[Lanen Kaelar 03] - Redeeming the Lost (17 page)

I couldn’t even hear my prayer myself. Berys’s
spell was strong
and solid—I had
tested it day and night ever since I had been
taken, but as far as I could tell I was still held silent on all
levels.

I cannot imagine how he managed to silence the
Language of Truth. Until a few months past I’d only ever heard of it in
legends, and now I missed it as I’d have missed a lost arm. There on the Dragon
Isle where I first heard my beloved’s voice in my head, and replied without
thinking, Varien had told me that I was the only human he had ever known who
could use it.

At least until now. I had shouted in
truespeech and Marik had heard me, curse him.

What a damnable twist of fate. Shikrar and
Akor, attacking Marik’s mind, had opened it to truespeech. Which had been   taken
from me just when it would have been bloody useful.

Something caught in my throat and I coughed,
silent still. Hells take it. Somehow the fact that I couldn’t even hear myself
cough made me furious. I screamed aloud, just because I had to, for the sheer
frustration of it.

Nothing.

I managed to stop myself this time, before I
yelled my throat raw. I’d done that the first day of my captivity, after Berys
had left with the marks of my hands on his misbegotten neck. Nothing had
worked, and eventually I had grown weary of the effort. Anger is a wonderful
tonic, but even anger could not let me forget that I was alive only through
Berys s distraction with other matters, and only until he got around to
accomplishing my damnation. At best it would only be a matter of hours.

And what in all the merry Hells had he meant
by saying I was become precious to him? Obviously because of my changed blood,
though what it might mean to him I could not imagine. Kantri and Gedri
mixed—yes, that was what I had agreed to when Vilkas saved my life. My babes
had been killing me, for their blood was Kantri and Gedri blended and they all
unwitting fought for their lives nearly at the cost of my own. I would surely
have died if not for Vilkas, that tall, dark, reserved lad with so great a well
of kindness in him. Vilkas and his comrade Aral put forth more power than I
knew existed, and with my consent changed me into a creature neither truly
human nor truly dragon. I yet reeled from that deep change; I yet knew not what
it might mean for me in the march of time; but to my heart it mattered not a
whit. My babes were safe, my body was able to support them, and that would do
for now.

I tried to breathe deep, tried to relax, but
it was no use. My heart began to race, my breathing quickened, as if I could
hear the tramp of the guard through the thick blanket of silence that covered
me. I think what bothered me most was that I could not rest. Every instant I
expected the door to fly open, every moment that passed I waited for Berys to
return and accomplish my damnation. Whatever that would feel like. Surely I
would no longer be myself. A body without a soul, like a breathing doll, no volition,
no intelligence… I shuddered again, from fear, from cold. The first gleam of
moonlight had stolen through the high grating, reminding me of passing time. It
couldn’t be long now.

I forced myself to calm down and drew in a
deep, shuddering breath. If I stopped to think about Berys and what was surely
going to happen, I wouldn’t have the courage to breathe at all.

Start small, Lanen. You’re still alive, don’t
give up yet.

I had no idea how Berys had brought me to this
place, but it had happened in the blink of an eye. As far as I could tell I had
been imprisoned two, maybe three days. Maybe four. My beloved husband Varien
and I, and the Healers Vilkas and Aral, had all been exhausted after we brought
the Lesser Kindred to their new life. We all could barely stand from weariness
and had taken a moment after that day and night of work to rest, when suddenly
the air had turned thick with demons. I had been torn from Varien’s side to be
dropped at the feet of a man I’d never seen before, but whom I guessed from his
association with demons must have been Berys. I had heard of him and knew that
he was older than my mother, but this man looked barely older than me. He had
grabbed me, stepped onto a small platform made of rock, and suddenly we were
here.

It all seemed a great deal of trouble to go
to. And why in the Hells was my peculiar blood so useful to Berys?

Back to that again, around and around my
thoughts trudged like a dog turning a spit.

I shook myself, there in the cold darkness.
Think of something else, girl!

Oh, yes. Something else. What will it be like
to be a body walking about without a soul, once mine is stolen away. Where
would I be? Tormented by demons for all time? Or somehow aware of my empty
shell being put through its paces by Berys the Damned?

I shivered harder in the gathering cold.
Goddess help me. Either one sounded terrible beyond belief.

Marik must hate me desperately, to hand me
over to Berys.

Well, it was mutual now, and all the Hells
mend him because
I surely wouldn’t.
He knew about my babes, and he would surely tell Berys eventually if he had not
already. For that alone I would kill Marik if I had the chance. It occurred to
me that I should feel some kind of guilt at having tried to murder my father,
but to speak truth I felt only anger at myself for having failed.

I had spent most of my life blessedly ignorant
of all of this. I had known nothing of my true father and had been abandoned by
my mother after little more than a year. My dear friend and heart’s father
Jamie had raised me as best he could, but it seems that even he could not keep
my fate from finding me. For reasons best known to himself, Marik had chosen
last autumn to make good his promise to the Rakshasa, and had hounded me across
the western sea to the Dragon Isle.

There he had received his due reward. The
Kantri—the True Dragons, the great creatures of legend that can speak and
reason—had broken his mind. The last time I had seen him ere this, he had not
been able to walk unassisted and he could not speak. His Healer, Maikel, had held
out no hope of Marik’s ever being able to regain the power of conscious
thought.

I shuddered to my bones. Perhaps that would be
my fate, afterwards. At least I won’t be there to know about it, I thought
grimly.

Then, even more grimly, Probably.

Enough, girl, I told myself sternly. Think.
The door was opened once. Maybe there will be another chance. When they come
for you, perhaps?

It would help if I’d had any faint idea of
where I was. Nothing looked even slightly familiar. The walls were thick and
stone-built, but that could be anywhere. I shivered, mostly from the cold, and
began to pace the tiny room—no more than two steps from wall to wall, but it
kept me from freezing.

The most maddening thing was that I kept
gazing, will I or nill I, at the little barred window high up on the wall. It
faced towards the south so that I never saw direct light of sun or moon, only
the scattered glow of either but sometimes I could catch a glimpse—I went to
drag the chair over, but the chain pulled me up short.

Though perhaps—I stood on the chair where it
was, standing on tiptoe—yes, there she was! The rising moon. She was just past
the full, the Ancient Lady of the Moon, and she smiled at me, fair and
comforting even in this dark and desperate place. I gazed as long as I could,
but I could only perch like that for a very short , time. Eventually a wave of
dizziness swept over me and I sat down, hard. I was in such a hurry to get down
that my backside clipped the edge of the chair and I fell into a muddled heap,
heedless now J of the cold, my anger gone and with it my strength. With my legs
drawn up to my chest and my manacled arms wrapped around my legs, I rocked
myself back and forth, small movements, as if I were terrified even to admit to
myself how frightened I was. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine Jamie
rocking me when I was a child, disturbed by an ill dream, but thinking of Jamie
made things worse.

And what did not?

The unnatural silence rattled me. All that I
did happened in a complete absence of sound, bar those few moments with my
tormentors. It made everything feel like a dream. No, a nightmare. A nightmare
that never ended, that on waking was as hopeless as in the depths of sleep. All
I could look forward to was a painful death—or worse yet, a short life in
agony, if there was anything left to feel agony after the soul had gone to the
deepest Hells. Left in this cage, without hope, without sound, with nothing to
comfort me and all I loved taken from me.

My body began to protest the compression and I
let go my legs. I felt my belly quavering, a peculiar movement, and it struck  ,
me—was that the first movement of my babes? Or only my stomach protesting the
food I’d eaten?

Goddess, Mother, aid me, I thought, my heart
pounding in my ears. I can’t even be sure I’ve felt my poor babes move. I can’t
even take my own life and protect my children from Berys by killing them.

Damn Berys. Damn and blast him to all the
Seven Hells, i demons take his liver and feet it to the dogs …

My whole body was shaking now, fear and rage
together leaving me unmanned, for I was furious with myself even as I trembled
in every limb. Every time I tried to think my way out of this hole I came to
this place of fear, of gut-tightening, muscle-cramping, uncontrollable terror.
Dear Goddess, what evil have I done to merit this end? I cried in the depths of
my soul, longing beyond reason for the ability to shout or scream if only to
relieve my anger. And my poor children, my unborn babes—I had fought for them,
poor little souls, fought already for all of our lives nearly at the cost of my
own. I had consented to be changed to a creature not entirely human that
they—that we—might live, and now my empty sacrifice mocked me to my bones. At
the time I had blessed the Healers for saving my life. Now I wished I had
simply died, and my littlings with me. At least then we might walk together in
the High Fields of the Lady.

By now, whenever now was, Berys surely knew
that I was with child. I drew my knees in again, gently, and wrapped my arms
around my middle. It was the nearest I could come to embracing my poor childer.

I pray now only that we will all go down to
death together, my sweetings, and I will protect you with all the fire of my
soul until the Lady comes to gather Her innocents to Her breast.

I had no doubt that their lives would end in
as much pain as possible once Berys learned of them.

I bowed my head as black despair washed over
my soul, for I could see no escape even in death for us all three.

I realised as it crashed over me that I had
never faced true despair before that moment. Sorrow, weariness, anger, fear—all
of these are the common lot of humanity, but always before there had been hope
somewhere behind all. Hope, for me, had always lain behind my days. Always
there was a prospect of a brighter future, of a time when this ill would be
past or that obstacle would be overcome: but now I could see the future, clear
and sharp before me, and it held only pain and fear and horrific ending, and
all too soon.

The wise say that it is only when hope deserts
you that you find the underlying truth of your soul. Some find only a vast
weariness that pulls them swiftly down to their ending: some admirable few
discover true courage in some hidden corner of the self. At that moment, in
that desert of the soul, in despair more profound than I had ever imagined, I
was brought face-to-face with my own imminent death. In that cold dark place of
stone my heart was as a lump of lead in my chest. I could barely force myself
to breathe, as if my body wished to make an end to life on its own terms. I
closed my eyes and longed for even the release of tears, but I tell you now,
true despair is dry as the dust of ages.

And then, with my eyes tight closed, I saw in
my mind a vision of a tiny flame far off, years distant from me but present.
The faintest hint of fire, as when a single spark lands on dry tinder and sits
for a brief instant, glowing red in the darkness.

Even as I sat there I drew in a breath,
carefully, and breathed out slowly and gently, as though I blew in truth on a
tiny physical spark to encourage it.

In my mind it glowed a little before it
subsided.

I drew another breath in the silent darkness,
and in that still—ness felt something within me flutter. My starving belly,
poor thing, I thought, and physically blew again on that tiny mental spark. It
glowed a little more this time, and when I next drew breath it did not fade.
Again, and it grew as large as my little fingernail, and it seemed to have the
shape of a woman.

My belly moved again and this time my eyes
flew open. That was not hunger. I moved my hands to sit over the small
roundness of my belly.

Butterfly movements from within. Barely
noticeable, save that I had sat so still.

Sweet Goddess, it must be.

My babes were moving.

For one breathless moment I thought nothing,
felt nothing, apart from a mad, delirious joy that they lived and thrived even
now.

And the next moment I laughed harshly into the
silence. In that instant, to my astonishment, the tiny flame within had grown
from distant star to brilliant sun, and it raged now within me, all-consuming.
I did not recognise it but I surely welcomed it, for that fire was strength and
home and love and all, it warmed my body and set my soul ablaze. I did not need
hope. I had nowhere else to turn, and turning inward I found—myself afire. All
those I loved were there, within me—my beloved Varien, our babes so tiny but
alive and growing despite all, my heart’s father Jamie, were the nearest, but
there were others: soulfriend Shikrar, his son Kedra, Mirazhe, their tiny son
Sherok gazing newborn into my eyes, Idai in despite of her pain a strength and
a companion.