The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  Seth, marching directly before him, glanced back at him. His eyes sparkled unnaturally from deep within his coarse, horsehair hood. He looked almost demonic out here in the moonless night. Kaelif hoped it wasn’t another vision.

  “Almost there, Kad’r,” the boy whispered, nodding toward the approaching campfires.

  “Speak Pendtish, Seth. The shadows have ears.”

  Seth considered the words, then nodded and turned away with his torch held more decisively before him.

  Kaelif wanted nothing more in that moment than to put the bloody light out; it was as irritating as it was unnecessary. It would’ve been more efficient to simply follow the path in total blackness, using only their taer-caeyl, and it would’ve been far more comfortable. Unfortunately, the torches were part of the charade, a necessary evil adopted to offset their chance of discovery.

  He looked to the rear. Four similarly hooded Pendtish soldiers followed him in dirty leather armor, crude melon-shaped helmets, and oily horsehair cloaks. They’d appropriated their attire from a party of equally coarse, oily Pendt soldiers a few hours earlier. The donors of the gear wouldn’t be missing them anytime soon. Such attire was unnecessary in their current assignment filling a hole.

  “Shake it up back there,” Kaelif whispered in Pendtish, “Make some noise. You’re too much cat and not enough swine.”

  The warriors immediately fell out of step and began chattering in the crude tongue of the dirty Pendts. They let their torches sag like drunken fools. One of them broke into a Pendtish tavern song. They were immediately convincing.

  They were heading south at all risk, following his vision to the dreaded Dragor Field, domain of Lord Prae. It was quickly approaching dawn and they’d ridden the hardest four hours of his life to get this far. Prae’s castle in Eo Naehg Lek, the Crow’s Ghost Keep, was still a week’s travel due south through land that would be heavily patrolled by Prae’s minions and Kaelif’s own people. Their safest approach would be to travel as far as possible by river, a feat requiring boats, boats that wouldn’t be missed. Or if they were somehow missed, boats that wouldn’t likely be searched for.

  Phase one of that plan brought them here, to the Pendts’ staging grounds on the banks of the Dragor River. He could have as easily taken the boats from the camps of their own kin a few dozen miles north, but such a theft from a Vaemysh camp would be quickly noticed, and the Vaemyn would never allow it to go unpunished. They’d track the thieves down on general principle, no matter the cost of time or resources.

  Pendts, on the other hand, lost boats to drunken soldiers on a regular basis. They had a desertion rate the Vaemyn considered reprehensible. That they’d ever managed to function as a nation these past few hundred years was a miracle in itself. They were barely more disciplined than a massive gang of bestial cutthroats.

  The fresh camp road they marched along was little more than a sloppy wagon two-track, pocked with low-cut stumps. It cut a line directly through a wide expanse of young forest thick with scrawny poplars, scrubby evergreen shrubs, and plenty of rocks. The hike so far had been quiet. Too quiet, in fact, considering how close they were to the animals’ staging grounds. Other than a band of tree shimlins skulking through the trees on his right, his taer-cael revealed only the night.

  It didn’t ease his concern. Since the meeting of the Gran’lamys and the breaking of the Drayma two nights before, the truth of their situation had consumed him like a house afire. If the members of Lamys te’Faht had been traitors in essence before that meeting, they were surely traitors in fact afterward.

  He thought about the words inscribed in the ancient pendant hanging beneath his filthy Pendtish armor: “Vigilance. No greater honor can be found than to protect the flock from the weakness of the shepherd.”

  He’d always thought the words waxed overly poetic, that their meaning was symbolic, maybe even inspirational. He’d taken it to mean that unruly leaders should be defeated diplomatically, no matter what the cost. But now, in the harsh light of reality, he felt the true weight of those words. They had nothing to do with diplomacy or politics. They were a rally cry, a flaming arrow shot across the landscape to signify the start of battle. They were a call for blood. In the bare moment of his vision, the Drayma had transformed them from simple traitors to cold assassins.

  Seth’s voice rescued him from his thoughts. “Kad’r, we’ve got company.”

  Kaelif focused on the taer-cael of four Pendt soldiers staggering toward them from the camp ahead. He felt a rush of irritation for being so deep in thought that the boy had sensed their approach before he had. He tapped a signal on his belt. The warriors behind him tapped back their acknowledgment: they’d make no move without his word.

  The Pendts looked to be patrolling guards. As the beasts marched within reach of their torchlight, the leader threw up a paw and barked orders to stop. This was the largest one, a particularly smelly soldier with a scarred snout who stood nearly a foot taller than Kaelif and outweighed him by a solid eighty stone.

  Kaelif pulled his face deeper into his cloak. He wore the skin of one of the donors of these uniforms over his face, but still wouldn’t risk a closer inspection unnecessarily.

  The Pendt shuffled to a stop immediately before him. “Who be ye going about there?”

  Kaelif resisted the reflexive urge to wince. The reek of alcohol and urine and dirty fur was nearly overpowering.

  “Who ye asking?” Kaelif said in the perfectly crude, grunting cadence of what passed for language among the Pendts.

  The soldier bristled. “Best watch ye mouth there, runt!” he growled back, “Who ye think ye talking yeself at this night?”

  “Talk to grunt what got legs broke for nothing, he don’t back out me way!”

  The big guard stalled at that. He clearly had little experience with someone bullying him back. He threw his snout forward and snuffled at Kaelif. The other Pendts fanned around him, all likewise sniffing at the air. Kaelif prayed the smell of the dead Pendts’ uniforms covered their own scent.

  The leader then pushed his face practically inside Kaelif’s hood. “What be ye name there, runt?”

  “Best ye be moving yeself back, now, boy,” Kaelif said, standing his ground, “Or maybe I kick meself a round of due respect up ye fat ass.”

  The soldier’s drunken comrades broke into laughter.

  The guard shoved back his own hood. He snarled a mouthful of twisted yellow fangs back at his crew. They immediately fell silent.

  The Pendt had a thick, flattish skull with practically no neck, so that his head appeared to nearly grow out of its chest. A series of coarse, poorly healed scars ribboned the beast’s short snout, twisting up one cheek beneath its beady, yellow eye. The ears were bald and pig-like, though smaller and pushed tightly back against its matted, gray fur.

  “I asked ye name, runt,” he growled at Kaelif, “Ain’t likely I be asking again.”

  “Ye just be backing yeself away now, boy,” Kaelif again pressed back, “Ask me twice, ye won’t be happy for it.”

  “That ain’t polite talk, boy. Now I gonna hurt ye, ain’t I?”

  “Hurt me?” Kaelif barked a laugh. “Gonna be needing ye more sots beyond them fools to help, ain’t ye?”

  The big guard growled and threw for Kaelif. Before he could lay a paw on him, two of the disguised Vaemyn had him on his back with sharp metal sword tips pressed into his neck. The other guards went for their own swords, but Kaelif’s warriors had cold steel against their throats before they even drew their weapons.

  The big Pendt rolled away, then awkwardly grunted his way back to his feet. He looked at the swords leveled at him by Kaelif’s men, then quickly pulled a crude whistle from his belt. Kaelif knocked it into the darkness before he could use it.

  “Insult me again,” Kaelif said, “Ye be doing that now, boy! Insult me one time more! Do, and I be wearing ye ears on a chain at me neck.”

  The Pendt smeared a paw across his snout. The fur on his forearm glistened black i
n the torchlight. “Ye best be showing me passes,” he snarled, “Or I be calling more guards from yon camp, curse ye blades and curse ye souls.”

  Kaelif flipped his cloak back over a padded shoulder to reveal the epaulets of Welvin, high officer of the Pendt Inner Guard. This was the policing division of the Pendt army, the division that spied on its own, and it explained why they hadn’t draw their hoods. The Pendt’s Inner Guard was a deeply secretive clan, whose member identities were never revealed. Common Pendts who discovered such identities, whether through stealth or mere clumsiness, spent their remaining years in camps tucked deep in the crude swamps of the Pendtlian backwaters.

  The fat guard backed away in surprise at the sight of the badge, but Kaelif’s sword deftly caught his hairy cheek, intersecting his existing scar and drawing more blood. The beast grabbed for his face, but Kaelif had him on the ground with a knee in his chest, a broken snout, and a dislocated shoulder before he even knew what happened.

  “Something else ye be saying at me, boy?” Kaelif snarled down at him, his sword tucked firmly between the hairy folds of the beast’s neck.

  “Nay, sir,” the guard grunted from the dirt, “Nay. I… I’d not be seeing ye, sir. Dark, ain’t it? Don’t see good in dark. I swear it so!”

  The Pendt was quickly growing breathless, much as Kaelif had planned. Due to the hunched nature of their spines, Pendts didn’t much tolerate being flat on their backs for long.

  “Ever ye be looking me straight on eye again,” Kaelif snarled at the Pendt, “I be feeding ye balls to me dogs. Maybe I save one for me stew.”

  “Sorry, sir. I knew not, I swear it at ye.”

  “Tell ye children about this night,” Kaelif hissed down at him, “Tell them of day gone past when ye lost ye stones but kept ye ears.”

  With that, Kaelif wiped his blade on the Pendt’s shoulder and stood up. He sheathed his weapon, then spit at him before signaling his warriors to move out. The sound of the drunken Pendts arguing behind them faded to silence as they continued their march toward the river.

  They made it through the camp without further incident, passing through a thousand soldiers without so much as drawing a glance. Most of the dirty soldiers were stumbling drunk, and the rest were sleeping. The level of security was abominable, especially from the standards of the Vaemysh army. The only thing these animals seemed capable of doing on their own was drinking, brawling, and shitting.

  Thirty minutes through the camp, they re-entered the cloak of night and met the wide, murmuring river. A hundred boats of varying sizes sat beached in the trampled reeds of the bank. Most could carry two to four soldiers, but some of the skiffs anchored further out in the current could bear a load of fifty.

  Kaelif gestured three of his warriors into one moderately sized pirogue, which was little more than a dugout with a pointed bow. Then he, Seth and the last warrior took another. They had a minimal amount of gear with them, enough to make the trip south to Prae’s Keep, and not much more. It wasn’t poor planning that had them traveling so lightly. They had no plans to leave Prae’s castle after the murder. It was doubtful there would be an opportunity to flee. This was very likely a suicide mission.

  They made only a few yards out from the bank when the current abruptly dragged them a dozen yards downstream in the opposite direction. After a several minutes of digging with their oars, they began heading upstream again and away from the camp. The current was determined. The work of propelling these crude boats against it was going to be taxing.

  When they’d made a mile south of the camp and into calmer currents, Seth lifted his oar and turned back to Kaelif. “Kad’r, what about Yaelic’s Teeth?”

  Kaelif continued paddling behind him. “What about them, Seth?”

  “How are we going to cross them?”

  “I reckon we’ll have to paddle a little harder there.”

  Seth turned back to the front and took a few awkward rows with his oar. Then he twisted back toward Kaelif again. “But Kad’r, they’re twenty trees high and nearly a mile wide.”

  “Ay’a, they’re damned impressive.”

  “They’re impassable.”

  “Are they?”

  “Kad’r, the water below the falls are spiked with rocks thick as dragon’s teeth. We’ll have to portage nigh on two miles above and around them.”

  “Who said anything about going around them?”

  “What?”

  “I reckon we’ll just have to find a way under them, won’t we?”

  The sight of the boy’s face paling against the night drew the first good humor he’d enjoyed in days.

  XIX

  FAENTHOL BURNING

  BEAM PULLED HIS HAND FROM HIS EYES WITH MORE THAN A LITTLE TREPIDATION.

  The darkness of the cavernous room had dissolved into the soft, ruddy haze of early evening, and the relief that sight brought him was nearly overbearing. They stood outside again at the precipice of a tired, weather-beaten rock face that flowed steeply away into the sulking gloom of the forest below. A warm breeze whispered through the young poplars crowding around this bare ledge, leaving the scent of wild honey balm in its wake. Beyond the cliff laid a sweeping landscape of darkening forest that rolled away into the magenta-infused horizon.

  Yet, even as the sun took its final breaths, night failed to fully arrive. An eerie array of orange, yellow, and red lights lit the evening sky like the pageant of celestial lights he’d once witnessed in far Northern Parhron. However, after a few moments of watching, he realized this was no display put on by the Gods of Pentyrfal. A wide, thin line of flames simmered along the distant edge of the world.

  “Forest fire,” he whispered to Prave, “Bad one, too. Damn near spans the whole horizon.”

  “That is no forest fire, Be’ahm. It’s something far more momentous than that.”

  “Momentous? You mean it’s not natural. What is it then?”

  “You’re witnessing the beginning of the end.”

  Beam drew a steadying breath and looked up into the newly appearing stars. “The end of the beginning. The beginning of the end. The beginning and the end. The beginning of the end of the beginning… gods give me strength.”

  Prave watched the distant lights in silence.

  Beam sighed. “Alright, Prave. What exactly is it we’re watching end this time? The details, I mean.”

  “You’re remembering the death of Faenthol.”

  Beam thought about that for a moment. “Faenthol. That’s where you said the Vaemyn lived before… before the God Caeyl fell, yeah? You said it’s where Parhron City is now. I mean, in my timescape.”

  “They weren’t Vaemyn in this timescape. They were called the Faen before the dark changes came.”

  “Right. The Faen. And just when exactly are we now?”

  “This memory was born over six hundred years after the gods delivered the God Caeyl. That distant fire marks the end of the Faen. Those flames herald the start of a repeating cycle of death and rebirth that will ultimately span greater than ten epochs.”

  Beam watched the distant flames. Considering how much of the horizon it covered, it had to be one catastrophic fire. “Faenthol burning,” he said, more to himself than the mage, “It must’ve been a hell of a big city.”

  “This is the first cataclysm brought about by the Fire Caeyl Mage, the first in a cycle that repeats over and over through the centuries, a cycle that can only end with you.”

  “Perfect. That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

  Prave looked at him. “Why such contempt, Be’ahm? This is the moment that begat you. This is the moment that preordained your birth. This fire burning before you is the reason I ultimately created you.”

  Beam wanted to tell him that he was insane, that preordaining someone’s birth ten thousand years before the event was so ridiculous that it didn’t even merit a retort. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. It was slowly becoming clear to him that somewhere along this long and wretched road he’d lost sight of the
clearly drawn line separating him from the superstitious rabble. To his horror he realized he was starting to believe.

  “The last of the unsavory mutants are long since dead,” Prave said as he again studied the fire, “All that remain are the clearly evolved new races. That and the confused remnants of a people who will soon call themselves the Vaemyn.”

  Beam thought about that, but said nothing. He only waited.

  “Only the fairest Faen escaped the mutations, though I was never able to divine why that was. Something deep in the matrix of their composition resisted the effects of the vile caeyls. That is why the Vaemyn in your time all bear pale hair and fair features. They are the progeny of the strongest of us.”

  They stood for a time in silence, each watching the distant flames from their own perspective. Then, suddenly and without comment, Prave muttered something to himself and turned away.

  Beam watched the man’s ethereal form fade into the darkness. “Wait! Where are you going? You’re not going to finish this? What happened?”

  As Prave passed into the stand of young poplar trees, he said without looking back, “Paex Gael’vra happened.”

  ∞

  They were back in the cave again, back in the bizarre room with the laboratory set before the massive fireplace, back with the cages and creepy dolls. Except now the forge was dark and cold, and the tables littered with the broken memories of Gael’vra’s clearly abandoned experiments. Empty cages dangled listlessly with their ribbed doors hanging open and draped in cobwebs. Odd appendages of varying sizes lay scattered about the floor, arms and legs covered in dirty tar, all in the same state of utter decay. A thick layer of ancient dust covered everything.