The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  Jhom waited farther down the corridor, watching him as he knelt before the body.

  “Move away, Jhom!” Chance yelled as he ran toward him, “Get away from him now!”

  Jhom did as instructed, backing across the corridor and into the wall between two angry looking Baeldonian sarcophagi.

  Chance ran toward Beam. He felt dizzy, then faint. The blade was taking him down. He wasn’t going to make it.

  Too far back from Beam’s bed, his legs gave out. He stumbled and fell forward across the polished marble. The sword clanged violently against the stone as it clattered across the floor. It came to a spinning stop directly at Beam’s feet.

  Chance pushed himself to his knees. He couldn’t draw a favorable breath. Then his guts seized and he vomited hard enough to nearly pull a muscle.

  Jhom was immediately at his side, his huge hands holding him by the shoulders. “Khe’naeg’s balls, Chance! What demonry is going on here?”

  Chance dragged his mouth over his sleeve and spit into the pooled vomit.

  Jhom hoisted him to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked, studying him closely, “Gods almighty look at you! You’re pale as snow.”

  “I’m… I’m all right.” He spit again. His stomach was already settling, though his legs seemed to have turned to willow.

  Still with a steadying hand on Chance’s shoulder, Jhom looked at the sword lying on the marble before Beam. “What the hell is that? It looks like a Blood Caeyl.”

  “It… it is,” Chance said as he followed Jhom’s gaze, “It’s—”

  The light from the Blood Caeyl erupted in a brilliant flash. In the span of a breath, the crimson light buried the corridor before them.

  “We have to back away from it,” Chance said, “Now!”

  “A Blood Caeyl? How’s that possi—?”

  “Now!” Chance yelled, grabbing a wad of Jhom’s sleeve, “Move away from it!”

  “But there aren’t any Blood Caeyls left,” Jhom said as he helped him back toward the hatch, “You told me they’re all—”

  A pulse of energy rocked the corridor. The power of the caeyl’s awakening exploded, slamming them from behind, knocking Chance from his feet. He landed hard on his belly, sliding a dozen feet across the slick marble. He came to a stop with his head buried in his arms as the report reverberated angrily into the darkness.

  As the noise gradually subsided, he pushed himself up from the cold stone. The eye now illuminated the corridor like the noonday sun. Jhom lay on his stomach just a few feet behind him.

  “Jhom! Are you all right?”

  The Baeldon rolled up on his side and rubbed a fist against his ear. “What?”

  Chance used the legs of a Baeldonian sarcophagus to climb back to his feet, then turned back to the light.

  The sword stood upright on its tip directly at Beam’s feet, exactly as he’d expected. A stream of thick, tenacious light poured down on Beam like an unearthly beacon. The surface of light swirled across his flesh like a second skin. Any details of the man beneath were lost to the red opacity of the radiation.

  Jhom blocked the light with his hand. “I’m not even sure I want to ask this,” he said as he squinted at Chance, “But just what the hell is going on?”

  “That’s why I wanted him farther down the corridor.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s exactly as you suspected, a Blood Caeyl. And gods willing, it’s going to heal him.”

  “Heal him?”

  Chance nodded.

  “And how long do you reckon something like that might take?”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “You don’t look any too surprised at this. I expect it safe to assume this has happened before?”

  Chance again nodded. “Yes. Every night since the first sanctuary.”

  Jhom squinted through the splayed fingers of his raised hand. “Every night? It’s damned bright. Does it let up any?”

  “Not so long as he’s under it.”

  “How long will it last?”

  “As long as it needs to.”

  Jhom snorted at that. “Any risk of honoring me with specifics?”

  “Could be hours. Could be days. Could be weeks. I honestly don’t know.”

  “And when he dies inside it? Does it stop?”

  “He won’t die.”

  “You sound pretty damned sure of that.”

  “I’m not sure of anything anymore,” Chance whispered, “But I don’t believe there’s a safer place in all of Calevia for him than right there under the light of that stone.”

  “Hmph. That’d be some kind of miracle, I’d say. Those wounds need tending, not tanning. You ask me, the poor bastard’s probably already dead.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  “Well then, looks like we wait. If it’s going to last more than a few hours, I reckon we’d best cover it up. Damned thing’s giving me a headache already. I’ve got some rope and extra blankets in my saddlebags. If it’s still going at dawn, I’ll find some wood and build a blind around it.”

  “And while you’re out there, find me some Cobbler’s Vetch, some flesca, and a couple squirrels or rabbits. Beam’s fate’s out of my hands, but I may still be able to help her.”

  Jhom bent low and scooped his hat from the floor, then carefully brushed it off. The leather hat was wide brimmed with turned up sides, and had a long silver feather tucked into the blue band. Apparently satisfied with its condition, he put it on.

  “I see,” he said as he adjusted the hat to what was apparently exactly the right angle, “Well, you’re probably wasting your worry on that one. She’s a savage. If she lives, she’ll just end up a prisoner. Or worse.”

  “No. She won’t.”

  Jhom snorted. “Oh, is that right? Well, between you and me, the army might think differently about it.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what the Baeldonian army, the Parhronian Parliament, or all the Lords of Pentyrfal think. If she lives, we’re setting her free, and you’ll only embarrass yourself to argue it with me.”

  “Set her free? You’re serious?”

  “As a tomb.”

  “Hmph,” Jhom said, grinning down at him, “Any hope of you sharing your rationale with me? Because if you’ve up and gone suddenly daft, I reckon I have a right to know. When your head lands in the mud beneath the chopping block, mine’ll likely be resting right next to it, grinning adoringly at you.”

  “She’s here for a reason, Jhom. I can’t tell you what that reason is, because I’ve yet to divine it. Perhaps it’s prophecy; perhaps it’s just a hunch. All I know is that it’s true.”

  Jhom sighed. “By the looks of her, it’s a moot argument. I’m not thinking she’s much breath left in her anyway.”

  “You’ll have to forgive me for not holding much weight with your healing skills, Jhom. You can barely pick a scab. Only time will tell her fate.”

  Koonta’ar stirred and released a soft groan.

  Chance knelt down beside her. He carefully stroked the damp white hair back from her icy brow. The radiance from the Blood Caeyl dulled the chalky white her skin had faded to since the venom took her. Her teeth chattered softly, making a whispering sound that he found almost soothing. It told him she was alive and relieved him of the unsavory task of holding a blade to her mouth to confirm it.

  He pulled back the blanket and applied more balm to her chest, neck, and cheek wounds. As he worked, he looked at the tattoos gracing her biceps. They were the same on each arm, the image of a tree with an all-seeing eye resting amid its branches. The eye’s pupil blossomed into a tiny sun. It wasn’t much different in concept from the coats of arms carried by the Parhronii; this was a family mark. She was a proud woman from an equally proud race.

  As he studied the skin art, Beam’s words fluttered into his mind. The half-breed said those eyes were everywhere in the Vaemysh cemetery. It went against everything Chance knew to be true about the Vaemyn, but it also wasn’t something Beam would g
ain from lying about.

  He wondered what part she’d play in this horrid drama. Perhaps she’d be an emissary of some sort. Perhaps she’d go on to lead her people once the storm died. Whatever her role, he was confident her presence here was no accident, and he vowed to keep her alive, no matter the penalty to himself.

  He lay down on his back beside her and draped a forearm over his eyes. He was beginning to see the path of this vulgar story, and maybe even his role in it. He wasn’t destined to be the hero of this saga, though he had no regrets for that. No, his role was much more complicated. His role was to be the one who advised the heroes. He was the one who kept the heroes alive and on task. He was the keeper of the flames.

  II

  A HERITAGE OF TREASON

  THE PRODE SCREAMED HIDEOUSLY AS IT DOVE PAST HIM.

  It raked his shoulder with its talons and peppered his back in quills. Mawby screamed as he collapsed to his knees. He clawed for the quills scalding his back, but they were just out of reach.

  Another prode dove toward him, but this one wore Maeryc’s face. The prode hit him in the chest and wrapped its vile wings around him. Maeryc’s eyeless face shrieked into his, his mouth a bottomless red pit lined with needle-like teeth that flexed outward as he screeched. Mawby tried to push the creature away, tried to separate himself from it, but it wouldn’t give. The quills pinned the prode to his chest. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t breathe.

  Another prode fell on him. And then another. And another. They buried him in the musty grass, shredded him with their talons, impaled him with their quills! And every last one of them bore Maeryc’s wretched face!

  Mawby seized up from the dream.

  He couldn’t breathe. The skin burned along his back where the prode’s talons had raked him. He struggled to break free of the fit, but couldn’t move. He quickly realized the horror for the dream it had been, but the pain felt so real, so terribly real. He reached for his shoulder to confirm the pain was an illusion, but couldn’t move his arm. He tried to lean forward, but found resistance.

  He shook his head. As the fog of sleep cleared, he looked around. He sat beneath the canopy of a monstrous tree. A ridiculously thick rope wrapped his chest and guts, securing him tightly against the wide trunk. A second rope bound his wrists where they emerged between his legs. He struggled to free himself, but the rope was too tight. There was no wiggle room, no space to mount resistance. His heart raged. He couldn’t get any air!

  He threw his head back against the smooth bark. Focus, damn you! Calm yourself and think! Don’t you dare lose control!

  Steadied now, he quickly surveyed his environment. He appeared to be alone. The crown of the huge tree swelled above him like a colossal tent. The leaves muttered persistently, pressured by a determined wind. The canopy spread out from the trunk for seventy feet or more before gradually sagging to a low drip line. Beyond the perimeter of the tree, he saw the sun-drenched Criohn Plains.

  He remembered this tree now. He’d seen it while pursuing Maeryc. It rose up over that next hill like a lone sentinel standing watch over the plains.

  He pressed his head back against the tree and listened. It was inferior to listening directly to the earth itself, but better than empty air. He closed his eyes and urged his other senses to silence while his oteuryns attended to the taer-cael of his surroundings. After several moments of determined surveillance, he found… nothing.

  Something was terribly wrong. The world’s taer-cael was strangely muffled, like the whole world had been wrapped in a thick blanket that muted her voice. The few images he could perceive were at best foggy and indistinct. He shook his head and tried again, but again found only murmuring silence.

  He knew of a dozen head injuries that might cause the blinding of taer-cael. They were rare, but they happened. Except he didn’t seem to have any injuries. His head didn’t even hurt. It made no sense.

  In the end, he understood that the cause didn’t matter one whit. Without the use of his oteuryns, he was dependent on his eyes and ears, a deeply disturbing experience his people called the little blindness. He’d lost the most dependable and important of his senses. Yet, dire as that revelation was, he refused to submit to this betrayal of his body. He had to use the senses available to him, had to take stock, had to get his bearings and figure this wretched situation out.

  He looked around at the deeply shaded grass and leaves covering the earth beneath the great tree. The air was heavy with the scent of freshly turned dirt. The wind whispered through the leaves around him. A murder of crows barked in the distance. He considered the dense canopy hovering over him and tried to understand how he got here.

  Then he remembered Maeryc. He remembered the Blood Caeyl eye pressed sickeningly into the man’s empty socket. He remembered the prodes. He remembered the arrows that intervened. Baeldonian arrows.

  His heart lurched. He was a prisoner!

  He twisted against the restraints with renewed enthusiasm. He had to get free. He couldn’t let Baeldons take him alive. He wrestled against the rope binding his hands, fought against them until his wrists burned wet with blood, but they were too cleverly applied. They tightened even as he fought them. He’d never escape them through force, even if he’d had the strength. His chest was tight and burning, and he couldn’t draw a proper breath. The pain from Maeryc’s knife wound in his ribs ached clear through to his spine. It must be more infected than he’d thought.

  He looked down at the ropes binding his chest and realized for the first time that his shirt was gone. A clean line of sand-colored gauze rose just above the rope line on his chest. Someone had dressed his wounds.

  A horse snorted behind him.

  Mawby froze.

  The air sharpened with the scent of the animal. He heard a murmured command. The horse stopped. A bridle rattled. Leaves crunched as someone dismounted.

  Mawby cursed his blindness. He needed his goddamned taer-cael! He shook his head, shook it hard, shook it until he felt the pressure of blood behind his eyes. Something covered his oteuryns. That was the only explanation!

  “It’s a clay paste. You won’t get it off.”

  Mawby stopped breathing. The voice was deep and seemed to come from every direction.

  The soft munch of footsteps drifted in from his left. He twisted toward the noise, straining to see around the ridiculous girth of the tree. Then he spotted it. A Baeldon! The giantish man stood just around the bend of the tree with his back to Mawby. He stood before a fresh mound of dirt that ran straight out from the tree like a spoke. This was the source of the smell of freshly turned earth.

  The Baeldon looked back over his shoulder at him, then slowly turned and walked over. He stopped a pace out from the soles of Mawby’s feet. The grace in his movement took Mawby back. It wasn’t the ungainly, lumbering stomp he’d expected from someone so large, and he was large.

  The man’s head was lost somewhere up there in the canopy above. He must have been nine feet tall, dressed in a tight-fitting, thin black leather shirt with long sleeves ending in fingerless gloves. He wore identical breeches with high, soleless black boots tightly laced well up over his calves. They were clearly made for speed and stealth.

  The Baeldon slowly lowered himself to the earth, parking on his knees before Mawby’s soles. Even squatting, his head was nearly five feet up. He was clean-shaven with a thin, nearly imperceptible scar running the length of his left lower jaw. And most strangely, the man was completely bald.

  “A Baeldon,” Mawby said in Vaemysh, “I should’ve died with the Prodes.”

  “Mayhaps I should’ve let you,” the mountain replied in the same language.

  Mawby refused to break eye contact with the huge man. It’d been a long time since he’d felt so intimidated, but he wasn’t about to reveal it.

  “You’re one hell of a pile Vaemyn, ain’t you?” the Baeldon said, again in Vaemysh, “What’s your name, friend?”

  “You speak our language,” Mawby said for lack of something
more profound, “You barely have an accent.”

  “I had a good teacher. And he had a better teacher before him.”

  Mawby didn’t know what to make of that.

  “You’re what? Six, mayhaps six and a half foot?”

  “Something like that,” Mawby answered. Why was the man making chitchat? Maybe it was to stall things along. Maybe it was some weird attempt to loosen him up.

  “Reckon I’ve never seen a warrior the size of you before,” the Baeldon said, grinning, “That is really something, I’d say. Something indeed.”

  “Yeah, I got it. I’m a big Vaemyn.”

  “You’re dark skinned, too. For a Vaemyn, I mean. Hair’s a hell of a lot closer to brown than yellow.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “Day and a half.”

  A day and a half? Thirty-six hours? The words knocked him back. He couldn’t make them work. A day and a half? He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be alive,” he whispered.

  “I was thinking the same thing. You were burning one hell of a fever when I found you. That knife wound was festered up pretty good. Cleaned it best I could, cut some of the dead tissue out, applied some balm. I’m a field healer. It’s a second trade.”

  “Field healer,” Mawby said with as much sarcasm as he could muster, “Happy coincidence. You can patch me up before you put a sword through my gut.”

  The Baeldon scowled at that. Then he gestured toward Mawby’s face, saying, “What happened there?”

  For the first time since waking, Mawby remembered his other wound, the burn blisters on his face. He thought back to the hatch. He remembered the Parhronii, remembered the caeyl mage, the blue energy, the burn. He remembered Koonta falling into that damned hatch. It was all coming back now, all the misery and despair of the past days.

  “How’d it happen?” the mountain said.

  “I’d think a healer could figure that out,” Mawby said, pushing the sorry images out of his mind.

  The Baeldon snorted a laugh. “Yea, it’s a burn. Not being a complete moron, I reckon I put that together before you woke up. Though, I’d have to say, it ain’t from no mortal fire. Looks like that burn grew from the inside out, jh’ven?”