‘We’ll stay right here,’ Orla promised. She gripped Ged’s hand in her own, feeling the slight sheen of sweat on his palm, and squeezed. ‘Please just be quick,’ she said.
Then Lyria was gone.
Chapter fifty-three
Now that they were still, the darkness seemed to deepen around them. It had a presence, this absence of light, as though it were all long arms reaching and slender fingers grasping. Orla felt as though it were trying to find a way inside her. She sat with her back against the rough stone wall, Ged’s head resting in her lap, his breathing harsh and fast. He was moaning occasionally and muttering words she could not make out. She tried to hold her mind clear of his but it was a constant effort and she was exhausted already, so she found herself drifting, the darkness and his closeness and his pain making her unable to tell, from moment to moment, what thoughts were his and what were her own. And that is how she learned what she was.
The information was not coherent, did not come in logical steps, but as a scatter of words and feelings and memories. A book open to a certain page, a sentence read over and over, struggling to understand. The carving in the temple that Ged had always studied as a child. And then his mother, her voice low and sweet, brushing his hair back from his forehead and saying – there are many kinds of power in this world, and yours is to know – and feeling that he was crying as she was saying it. I’m sorry, my son. Every power comes with a cost.
Then a picture, old and oddly drawn, an illustration from a book of a young woman, cradling a corpse to her bosom. Kissing it.
Nekrotien.
‘As described by Verulyen in his Systematics, the rarest and most dangerous of Mage-Born, the Nekrotien, has all the powers of a Reader but has a particular affinity to death. She (for this group of traits is almost exclusively found in women) is able to smooth the passage of the dying, though in doing so she travels with them partway down the path, and detaches herself further and further from her connection with the living. Beyond that she draws her power from the energy she derives from the dying at the moment of their death. As they pass from one realm to the next she leeches from them, a kind of parasite, and extracts what she can, the quality of power directly reflecting the person from whom it is drawn. It is for that reason, among others, that Nekrotien are immensely dangerous, for many in previous ages were not content solely to act as guides, assisting those near them in a natural death, but have chosen to bring death upon others purely to draw upon its power, and in particular, to bring death upon the great and powerful, causing an accumulation of strength which, once begun, can be difficult to stop. And so they are hated and feared even by the Gods…’
Orla gasped, as though emerging suddenly from ice-cold water. Nekrotien. The word sung in her mind. Her every sense was tingling, and she could feel – everything. Ged’s heartbeat and breath and fear and discomfort, she could sense far above her the servants moving from room to room, dull with apprehension and uncertainty, the Uruhenshi soldiers standing restless and on edge, here a point of fierce anger like a coal glowing with heat in a fire, there a point of despair, anguish, and each feeling, each thought, carried by a person. And somehow, beyond them all, the presence of the dead.
How many people had died in the numberless years since the construction of Kir-Enkerelan?
Even its foundations were built on bones, she realised. The bones of those who helped to build it, and below them, an ancient burial-ground, long-forgotten but singing to her even now, the dead with their voices of wordless, empty grief.
Nekrotien.
The word, this thing she was, had a stench to it, she thought, the smell of death and decay, the smell of anger and fear. The smell of disgust. Of power.
In her arms Ged stirred, and his movement was like a sudden tug on a string that pulled her back.
‘Ged,’ she whispered, ‘Can you hear me? Open your eyes, please. Are you alright?’
He murmured, but she couldn’t make out his words. He reached for her hand and squeezed it and as he did she felt a sudden rush of longing. Her friend, her only friend. The only one she’d trusted, in the end. And then he fell still and silent and she was afraid.
He was moving further away, and she did not know how to bring him back.
She shook him. ‘Ged, please, wake up. Don’t leave me, Ged. Please…’
He grew fainter still.
If you are with him as he goes he will be yours forever…
She shook her head in disgust. She didn’t know where the thought had come from but she didn’t want to think it. She needed him here. Alive. Beside her. Nothing else.
‘Ged….’ She began again but then caught herself.
Somewhere nearby there was a noise. Somebody was coming.
She sat still a moment, silent, reaching out, trying to sense who, where. And then Ged groaned once more, weaker, and she knew there was little time.
Maybe, she thought, a wild hope filling her, maybe if I can guide them from life to death, I can guide him back too?
She held Ged tighter, took a breath and closed her eyes.
It was like stepping into the Metkara River in full flood. Everything was moving in one direction – flowing around her, through her, pulling her with it, the force was immense, unstoppable. She held herself steady. Ged–
She reached for him.
Her dream, she thought, it was just like her dream of the dead floating in the river, Din and her sister floating face down. She knew this water, chalky with sediment, roiling and angry and loud, and this time she wasn’t standing beside watching, praying, she was waist deep, chest deep, withstanding its force, though how she could she did not know.
‘Ged!’ she called again, raising her voice above the roar.
She sensed others passing, reaching out for her, desperate for someone to hold them, to keep them back, but she didn’t even look to see who they were. She only had strength to do this one thing.
‘Ged!’ she called again, and then she saw him.
Pale and wet and shaking, balled up, arms around legs, crouched on a kind of island in the centre of the rush. Somehow it stayed afloat, though it was moving, slower than the pace of the water, inexorably downstream.
He looked up at her and met her eyes and something in her broke. He feared her, she knew. Not her, Orla, the friend that he knew, but the part of her that allowed her to be here, standing mid-stream between the living and the dying.
‘Help me,’ he said, his voice barely a whisper above the roar.
She took a step, and then another, feeling the pressure pushing against her, the force that allowed only one direction: away.
She did not know how they would get back.
‘I’m coming,’ she said.
‘I’m scared,’ Ged said, and looked away. Suddenly a section of the tiny islet that he crouched on gave way and was washed with the rest of the detritus away downstream. He let out a cry and scrabbled frantically at the solid surface around him.
‘Don’t move Ged, stay still.’
She came closer.
Then she saw what it was that was holding him there. Books. Mounds and mounds of books, manuscripts, parchments, fragments of letters. She recognised the fine angled lines, the heavy bars, the gentle curves of the language he loved.
‘Conjugate something for me,’ she said on a sudden impulse.
‘What?’
‘Anything. The verb to wash. What is it in High Khuri. Mekhar?’
‘That’s right,’ he looked at her, confused, doubting.
‘First person present tense?
‘Mekhare…’
The response was quick, automatic. His voice stronger as he said it.
‘Good. Second person past imperfect?’
‘Mekhandia’
‘Keep going, I know you want to.’
Ged began to reel through the words that he loved and that he had spent so long teaching her; each inflection of the root word indicating who was speaking and to whom, in what setting, and in reg
ard to what time. Bloody horrible language, Orla thought, not for the first time, but this time with a sting of gratitude that made her smile.
‘Don’t stop, just reach out and take my hand.’
Ged looked surprised, curious even, but he didn’t stop. He took Orla’s hand and she closed her eyes and felt for all the things Ged had given her. His determination, his curiosity, his kindness. The way he chose to travel through words and books and ideas, spanning a whole world without leaving his seat in the Library. She found the memories he had shared of his mother, those fragments of time he recalled with her, precious as a scatter of tiny jewels. She held his hand and tried to pour it all back, to empty herself out and return it to him. She heard him take a sharp intake of breath. Orla tried to open her eyes but there was nothing but darkness, and a roaring grown louder, filling her mind, her thoughts, her chest. She gripped his hand tighter, waited, waited. And then she felt it – the moment when suddenly there was a looseness, a lightness around them. And then she pulled. With everything in her, she drew him back. Against all the power of thundering darkness, against Ishkarin herself, she drew him back, all the time the steady rhythm of his voice filling her, guiding her. There was a pressure in her head that built to pain, a terrible tearing emptying sensation, the opposite of joy. Loss. She was losing him. Even as she carried him with her she was losing him.
Chapter fifty-four
She sat across from a skinny mop-haired boy a few years older than herself.
Ged. She knew it was Ged. She remembered… she wasn’t sure what. They were friends. She knew that the way she knew the days of the week or the names of different animals. But beyond that, everything she had known of him, everything they had shared, was gone.
She had given it all back, offered it to the darkness, in exchange for him. A stranger.
‘Are you… alright?’ She had asked it a good dozen times now. She knew it was the polite thing to do, to ask. She didn’t know what else to say.
Ged nodded, as he had done each time, but this time he paused a moment, and then spoke. ‘I’m alright but I don’t understand how.’
‘You were dying,’ Orla said simply. ‘I brought you back.’
‘You can do that?’
‘I wouldn’t count on ever being able to do it again though,’ she rubbed her head, which hours later was still throbbing viciously. ‘Where is Roland? You said he’d be here?’
‘He will be,’ Lyria replied quickly.
Lyria had been waiting, when Orla and Ged had come round. She’d returned with a flask of some bitter liquid that brought heat and vigour almost instantly to the body, and a lamp which she had turned down to the slightest flicker, but which was a million times better than the darkness she had left them in.
She’d tended to Ged, tended to Orla, asked no questions and then led them out.
Roland, she’d told them, was preparing things for them. She would elaborate no further. And now they were waiting and while they waited they watched the Palace burn.
They were some distance away, in a thick expanse of woodland far from any path, a place that Orla sensed had remained undisturbed for many centuries. There was some protection woven about it, she thought, though she did not know what. From where they sat they could just make out the shape of Kir-Enkerelan towering above them on the hilltop. They smelt the smoke before they saw it, and saw the sky darken before they made out the flames, rising high against what was now a night-sky. No stars were to be seen this night. They could hear nothing. They were too far away for Orla to sense what was taking place within the Palace walls. But the King was dead, the Council had fallen, the Uruhenshi had gained control, and the Palace was burning.
Orla looked away. She did not need to know more than that.
‘You’re sure Roland didn’t go back in?’ she asked. Lyria shook her head.
‘He’ll be here soon. I have no doubt.’
Orla turned away. The world seemed distant to her, insubstantial somehow, as though if she reached out to touch the trunk of the tree before her she might find she could put her hand right through it. She had been Reader to the King and now the King was dead. She had been bound to take vengeance but had failed. She had saved her best friend from a death of her own making, but had lost him in the process. She was tired. Deeply, unutterably, achingly tired. She wanted to curl up and sleep, here on the bare earth, and she didn’t care what happened after that. She had spent all she had.
She let her eyes close, but as she did the darkness that she had travelled through to bring Ged back was all around her again, and pinned her so she could not move, could not breath. The terror rose, she wanted to struggle, wanted to scream, but she could not even take a breath. It seemed to go on for a long, long time, then she felt something – hands on her, shaking her, waking her, bringing her back.
‘Orla, what’s the matter? You were making a terrible noise.’
She blinked and looked around, and for a moment she saw through everything, actually saw through it, as though it were not there. She was alone in a world of hard stone and bare dirt, silent but for the empty cry of the wind. And then she was back. She took a deep breath and spluttered, her lungs spasming, protesting the touch of air.
Ged crouched beside her, rubbing her back vigorously, like he could rub life back into her, like all the world might be made right by his touch.
‘Don’t,’ Orla said and pulled away. Just having him near her made her head begin to ache again as though it were about to split. She saw the hurt look on his face, but was too tired to apologise, to try to find the words to explain what she was feeling. He moved away and sat, leaning against a tree, arms around his legs. It was the same pose, Orla realised, that she had found him in when she’d brought him back from wherever he had been.
She scrunched her eyes shut and rubbed them with her fists so that instead of darkness, which scared her, which seemed hungry for her, she saw splashes of colour and light.
Eventually, after what seemed an impossibly long time, the uncomfortable silence that had fallen between the three of them was broken by the sound of footsteps. Orla sat up, heart racing, torn between fear that it might be a guard, and hope that it was Roland. She looked to Lyria and Ged, who seemed taken with the same uncertainty.
Finally, a figure emerged from between the trees. Orla gasped.
It was Genevieve.
Chapter fifty-five
Roland was just behind her.
Orla was on her feet before he reached them. She glared at Genevieve who, despite everything that had happened today, looked just as she always did: elegant, beautiful, and cruel.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Orla asked, without taking her eyes off the woman.
‘Orla, Ged, I am very glad to see you,’ Roland spoke lightly but Orla sensed the deep fear only now subsiding that underlay his words.
Wait.
She sensed?
She tried again, reaching out consciously this time, through the pain and exhaustion that bound her.
She sensed. She could sense him!
She looked towards Roland, all thought of Genevieve banished.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked, a sudden fear gripping her heart, that this change might only mean that he was injured or damaged in some terrible way.
‘Where would you like me to begin?’ he said, and smiled weakly.
‘I mean, the blocking. It’s gone. I can feel you…’
‘Ah,’ Roland said, and no more.
Orla took a step closer, and another.
She’d had so many questions, so many doubts. And now she could know, for certain.
She stopped. Something made her draw back. She realised she was not sure she wanted to know. Tears pricked her eyes.
‘I have not been entirely truthful with you,’ Roland said slowly.
A bitter taste filled Orla’s mouth. Of course. There had been too many gaps, too many hints. She looked around even now, expecting to see guards closing in on them. It was a long g
ame Roland had been playing, whatever it was. It must be almost over.
‘There is no such thing as a natural shield,’ Roland said, watching her face as he did so. ‘But there was one Mage, Hirim, powerful and learned, who did much work on shielding many years ago, in a time before the third Darkfall. Only one artefact remains from that time, made by him, incredibly old, incredibly valuable. And though we no longer know how it works, it has been passed down from Keeper to Keeper, kept secret. I inherited it and have used it to guard my mind from you, and from Iliana before you.’
Orla looked quickly to Ged. He was standing as still as though he was made of stone, his face pale in the dim light, expressionless even at the mention of his mother’s name.
‘I loaned it to Lyria. I had business elsewhere and I felt that she might need it.’
‘Damn right I needed it,’ Lyria muttered, ‘She would have melted my eyeballs without it.’
‘But why...’ Orla didn’t even know where to start.
‘Many reasons. Hirim’s purpose in making it was to counter the power of the Readers, to place some limits on what they could know. But it was also found that it was necessary for the Readers too. The power you have, this constant access to the minds of those around you, is exhausting and painful, and can lead to illness or madness. Many Readers in the past retreated to live in isolation; it was the only way they could survive. Otherwise the barrage of thoughts surrounding them drove them insane. By using a shield a Keeper could stay with a Reader, help them, teach them, protect them, without it draining the Reader’s power or adding to their pain. Because it is painful, isn’t it?’
He was watching her intently.
Orla nodded, a hard lump filling her throat so she was unable to speak. Finally, she steadied herself. ‘It’s true. That time I spent with you, before I was called by the Council, was the first time I’d been able to relax with another person. Ever. It was peaceful.’
Roland smiled. ‘There was one more reason for the shield,’ he said.
The Dying Flame Page 27
