“The gods favor you, Soen,” Ch’drei chuckled.
“If so, they did not see fit to favor me with the lives of Qinsei and Phang,” Soen replied, closing his fist around the small stones.
“Do you think the other bolters know?” Ch’drei asked, her question merely curiosity.
“That they have a traitor among them who is giving away their every move to us?” Soen pondered for a moment. “No, this is a truth that is known to only three of us. . you, myself. . and the wretched creature that will deliver these slaves into my. . forgive me, Keeper. . our hands.”
CHAPTER 27
Pretending
Drakis awoke with a start, sitting upright so quickly that he felt three vertebrae in his back crack back into place. He drew in a great gulp of air and then held it for a moment, his eyes blinking as he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
The walls of the circular space were a dark, rich brown color. The curve of their surface showed slick and glistening in the thin light that spilled down through a woven grating that capped the room ten feet or so above his head.
At length he let out his breath and stretched slowly. Every muscle in his body felt stiff and aching. It was to him as though he had slept for a thousand years, and yet he still longed for the bliss of unconsciousness. He rubbed his hand quickly over the bristles of his emerging hair and was surprised at how long it had gotten.
How long have I been in here? he wondered. For a while, he fingered the matted animal furs under him. He remembered running into the woods. Then something about Mala finding him. . leading him somewhere. .
He frowned at the thought of her, his mind tumbling through a cascade of memories. He loved her-had to love her-and yet the things he had done to her, had suffered because of her were shameful, painful, and unforgivable. .
A small, quivering voice cut through his dark musings.
“Drakis?”
He turned at once toward the sound. He sat on a slab of stone about the size of the tombs where the bones of the Rhonas dead were so often placed. There were two more of these slabs set around the floor of the curved room, but only one of them was likewise occupied.
“Mala,” he replied as evenly as he could manage. “I’m here.”
Mala sat with her legs pulled up tight against her chest as she rocked nervously back and forth. “Please, Drakis. Is it you?”
Drakis smiled ruefully, gripping the edge of the stone bier with his hands as he leaned forward. “I might ask the same of you. Are you all right?”
“I. . I don’t know.” She raised her face toward the light. Her eyes were red from crying and still filled with tears. The beautiful shape of her head was now covered with a bristle of rust red hair, nearly obscuring the dark stains of the House tattoo. But there was something in the heart-shape of her dirt-streaked face and her wide mouth that called to his heart. And her eyes. . those emerald eyes. . called to him still.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I. . I don’t know that either,” she said, her voice quavering. “I’m frightened.”
“There’s nothing to be frightened about. .”
“Have you seen the walls?”
Drakis turned his head around, pressing it closer to the reddish brown surface. “I don’t see what. .”
He stopped.
The wall was composed entirely of enormous cockroaches. Their legs were linked together, forming a thick pattern so dense that it was impossible for Drakis to tell if there was anything beyond the mass of roaches or whether they alone formed the wall. He reached out gingerly to touch it.
“No, Drakis! Don’t. .”
The wall of roaches reacted at once to his touch, a clattering, chattering sound engulfing the cell as the walls around them contracted inward in a violent spasm. Drakis leaped off of the stone slab with a yelp, reaching without conscious thought for his weapon and only then realizing that it was no longer at his side.
Mala screamed hysterically, pulling herself into a tighter ball as the size of their confined space grew rapidly smaller.
Then, with equal swiftness, the surrounding cockroach wall stopped and receded, though, to Drakis’ eyes, not quite so far back as it had been before.
Drakis concentrated on bringing himself under control. His breath was too quick, and he could feel the heat of his flushed face. He had no idea where they were nor how they had gotten here, but he was certain that anywhere else would be better for them. At once he turned his face toward the overhead grating and was again surprised. What had appeared to him to be a thick grillwork he now saw was constituted entirely of large snakes, their bodies woven to cover the opening. He could not discern much of anything in the light beyond the snakes, but he held little hope it was much better than where they were now.
Drakis looked down at the soft, fine-grained floor under his feet. Various skulls protruded from the deep white grains along the wall’s peripheral base; the sand was composed of crushed bone.
“It will be all right,” Drakis said, as much to himself as to Mala.
“How will. . will this possibly. . be all right?” Mala asked through gulping sobs.
Drakis turned. He longed to go to Mala, to take her in his arms and comfort her. He took a step toward her, and then he stopped and stood awkwardly in midstride, watching her.
She gazed at him, her tear-filled eyes narrowing on him, reflecting a world of pain, longing, hatred, hope, and despair. When she spoke, her words were more of an accusation than a question. “You remember, don’t you?”
Drakis heard his own quickened breaths in his ears. His mouth had suddenly gone dry, and he was having trouble looking her in the eye. “Yes, Mala. I remember. . I remember a great many things now. . we all do. .”
Her lips parted in contempt.
Drakis let out a harsh breath. “But, yes, I remember.”
“How could you, Drakis,” her voice shook as she spoke. “How could you do that to me? The servants who brought me to Shebin’s rooms scorned me and tore at my clothes. . all the while screeching that my hoo-mani body was too ugly to tempt them. . and then they forced me to watch you. . you. . and that hideous, soulless elf bitch. .”
Her voice trailed off to nothing.
Only now did he remember it all-how he had spurned Tsi-Shebin the day before because of his love of the garden slave called Mala and how her vengeance had taken its own cold course. So she had changed his Devotions that night to include erasing his memory of the woman he so tenderly loved so that she could arrange her horrific and unforgivable humiliation.
It was not the first time, Drakis knew, that Tsi-Shebin had played cruelly with him or with those he dared love other than her.
He shook with revulsion, feeling the urge to vomit and all the while knowing that it was he alone who made him sick. . that it was himself whom he hated the most. Drakis was filled with unspeakable shame over what had happened and what he had done.
Yet his other memories of Mala persisted at the same time: of their yearning to touch softly through the bars that separated them, of the quiet talks they stole, and the warm smiles they shared.
He looked again into those emerald eyes and saw his own loathing and longing reflected back.
“Mala,” he said quietly at last. “I am so terribly sorry-more sorry than I think there are words to tell. I wish there were a way that I could take it all back or change it all. I even sometimes wish that I could just forget it all and go back to being ignorant and happy.”
Mala gave a short laugh, wiping her eyes against the soiled cloth covering her knees. “I’d settle for ignorant.”
Drakis smiled slightly and nodded. “Well, if all you’re looking for is ignorant, then here I am.”
Mala gazed at him again, her face serious. “Drakis, I don’t know how to forget. I look at you and I see so many different faces now all at the same time. So many of them I hate and so many of them I long for all at once. I can’t make myself forget what I know. I need you, Drakis. . I don’t un
derstand what is happening to us or where we are going. . but I need to follow you, be with you and be comforted by you. But every time I see you I also see your other faces, and I just can’t. .”
“Maybe,” Drakis said. “Maybe we could just-pretend.”
Mala looked away from him. “What?”
“Look, I–I don’t know what happened to us, and we’re all dealing with our own pasts,” Drakis said, taking a step closer.
Mala tightened her grip around her knees.
“I know there are a lot of things in my own past that absolutely terrify me,” he went on. “I’ve seen things. . done things. . you know that I have. . that are. .”
Drakis ran out of words, unable to express his self-loathing. “Up until now I’ve been able to push all these memories aside. I keep telling myself that I’ve got to take command, I’ve got to be in control and get everyone to safety-and that I’ll think about my unthinkable past later. I haven’t stopped-haven’t really let any of us stop-long enough to deal with our own thoughts and memories. We’ve been running away from ourselves as fast as we could, dreading being caught by our own pasts as much as any Inquisitor the Empire has sent after us. Now we’ve stopped, and we have nowhere left to run from ourselves.”
Mala turned her gaze back on him once more, her eyes both pleading and reserved.
Drakis offered his hand out in front of him. “Now all I know is that you are here. . and I am here. . and together we’re stuck in this hole. You need someone to hold you, and I need someone to hold. So if we can’t forgive our pasts or forget them, maybe we can just pretend-for a while at least-that I still love you and you still love me. Let’s pretend that all that happened before was just a bad dream and that all that matters is what’s happening right here and now.”
Mala did not move.
“We are who we are,” Drakis said quietly extending his hand once more. “But for today, can we pretend to be those people we were before we remembered?”
Mala reached out her small, dirty hand slowly, taking his large hand in hers. He climbed up onto the stone bier next to her and slowly, carefully, put his arms around her. She turned into him, leaning against his body and turning her face into his chest.
He held her there for many hours, doing his best to pretend that she loved him.
All the while, she shrank from his touch.
CHAPTER 28
Eternal Halls
Drakis opened his eyes to a dream.
He sat facing walls that were the white of fine marble illuminated by soft balls of light floating in perfect stillness at set distances between narrow, fluted pillars. Carefully shaped trees and plants adorned the octagonal space in hues of green, augmented with brilliant flowers in orange, blue, yellow, and crimson. The pillars drew his eyes up toward a glorious and intricate ceiling twenty feet above him. Clouds drifted past the intricate latticework formed between the arches high overhead.
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the soft echoes of musical pipes playing a gentle melody.
Mala was still at his side, though sleep had taken her at last, too. She leaned against him, quiet at last.
Drakis closed his eyes. So this is what peace feels like, he thought. Free from care or pain. Free from responsibilities. Free from your own past. He smiled and shifted slightly to relieve a muscle that was threatening to cramp in his lower back.
He seriously considered whether it might be possible to remain in this one spot forever. He supposed that eventually he would need to find water and food and other such bothersome necessities of life, but for now the relief that he felt in this one place was acute. He had been in pain for so long that it was not until now-when he let it go-that he realized just how large a burden it had been to him.
The hollow tones of the pipes continued to drift over him, carried from a distance on a gentle, sweet breeze.
Five notes. . Five notes. .
He wondered how he’d got here. He remembered finding Mala in the woods. He remembered following her into the glade, the rock fountain in the middle and drinking from it. His memories became more confused after that and it seemed like too much of an effort to remember. Then he remembered being in the terrible cell with Mala and. .
He shifted once more, frowning. He didn’t know how he got from that horrible cell to this place, but he knew that he didn’t care. For now, he thought, it is enough to just sit here, drink in the peace, rest, and listen to the sweet sounds of the. .
Nine notes. . Seven notes. .
He sat upright suddenly, his eyes open.
The song. . that song.
The distant pipes were playing the melody that had so often troubled his dreams and even his waking hours of late. He had tried so hard to push it from his thoughts for so long that he could scarcely mistake it now. It must be the dwarf, he thought. Jugar had been humming the tune around the Ninth Throne of the Dwarves when they first took him as a prize. It had to be him!
The peaceful, languid tones suddenly annoyed Drakis. That damnable little beast! He would be the one to spoil this.
Mala roused slowly, blinking as she awoke. “Drakis? What happened? Where are we?”
Drakis pushed himself off the stone-the same stone they had sat upon in the roach cell, he realized, as his bare feet landed on a soft green material that blanketed the floor. His practiced eye glanced around him, searching for something that might be used as a weapon, but other than the large stone bier itself in the middle of the tall room and the small trees that seemed to be growing right out of the flooring, there was nothing that presented itself to him as useful in combat.
He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. This was not a battlefield; indeed, there was something about this place that was so far removed from everything he knew about life that he found himself increasingly anxious in the midst of absolute peace.
“A land of peace and rest?” the young boy said. “Even if there were such a place, you won’t know what to do when you get there.”
“What do you know about it?” his brother whispered gruffly beside him as they pushed the wheel of the mill with a dozen other slaves. “There is a land of peace and freedom. .”
“That’s not what Drakosta says.” I’m twelve, Drakis thought as he heard his young self speak. That young boy was me. Drakosta was still alive then and would not be beaten to death by Timuran for two years yet. “He says that it’s all a story someone made up.”
“Well that’s not what Mom says,” Polis answered back, sweat pouring from his forehead. “It’s north-in Vestasia maybe-beyond a sea of water and even a sea of sand. That’s where we’re going, Drak. . you and me together. No one will ever make us work again. You wait and see.”
I had a brother, Polis. Which brother was that? And was that our mother who told those tales or was it someone we only thought was our mother because the elves always tried to make us believe we were in families even when our parents were dead, when several sets of parents were dead and our memories of each were successive lies. .
“Drakis! What is it?”
Drakis shook himself back into the present. Mala stood in front of him. The soft tune continued to play.
“Come on,” he said as he turned toward the tall arched doors of translucent glass and pushed them open with a violent shove.
The room beyond was a small, circular garden enclosed by a glass dome overhead. A fountain murmured in the center of the garden, whose appearance mildly shocked Drakis as it was identical to the one he remembered being in the glade just before his thoughts faded.
“This is it,” Drakis said. “This is where you brought me when you found me in the Hyperian Woods.”
Mala cocked her head, her eyes narrowing above her cheekbones. “What are you talking about? I couldn’t find you in the woods. .”
“This,” Drakis said, stepping up to the fountain. “When we first entered the Hyperian Woods, we all got separated. You found me and brought me back to this fountain. . it was in a glade then. .”
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“What glade, Drakis?” Mala asked. “I never found you. . that dwarf of yours found me.”
“Oh, that dwarf,” Drakis growled and gritted his teeth. Drakis turned around, shouting up into the dome. “Jugar, you monstrous little snake! As soon as I find you playing those damned pipes I’m going to take them, break them and one by one insert them into your. .”
“Silence, Master Drakis,” came the imperious voice behind him. “These are my halls, and you will respect my home.”
Drakis turned, his tirade cut short.
The Lyric stood before him, her narrow face uplifted in regal scorn. She still wore the same dress, now tattered to rags, that she had from the beginning of their ordeal, but now on the sparse and stubby golden hair sprouting from her head she wore a circlet fashioned of woven twigs. “You need not concern yourself with Jugar. He is with us, and his dwarven ways shall not trouble you while you are in my realm.”
The Lyric gestured behind her, and a wide, familiar, and now troubled face came into view at about the level of her waist.
“Good friends are always well met in strange circumstances,” Jugar said quietly, his mouth shaking beneath troubled eyes as he spoke. “You’re a mighty man, Drakis, to live within the boundaries of the Murialis Woods.”
The Lyric turned to face Drakis once more, her face raised in defiance. “You stand within the Eternal Halls-my forest palace where you are, for now, my guests. But you may find what the dwarf, it seems, has lost the words to tell you: that it is far easier to enter the Eternal Halls than it is to leave them.”
Drakis stared at the Lyric for a moment, then held up his hand. “Wait. Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?” Mala asked.
“Listen!”
In the immediate stillness, the tones of a set of pipes drifted through the garden.
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