‘And what of the price?’ asked Nikka. ‘He purchases your freedom, tutors you, feeds and keeps you. What was the price that he asked of you?’
‘He spoke of this as we travelled from Bohba,’ said Dregan ‘He asked that I repay him by giving Wist a chance. It seems that my time to repay Eliscius may have arrived, although I still cannot bring myself to believe his story.’
18 - Temptation's Wings
When the party finally halted for the evening, they spread out under the growing shade of a group of doum palm trees. They had reached the line that marked the boundary between the desert and the sprawling jungle - the jungle that enveloped the twisted, teardrop lake Kar-Iktar. The shift in terrain was as marked as that between the mountain and the desert floor. The vegetation here was verdant and plentiful, lush and over-abundant. The drastic change in environment stung Wist’s senses. After the brutal sparsity of the desert and the broken vista of the mountain, the voracity of life jarred his mind. He’d become attuned to the pitch of things on his journey and had become used to picking out its tell-tale markers. This emphatic statement of potency and virility assaulted him. In the failing light, the jungle had looked impenetrable, as if it could defeat any attempt to traverse it.
As Wist lay in the gloom beneath a huge tree, he watched Tyla and Aviti tend to the horses. Faric had departed after a short rest to scout the immediate area and had not yet returned. The Lyrat wore his dislocation from the group like a protective shroud, as if it could shield him from the pain of his loss. His Pair simply seemed lost; a compass bereft of its cardinal points. Where Tyla fought to understand his new world, Faric fought to deny its existence. He understood Faric’s desperation; the shift in the Lyrat’s world had been as drastic as his own.
Wist heard Nikka’s deep laughter as the Cerni chatted quietly to Dregan. He had thought that being so close to Eliscius, Dregan would have shown him some compassion, but he displayed only distrust and suspicion. He could feel a crisis building between himself and the mage, and wanted to avoid it. He’d never been good at handling confrontation.
Rolling over on to his side, Wist looked back at Tyla and Aviti, watching sleepily as they finished their task. It had been a hard day’s march. This, and the fight against the Krowen, had pushed him to the edge of his endurance. Wist had refused to ride the horse after the fight; walking in isolation behind Faric had suited his state of mind. The fatigue that the day’s exertion had brought had helped Wist to shift the black mood, and now he lay motionless, alone again, but no longer angry with his companions. He’d made the correct decision to spare the life of the Krowen; what his comrades thought was of less importance. Wist played with the dirty rag that remained bound to his wrist before he drifted into a dark, empty sleep thinking of the vast rift in the world.
--*--
No-one rode the horses the next day. The thick vegetation that grew around them in the shadow of the trees meant that the horses needed to step carefully and riding them would only have slowed them further. Instead, the horses were led by Tyla and Aviti, who trailed at the back of the group. The horses walked behind them, unperturbed by the change of environment; perhaps they were immune to the arduous conditions of the jungle. Despite spending all of her life in Mashesh, enduring the scorching days of summer, nothing had prepared Aviti for the damp, humid, penetrating heat of the jungle.
The sun’s direct light was blocked from them most of the time; the canopy of the trees allowed only a speckling of its rays to find the overgrown floor. The hot, moist air stung her lips as she drew in a breath. She thought that this must be how the steam tents in Mashesh must feel, although she would never find out. That life had been swept away, along with her family.
She was still shaken from the euphoria of extinguishing the fire-snake. It had not only been the exhalation of her achievement that she felt. The physical sensation of the magic flowing through her was intoxicating. She had felt little but fear and anger when she had burned Kerk, but this had been different and she wanted to feel it again.
She shifted her thoughts back to Tyla. The Lyrat looked to have recovered his full strength, although he would not allow her to examine him properly. His foolish pride was getting in the way of common sense. The only outward sign of the blow he had suffered was the almost invisible scar that divided his left temple - that and the slump of his posture; the loss of his asperity. His burden of guilt was responsible for that. ‘I hate this heat,’ she said to him, trying to fill the silence between them. ‘Not the heat really – more the burning dampness. It drains all of my strength away.
‘Either that or the insects,’ she said with a levity she did not feel. She yearned to help Tyla shed his guilt, or even to help him carry it. But how could she hope to help a Lyrat, whose life she did not understand? It was not long ago that she would have quaked in fear at the sight of him.
‘How did you overcome your block?’ he asked. The suddenness of his question startled Aviti.
‘I do not know what you mean,’ she said truthfully. She had been hoping for Tyla to speak to her, but his choice of question had thrown her off-balance.
‘Your block,’ he repeated, ‘the wall inside you that stopped you from tapping your inner strength. Before we confronted the Krowen yesterday, only anger could trigger your power. What you displayed, when you dismissed the Fire Snake - I could not hope to emulate you. The mage has practised his talent for years, refining it with careful guidance. You simply watched what he did and copied it, first time and under the greatest stress. If you had failed, the serpent would have claimed our lives. It seems that I am twice in your debt.’
‘Then, I still have some way to go before we are even,’ she countered. ‘Without you, and Faric, I would not be alive.’
‘My question remains,’ he said, shrugging off the issue. ‘How did you conquer your block? It takes the children of our tribe seasons to learn how to control the release of their powers. The longer it is before their gift becomes active, the harder it is for them to control. You are no longer a girl. I would have guessed that it may have taken years for you to gain even a partial grasp on it.’
She ducked under a low hanging branch, holding the limb aside for the horse to pass. ‘I did not feel it as a block… not in the way you describe. To me, it felt more that I was grasping at a door in the dark. I knew it was there. I could almost make out its shape, feel the texture of its surface. But I could not find the way to open it.
‘On the mountain side, when you were being tended to by Dregan, I failed utterly.’ She dipped her head as she remembered her failure. ‘I struggled to find the way to open it; to find the key, but I could not. I had to watch while everyone found their role in the battle: even Faric found a purpose. I felt so worthless.’
‘Your intervention would have made no difference.’ he interjected. ‘From what I have been told, if Tilden had not received what he wished, the Damned would have crushed us.’
‘It does not matter;’ she said, ‘not to me. My parents would not have stood by and watched as their comrades fell.’
Tyla began to speak, but she cut him off. ‘That is not what you asked though,’ she said with a faint smile. She wished she had not interrupted him.
‘When I saw the Fire Snake - as you named it - I forgot my panic. For an instant, my life seemed simple: a single task for me to perform and nothing else for me to consider. I had to try to destroy that creature. As I could think of no other way to achieve this, I attempted to cast it down with fire. Instead of pushing at the door and grasping for a latch, I simply asked it to open for me. That is the only way I can describe. I simply wanted it to happen. I needed access and it was not denied. There were no other thoughts clouding my mind. Once I had realised how simple it was, the second time I needed to call upon my – inner strength – it could not be blocked from me.’
‘After I had watched Dregan and his efforts quenching the other serpent, I knew what I needed to do. It was as if I could see what he was doing with the raw ess
ence of the snake. I only needed to channel it. To be as the bed is to the river – to allow it to flow through me.’ As she thought of the intoxicating effect of the magic, she felt ashamed suddenly and could not find the words to continue.
Tyla glanced from her to where Faric had passed through the thick undergrowth. ‘That in no way diminishes what you achieved,’ he said, looking back at her. ‘Did your parents tell you of their battles? We have little to do with the raising of our children.’
Aviti shook her head. He had misconstrued her silence. ‘I had thought that my parents were farmers, nothing more. The vision that I had in the cave was the only time I had ever seen them fight.’
‘Then how can you compare your own struggle to theirs?’ he said. ‘Who can tell how long your mother took to come into her full potential? Or if she ever did achieve it.’
He was not trying to bait her, or criticise her mother, but she resisted his encouragement. How had she been turned around so simply? Had she not been trying to get through his hardened shell? Despite her frustrations, she was happy just to hear him speak his few words. She swallowed her nervousness and framed the question she had been building up towards.
‘What do you think will happen to Faric?’ she asked. ‘Will he recover or will he be forever trapped in this – bitterness?’
She had expected him to recoil from the question, but he did not react. It was as if he sought to reclaim the passivity that had comforted him before his bond with Faric had been broken. Was he waiting for Faric to answer the question? So often in the past, he had deferred to his Lyrat partner. She ached to ease his suffering. The rustle of the dead leaves and vines, that they trampled underfoot, filled the silence that grew between them. Tyla never answered her question. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and his body adopted its discomfited stance once more.
--*--
Wist battled on through the resistive tree limbs and biting insects that thronged in the shade of the bowers of the trees. The debilitating heat was sapping his strength. He struggled to keep pace with Nikka and Dregan, who drifted through the jungle as if the path opened in front of them, only for it to close before he’d a chance to enter. The Cerni’s laughter had sounded less often today, and he’d been glad. Its effortless tone mocked his struggle to keep up.
Wist pushed the hanging vines away from his face, feeling their rough surface caress his skin and causing him to shiver. Strange that he should shiver in this suffocating heat. At least the nausea he’d felt earlier had passed. The effort of dragging himself through the jungle for half a day had exhausted him, but the hypnotic rhythm of Nikka cutting his way through the jungle pulled him on. The closeness of the trees and vines had sparked feelings of confinement and harsh restraint in him. The stench of decaying plant matter induced memories of his imprisonment in Tilden’s camp; images of that time flitted through his mind. The overwhelming stench of waste and decay in that cage had been the only distraction to his pain. Now it served as a trigger to uncoil the potency of those painful memories.
Sweat had been pouring from him since they had entered the jungle. As he wiped his brow yet again, he noticed that it was no longer damp. Puzzled, but too tired to be concerned, he ploughed on. The branches and hanging vines pulled at him from every direction now. Wist caught a glimpse of Nikka short legs disappearing through a thicket and tried to catch up. His body wouldn’t respond to his need to move quicker. Wist was starting to fall behind. Aviti and Tyla should have passed him by now? As quickly as the thought entered his head, it fled - chased by the disorientation that now gripped him. Wist turned to look where he had come from, but the dim undergrowth looked identical in all directions, so he blundered on. He tried to call out, but the dark vertigo that had plagued him during his stay in N’tini’s farm had returned. It darkened the corners of his vision and pulled him down.
He fell, and for a time, the blackness comforted him, but then a face coalesced from the fragments of his mind. It wasn’t the face he’d been expecting, but perhaps the one he feared to see
Eliscius’ battered face loomed in the darkness. With one eye was swollen shut and the other looking through him, Wist drifted forwards, closing the immeasurable distance between them. As Wist moved, he saw the myriad small cuts and abrasions on Eliscius’ arms; each one had been precisely placed, creating a tapestry of suffering on his exposed limbs. He’d been bled dry, like an animal slaughtered for a religious feast. But still he lived on.
Closer and closer, Wist was pulled. Bruises sprouted from Eliscius’ face as he moved. Soon his face was all that he could see. The purple bruises resembled leprous spots; filled with cruel infection and decay. The nearer Wist came to him, the more he felt that he would be devoured; consumed by the enlarged mouth of his former benefactor. Wist was close enough now that he could smell the sweet, rotten stench of his mentor’s breath, filing his nose.
Still he did not stop moving. His face touched Eliscius’, but he felt nothing, he simply continued to drift forwards, passing into him, as if their bodies were insubstantial. Then all went dark.
After an instant, he emerged from the void to look out at a dimly lit stone room. It was large and regular, as long as it was wide and as tall as it was long. In the centre of the room was a square table crafted from stone and wood; the wooden frame holding a massive slab of polished granite. He could see chairs, similar in construction to the table, spaced around it: four chairs on each side of the symmetrically perfect table. A figure appeared at the far end of the room, disrupting its symmetry and altering its balance. Wist’s head began to swim. Nausea and vertigo threatened to return from their concealment to comfort him.
The dim figure reached out from his seated position and placed a small bowl on to the table. He pushed it out and it glided across the sparkling granite surface, coming to rest at the edge of the table nearest to him. As the figure pushed his chair out to stand, further breaking the hypnotic effect of the room, Wist caught a glimpse of this man’s face.
A rush of disorientation grabbed him as he tried to focus on the room. It was no good; he couldn’t fight it any longer. He was pulled from the room in a rush of light and heat. Then the light and heat were replaced instantly by water - so much water he couldn’t breathe: clutching at him, pulling him, drawing him down from its crystalline surface to its icy black depths. The water pushed its way beyond his lips and flooded into his lungs.
Erupting through its surface, he choked and spat out the water. Dizziness and exhaustion wouldn’t release him. He felt himself lifted and the rough edge of a container held to his lips.
Drink, a voice said urgently. He couldn’t bring his eyes into focus. He forced a gulp down, but immediately felt it in his stomach trying to come back up.
Drink, damn you, the voice repeated. His head was forced roughly back to take some more water.
Too much heat – should have told us. Another voice, this one more distant. He just wanted to lie down and sleep. So tired.
His head rebounded with the force of a sharp blow. His eyes focused briefly on a man. Dark hair, pulled backed. Sharp face. Dregan
Yes. Dregan. If he’d just let me lie down.
Another blow; this one rougher than the first.
‘Focus, or you could die.’ Wist watched through the maelstrom of disorientation as the Mage reached into his pack. Retrieving something from it, he turned back to him. ‘Damn fool, open your mouth.’ Wist numbly obeyed, swallowing the sweet tasting drops that were placed on his tongue without thought.
‘That will keep him from losing any more fluid,’ the voice said. ‘Make sure he gets enough water.’ Wist was pushed into waiting arms.
--*--
The nausea passed with the aid of Dregan’s potion and it also helped Wist stay awake, allowing him to drink as much as he wished. A camp had been hastily arranged at a clearing they had found near to where Wist had collapsed. The intense heat of the day had abated now and his breathing was easier.
‘Heat exhaustion, Son; a dange
rous thing and no mistake,’ said Nikka. It was the first thing that anyone had said to him since he’d come around. Wist nodded in agreement as he drank some more.
Nikka continued, ‘That was a real problem in the dark depths of the Volni. The team drivers had to make sure there was enough water to keep their team from flagging. If you got ill, you were left to die and that left the team short and meant that the driver was more likely to be beaten for his team’s lack of effort.
‘I should have spotted the signs,’ said Nikka.
‘It isn’t your job to look after me,’ replied Wist. He was touched by Nikka’s concern, but embarrassed by his own failure. ‘I should’ve called for help.’
‘Aye, but it is not easy to recognise the signs in yourself. Before you are aware of its presence, it has control of you. Much like a few women I have known,’ said Nikka flatly, but his eyes danced with mischief.
‘No man is crushed by fortune, who is not first deceived by her smiles,’ replied Wist groggily. Nikka roared with laughter, drawing a dangerous look from Dregan. He held up his hand to apologise for the outburst.
‘You never warned me that you were a philosopher,’ accused Nikka.
‘I didn’t think that up, it was written by -’ he faltered, ‘not by me anyway.’
‘No matter,’ said Nikka, still chuckling. ‘I shall remember to use that next time I have company.’
‘What are we doing in this jungle?’ Wist asked. ‘I’d prefer a forced march across the desert to this.’
‘There is something at the centre of it that Dregan needs; something at the lake.’ Nikka’s dark face lost its joviality. ‘He needs to get there by the time the moon has risen. He was hoping to get to the lake early and let us rest at its edge, but it will not be possible now.’
The Redemption of Wist Boxed Set: Books 1 - 3: The complete collection Page 23
