Tahn looked back at the Bar’dyn pushing him now far from his friends. They appeared unconcerned about the deaths of their comrades.
“I am I!” Out of nowhere, Braethen flashed into Tahn’s view. His battle cry caused Tahn’s skin to tingle. With fury, the sodalist came at the Bar’dyn that were trying to separate Tahn from his friends. Sutter rushed to Braethen’s side. But before they could be of any help, arrows hit them in the legs and they both went down in a tumble.
Tahn stood alone. He was getting further from the rest by the moment. Further into the dark. Without any arrows.
Then something occurred to him. Something from a dream. Something he’d done on instinct in the wilds of Stonemount.
He drew his empty bow, rehearsed the oldest words he knew, and aimed.
A look of recognition caught in the Bar’dyn eyes.
“We did not choose this, Quillescent,” one said. “Beware your own destruction if you first seek ours.” It spoke with a soothing intelligence that caught Tahn off guard. Then, they nodded, the movement seeming like a signal.
In the next moment the camp grew still. Quiet.
All light dwindled. The fire guttered. Tahn’s own wakefulness seemed to ebb … when an apparition parted the two Bar’dyn that separated Tahn from the others. It moved with a strange grace, wore no great cloak, no dark hood. Its clothes were plain. His fear of it was the disregard it held in its face when it looked at Tahn. The indifference.
Tahn had only the vaguest sense that it had no body of its own. Though it had a kind of gravity about it, thickening the air, muting the glow of the fire. Even the stars flickered, their immutable light straining in the shadow that surrounded the figure. It came toward him, walking slow, inviting Tahn to release his arrowless draw.
Tahn’s heart hammered. He thought the old words. Doubt flooded through him. Icy fear paralyzed him, and he dropped his bow.
A willowy hand rose. It pointed at Tahn.
He thought he heard whispers, countless voices, rushing in his ears. Something inside him stirred. Vibrated. It was like a string resonating when being played. Tahn lost all strength in his legs and fell face-first to the ground. His body trembled, his nose and mouth filling with dust as he gasped for breath.
And yet beneath it there seemed an invitation. A desire to be resonated with. This apparition, or man, wanted … He wanted me to fire at him.
A moment later Tahn thought he could hear a vibrant note. He was locked in some kind of connection with the creature. And when it began to feel a dark vibration inside it, Tahn felt it too.
It came like a howl of wind heard at a distance. A deep note. It raced outward from inside the mind of this Quiet, a scouring rush. Its form began to quaver. And a long moment later it exploded like a collection of vapors. And there behind it stood Vendanj, one hand raised, a grim look on his face.
The Sheason grimaced and swept his hands up toward the sky. A wave of soil swallowed the last two Bar’dyn. The creatures fell, snatched down into the earth amid the grinding of rocks and twisted roots. They struggled against the Soliel, their throaty voices grunting with the effort, until their mouths filled with dirt and sand that seemed to flow there intentionally.
Before their mouths were of use to them, one of the Bar’dyn stared up at Tahn with a look of disappointment. “You still don’t understand, do you?” it said, turning a brief eye toward the ground where his dead comrades had been swallowed up.
Vendanj stepped between Tahn and the dying Bar’dyn.
The creature looked up at him. “You can’t win a war against an enemy who hasn’t anything left to lose.”
Then its mouth was full and its eyes went blank.
“Are you all right?” Vendanj asked Tahn.
Tahn nodded. The aching resonance inside him had ended when Vendanj destroyed the apparition.
Vendanj then rushed to Wendra’s side. He took his wooden case from the inner lining of his cloak, and removed a sprig. He opened Wendra’s mouth, and put it on her tongue. Then he took her hand and placed his fingertips to her throat.
Penit sat close, watching Vendanj with fascination and concern. As Vendanj worked, the others remained still, watching and hoping.
A few moments later, Wendra convulsed, and took a long, ragged breath. Her eyes shot open, immediately searching for Penit. Seeing him, she settled beneath Vendanj’s hands, still gasping.
The Sheason made her comfortable, then tended to Braethen and Sutter, whose wounds were not so severe. Sutter limped back into camp, his sword held loosely in his hands. Sweat ringed his armpits and collar. Between heavy gasps he muttered, “Had … them … worried.”
Still shaking from his encounter with the apparition, Tahn crawled his way back to the fire. His face felt raw and dirty, but he didn’t bother to brush the dirt away. He propped himself up on his hands and stared through the flames at the Sheason, whose face showed heavy concern.
“This wasn’t just a band of advance scouts,” Vendanj said. “They came to test us. To take stock.” Then he sat on the ground, and laid back against a fallen tree. He looked gaunt and pale. Older, maybe. In the firelight, sweat shone on his brow like tiny pearls.
“They’ve reached the hills ahead of us. And they know there’s only one reason for us to travel north. It doesn’t matter.” Vendanj shook his head, and looked at Wendra. “But they know about you now. That’s clear. It’s why they tried to silence you.” Vendanj then settled a heavy gaze on Tahn. “And they’ve learned more about you now, too.”
My empty bow. Tahn caught his breath, wondering what he’d meant to do with an empty draw.
“Rest a while. We’ll ride north when you’ve collected your strength.” Vendanj closed his eyes and breathed deeply, taking a sprig from his wooden case for his own tongue.
Sometime later they mounted again, and rode into the Saeculorum.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
Lineage
Genealogists ask us to remember people who are often better left in the past. Sadistic bastards.
—From the pen of satirist Sech Galen, on “How to Remain a Happy Orphan”
It was dark hour when Vendanj woke him.
They had ridden several hours to put distance between themselves and the Quiet, then found some shallow caves high on a defensible ridge. Tahn had barely fallen asleep.
“Tahn, come with me. There are things we must discuss.”
It was the heart of night. Tahn crept from his cold bed and joined the Sheason far from the others under a hard moon and starlight. Vendanj waited as Grant joined them in the shadows. For several long moments, they kept silent company.
“It’s time to restore your memory,” Vendanj began in a low voice. “It won’t all come back at once. May take a few days. But we want you to remember so that these things don’t surprise you at Tillinghast.” Vendanj reached out and gave Tahn’s arm a reassuring squeeze.
“Some of it will be painful,” Vendanj added. “Which is why we’ve waited ’til now. Too many things to get through before coming here. But now’s the time.”
Tahn didn’t argue. He’d had plenty to deal with.
“Are you ready?” Vendanj asked.
Tahn spared a look at Grant, then took a deep breath. He’d spent years in the Hollows wanting to remember his first twelve years. Feeling a bit lost because of it. And now, there was a rock in the pit of his stomach. Some of this was going to go badly. He thought about Mira, how she wished she could forget her own childhood. But he still had to know. He nodded to Vendanj.
The Sheason put his hands on Tahn’s head and began to speak in a tongue Tahn had never heard. The touch of Vendanj’s hands warmed his skin, relaxed him, made him feel safe and comfortable. He couldn’t understand the Sheason’s words, but somehow understood their feeling. Then slowly, what Tahn could only think to call a veil slipped from his mind. As it did, memories returned to him, memories from his youth, before the Hollows.
A strange weight crushed down on him. Tahn fell to the
hard rock.
In his mind, he was still falling. Falling down a long tunnel of forgotten things. Images and thoughts and feelings that for years had made him feel odd or sometimes even sick … now made sense. And the memories continued to rush through him.
He shut his eyes.
And he knew without seeing that the shadow behind him was the man Grant.
And he knew Grant was his father.
Grant was the faceless man from his dreams and nightmares. The man who had taught him that he might one day stand on a cliff at Tillinghast and draw. The man who had taught him that what mattered was the intention of his pull, since there would be no target. The man on the barren plain—the Scar—the man with the wind-tortured voice. The man who’d taught him how to recognize his latent gift to hear the whispering of the Will and bring it into harmony with his weapon by reciting words with every bowstring he’d ever pulled.
I draw with the strength of my arms and release as the Will allows.
Words that had defined him in ways that often made him feel quite mad.
Words that had stayed his hand when he should have defended people who needed his help. A woman being burned. A sister and her child.
Tahn’s eyes shot open, and he glared at Grant. “You bastard! Wendra. Is she even my sister?”
Grant rushed to Tahn.
Tahn shoved him back. “Answer me!” But he knew the answer.
The wind soughed around the cliff’s edge under the brittle moon. “No,” Grant said. “She’s not.”
Tahn stared out at the long dark plain of the Soliel far below. “Balatin, why?”
He saw in his mind a hundred memories of singing and dancing and hunting and playing and eating and celebrating Northsun and feeling the warm love of the man … and it was all false. The life he had clung to when he couldn’t remember the long past had been nothing more than a hoax, a scheme, conceived by people who claimed to love him. People who meant to use him.
And now, underneath it, he could see and feel his years of dry, lonely hopelessness spent in the Scar with Grant. He had learned to fight and examine and live, all in anticipation of the day he would come into this place of last things. Come here to what? Become a sacrifice for a Sheason and his martyr’s quest? Murderous thoughts rose in Tahn’s mind.
The Sheason must have sensed it, because he took hold of Tahn again, imparting a measure of peace to his troubled heart. Again Tahn felt warmth.
But it wasn’t enough to quench his anger. Not completely. When Vendanj removed his hands, Tahn knelt under the harsh glare of the moon and swore an oath. “If there’s something that qualifies me to stand at Tillinghast, why send me away?” He looked up into the vaulted heavens. “You stole everything from me. You took it when you sent me into the Hollows. And now you’ve taken the life I had there, too.”
He collapsed again and wept.
He understood so much now. He was Grant’s son. He’d trained for years in the barrenness of the Scar. He’d prepared for a time none of them hoped would come. And then he’d been sent away.
Tahn cried out again, anger and frustration and sadness competing in his heart. He’d been an instrument. That’s all his life had been about. The days since his forgotten youth, the days of the Hollows, had been his to live and remember. But even they were a disguise to hide the purpose Vendanj and Grant thought might one day come, and for which he had been removed from the company of the one … who should have loved him.
As he lay beneath those same stars that had once been the far points of dreams, he realized that the man who should have loved him first and best, his real father, had been the one who sent him away.
But he also wept for the loss of the life and family he’d believed were his own. For Balatin, his mother, Vocencia … and Wendra. His heart broke most because of her. He’d not even been able to defend her because of these things they’d put in his head about the Will.
He hoped that this man, Grant, remained forever in the Scar where the endless sun and lifelessness could beat on him until time passed him by.
“Tahn?” It was Grant.
Tahn waved his hand for Grant to leave.
Vendanj hunkered close and spoke softly. “I asked Grant to come with us, Tahn. I needed his help. Still do. But he came because you’re his son. At least listen to him.”
Tahn glared up at the exile.
Grant stared back, his eyes hard to read. “You’ll remember living with me in the Scar. Training. And you’ll remember I sent you away.” He sighed. “I could tell you it was to give you a better life. And that wouldn’t be a lie. But it’s not the real reason. I would have sent you there regardless.”
Grant looked up at Vendanj, then up to the stars for a moment before focusing back on Tahn. “Early in your life it became clear that you possessed a gift, a certain bond with the Will. It’s a subtle thing. Small, maybe. But you sense things.” Grant scrubbed his cheeks. “You’re not the only one. Vendanj has told you as much. And I’d say this sense you have isn’t all the time. Not for all things. But with time, it did grow. In slight ways. And I knew I couldn’t hide it. Even in the Scar. There are some who’d seek to abuse it. Or just kill you flat. Not to mention the Quiet. That’s why I sent you to the Hollows. That place was once hallowed, set apart by the First Ones, as a safe haven from the Quiet. I thought you’d be safe there, especially in the care of my closest friend … Balatin Junell.”
A fresh wave of anguish thickened in Tahn’s chest and throat. He bit back more tears. Grant tried to touch Tahn, to console him, but he jerked away. The man withdrew his hand.
“But from the beginning, we suspected this sense of yours might one day be needed in the way it now is. That’s why I taught you to ‘draw with the strength of your arms, but release as the Will allows.’”
Hearing the words spoken by this man … it was almost more than Tahn could bear. He shut his eyes and waited for this nightmare to end.
“You see, Tahn, when you go to Tillinghast, all your choices will return to you. Even for a young man that’s a grave risk. But you … your choices have been guided by your perceptions of the Will. You possess less guile. It’ll still be painful. But you stand a better chance there than most.”
Tahn opened his eyes again, and glared at Grant. “And what happens if I survive?”
“We don’t know,” Vendanj interrupted softly. “None I’ve brought here have lived. But I believe if you do survive, and the Veil fails, you can help us against the Quiet. Really help us.” There was the faintest hope in his voice. “But you must make your peace with what we’ve shown you. Not this instant, but soon.”
Tahn took a deep, bracing breath, trying to gather his composure. But it was no use, not tonight, anyway. To endure these things, he could only harden his heart. He’d suffered a long time with doubt of the deepest kind—missing pieces of himself. And here on this ledge he’d lost the rest.
He crawled over the rough stone back to the shallow cave and lay down, wondering if the dreams that came would at last be truly his own.
As he fell down toward nightmare, he shivered not from the cold of the Saeculorum, but from wounds he felt deep inside. Wounds he didn’t know how to heal.
* * *
The guilt descended on Grant in a rush.
He sat at the edge of the cliff, as his son crawled away, and let the self-hate come. The gentle but firm hand of the Sheason on his shoulder did little to reassure him. The Vendanj left him to find his own place. In the dark solitude, his own remembrance came full and bitter.
He still believed that sending Tahn away into the Hollows had been the right thing. The boy had learned enough, he thought, to serve him all his life. But the Scar and being in Grant’s company hadn’t been healthy for the lad. More importantly, he’d been safer in the Hollows.
Still, he’d sent away his own son. And the thought of it had hurt every day. If being exited held any real punishment, it had been that.
He’d not stood beside his son through it al
l.
He’d done the next best thing, convincing his closest friend, Balatin, to leave his life in Recityv and take his young bride into the Hollows to raise Grant’s son. Balatin had been a good father, and Vocencia a good mother. They’d given Tahn a good, simple, safe life. But right now that was small comfort.
Abandonment. Something he’d done to Tahn. I’m a bastard.
He stared into the distance, considering. The long years of placing children from the Forgotten Cradle into homes that might better care for them had been a kind of personal atonement. Not because Helaina had sentenced him to it. But because he’d wanted to redeem his own act of desertion.
And if he was honest, he even resented his old friend Balatin a little. Resented him despite the immense favor the man had done him. Resented him because he could imagine the moments his friend had shared with Tahn that Grant would never know.
But those many years of rearing wards in the Scar, of protecting those he’d placed into homes here and there, gave him confidence that he knew what was best for a child, for a young man. He’d have to find some comfort in that knowledge. He might even have to use it to guide Tahn yet later in the Saeculorum.
Or afterward, if Tahn survived Tillinghast.
And though the Scar hadn’t gotten into Tahn as it had gotten into him, he nevertheless saw much of himself in his son: honesty, doggedness for the right things. It pleased him in the same way it would any father. But those traits had also caused Grant a lifetime of sorrow. He hoped it wouldn’t be the same for Tahn.
He couldn’t undo what he’d done. He’d do it again. He’d tried to prepare his son for what lay ahead. But he wasn’t deceived. Even if Tahn survived, Grant would never truly be the boy’s father.
He’d given away that honor.
The Sheason’s restoration was double. Grant’s own lifetime whirled back on him, and left him as completely in the Scar as if he had never left it.
Grant needed the stoniness of his heart to return, to relieve the pains of memory and choice.
If there was any blessing to his life in the Scar, it was the emptiness it inspired. And there were times Grant could call on it to soothe him.
The Unremembered Page 51
