondered if maybe these were renegades, not warriors. It’d explain their trespassing so far north, though it wouldn’t make them any less dangerous than conventional warriors.

The rest of the squad poured in from the forest behind him. Their armor was camouflaged just as this first one’s was, though these warriors all wore their tresses in the traditional Vaemysh braids, some boasting one solid braid snaking down their backs and others with a mess of finer braids sprouting irregularly from their heads like unmanaged brambles. None wasted any time freeing their arrows. Beam pulled back behind the tree as a round of death thudded the wood behind him.

Not inclined to wait for further discussion, he grabbed up his weapons and began limping into the forest. Yet, in spite of his pain, in spite of the stiffness of his heavy, wet leathers, he simply couldn’t resist his roguish impulses. Pausing at the edge of the trees, he turned and flashed them a gesture that transcended their language barriers.

An instant later, he was gimping his way into the forest, cursing the Vaemyn and laughing for his life as the sharp cracks of arrows worried the trees behind him.

III

THE CAVE

EAM SAT ON A TALL, FLAT-TOPPED BOULDER AND WATCHED THE CAMPFIRE SLOWLY DIE.

The last fingers of flame struggled stubbornly atop a glowing pot of embers, but they didn’t seem long for this world. Yet, even with so small a fire, the cave was glowing as brilliantly as a cathedral full of candles.

A dense, hoary skin of clear, jagged crystals adorned the inside surface of the cave. These shards completely covered the walls and ceiling, the smallest being the size of his fingers and the largest as big as his leg. The faceted surface threw out an array of light that sparkled and danced across the gravel floor around his fire. These crystals received the weak light of his flames and reflected it back down on him a dozen times brighter than they’d found it. It lent the impression that the walls were glowing from the outside in, like stained glass viewed against the sunlight.

A light wind kicked up from the gaping mouth of the cave. The breeze sifted through the crystals, whispering as nervously as old memories.

He was lucky to have found this shelter in the mountain, though it was a bittersweet gift. Most men would find the room’s presence inspirational, its ambience peaceful, maybe even restorative, but he’d never been most men. He loathed caves, crystal or otherwise. His dread of confined spaces had been a curse on him since his earliest memories. In his youth back in the priory, he often slept out under the eaves of the courtyard rather than suffer in the warm comfort of a bed imprisoned within a windowless room.

Fortunately, tonight his fear of exposure outranked even his confinement dread, and so he surrendered to the unsavory option of sleeping inside this rocky space, a disagreeable exchange of comfort for safety. He’d taken a slug of his dwindling elixir before entering the cave, and then he spent an unhappy half-hour performing the vomiting ritual the medicine invariably induced. Only once the nostrum instilled its calm could he enter and build a respectable fire. Unfortunately, the vomiting only doubled the pain gripping his chest, so while now safely sheltered, he was nothing like at peace.

He was thankful the river hadn’t thieved the medicine during his ride from the falls. The elixir enabled him to search through the ancient Vaemysh tombs scattered throughout the dusty hills of the southern scrubs. The elixir allowed him to prowl through the tombs by night and hide in them by day. The elixir bought him the strength to find victory in his quest.

Still, elixir or not, he wasn’t about to venture any deeper into the cave than necessary. He wanted the world of sky and trees within spitting distance. Such an arrangement would keep safety and fear perfectly balanced.

He hobbled stiffly around his rough camp in his damp linen undergarments. His wet outer clothes were spread out across the butts of several large boulders encircling his fire. He moved from one to the next, flipping each of them to facilitate their drying. Each turn of the leathers sent him cursing at the sting the act brought to his hands.

The aches and pains suffered in his flight were overwhelming. His right eye was swollen fully shut. His body was a painter’s canvas of scratches and bruises. His hands were raw from the brambles back at the road, and he had several split nails. But the crown on his entire miserable affair with the river was that he’d broken at least two ribs, probably three.

On a happier note, however, his head wound had at last stopped bleeding.

He sat back on the spike of the last boulder and collected his breath. Strewn about the gravel floor between his meager bed and the fire were the bony remains of a half-eaten rabbit whose luck had turned out to be even worse than his own. He considered putting the uneaten remnants in his pack, but the rabbit was all the way down there, and he was all the way up here, and the effort required to transition the two seemed insurmountable at best.

Instead, he kicked the last faggots of wood he’d collected into the fire and watched as an explosion of sparks sallied up to the craggy ceiling where the smoke slithered away through the shards. Then he crossed around the fire and collapsed into a hastily built bed of leaves.

His body serenaded him with a melody of aches and pains, the heart-wrenching ballad of a man whose fortune did him wrong. He’d wrapped the ripped skin of his hands and damaged eye in the fat, oily leaves of a flesca shrub he’d found on route. It would help speed the healing, but it didn’t do a damned thing to temper the pain. And though the pain was unmatched by any he’d experienced before in his roguish life, he remained grateful to the gods for having kept him alive to experience anything at all.

He braced his ribs and winced as he rolled his way onto his back. The growing fire's warmth appeased the aches in those muscles fortunate enough to face it, but those abandoned to the colder, darker side of his bed whimpered their complaints. And since the act of turning was an excruciating ordeal at best, he opted to spend the night in one position, the halves of his body clearly divided between warmth and cold, comfort and agony. It was accurate rendition of his life’s story.

As he waited for sleep, his mind wandered back over the wretchedness of his recent past. Though it’d been a mere two mortal years, it felt like a lifetime. The bloody savages hadn’t allowed him a single minute’s peace in the seven hundred eighty-three days he’d dedicated to his search. Small wonder he was so exhausted. And for what grand purpose had they spent so much time persecuting him? For a lousy gem? For an artifact they had neither the intellectual savvy to understand nor the cultural sophistication to appreciate.

It was like a pig wearing a hat; it just didn’t make sense. Why do packs of wild dogs attack and kill civilians and then leave them dead and mutilated without even eating them? Because it’s their nature. Because violence for the simple sake of it gives them a deep, visceral pleasure. There’s no deeper significance in it than that. The savages may have been enlightened once a long, long time ago, but they’d since fallen feral and unpredictable, and there was no more dangerous creature on all of Calevia than beasts that’d once had a taste of civilization before reverting back to their animal temperaments.

A wave of fatigue washed over him, as hot and breathtaking as a desert wind. He needed to push the whole affair over the abyss of his darker mind and get some rest while he was able. He removed the pouch with his prize from around his neck and laid it carefully on a low, flat stone next to his head.

A summer storm had followed him up this small mountain and now raged outside the cave. It was a gift from goddess Calina, one that would go miles in hindering the savages’ pursuit. The sound of the rain was as appealing as a lullaby, soothing and entrancing, and he rode its happy rhythm like a magic horse into the fog of sleep.

∞

The tavern was dark and crowded, though so quiet, it was nearly silent. Beam sat at a narrow table at the back of the room. A smiling lass with long dark hair and full, ripe lips sat on his lap with her arm snaked around his neck. She held a colorless goblet to Beam’s mouth and urged him to drink deeply of it, and he did exactly as instructed. The wine was tasteless and lacked body, but he couldn’t have cared less. He had no enthusiasm for the wine; he had something far more appetizing in mind.

He used the tip of his knife to tease loose the top and final ribbon of her bodice. As the pale fabric fell away to reveal his hard won booty, she giggled and covered his eyes.

“I don’t think so, silly Parhronii,” she said, “Not until you’ve paid me.”

Beam cupped his own hand over the hand blinding him. “Oh, believe me, darling,” he said, “I’ll pay you well enough. I may even give you a bonus.” He tried to pull her hand away, but she held it firmly in place.

“Now, don’t you be rude, young man,” she said, giggling, “You know the rules. You have to pay passage before you board the ship. Now, just where is that purse of yours?” Her fingers crawled into his shirt and slid down his chest toward his pouch.

Beam grabbed her wrist. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Ven’nya ge fae, Be’ahm.”

His alarms started clanging. The words were Vaemysh. He pulled her hand from his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Ven’nya ge fae, Be’ahm.”

He pushed her from his lap and shoved his way back from the table, but his foot caught the chair rungs. He stumbled backward and fell to the floor landing hard against the wall. When he looked up, the barmaid was gone. Sitting in her place was a Vaemyd, a female savage. Slender and muscular, she was dressed in a warrior’s mail with her white hair braided tightly back. Her tiny, delicate horns sprouted from just behind her ears and curled forward under her earlobes like iridescent pearl earrings.

“Where the hell did you come from?” he asked her.

“How thoughtful of you, Be’ahm,” she said as she bounced his pouch in her hand, “Doesn’t it feel better to return stolen property? The way of the criminal is such a sorry life, don’t you think?”

“What are you doing with that?” he yelled back, “It belongs to me!”

“It never belonged to you, skeechka. You stole it from us.”

“Bullshit! It’s mine by rights.”

The table and chairs faded away as a dozen warriors materialized behind the Vaemyd. Their bows were spanned, their arrows leveled down at him.

“By rights?” the Vaemyd said, laughing seriously, “What possible right could you have to our heirlooms?"

“I suffered for it,” Beam said, “I spent my life earning it.”

“No, Be’ahm, this is what you’ve earned.”

With that, the grinning warriors released their arrows.

∞

Beam bolted forward in his bed. The unexpected movement handed him another boot in the ribs that left him unable to breathe, unable to move, unable to think of anything beyond the agony gripping him. As he rocked himself toward composure, he attempted a calming meditation. He tried to send his thoughts to a happier time and place just as the monks had taught him, but the effort proved as useless as usual, due more to his scant supply of happy times to reference than fault in the brothers’ techniques.

Eventually the pain eased enough to allow air to pass again. He carefully pushed himself up onto his knees. He smeared the long strands of sweaty hair back from his face. The liberty of sleep was now thoroughly vanquished, rounded up and executed by grim dreams and broken flesh. His thoughts roamed back to the Vaemyd taunting him in his dream, and he immediately wanted to beat something to death. It seemed like those goddamned savages had been chasing him his entire life, and he’d been hating them just as long. Now, they were even plaguing his dreams.

Outside the cave, the rain still pattered. Darkness shuttered the cave’s entrance, though the crystalline surface framing it was shimmering in a most peculiar red light. It looked like a mouth seen from the inside out, with glittering crimson lips and jagged, bloody teeth, and though he knew the light was only the crystal facets stealing the firelight, he still found it mildly disturbing. And yet, watching it diverted him from his agonies more effectively than any feeble meditation attempt ever could.

He glanced over at the pouch still resting on the rock beside his bed, then immediately did a double take. It was glowing. It looked lit from within like one of the luminaries used by the Parhronii civilians to line the streets during the Festival of the Trees, candles softly glowing inside small, woolen bags half filled with sand. It was utterly impossible and perfectly fascinating, and obviously another trick of light in a cave defined by tricks of light.

He picked up the pouch. It bathed his hand and wrist in a muffled red glow. The bag and its content felt warm against his palm and fingers, like a pebble heated by a summer sun. He slipped the cord over his head and laid the pouch against his chest. The warmth quickly radiated into his flesh. It flowed through his arms and into his shoulders and swelled across his back like blossoming wings. The sensation was delicious and enticing. He closed his eyes and melted back into his bedding.