“It’s good to be home.” He breathed out a burden of stress.
“Catling?” Nessa brushed by him to hug her friend. The embrace went unanswered, and she spun to him, worry shadowing her beautiful eyes. “What happened?”
“Nessa, she’s… We’ll talk about it without…” He bobbed his eyebrows at the boy in his arms. “Where’s Rose? I didn’t even think… I don’t want her to see this yet.”
“I agree.” Nessa glanced over her shoulder. “Rose expressed an interest in singing lessons, and your mother lit up like a beacon. They’ll be done soon. Let’s get Catling inside.” She grasped her friend’s limp hand, tears gathering on her lashes.
They switched duties, and while Nessa added Brodie to the singing lessons, Kadan waited with Catling in a guest chamber. He pressed on Catling’s shoulders until she sank into a chair. The door slid open, and Nessa swirled in, closing it behind her. “Tell me everything.”
He started, but it seemed a long story for so short a time away. Ava-Grea had been betrayed and retaken. Influencers had stood against the realm, and if their guild had more than a handful of survivors, he couldn’t name them. Tora-Mur, perhaps, would find her way to safety. He described what Catling had done at the fane, on The Sea God, and finally in Elan-Sia. “I can’t heal her; I tried. You’re her last hope.”
Nessa sat on the bed’s edge, fingers pressed together against her lips, her gaze lost to the dying day outside the window. “Not now. Tonight when Brodie and Rose are asleep.”
“I knew you would at least try. That’s the reason I brought her here.” He headed for the door, a hand extended to her. “I’d like to visit with the children.”
“Kadan?” Nessa shook her head. “Do we just leave her?”
“She doesn’t care, Nessa.” It hurt his heart to see her eyes brim with tears. “I believe she’d sit there until she died, and it wouldn’t matter to her. But we can bring in someone to keep her company. I read to her on the ferry though I don’t think she noticed.”
“If I can’t heal her, that’s the end, isn’t it? She’ll die.”
“That’s what happened to all the others. There’s no will to live, nothing there, no desire. She doesn’t eat or drink without help or take care of her body’s needs. In a way, love, she’s already dead.” He drew Nessa up and gathered her into his arms, the embrace a shared gift of life and reminder of all their friend had lost. Outside the window, the radiant serenity of an evening sun washed his soul, and he yielded to the comfort of love.
***
The ninth bell chimed through the city. Kadan entered the chamber with Minessa. The women who’d tended Catling through the evening bowed and let themselves out. Catling slept, dressed in nightclothes, and tucked under blankets. They’d bathed her, combed her wet hair, and arranged it on the pillow. Her thin arms lay folded on top of the blankets like a corpse laid out for mourning.
Minessa carried a tray with three cups of greenleaf, one for each of them. The steaming brew for Catling was a wish, a hope Minessa could heal the severed threads that bound together her friend’s emotions, that made her who she was and kept her alive. If Kadan didn’t already love his Nessa, he would have for the gesture alone.
He sat on one side of the bed, unfolded Catling’s arms and held her hand. A breath filled his chest, and he centered on his exhale. Minessa mirrored him on the bed’s other side. If anyone possessed the skills to heal Catling, Minessa did. Her talent surpassed that of all the healers in Ava-Grea, a gift from and to the world.
Minessa closed her eyes and smiled. “Did you know that love is the key ingredient in healing?” He listened without reply as she shared her reflections, her way of relaxing into her influence. “It’s not a different spectrum as the doyen taught us, but a crossover, a deep burn that cauterizes our healing. I believe we added it to our ministrations without consciousness since healing is impossible without it.”
Minessa probed, beginning with a complete assessment of Catling’s health. Kadan had kept her alive, but he couldn’t prevent her from failing. Without the emotional spark, her energy aura felt dull and lethargic. “You did so well, Kadan.”
Her kind words comforted him despite the failure of his efforts. He sensed her moving into the woad around her eye, something he hadn’t tried, and his heart leapt with hope. She looked for the tie between conceptualized emotion and real emotion, whatever it was that allowed her eye to perceive, distinguish, and sever. Finding nothing there, she explored the woads on Catling’s scalp and back. The residual luminescence in her skin lay dark, the ephemeral light dead.
His hope faded as she moved on into the brain’s deep core, to its tiny almond-shaped center. She closed her eyes. “Tunvise taught us that this tiny part of us connects to other areas, mediating friendship, love, and affection, fear, rage and aggression. Without it, we are indifferent to love and danger.”
She probed further, the lines in her forehead creasing. “Memories reside here, all the emotional connections to our past that we use to evaluate the present. This is all supposed to integrate, Kadan, and there’s nothing here, no connections. Even motivations like pleasure or physical desire, the relief of hunger and thirst, I can’t find them.”
Absorbed in her search, she ceased talking, and he simply journeyed beside her, as helpless as she. All the pieces of Catling’s emotional life existed: the parts for expression, those coordinating smells, sounds, and sights with sweet memories, those that cross-referenced and created meaning. Yet they had disconnected from one another. With no emotional context for reacting to pain, for perceiving pleasure, for regulating aggression, Catling existed in a state leaving her completely tame.
“She has no capacity for moods, no self-awareness,” Minessa whispered. “She’ll never express or feel love.”
Kadan felt Nessa’s love spilling into Catling’s body as if love alone possessed the power to cure her mind and recreate her soul. Her efforts increased in intensity, the searching and probing bordering on frantic. There were no threads to tie, no connections to mend, nothing to reinforce or invigorate. When Catling had blasted out the lush, emotional landscape, she’d left no seed behind. All of it, every part of who she was had vanished.
Minessa’s hand retracted, and tears sprang to her eyes. “I can’t do it, Kadan. I don’t know how.”
He circled the bed and dropped to a knee, holding her hands while she wept. “I think we should let Rose see her while she still looks like Catling. Then, I think…”
Nessa raised her eyes.
“I think I should help her die.”
Minessa slumped, her whole body seeming to shrink with despair. “Life is too cruel, Kadan. All her loss and pain and none of it her own doing. Everyone used her for their own purposes. And now her friends are the ones left to kill her.”
He lacked the words to soften the burden or cure the heartbreak. She wiped her eyes and blew out a breath. “I’ll wash my face and get Rose up from bed.”
After she left, he took Catling’s hand, wishing for miracles, for something they’d missed. He would have liked to save the day, to be the hero, to somehow make sense of a world that wasn’t cruel, perhaps, but capricious; yet, there was nothing to save.
Nessa returned wearing a scrubbed smile, holding Rose’s hand. Rose would turn four winters in another season. She wore a ruffled nightdress and her sleep-tousled hair curled on her shoulders. Like her mother, she was small for her age and imbued with power. If Whitt hadn’t survived and fate left Rose as part of his family, it wasn’t a bad place to be.
Upon seeing Catling, Rose pulled free of Minessa’s hand and ran to the bed. She climbed up on the end, her eyes luminous. “Is she sleeping?”
Minessa nodded. “Remember, I told you she’s ill. You must be gentle with her.”
“What’s the matter with her?” Rose asked.
“She had different tricks.” Minessa sat on the end of the bed near the child. “Different from the rest of us. She used them to save people, but she…” Minessa’s voi
ce broke.
“She saved me,” Kadan said. “She saved many people and stopped the war. But to save everyone, she had to use one of the tricks on herself, and it made her sick.”
“What kind of trick?” Rose asked.
“Well,” he thought about it. “You know we have our own private feelings that are different than trick feelings?”
Rose pursed her lips. “Trick feelings aren’t nice even when they feel good.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Your mother knew how to stop trick feelings. It was her special gift, letting people enjoy their own happiness and sadness and love. But she could also stop real feelings if she needed to, and one day she stopped her own real feelings. We can’t bring them back.”
“Is she going to die?” Rose’s eyes welled.
“Yes, very soon.” Minessa wrapped an arm around the small shoulders. “We wondered if you might like to say farewell to her.”
Rose crawled up to the head of the bed and kissed her mother’s forehead. “I love you, and I wish we could play more.”
“That was a sweet thing to wish,” Kadan said.
“Now, I’ll take you back to bed.” Minessa smiled. “Perhaps you’d like to snuggle with Brodie tonight.” Delighted with the idea, Rose took her hand. Minessa glanced at Kadan, the compassion in her eyes granting him the permission he required. She gazed down at Rose, and the two of them left the room.
Kadan sat with the vast silence. Outside, clouds drifted across the moons, and a solitary star lingered, remotely burning. One last task remained. A simple thought to bring about a gentle death. He reached out to take Catling’s curled hand, sharing the warmth of touch and enduring life. Killing with influence came easier than healing, the body fragile, each part interdependent, a single organism of miraculous creation.
To kill was to deprive the world of its miracles.
There were times when he’d stolen lives in a brutal act of rage. He’d also killed softly and gently, slowly restricting the pathways feeding the brain. He’d done so out of mercy many times when working beside the sick beds in Ava-Grea. He’d killed to save lives, and he’d killed because others ordered him to. Long ago, he’d murdered an innocent woman as part of his training. Why? Farrow and her flame red hair would haunt him to his grave, and yet her death would prove far easier than this one.
With a final sigh, he directed his influence to Catling’s brain, and before his courage faltered, he pinched. She reacted, nerves firing signals of danger. He retracted his hand, severing the influence. His heart pounded, and he gulped a breath. His hand returned to hers, influence rushing through the folds of her brain. The connections were firing, billions of them sparking and forming thousands of links all through her mind, a hundred trillion tiny bits of information traveling at miraculous speed. The brilliancy inside her shone like rivers of luminescence on a moonless night.
Minessa entered the room, her face drawn. She halted, narrowing her puffy eyes at his crescent grin. “What happened?”
“Find out for yourself.”
She swept to the bed, half on his lap, and grabbed Catling’s hand. In the midst of a laugh that chimed through his heart like sweet bells, she burst into tears. “Rose did it!” She hugged him, and they rocked from side to side in the chair.
“What about her influence?” Nessa asked.
They touched her hand, and Nessa traveled to Catling’s eye. Nothing but severed residue. Kadan shared a glance with her, and without words, they probed the woads on her back. Nothing functioned beyond the ordinary stuff of skin.
“I can bring it back,” Minessa said. “I can heal the influence. It’s there; I’d just need to reconnect it. The question is should I?”
“Rose didn’t touch it,” he said. “I think she knows best.”
***
Catling dreamed of awakening in the loft with Whitt. They were children, six and five again, with little Mouser sleeping between them, her blond curls sprouting bits of straw and her mouth open. Light streaked through the fissures in the walls, illuminating the dust motes that swirled in the slanted morning sun.
The air glittered with color, emotions permeating all parts of the planet. They flowed in the silver song of hurrying waters and grew in the charmed forests, overhung and overspread with ivy. Emotion imbued the poignant scent of honeysuckle in the garden; it sang with the fluttering of untried wings on their skyward flight. It lived in the silent stones, in the huddled hills, crept in sylvan sweetness over the mountains, and echoed in the whispering rumble of the crisp, sparkling sea. The world surged with infinite beauty around her.
She stroked Mouser’s hand, and the little girl changed into Rose with her dark hair and gray eyes, her bowed lips. The child was of the world, indistinguishable, a creature of love and delight. Luminescence streamed through her, radiating from her skin, and Rose giggled.
“Is she waking up?”
“Perhaps,” a man said.
“Can I wake her?
“Gently.”
“I won’t trick her.” Rose’s voice. “I’ll use my fingers.”
“A fine choice.” Kadan chuckled.
Little fingers tickled Catling’s cheek. Emotion surged into her body. A flood of color rippled through her veins, saturated her flesh, and infused her being from her fingertips to her toes. It was a sea of pleasure and pain, of dreams and disappointment, of guilt and gratefulness, fear and love. Emotion collided and blended, poignant, melancholy, bittersweet and wistful, rich in nuance and authentically human. All hers, all genuine, welling up from the core of her soul.
She opened her eyes. Rose grinned, inches from her nose, a child with a violet rose around her eye and a silly expression. Kadan and Minessa stood behind her. Light streaked through the window, illuminating the dust motes that swirled in the slanted morning sun, making mellow gold of all the air.
Chapter Forty-Two
Catling meandered through the Harvest market where long ago, she’d walked with Keela, clutching her mother’s skirt and trying not to get trampled or swatted. The market had changed, more orderly with trim rows and less thievery, no enforcers or guards waiting to bash heads. No hangings. It bustled with traders from the far reaches of Ellegeance, crofters delivering produce, and craftsmen hawking their wares.
Kadan and Minessa expected guests, and Catling had volunteered to shop for sweets, a welcome chore since idle time addled her head with too much thinking. The weeks of consciousness without care left an odd residue as if she’d dreamt them or watched them unfold in a stranger’s life. Each day, the sensation faded in small degrees with her lingering frailty as Rose rekindled her reason to live.
A split copper glinted between the pavers, and she stooped to pick it up. She’d once stashed her coins in hidey-holes throughout the warrens, tucked with dreams of growing rich and sailing to the sea. For a few moments, the old urge returned, and she tracked the cracks and crannies for lost loot. The quest proved harder than in the old days when Algar filled his victims’ pockets with coppers. They’d scatter when the bodies dropped, splits and chips bouncing and rolling into miniature crevasses for her slender fingers to find.
She searched inside her head for influence and found nothing, tried to fling a dose of pleasure and love over the crowd with no effect. Nothing to cast or brush or poke or touch. If she covered her eye, her vision remained unchanged. She’d erased her power, and Kadan said it was gone forever. The uncertainty on his face suggested that she might find her situation depressing or disappointing. And yet, that knowledge soothed her soul like a balm. A long-held wish had come true. She was free, commonplace, and unremarkable with nothing anyone desired, a woman with a pretty flower around her eye, a graceful garden blooming on her back. The red bird of death had surrendered its virulent power.
The guild had died in Elan-Sia. For years, she’d dreamed of revenge for the rending of her childhood. Then somewhere along the way, life became more complicated, the people in her story increasingly nuanced. She’d lost the ability
to separate the horror of Algar’s abuse from the joy of her lovely girl. Vianne was correct after all about the power and sacredness of authentic emotion.
Now, it was finished. A handful of influencers were scattered about the realm, but with scarce exceptions, they would be the last. A few generations might see some residual skill, but in time, the power to manipulate emotions would fade from the world. After that, if people chose to surrender their wills to the false sway of others, it would be by choice.
She sat on the Blackwater’s banks and watched the waterdragons play against a golden riot of autumn leaves. The whimsical creatures fanned their wings, freckling the river with droplets of light. The last time she’d idled there, Whitt lounged beside her, Vianne hadn’t found her, and her family and dreams of home were alive.
Whitt survived the war. Word had arrived by bird and later by letter. Ellegeance had won, though not decisively. Perhaps, the goddess was the ultimate and only victor in two decades of carnage. His letters brimmed with humor and frustration. Along with Gannon, he toiled in Elan-Sia, rebuilding a government, revising and reestablishing the rule of law. The Cull Tarr had withdrawn to Nor-Bis, and he trusted that the wariness which characterized the relationship between the two peoples would soften. True peace would require time and patience.
When midafternoon arced west, she hiked the winding stairs. A fragrant breeze graced the seventh tier garden. Guests in polished boots and elegant jackets nibbled from an array of local delicacies and drank a fruity concoction laced with spike.
Brodie and Rose floated wooden boats in the fountain. Gannon chatted with Minessa’s father, High Ward Barrick-Kar, and Councilor Oaron admired the pots of native fruit trees with a handful of dignitaries and hovering scribes. She searched the gathered faces and sighed. No sign of Whitt.
“Catling!” Gannon’s smile split his face in two, and he opened his arms for an embrace. Dapper and dignified, scrubbed and shaved, he wore Lelaine’s azure under deeper shades of blue. His ebony curls were trimmed to show off a touch of new gray at his temples.
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 27
