He finally managed to fall asleep for a few more hours, but it seemed only moments before the woman was shaking him awake. The sun had just gathered herself up from the horizon and had begun to float upwards behind them when they began what would turn out to be a very long walk.
After the woman gave him barely more than a sip of water, they headed off, each man taking hold of one of Nylan’s arms. They set a fast pace for Nylan’s short legs, but if he didn’t keep up, they dragged him along, not slowing. He was far too exhausted and ill to feel or hear anything from them, but that was the only mercy.
The woman halted the march for a moment after Nylan had stumbled for the third time. “You have to walk. That is one of the conditions of the contract.”
“Please,” Nylan rasped, crumpled in the sand where the men had dropped him. “Water, please.”
“No, you’ve had all the water the conditions of the—”
“Nik your contract!” Nylan shoved himself up from the ground to glare at the woman. “I’m the Prince of Sorrows, and I deserve better than this, contract or not.”
The woman’s façade cracked, and she looked a bit nervous, perhaps, Nylan thought, at having someone as young as he was swear at her so crudely.
Nylan struggled to his feet and took a step toward her. The men seemed at a loss as to whether they should intervene. “I’ll call the curse down on you if you don’t give me some water. Now.”
“Goddess!” the woman exclaimed after a moment. “You are dangerous, aren’t you?” She didn’t seem to be mocking him when she said so. Nylan’s glare deepened. “I wondered why they were being so very cautious. It explains much.”
She handed him a nearly-empty water bottle and waited for him to drain it. It contained just enough water to make him realize how horribly thirsty he was, and he nearly screamed in despair.
A nod from the woman and the men caught his arms again. They yanked Nylan roughly, and he moved, knowing there was nothing else he could do.
The sun was almost down when they crested the last hill. Nylan froze and then dropped to his knees, too exhausted and horrified to stand. From the pattern of the devastation, and the ever-brighter glints shimmering around them, he knew they had almost reached the terrible place where the Breach had been formed. It lay before them, a great rent in the very soul of the world, and Nylan could feel its wrongness tearing at him.
They’d reached the edge and were looking down into the petrified, blackened crater where the Breach had first torn reality apart. Nothing had survived its formation, and if Nylan had believed Worldsend to be the least hospitable place he’d ever seen, this part of it was a thousand times worse than the rest.
“Why?” he breathed. His body shook with weariness. His hunger had become so much a part of him he—almost—was beyond feeling it. This place thrummed in his ears, in his brain, invading all his senses until he felt nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing but the Breach.
“You know why, child,” the woman said, her voice almost gentle. “You’re a threat. Sorrows are always threats, and...” She didn’t finish whatever it was she’d been going to say, and Nylan turned to look at her, frowning in confusion.
She reached out and caught his face between her hands, and, with no more warning, she was inside his mind. He tried to resist her but lacked the strength to do more than be afraid. Her presence burned white hot and left him sobbing when she finally released him.
“What did you do?” He dropped back to the sand, clutching his head in his hands. Blood dripped from his nose, and he coughed out choking sobs, trying not to vomit.
“A simple spell, child,” she said, dismissive. “You aren’t to come back, but you aren’t to be killed. This makes things complicated.”
“What did you do, senna?” one of the men asked. They both looked frightened. “I thought you said we wouldn’t hurt him.”
“If he knew, he would consider this a kindness,” she said. “Memory can be a terrible burden, especially a memory such as his, filled with death and betrayal and pain. He won’t have those nightmares to fear anymore.”
“My memory?” Nylan gasped. The pain was slowly subsiding, but he felt so very strange. It was as if someone were slowly wrapping cotton gauze around the edges of his life. He tried to remember the color of his favorite shirt and couldn’t. He tried to remember what Flannery Llorka looked like. And couldn’t.
“Don’t do this to me.” He stared up at the woman, helpless. “Please.”
“It’s for the best, believe me,” she assured him. “I wish someone had done the same for me at your age.”
She lifted him from the ground once more and turned him to face the Breach. “Now, go, before the sun disappears. Walk into the Breach, and don’t look back.”
Nylan stiffened, but he felt no shock at the woman’s words. For some time, he had expected this ax to fall. He lifted his chin in a final defiance.
I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I remember this much, at least. I am a prince of the blood of SanClare and Voyavel. I am a Sensitive, gifted by Vail. I have survived so far in spite of them. I will survive this.
“I will.” This only made sense after everything else. Someone wanted him out of the way. Maybe he even knew who this person was, but his memories were fragmenting, and he couldn’t be sure of anything anymore.
But the Breach he remembered. Jary—don’t let me forget him, dear Vail, don’t let me forget—had told him stories about it and about how it had been used as a punishment for important criminals, highborn traitors, and rebels. A long time ago.
Jarlyth had said that no one knew for sure what happened to people sent through, but maybe they didn’t die. Nylan supposed that somewhere his murderer was consoling himself with that possibility.
“Don’t turn back.” The woman’s flat voice interrupted his confused, dazed reverie. “Or we’ll have to kill you.”
Of course. Nylan nodded again, once, collected himself, and started off. He climbed down the steep slope to the crater’s bottom, even more covered in dirt and grime by the time he reached it. He paused for a moment and dusted himself off, then turned to face the Breach once again. Its thrumming had grown much louder, screaming in his head now, and he clenched his teeth against its noise.
Tears stung his eyes, but the bitter, frightening glee he’d felt so briefly at the prospect of his own death was gone. Death walked beside him. His life was almost over. It seemed to be unavoidable now.
He took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. At least he would go out like a prince. And at least when it was over, he’d be with Jarlyth again.
He expected it to hurt and had almost asked the woman if she thought it would. He’d thought better of that just before the words escaped his mouth, but he was still afraid.
The glints of light were sharp-edged, it was said. He didn’t know if this was tale or truth. The pirates had navigated around them in their little boats and seemed to fear making contact. Would stepping into the Breach cut him to pieces?
“Maybe it’ll be quick.” Nylan needed to hear a voice, even if it was just his own, thin, frightened one.
The roar in his head blotted out everything, and he barely heard himself. The Breach loomed before him, just a couple of lengths away. A few more steps, and he’d be in it. Stabbed to death on its shards or punctured as by a thousand arrows.
He inhaled deeply and took a long, last look at the world. More and more of his memories faded with each passing moment, too, and he wanted to fight the spell, but he was too tired.
“Let’s get this over with,” he breathed, and he stepped from shattered land to shattered air.
Nylan had been caught in a current once, long ago. He and a few other Sensitive children had been playing in a seemingly gentle stream that ran through Tanara Priory and poured out into the Gulf of Souls, and he’d taken only a few steps past the safe boundary in order to catch a straying, floating toy. He’d been sucked under so fast, he hadn’t had time to scream or inhale. As always
, Jarlyth had saved him.
The Breach had a current, too, and it pulled him in with a vicious determination, moving Nylan through its magic as if through all places and times at once. He saw light-bleached, broken bits of the world beyond the Breach in shards of reality all around him and understood he was looking out through the glints.
At first, only the light hurt him and then the current ran him into the rim of one of the shards, bruising his arm and leg. He tried to pull himself out of the current, reaching out to catch the next of the quickly-passing scenes, and sliced open the palm of his hand on the edge of its reality.
The current slowed and turned in a great, sick-making whirl, and Nylan saw two figures almost invisible in the blinding brightness. It took him a moment to realize they were inside the Breach with him and not in a shard somewhere out in the world.
Their outlines blurred into light as if Nylan stared at an eclipse to see them. If they were male or female, old or young, or even people and not trees, he couldn’t tell.
Until one of them spoke.
“Poor, pretty thing.” A hand reached out, pointing at him. “He’s one of yours, isn’t he?” The voice was as indeterminate as the figure.
“Help me!” Nylan’s voice squeaked out as a rasping breath. “Please, help!”
They can’t have heard me.
“I’m sorry, my dear child,” the second figure said. “You must be brave until—”
But the current’s whiplash sent Nylan speeding past too quickly for him to hear the rest of whatever the figure was trying to tell him. Or was reality moving past him at this insane speed? He couldn’t tell, but each time the current threw him into some immovable piece of reality, it hurt worse.
He struggled toward another shard and was thrown back, deeper into the light, his other hand torn and arms scratched badly.
The pressure had grown, roaring more and more painfully as time passed. The light burned into him, hurting his eyes, his head, everything.
Maybe I’ll burn up. Maybe this is how you die in the Breach.
He closed his eyes against the inescapable brightness and realized what was happening to his memory within mirrored the chaos he tumbled through.
Perfect and whole until the witch-woman’s spell, his memory had melted and shattered. Too late, he knew, Nylan clutched at the remaining pieces, trying to hold onto them and keep them from being drawn from his mind.
The spell gained speed with each passing moment—or perhaps it was trying to match the current’s speed—and memories were vanishing into nothing far too quickly. Chunks of memory like tiles from a storm-ravaged rooftop tore free of his grasp and blew away. He held onto small pieces and odd fragments which, along with the parts of his memory the witch woman had seen fit to leave him, made for nothing but confusion.
The pressure in his head grew unbearable, and he moaned and curled up into a helpless, flung-about ball. He bumped more often into the shards of reality, the current narrowing as he went, and with each unavoidable collision, a new cut or scrape or bruise.
The roar grew even louder, the current’s speed terrifying, the light truly blinding, and then, as if a door had closed, shutting it all out, everything stopped.
Nylan felt himself falling through the sudden dark silence, but he couldn’t see anything with his Breach-blinded eyes. He felt cut to pieces and boneless and broken, and he couldn’t force his body to move though he knew he might be hurtling to his death.
His shoulder made a terrible sound as it struck the ground with the rest of him right behind it. Nylan rolled automatically, glad of his training, and came to rest against something hard and wet and cold.
A very long time passed while he simply lay still where he was, trying to regain his breath and figure out if he could even move. His body continued to ignore his brain, and he thought he may have been unconscious for awhile.
Eventually, Nylan struggled to sit up, hampered by countless cries of pain from his nerves and by his left arm—numb and useless—weighing him down. He managed to pull himself up at last and rubbed the back of his good hand across his face to try and clear his eyes. He did this quickly, wobbling precariously, but managed to brace himself once more with his good arm before he’d collapsed back onto the ground.
It hadn’t helped. His eyes still saw only echoes of the blinding, burning light the Breach had branded into them, and every time he blinked, the light seemed to flare up brighter again.
The world smelled wrong, somehow, though he recognized the sharp scent of the ocean underlying the worse smells of rotting fish and manure. He recognized only one other of the myriad scents surrounding him: blood. He felt it on his hand, too, warm and sticky.
“Holy Vail, help me,” he whispered. But she had not helped him so far...
Helped me do what? He knew that she’d abandoned him, but to what, he didn’t know. And he knew he had been taken, but away from what?
The Breach, he remembered, but aside from a few, seemingly useless fragments and glimpses, he had no idea of anything else. A wave of panic rose up then quickly died away.
It doesn’t matter, he thought, suddenly calm.
Some part of him knew this wasn’t true, but he couldn’t push his way past this magnificent unconcern.
Like a spell. And then another thought occurred to him: Spells are bad. Don’t talk about spells. Don’t think of them.
“All right.” And his curiosity about himself dwindled away to nothing.
His eyes stung but after a few minutes, he began to be able to make out his surroundings through the fading light patterns. It was nighttime wherever he was, but the darkness was incomplete.
The pools of light flickered and changed. He frowned up at the nearest pole and saw the flame burning inside a small glass box. This use of fire seemed strange and almost reckless to Nylan. Magic would be safer.
Stop! Stop thinking about it.
The wind blew stronger, and he finally felt it. It was cold here in this strange place, but he’d been cold for so long he almost hadn’t noticed.
He could just about see again, but nothing looked familiar. He seemed to be in the middle of some sort of open area—a village square or something. As he looked around, he made out something larger than anything around it. A great stone arch rose out of a massive, stone platform which occupied the center of the square.
It’s a Crossing, he thought, but the minute he did, the meaning of that word slipped away from him, leaving in its wake a sense of fear and repulsion at the sight of the strange, out-of-place thing towering over him. He turned away from it and found the sights much less overwhelming.
It did seem to be some sort of village or neighborhood, but the buildings were strange, all made out of rough brick or wooden shingles—which made the flame lights seem even more foolish. Strange compared to what, he didn’t know.
A road ran away from the unnerving square, dividing two rows of ugly buildings, and it was ugly, too—rutted dirt and broken brick and crushed stone with a strong smell of manure permeating everything.
After a few moments, Nylan realized his eyesight had returned to normal. Everything was still fuzzy because a heavy fog hung damply over it all. At the same time, his thirst reasserted itself, overwhelming everything else. He cast around frantically, looking for anything that might be water, and caught sight of a horse trough less than a length away. He crawled over to it, and caught up handful after handful to his mouth, leaning against the trough with his hurt arm pressing against its side. The water tasted scummy and old and more wonderful than any water he’d ever had before. He drank until he was dripping and exhausted by the effort.
I have to move. If I stay here, I might freeze. Nylan struggled to stand up, leaning heavily on the edge of the trough. He turned back toward the brick building behind him and nearly threw up by the time he’d managed to get to his feet.
“I’m sick,” he breathed. In spite of the cold and damp, sweat ran down his face. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears an
d each throb hurt. Even if he wasn’t sick, he was badly injured. Everything, even the slightest movement, sent spikes of pain throughout his body, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to just stay where he was. He needed help, but his head ached so badly, he wanted to cry.
He growled at himself, “Don’t cry, stupid baby. Stop crying!” He stumbled back to the wall and then inched along it.
The wall turned to glass after he’d gone only an agonizing few steps, and he paused and frowned at it. The glass was not very clear, and, instead of being one large piece, the window was made up of many tiny panes, but it was enough for Nylan to see himself reflected in it.
He looked terrible. The blood on his hand and face had come from his nose and a smear of it ran across his cheek which was also darkened by an enormous bruise. His long, black hair was a tangled, filthy mess. His hand-me-down clothes were ripped and tattered, filthy and bloodstained. He frowned and turned his head sideways then looked away entirely for a moment before he could look back. More blood. It stained both his ears and had run down his neck on both sides.
He remembered unbelievable pain and brightness and knew his injuries came from somewhere in that fading memory of magic. But this place felt empty to him. The lights, the glass, the buildings, the road. It was all so...
“They don’t have magic,” he breathed, then bit into his sore lip to stifle the words he’d already said.
Stop. Just stop. They’ll kill you. How he knew this when he knew so very little, Nylan didn’t know. But he knew magic equaled danger in this strange land. But he also knew that he himself practically bled magic. I have to stop thinking about it.
Because there was nothing else to be done, Nylan walked on, not noticing the smears of blood his steadying hand left on the windows. He wondered where all the people were but decided they must all be asleep. It must be very late. How would he find a safe place to stay? Or food? It could be hours before morning for all he knew.
He turned the corner as the building did and stopped again. Far ahead of him down this new street, lights came from the buildings. He started walking again, faster this time, and as he drew closer to the brighter lights, he could make out the sounds of a crowd of voices and music, as strange as everything he’d seen in this land so far, and he could smell food. He walked even faster.
SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) Page 6
