The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  Lucifeus briefly faked indignity, then did exactly as told. He retrieved a long match from the tin mug on the heavy oak mantle and lit it in the fire beneath.

  Esoria waved at the tracker and the coward, saying, “I’ve no need to examine them. I don’t even need to get near them. I’m confident they don’t matter. They’re simply frightened.”

  The weak one on the end shook so hard, Mal feared he might crack a wrist. The Vaemyd Grelia’tau, conscious again, simply sat upright in her shackles, a smear of blood slowly drying on her forehead. She was equally frightened, he had no doubt, and in a great deal of pain as well. But in typical savage fashion, she strived to cover it with anger.

  “The signs all point to Prae,” Esoria said quietly. Then she paused and looked across the table at the Kadeer. “And yet…”

  “And yet?” Mal said, “There’s an ‘and yet’? And yet, what?”

  “I’m not sure. Though I understand them academically, I fear Fire Caeyls are not my strongest suit.”

  “Esoria, dearest,” Lucifeus said as he tapped the lit match against his thumb, “Just say it. We’re big boys. Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  She didn’t reply. Her eyes remained fixed on the seemingly soulless savage.

  Mal had a nose for fear. He understood it. He recognized it no matter how faint its scent. He could smell it in a sailor from thirty feet away, whether in the heart of a storm or during the pitch of battle, and that smell was filling the room around him now. Esoria was scared to death. He prayed it wasn’t contagious.

  “Hellsteeth, Esoria,” he said carefully, “Just say it.”

  “You won’t be pleased,” she whispered back.

  Mal watched Lucifeus watching the witch. His brother appeared seized by a rare moment of solemnity, a fact that did nothing to ease his own growing apprehension. Still, never mind how gruesome the news may be, they needed to know. He looked over at Esoria and said, “Please be forthwith. What is it?”

  “You want the truth?”

  Mal shrugged his brow. “I’m not confident ‘want’ is the proper description.”

  “I don’t believe Prae is this man’s owner.”

  The words landed like a punch in the stomach. “What is that supposed to mean, exactly?” He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know.

  “I mean Prae can’t use his energy to possess mortals. On a good day of Caeylsphere energy, he may be able to fill a corpse with the essence of a demon, but he cannot possess a beating heart. Not ever. This man has a beating heart.”

  Mal looked at his brother, who simply shrugged back.

  “You two have the deductive abilities of stumps! I don’t know how you manage to run this fort. I’m telling you it’s not Prae possessing this Vaemyn.”

  “Not Prae?” Mal said, “Well… who is possessing them, then?”

  “Who? Or what?”

  “Or what? Those are the kind of words that can ruin an entire day. Just what in the Nine are you talking about?”

  He watched Esoria slip around the table. She again took the Kadeer’s face in her hands and twisted it up toward her. The warrior’s unfocused gaze didn’t waver as she studied him. His eyes were dark pits, his face sallow, his white hair disheveled and dirty, his lips and nostrils scabbed and dry. The savages had all endured the same abuse since their capture, but the others didn’t look nearly as worn as he did.

  Esoria released the Vaemyn and gave him a quick slap, to which he offered no physical response. She stepped back from him and parked her fists on her hips. “Nay, he’s been taken. It’s beyond reasonable doubt.”

  “Taken?” Mal said.

  “Aye.”

  “But not by Prae?”

  “Nay.”

  “Despite Prae’s amulet in his horn?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” Lucifeus said, “Taken?”

  “There’s an ethereal wall surrounding his flesh. He’s been disassociated from this corporeal plane, so to speak.”

  “Can you divine why?” Mal asked.

  Esoria rubbed her face in her hands, then looked up at him. “Sadly, yes,” she said on a sigh, “I’m afraid I can.”

  “Why doesn’t that sound like good news?”

  She readjusted the large black candle berthed between the Kadeer’s shackled wrists, pulling it back toward her just a bit so that it sat between the flesh of his thumb joints with a few inches clearance on each side. Then she methodically arranged the eight red candles in a half moon around and behind it with the open end facing the affected warrior like a crescent moon.

  When she’d finished, she turned to Lucifeus and sent him a glare as harsh as a bite. “Didn’t I tell you to light these candles?”

  Lucifeus flinched, then proceeded to comply with her orders.

  Esoria watched the Kadeer as if trying to pick his brain apart with her thoughts. She watched him long after Lucifeus lit the candles.

  Mal felt the clock ticking in his head. The apprehension in the room was thick as butter. Needing to see something happen, anything happen, he placed a hand on her elbow and urged, “What can we do to help?”

  She slapped his hand away. “I’m not one of your freebooters, Malevolus Fark! This isn’t going to be easy and it is sure as the hells not going to be pretty. So kindly give me some space before I have Hoot there escort you out of this miserable dungeon.”

  Mal threw his hands up and backed away. Never pet a snarling dog.

  Esoria growled, then turned back to the table. The light of the nine burning candles shimmered across her scowling features, casting her purposeful eyes in and out of shadows so that she appeared possessed herself.

  After a long moment’s contemplation, she opened an odd porcelain canister. She scooped out three generous fingers of a greasy black ointment, which she smeared onto the table surface to make a thick circle around the candle arrangement. She took great care to fill in every scratch, scar, and crack in the wood. Apparently satisfied with her work, she wiped her fingers clean on a green silk hanky. She then pulled several tiny skulls from her bag, all grossly misshapen, with extra eye sockets and gnarly protuberances. These she arranged at irregular intervals just inside the greasy circle on the far side of the black candle, all facing the troubled Kadeer.

  As she worked, her whispered incantations flitted through the darkness. She unrolled a narrow strip of black satin across the abused wood between her and the circle, smoothing it out carefully. Finally, she placed a thin, square silver box made hideous with gaudy jewels in the middle of the cloth. As she pried the lid open, a rainbow of light flooded her face.

  The blue velvet lining the interior of the box was divided into a dozen small sections, each filled with a different color of crystalline powder and tiny stone chips. Some were full, others nearly empty, but all glowed with an unnatural light like a rainbow locked in a pauper’s box.

  Finally, she stood back and brushed her hands together as she studied her work. Several moments later, she drew a steadied breath, anchored her fists on her hips and looked up at Mal

  “This man is gripped in a fever like I’ve never seen,” she said plainly, “He’ll never see his soul again.”

  “Poor fellow,” Lucifeus said with a laugh.

  “I’m not sure I’ve the skills for this,” she said directly to Mal, “This may be bigger than me. I may find need to call in my sisters.”

  “Nonsense,” Lucifeus said behind her, “I’m confident you have the steam for it.”

  “You don’t understand!” she barked back at him, “The ritual could kill him.”

  “And pray tell how that is a disincentive?”

  Mal didn’t share his brother’s levity. In fact, he felt an inexplicable sense of utter dread, like they faced impending doom, like the arrow of fate was arcing toward them and there was nothing they could do but throw down a prayer of penitence and brace for impact.

  In the same breath, he was also completely stymied by this sensation, this peculiar t
repidation. He’d never been one to submit to fear, not even in the midst of a firefight. Yet, something about this situation had given him a bone-deep chill, and he hated the sensation, and he hated more that he couldn’t explain it. They were just making assumptions, after all. Only the glazed warrior knew the truth. Until they understood what was happening, fear was a waste of life energy.

  Esoria placed a silver ornament cast in the form of a snake on the wood just between the solitary black candle and the semi-circle of red ones behind it. The serpent’s body coiled against the table, while the head spiraled up several inches on a long neck with its mouth gaping open toward the ceiling like a tiny, macabre goblet. The open jaws were just level with the flame of the black candle.

  Using Lucifeus’s knife, she pried one of the Fire Caeyl eyes from the skullish token and dropped it into the mouth of the serpent. She then took a pinch of simmering red crystal powder from the silver box and sifted it into the mouth atop the Fire Caeyl chip.

  As she meticulously brushed the remnants of the red powder from her fingertips back into the silver box, she passed Mal a look that he felt clear down to his feet. That simple glance told him she was as afraid as he was. And with that dark revelation, his resolve faltered.

  “I shall do my best to pry the truth free,” she whispered to him, “I’ve very little Blood Caeyl dust left, and it was wicked old when my mother gave it to me twenty-odd years ago. Given the speed with which magic is declining in this world, these crystals may well be less than worthless now. Most of my collection is more dust than gems, and the smaller the crystal the more significant the decline in vitality. What I have here is barely more active than sand.”

  Mal slipped a hand onto her shoulder. “I understand. But we still have to try.”

  She again slapped his hand away. “Don’t you dare condescend to me, Malevolus! This is a dangerous thing we’re doing. I could inadvertently unlock a box you don’t want to look into.”

  Her words felt more prediction than warning. He suddenly wanted out of this miserable room, wanted to run out into the sunshine, run as fast and hard as his feet would carry him, run all the way to the seaside and board the first northbound ship that would take him.

  “I’m ready,” she whispered to him.

  He glanced over at Lucifeus, who was looking back at him in another uncharacteristic moment of gravity. Then he looked at Esoria again and nodded. “Very well. Do as you will.”

  She offered him nothing back but a somber look. She then pulled Mal’s chair closer, turned its back toward the table and knelt onto it. She leaned over the chair’s back, propping her elbows on the table directly across from the warrior. She took a pinch of blue powder from the silver box and sprinkled it into the jaws of the serpent with the other dust. The powders had no sooner met than an unnatural amber light erupted from the vessel, bathing the table and the warriors’ faces in a hellish radiance.

  Hoot squeaked from the shadows behind him. Mal sent him a silencing gesture. “Judging by that light,” he whispered to her, “I’d say your apothecary is more active than you described.”

  Esoria scooped a generous finger-full of the yellow powder from the small box and rubbed it vigorously between her palms. When she eventually opened her hands again, they glowed as brilliantly as if painted in buttery sunshine.

  Holding her open palms on either sides of the worried flame of the black candle, she bowed her head and began to chant. For several minutes, she prayed. For several minutes, the light radiating from both the serpent’s mouth and her painted palms intensified. Soon the table was illuminated as brilliantly as daylight. Her red curls glowed like a bonfire in the eerie yellow light. Her face shimmered demonically.

  The Kadeer, who’d sat there in those shackles all this time without so much as a blink, suddenly came to life. His eyes locked on the serpent’s mouth, his face twisted into a mask of bewilderment. The sharp smell of fresh urine filled the air. Esoria’s words flowed low and rhythmic. The Vaemyn cried out. He writhed violently against his restraints, growling and twisting until blood smeared his wrists and forearms.

  Mal gripped the back of Esoria’s chair and held on.

  The air around the table began to change, as if the shadows were being drawn in from the four corners of the brig, as if the darkness itself were congealing just around the Kadeer’s head. As Esoria’s chanting swelled in volume, the smoky darkness swirling about the Vaemyn’s face grew increasingly opaque, like late summer storm clouds mobilizing around a mountain peak. The thick odor of sulfur choked the air. The table rattled beneath the desperate resistance of the Vaemyn.

  Hoot shuffled back toward the cells, whimpering queerly. The two remaining savages weren’t tolerating the scene much better. The weak one actively sobbed, and the tracker pulled herself down the table as far away from the Kadeer as she could manage without chewing her shackled arms off.

  The witch’s hymn grew more fevered. The yellow light cast from the Fire Caeyl dust flamed blindingly. The affected savage threw his head back and forth beneath that swirling storm of darkness, while an unearthly noise growled up from deep in his chest. Just when it seemed this gruesome dance would never end, a thunderous peal erupted through the room, punctuated by yet another brilliant flare of light.

  Esoria blew the yellow dust from her hands.

  The fine powder ignited as it passed through the black candle’s flames and into dark cloud imprisoning the warrior’s head. The abrupt mixture of shadows and light flashed, then the darkness flew away from the savage’s face like soot blown from a hearth. In the same instant, yellow flames erupted about the Kadeer, engulfing his face, head, and shoulders. He screamed hideously from within that unnatural fire. His fingernails gouged the wood. He threw himself from side to side.

  Just as it seemed the nightmare would never end, the flame raging over the Vaemyn collapsed in on itself. It condensed into solid form, into a sphere, like a ball of liquid gold that fully imprisoned the warrior’s head. Its iridescent surface slowly rotated about him like a metallic soap bubble, rhythmically swelling and contracting as it moved. Mal saw their own contorted faces looking back from the physical surface of the bubble like demons peering out from a nightmarish portal.

  The brig fell eerily silent, save for the delicate bubbling of the oil on the fire and the distant whimpers of the frightened warrior at the other end of the table.

  Then the bubble abruptly popped, collapsing in on the savage’s head. In the same beat, the eight red candles in the half moon snuffed out, the unnatural light in the snake’s mouth extinguished, and they were once again in near darkness.

  Mal told himself to breathe.

  Esoria slouched at the edge of the table, silent now except for her delicate panting.

  The affected savage sat still as death. A thick layer of faintly shimmering yellow dust fully covered his face, neck, and shoulders, filling every crease, every line, every pore. His lips, his teeth, his nostrils, even his irises and the whites of his eyes were fully painted in the powder. He looked like a bust of himself carved from a massive Fire Caeyl.

  “It’s bad,” Esoria whispered, “Worse than you’d ever guess.”

  “Worse?” Mal whispered back, “What the hell does that mean?”

  She used the back of her hand to push a renegade curl of red hair back from her face. “I mean I was correct in my initial surmise. Prae has nothing to do with this, not directly at least.”

  “What? How’s that possible? Who else is powerful enough to do this?”

  “Or mad enough,” Lucifeus added behind him.

  “You don’t understand,” Esoria said as she studied the Vaemyn, “This man is a hack.”

  Mal’s first impulse was to laugh and tell her she was crazy, that everyone knew hacks weren’t real. But as the facts of what he’d seen here this morning lined up in his mind, he found himself mired in doubt.

  “A hack?” Lucifeus said, “I don’t believe I heard you right.”

  “You heard me exa
ctly right.”

  Mal studied her for a moment, then said, “A hack, you’re saying. You mean a hack like a demon’s hack? Like the old stories?”

  “Is there another kind of hack I’m unfamiliar with, Mal?” she snipped.

  Mal considered the other two prisoners. The female tracker still held as far back from her damaged Kadeer as her restraints allowed. The frightened one now sobbed so hard, he couldn’t draw a proper breath.

  “What about them?” he asked.

  “They’re clean. Not that it matters. This one used the last of my Fire Caeyl dust, so we couldn’t test them if we wanted to. But the Kadeer is now pliable. He’ll answer your questions so long as you present them straight and clear. But you’ve only one shot at it, so I implore you to question him wisely and with Calina’s speed.”

  Lucifeus moved to the end of the table, so that he stood between Esoria and the hack. He stroked his moustache with an index finger as he watched the Vaemyn. “Gods’ hooks, Esoria!” he said seriously, “Are you telling us a wyrlaerd is out there somewhere? Walking freely in our plane?”

  “It’s the only explanation I can offer, Lucy.”

  “A wyrlaerd? A Divinic Demon?”

  “Are you having trouble hearing today, Captain Fark?”

  Lucifeus just looked at her.

  Esoria pushed her fingers through her hair and readjusted a clip to better control the rebellious red curls. “Only Divinic Demons can possess living mortals,” she said as she fought with her hair, “No caeyl controlled by a mortal has ever been able to do that. Therefore, the only logical conclusion I can draw is there’s at least one demon out there somewhere.”

  “At least one?” Mal hated the words. “Are you trying to make it worse or what?”

  “Well, of course, I am, Captain Fark. Don’t you know that’s what I live for? To make your lives miserable!”

  “Task achieved,” Lucifeus said with a half-hearted snort.

  “Do you want the truth or not?” she pressed.

  “A thousand years and more,” Lucifeus said, “That’s how long since the Divinic Wars. And all that time without so much as a whiff of the demons. Why, they made nary even an appearance during the Fifty Year War. So pray tell, why now? What is the elemental difference in this particular juncture?”