A Home in the Hills

by Robert J. Crane

  He was not vomiting now. Yet he did not eat either. He drank little. His consciousness faded in and out, in and out.

  But he lay upon the deck, propped up, with Scourgey always by his side. Alixa was there with him too, every time he awoke. She held his hand constantly. And when he stirred, when he opened eyes to a blearier and blearier world, full of white spots that he could not vanquish—she smiled at him.

  Her eyes were pink. Always pink. But she smiled.

  Longwell was there too. He spoke to Jasen kindly, things that … he did not remember, honestly. But they were kind things, he thought. Stories of his people. Tales of Reikonos, of a place with warm hearths and noble hearts called Sanctuary. He reminded him, at every stage, that Jasen was strong, a warrior, that he was noble and good and had done him and his ancestors and his brethren in the Emerald Fields, and a whole world who did not know it yet, proud.

  And one other thing, one thing that Jasen did remember properly, not in the ghostly, vague way that the world seemed to hang now, swimming rather than solid.

  “You will be home soon.”

  Home. He held on to that. He gripped it when he was awake, and the days passed him by, the sea unbroken, the sails full of the wind blown by the dead. And he held onto it while he slept, fallen into dark places that were more like voids than dreamscapes.

  Home. He was going home.

  He just needed to hold on a little longer.

  “We will be there soon.” This was Alixa. She came from far away.

  The air was so salty.

  Scourgey smelled … bad. Awful. She was so rotten—or was that him? Was that the scent coming from his own innards, leaking out of him as the small bit of life left in him was blotted out?

  Skies were blue. Then twilit. He was carried, into the ship, into his quarters.

  Comfortable here, yet it was not right.

  A long gap.

  He was dead?

  But no—it was morning again, midday, afternoon, early evening—hard to tell. Blue though. Very blue.

  Salty.

  Scourgey reeked.

  Luckily, he had nothing more to vomit. There was no bile left, except maybe a dribble. And he didn’t possess the strength to cough it up.

  Someone crouched before him. A hand on his shoulder, big, but holding him gently.

  Someone else fussed.

  Medleigh.

  And Burund—it was the shipmaster who gripped Jasen’s shoulder.

  He looked into his eyes.

  “Jasen.”

  Jasen lifted his head.

  So many white spots.

  He could see the dead again. They were on the deck—but he could not focus on them, could not pick out who they might be.

  Burund smiled a kindly smile.

  “Hold on,” he said, from a long way away. “We are close.”

  How close?

  “Tomorrow,” said the shipmaster—had Jasen asked? He didn’t remember it … but he must have.

  Tomorrow. Home. Tomorrow.

  Hold on.

  The blackness was so deep, though—so deep down. He could feel it, in the very core of him, like a wolf eating the soft parts of a mountain goat. It hurt—but the pain was not all-encompassing. He did not feel bruised throughout his whole body, the way he had in the days after leaving Nonthen behind. As his body failed, he felt less and less.

  Tomorrow—he would be home tomorrow.

  He held onto that … and he slept.

  *

  There was a knocking at his door.

  He left the dark place that had been his dreamless sleep.

  The dark, though … it did not leave him. Not entirely.

  The fog was close now. Very, very close.

  “Yes?” he called out, his voice almost inaudible.

  The door opened.

  Alixa stood there, with Longwell.

  “We are here,” she said.

  Jasen’s heart, weak that it was, skipped. “Luukessia?” he breathed.

  “Yes,” said Longwell.

  “Help me—please,” said Jasen.

  The two of them came in, to his bed. They let him drape an arm over either of their shoulders. It would be a particularly lopsided sort of walk—their heights were so far apart.

  Scourgey loosed a low, cooing sort of a noise.

  They lifted Jasen out of bed.

  He was weak now, very frail. The muscles that had once carried him seemed to have vanished away. Without the stomach for food, and less and less capacity for water, he had withered. He could feel it, and if he looked down, he could see it: his trousers, which he slept in—far too difficult pulling the things on and off now—hung down from his hips in straight lines, like they were clipped to a drying line, nothing at all filling them.

  Alixa and Longwell placed Jasen gingerly onto feet no longer capable of holding him.

  Scourgey ducked under his legs.

  Carefully, they lowered him forward, so he could wrap his arms about her neck.

  “Good girl,” said Alixa softly.

  Her eyes were pink. Yet when they met with Jasen’s, she smiled—a radiant smile that one day, and one day very soon, men would find beautiful—that would inspire hearts and minds.

  “I’m sorry,” he said—

  She frowned. “For what?”

  How could he put it into words? There was much. His regrets were many. The way he had bullied Alixa into coming down to the wall on that first fateful crossing of it, goading her into something he knew she was deeply uncomfortable with. Their falling-out in the long days upon this war galley.

  Not telling her that he was dying.

  And he was sorry, too, for all the things he would miss out on. He would not have a life of his own, but now, lying upon Scourgey as he and Longwell and Alixa made their way through the labyrinthine corridors of the war galley for the last time together, he was sorrier that he would not see how Alixa’s would turn out.

  She had grown so much, changed so drastically, in such a little time. It was not a complete change—she had not ceased to be the girl she once had been in Terreas—but this Alixa was one Jasen could never have imagined she would grow to be. Very likely it was an Alixa she would not have been, period. Terreas, for all that it meant to Jasen, had shaped her to be meek; now he saw the woman she would become.

  So much he could apologize for. But he hadn’t the energy, so he said only, “Tugging on your braids … on the mossy rock.”

  Alixa burst out with a laugh, a cathartic sound that was jubilant and light and tinged with so much sadness all at once.

  “I forgive you, Jasen,” she said when she’d laughed herself out. “For that, and for everything else you’re not saying.”

  He nodded. “Thank you.”

  They walked slowly through the ship, through halls, round corners that Jasen was still not sure he had ever really wrapped his head around … and then up the steps, through the door to the deck …

  The sun was bright. It must be close to midday now, perhaps even a little past it, because it hung almost at its apex. The skies were a perfect, clear blue.

  The winds that had brought them here had ceased. So now the Lady Vizola II lay lazily upon the water—at the shores of Luukessia.

  “There it is,” said Alixa softly, fondly. “Home.”

  Jasen tried to focus on it. His sight was so full of those blind spots now. Had cataracts grown upon his eyes in these last days? He could not rid himself of them, no matter how he blinked. They blurred the world, turning it into a smear.

  But he would recognize Luukessia anywhere. He had seen it from the waters only once, and yet the sight of the shoreline had been burned into his mind, this land that was all he had ever known until just two short months ago, a network of rising hills and green, overgrown meadows, nature untamed and thriving where the scourge did not bring their death … and at the very peak of it all, the cluster of mountains in which Terreas was nestled.

  No smoke poured from any of them, no puffs o
f white cotton breathed into the sky.

  The cratered mountain had stilled once more.

  There were men upon the deck, the crew of the Lady Vizola. Which, Jasen didn’t know—at least, until Burund and Kuura swam out of the smearscape.

  “Good morning, Jasen,” said Burund. “We have arrived.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a tense, disquieted moment, where no one appeared sure of exactly what to do or say.

  Longwell broke it. “Well then … shall we take a rowboat?”

  “One is already prepared,” said Kuura.

  They started out.

  “We’re all going?” said Alixa, surprised.

  “Of course we are,” said Kuura, grinning widely. “You did not think we would send him out there alone, did you?”

  “You are sending me out alone,” Jasen wheezed.

  Kuura smiled. “Ah, yes, but not to the shore. That much, we can manage.”

  Scourgey could not guide him down the ropes to the boat that lay waiting. So Longwell gently lifted him into his arms. Clutching him with one—he seemed so small at the dragoon’s hip—he descended.

  Scourgey whined softly.

  “I will be back for you in just a moment,” said Longwell. “I promise.”

  He lowered Jasen into the boat. Then he climbed back up.

  Alixa clambered down beside him.

  “Are you comfortable?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. At least, he was as far as he could be. Here, lying against the rowboat’s frontmost seat, death gripping him, comfort was relative. The sun beat down upon him, burning his tender flesh. He didn’t much care—it wouldn’t matter for much longer.

  Longwell returned a few moments later, with Scourgey upon his shoulders. She leapt down, her claws clacking upon the rowboat’s bottom. Easing her head under Jasen’s hand, she slumped down against the side of the boat so that she was touching his leg but putting no weight on him.

  “She will stay with you,” said Longwell. “To the very end.”

  Jasen knew. And though he hadn’t the energy to do so aloud, he thanked her.

  She lifted her head to look at him. Hearing it? Just knowing, in her strange way?

  The boat began to move. Oars plunged into the water in a steady cadence.

  The rowboat pulled out of the small shade thrown by the Lady Vizola II.

  Jasen winced against the sun’s brightness.

  “Close your eyes,” said Alixa softly. “We’ll be there soon.”

  He did.

  The boat moved …

  The dark place came in again.

  He was so tired.

  “Jasen.”

  He opened his eyes.

  Bleary.

  The sun was bright.

  Alixa bowed over him. Concern wrought upon her face, a smile flickered upon her lips as he roused. There was relief in it—he was not yet dead.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  He gripped the edge of the boat, floundering—

  “Help,” he breathed.

  Alixa gently took his hands.

  She was so warm.

  Or was it him that was cold?

  Of course it was. He was dying—today.

  She straightened him, and it came into view again, this smeared, blurry rendition of Luukessia, with its green, rolling hills, the bar of sand streaked around its edge some twenty feet off …

  And a fleshy, greyish line of bustling scourge, right up to the water’s edge, snarling and gnashing their teeth.

  “Foul creatures,” said Longwell. Then, with a sideways glance at Scourgey: “Uhh—no offense, Niamh.”

  Burund peered at the shore. Frowning, he murmured, “Are you sure you wish to do this, Jasen?”

  “I’m sure,” Jasen breathed.

  “You are certain when you say they will not attack you?” Kuura muttered.

  “I’m sure,” said Jasen. “They have no interest … in the dead.”

  “But you are not dead yet,” Kuura‘s voice was strained.

  “I will be safe,” Jasen replied. “I know this.”

  Again, there was a long and tense silence, as if none of them knew what to do, or to say.

  It was Longwell who broke the quiet.

  Taking a great breath, as if the dragoon were steadying himself, he stepped forward in the rowboat. “Jasen Rabinn—I must echo Queen Huanatha of Muratam when I say that it has been an honor—one of the very highest—in fighting alongside you. Truly, you are the pride of Luukessia, a great tribute to your ancestors. And though you leave behind no blood lineage of your own, know this: the things you have done will carry forth a great legacy from here, one that is everlasting.” He bowed his head. “You are barely a man, and yet a greater man I have rarely known. And I will not forget you.”

  “Nor will I,” said Burund. “You may have helped save all of Coricuanthi by your deeds.”

  “And,” said Kuura with a faint grin, “you have made me a very rich man indeed.” He laughed … and then it fell, and he looked at Jasen very earnestly, not with a smile that was so wide as to show off all of his teeth, but a sweet, small one. “Thank you, Jasen. I shall not forget you.”

  “And neither will I,” said Alixa. Her voice warbled, shook. Her eyes were not just pink but red, and they shone with a sheen that did not leave her no matter how fast she blinked at it. Yet she held it in—and for the last time, he was glad of it.

  “You will go on,” Jasen wheezed. “To our brethren.”

  Alixa nodded, firmly. “And I will tell them tales of my cousin—who was brave, and adventurous; who challenged me; who made me better … and who saved my life.”

  Her voice trembled at this last part.

  Now she would surely break.

  But still she did not. The girl was made of steel, through and through.

  “I will remember you,” she whispered. “Always. And I will make sure, however I can, that none of this was in vain.”

  “I know,” said Jasen. “You have a … great destiny before you. You will … carry on … for all of us.” Ancestors, this hurt so much—his throat was so shredded. But he spoke, tapping into the last reservoir of his energy, once so full yet now close to empty. “For Terreas,” he finished, voice fading.

  Alixa nodded. “I promise,” she said.

  That long quiet again.

  Then Longwell said: “Well. I suppose it is time to do this. Niamh?”

  He clambered out into the water. Bowing low, he stooped so that Scourgey could clamber onto his back. Once she was comfortably positioned, he straightened, and took his lance in hand. “I’ll be back in just a moment,” he said, flashing a smile. Then he trudged out into the water, his legs cutting through it, sending waves sloshing out with every step he made closer to the shore.

  The scourge arrayed there clamored for him.

  Longwell shouted—something that Jasen could not make out.

  He could hardly see what he was doing. But there were louder splashes all of a sudden, then whines—

  And then Longwell was on his way back again.

  “Poxy bastards,” he grumbled when he reached the rowboat again, sans Scourgey. “Thought they’d have a bite of me, did they? Never mind—Amnis showed them what for.” He dripped, water pooling beneath him in the boat. “This is it, Jasen. Last goodbyes.”

  Jasen looked at them—at Burund, and Kuura, and lastly Alixa, who had stayed by his side all this time and gripped his hand in hers, warm, so very warm, so alive …

  “Thank you, all,” he wheezed. “For everything.”

  Burund nodded. Kuura too.

  Alixa bit her trembling lip. “No … thank you.”

  She hugged him. Kissed him upon the cheek.

  It there was any place he could choose to die—any place that was not his former home—it would surely be here.

  But his time was finite. So Alixa released him. She favored him one last look, her eyes glistening with tears … and then she let Longwell gently lift h
im from the boat, turn … and carry him on his back to the shores from which they had both come … but where only one of them would remain.

  “She waits for you,” Longwell murmured to Jasen. “The scourge detest water … and yet she waits for you, submerged to her haunches in it.”

  Jasen opened his eyes to see.

  It was so hard to make out.

  “She’s a good girl,” he said.

  “Oh, yes, she is,” Longwell agreed. “One of the finest I ever knew.”

  The shore’s proximity announced itself by the clamoring of the scourge.

  “We are here,” said Longwell.

  Jasen opened one eye. He could see better that way—something about both of them open at once only smeared the world more, like his eyes could no longer point in quite the same direction, and his brain was failing to stitch the images from each together.

  There was Scourgey. She quaked in the water, but she waited, apart from the rest of them, looking up with her coal-lump eyes.

  Longwell stooped, and gently lowered Jasen onto her back.

  “You got her?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Jasen. His arms were looped round Scourgey’s neck. Of course, he did not have her, really; he had no grip at all; but Scourgey kept him balanced. She would not let him fall.

  “Your faith has never once wavered, has it,” Longwell demurred, looking fondly at Scourgey as he straightened. “Farewell, Niamh. And farewell, Jasen. Until we meet again.”

  “Thank you,” said Jasen.

  Scourgey turned, the water making waves about her.

  She came to the shore.

  The scourge thrashed, all in a line, pressed right up to the water’s edge. Jasen could imagine the rest of them on the boat, Kuura most of all watching in fear that Jasen was wrong …

  Yet it was not he who the scourge wanted. They desired Longwell, and the boat farther out. They did not so much as spare Jasen, already mostly dead, a look as Scourgey moved through their mass, undeterred, and then onward, inland.

  “You know where we’re going,” Jasen whispered into her ear. It was all he had the strength for now. “Don’t you?”