Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (19 page)

Roen opened his mouth, but Memory was already talking.

“Hey, how about I show you a trick?” Memory reached to the girl’s ear and seamlessly pulled out a leaf. Roen wondered for a moment where she’d gotten it from, remembering the leaves on the ground behind his home that felt so far away. Then, through his pain bleary eyes he realized Memory still had dead leaves caught throughout her hair and dress from her tussle on the forest floor.

Bonny snorted. “Oh, come on! You know, you smell bad.”

A knock on the window shutters had the girl sighing. The mother’s shrill voice called through, making Roen wince. “Bonny, come out here and leave our guests in peace.”

“Fine.” She gave Memory a skeptical look, and then slipped through the window on her belly, closing it behind her.

“Fun kid,” said Memory, eyebrows raised. “But not a bad way to travel is it?”

“I still don’t like this,” said Roen.

“Better than leaving you behind. I just don’t think we should leave anyone behind, for whatever reason.” Memory pulled her legs up and wedged her back amongst the cushions, turning her face away.

“We have time, now,” Eloryn said to Roen in a quiet voice.

“Time?”

“I can heal the damage those brutes did to you.”

“No, don’t. I’m all right.” The wagon shook and Roen winced. Eloryn’s eyes flicked up to his face, clear sympathy filling them.

“If you only don’t wish me to because-”

“Too much risk of our hosts seeing,” Roen whispered.

“I’ll keep watch,” Memory volunteered from amongst the pillows.

Beset, Roen gritted his teeth.

Eloryn’s voice was quiet but firm. “If you’re worried for my safety, then worry that without you well I would suffer more.”

He didn’t want her to have to do this for him. He was supposed to be helping her, not the other way around. But she was right. How he was now, he was useless to her. But it still hurt to hear her say it, to know that was the only reason she bore his company. “Very well, what do I do?”

“Just be still and relax,” Eloryn said. She raised a hand to his forehead and his chest and placed them feather soft on his skin. Roen saw the color rise through her face and his body tensed.

Eloryn snatched her hands away, then looked at him with a pained expression before starting again. “Please try and relax.”

“Is this what you did for me?” Memory asked sitting forward to watch.

Eloryn nodded, and began whispering magical words to Roen’s body. Roen felt the air rush out of him and his eyes glazed.

A clattering bump bounced Roen’s chin against his chest and he opened his eyes. He wondered why his body was numb, then realized it was just the absence of pain. Eloryn watched him from close at his side. Her skin looked paler than normal, showing soft purple shadows under jade irises. The sympathy in her expression remained. His own eyes dropped away from hers, running down her neck and resting on the thin red line across her chest. The deep slash cut by Memory’s knife had closed, but the blood it spilt still stained the gold front of Eloryn’s dress. Eloryn shifted in her seat, and Roen looked back up to see her staring, mouth slightly open in a confused look. Roen cursed internally, realizing where he’d just been staring, and turned his gaze away into the rest of the cabin.

“Have I been asleep? How long?” Roen looked around, re-gathering information into a no longer woozy mind. The wagon interior was as he remembered, but now no light showed through the gaps around the wooden door.

“It took some hours. We weren’t interrupted. Do you feel better?”

Roen rolled his shoulder, stretched out his back and nodded. He felt great, at least his body did, anyway. His clothing and mind were still in ruins. Roen looked to Memory, sleeping fitfully on the bed, woken when they hit another large bump in the road.

“Thank you. I’m glad you took a moment to heal yourself also.” Roen’s voice sounded rough even to his own ears. He tried to cover it by continuing to talk. “Can’t be much farther till we’re there if it’s night already.” Roen stood up, steadying himself with a hand on the ceiling. He opened the smaller window in the back door of the wagon and peered out.

It was past dusk. A blacker air surrounded them, helped by mammoth trees growing up on either side of the rough trail they rode. This wasn’t the main road to Kenth. A wagon shouldn’t even be driven on a track like this.

Roen took three stalking steps to the front of the wagon, pots and pans clattering on shelves beside him. He climbed up past Memory and opened the front window.

“How’s the driving?” he asked in a cheery voice.

“Just taking a short cut. Not long now.” The woman and her daughter sat side by side on the bench in front of him. The girl absently carved into the wood of the bench with a sharp fingernail. Roen smiled and nodded and closed the window again.

He swore under his breath.

“Mem, Eloryn, I think our ride should end here. I don’t think they are taking us where we asked,” he whispered.

Memory shrugged, groggy from sleep, but nodded to his suggestion as though she expected trouble as the norm. Eloryn looked drained but stood up right away.

Roen lifted his finger to his lips and silently unlatched and swung the back door. It opened to the darkness of the track growing smaller behind them. The wagon moved slowly, hindered by tree roots and rubble. He pointed out, and took Memory’s hand as she stepped off.

She dropped out the moving doorway onto the ground and tumbled over herself. The sound of the wagon creaking and rattling covered her swearing. Roen lifted Eloryn down next, trying to judge the movement better this time. Eloryn wobbled when her feet hit the dirt, but didn’t fall. Roen stepped off easily, took them each by a hand and started sneaking them back down the path in the woods.

The wagon came to an abrupt stop. Roen turned back, and saw Bonny perched like a grotesque on the rounded rooftop.

Her brown eyes had turned black to the edges. Her skin now gray; it darkened toward her mouth, now a gaping hole of sharp teeth.

“Don’t go. We don’t get our prize if you go,” she howled in a disturbing imitation of the child’s voice.

“Banshee?” Eloryn gasped to Roen.

“Unseelie fae, one way or another,” he nodded. “Keep running.”

The mother figure appeared in front of them. The magical glamour that hid her true form was gone as well. She seemed bonier than before, taller than any of them. Her eyes were also black, teeth menacing, and bushy hair knotted with tiny bones.

“Just stay back,” Roen warned, drawing his pale golden blade against them. “You’re not in your rights to hurt us. You would be breaking the Pact.”

“Pact, ha! You agreed to come with us, agreed to be ours!” the woman sang at them with a thirsty smile, unworried by the sharp weapon aimed at her.

Roen knew electrum wasn’t much use against the fae, that if he made a move before them, he’d be at fault under the Pact, at risk of being Branded, but he held the blade steady regardless. The banshee tricked and manipulated just like all the Unseelie, finding loopholes in the Pact that governed their behavior so that they could satisfy their dark cravings.

“We spoke no agreement.” Eloryn stepped forward. “I will Brand you if I must.”

“Can’t Brand if we don’t touch. Come with us! She just wants the magic ones. We’re not going to bite, we’re going to get a prize!” Bonny, or whatever her name truly was, bounced on the wagon’s roof.

“Who?” Roen grunted, confused.

Bonny laughed in a tinkling, ear-piercing crescendo.

Roen heard the flick of Memory’s knife opening and she moved beside him.

The mother leapt back.

“What is that? How do you have that?” she spat.

The knife shook in Memory’s hand.

“Cold dead iron. I told you she smelled of it. But I’m not scared, I’m not scared!” The girl-like dark fae leapt from the wagon roof, imitating flight, and landed between Memory and banshee mother. Bonny thrust a grey-skinned hand at Memory, as though she meant to swat the blade from her hand. Yelping, Memory slashed the knife, tracing the smallest line across the girl’s arm.

Bonny’s eyes bulged. She howled. The point where the blade had touched her arm steamed and hissed and she threw herself onto the ground in fits, screaming vicious curses. The mother hunched over her.

“Pact? Pact! You are the ones who break the Pact!” she screamed wildly. She lunged at them, but the thrashing girl cried out and she stepped back beside her, baring her teeth.

Roen grabbed Memory and Eloryn again by the hands. Mournful howling filled the night as he dragged them away through the moonlit trees.

They hobbled into Kenth under a cover of dismal clouds. A light wind lifted dry leaves in a dance around their feet. Eloryn had spoken with trees and earth in the forest to find their way, and they walked through the whole night. The effects of the poison in Eloryn had long passed, but pushing herself to heal Roen and lack of sleep left her spark of connection barely alight.

Her feet ached in her torn satin slippers. She wondered how Memory’s, completely bare, must be feeling.

The small town huddled like a flock of sheep at the base of wooded hills. The houses were all half crumbled walls built of a dark stone from the nearby mountains, and thatched in patchy straw when they still had roofs. It was secluded, ghostly, and completely deserted.

“Sure this is the place?” Memory asked.

“Where better to hide than a dead town?” said Roen.

“Dead? Creepy much?”

“Dead of the fae. There are none here anymore.”

“Isn’t that a good thing? They seem sort of nasty,” said Memory.

“Good or bad, the fae are what bring prosperity to the world. They leave, and you end up with land like this.” Roen tilted his head to the cracked, empty fields and wilted trees. “We’ll know soon if this is the right place.”

Roen walked forward again, leaving the girls a few steps behind. Tension strung his shoulders tight. Eloryn had traced over the strain there in her healing, feeling it like a weight he’d carried too long, one she couldn’t heal but a burden she’d added to immeasurably.

He’d been silent almost the entire night.

Eloryn sighed and followed. They headed down the main street of the ghost town toward a well in the centre of a small square at the other end. Dark woods backed the view like an image from one of her fairytale books.

“What are we meant to do here?” Memory asked when Roen stopped at the well. She circled the ancient structure of moss covered stone and aged bronze woven in floral motifs.

“We make a wish. May I have your knife?” Roen held out his hand and pulled out the coin token with the other. Eloryn had given it back to him during the night, a gesture of her trust, but it didn’t seem to please him at all. He took it like a further weight to carry.

Memory passed her knife over. “As long as I get it back.”

Roen pulled it open and brought it up in front of his eyes, turning it around. Flicking the blade with his thumb, he glanced at Memory but said nothing, just started scratching into the back of the coin. The knife carved easily through the silver surface.

“Lanval’s contact told me to write a message on the coin,” Eloryn said, “and drop it in this well. Then the Council should come to us. It’s a special coin made by the resistance, showing the Maellan crest, but minted after Thayl came to rule.” She wondered what exact wording Roen used in the message, but didn’t dare question him.

Memory sat down on the wide rim of the well with an odd look of satisfaction. Eloryn joined her.

“Mmm. Sitting,” Memory said.

Roen tossed the coin down the well’s mouth and they watched with held breaths. No sound came to tell them it had reached a bottom.

Eloryn smiled a little at the setup. “A magical interception. Coins dropped here must go straight to the Council.”

“Wow, communication system and form of income in one. These guys are smart.”

“Now you wait.” Roen wiped off the blade and handed it back to Memory. She kept it in her hand, flicking and fidgeting with it.

He began walking away.

“Roen?” Eloryn stood up faster than she meant to.

“I won’t be far,” he called without looking back. She sat down again and watched him go. He reached a mostly intact building half way down the road and sat against the shadowed wall, knees against his chest.

If this worked, he could go back to his parents, and no longer feel the responsibility of my presence.
Eloryn remembered seeing a similar look of affliction in Alward’s face growing up. Wherever he was now, it was her fault. If anyone else was hurt because of her...

“May I see your knife for a moment?” she asked Memory, looking for a distraction.

“Sure.” Memory flicked it closed again and passed it to her.

As the knife came into her hands, Eloryn felt her spark of connection grow strong and a strange warmth in the metal. It wasn’t silver, as she’d first thought. It was something harder. “Could this really be iron?”

“I don’t know. Stainless steel or something.” Memory shrugged.

“No, it’s... this metal is poison to the fae. I don’t know how you could have this. There should be no iron in Avall. It was all removed during the Purge, at the forming of the Pact.”

“Is there anything that isn’t to do with whatever this Pact thing is?”

Eloryn frowned. She often had to remind herself how little Memory knew. Things even a child of Avall knew. “The Pact was a deal made over 1500 years ago between the fae and humans, to benefit both sides. It brought magic and prosperity to the people of Avall, and Avall became a safe haven for the fae in return. Part of the pact is the peace treaty. If a fae hurts a human they can be magically Branded, and vice versa, unless under certain conditions. The Brand is a death sentence. I’m sorry. I should have told you these things before now. If you hadn’t been acting in self defense when the banshee attacked, you could have been Branded. The iron itself isn’t a crime as such. It simply shouldn’t exist here any more.”

“You don’t think it means I could be from somewhere else, like Hell?” Memory asked, quiet and high pitched.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person Mem, or a demon.” If only she knew more, if Alward had let her study the Veil with him. He had been obsessed with its research, even travelling into the woods where he could perform spells and experiments unnoticed. But he never shared that research with her, never explained why. She had stolen peeks into his work, but not enough for this.

“There are always other answers. I just don’t have them for you, I’m sorry.” Eloryn had always felt so clever in her home with Alward, able to answer any question. Now she was just lost. Her eyes turned back down the street, searching for something, and found Roen gone. She looked to Memory, concerned.

“I saw him wander off just now. I’m sure he’ll be back. Don’t worry,” Memory said, despite looking worried herself.

Eloryn lifted her bottom lip in the semblance of a smile and handed Memory her knife. Memory slid down to the ground so she could lean against the well, and closed her eyes. They sat in silence, and Eloryn held her hands tightly in her lap to keep them still. She stared at the sky, her mind racing in circles after any trace of calm she could catch.

Hours passed before Roen returned. He carried a scrap of hessian folded into a bundle. He handed Eloryn a small apple he held in his hand, blushed red only on one side, small and perfect.

“Found one tree still fruiting. They’re small, but edible.” He propped the makeshift bag against the well, showing a feast of green apples. “Sorry for taking so long.”

“No apology needed when you bring food.” Memory smiled and bit into one apple, already holding a second in her other hand.

Eloryn stared at the apple, but had trouble bringing herself to eat it.

“You need to eat,” Roen told her in dull tone. “You’re losing a lot of weight.”

He turned back toward the road.

The world suddenly blinked out of Eloryn’s eyes. Light and vision vanished, leaving only formless black. She shrieked, echoed by Memory.

“What’s happening? I can’t see!” Memory cried.

“Nor I!” Roen’s voice.

Eloryn whispered a behest to let her eyes see again, and found they were surrounded by five old men in faded black and purple suits. They held knives in one hand, and scrolls in the other, held up ready to be read. When she looked them in the eye, no longer blinded, they turned to the youngest man for guidance.

“She can still see?”

“Look at her...” another muttered, dumbstruck.

The younger man with a narrow face and hooked nose unrolled his scroll. “It’s a trick! Finish this.”

“No! Stop please, we called for you!” Eloryn said, folding her fingers into the latticework triangle symbol of the Wizards’ Council.

Another age-stooped man hesitated. “They’re just children.”

“You think they wouldn’t appear in any way they could to trap us? Remember how many died the last time we received a message from ‘the heir’! Hesitate and how many will die this time?”

“Princess, what’s happening?” Roen stood statue still, taut with distress. Memory sat frozen, gripping her knife behind her back with white fingers.

“I can prove it’s who I am, let me prove it!” Eloryn cried.

This time four lowered their weapons.

The younger man, vocal against her already, sneered. “How?”

“She has the Maellan crested medallion,” Roen said, turning blindly to the voices around him.

“No, it’s still at Duke de Montredeur’s,” said Eloryn.

The man huffed at her.

“But I have the bloodline. I am Maellan!” Eloryn flicked through possibilities in her mind, looking down at the dead, bare ground around them. She spoke her words, a long string of pleading words, spoken loudly for the men to hear how she used them.

From the barren dirt, a meadow of grasses forced through, like green living hair. Wildflowers unfolded. Sprays of grass seeds and dander spread. The old men gasped audibly.

“No book, no scroll? She is Maellan! You cannot dispute that power, Hayes!” a bald, wide-bellied man said.

“You can see the Lady Loredanna clear in her behind the grime she wears,” said another.

“Seems so. In which case we all need to be out of sight. We’ve been exposed too long already. Apologies, Highness.” His lips twitched under his hooked nose, still skeptical. “You understand we must be cautious. These two are with you?” Hayes asked.

Eloryn nodded.

Hayes snapped his fingers to the aged man on his left, who began speaking words of annulment to the spell on Roen and Memory’s eyes. As he did so, Hayes unrolled his scroll and began reading words that must have been intended to follow the blindness on them. The patch of ground Eloryn had brought to life blazed and shriveled into grey ash.

Eloryn cried out in alarm.

“It had to be done. Your proof was not exactly discreet,” said Hayes.

The bald man tilted his head. “Common folk would just have thought it was the fae returned.”

“It’s not the common folk I’m worried about.”

Memory already didn’t like them. They were old. Really old. The kind of old that’s misshapen with bitterness and arrogance. Hayes was the youngest – forties or fifties, Memory couldn’t tell – but managed to be the nastiest of the lot. How she thought King Thayl would have been, the way people talked about him. She liked him way better than these guys.

The bald man, Waylan, wasn’t so bad. Still old, but more friendly than the others. To her at least, anyway. They were all eager to be friendly with Eloryn. Memory itched and squirmed in her corset. If she’d known she would be wearing this dress for so long, she would have picked something more comfortable. She doubted this group of old men would have any clothes for her, even if they cared.