The Pleasure of Memory (67 page)

Chance was sitting across the corridor from him beneath the watchful eyes of another dead Baeldon. He was fussing with the dwindling portions of their food supply, though his eyes were leveled soundly at Beam. He looked like he’d been waiting on pins and needles for Beam to wake up.

“I trust you had a good sleep?” he asked far too casually.

Beam easily saw through the words. The real question the man was asking was has the caeyl changed you? Again? In truth, he was wondering the same thing. Am I still sane? Am I still me?

“I’m good,” he offered as a compromise.

Koonta’ar materialized from the shadows. Her face looked like an abandoned house, alone and hopeless. She was clearly exhausted, and as he watched her watching him, he suffered another misplaced pang of guilt for it. For all the aggravation they brought, the dreams seemed to recharge him; he felt like he’d slept a week. Once again, he prayed that his revitalization wasn’t coming at his companions’ expense.

Koonta caught a piece of molding bread tossed by Chance, and then melted to a sitting position on the glassy marble. Her eyes never left Beam’s.

He’d normally have slung a disparaging comment her way, but this morning he found he just didn’t have the urge. The dream had him too preoccupied. He thought about his strange communion with the warrior and the ethereal tunnel that’d joined them, and he realized he’d done the same thing to Koonta the day before. It had been a cruder experience, not nearly as deep or intense, but it’d been every bit as invasive.

What was it Prave had told him? That he was changing? That with every visit he’d open another door? What if there was something to it? Something greater and more significant than simple superstition and religious dogma? What if it actually was true? Prave had said he’d become a god. He knew it was so much bullshit, yet still couldn’t seem to let it go.

Chance knelt down before him with a leather skin of food. Before offering the food, he reached forward and plucked something from Beam’s shirt. As he held it up between them, Beam realized it was a clump of hair.

The sight was so curious, so utterly unexpected, he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Why would the man be holding a lock of his hair? “You gave me a trim while I was sleeping?” he asked.

“Sure,” Chance said as he picked more hair from Beam’s shirt, “What else do I have to do at night?”

Beam had no retort for that. The sight of the hair had his mind reeling.

Chance rolled the clump of the hair between his fingers as he studied it. “It’s from your face.”

“My face?” It was the queerest thing Beam ever heard anyone say. He ran his fingers through his beard and then held his hand out. Black hair covered his fingers.

Time stopped.

“I could be wrong,” Chance said as if reading his mind, “But I’d have to say your beard is…well, falling out.”

“Falling out?” Beam said, “What? No. That’s impossible.”

Chance held his torch closer.

Beam plucked out another clump from his chin and flicked it away like it was offal. He was about to complain when he caught Chance’s eyes. The look stopped him cold. “Why are you looking at me like I’m a leper?” he said carefully.

“Your hair.”

“I know,” Beam said, “My beard’s falling out. I got that.”

“No, there’s more. It’s…” Chance stopped.

“It’s what?” Beam pressed.

“Your hair...”

“What about my hair?” Beam asked.

“It’s…well, longer.”

“Longer?” Beam said carefully, “What do you mean, longer?”

“It appears to have grown a bit overnight.”

The words rolled around Beam’s head for a moment. They didn’t make any sense. Finally, he laughed and said, “Bullshit.”

“Is it?” Chance asked, pointing at Beam’s chest, “Explain that, then.”

Beam looked down at his shirt. For a moment, he thought he was going to throw up. The terminal ends of his hair hung past his armpits.

He cautiously fingered the tips. It was at least two or three inches longer than when he went to sleep. “How…how long was I out?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Overnight,” Chance said, “That’s all.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Pretty sure?”

“Beam, I’m certain of it. You slept the night. Though you were in the caeyl’s light longer than usual. Eleven or twelve hours, perhaps longer.”

“Eleven or twelve hours?”

Chance nodded. “Perhaps longer. We’ve been waiting some time for you to reemerge.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“You were in the light. How was I supposed to wake you?”

Beam tilted the sword up and stared at the reflection looking back from the wide blade. There was no question about it; the hair on his head was longer. It even seemed a bit lighter, though he told himself it had to be an illusion brought on by the gloom. However, it was the condition of his beard that most alarmed him. Patches of bare skin spotted his cheeks. He was molting like a spring wolf.

“Miners,” he whispered.

“Miners?” Chance said, “What does that mean?”

“I’ve heard of a sickness miners get sometimes when they’re down under too long or too deep. Makes their hair fall out, and then they get really sick and die.”

“It’s no sickness.”

Beam knew he was right. In his heart, he understood exactly what was happening. Yet, he just couldn’t will himself to face it. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“No, Beam, I think this is something else,” Chance whispered.

“Curse the bloody gods!” Beam said more to himself than anyone, “This isn’t right! I haven’t been a saint, I admit it, but I sure as hell don’t deserve this.”

Chance’s eyes were locked on his. “I doubt it has anything to do with deserving.”

“It’s the damned caeyl. It’s killing me, isn’t it?”

“It’s not killing you,” Chance said, “It’s more like…like it’s changing you.”

“Changing? What does that mean, changing?”

Chance shook his head, but didn’t pull his eyes away. “I’m not sure,” he whispered, “Perhaps a metamorphosis of some kind. Worm to moth, something like that.”

Beam scowled at the imagery. “You think that’s pretty funny, do you? A goddamned worm?”

“I intended no humor.”

“It’s the heat of the caeyl,” Beam said as he brushed the hair from his tunic, “It’s speeding my blood up, that’s all.”

“Speeding your blood up?”

Beam reached for his knife, but the sheath in his boot was empty. Then he remembered Chance cutting the warrior’s bonds the night before. He looked over at the Vaemyd and saw the dagger wedged beneath her belt. He immediately looked back at Chance and resisted the urge to knock him flat. “You gave her my knife?”

“She took a watch. She needed a weapon.”

“You let her take a watch?”

“I can’t take them all, Beam. And I couldn’t exactly tap you for a shift. As point of fact, I haven’t been able to depend on you taking a watch since our first night in the tunnels.”

Beam watched him for a moment, but decided against pursuing it further. There didn’t seem to be a point in expanding their collective aggravation this morning. Instead, he looked at the Vaemyd. “You there, Vaemyd,” he said, gesturing for the blade, “Give me the knife.”

“I told you my name is Koonta’ar,” she said, “Do you have a problem with your memory?”

Beam bristled. If one more person asked him that question, he swore he’d murder them where they stood. “Just give me the goddamned knife.”

“Say my name,” she said stubbornly.

He held his hand out toward her and asked as sourly as he could manage, “Koonta’ar, if you’d be so kind as to give my knife back, I’d be forever in your debt.”

Without breaking eye contact, she tossed it across the corridor. As it clattered to a stop at his feet, she said in Vaemysh, “
Notice there’s no blood on it
.”

“
Of course there isn’t
,” Beam said in kind, “
If there were, it would’ve been yours
.”

Chance gave him a look like he’d just grown a tail. “You said you didn’t speak Vaemysh.”

“I don’t,” Beam said, “I mean...I don’t bloody know. Maybe I picked up a little along the way. What difference is it?”

“That sounded like more than a little.”

“It was a lucky guess. Just leave it, will you?”

Chance looked at him for a moment, and then he simply nodded and withdrew.

As Beam watched the man repacking their supplies, he felt a deep and sorrowful pang of angst. The man was confused and terrified, and though Beam wanted more than anything to assure him, to drive his fear and pain out into the rock, he couldn’t. The unfortunate truth was he had plenty of worries of his own standing in line ahead of the mage’s.

Finally, he sighed and tipped his sword up toward his face. As he considered the reflection looking back at him from the blade, he took the knife and tested its sharpness against his thumb. Then he began to shave.

XXXIV

THE APPRENTICE

UREN WONDERED IF IT WAS DAY OR NIGHT.

His world had devolved to a perpetual gloom whose oppression was broken only by the anemic torchlight whispering through the barred window of the cell door on the sidewall at the other end of the long, narrow room. It could have been days or weeks or even just hours since his confinement began. It felt like he was in a dream performing the same simple task over and over, and every time he’d come close to finishing he’d inexplicably find himself back at the start, and the only way he could ever escape it was to either wake up or die.

He threw his head back against the stone. The pain seared across his skull, and he felt a strange satisfaction for it. In truth, the pain was all he had. The pain distracted him from his self-pity, at least temporarily. The pain grounded him.

The decaying straw covering the stone floor was thick and greasy from decades of excrement and decay. And though his vision had adapted as well as it might to the perpetual dusk, the acrid fumes wafting up from the rotting bedding made his eyes water constantly so that the flesh around his eyes burned viciously from the relentless irritation.

He struggled against the rusted iron collar for the thousandth time. The damned thing was rubbing his skin raw. His neck was perpetually hot and sticky from the blood oozing beneath the corroded metal. The chain leashing him to the wall was so short that he had to hold the collar up when he rested to keep it from choking him to death in his sleep.

In the scheme of things, though, he knew the pain was the least of his worries. He could endure the pain. It was only physical after all, and he could escape the weakness of his body when he meditated. What terrified him most was the fact he wasn’t alone.

The sparse light seeping through the caged window brought all the horrors of this dungeon to life. His nearest mate laid a few feet away on the sidewall, hanging from a throat shackle identical to his own. His hollowed eye sockets gaped incessantly at Luren. The fleshless mouth hung open like a frozen scream. Tatters of rotting, colorless cloth draped the ribs like cobwebs. Yellowed hair sprouted in clumps from patches of mummified skin.

And there were others keeping him company in the cell as well, though they were little more than scattered suggestions of death. A skeletal arm, a toothless jawbone, a rake of ribs curling up from the rotting straw, eyeless orbs peering up from the bedding like a swimmer spying on him from just above the waterline. The images were gruesome and hopeless, but they weren’t the worst of it. His most chilling companions were the rats.

They crawled through the gloom like living bits of shadows, climbing in and out of his companions’ ribs and eyes, gnawing on their decaying bones. Their ever-present eyes gleamed red in the anemic light so that he was always aware of their hungry gaze. One particularly greasy black rat had the habit of climbing atop the skull of Luren’s nearest neighbor and clicking at him as if urging him to hurry up and die so that he and his family could dine.

Luren snapped his head back against the stone again. The resulting pain was like a stomp on the floor that scatters a swarm of ants. It drove away his fears and gave him strength. It told him he was alive, and as long as he was alive, there was hope. He closed his eyes and thought of Chance and home. He had to get out of here. He refused to die in this wretched place, alone and forgotten.

His fingers slipped along the coarse iron collar until they reached the lynch peg. This part of the collar was in much better condition than the rest of the shackle; he could feel the fresh grease and smell the biting scent of oil even above the stench of old urine. He’d tried repeatedly to coax the peg into surrender, to use his caeyl energy to alter its position in time-space just enough to slip it free, but he’d failed every time. He was too young, too inexperienced.

He wasn’t mature enough to have his own external caeyl, like the one in Chance’s staff. He could only use his Bloodlink Caeyl, the one imbedded in his brain at the base of his head, to summon the natural energy emanating from the earth, and then only to a small degree. He could create brief space-time events like levitating pebbles or freezing water or creating fire, but none of that would serve him here.

Everything was different here. The earth beneath Prae’s keep was impure. It was corrupted and spoiled. Its effects somehow fouled the caeylsphere so that the natural energy available to one of his inborn talents was made nearly useless, and he lacked the skills and experience to subjugate its corruption. His was a pure magic, and in this place, purity was a handicap.

He knocked his head back against the wall.

Where the hell was Chance?

He hit his head again.

He needed Chance. He needed help!

Hot tears burned his eyes. He buried his face into his hands. “I’ll die here alone,” he whispered, “And no one will ever know what happened to me.”

He heard the familiar sound of tiny claws scratching against bone.