Melianarrheyal

by G. Deyke

  ~*~

  I am neither sleeping nor eating as I ought, and it is taking its toll. The world grows less and less real beneath my fingers, and my head always swims even when I am sitting still and alone. But the dreams are there, always there, lurking beneath my eyelid every time I sleep, and I must keep them away at any cost. I must not sleep, no matter how weary I may be.

  Therrin is the first to say something. “Will you not eat more?” she asks when I push away my plate.

  Therrin has been cooking many of the meals; this is something she learned from the man she called father, and it is one of the many things she has been doing to help the crew. “Therrin's cooking may suffice to pay the way for all three of you, and for the boat as well,” Ler has said – there is the problem of payment solved. And Therrin is glad to help.

  Now I fear that my small appetite may be an affront to her skill in the kitchen, and I would eat more if only so that I do not offend her; but my stomach turns at the thought, and I shake my head. “I'm not hungry,” I say. It is not quite a lie.

  Rih is next: he comes to speak with his cousin whenever he has no other tasks, and he often includes me in their conversations. He is delighted with my demon-eye, saying: “You are the best among all conjurers. None other could do such a thing – only my own cousin!”

  But he is less happy to see my face after I have been on the ship for several days. “I've seen snowdrifts no paler than you,” he says. “There are always those who don't take well to the ship's movement, but that sickness lasts two or three days, at most – and you've been looking worse and worse. Tell me, have you slept at all since you came aboard?”

  I have to smile at the tone of his question. It is easy to smile at Rih – he is always laughing himself. But I don't know how to answer. I shrug, and I say: “Not very much.” I don't like to think about it. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to give the dreams another chance.

  “Is there a reason? Lin is a healer, though not a strong one – but perhaps she could help you.”

  “No!”

  He looks at me, confounded.

  “No,” I repeat. “No. There's nothing wrong.” I am afraid, so afraid. What if the healer could make me sleep? What if she charmed my body so that I could not fight the sleep any longer? I must stay awake. I must stay awake so that the dreams cannot reach me.

  Yet at last the dreams reach me even so. I can see that it is a dream – my demon-eye sees so differently from my old one that I can see that it is only a vision, nothing which my demon-eye sees, only a memory – but she is there, she is there before me, she is here on this ship and she smiles and reaches for me and it makes no difference that she is not real. She is here. I scream.

  I hold up my arms frantically to ward her off and I shrink back further against the barrel at my back and I clench my blind eye shut and I turn my head away and I try to flee from the vision.

  Now they are here, they are all here; they must have heard my scream. Ty has his hand on my arm and Therrin is kneeling before me searching my eyes and all the crew are here, they are here and they are watching.

  My breath is coming short and fast and I can feel the tears trickling down my cheek and my lips and hands are tingling and she is here, she is here, I am so afraid.

  “What happened?” Ler asks, her voice crisp.

  There are voices all around me but I cannot listen to them, I cannot hear them. I wish I could close my ever-seeing eye so that I might know that I shan't see her again, but I cannot. My stomach hurts and spasms but I have eaten so little that it cannot empty itself again. I clutch at my head and I try to forget the world around me.

  The demon can always see but I cannot fix my attention on what it tells me. I cover that left eye socket, so that all I can see is my own hand (curse this eye that can see even in darkness!) and the red that shines through at the seams where my fingers meet. I breathe in quick, sharp bursts, feeling my breast jump with every breath.

  Ty's hand is on my arm and I don't know if I am grateful to know that he is here and real or if I want to shrug him off. I haven't the strength to, so it makes little difference. I can't feel so much at once, so many different feelings. His hand and the barrel and the planks beneath me and the light breeze against my skin, against my clothing – it is too much, I am overwhelmed.

  I am shaking, my knees clenched together tightly, my fingers pulling at my hair so that some of it has freed itself from its binding and some of it has torn from my scalp. I can feel the rough edges of my fingernails digging into the fleshy part of my right palm and the small part of my mind which I can still hear and is not overwhelmed with fear wonders if I have yet drawn blood.

  Then another small part of me remembers the time when I was within myself like this and I woke to a bloodied shoulder and she bloodied it and I am nearly overcome with the desire to vomit. I mustn't. Not here and not now – I must stay within myself – I cannot acknowledge the world around me enough to find the edge of the ship, that I might spew over it into the sea. My belly is empty besides. Still, my throat spasms and I worry that I shan't be able to hold it in.

  The voices try to break into my barrier but I will not let them. I will not. I cannot.

  I am all alone inside myself. I am all alone in the darkness.

  At long last I grow aware that the only sound I can hear is the eternal movement of the waves beneath the ship, and that my breath has slowed, and now it is lassitude I feel. I try to fight it. I will not sleep. I will not.

  I open my eye and I unclench my hands and I let go of my hair and I sit up against the barrel again. I take my hand away from my demon-eye and I see that there are bloody crescents in my right palm and that strands of dark brown hair have been torn from my head and wrapped around my fingers. It is twilight now, and the deck has been abandoned. Even Ty is gone. I hear voices from the kitchen, so perhaps they are eating there beyond the door.

  I will not sleep. I must keep myself awake. I stand and I drink a little and I walk around the deck, once, twice. The motion of the ship no longer upsets me. It is only the dreams.

  I am sitting back in my usual spot, fighting to stay awake, when Ty returns. “Feeling better?” he asks.

  I start: I did not hear him come. In answer I shrug.

  He sits down nearby, keeping his eyes on my face. “If this goes on it may well kill you,” he says; “and Ler has been patient, but Ahl especially is irked when anyone perceives a danger he cannot see himself.”

  If only it ended, it wouldn't be so bad if it did kill me. At least it would be over. And yet – if I must die, I would die for any other reason. I don't want even my death tainted with this.

  “Tell me what ails you,” Ty says quietly.

  I cannot. I cannot speak the words. I will not even think the words; I cannot speak them. Yet I cannot simply refuse, and he sits calmly and awaits response.

  I shake my head, but he does not move. His eyes are still resting on mine, expectantly, patiently.

  I draw breath, but I let it out again without speaking, not knowing how to answer, how to tell him what he asks without saying more than I can. My breaths are shaky.

  “My dreams,” I manage at last.

  He waits.

  “Every time I sleep,” I say. “Every time without fail. I will not sleep. I – the dreams, I can't let them in...”

  He leans to prop his chin on his hands, but says nothing.

  I have no choice now. There is nothing else I can say. I must force out the word. “She is there,” I say, my voice half a whisper, beginning to weep again. “My dreams are of her and they will not cease. I cannot sleep. I cannot let in the dreams. They will not stop, they will not stop...”

  “The flower?” he asks, frowning. I shrink back at the word, but I nod.

  A long moment he is silent. Then he says: “When I conjured that last demon, I had little thought to spare for what was happening around me; but it seems to me that I heard her speak of a curse. Could that be?”

  Hating the
words as they come from my mouth, I say: “She was no healer.”

  “I know,” he says. “I saw her blue spells often enough.”

  He forces me to remember. I run through that last day in my mind, though I want nothing more than to forget it forever.

  “Did she say such a thing?” he asks when I am too long in responding. Against my will I nod.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I whistle to Snake. Help me come through this. I must be strong.

  “A gray powder. She held it to my shoulder.” She looked at me. I must not think of her eyes. I mustn't. I don't want to know. (So filled with hatred and betrayal, loathing that stabbed into my soul like daggers.) “She said my name. She said my true name and she said she cursed me.”

  “And?”

  I don't know. I don't remember. I don't want to remember. My memory is full of holes. Already. So soon. It has been so short a time and already I am forgetting. I want to forget, but it scares me a little how well I have been able to. “I don't remember,” I say. “I don't know.”

  He is silent, thinking. At last he says: “Rih is a healer whose talent runs with curses. He cannot use it well, nor does he much like to, but perhaps he will know what is happening to you.” And louder he shouts: “Rih!”

  Rih comes from the kitchen, holding a knife in one hand and a rag in the other. “Yes?”

  “Can you spare a moment?”

  “Of course.” He ducks back into the kitchen and returns shortly with his hands empty, drying them on his trousers. “What is it?”

  Ty tells his cousin what I have told him, and asks: “Is there any way someone with no talent to curse could have laid a curse on Arrek?”

  Rih's brow is knit with something that looks like dismay. “Yes,” he says. “I've seen it often in the cities lately. A gray powder, you say?”

  I nod.

  “Twenty-two gold and thirty copper in Quiyen when we were last there. It's the newest fashion – curses that even commoners can afford, if they save up for them. The curse itself is simple. The most difficult thing for the healer making them is being certain it can be used on anyone and applied only by touching the powder to the victim, and speaking his name.

  “It is, as I said, a very simple curse. All it does is make victim dream each night of the one who laid the curse on him. In the case of a commoner who cannot buy the curse without long deliberation, that is enough to curse them with guilt and remorse: the victim's own mind ensures that the dreams center around the time when he wronged the buyer.

  “In the case of a noblewoman with the gold to spare – well, perhaps she wronged Arrek far more than he ever wronged her. Then it would be a nightly torment, nothing more. If she wanted a better curse, I'm sure she could afford it.”

  He eyes me, looking for a response, but I will give none. I cannot think of it. I will not.

  (“I hope fifty gold will last us; I couldn't take more...”)

  “How can it be lifted?” asks Ty.

  “It can't,” Rih says. “I have never heard of a curse being removed except by the caster – in this case, the one who made the powder. There are enough of them now that we couldn't find the one she bought this from, even if we had the time to search the city. It must run to its finish: the noblewoman must touch Arrek again and formally remove the curse.”

  “That won't happen,” says Ty. “She swore she would kill us if she sees us again.”

  Please no. Please don't let her find us. I whistle to Snake. Please, spare us. I will take any death but that one. Any death at all.

  “Then there's nothing that can be done.”

  “There must be. Arrek may die if this does not end, and soon.”

  “Even if we did find the caster, all he could do is change it to end more quickly. A curse is made to stick. It can't be just taken off like a dirty shirt.”

  Then there is no hope. I cannot live this way. I cannot. It must end, there must be some way, there must.

  If the dreams are taking me now even in waking, perhaps the only way to flee them is to die. It would be simple enough. I must only leap overboard and hope that I can drown before they rescue me.

  “What if you combined your talent with another?” Ty is asking.

  Rih shakes his head. “I can't think of any way. Look – I don't think it can be removed. I am nearly certain that it can't. But you're the great conjurer who restores sight to the blind where a healer could not. Perhaps you can think of something.”

  “Perhaps,” says Ty. “If there is a way, I will find it.”

  Then I shan't be killing myself yet after all. Ty must have his chance.