The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  “Why are we here?” Beam whispered to Prave, “What are they doing?”

  Prave said nothing.

  “Prave, seriously. What is this?”

  Prave merely shook his head. He didn’t take his eyes from the fair-haired man working the obelisk just before them.

  “Goddamn it, Prave! You never take me anywhere unless there’s something to be learned in it, usually something directed at teaching me the willpower to resist hanging myself out of tedium. So now you bring me to a place that’s actually interesting, and you won’t talk to me? Please… have mercy this once. Don’t make me work it through. Tell me, who are these men?”

  After several moments, Prave stirred and turned to him with a look so severe it nearly sent Beam backing away. “You speak of patience,” he said as he studied Beam, “And yet, that is a skill you’ve proven yourself fairly incapable of learning. Easier to teach a breed bull not to rut when the cows are cycling.”

  It was an uncharacteristic moment of harshness he’d rarely seen the mage succumb to. Still, he understood that there was truth in the man’s words. He also understood that silence would probably be his best tack in this peculiar moment.

  “Consider that one first,” Prave said, looking at the pale-haired man who worked the obelisk with his back to them.

  Beam obliged the command. “All right, I see him.”

  “Go to him. Consider him closely.”

  Beam studied Prave for a moment longer, looking for the trick he figured must be hiding under cover of this lesson. As usual, it was a wasted effort. So he did as ordered and walked toward the obelisk.

  The chiseling man had long, nearly white hair braided loosely down his back. He wore a simple brown robe with a drawn hood much as Chance had worn when they’d first met, though the fabric’s weave was coarser and less refined. He also wore an actual leather belt rather than a rope around his waist. As Beam moved around for a closer inspection, he spied the pink edge of an oteuryn curling up beneath an ear.

  He looked back at Prave. “A Vaemyn?”

  Prave didn’t reply, but simply nodded toward the chiseling man.

  Beam again turned back to the cone. When he leaned in for a closer look at the man’s face, he nearly soiled his ethereal britches. It was Prave. It was the young Prave, the Prave Beam first met in those damned dreams back in the war tunnels.

  He looked back at the real Prave who hadn’t moved a step. The old man’s eyes were focused on his younger self. Prave watched the younger man intently, though without alarm or evidence of uneasiness at the sight of himself.

  “What is this?” Beam asked him.

  The older Prave’s eyes drifted over to him.

  “Tell me,” Beam pressed, “What am I looking at?”

  “He is your ancestor, Be’ahm.”

  “My… ?” Beam looked back at the man working the rock.

  There was no doubt it was Prave, though a dramatically younger, healthier, more robust version of him. The younger Prave broke off a glassy red chunk of crystal. He turned and held it up into the sunshine above Beam’s head. Crimson light flooded his face and shoulders. Apparently satisfied, he dropped it into a bag at his feet.

  Beam knew he could watch the man for a year and never make sense of this vision. A younger Prave? His ancestor? Reasonably abandoning any hope of figuring it out on his own, he walked back to his mentor.

  “Why are you showing me this? Are you trying to convince me you were young once? Fine, I’m convinced.”

  “As is your want, you miss the point completely, Be’ahm.”

  “There’s a point?” Beam said, grinning. The doleful eyes looking back at him effectively smothered his humor.

  “This is your ancestor, Be’ahm.”

  “Yeah, you said that. So what? The Parhronii scholars believe we’re all related. Even the stinking Pendts. You just have to go back far enough. They call it the developmental evolution of progenesis, or some such crap. Brother Dael insisted I study the sciences, for all the good it did me.”

  “Listen past the list of words, Be’ahm. Search for once for the intent in the words. This man is the progenitor of your father’s lineage. He is the first in succession of the line leading directly to you.”

  Beam studied him for a moment as the meaning of what he said surfaced. “You’re saying you’re my direct ancestor? Like my great, great, great grandfather or something?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t believe it!”

  “Why so stubborn?”

  “What?”

  Prave tapped his boney index finger against Beam’s forehead, saying, “The memory has been right in there all along. Why spend such effort refusing to believe what you know to be the truth?”

  “That’s why you brought me here?” Beam said, pulling his head away, “You couldn’t have told me that sooner? Say, on day one, maybe? Hey Beam, here’s an interesting fact… I’m your grandfather. No, you had to traipse me around the entire world for a century first?”

  “You needed to see.”

  “I needed to see?” Beam laughed at that. “That’s the point of this blasted torture? I needed to see? That’s why you’ve held me prisoner in this stinking nightmare? You’ve paraded me around your miserable shadow worlds just to dump this on me in the end?”

  “Look at him,” Prave said gesturing toward the younger version of himself, “Go to him. Listen to him. Remember him.”

  Beam turned away, stifling a curse. He walked over to the Vaemyn again. He watched this memory of Prave breaking the caeyls free of dirt matrix in the rocky cone. The Vaemyn chipped a glowing green shard from the monolith, examined it against the sun for a moment, then pitched it off into the dirt. He did the same with an orange shard, and a purple shard after that. It seemed the man was only seriously interested in the red stones, in the Blood Caeyls. And only in the very lightest colored ones, those that were nearly transparent.

  Yet, he could find no sense of familiarity in this action, other than the man’s perfect reflection of his own Prave. There was no memory forthcoming to him. He glanced back at his Prave, who now watched the dark man, the one kneeling with his back to them in the dirt beyond the cone.

  “Look at that one,” Prave ordered.

  “I suppose that one’s my great uncle, then? Maybe my second cousin?”

  “Look at him.”

  Beam knotted his fists, then walked over to the man. This one was larger, brawnier than the young Prave. He had a broad back. He wore his long, thick black hair in snake-like braids collectively bound back behind his dark oteuryns. The sight of the horns stopped him in his tracks. He wouldn’t have been more surprised if the man had sported tits.

  “A Vaemyn?” he said, looking back at Prave.

  Prave nodded.

  “With black hair?”

  “Do you not see his oteuryns?”

  “Well, of course I do.”

  “Then why waste the question? Dark Vaemyn were common in the beginning.”

  “Fine! Then tell me this, dear Prave. Exactly how long ago was this beginning?”

  “One hundred centuries before your birth.”

  Beam gave it a moment’s consideration before breaking into laughter. “You’re joking, right? You’re showing me this in jest? I know you’re not saying you started my father’s family line ten thousand years ago. I swear to gods, that’s about the craziest thing you’ve—”

  “This other man was called Paex Gael’vra. He was a seer and a healer, and he was my friend.”

  The man clearly wasn’t joking. In truth, he didn’t look healthy enough for humor. His life’s vapors seemed to be draining from him even as Beam watched.

  “All right, I’ll play,” Beam said seriously, “If what you say is true, why aren’t there any dark Vaemyn left in my time?”

  Prave slipped him a sly grin.

  Beam sent him back a well-aimed glare. “Don’t give me that! You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Be
fore the beginning, there were only Vaemyn. There were no other races.”

  “You mean, before the God Caeyl?”

  “This land was called Faenthol. Its people, our people, called themselves the Faen. In your timescape outside the Caeylsphere, this land is called Parhron.”

  “Parhron? I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  The dark Vaemyn dug a jagged piece of crystal from the dirt. He twisted toward them, holding it up to the sun. The shard cast his features in a morbid yellow light. His face was broad like his back, his eyes large and widely set. He wore a line of dark beard that rode along the length of his jawline. It was a shade lighter than the nearly black hair on his head. He had no moustache.

  After a moment’s study, the man dropped the yellow crystal into his bag with the others. The bag was half-filled with crystals of dozens of colors. Unlike the younger Prave, he didn’t seem particular about which kind he collected, though there seemed a definite tilt toward the yellow.

  “So many colors,” Beam said, “I thought there were only three types of caeyl?”

  “In the beginning, there were many. The God Caeyl brought thousands of variations in every color, shade, and opacity imaginable. Thankfully, the energy generated by the off-colored caeyls decayed after only a few generations. Only the red, blue and yellow caeyls retained their energy.”

  “Thankfully? That’s a curious thing to say. I thought caeyls were the supreme and holy reason for your existence?”

  “You will see. In time.”

  “Well, of course I will. In time.” Beam turned back to the dark haired man. “So, this one was your friend, yeah? Who was he? Someone important, I expect?”

  “His is a complicated tale. He was the Father of the Fire Caeyl.”

  “Fire Caeyl?” Beam didn’t like the sound of that one bit. The only Fire Caeyl mage he knew of in his own timescape was Prae the Biled, a man who was pretty much a free-walking indweller.

  He turned his attention back to the younger Prave, who studied another sliver of Blood Caeyl in the sunlight. “And him?” he said carefully, “I mean… you? I’m guessing you were the Father of the Blood Caeyl?”

  “No. I used the Blood Caeyls in my work as a healer, but I wasn’t the master. That was a woman. She eventually became a recluse, nearly a hermit. She lived in the far southern mountains near where you found your memories.”

  “Perfect. Then I suspect her little hovel will be our next stop on this tedium stagecoach express?”

  Prave shook his head.

  “No? What happened to her that she’s so mercilessly abandoned to history?”

  “She wasn’t abandoned. Never abandoned. Her name was Braen’ar.”

  “Braen’ar,” Beam said, watching him closely, “Pretty name. For a Vaemyd. What happened to her?”

  Prave’s expression hardened. His posture tightened and his hands were nearly in fists. The reaction shocked him. He’d never seen Prave even slightly put off by a question. But as he watched his mentor struggling, he realized there was more to this name, this Braen’ar, than a simple historical affinity for red rocks.

  Beam stepped closer to him. “What is it, Prave? Was she someone special? A lady friend, maybe? It’s all right, I’d love to learn that you were once a normal mortal male.”

  Prave didn’t respond. His expression grew hard, harder than Beam ever remembered seeing it. Regardless of where this story was going to lead, Beam understood that where it began was clearly a personal matter. He regretted having pressed it at all.

  “Hers is another story,” Prave said as he turned and walked slowly away, “Suffice to say she still lives in your time. After a fashion.”

  “She still lives?” Beam didn’t know what to make of that, other than to acknowledge that this little side trip was growing more interesting by the moment. Maybe it was time to try patience, after all.

  “All right then, Master Praven,” he said as he followed the man, “What manner of torture do you have in store for me next?”

  X

  THE CLOUDS OF DOUBT

  MAWBY SQUATTED IN THE DEEP GRASS, STARING STUPIDLY INTO HIS OPEN PACK.

  After a moment, he looked up into the incessant wind. A queer kind of melancholy had seized him since returning to the Baeldon’s camp, and he hated himself for yielding to it. And yet, the sorry fact was he couldn’t find the strength for resistance. For the first time in his life, it seemed angst was his master.

  He reached into his bag and groped half-heartedly through its contents. He felt hollow and lifeless, half the man he’d ever been. He’d always been decisive and confident, quicker to find conviction and pledge to it than anyone around him. Now all he wanted was to lie down in the grass and sleep. He’d fallen into a state of despondency for which he had neither the training nor experience to climb out of.

  His groping hand found the leather pouch he searched for. He pulled it out and looked at it crouching there in his hand all smug and accusing, like it was daring him to go ahead and do it. It’s only treason, Mawby, so why the long face? Considering everything he’d lost these past weeks, considering all his pathetic failures over these recent days, what was a little treason now?

  He stuck a finger inside the pouch and hooked the cord. The thin line of leather followed his hand up like a snake rising from a pit. A small glass ampoule sparkled at its tail, twisting lazily as he held it there. This ampoule and the one he now wore were the last of the prode oil. He’d only been issued one to begin with. The other two came from the bodies of friends.

  “You ready to take the trail?”

  The words startled him. Mawby dropped the empty pouch back into his pack, then cinched the pack tight.

  He stood up and hoisted the pack over his shoulder, walking over to Wenzil, who was securing his supplies to one of the huge horses. The animal ripped a thick wad of grass free and looked back at Mawby as it chewed. Mawby had never been fond of riding. It was too far from the ground for his taste, too far from the security of his taer-cael.

  The mountain climbed up on his horse and grinned down at him from the heavens. “What do you have there?”

  Mawby saw his hand hold the cord up to the runner. The pale green fluid in the ampoule glistened dreamlike in the sunlight. “It’s prode oil,” he heard himself say, “If you come under attack from prodes, just break the glass against your shirt. They won’t attack if you bear their scent.”

  The mountain took the cord and held the ampoule up to the sun. “I bet this stuff smells delightful.”

  “It’s not what you think. Smells something like cloves, I reckon.”

  “Cloves?”

  “Doesn’t matter. If a prode’s coming at you, you won’t care if it smells like someone else’s day old piss.”

  “Point taken.” Wenzil pulled the cord over his head, which was a fairly tight squeeze given the size of his skull. “We ought to get along. If we push it, I think we can make the next hatch by nightfall.”

  Mawby felt the waves of doubt crashing against the shores of his stomach. “You sure about this?” he said, tentatively, “About the finding the mage? How do you know that—?”

  “I don’t know anything, Maw. But if you want to live your life with purpose, you’ll start accepting what you can’t control. And there’s a hell of a lot you can’t control.”

  The words landed like a punch. Mawby turned his face into the wind and pushed his gaze out over the monotony of the rolling plains. He felt like a fool for having asked the question at all. It made him sound weak. Then again, maybe he was.

  “Reckon you can always go back to your people,” Wenzil said, “Maybe try to remedy the loss of the caeyl. Maybe you’ll eventually right the death of your friends. Maybe you’ll just build yourself a good drunk and live out the rest of your days inside it.”

  Mawby felt light-headed. He willed back the pressure rising in his chest. Then a solid hand, a warm and strengthening hand, grappled his shoulder, and it felt like a lifeline.

&
nbsp; Wenzil bent down toward him bearing a most sincere grin. “Mawby,” he said as he tightened his hold on his shoulder, “You can’t change what is. You can’t fix anything behind you. But you can take the wreckage of your guilt and maybe find something important to build with it. You just need to follow the signs, my friend.”

  The words scored a hit. And as easily as that, the pain ebbed just a bit, just enough. Wenzil was right. He had to follow the signs. He had to know that what he was doing was exactly the right thing. And at this moment, all the signs pointed to the path he was about to take. The man was right. Work with what you have and try to forget the rest.

  Forget it, or at least suffer it nobly.

  He threw his pack strap up over the saddle horn, then carefully climbed up onto his waiting horse. The effort strained his chest wound, which announced its displeasure on a lightning bolt of pain. He hunched forward and waited for the opportunity to breathe again. This was the only time he welcomed the persistent wind of these plains, when the pain raised its gruesome head. The wind seemed to soothe it, or maybe it just distracted him.

  Then, without a word to Wenzil, he urged the great horse into a lope.

  ∞

  “You hear anything?”

  Mawby pushed himself up from the grass and sat back on his heels. He looked up at the hills surrounding them. They were in a deep swale that gouged its way through a long run of westbound hills. It offered them some secrecy, but at the price of blinding them from approaching eyes.

  “Well?” Wenzil pressed.

  “No, nothing.” Mawby looked up at Wenzil. “If we see any of my people approach, throw that prode oil into the grass. I can probably keep them from killing you if they think you’re my prisoner.”

  Wenzil slapped the sword strapped to his thigh. “And what about this? Drop it as well? How about the quiver?”

  A quick glance at the sword and the shock of arrows rising up over Wenzil’s back was enough to convince him there’d be no explaining anything to anyone. In truth it didn’t matter which side caught them. Baeldonian or Vaemysh, they’d be dead either way. Probably before they even knew they were being watched.